
Honolulu is quiet, the dead buried, the rubble of buildings cleaned away. A salvage barge rocks in the Pacific swell off Diamond Head. Divers follow a bubble trail down into the green water to the wreck of the Stateside skytrain. The Scramble Syndrome did this. Ashore, in converted barracks, psychologists work fruitlessly in the aftermath of insanity. This is where the Scramble Syndrome started: one minute the city was peaceful; a clock tick later the city was mad.
In forty days -- nine cities infected.
The twentieth century's Black Plague.
SEATTLE
First a ringing in the ears, fluting up to a whistle. The whistle became the warning blast of a nightmare train roaring clackety-clack, clackety-clack across his dream.
A psychoanalyst might have enjoyed the dream as a clinical study. This psychoanalyst was not studying the dream; he was having it. He clutched the sheet around his neck, twisted silently on the bed, drawing his knees under his chin.
The train whistle modulated into the contralto of an expensive chanteuse singing "Insane Crazy Blues." The dream carried vibrations of fear and wildness.
"A million dollars don't mean a thing -- "
Hoarse voice riding over clarion brass, bumping of drums, clarinet squealing like an angry horse.
A dark-skinned singer with electric blue eyes and dressed in black stepped away from a red backdrop. She opened her arms to an unseen audience. The singer, the backdrop lurched into motion, revolving faster and faster and faster until it merged into a pinpoint of red light. The red light dilated to the bell mouth of a trumpet sustaining a minor note.
The music shrilled; it was a knife cutting his brain.
Dr. Eric Ladde awoke. He breathed rapidly; he oozed perspiration. Still he heard the singer, the music.
I'm dreaming that I'm awake, he thought.
He peeled off the top sheet, slipped his feet out, put them on the warm floor. Presently, he stood up, walked to the window, looked down on the moontrail shimmering across Lake Washington. He touched the sound switch beside the window and now he could hear the night -- crickets, spring peepers at the lakeshore, the far hum of a skytrain.
The singing remained.
He swayed, gripped at the windowsill.
Scramble Syndrome --
He turned, examined the bedside newstape: no mention of Seattle. Perhaps he was safe -- illness. But the music inside his head was no illness.
He made a desperate clutch for self-control, shook his, head, banged his ear with the palm of his hand. The singing persisted. He looked to the bedside clock -- 1:05 A.M., Friday, May 14, 1999.
Inside his head the music stopped. But now -- Applause! A roar of clapping, cries, stamping of feet. Eric rubbed his head.
I'm not insane ... I'm not insane --
He slipped into his dressing gown, went into the kitchen cubicle of his bachelor residence. He drank water, yawned, held his breath -- anything to drive away the noise, now a chicken-haggle of talking, clinking, slithering of feet.
He made himself a highball, splashed the drink at the back of his throat. The sounds inside his head turned off. Eric looked at the empty glass in his hand, shook his head.
A new specific for insanity -- alcohol! He smiled wryly. And every day I tell my patients that drinking is no solution. He tasted a bitter thought: Maybe I should have joined that therapy team, not stayed here trying to create a machine to cure the insane. If only they hadn't laughed at me --
He moved a fibreboard box to make room beside the sink, put down his glass. A notebook protruded from the box, sitting atop a mound of electronic parts. He picked up the notebook, stared at his own familiar block printing on the cover: Amanti Teleprobe -- Test Book IX.
They laughed at the old doctor, too, he thought. Laughed him right into an asylum. Maybe that's where I'm headed -- along with everyone else in the world.
He opened the notebook, traced his finger along the diagram of his latest experimental circuit. The teleprobe in his basement laboratory still carried the wiring, partially dismantled.
What was wrong with it?
He closed the notebook, tossed it back into the box. His thoughts hunted through the theories stored in his mind, the knowledge saved from a thousand failures. Fatigue and despondency pulled at him. Yet, he knew that the things Freud, Jung, Adler and all the others had sought in dreams and mannerisms hovered just beyond his awareness in an electronic tracer circuit.
He wandered back into his study-bedroom, crawled into the bed. He practiced yoga breathing until sleep washed over him. The singer, the train, the whistle did not return.
Morning lighted the bedroom. He awoke, trailing fragments of his nightmare into consciousness, aware that his appointment book was blank until ten o'clock. The bedside newstape offered a long selection of stories, most headed "Scramble Syndrome." He punched code letters for eight items, flipped the machine to audio and listened to the news while dressing.
Memory of his nightmare nagged at him. He wondered, "How many people awake in the night, asking themselves, 'Is it my turn now?' "
He selected a mauve cape, drew it over his white coveralls. Retrieving the notebook from the box in the kitchen, he stepped out into the chill spring morning. He turned up the temperature adjustment of his coveralls. The unitube whisked him to the Elliott Bay waterfront. He ate at a seafood restaurant, the teleprobe notebook open beside his plate. After breakfast, he found an empty bench outside facing the bay, sat down, opened the notebook. He found himself reluctant to study the diagrams, stared out at the bay.
Mists curled from the gray water, obscuring the opposite shore. Somewhere in the drift a purse seiner sounded its hooter. Echoes bounced off the buildings behind him. Early workers hurried past, voices stilled: thin look of faces, hunted glances -- the uniform of fear. Coldness from the bench seeped through his clothing. He shivered, drew a deep breath of the salt air. The breeze off the bay carried essence of seaweed, harmonic on the dominant bitter musk of a city's effluvia. Seagulls haggled over a morsel in the tide rip. The papers on his lap fluttered. He held them down with one hand, watching the people.
I'm procrastinating, he thought. It's a luxury my profession can ill afford nowadays.
A woman in a red fur cape approached, her sandals tapping a swift rhythm on the concrete. Her cape billowed behind in a puff of breeze.
He looked up to her face framed in dark hair. Every muscle in his body locked. She was the woman of his nightmare down to the minutest detail! His eyes followed her. She saw him staring, looked away, walked past.
Eric fumbled his papers together, closed the notebook and ran after her. He caught up, matched his steps to hers, still staring, unthinking. She looked at him, flushed, looked away.
"Go away or I'll call a cop!"
"Please, I have to talk to you."
"I said go away." She increased her pace; he matched it.
"Please forgive me, but I dreamed about you last night. You see -- "
She stared straight ahead.
"I've been told that one before! Go away!"
"But you don't understand."
She stopped, turned and faced him, shaking with anger. "But I do understand! You saw my show last night! You've dreamed about me!" She wagged her head. "Miss Lanai, I must get to know you!"
Eric shook his head. "But I've never even heard of you or seen you before."
"Well! I'm not accustomed to being insulted either!" She whirled, walked away briskly, the red cape flowing out behind her. Again he caught up with her.
"Please -- "
"I'll scream!"
"I'm a psychoanalyst."
She hesitated, slowed, stopped. A puzzled expression flowed over her face. "Well, that's a new approach."
He took advantage of her interest. "I really did dream about you. It was most disturbing. I couldn't shut it off."
Something in his voice, his manner -- She laughed, "A real dream was bound to show up some day."
"I'm Dr. Eric Ladde."
She glanced at the caduceus over his breast pocket. "I'm Colleen Lanai; I sing."
He winced. "I know."
"I thought you'd never heard of me."
"You sang in my dream."
"Oh." A pause. "Are you really a psychoanalyst?"
He slipped a card from his breast pocket; handed it to her. She looked at it.
"What does 'Teleprobe Diagnosis' mean?"
"That's an instrument I use."
She returned the card, linked an arm through his, set an easy, strolling pace. "All right, doctor. You tell me about your dream and I'll tell you about my headaches. Fair exchange?" She peered up at him from under thick eyelashes.
"Do you have headaches?"
"Terrible headaches." She shook her head.
Eric looked down at her. Some of the nightmare unreality returned. He thought, "What am I doing here? One doesn't dream about a strange face and then meet her in the flesh the next day. The next thing I know the whole world of my unconscious will come alive."
"Could it be this Syndrome thing?" she asked. "Ever since we were in Los Angeles I've -- " She chewed at her lip.
He stared at her. "You were in Los Angeles?"
"We got out just a few hours before that ... before -- " She shuddered. "Doctor, what's it like to be crazy?"
He hesitated. "It's no different from being sane -- for the person involved." He looked out at the mist lifting from the bay. "The Syndrome appears similar to other forms of insanity. It's as though something pushed people over their lunacy thresholds. It's strange; there's a rather well denned radius of about sixty miles which it saturated. Atlanta and Los Angeles, for instance, and Lawton, had quite sharp lines of demarcation: people on one side of a street got it; people on the other side didn't. We suspect there's a contamination period during which -- " He paused, looked down at her, smiled. "And all you asked was a simple question. This is my lecture personality. I wouldn't worry too much about those headaches; probably diet, change of climate, maybe your eyes. Why don't you get a complete physical?"
