Nightmare in Pink (13 page)

"Could we see the patient, Doctor?" Mulligan said.

"She's resting now."

"Doctor, I can remain more convinced of the value of your programs here when I can be given a chance to observe results. Right now there is a list of equipment purchases on my desk for approval."

Varn went to the door and spoke to the man outside. Doris Wrightson was brought in a few minutes later. There was a scarf tied around her head. She wore a gray denim hospital dress that looked too small for her-loose at the waist, but tight across breasts and hips. She moved with a ponderous litheness-that odd gait of the perfectly-conditioned athlete. Musculature squared her jaw. Her shoulders and neck were solid and heavy, packing the fabric of the dress. In repose her arms and legs had the roundness and illusion of softness of a woman, but at the slightest move, the slabbed muscles distorted contour, as explicit as an anatomical drawing.

For a moment I could not think what she reminded me of, and then I saw it. She was precisely like one of the circus girls: one of those hard, chunky, quiet, amiable fliers – narrow-waisted, flat-bellied, with thighs like a warmed layer of thin foam rubber stretched over granite, and with such pectoral development that even the high round breasts are muscular. This was no sedentary office worker, nor could I imagine her as ever having been one.

She said, "Hello, Doctor. Hello, Mr. Mulligan," and then stood off to one side, placid and incurious as a good dog. Though she was very pale, her skin had the moist luminous glow of perfect health, and the whites of her mild brown eyes were blue-white.

Varn said, "She's now at the point where, with a rig designed on the basis of a rowing machine, she will expend forty-eight hundred foot pounds of energy a minute-fifty foot tons an hour-and maintain that rate for eight hours in two four-hour segments. It requires a five-thousand calory intake to keep her weight stabilized on that basis. As we keep increasing effort required, we alter the specific physical motions in order to avoid over development of any specific muscle areas."

"How do you feel, Doris?" Mulligan asked.

"I feel very good, thank you."

"All of her physical problems have disappeared," Varn said. "Her normal heartbeat at rest is approximately fifty."

"Can you explain her emotional adjustment?"

"Only by inference," Varn said. "As you can, see, she is placid and amiable and cooperative. Social interractions and interrelations no longer concern her. She is not anxious about how people react to her. She is totally unselfconscious. Her desire to please is based upon our ability to provide her with that pleasure stimulus which forms a compulsion so complete nothing else is of any particular concern to her. She takes pride in doing the hard tasks we set her, though, a pride a little apart from the reward of the pleasure stimulus."

"How about intelligence?" Mulligan asked.

"That's difficult. The conventions we use to measure intelligence are conditioned emotional factors. The tests imply a wide range of emotional responses. She has one single emotional compulsion. My guess is that intelligence is unimpaired. But her indifference to anything other than the pleasure stimulus makes it difficult to measure. There seems to be an impairment of memory regarding everything which ever happened to her before she came here. Her skills seem unimpaired."

"What's your appraisal of the future?"

"I don't believe we're anywhere near the top limit of physical capability, even though her physical strength is astonishing right now. We're trying to keep her at that point of stasis where strength increases without any breakdown of muscle tissue. I would guess that the end point will be reached when the bone structure cannot take the stress involved."

"What will happen when you stop the experiment?"

''No!" Doris Wrightson cried, her face vivid with dismay.

Varn went quickly to her and said, "We're not going to stop, Doris. Don't be upset." He patted her shoulder. It was a gentling gesture, the way one pats the bulging shoulder of a nervous horse. She quieted quickly, less of the whites of her eyes showing, and he guided her to the door, turned her over to someone waiting there for her.

Varn came back and said, "That's the special problem, as you can see. When we have tried stopping for one day, she becomes very restless and anxious and difficult to manage. It is, in a sense, a very strong addiction. But, unlike other addictions, there is no change in the tolerance level. The exact same percentage increase in the strength of the stimulus now will cause her to faint as it did in the beginning. There is the same effect from an increase in duration."

"What are you going to do with her?"

"We'll face that when we come to it, Mr. Mulligan. Dr. Moore has several suggestions. We'll try the least radical ones first."

"Would you be interested in another female?"

The quickening of interest in Varn's handsome face turned my heart to ice. "It improves the validity of any experimental procedure to have another subject to use as a control," he said. "But… we would want to be very certain that… there would be no one on the outside to insist on visiting…"

"Just like miss Wrightson? I think I can guarantee that."

