Now Wait for Last Year Page 8

  But she knew, before long, that she would.

  SIX

  It was during the early afternoon, as she sat in her office at TF&D arranging for the purchase of a 1937 artifact, a reasonably unworn Decca record of the Andrews Sisters singing 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schön', that Kathy Sweetscent felt the first withdrawal symptoms.

  Her hands became oddly heavy.

  With extreme care she put the delicate record down. And there was a physiognomic alteration in the objects around her. While at 45 Avila Street, under the influence of JJ-180, she had experienced the world as consisting of airy, penetrable, and benign entities, like so many bubbles; she had found herself able – at least in hallucination – to pass through them at will. Now, in the familiar environment of her office, she experienced a transformation of reality along the lines of an ominous progression: ordinary things, whichever way she looked, seemed to be gaining density. They were no longer susceptible to being moved or changed, affected in any way, by her.

  And, from another viewpoint, she simultaneously experienced the oppressive change as taking place within her own body. From either standpoint the ratio between herself, her physical powers, and the outside world had altered for the worse; she experienced herself as growing progressively more and more helpless in the literal physical sense – there was, with each passing moment, less which she could do. The ten-inch Decca record, for instance. It lay within touch of her fingers, but suppose she reached out for it? The record would evade her. Her hand, clumsy with unnatural weight, hobbled by the internal gathering of density, would crush or break the record; the concept of performing intricate, skillful actions in reference to the record seemed out of the question. Refinements of motion were no longer a property belonging to her; only gross, sinking mass remained.

  Wisely, she realized that this told her something about JJ-180; it lay in the class of thalamic stimulants. And now, in this withdrawal period, she was suffering a deprivation of thalamic energy; these changes, experienced as taking place in the outside world and in her body, were in actuality minute alterations of the metabolism of her brain. But—

  This knowledge did not help her. For these changes in herself and her world were not beliefs; they were authentic experiences, reported by the normal sensory channels, imposed on her consciousness against her will. As stimuli they could not be avoided. And – the alteration of the world's physiognomy continued; the end was not in sight. In panic she thought, How far will this go? How much worse can it get? Certainly not much worse ... the impenetrability of even the smallest objects around her now seemed almost infinite; she sat rigidly, unable to move, incapable of thrusting her great body into any new relationship with the crushingly heavy objects that surrounded her and seemed to be pressing nearer and nearer.

  And, even as the objects in her office settled massively against her, they became, on another level, remote; they receded in a meaningful, terrifying fashion. They were losing, she realized, their animation, their – so to speak – working souls. The animae which inhabited them were departing as her powers of psychological projection deteriorated. The objects had lost their heritage of the familiar; by degrees they became cold, remote, and – hostile. Into the vacuum left by the decline in her relatedness to them the things surrounding her achieved their original isolation from the taming forces which normally emanated from the human mind; they became raw, abrupt, with jagged edges capable of cutting, gashing, inflicting fatal wounds. She did not dare stir. Death, in potentiality, lay inherent in every object; even the hand-wrought brass ash tray on her desk had become irregular, and in its lack of symmetry it obtained projecting planes, shot out surfaces which, like spines, could tear her open if she was stupid enough to come near.

  The combox on her desk buzzed. Lucile Sharp, Virgil Ack-erman's secretary, said, 'Mrs Sweetscent, Mr Ackerman would like to see you in his office. I'd suggest you bring along the new "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön" record you purchased today; he expressed interest in it.'

  'Yes,' Kathy said, and the effort almost buried her; she ceased breathing and sat with her rib-cage inert, the basic physiological processes slowing under the pressure, dying by degrees. And then, somehow, she breathed one breath; she filled her lungs and then exhaled raggedly, noisily. For the moment she had escaped. But it was all worsening. What next? She rose to her feet, stood. So this is how it feels to be hooked on JJ-180, she thought. She managed to pick up the Decca record. Its dark edges were like knife blades sawing into her hands as she carried it across the office to the door. Its hostility toward her, its inanimate and yet ferocious desire to inflict destruction on her, became overwhelming; she cringed from the disc's touch.

  And dropped it.