She shook her head. "I've had six physicals since we left Karachi: same thing -- four new diets." She shrugged. "Still I have headaches."
Eric jerked to a stop, exhaled slowly. "You were in Karachi, too?"
"Why, yes; that was the third place we hit after Honolulu."
He leaned toward her. "And Honolulu?"
She-frowned. "What is this, a cross-examination?" She waited. "Well -- "
He swallowed, thought, How can one person have been in these cities the Syndrome hit and be so casual about it?
She tapped a foot. "Cat got your tongue?"
He thought, She's so flippant about it.
He ticked off the towns on his fingers. "You were in Los Angeles, Honolulu, Karachi; you've hit the high spots of Syndrome contamination and -- "
An animal cry, sharp, exclamatory, burst from her. "It got all of those places?"
He thought, How could anyone be alive and not know exactly where the Syndrome has been?
He asked, "Didn't you know?"
She shook her head, a numb motion, eyes wide, staring. "But Pete said -- " She stopped. "I've been so busy learning new numbers. We're reviving the old time hot jazz."
"How could you miss it? TV is full of it, the newstapes, the transgraphs."
She shrugged. "I've just been so busy. And I don't like to think about such things. Pete said -- " She shook her head. "You know, this is the first time I've been out alone for a walk in over a month. Pete was asleep and -- " Her expression softened. "That Pete; he must not have wanted me to worry."
"If you say so, but -- " He stopped. "Who's Pete?"
"Haven't you heard of Pete Serantis and the musikron?"
"What's a musikron?"
She shook back a curl of dark hair. "Have your little joke, doctor."
"No, seriously. What's a musikron?"
She frowned. "You really don't know what the musikron is?"
He shook his head.
She chuckled, a throaty sound, controlled. "Doctor, you talk about my not knowing about Karachi and Honolulu. Where have you been hiding your head? Variety has us at the top of the heap."
He thought, "She's serious!"
A little stiffly, he said, "Well, I've been quite busy with a research problem of my own. It deals with the Syndrome."
"Oh." She turned, looked at the gray waters of the bay, turned back. She twisted her hands together. "Are you sure about Honolulu?"
"Is your family there?"
She shook her head. "I have no family. Just friends."
She looked up at him, eyes shining. "Did it get ... everybody?"
He nodded, thought: She needs something to distract her attention.
He said, "Miss Lanai, could I ask a favor?" He plunged ahead, not waiting for an answer. "You've been three places where the Syndrome hit. Maybe there's a clue in your patterns. Would you consent to undergoing a series of tests at my lab? They wouldn't take long."
"I couldn't possibly; I have a show to do tonight. I just sneaked out for a few minutes by myself. I'm at the Gweduc Room. Pete may wake up and -- " She focused on his pleading expression. "I'm sorry, doctor. Maybe some other time. You wouldn't find anything important from me anyway."
He shrugged, hesitated. "But I haven't told you about my dream."
"You tempt me, doctor. I've heard a lot of phony dream reports. I'd appreciate the McCoy for just once. Why don't you walk me back to the Gweduc Room? It's only a couple of blocks."
"Okay."
She took his arm.
"Half a loaf -- "
He was a thin man with a twisted leg, a pinched, hating face. A cane rested against his knee. Around him wove a spiderweb maze of wires -- musikron. On his head, a dome-shaped hood. A spy, unsuspected, he looked out through a woman's eyes at a man who had identified himself as Dr. Eric Ladde. The thin man sneered, heard through the woman's ears: "Half a loaf -- "
On the bayside walk, Eric and Colleen matched steps.
"You never did tell me what a musikron is."
Her laughter caused a passing couple to turn and stare. "O.K. But I still don't understand. We've been on TV for a month."
He thought, She thinks I'm a fuddy; probably am!
He said, "I don't subscribe to the entertainment circuits. I'm just on the science and news networks."
She shrugged. "Well, the musikron is something like a recording and playback machine; only the operator mixes in any new sounds he wants. He wears a little metal bowl on his head and just thinks about the sounds -- the musikron plays them." She stole a quick glance at him, looked ahead. "Everyone says it's a fake; it really isn't."
Eric stopped, pulled her to a halt. "That's fantastic. Why -- " He paused, chuckled. "You know, you happen to be talking to one of the few experts in the world on this sort of thing. I have an encephalorecorder in my basement lab that's the last word in teleprobes ... that's what you're trying to describe." He smiled. "The psychiatrists of this town may think I'm a young upstart, but they send me their tough diagnostic cases." He looked down at her. "So let's just admit your Pete's machine is artistic showmanship, shall we?"
"But it isn't just showmanship. I've heard the records before they go into the machine and when they come out of it."
Eric chuckled.
She frowned. "Oh, you're so supercilious."
Eric put a hand on her arm. "Please don't be angry. It's just that I know this field. You don't want to admit that Pete has fooled you along with all the others."
She spoke in a slow, controlled cadence: "Look ... doctor ... Pete ... was ... one ... of ... the ... inventors ... of ... the ... musikron ... Pete ... and ... old ... Dr ... Amanti." She squinted her eyes, looking up at him. "You may be a big wheel in this business, but I know what I've heard."
"You said Pete worked on this musikron with a doctor. What did you say that doctor's name was?"
"Oh, Dr. Carlos Amanti. His name's on a little plate inside the musikron."
Eric shook his head. "Impossible. Dr. Carlos Amanti is in an asylum."
She nodded. "That's right; Wailiku Hospital for the Insane. That's where they worked on it."
Eric's expression was cautious, hesitant. "And you say when Pete thinks about the sounds, the machine produces them?"
"Certainly."
"Strange I'd never heard about this musikron before."
"Doctor, there are a lot of things you've never heard about."
He wet his lips with his tongue. "Maybe you're right." He took her arm, set a rapid pace down the walkway. "I want to see this musikron."
In Lawton, Oklahoma, long rows of prefabricated barracks swelter on a sunbaked flat. In each barracks building, little cubicles; in each cubicle, a hospital bed; on each hospital bed, a human being. Barracks XRO-29: a psychiatrist walks down the hall, behind him an orderly pushing a cart. On the cart, hypodermic needles, syringes, antiseptics, sedatives, test tubes. The psychiatrist shakes his head.
"Bafly, they certainly nailed this thing when they called it the Scramble Syndrome. Stick an egg-beater into every psychosis a person could have, mix 'em up, turn 'em all on."
The orderly grunts, stares at the psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist looks back. "And we're not making any progress on this thing. It's like bailing out the ocean with a sieve."
Down the hallway a man screams. Their footsteps quicken.
The Gweduc Room's elevator dome arose ahead of Eric and Colleen, a half-melon inverted on the walkway. At the top of the dome a blue and red script-ring circled slowly, spelling out, "Colleen Lanai with Pete Serantis and the Musikron."
On the walkway before the dome a thin man, using a cane to compensate for a limp, paced back and forth. He looked up as Eric and Colleen approached.
"Pete," she said.
The man limped toward them, his cane staccato on the paving.
"Pete, this is Dr. Ladde. He's heard about Dr. Amanti and he wants to -- "
Pete ignored Eric, stared fiercely at Colleen. "Don't you know we have a show tonight? Where have you been?"
"But, it's only a little after nine; I don't -- "
Eric interrupted. "I was a student of Dr. Amanti's. I'm interested in your musikron. You see, I've been carrying on Dr. Amanti's researches and -- "
The thin man barked, "No time!" He took Colleen's arm, pulled her toward the dome.
"Pete, please! What's come over you?" She held back.
Pete stopped, put his face close to hers. "Do you like this business?"
She nodded mutely, eyes wide.
"Then let's get to work!"
She looked back at Eric, shrugged her shoulders. "I'm sorry."
Pete pulled her into the dome.
Eric stared after them. He thought, "He's a decided compulsive type ... very unstable. May not be as immune to the Syndrome as she apparently is." He frowned, looked at his wristwatch, remembered his ten o'clock appointment. "Damn!" He turned, almost collided with a young man in busboy's coveralls.
The young man puffed nervously at a cigarette, jerked it out of his mouth, leered. "Better find yourself another gal, Doc. That one's taken."
Eric looked into the young-old eyes, stared them down. "You work in there?"
The young man replaced the cigarette between thin lips, spoke around a puff of blue smoke. "Yeah."
"When does it open?"
The young man pulled the cigarette from his mouth, flipped it over Eric's shoulder into the bay. "We're open now for breakfast. Floor show doesn't start until seven tonight."
"Is Miss Lanai in the floor show?"
The busboy looked up at the script-ring over the dome, smiled knowingly. "Doc, she is the floor show!"
Again Eric looked at his wrist watch, thought, I'm coming back here tonight. He turned toward the nearest unitube. "Thanks," he said.