"Wilkerson is very interested in setting up an experiment for agility rather than strength. He has the idea of a plate which the subject would have to touch to close the contact, and then he could put it a little higher each day…"

His patient impersonal explanation was lost in the roar of blood in my ears. In a little cold white tall room in the back of my mind, my Nina, in gray denim, with a wire in her head, with all of her world and her life focused down to a single recurrent ecstasy-crouched and sprang, crouched and sprang…

Varn was gone. Mulligan studied me. "At a lunch counter, McGee, somebody can reach across her to get a paper napkin. It would be that simple. Moore's report says that you have a strong sexual-emotional attachment for the girl-a protective instinct, with a slight overtone of moralistic guilt. That last astonished me somewhat."

"You are a bastard, Mulligan."

"Dr. Varn's most bitter disappointment is that he cannot publish. But the fellow is endlessly curious. There are certain unpleasantly immoral implications in turning people into hopelessly dependent compulsives, but who are we to say that a hundred years from now history might acclaim the good doctor as the one who found the way of turning man into superman. From a beginning of rewarding strength or solidity, why not reward the problem-solving ability, or artistic effort, or mind-reading? Or maybe it will be a world where all the dutiful plods wear their little wires, and men of high intelligence and ambition push the buttons. Our bald little doctor is properly nervous about this field of investigation, but he is carefuI about his security measures. He is inquisitive, not monstrous. And I am not without compassion."

"You are a legitimate maniac, Mulligan. You are the one they should lock up."

"Don't be childish. Years ago, when I was looking for exactly the right angle of approach, I realized it would be stupid to try to contrive enough fatal accidents to take care of people who might get in the way of a long-range, large-scale project. This has worked well. After these people were bribed and coerced into their first illegal, unethical, unprofessional act, they've had no choice but to be cooperative. I don't actually give a damn about their rationalizations. Charlie was their first project, you are the sixth, Olan Harris is the seventh, and Miss Gibson can be the eighth. I think you will write the letters, McGee. I think you will make every effort to make them plausible and convincing. I do not think you will try to be clever or tricky. As soon as you have written them, you are no longer a problem to me, and I shall probably never see you again. I may see you after your personality has been surgically adjusted, and you will probably remember me and feel a sense of antagonism. But you won't be dangerous."

"I'll be a very happy man."

"That's everybody's goal, isn't it?"

"Let them treat you, Mulligan."

"I am a happy man, my friend. I'm getting my gratification from finding a way past all the rules and restrictions and conventions of a dull and orderly society. I'm performing a theft of such dimensions, it will be legend rather than theft. And, like our Doctor Varn, I am slightly bitter because I will never be able to publish the details of it. But books will be written about it. From the look of you, I think you are ready to write those letters."

I was, and I did.

Tiny bright light swinging and my voice in a darkened room.

Brush and soap and shower. "He was never worth a goddam until they moved him to linebacker."

Light in the room at night. Face at the grill in the door.

Pasty feel of electrodes at the temples, pen scratching a rhythmic line on a chart.

"Now, Travis, run in position until I tell you to stop."

Indifferent face in the night. Needle fang in my arm. Cool wipe of alcohol. Medicine smell. Off into drifting…

They wanted a manageable patient, a mild eagerness to cooperate. There were times when I felt I was fighting my way to the surface and then I would be pushed down again, down into the drifting. No problem to anybody. When I got close to the surface I would know that some terrible thing was going to happen, but I did not know what it was.

I do not know how they slipped up, or why they slipped up. Perhaps it was one of those little errors in routine, somebody skipping a medication indicated on the chart. But suddenly I came awake in the night. I did not know what night it was, or how much time had passed. I knew only that I was alert and terrified. Wisps of strange dreams and visions clotted the corners of my mind. The night-light was sealed into the baseboard, guarded with a heavy grill. I looked out the door grill into a segment of empty gray corridor.

I paced the room, and, at the first rattle of the latch, got quickly into bed. It was the square sandy nurse. She fixed the hypo in the dim light. When she bared my arm and leaned over it, I hit her sharply on the shelf of the jaw, near the chin. She fell across me without a sound. I found the hypo when I shifted her cautiously. I got up and straightened her out and looked in her pockets. I found the little vial from which she filled the hypo. I injected her in the arm with what was in the hypo, then drew off more from the vial, sticking the needle through the soft rubber top, and gave her that. She had a split ring with two keys on it. I did not know what they fitted. She had left my door wedged open a few inches. She was on the floor on her back. Her mouth hung open. She began to snore. I rolled her onto her face. She stopped snoring. I shoved her under the bed. She slid easily on the gray vinyl flooring.