  The record lay on the thick carpet, apparently unbroken. But how to pick it up once more? How to drag it loose from the nape, the backdrop, surrounding it? Because the record no longer seemed separate; it had fused. With the carpet, the floor, the walls, and now everything in the office, it presented a single indivisible, unchangeable surface, without rupture. No one could come or go within this cubelike spaciality; every place was already filled, complete – nothing could change because everything was present already.

  My God, Kathy thought as she stood gazing down at the record by her feet. I can't free myself; I'm going to remain here, and they'll find me like this and know something's terribly wrong. This is catalepsy!

  She was still standing there when the office door opened and Jonas Ackerman, briskly, with a jovial expression on his smooth, youthful face, entered, strode up to her, saw the record, bent unhinderedly down and gently lifted it up and placed it in her outstretched hands.

  'Jonas,' she said in a slow, thickened voice, 'I – need medical help. I'm sick.'

  'Sick how?' He stared at her with concern, his face twisted up, wriggling, she thought, like nests of snakes. His emotion overpowered her; it was a sickening, fetid force. 'My God,' Jonas said, 'what a time you picked – Eric's not here today, he's in Cheyenne, and we haven't got the new man that's replacing him yet. But I could drive you to the Tijuana Government Clinic. What is it?' He gripped her arm, pinching her flesh. 'I think you're just blue because Eric's gone.'

  Take me upstairs,' she managed to say. 'To Virgil.'

  'Boy, you do sound awful,' Jonas said. 'Yes, I'll be glad to get you upstairs to the old man; maybe he'll know what to do.' He guided her toward the office door. 'Maybe I better take that record; you look like you're about to drop it again.'

  It could not have taken more than two minutes to reach Virgil Ackerman's office and yet to her the ordeal consumed a vast interval. When she found herself facing Virgil at last she was exhausted; she panted for breath, unable to speak. It was just too goddam much for her.

  Eyeing her curiously, and then with alarm, Virgil said in his thin, penetrating voice, 'Kathy, you better go home today; fix yourself up with an armful of woman type magazines and a drink, propped up in bed—'

  'Leave me alone,' she heard herself say. 'Christ,' she said, then, in despair, 'don't leave me alone, Mr Ackerman; please!'

  'Well, make up your mind,' Virgil said, still scrutinizing her. 'I can see that Eric's leaving here and going to Cheyenne to—'

  'No,' she said. 'I'm okay.' Now it had worn off a little; she felt as if she had imbibed some strength from him, perhaps because he had so much. 'Here's a fine item for Wash-35.' She turned to Jonas for the record. 'It was one of the most popular tunes of the times. This and "The Music Goes Round and Round."' Taking the record, she placed it before him on his big desk. I'm not going to die, she thought; I'm going to get through this and recover my health. 'I'll tell you what else I have a line on, Mr Ackerman.' She seated herself in a chair by the desk, wanting to conserve what energy she had. 'A private recording which someone made, at the time, of Alexander Woollcott on his program, "The Town Crier." So the next time we're up at Wash-35 we'll be able to listen to Woollcott's actual voice. And not an imitation. As we're doing.'

  '"The Town Crier"!' Virgil exclaimed in
childish joy. 'My favorite program!'

  'I'm reasonably sure I can get it,' Kathy said. 'Of course, until I actually pay over the money there could still be a hitch. I have to fly out to Boston to make the final arrangements; the recording is there, in the possession of a rather shrewd spinster-lady named Edith B. Scruggs. It was made on a Packard-Bell Phon-o-cord, she tells me in her correspondence.'

  'Kathy,' Virgil Ackerman said, 'if you can actually turn up an authentic recording of the voice of Alexander Woollcott – I'm going to raise your salary, so help me God. Mrs Sweet-scent, sweetheart, I'm in love with you because of what you do for me. Was Woollcott's radio program over WMAL or WJSV? Research that for me, will you? Go through those '35 copies of the Washington Post – and by the way, that reminds me. That American Weekly with the article on the Sargasso Sea. I think we'll finally decide to exclude that from Wash-35 because when I was a boy my parents didn't take the Hearst papers; I only saw it when I—'

  'Just a moment, Mr Ackerman,' Kathy said, raising her hand.

  He cocked his head expectantly. 'Yes, Kathy?'

  'What if I went to Cheyenne and joined Eric?'