"You better get reservations if you're coming back tonight," said the busboy.
Eric stopped, looked back. He reached into his pocket, found a twenty-buck piece flipped it to the busboy. The thin young man caught the coin out of the air, looked at it, said, "Thank you. What name, Doc?"
"Dr. Eric Ladde."
The busboy pocketed the coin. "Righto, Doc. Floorside. I come on again at six. I'll attend to you personally."
Eric turned back to the unitube entrance again and left immediately.
Under the smog-filtered Los Angeles sun, a brown-dry city.
Mobile Laboratory 31 ground to a stop before Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, churning up a swirl of dried palm fronds in the gutter. The overworked turbo-motor sighed to a stop, grating. The Japanese psychologist emerged on one side, the Swedish doctor on the other. Their shoulders sagged.
The psychologist asked, "Ole, how long since you've had a good night's sleep?"
The doctor shook his head. "I can't remember, Yoshi; not since I left Frisco, I guess."
From the caged rear of the truck, wild, high-pitched laughter, a sigh, laughter.
The doctor stumbled on the steps to the hospital sidewalk. He stopped, turned. "Yoshi -- "
"Sure, Ole. I'll get some fresh orderlies to take care of this one." To himself he added, "If there are any fresh orderlies."
Inside the hospital, cool air pressed down the hallway. The Swedish doctor stopped a man with a clipboard. "What's the latest count?"
The man scratched his forehead with a corner of the clipboard. "Two and a half million last I heard, doctor. They haven't found a sane one yet."
The Gweduc Room pointed a plastine finger under Elliott Bay. Unseen by the patrons, a cage compressed a high density of sea life over the transparent ceiling. illumabeams traversed the water, treating the watchers to visions of a yellow salmon, a mauve perch, a pink octopus, a blue jellyfish. At one end of the room, synthetic mother-of-pearl had been formed into a giant open gweduc shell -- the stage. Colored spotlights splashed the backdrop with ribbons of flame, blue shadows.
Eric went down the elevator, emerged in an atmosphere disturbingly reminiscent of his nightmare. All it lacked was the singer. A waiter led him, threading a way through the dim haze of perfumed cigarette smoke, between tables ringed by men in formal black, women in gold lame, luminous synthetics. An aquamarine glow shimmered from the small round table tops -- the only lights in the Gweduc Room other than spotlights on the stage and illumabeams in the dark water overhead. A susurration of many voices hung on the air. Aromas of alcohol, tobacco, perfumes, exotic seafoods layered the room, mingled with a perspirant undertone.
The table nestled in the second row, crowded on all sides. The waiter extricated a chair; Eric sat down.
"Something to drink, sir?"
"Bombay Ale."
The waiter turned, merged into the gloom.
Eric tried to move his chair into a comfortable position, found it was wedged immovably between two chairs behind him, A figure materialized out of the gloom across from him; he recognized the busboy.
"Best I could get you, Doc."
"This is excellent." Eric smiled, fished a twenty-buck piece from his pocket, pressed it into the other's hand.
"Anything I can do for you, Doc?"
"Would you tell Miss Lanai I'm here?"
"I'll try, Doc; but that Pete character has been watching her like a piece of prize property all afternoon. Not that I wouldn't do the same thing myself, you understand."
White teeth flashed in the smoke-layered shadows. The busboy turned, weaved his way back through the tables. The murmuring undercurrent of voices in the room damped out. Eric turned toward the stage. A portly man in ebony and chalk-striped coveralls bent over the microphone.
"Here's what you've been waiting for," he said. He gestured with his left hand. Spotlights erased a shadow, revealing Colleen Lanai, her hands clasped in front of her. An old-fashioned gown of electric blue to match her eyes sheathed the full curves.
"Colleen Lanai!"
Applause washed over the room, subsided. The portly man gestured with his right hand. Other spotlights flared, revealing Pete Serantis in black coveralls, leaning on his cane.
"Pete Serantis and -- "
He waited for a lesser frenzy of clapping to subside,
" ... The Musikron!"
A terminal spotlight illuminated a large metallic box behind Pete. The thin man limped around the box, ducked, and disappeared inside. Colleen took the microphone from the announcer, who bowed and stepped off the stage.
Eric became aware of a pressing mood of urgency in the room. He thought, "For a brief instant we forget our fears, forget the Syndrome, everything except the music and this instant"
Colleen held the microphone intimately close to her mouth.
"We have some more real oldies for you tonight," she said. An electric pressure of personality pulsed out from her. "Two of these songs we've never presented before. First, a trio - 'Terrible Blues' with the musikron giving you a basic recording by Clarence Williams and the Red Onion Jazz Babies, Pete Serantis adding an entirely new effect; next, 'Wild Man Blues' and the trumpet is pure Louis Armstrong; last, 'Them's Graveyard Words,' an old Bessie Smith special." She bowed almost imperceptibly.
Music appeared in the room, not definable as to direction. It filled the senses. Colleen began to sing, seemingly without effort. She played her voice like a horn, soaring with the music, ebbing with it, caressing the air with it.
Eric stared, frozen, with all the rest of the audience.
She finished the first song. The noise of applause deafened him. He felt pain in his hands, looked down to find himself beating his palms together. He stopped, shook his head, took four deep breaths. Colleen picked up the thread of a new melody. Eric narrowed his eyes, staring at the stage. Impulsively, he put his hands to his ears and felt panic swell as the music remained undiminished. He closed his eyes, caught his breath as he continued to see Colleen, blurred at first, shifting, then in a steady image from a place nearer and to the left.
A wavering threnody of emotions accompanied the vision. Eric put his hands before his eyes. The image remained. He opened his eyes. The image again blurred, shifted to normal. He searched to one side of Colleen for the position from which he had been seeing her. He decided it could only be from inside the musikron and at the instant of decision discerned the outline of a mirror panel in the face of the metallic box.
"Through a one-way glass," he thought. "Through Pete's eyes."
He sat, thinking, while Colleen finished her third number. Pete emerged from the musikron to share the applause. Colleen blew a kiss to the audience.
"We'll be back in a little while."
She stepped down from the stage, followed by Pete; darkness absorbed them. Waiters moved along the tables. A drink was placed on Eric's table. He put money in the tray. A blue shadow appeared across from him, slipped into the chair.
"Tommy told me you were here ... the busboy." She leaned across the table. "You mustn't let Pete see you. He's in a rage, a real pet. I've never seen anybody that angry."
Eric leaned toward her, caught a delicate exhalation of sandalwood perfume. It dizzied him. "I want to talk to you," he said. "Can you meet me after the show?"
"I guess I can trust you," she said. She hesitated, smiling faintly. "You're the professional type." Another pause. "And I think I need professional advice." She slipped out of the chair, stood up. "I have to get back before he suspects I didn't go to the powder room. I'll meet you near the freight elevator upstairs."
She was gone.
A cold breeze off the bay tugged at Eric's cape, puffing out behind him. He leaned against the concrete railing, drawing on a cigarette. The glowing coal flowed an orange wash across his face, flaring, dimming. The tide rip sniggled and babbled; waves lap-lap-lapped at the concrete beneath him. A multi-colored glow in the water to his left winked out as the illumabeams above the Gweduc Room were extinguished. He shivered. Footsteps approached from his left, passed behind him -- a man, alone. A muffled whirring sound grew, stopped. Light footsteps ran toward him, stopped at the rail. He smelled her perfume. "Thanks," he said.
"I can't be long. He's suspicious. Tommy brought me up the freight elevator. He's waiting."
"I'll be brief. I've been thinking. I'm going to talk about travel. I'm going to tell you where you've been since you hooked up with Pete in Honolulu." He turned, leaned sideways against the railing. "You tried your show first in Santa Rosa, California, the sticks; then you went to Piquetberg, Karachi, Reykjavik, Portland, Hollandia, Lawton -- finally, Los Angeles. Then you came here."
"So you looked up our itinerary."
He shook his head. "No." He hesitated. "Pete's kept you pretty busy rehearsing, hasn't he?"
"This isn't easy work."
"I'm not saying it is." He turned back to the rail, nipped his cigarette into the darkness, heard it hiss in the water. "How long have you known Pete?"
"A couple of months more or less. Why?"
He turned away. "What kind of a fellow is he?"
She shrugged. "He's a nice guy. He's asked me to marry him."
Eric swallowed. "Are you going to?"
She looked out to the dark bay. "That's why I want your advice. I don't know ... I just don't know. He put me where I am, right on top of the entertainment heap." She turned back to Eric. "And he really is an awfully nice guy ... when you get under that bitterness."
Eric breathed deeply, pressed against the concrete railing. "May I tell you a story?"
"What about?"
"This morning you mentioned Dr. Carlos Amanti, the inventor of the teleprobe. Did you know him?"
"No."
