Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (42 page)

I sat up and waited. Lenny brought her down in a few minutes. I didn’t join them in the kitchen. I watched and listened through her, and she was so agitated now that she wasn’t even aware of my presence. I was getting that good at it.

“Listen, Lenny, and then leave me alone. I thought it was Karl, but it isn’t. I don’t know who it is. He can get inside my mind. I don’t know how. I know he’s there, and he makes me do things, crazy things. He’ll use me, just like Karl did all those years. I can’t help myself. And night after night, day after day, whatever he wants me to do, wherever he wants me to go…” She was weeping and her talk was beginning to break up into incoherent snatches of half-formed thoughts.

“Chris! Stop that! Your husband was crazy! He thought he could possess you. That’s insane! And he half convinced you that he could do it. But God damn it, he’s dead! No one else can touch you. I won’t let anyone near you.”

“He doesn’t have to be near me. All these weeks… He’s been in and out, watching, listening to us go over the notebooks. He knows what’s in them now. I… He won’t stop now. And if he says I have to go with him, I’ll have to.”

Her voice went curiously flat and lifeless. She was seeing again that tube that ended in a point, and suddenly she longed to be on it, heading toward that point. “I’d rather die now,” she said.

Lenny’s big face twisted with pain. “Chris, please, trust me. I won’t let anyone near you. I promise. Let me help you, Chris. Please. Don’t force me out now.”

“It won’t make any difference. You don’t understand. If he makes me go with him, I can’t fight it.”

But she could. I didn’t know if my thoughts reminded her, or if she would have thought of it herself. Karl sitting in her room, watching her with a smile on his face. “You will turn them down, of course, my dear. You can’t travel to Africa alone.”

“No, I won’t turn them down! I want to take this assignment…” Slipping, blurring images, fear of being alone, of not being able to keep the world in focus. Fear of falling through the universe, to a time where there was nothing, falling forever… Staring at the rejection of the offer in her own handwriting. Karl’s face, sad, but determined.

“You really don’t want to travel without me, my dear. It wouldn’t be safe for you, you know.”

And later, waking up from dreamless sleep. Knowing she had to get up, to go down the hall to his room, where he was waiting for her.
No! It’s over! Leave me alone.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, standing up,
No! I hate you! Your soft fat hands! You make me feel dirty! Why don’t you die! Have a heart attack and die!

Fighting it to the door, dragging herself unwillingly to the door, fighting against the impulse, despising him and even more herself. He was forcing her up flights of stairs, without rails, straight down for miles and miles, and he was at her side, forcing each step. She pushed him, and he screamed. Then he was there again, and she pushed again. And again. Then he was running, and she, clinging to the doorknob in her bedroom, she was running too, pushing him off the steps as fast as he managed to climb back on, and he stumbled and fell and now she knew he would fall forever. Swirling into darkness, pain and terror. She slipped to the floor, and awakened there much later knowing only that something was gone from her life. That she felt curiously free and empty and unafraid.

I lay back down and stared at the ceiling. I could hear her footsteps recede up the stairs, across the hall to her room. Lenny’s heavy tread returned and there was the sound of measured pacing. Soon, I thought. Soon it would end. And after today, after she recovered from the next few hours… She would have to remain nearby, here in this house as long as possible. Above me she was starting to dress. I was there. She didn’t doubt a presence haunting her. Nor did she question that he could force her to go away with him if he chose.

“Who?” she whispered, standing still with her eyes closed. She imagined the suppressed fury on Lenny’s big face, the pulse in his temple that beat like a primitive drum summoning him from this time back to a time when he would have killed without a thought anyone who threatened his woman. I laughed and forced his face to dissolve and run like a painting on fire.

Suddenly I was jerked from my concentration by the sound of Janet’s voice. “Where is he? How is he?”

“He’s sleeping in the study. Feverish, but not bad.” Lenny’s reassuring voice.

Janet came into the study and sat on the couch and felt my face. “Honey, I was scared to death. I called and called and no answer. I was afraid you’d passed out or something. Let me take you over to Dr. Lessing.”

“Get out,” I said without opening my eyes. “Just get out and leave me alone.” I tried to find
her
, and couldn’t. I was afraid to give it too much attention with Janet right there.

“I can’t just leave you like this. I’ve never seen you like this before. You need a doctor.”

“Get out of here! When I need you or want you I’ll be in touch. Just get the hell away from me now.”

“Eddie!”