  'But—' Virgil bleated, gesturing. 'I need you!'

  For a while,' she said. Maybe that will be enough, she thought. They might not demand any more. 'You let him go,' she said, 'and he keeps you alive; he's a lot more vital than I am.'

  'But Molinari needs him. And he doesn't need you; he has no babyland he's building; he's not a bit interested in the past – he's full of gas about the future, like an adolescent.' Virgil looked stricken. 'I can't spare you, Kathy; losing Eric was bad enough but the deal in his case is that I can send for him any time I get into difficulty. I had to let him go; in fact I'm scared as hell without him. But not you.' His tone became plaintive. 'No, that's too much. Eric swore to me when we were at Wash-35 that you wouldn't want to go with him.' He shot a mute, appealing glance at Jonas. 'Make her stay, Jonas.'

  Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Jonas said to her, 'You don't love Eric, Kathy. I've talked to you and to him; you both tell me your domestic woes. You're as far apart from each other as it's possible to be and not commit an outright crime ... I don't get this.'

  'I believed that,' she said, 'while he was here. But I kidded myself. Now I know better, and I'm sure he feels the same way.'

  'Are you sure?' Jonas said acutely. 'Call him.' He indicated the vidphone on Virgil's desk. 'See what he says. Frankly I think you're better off separated, and I have no doubt Eric knows it.'

  Kathy said, 'May I be excused to go? I want to get back down to my office.' She felt sick at her stomach and achingly frightened. Her damaged, drug-addicted body yearned for relief and in its thrashings it directed her actions; it was compelling her to follow Eric to Cheyenne. Despite what the Ackermans said. She could not stop, and even now in her confusion she could read the future; she could not escape the drug JJ-180 – the 'Starmen had been correct. She would have to go back to them, follow up on the card that Corning had given her. God, she thought, if only I could tell Virgil. I have to tell someone.

  And then she thought, I'll tell Eric. He's a doctor; he'll be able to help me. I'll go to Cheyenne for that, not for them.

  'Will you do me one favor?' Jonas Ackerman was saying to her. 'For heaven's sake, Kathy; listen.' Again he squeezed her arm.

  'I'm listening,' she said with irritation. 'And let go.' She tugged her arm away, stepped back from him, feeling rage. 'Don't treat me like this; I can't stand it.' She glared at him.

  Carefully, in a deliberately calm voice, Jonas said to her, 'We'll let you follow your husband to Cheyenne, Kathy, if you promise to wait twenty-four hours before you go.'

  'Why?' She could not understand.

  'So that this initial period of shock at the separation has a chance to wear off,' Jonas said. 'I'm hoping that in twenty-four hours you'll see your way clear to changing your mind. And meanwhile—' He glanced at Virgil; the old man nodded in agreement. 'I'll stay with you,' Jonas said to her. 'All day and night, if necessary.'

  Appalled, she said, 'Like hell you will. I won't—'

  'I know there's something wrong with you,' Jonas said quietly. 'It's obvious. I don't think you should be left alone. I'm making it my responsibility to see that nothing happens to you.' He added in a low voice, 'You're too valuable to us to do something terminal.' Again, and this time with harsh firmness, he took hold of her arm. 'Come on; let's go downstairs to your office – it'll do you good to get wrapped up in your work, and I'll just sit quietly, not interfering. After work tonight, I'll fly you up to L.A. to Spingler's for dinner; I know you like sea food.' He guided her toward the door of the office.

  She thought, I'll get away. You're not that smart, Jonas; sometime today, perhaps tonight. I'll lose you and go to Cheyenne. Or rather, she thought with nausea and an upsurge of her former terror, I'll lose you, dump you, slip away from you in the labyrinth that's the night city of Tijuana, where all kinds of things, some of them terrible, some of them wonderful and full of beauty, happen. Tijuana will be too much for you. It's almost too much for me. And I know it fairly well; I've spent so much of my time, my life, in Tijuana at night.

  And look how it's worked out, she thought bitterly. I wanted to find something pure and mystical in life and instead I wound up spliced to people who hate us, who dominate our race. Our ally, she thought. We ought to be fighting them; it's clear to me now. If I ever get to see Molinari alone at Cheyenne – and maybe I will – I'll tell him that, tell him we have the wrong ally and the wrong enemy.