"I was one of his students. When he had the breakdown it hit all of us pretty hard, but I was the only one who took up the teleprobe project. I've been working at it eight years."
She stirred beside him. "What is this teleprobe?"
"The science writers have poked fun at it; they call it the 'mind reader.' It's not. It's just a means of interpreting some of the unconscious impulses of the human brain. I suppose some day it may approach mind reading. Right now it's a rather primitive instrument, sometimes unpredictable. Amanti's intention was to communicate with the unconscious mind, using interpretation of encephalographic waves. The idea was to amplify them, maintain a discrete separation between types, and translate the type variations according to thought images."
She chewed her lower lip. "And you think the musikron would help make a better teleprobe, that it would help fight the Syndrome?"
"I think more than that." He looked down at the paving.
"You're trying to tell me something without saying it," she said. "Is it about Pete?"
"Not exactly."
"Why'd you give that long recitation of where we'd been? That wasn't just idle talk. What are you driving at?"
He looked at her speculatively, weighing her mood. "Hasn't Pete told you about those places?"
She put a hand to her mouth, eyes wide, staring. She moaned. "Not the Syndrome ... not all of those places, too?"
"Yes." It was a flat, final sound.
She shook her head. "What are you trying to tell me?"
"That it could be the musikron causing all of this."
"Oh, no!"
"I could be wrong. But look at how it appears. Amanti was a genius working near the fringe of insanity. He had a psychotic break. Then he helped Pete build a machine. It's possible that machine picks up the operator's brain wave patterns, transmits them as a scrambling impulse. The musikron does convert thought into a discernible energy -- sound. Why isn't it just as possible that it funnels a disturbing impulse directly into the unconscious." He wet his lips with his tongue. "Did you know that I hear those sounds even with my hands over my ears, see you with my eyes covered. Remember my nightmare? My nervous system is responding to a subjective impulse."
"Does it do the same thing to everybody?"
"Probably not. Unless a person was conditioned as I have been by spending years in the aura of a similar machine, these impulses would be censored at the threshold of consciousness. They would be repressed as unbelievable."
Her lips firmed. She shook her head. "I don't see how all this scientific gobbledy-gook proves the musikron caused the Syndrome."
"Maybe it doesn't. But it's the best possibility I've seen. That's why I'm going to ask a favor. Could you get me the circuit diagrams for the musikron? If I could see them I'd be able to tell just what this thing does. Do you know if Pete has plans for it?"
"There's some kind of a thick notebook inside the musikron. I think that's what you mean."
"Could you get it?"
"Maybe, but not tonight ... and I wouldn't dare tell Pete."
"Why not tonight?"
"Pete sleeps with the key to the musikron. He keeps it locked when it's not in use; so no one will get inside and get a shock. It has to be left on all the time because it takes so long to warm it up. Something about crystals or energy potential or some words like that."
"Where's Pete staying?"
"There are quarters down there, special apartments."
He turned away, breathed the damp salt air, turned back.
Colleen shivered. "I know it's not the musikron. I ... they -- " She was crying.
He moved closer, put an arm around her shoulders, waiting. He felt her shiver. She leaned against him; the shivering subsided.
"I'll get those plans." She moved her head restlessly. "That'll prove it isn't the musikron."
"Colleen ... " He tightened his arm on her shoulders, feeling a warm urgency within him.
She moved closer "Yes."
He bent his head. Her lips were warm and soft. She clung to him, pulled away, nestled in his arms.
"This isn't right," she said.
Again he bent his head. She tipped her head up to meet him. It was a gentle kiss.
She pulled away slowly, turned her head toward the bay. "It can't be like this," she whispered. "So quick -- without warning."
He put his face in her hah", inhaled. "Like what?"
"Like you'd found your way home."
He swallowed. "My dear."
Again their lips met. She pulled away, put a hand to his cheek. "I have to go."
"When will I see you?"
"Tomorrow. I'll tell Pete I have to do some shopping."
"Where?"
"Do you have a laboratory?"
"At my home in Chalmers Place on the other side of the lake. It's in the directory."
"I'll come as soon as I can get the diagrams."
Again they kissed.
"I really have to go."
He held her tightly.
"Really." She pulled away. "Good night" -- she hesitated -- "Eric." Shadows flowed in around her.
He heard the whirring of the elevator, leaned back against the concrete, drawing deep breaths to calm himself.
Deliberate footsteps approached from his left. A handlight flashed in his face, the dull gleam of a night patrolman's brassard behind the light. The light moved to the caduceus at his breast.
"You're out late, doctor."
The light returned to his face, winked off. Eric knew he had been photographed -- as a matter of routine.
"Your lipstick's smudged," the patrolman said. He walked away past the elevator dome.
Inside the silent musikron: a thin man, pinched face, hating. Bitter thought: Now wasn't that a sweet love scene! Pause. The doctor wants something to read? Wry smile. I'll provide it. He'll have something to occupy his mind after we've gone.
Before going to bed, Eric filed a transgraph to Mrs. Bertz, his secretary, telling her to cancel his appointments for the next day. He snuggled up to the pillow, hugging it. Sleep avoided him. He practiced Yoga breathing. His senses remained alert. He slipped out of bed, put on a robe and sandals. He looked at the bedside clock -- 2:05 A.M., Saturday, May 15, 1999. He thought, Just twenty-five hours ago -- nightmare. Now ... I don't know. He smiled. Yes I do; I'm in love. I feel like a college kid.
He took a deep breath. I'm in love. He closed his eyes and looked at a memory picture of Colleen. Eric, if you only solve this Syndrome, the world is yours. The thoughts skipped a beat. I'm an incipient manic --
Eric ruminated. If Pete takes that musikron out of Seattle -- What then?
He snapped a finger, went to the vidiphone, called an all-night travel agency. A girl clerk finally agreed to look up the booking dates he wanted -- for a special fee. He gave her his billing code, broke the connection and went to the microfilm rack across from the foot of his bed. He ran a finger down the title index, stopped at "Implications of Encephalographic Wave Forms, A Study of the Nine Brain Pulses, by Dr. Carlos Amanti." He pushed the selector opposite the tape, activated the screen above the rack and returned to his bed, carrying the remote-control unit.
The first page flashed on the screen; room lights dimmed automatically. He read:
"There is a scale of vibratory impulses spanning and exceeding the human auditory range which consistently produce emotional responses of fear in varying degrees. Certain of these vibratory impulses -- loosely grouped under the term sounds -- test the extremes of human emotional experience. One may say, within reason, that all emotion is response to stimulation by harmonic movement, by oscillation.
"Many workers have linked emotions with characteristic encephalographic wave responses: Carter's work on Zeta waves and love; Reymann on Pi waves and abstract thinking; Poulson on the Theta Wave Index to degrees of sorrow, to name a few.
"It is the purpose of my work to trace these characteristic responses and point out what I believe to be an entirely new direction for interpretation of -- "
Because of the late hour, Eric had expected drowsiness to overtake his reading, but his senses grew more alert as he read. The words had the familiarity of much re-reading, but they still held stimulation. He recalled a passage toward the end of the book, put the film on motor feed and scanned forward to the section he wanted. He slowed the tape, returned the controls to single-page advance; there it was:
"While working with severely disturbed patients in the teleprobe, I have found a charged emotional feeling in the atmosphere. Others, unfamiliar with my work, have reported this same experience. This suggests that the characteristic emanations of a disturbed mentality may produce sympathetic reactions upon those within the unshielded field of the teleprobe. Strangely, this disturbed sensation sometimes follows by minutes or even hours the period when the patient was under examination.
"I am hesitant to suggest a theory based upon this latter phenomenon. There is too much we do not know about the teleprobe -- its latency period, for instance. However, it is possible that the combination of teleprobe and disturbed personality broadcasts a field with a depressant effect upon the unconscious functions of persons within that field. Be that as it may, this entire field of teleprobe and encephalographic wave research carries implications which -- "
With a decisive gesture, Eric snapped off the projector, slipped out of bed and dressed. The bedside clock showed 3:28 A.M., Saturday, May 15, 1999. Never in his life had he felt more alert. He took the steps two at a time down to his basement lab, flipped on all the lights, wheeled out his teleprobe.
I'm on to something, he thought. This Syndrome problem is too urgent for me to waste time sleeping.
He stared at his teleprobe, an open framework of shelves, banks of tubes, maze of wiring, relaxing chair in the center with the metal hemisphere of the pickup directly above the chair. He thought, The musikron is rigged for sound projection; that means a secondary resonance circuit of some kind.
He pulled an unused tape recorder from a rack at the end of his bench, stripped the playback circuit from it. He took the recorder service manual, sketched in the changes he would need, pausing occasionally to figure circuit loads and balances on a slide rule. Presently, not too satisfied with his work, but anxious to get started, he brought out the parts he would need and began cutting and soldering. In two hours he had what he wanted.