“For God’s sake, Janet, can’t you leave me alone? I’ve got a virus, a bug.

I feel rotten, but not sick, not sick enough for a doctor. I just want to be left alone.”

“No. It’s more serious than that. Don’t you think I know you better than that? It’s been coming on for weeks. Little things, then bigger things, now this. You have to see a doctor, Eddie. Please.”

Wearily I sat up and stared at her and wondered how I’d ever found her attractive or desirable. Freckled, thin, sharp features, razorlike bones… I turned away and said, “Get lost, Janet. Beat it. Yeah, it started a long time ago, but it takes a club over the head, doesn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what you think I mean. I’m sick. I’m tired. I want to be alone. For a long time. Tonight. Tomorrow night. Next week. Next month. Just get out of here and leave me alone. I’ll pick up some things later on after you’ve gone to work.”

“I’m going to call Dr. Lessing.”

I looked at her and hoped I wouldn’t have to hit her. I didn’t want to hurt her, too. Her freckles stood out in relief against the dead white of her skin. I closed my eyes. “I won’t see him. Or anyone else. Not now. Maybe tomorrow. Just leave me alone for now. I have to sleep.”

She stood up and backed away. At the door she stopped, and the helplessness in her voice made me want to throw something at her. “Eddie? Will you stay here for the next hour?”

So she could bring in her men in white. I laughed and sat up. “I had planned to, but I guess I’d better plan again. I’ll be in touch.”

She left then. I could hear her voice and Lenny’s from the kitchen, but I didn’t try to make out their words. A clock chimed twelve. I wanted to go out there and throw Janet out. I didn’t want her around for the next half hour or so. I heard the back door, then the sound of a motor, and I sighed in relief.

I went to the kitchen and got coffee and stood at the window watching snow fall.

Lenny joined me. “Janet says you had a fight.”

“Yeah. I was rough on her. Sickness brings out her mother-hen instincts, and I can’t stand being fussed at. What was wrong with Christine?”

“A dream.” He stared at the snow. “Supposed to get a couple of inches by night.” I realized it was snowing. “Won’t stick long. Ground isn’t cold enough yet.”

“Lenny, for God’s sake quit kidding yourself. What if you are causing her present condition? Isn’t it suggestive? Her husband, now you. It’s a sexual fantasy. By making her reach a decision about you, you might push her off the deep end irreversibly.”

He looked shocked. “That’s crazy.”

“Exactly. Lenny, these things are too dangerous for a well-meaning but non-professional man to toy with. You might destroy her…”

“If she was crazy you’d be making good points,” Lenny said distinctly. “She isn’t.”

I finished my coffee.
A doctor. Shots, pills, all yesterday and last years and decades ago. Questions. Lost forever and forever falling. Through all the yesterdays. Lenny wants to get a doctor for you. A psychiatrist. You have to get him out of here now. Immediately. Even if it kills him.

She resisted the idea. She kept trying to visualize his face, and I wouldn’t let it take shape. Instead I drew out of her memories of the institutions she’d been in.

Lenny’s voice startled me, and I left her.

“I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to be here when she comes down. She knows you think she’s psycho.”

I put down my cup. “Whatever you say.”

She came into the kitchen then. She was deathly pale. She had a gun in her hand. I stared at it. “Where—?”

She looked at it too, looked at it in a puzzled manner. “I had it in my car when I came here,” she said. “I found it when I was unpacking and I put it upstairs in my room. I just remembered.”

“Give it to me,” Lenny said. He held out his hand and she put the small automatic in it.

I sighed my relief. That was the last thing I wanted her to do. She’d be locked up the rest of her life. Now if I could make her drive him out, maybe he’d use it himself.

Lenny kept his hand in his pocket, over the gun. “Why were you thinking of guns right now? Where was this?”

“In my train case. I told you…” She glanced at me and I turned my back to stare at the snow again. I was watching my own back then, and seeing Lenny’s face and the kitchen that I was keeping in focus only through great effort. “I told you,” she said again. “If he makes me go back with him, I’ll have no choice.” I made her add, “The only way I escaped from Karl was through his death.”

She shuddered, and an image of Karl’s face swam before her eyes, contorted with pain and fear. It was replaced by another face, Lenny’s, also contorted by pain and fear. And the image of a hospital ward, and a doctor. And I watched his face change and become my own face. The image dimmed and blurred as I tried to force it away, and she fought to keep it. The concrete corridor was there. She forced the image of a man backward through the corridor, grey walls and ceiling and floor all one, no up and no down, just the cylinder that was growing smaller and smaller. I tried to pull away. Cliffs, I thought. Crumbling edges, falling… Hospital, shots, electroshock…

“Chris, what is it?” Lenny’s voice, as if from another world, faint, almost unrecognizable.