I was in the short hospital gown I wore at night. They would bring me clean coveralls each morning. The door to the tiled bath was locked. I did not dare go out into the hallway. This might be the only chance I would have. They would know how to handle patients who got out into the corridors. They would have safe, practical, effective methods. They would never give me a second chance. There would be nothing left but the dreams and visions until they had finished their series, and then there would be a tiny blade shoved into my head, and after that I would never worry very much about anything.

The room door opened inward. It was held open by a rubber wedge. I listened. I heard nothing. I pulled the door halfway open and wedged it. The night-light made a fairly bright area just inside the door. I had to bait it with something. I used her keys. They caught the light. They would catch the eye of anyone passing. The normal reaction would be to pick them up. I waited alongside the door, where I could not be seen through the grill. I waited a long time. I heard someone coming. Scuff of a shoe. Faint rustle of clothing. I clenched my hands together. I heard a soft exclamation.

The instant I saw a hand reaching for the keys, I jumped out and brought my clenched hands down on the nape of a neck, as hard as I could. He made too much noise tumbling onto the floor. I pulled him inside, wedged the door open an inch or so. I dragged him over beside the bed. I was going to inject him. But as I touched him, he gave a prolonged shudder and died. I worked his clothing off him and put it on. The legs and sleeves were short. I was worried about the shoes. I wanted shoes. But they were just big enough.

I put him into the bed and covered him over. I felt in the pockets. There was a wallet. I took it to the light. He was Donald Swane. He had three keys. One of them was identical to one of the nurse's keys. I felt sorry for the poor dead son-of-a-bitch. He had no way of knowing that some of the patients didn't belong there. Which ones do you believe?

He had eleven dollars, half a pack of Camels, a Zippo lighter, three keys, half a roll of clove Life Savers, and no weapon at all. Once upon a time I had tried to memorize the layout of the building. I couldn't remember much of it.

I didn't want to walk out of the room. It seemed like a safe place. I didn't know what was waiting outside. His shoes were quiet. They had rubber soles. I carried the hypo and vial in the pocket of the white jacket. I opened the door and looked up and down the corridor. It was empty. To my left I saw a red bulb burning over a doorway. I remembered there were stairs there. I walked swiftly, letting the door close behind me. I went through the stairway door. I had left his watch on his wrist.

It was after four in the morning. I wanted to go down the stairs. As I started to go down, a door opened on the next flight down, and somebody started coming up. I went up. There was only one more flight. I waited until I was certain they were coming all the way up. I went out into a corridor very like the one on my floor below. I pulled a door open. It was a lab. A blue night-light shone on tubing and retorts, zinc benches, bottle racks. I made certain the door could be opened from the inside, and let it shut.

I crouched against the door, straining my ears to hear any sound in the corridor. The door was too thick. I waited at least five minutes. Then I looked around the lab. The windows were steel casement windows, rigidly braced. They did not open far enough for me to get out. I was on the third floor. I could have risked a drop from that height.

I wanted a weapon. I searched the small lab. I found a short heavy length of pipe. I tied it into a towel. I looked into a big refrigerator. It was full of racks of small vials containing colorless fluid. They were marked in a D series. D-1 to D-17. Many of them had sub-numerals in parentheses. I took vials of D-15, three of them, and some of the other numbers. They were small. I had the idea that if I could get out of there, the vials would be some proof of what was being done there, provided they were the Daska compounds. Somehow I saw all the doctors I had not met as looking exactly like Varn, all handsome little bald fellows.

It felt reassuring to have a club in my hand. I expected alarm bells to go off at any moment. I thought they would have some way of sounding an alarm when a patient was loose. Perhaps a siren. The corridor was empty. I ran to the stairs and went racing down. I got down to the ground floor level. The corridor there was much wider. I remembered a time, a lifetime ago, when I had been taken down to talk to Baynard Mulligan. It seemed a longer corridor than the ones upstairs.

In the far distance I saw two nurses standing and talking. If I could not see their faces, they could not see mine. There had to be an exit in that direction, perhaps halfway between me and the nurses. I walked toward them, trying to move casually. Suddenly a man came out of a doorway forty feet in front of me and started walking toward me, looking at a piece of paper he held in his hand.