Eric took cutter pliers, went to the teleprobe, snipped away the recorder circuit, pulled it out as a unit. He wheeled the teleprobe cage to the bench and, delicately feeling his way, checking the circuit diagrams as he went, he wired in the playback circuit. From the monitor and audio sides, he took the main leads, fed them back into the first bank of the encephalographic pickup. He put a test power source on the completed circuit and began add big resistance units by eye to balance the impedance. It took more than an hour of testing and cutting, required several units of shielding.
He stepped back, stared at the machine. He thought, It's going to oscillate all over the place. How does he balance this monster?
Eric pulled at his chin, thinking. Well, let's see what this hybrid does.
The wall clock above his bench showed 6:45 A.M. He took a deep breath, hooked an overload fuse into a relay power switch, closed the switch. A wire in the pickup circuit blazed to incandescence; the fuse kicked out. Eric opened the switch, picked up a test meter, and returned to the machine. The fault eluded him. He went back to the circuit diagrams.
"Perhaps too much power -- " He recalled that his heavy duty rheostat was at a shop being repaired, considered bringing out the auxiliary generator he had used on one experiment. The generator was beneath a pile of boxes in a corner. He put the idea temporarily aside, turned back to the teleprobe.
"If I could just get a look at that musikron."
He stared at the machine. "A resonance circuit -- What else?" He tried to imagine the interrelationship of the components, fitting himself into the machine.
"I'm missing it some place! There's some other thing and I have the feeling I already know it, that I've heard it. I've got to see the diagrams on that musikron."
He turned away, went out of the lab and climbed the stairs to his kitchen. He took a coffee capsule from a package in the cupboard, put it beside the sink. The vidiphone chimed. It was the clerk from the travel bureau. Eric took down her report, thanked her, broke the connection. He did a series of subtractions.
"Twenty-eight hour time lag," he thought. "Every one of them. That's too much of a coincidence."
He experienced a moment of vertigo, followed by weariness. "I'd better get some rest. I'll come back to this thing when I'm more alert."
He padded into the bedroom, sat down on the bed, kicked off his sandals and lay back, too tired to undress. Sleep eluded him. He opened his eyes, looked at the clock: 7:00 A.M. He sighed, closed his eyes, sank into a somnolent state. A niggling worry gnawed at his consciousness. Again he opened his eyes, looked at the clock: 9:50 A.M. But I didn't feel the time pass, he thought. I must have slept. He closed his eyes. His senses drifted into dizziness, the current in a stream, a ship on the current, wandering, hunting, whirling.
He thought, I hope he didn't see me leave.
His eyelids snapped open and, for a moment, he saw a unitube entrance on the ceiling above his head. He shook his head.
"That was a crazy thought. Where'd that come from?" he asked himself. "I've been working too hard."
He turned on his side, returned to the somnolent state, his eyes drooping closed. Instantly, he had the sensation of being in a maze of wires; an emotion of hate surged over him so strongly it brought panic because he couldn't explain it or direct it at anything. He gritted his teeth, shook his head, opened his eyes. The emotion disappeared, leaving him weak. He closed his eyes. Into his senses crept an almost overpowering aroma of gardenias, a vision of dawnlight through a shuttered window. His eyelids snapped open; he sat up in the bed, put his head in his hands.
Rhinencephalic stimulation, he thought. Visual stimulation ... auditory stimulation ... nearly total sensorium response. It means something. But what does it mean? He shook his head, looked at the clock: 10:10 A.M.
Outside Karachi, Pakistan, a Hindu holy man squatted in the dust beside an ancient road. Past him paraded a caravan of International Red Cross trucks, moving selected cases of Syndrome madness to the skytrain field on the Indus delta. Tomorrow the sick would be studied at a new clinic in Vienna. The truck motors whined and roared; the ground trembled. The holy man drew an ancient symbol with a finger in the dust. The wind of a passing truck stirred the pattern of Brahmaputra, twisting it. The holy man shook his head sadly.
Eric's front door announcer chimed as someone stepped onto the entrance mat. He clicked the scanner switch at his bedside, looked to the bedroom master screen; Colleen's face appeared on the screen. He punched for the door release, missed, punched again, caught it. He ran his hands through his hair, snapped the top clip of his coveralls, went to the entrance hall.
Colleen appeared tiny and hesitant standing in the hall. As he saw her, something weblike, decisive, meshed inside him -- a completeness.
He thought, Boy, in just one day you are completely on the hook.
"Eric," she said.
Her body's warm softness clung to him. Fragrance wafted from her hair.
"I missed you," he said.
She pulled away, looked up. "Did you dream about me?"
He kissed her. "Just a normal dream."
"Doctor!"
A smile took the sting out of the exclamation. She pulled away, slipped off her fur-lined cape. From an inner pocket of the cape she extracted a flat blue booklet. "Here's the diagram. Pete didn't suspect a thing."
Abruptly, she reeled toward him, clutched at his arm, gasping.
He steadied her, frightened. "What's the matter, darling?"
She shook her head, drawing deep, shuddering breaths.
"It's nothing; just a ... little headache."
"Little headache nothing." He put the back of his wrist against her forehead. The skin held a feverish warmth. "Do you feel ill?"
She shook her head. "No. It's going away."
"I don't like this as a symptom. Have you eaten?"
She looked up, calmer. "No, but I seldom eat breakfast ... the waistline."
"Nonsense! You come in here and eat some fruit."
She smiled at him. "Yes, doctor ... darling."
The reflection on the musikron's inner control surfaces gave an underlighted, demoniacal cast to Pete's face. His hand rested on a relay switch. Hesitant thought: Colleen, I wish I could control your thoughts. I wish I could tell you what to do. Each time I try, you get a headache. I wish I knew how this machine really works.
Eric's lab still bore the cluttered look of his night's activities. He helped Colleen up to a seat on the edge of the bench, opened the musikron booklet beside her. She looked down at the open pages.
"What are all those funny looking squiggles?"
He smiled. "Circuit diagram." He took a test clip and, glancing at the diagram, began pulling leads from the resonance circuit. He stopped, a puzzled frown drawing down his features. He stared at the diagram. "That can't be right." He found a scratch pad, stylus, began checking the booklet
"What's wrong?"
"This doesn't make sense."
"How do you mean?"
"It isn't designed for what it's supposed to do."
"Are you certain?"
"I know Dr. Amanti's work. This isn't the way he works." He began leafing through the booklet. A page flopped loose. He examined the binding. The booklet's pages had been razored out and new pages substituted. It was a good job. If the page hadn't fallen out, he might not have noticed. "You said it was easy to get this. Where was it?"
"Right out on top of the musikron."
He stared at her speculatively.
"What's wrong?" Her eyes held open candor.
"I wish I knew." He pointed to the booklet. "That thing's as phony as a Martian canal."
"How do you know?"
"If I put it together that way" -- a gesture at the booklet -- "it'd go up in smoke the instant power hit it. There's only one explanation: Pete's on to us."
"But how?"
"That's what I'd like to know ... how he anticipated you'd try to get the diagram for me. Maybe that bus-boy -- "
"Tommy? But he's such a nice young fellow."
"Yeah. He'd sell his mother if the price was right. He could have eavesdropped last night."
"I can't believe it." She shook her head.
In the webwork of the musikron, Pete gritted his teeth. Hate him! Hate him! He pressed the thought at her, saw it fail. With a violent motion, he jerked the metal hemisphere off his head, stumbled out of the musikron. You're not going to have her! If it's a dirty fight you want, I'll really show you a dirty fight!
Colleen asked, "Isn't there some other explanation?"
"Can you think of one?"
She started to slide down from the bench, hesitated, lurched against him, pressing her head against his chest "My head ... my head -- " She went limp in his arms, shuddered, recovered slowly, drew gasping breaths. She stood up. "Thank you."
In a corner of the lab was a canvas deck' chair. He led her over to it, eased her down. "You're going to a hospital right now for a complete check-up -- tracers, the works. I don't like this."
"It's just a headache."
"Peculiar kind of a headache."
"I'm not going to a hospital."
"Don't argue. I'm calling for reservations as soon as I can get over to the phone."
"Eric, I won't do it!" She pushed herself upright in the chair. "I've seen all the doctors I want to see." She hesitated, looked up at him. "Except you. I've had all those tests.; There's nothing wrong with me ... except something in my head." She smiled. "I guess I'm talking to the right kind of a doctor for that."
She lay back, resting, closed her eyes. Eric pulled up a stool, sat down beside her, holding her hand. Colleen appeared to sink into a light sleep, breathing evenly. Minutes passed.
If the teleprobe wasn't practically dismantled, I could test her, he thought.
She stirred, opened her eyes.
