The Santaroga Barrier (25 page)

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Authors: Frank Herbert

BOOK: The Santaroga Barrier
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“Win, please?” She turned toward him, pleading.
Burdeaux swallowed. “Well … since it's you …”
“Thank you, Win.”
“Twenty minutes,” Burdeaux said. “I'll be right out in the hall where you can call me if you need.”
“Thank you, Win.” She turned her attention back to Dasein.
Burdeaux left the room, closed the door softly.
Dasein said: “Jen, I …”
“Be quiet,” she said. “You're not to waste your strength. Uncle Larry said …”
“I'm not eating here,” Dasein said.
She stamped a foot. “Gil, you're being …”
“I'm being a fool,” he said. “But the important thing is I'm alive.”
“But look at you! Look at …”
“How's Harry Scheler?”
She hesitated, then: “He'll live; He'll have some scars, and for that matter so will you, but you …”
“Have they figured out what happened?”
“It was an accident.”
“That's all? Just an accident?”
“They said something about the line from the fuel pump being broken … a bad electrical connection to one of the lights and …”
“An accident,” Dasein said. “I see.” He sank back into his pillow.
“I've prepared you some coddled eggs and toast and honey,” Jenny said. “You've got to eat something to keep up …”
“No.”
“Gil!”
“I said no.”
“What're you afraid of?”
“Another accident.”
“But I prepared this myself!”
He turned his head, stared at her, spoke in a low voice: “Stay away from me. I love you.”
“Gilbert!”
“You said it,” he reminded her.
Her face paled. She leaned against the cart, trembling. “I know,” she whispered. “Sometimes I can feel the …” She looked up, tears streaming down her face. “But I do love you. And you're hurt now. I want to take care of you. I need to take care of you. Look.” She lifted the cover from one of the dishes on the cart, spooned a bite of food into her mouth.
“Jenny,” Dasein whispered. The look of hurt on her face, the intensity of his love for her—he wanted to take her in his arms and …
A wide-eyed look came over Jenny's face. She reached both hands to her throat. Her mouth worked, but no sound came forth.
“Jenny!”
She shook her head, eyes staring wildly.
Dasein threw back the covers of his bed, winced as movement increased the pain along his arms. He ignored the pain, slid his feet out to a cold tile floor, straightened. A wave of dizziness gripped him.
Jenny, hands still at her throat, backed toward the door.
Dasein started toward her, hospital nightshirt flopping around his knees. He found movement difficult, his knees rubbery.
Abruptly, Jenny slumped to the floor.
Dasein remembered Burdeaux, shouted: “Help! Win! Help!' He staggered, clutched the edge of the cart. It started to roll.
Dasein found himself sitting helplessly on the floor as the door burst open. Burdeaux stood there glaring at him, looked down at Jenny who lay with her eyes closed, knees drawn up, gasping.
“Call the doctor,” Dasein husked. “Something in the food. She ate some …”
Burdeaux took one quick breath of awareness, whirled away down the hall, leaving the door open.
Dasein started to crawl toward Jenny. The room wavered and twisted around him. His arms throbbed. There was a whistle in Jenny's gasping breaths that made him want to dash to her, but he couldn't find the strength. He had covered only a few feet when Piaget rushed in with Burdeaux right behind.
Piaget, his round face a pale blank mask, knelt beside Jenny, motioned toward Dasein, said: “Get him back in bed.”
“The food on the cart,” Dasein rasped. “She ate something.”
A blonde nurse in a stiff white cap wheeled an emergency cart in the door, bent over Piaget's shoulder. They were cut from Dasein's view as Burdeaux scooped him up, deposited him on the bed.
“You stay there, Doctor Gil,” Burdeaux said. He turned, stared at the action by the door.
“Allergenic reaction,” Piaget said. “Throat's closing. Give me a double tube; we'll have to pump her.”
The nurse handed something to Piaget, who worked over Jenny, his back obscuring his actions.
“Atropine,” Piaget said.
Again, he took something from the nurse.
Dasein found it difficult to focus on the scene. Fear tightened his throat.
Why am I so weak?
he wondered. Then:
Dear God, she can't die. Please save her.
Faces of more hospital personnel appeared at the door, wide-eyed, silent.
Piaget glanced up, said: “Get a gurney.”
Some of the faces went away. Presently, there was a sound of wheels in the corridor.
Piaget stood up, said: “That's as much as I can do here. Get her on the gumey—head lower than her feet.” He turned to Dasein. “What'd she eat?”
“She took …” Dasein pointed to the food cart. “Whatever it is, she took the cover off. Eggs?”
Piaget took one stride to the cart, grabbed up a dish, sniffed at it. His movement opened the view to the door for Dasein. Two orderlies and a nurse were lifting Jenny there, carrying her out the door. There was one glimpse of her pale face with a tube dangling from the corner of her mouth.
“Was it a poison?” Burdeaux asked, his voice hushed.
“Of course it was a poison!” Piaget snapped. “Acts like aconite.” He turned with the dish, rushed out.
Dasein listened to the sound of the wheels and swift footsteps receding down the hall until Burdeaux closed the door, shutting out the sound.
His body bathed in perspiration, Dasein lay unresisting while Burdeaux eased him under the blankets.
“For one moment there,” Burdeaux said, “I … I thought you'd hurt Jenny.”
She can't die
, Dasein thought.