I pushed open the first door I came to and went in. I was in a kitchen area. Two men were working slowly and sleepily at a big range. A dull-looking girl stood at a work table yawning and slicing grapefruit into halves. There was a lot of stainless steel and steam racks. They all looked at me questioningly.

"You seen Don?" I asked.

"What the hell would he be doing in here? Go look in the dining room."

There was a long pass-through area at one end of the room. I could look through there into a big institutional dining area. I saw the swinging doors with push plates which had to lead there. I walked toward the doors.

"Don who?" the girl asked.

"Skip it."

The dining area was empty. There was a long counter with low stools and beyond it, a cafeteria area adjacent to the pass-through. A busty redheaded girl in a blue nylon uniform stood at the work area behind the counter, slicing small boxes of dry cereal and placing the boxes into white bowls.

She glanced at me and said, "You want coffee, it's about three more minutes. I threw out the old, it tasted like battery acid, man." She gestured toward a huge gleaming urn that stood on the counter.

As I started to turn away. she said, "You new?"

"Brand new."

"Didn't take you long to get the coffee habit. It's like my husband says it's that way in the navy."

Find a door and walk out, I thought. And then what? Are there walls, gates, guards? Is it way out in the country? Any way to get a car?

"Rest yourself while you wait, man."

I needed a diversion. I needed everybody looking in some other direction. I sat on a stool. The vials in my pocket clinked. I stared at the long distortion of my face in the shining urn. Why the hell not?

"Mind if I look in the top of that thing?"

"What for? You look at those tube things and you can tell, it's when they get dark enough."

"I was wondering how they make them now," I said. I got up onto the counter and pulled the lid.

"Hey!" she said.

"This is very interesting."

"Climb in and have a swim. You a nut or something?"

She turned back to her cereal. I thumbed the rubber tops off the vials of D compound and dumped them in. Maybe they were harmless. Maybe they were cholera germs. Maybe heat changed them. It was too late to wonder about it. Scores slain in coffee poisoning. I wiped the counter with a paper napkin. I sat on a stool. She looked at me and her face was losing form, sliding and loosening like melting candy. I heard a strange prolonged chord of music in a minor key. The walls of the big room tilted-inward toward me, and the edges of reality had turned pink.

"You feel okay?" she asked, out of a mouth that was sliding down her throat into the top of her uniform.

"Just a little residual hallucination."

"Huh? Oh."

"I'll be back for some of your delicious coffee, angel."

"You do that."

"Don't melt while I'm gone."

"Melt? It isn't hot in here, man."

The door kept receding as I walked toward it. It took me three or four hours to reach it. I went into the corridor. I found a storage room. I folded myself into a cement corner behind huge cartons of toilet paper, and held my fists against my eyes and tried to keep the whole world from melting away into a pink eternal nothing.

In seven or eight months the world began to refocus and solidify. The musical chord died away, and I could hear clattering, shouts, a bell ringing.

I got up and walked out into a vast confusion. I heard glass breaking. Two men were trying to hold a third man. He was screaming, spasming, throwing them all over the corridor. I edged by them. A woman stood braced with her back against the wall, eyes closed, expression dreamy, slowly driving her nails into her cheeks and yanking them out again, blood running onto her beige blouse. I walked by her. I reached the main entrance.

The world was out there, beyond tall glass, a bright cool morning. A man on all fours was in a corner, trying to ram his way through, backing up and lunging forward like a big stubborn turtle trapped in a box. A girl sat spraddled on the floor. Her blouse was ripped to rags. Her empty eyes looked at me. She was sucking her thumb and slowly massaging her small loose breasts.

A man lay quite still just outside the main doors. I stepped over him. I heard sirens. I saw ambulances. People were running toward the building. They ignored me. I saw the parking lot and walked steadily toward it.

Off to my right I saw a fat woman running in a big circle as though she were running an imaginary base path. A big car came into the lot just as I got there. A man slammed the brakes on and piled out. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded. "What's happening in there?"

I turned him around and rapped him behind the ear with my length of pipe. When he fell, his car keys spilled out of his hand. I peeled his topcoat off and put it on. I took his car and drove away from there. Fifteen minutes later I was on the Thruway, heading south toward the city.

Twenty minutes later the sides of the highway began to curl upward and turn pink and the musical sound began again. I had to pull off. It took twenty minutes to get from my lane to the shoulder. The car was barely moving. But when it reached the shoulder it began to leap up and down.