  'Mr Ackerman,' she said, turning urgently to Virgil. 'I have to go to Cheyenne to tell the Secretary something. It affects all of us; it has to do with the war effort.'

  Virgil Ackerman said drily. Tell me and I'll tell him. There's a better chance that way; you'll never get to see him ....ot unless you're one of his bambinos or cousins.'

  'That's it,' she said. 'I'm his child.' It made perfect sense to her; all of them on Terra were children of the UN Secretary. And they had been expecting their father to lead them to safety. But somehow he had failed.

  Unresistingly, she followed Jonas Ackerman. 'I know what you're doing,' she said to him. 'You're using this opportunity, with Eric away and me in this terrible state, to take sexual advantage of me.'

  Jonas laughed. 'Well, we'll see.' His laugh, to her, did not sound guilty; it sounded sleekly confident.

  'Yes,' she agreed, thinking of the 'Star policeman Corning. 'We'll see how lucky you are in making out with me. Personally I wouldn't bet on it.' She did not bother to remove his big, determined hand from her shoulder; it would only reappear.

  'You know,' Jonas said, 'if I didn't know better, I'd say from the way you've been acting that you're on a substance which we call JJ-180.' He added, 'But you couldn't be because there's no way you could get hold of it.'

  Staring at him Kathy said, 'What—' She couldn't go on.

  'It's a drug,' Jonas said. 'Developed by one of our subsidiaries.'

  'It wasn't developed by the reegs?'

  'Frohedadrine, or JJ-180, was developed in Detroit, last year, by a firm which TF&D controls called Hazeltine Corporation. It's a major weapon in the war – or will be when it's in production, which will be later this year.'

  'Because,' she said numbly, 'it's so addictive?'

  'Hell no. Many drugs are addictive, starting with the opium derivatives. Because of the nature of the hallunications it causes its users.' He explained, 'It's hallucinogenic, as LSD was,'

  Kathy said. Tell me about the hallucinations.'

  'I can't; that's classified military information.'

  Laughing sharply, she said, 'Oh God – so the only way I could find out would be to take it.'

  'How can you take it? It's not available, and even when it's in production we wouldn't conceivably under any circumstance allow our own population to use it – the stuff's toxic!' He glared at her. 'Don't even talk about using it; every test animal to which it was administered died. Forget I even m
entioned it; I thought Eric had probably told you about it – I shouldn't have brought it up, but you have been acting strangely; it made me think of JJ-180 because I'm so scared – we all are – that someone, some way, will get hold of it on the domestic market, one of our own people.'

  Kathy said, 'Let's hope that never happens.' She felt like laughing, still; the whole thing was insane. The 'Starmen had obtained the drug on Terra but pretended to have gotten it from the reegs. Poor Terra, she thought. We can't even get credit for this, for this noxious, destructive chemical which destroys the mind – as Jonas says, a potent weapon of war. And who's using it? Our ally. And on whom? On us. The irony is complete; it forms a circle. Certainly cosmic justice that a Terran should be one of the first to become addicted to it.

  Frowning, Jonas said, 'You asked if JJ-180 hadn't been developed by the enemy; that suggests you have heard of it. So Eric did mention it to you. It's all right; only knowledge of its properties is classified, not its existence. The reegs know we've been experimenting with drug warfare for decades, back into the twentieth century. It's one of Terra's specialties.' He chuckled.

  'Maybe we'll win after all,' Kathy said. That ought to cheer up Gino Molinari. Perhaps he'll be able to stay in office with the assistance of a few new miracle weapons. Is he counting on this? Does he know?'

  'Of course Molinari knows; Hazeltine has kept him informed at every stage of development. But for chrissake don't go and—'

  'I won't get you in trouble,' Kathy said. I think I'll get you addicted to JJ-180, she said to herself. That's what you deserve; everyone who helped develop it, who knows about it. Stay with me night and day during the next twenty-four hours, she thought. Eat with me, go to bed with me, and by the time it's over you'll be earmarked for death just as I am. And then, she thought, maybe I can get Eric on it. Him most of all.

  I'll carry it with me to Cheyenne, Kathy decided. Infect everyone there, the Mole and his entourage. And for a good reason.