"It's that musikron," he said. He took her arm. "Did you ever have headaches like this before you began working with that thing?"
"I had headaches, but ... well, they weren't this bad." She shuddered. "I kept having horrible dreams last night about all those poor people going insane. I kept waking up. I wanted to go in and have it out with Pete." She put her hands over her face. "How can you be certain it's the musikron. You can't be sure. I won't believe it! I can't."
Eric stood up, went to the bench and rummaged under loose parts for a notebook. He returned, tossed the book I too her lap. "There's your proof."
She looked at the book without opening it. "What is this?"
"It's some figures on your itinerary. I had a travel bureau check your departure times. From the time Pete would have been shutting down the musikron to the moment all hell broke loose there's an even twenty-eight-hour time lapse. That same time lag is present in each case."
She pushed the notebook from her lap. "I don't believe it. You're making this up."
He shook his head. "Colleen, what does it mean to you that you have been each place where the Syndrome hit ... that there was a twenty-eight-hour time lapse in each case. Isn't that stretching coincidence too far?"
"I know it's not true." Her lips thinned. "I don't know what I've been thinking of to even consider you were right." She looked up, eyes withdrawn. "It can't be true. If it was, it would mean Pete planned the whole thing. He's just not that kind of a guy. He's nice, thoughtful."
He started to put his hand on her arm. "But, Colleen, I thought -- "
"Don't touch me. I don't care what you thought, or what I thought. I think you've been using your psychological ability to try to turn me away from Pete."
He shook his head, again tried to take her arm.
She pulled away. "No! I want to think and I can't think when ... when you touch me." She stared at him. "I believe you're just jealous of Pete."
"That's not -- "
A motion at the lab door caught his eye, stopped him. Pete stood there, leaning on his cane.
Eric thought, How did he get there? I didn't hear a thing. How long has he been there? He stood up.
Pete stepped forward. "You forgot to latch your door, doctor." He looked at Colleen. "Common enough thing. I did, too." He limped into the room, cane tapping methodically. "You were saying something about jealousy." A pause. "I understand about jealousy."
"Pete!" Colleen stared at him, turned back to Eric. "Eric, I -- " She began, and then shrugged.
Pete rested both hands on his cane, looked up at Eric. "You weren't going to leave me anything, were you, doctor -- the woman I love, the musikron. You were even going to hang me for this Syndrome thing."
Eric stopped, retrieved his notebook from the floor.
He handed it to Pete, who turned it over, looked at the back.
"The proof's in there. There's a twenty-eight-hour time lag between the moment you leave a community and the moment madness breaks out. You already know it's followed you around the world. There's no deviation. I've checked it out."
Pete's face paled. "Coincidence. Figures can lie; I'm no monster."
Colleen turned toward Eric, back to Pete. "That's what I told him, Pete."
"Nobody's accusing you of being a monster, Pete ... yet," Eric said. "You could be a savior. The knowledge that's locked up in that musikron could practically wipe out insanity. It's a positive link with the unconscious ... can be tapped any time. Why, properly shielded -- "
"Nuts! You're trying to get the musikron so you can throw your weight around." He looked at Colleen "And you sugar-talked her into helping you." He sneered. "It's not the first time I've been double-crossed by a woman; I guess I should've been a psychiatrist."
Colleen shook her head. "Pete, don't talk that way."
"Yeah ... How else do you expect me to talk? You were a nobody; a canary in a hula chorus and I picked you up and set you down right on the top. So what do you do -- " He turned away, leaning heavily on the cane. "You can have her, Doc; she's just your type!"
Eric put out a hand, withdrew it. "Pete! Stop allowing your deformity to deform your reason! It doesn't matter how we feel about Colleen. We've got to think about what the musikron is doing to people! Think of all the unhappiness this is causing people ... the death ... the pain -- "
"People!" Pete spat out the word.
Eric took a step closer to him. "Stop that! You know I'm right. You can have full credit for anything that is developed. You can have full control of it. You can -- "
"Don't try to kid me, Doc. It's been tried by experts. You and your big words! You're, just trying to make a big impression on baby here. I already told you you can have her. I don't want her."
"Pete! You -- "
"Look out, Doc; you're losing your temper!"
"Who wouldn't in the face of your pig-headedness?"
"So it's pig-headed to fight a thief, eh, Doc?" Pete spat on the floor, turned toward the door, tripped on his cane and fell.
Colleen was at his side. "Pete, are you hurt?"
He pushed her away. "I can take care of myself!" He struggled to his feet, pulling himself up on the cane.
"Pete, please -- "
Eric saw moisture in Pete's eyes. "Pete, let's solve this thing."
"It's already solved, Doc." He limped through the doorway.
Colleen hesitated. "I have to go with him. I can't let him go away like this. There's no telling what he'll do."
"But don't you see what he's doing?"
Anger flamed in her eyes; she stared at Eric. "I saw what you did and it was as cruel a thing as I've ever seen." She turned and ran after Pete,
Her footsteps drummed up the stairs; the outer door slammed.
An empty fibreboard box lay on the floor beside the teleprobe. Eric kicked it across the lab.
"Unreasonable ... neurotic ... flighty ... irresponsible -- "
He stopped; emptiness grew in his chest. He looked at the teleprobe. "Sometimes, there's no predicting about women." He went to the bench, picked up a transistor, put it down, pushed a tumble of resistors to the back of the bench. "Should've known better."
He turned, started toward the door, froze with a thought which forced out all other awareness:
What if they leave Seattle?
He ran up the stairs three at a time, out the door, stared up and down the street. A jet car sped past with a single occupant. A woman and two children approached from his left. Otherwise, the street was empty. The unitube entrance, less than half a block away, disgorged three teen-age girls. He started toward them, thought better of it. With the tubes running fifteen seconds apart, his chance to catch them had been lost while he'd nursed his hurt.
He re-entered the apartment
I have to do something, he thought. If they leave, Seattle will go the way of all the others. He sat down by the vidiphone, put his finger in the dial, withdrew it.
If I call the police, they'll want proof. What can I show them besides some time-tables? He looked out the window at his left. The musikron! They'll see -- Again he reached for the dial, again withdrew. What would they see? Pete would just claim I was trying to steal it.
He stood up, paced to the window, stared out at the lake.
I could call the society, he thought
He ticked off in his mind the current top officers of the King County Society of Psychiatric Consultants. All of them considered Dr. Eric Ladde a little too successful for one so young; and besides there was the matter of his research on the teleprobe; mostly a laughable matter.
But I have to do something ... the Syndrome -- He shook his head. I'll have to do it alone, whatever I do. He slipped into a black cape, went outside and headed for the Gweduc Room.
A cold wind kicked up whitecaps in the bay, plumed spray onto the waterfront sidewalk. Eric ducked into the elevator, emerged into a lunchroom atmosphere. The girl at the checktable looked up.
"Are you alone, doctor?"
"I'm looking for Miss Lanai."
"I'm sorry. You must have passed them outside. She and Mr. Serantis just left."
"Do you know where they were going?"
"I'm sorry; perhaps if you come back this evening -- "
Eric returned to the elevator, rode up to the street vaguely disquieted. As he emerged from the elevator dome, he saw a van pull away from the service dome. Eric played a hunch, ran toward the service elevator which already was whirring down.
"Hey!"
The whirring stopped, resumed; the elevator returned to the street level, in it Tommy, the busboy.
"Better luck next time, Doc."
"Where are they?"
"Well -- "
Eric jammed a hand into his coin pocket, fished out a fifty-buck piece, held it in his hand.
Tommy looked at the coin, back at Eric's eyes. "I heard Pete call the Bellingham skytrain field for reservations to London."
A hard knot crept into Eric's stomach; his breathing became shallow, quick; he looked around him.
"Only twenty-eight hours -- "
"That's all I know, Doc."
Eric looked at the busboy's eyes, studying him.
Tommy shook his head. "Don't you start looking at me that way!" He shuddered. "That Pete give me the creeps; always staring at a guy; sitting around in that machine all day and no noises coming out of it" Again he shuddered. "I'm glad he's gone."
Eric handed him the coin. "You won't be."
"Yeah," Tommy stepped back into the elevator. "Sorry you didn't make it with the babe, Doc."
"Wait."
"Yeah?"
"Wasn't there a message from Miss Lanai?"
Tommy made an almost imperceptible motion toward the inner pocket of his coveralls. Eric's trained eyes caught the gesture. He stepped forward, gripped Tommy's arm.
"Give it to me!"
"Now look here, Doc."
"Give it to me!"
"Doc, I don't know what you're talking about."
Eric pushed his face close to the busboy's. "Did you see what happened to Los Angeles, Lawton, Portland, all the places where the Syndrome hit?"
The boy's eyes went wide. "Doc, I -- "
"Give it to me!"
Tommy darted his free hand under his coveralls, extracted a thick envelope, thrust it into Eric's hand.