“I don’t know. Just hold me. Please.”

Cliffs… Exploding pain in my chest suddenly. Burning pain in my shoulder, my arm. Darkness. Losing her, finding her again. Losing…

“You!” Her voice coarse, harsh with disbelief. I turned from the window clutching my chest. The room was spinning and there was nothing to hold on to.
Let go. They’ll lock you up.
Pain.

“Eddie!”

“You!” she said again, incredulously.

Get the gun back!
Lenny. No more pretense now. My hand found something to hold, and the room steadied. Feeling of falling, but knowledge of standing perfectly still, fighting against the nausea, the pain.
Get the gun. Reach in his pocket and take it out.
She and I were in that other place where the grey corridor stretched endlessly. We had time because there was no time. She backed a step away from Lenny, and I forced her to move closer again, seeing the beads of sweat on her forehead, the trembling in her hands. From somewhere else I could hear Lenny’s voice, but I couldn’t hear the words now.
Get the gun!

“Lenny, get out! He’ll kill you!”

You and I. I’ll take care of you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.

Lenny’s hands on me, trying to force me to a chair. Seeing myself sprawled across the table unconscious. “
No!
” I couldn’t pull away. She was holding the back of a chair with both hands, holding so hard it hurt. I saw her grasp tighten and felt the pain erupt again, this time blacking out everything momentarily. Lenny… I couldn’t make her move. I slipped my hand into his pocket then and my fingers felt the metal, warm from the close pocket. I pulled it out and aimed it at Lenny. I was seeing his face from a strange angle, her angle. A cross-section of his face. A Dali painting of fear and shock. She was beating on me and I closed my other hand over her wrist, a child’s wrist. Laura’s wrist. Back in that timeless corridor.
Why didn’t you look into the future too? Why just the past?

He said I did. I repressed it. Too frightening.
The image of the man sprawled across the table, clearer, detailed. Real.

Absolute terror then. Hers.

I tried to go into her and couldn’t. I could see her, wide-eyed, catatonic, and couldn’t reach her at all. It was as if the wall that had been breached had been mended now, and once again kept me and all others outside. I didn’t know how I had gone through it before. I didn’t even know if I had.

I heard the gun hit the floor before I realized that I had dropped it. I felt the table under my cheek before I realized that I had collapsed and was lying across it. I heard their voices, and I knew that she had found her way back, but I couldn’t see them. For the moment I was free of the pain. Almost uninterested in the figure slumped across the table.

“You’d better get an ambulance,” she said. I marveled at the calm self-assurance in her voice. What had she seen while she had stood unmoving, rigid? She touched my forehead with fingers that were cool and steady.

“Was it real?” I whispered. “Any of it?”

“You’ll never know, will you?” I didn’t know if she said the words aloud or not. I listened to their voices drifting in and out of consciousness while we waited for the ambulance. Was it real? I kept coming back to that.

Was what real?

Anything.

• • •

Kate Wilhelm

Kate Wilhelm’s first short story, “The Pint-Sized Genie” was published in
Fantastic Stories
in 1956. Her first novel,
More Bitter Than Death
, a mystery, was published in 1963. Over the span of her career, her writing has crossed over the genres of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism, psychological suspense, mimetic, comic, family sagas, a multimedia stage production, and radio plays. She has recently returned to writing mysteries with her Barbara Holloway and the Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl Mysteries novels. Her works have been adapted for television, theater, and movies in the United States, England, and Germany. Wilhelm’s novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to
Redbook, Quark, Orbit, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Locus, Amazing, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mysteries, Fantastic Stories, Omni
and many others.

Kate and her husband, Damon Knight (1922-2002), also provided invaluable assistance to numerous other writers over the years. Their teaching careers covered a span of several decades, and hundreds of students, many of whom are famous names in the field today. Kate and Damon helped to establish the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and the Milford Writer’s Conference. They have lectured together at universities in North and South America and Asia. They have been the guests of honor and panelists at numerous conventions around the world. Kate continues to host monthly workshops, as well as teach at other events. She is an avid supporter of local libraries.

Kate Wilhelm lives in Eugene, Oregon.