“I'm sorry,” Burdeaux said. “I know you wouldn't hurt her.”
“She can't die,” Dasein whispered.
He looked up to see tears draw glistening tracks down Burdeaux's dark cheeks. The tears ignited an odd anger reaction in Dasein. He was aware of the anger swelling in him, but unable to stop it. Rage! It was directed not at Burdeaux, but at the disembodied essence of Santaroga, at the collective
thing
which had tried to use the woman he loved to kill him. He glared at Burdeaux.
“Doctor Larry won't let anything happen to Jenny,” Burdeaux said. “He'll …”
Burdeaux saw the expression in Dasein's eyes, instinctively backed away.
“Get out of here!” Dasein rasped.
“But the doctor said I was to …”
“Doctor
Gil
says you get the hell out of here!”
Burdeaux's face took on a stubborn set. “I'm not to leave you alone.”
Dasein sank back. What could he do?
“You had a very bad shock reaction last night,” Burdeaux said. “They had to give you blood. You're not to be left alone.”
They gave me a transfusion?
Dasein wondered.
Why didn't they kill me then? They were saving me for Jenny!
“You all care so much for Jenny,” Dasein said. “You'd let her kill me. It'd destroy her, but that doesn't make any difference, does it? Sacrifice Jenny, that's your verdict, you pack of …”
“You're talking crazy, Doctor Gil.”
As quickly as it had come, the anger left Dasein. Why attack poor Win? Why attack any of them? They couldn't see the monkey on their back. He felt deflated. Of course this was crazy to Burdeaux. One society's reason was another's unreason.
Dasein cursed the weakness that had seized his body.
Bad shock reaction.
He wondered then what he would do if Jenny died. It was a curiously fragmented feeling—part of him wailing in grief at the thought, another part raging at the fate which had shunted him into this corner … and part of him forever analyzing, analyzing …
How much of the shock had been a Jaspers reaction? Had he become sensitized the way Santarogans were?
They'll kill me out of hand if Jenny dies,
he thought.
Burdeaux said: “I'll just sit here by the door. You be sure to tell me if you need anything.”
He sat down facing Dasein, folded his arms—for all the world like a guard.
Dasein closed his eyes, thought:
Jenny, please don't die.
He recalled Piaget telling how Harry Scheler had known of the brother's death.
An empty place.
Where do I sense Jenny?
Dasein asked himself.
It bothered him that he couldn't probe within himself somewhere and be reassured by Jenny's presence. That kind of reassurance was worth any price. She had to be there. It was a thing any Santarogan could do.
But I'm not a Santarogan.
Dasein felt that he teetered on the razor's edge. One side held the vast unconscious sea of the human world into which he had been born. On the other side—there, it was like the green waters of a lake—serene, contained, every droplet knowing its neighbors.
He heard a door open, felt a storm begin in the unconscious sea, sensed a breeze stirring the surface of the lake. The sensation of balancing receded. Dasein opened his eyes.
Piaget stood in the middle of the room. He wore a stethoscope around his neck. There was a feeling of fatigue around
his eyes. He studied Dasein with a puzzled frown.
“Jenny?” Dasein whispered.
“She'll live,” Piaget said. “But it was close.”
Dasein closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “How many more
accidents
like that can we take?” he asked. He opened his eyes, met Piaget's gaze.
Burdeaux came up beside Piaget, said: “He's been talking crazy, Doctor Larry.”
“Win, would you leave us for a bit?” Piaget asked.
“You sure?” Burdeaux scowled at Dasein.
“Please,” Piaget said. He pulled up a chair, sat down beside the bed, facing Dasein.
“I'll be right outside,” Burdeaux said. He went out, closed the door.
“You've upset Win and that's rather difficult to do,” Piaget said.
“Upset …” Dasein stared at him, speechless. Then: “Is that your summation of what's happened?”
Piaget looked down at his own right hand, made a fist, opened it. He shook his head. “I didn't mean to sound flippant, Gilbert. I …” He looked up at Dasein. “There must be some reasonable, rational explanation.”
“You don't think the word
accident
explains all this?”
“An accident prone …”
“We both know there's no such thing as an accident prone in the popular sense of that label,” Dasein said.
Piaget steepled his hands in front of him, leaned back. He pursed his lips, then: “Well, in the psychiatric view …”
“Come off that!” Dasein barked. “You're going to fall back on the old cliche about ‘a neurotic tendency to inflict self-injury,' a defect in ego-control. Where did I have any control over the work on that bridge? Or the boy with the bow and arrow or …
“Boy with a bow and arrow?”
Dasein thought to hell with his promise, told about the incident at the park, added: “And what about the garage hoist or the fire? For that matter, what about the poison in the food Jenny … Jenny, of all people! the food that she …”
“All right! You have grounds to …”
“Grounds? I've an entire syndrome laid out in front of me.
Santaroga is trying to kill me. You've already killed an apparently inoffensive young man. You've almost killed Jenny. What next?”
“In heaven's name, why would we …”
“To eliminate a threat. Isn't that obvious? I'm a threat”
“Oh, now really …”
“Now, really! Or is it perfectly all right if I take Jenny out of this crazy valley and blow the whistle on you?”
“Jenny won't leave her …” He paused. “Blow the whistle? What do you mean?”

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