Eric released the boy's arm. Scrawled on the envelope was: "This will prove you were wrong about Pete." It was signed, "Colleen."
"You were going to keep this?" Eric asked.
Tommy's lips twisted. "Any fool can see it's the plans for the musikron, Doc. That thing's valuable."
"You haven't any idea," Eric said. He looked up. "They're headed for Bellingham?"
"Yeah."
The nonstop unitube put Eric at the Bellingham field in twenty-one minutes. He jumped out, ran to the station, jostling people aside. A skytrain lashed into the air at the far end of the field. Eric missed a step, stumbled, caught his balance.
In the depot, people streamed past him away from the ticket window. Eric ran up to the window, leaned on the counter. "Next train to London?"
The girl at the window consulted a screen beside her. "There'll be one at 12:50 tomorrow afternoon, sir. You just missed one."
"But that's twenty-four hours!"
"You'd arrive in London at 4:50 P.M., sir." She smiled. "Just a little late for tea." She glanced at his caduceus.
Eric clutched at the edge of the counter, leaned toward her. "That's twenty-nine hours -- one hour too late."
He pushed himself away from the window, turned.
"It's just a four-hour trip, doctor."
He turned back. "Can I charter a private ship?"
"Sorry, doctor. There's an electrical storm coming; the traveler beam will have to be shut down. I'm sure you couldn't get a pilot to go out without the beam. You do understand?"
"Is there a way to call someone on the skytrain?"
"Is this a personal matter, doctor?"
"It's an emergency."
"May I ask the nature of the emergency?'"
He thought a moment, looking at the girl. He thought, Same problem here ... nobody would believe me.
He said, "Never mind. Where's the nearest vidiphone? I'll leave a message for her at Plymouth Depot."
"Down that hallway to your right, doctor." The girl went back to her tickets. She looked up at Eric's departing back. "Was it a medical emergency, doctor?"
He paused, turned. The envelope in his pocket rustled. He felt for the papers, pulled out the envelope. For the second time since Tommy had given them to him, Eric glanced inside at the folded pages of electronic diagrams, some initialed "C.A."
The girl waited, staring at him.
Eric put the envelope back in his pocket, a thought crystallizing. He glanced up at the girl. "Yes, it was a medical emergency. But you're out of range."
He turned, strode outside, back to the unitube. He thought about Colleen. Never trust a neurotic woman. I should have known better than to let my glands hypnotize me.
He went down the unitube entrance, worked his way out to the speed strip, caught the first car along, glad to find it empty. He took out the envelope, examined its contents' during the ride. There was no doubt about it; the envelope contained the papers Pete had razored from the musikron service book. Eric recognized Dr. Amanti's characteristic scrawl.
The wall clock in his lab registered 2:10 P.M. as Eric turned on the lights. He took a blank sheet of paper from his notebook, wrote on it with grease pencil:
"DEADLINE, 4:00 P.M., Sunday, May 16th."
He tacked the sheet above his bench, spread out the circuit diagrams from the envelope. He examined the first page.
Series modulation, he thought. Quarter wave. He ran a stylus down the page, checked the next page. Multiple phase-reversing. He turned to the next page. The stylus paused. He traced a circuit, went back to the first page. Degenerative feedback. He shook his head. That's impossible! There'd just be a maze of wild harmonics. He continued on through the diagrams, stopped and read through the last two pages slowly. He went through the circuits a second time, a third time, a fourth time. He shook his head. What is it?
He could trace the projection of much of the diagram, amazed at the clear simplicity of the ideas. The last ten pages though -- They described a series of faintly familiar circuits, reminding him of a dual frequency crystal calibrator of extremely high osculation. "10,000 KC" was marked in the margin. But there were subtle differences he couldn't explain. For instance, there was a sign for a lower limit.
A series of them, he thought. The harmonics hunt and change. But it can't be random. Something has to control it, balance it.
At the foot of the last page was a notation: "Important -- use only G6 midget variable, C7, C8 dual, 4ufd."
They haven't made tubes in that series for fifty years, he thought. How can I substitute?
He studied the diagram.
I don't stand a chance of making this thing in time. And if I do; what then? He wiped his forehead. Why does it remind me of a crystal oscillator? He looked at the clock -- two hours had passed. Where did the time go? he asked himself. I'm taking too much time just learning what this is. He chewed his lips, staring at the moving second hand of the clock, suddenly froze. The parts houses will be closing and tomorrow's Sunday!
He went to the lab vidiphone, dialed a parts house. No luck. He dialed another, checking the call sheet beside the phone. No luck. His fifth call netted a suggestion of a substitute circuit using transistors which might work. Eric checked off the parts list the clerk suggested, gave the man his package tube code.
"I'll have them out to you first thing Monday," the man said.
"But I have to have them today! Tonight!"
"I'm sorry, sir. The parts are in our warehouse; it's all locked up tight on Saturday afternoon."
"I'll pay a hundred bucks above list price for those parts."
"I'm sorry, sir; I don't have authorization."
"Two hundred."
"But -- "
"Three hundred."
The clerk hesitated. Eric could see the man figuring. The three hundred probably was a week's wages.
"I'll have to get them myself after I go off duty here," the clerk said. "What else do you need?"
Eric leafed through the circuit diagrams, read off the parts lists from the margins. "There's another hundred bucks in it if you get them to me before seven."
"I get off at 5:30, doctor. I'll do my best."
Eric broke the circuit, returned to his bench, began roughing-in from the diagram with what materials he had. The teleprobe formed the basic element with surprisingly few changes.
At 5:40, the dropbell of his transgraph jangled upstairs. Eric put down his soldering iron, went upstairs, pulled out the tape. His hands trembled when he saw the transmission station. London. He read:
"Don't ever try to see me again. Your suspicions are entirely unfounded as you probably know by now. Pete and I to be married Monday. Colleen."
He sat down at the transmitter, punched out a message to American Express, coding it urgent for delivery to Colleen Lanai.
"Colleen: If you can't think of me, please think of what this means to a city full of people. Bring Pete and that machine back before it's too late. You can't be this inhuman."
He hesitated before signing it, punched out, "I love you." He signed it, "Eric."
He thought, You damn' fool, Eric. After the way she ran out on you.
He went into the kitchen, took a capsule to stave off weariness, ate a dinner of pills, drank a cup of coffee. He leaned back against the kitchen drainboard, waiting for the capsule to take hold. His head cleared; he washed his face in cold water, dried it, returned to the lab.
The front door announcer chimed at 6:42 P.M. The screen showed the clerk from the parts house, his arms-gripping a bulky package. Eric punched the door release, spoke into the tube: "First door on your left, downstairs."
The back wall of his bench suddenly wavered, the lines of masonry rippling; a moment of disorientation surged through him. He bit his lip, holding to the reality of the pain.
It's too soon, he thought. Probably my own nerves; I'm too tense.
An idea on the nature of the Syndrome flashed into his mind. He pulled a scratch pad to him, scribbled, "Loss of unconscious autonomy; overstimulation subliminal receptors; gross perception -- petit perception. Check C. G. Jung's collective unconscious."
Footsteps tapped down the stairway.
"This the place?"
The clerk was a taller man than he had expected. An air of near adolescent eagerness played across the man's features as he took in the lab. "What a layout!"
Eric cleared a space on the bench. "Put that stuff right here." Eric's eyes focused on the clerk's delicately sensitive hands. The man slid the box onto the bench, picked up a fixed crystal oscillator from beside the box, examined it
"Do you know anything about electronic hookups?" Eric asked.
The clerk looked up, grinned. "W7CGO. I've had my own ham station over ten years."
Eric offered 'his hand. "I'm Dr. Eric Ladde."
"Baldwin Platte ... Baldy." He ran one of his sensitive hands through thinning hair.
"Glad to know you, Baldy. How'd you like to make a thousand bucks over what I've already promised you?"
"Are you kidding, Doc?"
Eric turned his head, looked at the framework of the teleprobe. "If that thing isn't finished and ready to go by four o'clock tomorrow afternoon, Seattle will go the way of Los Angeles."
Baldy's eyes widened; he looked at the framework. "The Syndrome? How can -- "
"I've discovered what caused the Syndrome ... a machine like this. I have to build a copy of that machine and get it working. Otherwise -- "
The clerk's eyes were clear, sober. "I saw your nameplate upstairs, Doc, and remembered I'd read about you."
"Well?"
"If you say positive you've'found out what caused the Syndrome, I'll take your word for it. Just don't try to explain it to me." He looked toward the parts on the bench, back to the teleprobe. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do." A pause. "And I hope you know what you're talking about."
"I've found something that just can't be coincidence," Eric said. "Added to what I know about teleprobes, well -- " He hesitated. "Yes, I know what I'm talking about."
Eric took a small bottle from the rear of his bench, looked at the label, shook out a capsule. "Here, take this; it'll keep you awake."
Baldy swallowed the capsule.
Eric sorted through the papers on his bench, found the first sheet. "Now, here's what we're dealing with. There's a tricky quarter-wave hookup coupled to an amplification factor that'll throw you back on your heels."
Baldy looked over Eric's shoulder. "Doesn't look too hard to follow. Let me work on that while you take over some of the tougher parts." He reached for the diagram, moved it to a cleared corner of the bench. "What's this thing supposed to do, Doc?"
"It creates a field of impulses which feed directly into the human unconscious. The field distorts -- "
Baldy interrupted him. "O.K., Doc. I forgot I asked you not to explain it to me." He looked up, smiled. "I flunked Sociology." His expression sobered. "I'll just work on the assumption you know what this is all about Electronics I understand; psychology ... no."
They worked in silence, broken only by sparse questions, muttering. The second hand on the wall clock moved around, around, around; the minute hand followed, and the hour hand.
At 8:00 A.M., they sent out for breakfast. The layout of the crystal oscillators still puzzled them. Much of the diagram was scrawled in a radio shorthand.
Baldy made the first break in the puzzle.
"Doc, are these things supposed to make a noise?"
Eric looked at the diagram. "What?" His eyes widened.
"Of course they're supposed to make a noise."
Baldy wet his lips with his tongue. "There's a special sonar crystal set for depth sounding in submarine detection. This looks faintly like the circuit, but there are some weird changes."
Eric tugged at his lip; his eyes glistened. "That's it! That's why there's no control circuit! That's why it looks as though these things would hunt all over the place! The operator is the control -- his mind keeps it in balance!"
"How's that?"
Eric ignored the question. "But this means we have the wrong kind of crystals. We've misread the parts list." Frustration sagged his shoulders. "And we're not even halfway finished."
Baldy tapped the diagram with a finger. "Doc, I've got some old surplus sonar equipment at home. I'll call my wife and have her bring it over. I think there are six or seven sonopulsators -- they just might work."
Eric looked at the wall clock: 8:28 A.M. Seven and a half hours to go. "Tell her to hurry."
Mrs. "Baldy" was a female version of her husband. She carried a heavy wooden box down the steps, balancing it with an easy nonchalance.
"Hi, Hon. Where'll I put this stuff?"
"On the floor ... anywhere. Doc, this is Betty."
"How do you do."
"Hiya, Doc. There's some more stuff in the car. I'll get it."
Baldy took her arm. "You better let me do it. You shouldn't be carrying heavy loads, especially down stairs."
She pulled away. "Go on. Get back to your work. This is good for me -- I need the exercise."
"But -- "
"But me no buts." She pushed him.
He returned to the bench reluctantly, looking back at his wife. She turned at the doorway and looked at Baldy. "You look pretty good for being up all night, Hon. What's all the rush?"
"I'll explain later. You better get that stuff."
Baldy turned to the box she had brought, began sorting through it. "Here they are." He lifted out two small plastic cases, handed them to Eric, pulled out another, another. There were eight of them. They lined the cases up on the bench. Baldy snapped open the cover of the first one.
"They're mostly printed circuits, crystal diode transistors and a few tubes. Wonderful engineering. Don't know what the dickens I ever planned to do with them. Couldn't resist the bargain. They were two bucks apiece." He folded back the side plate. "Here's the crys -- Doc!"
Eric bent over the case.
Baldy reached into the case. "What were those tubes you wanted?"
Eric grabbed the circuit diagram, ran his finger down the parts list. "C6 midget variable, C7, C8 dual, 4ufd."
Baldy pulled out a tube. "There's your C6." He pulled out another. "There's your C8." Another. "Your C7." He peered into the works. "There's a third stage in here I don't think'll do us any good. We can rig a substitute for the 4ufd component."
Baldy whistled tonelessly through his teeth. "No wonder that diagram looked familiar. It was based on this wartime circuit."
Eric felt a moment of exultation, sobered when he looked at the wall clock: 9:04 A.M.
He thought, "We have to work faster or we'll never make it in time. Less than seven hours to go."
He said, "Let's get busy. We haven't much time."
Betty came down the stairs with another box. "You guys eaten?"
Baldy didn't look up from dismantling the second plastic box. "Yeah, but you might make us some sandwiches for later."
Eric looked up from another of the plastic boxes. "Cupboard upstairs is full of food."
Betty turned, clattered up the stairs.
Baldy glanced at Eric out of the corners of his eyes. "Doc, don't say anything to Betty about the reason for all this." He turned his attention back to the box, working methodically. "We're expecting our first son in about five months." He took a deep breath. "You've got me convinced." A drop of perspiration ran down his nose, fell onto his hand. He wiped his hand on his shirt. "This has gotta work."
Betty's voice echoed down the stairs: "Hey, Doc, Where's your can opener?"
Eric had his head and shoulders inside the teleprobe. He pulled back, shouted, "Motor-punch to the left of the sink."
Muttering, grumbling, clinking noises echoed down from the kitchen. Presently, Betty appeared with a plate of sandwiches, a red-tinted bandage on her left thumb. "Broke your paring knife," she said. "Those mechanical gadgets scare me." She looked fondly at her husband's back. "He's just as gadget happy as you are, Doc. If I didn't watch him like a spy-beam my nice old kitchen would be an electronic nightmare." She upended an empty box, put the plate of sandwiches on it. "Eat when you get hungry. Anything I can do?"
Baldy stepped back from the bench, turned. "Why don't you go over to Mom's for the day?"
"The whole day?"
Baldy glanced at Eric, back at his wife. "The Doc's paying me fourteen hundred bucks for the day's work. That's our baby money; now run along."
She made as though to speak, closed her mouth, walked over to her husband, kissed his cheek. "O.K., Hon. Bye." She left
Eric and Baldy went on with their work, the pressure mounting with each clock tick. They plodded ahead, methodically checking each step.
At 3:20 P.M., Baldy released test clips from half of the new resonance circuit, glanced at the wall clock. He stopped, looked back at the teleprobe, weighing the work yet to be done. Eric lay on his back under the machine, soldering a string of new connections.
"Doc, we aren't going to make it." He put the test meter on the bench, leaned against the bench. "There just isn't enough time."
An electronic soldering iron skidded out from under the teleprobe. Eric squirmed out behind it, looked up at the clock, back at the unconnected wires of the crystal circuits. He stood up, fished a credit book from his pocket, wrote out a fourteen hundred buck credit check to Baldwin Platte. He tore out the check, handed it to Baldy.
"You've earned every cent of this, Baldy. Now beat it; go join your wife."
"But -- "
"We haven't time to argue. Lock the door after you so you can't get back in if -- "
Baldy raised his right hand, dropped it. "Doc, I can't -- "
"It's all right, Baldy." Eric took a deep breath. "I kind of know how I'll go if I'm too late." He stared at Baldy. "I don't know about you. You might, well -- " He shrugged.
Baldy nodded, swallowed. "I guess you're right, Doc." His lips worked. Abruptly, he turned, ran up the stairs. The outside door slammed.
Eric turned back to the teleprobe, picked up an open lead to the crystal circuits, matched it to its receptor, ran a drop of solder across the connection. He moved to the next crystal unit, the next --
At one minute to four he looked at the clock. More than an hour's work remained on the teleprobe and then -- He didn't know. He leaned back against the bench, eyes filmed by fatigue. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket, pressed the igniter, took a deep drag. He remembered Colleen's question: "What's it like to be insane?" He stared at the ember on his cigarette.
Will I tear the teleprobe apart? Will I take a gun, go hunting for Colleen and Pete? Will I run out -- The clock behind him clicked. He tensed. What will it be like? He felt dizzy, nauseated. A wave of melancholia smothered his emotions. Tears of self-pity started in his eyes. He gritted his teeth. I'm not insane ... I'm not insane -- He dug his fingernails into his palms, drew in deep, shuddering breaths. Uncertain thoughts wandered through his mind.
I shall faint ... the incoherence of morosis ... demoniacal possession ... dithyrambic dizziness ... an animal figure concretionized out of the libido ... corybantic calenture ... mad as a March hare --
His head sagged forward.
... Non compos mentis ... aliene ... avoir le diable au corps -- What has happened to Seattle? What has happened to Seattle? What has -- His breathing steadied; he blinked his eyes. Everything appeared unchanged ... unchanged ... unchanged -- I'm wandering. I must get hold of myself!
The fingers of his right hand burned. He shook away the short ember of his cigarette.
Was I wrong? What's happening outside?" He started for the stairs, made it halfway to the door when the lights went out. A tight band ringed his chest. Eric felt his way to the door, grasped the stair rail, climbed up to the dim, filtered light of the hall. He stared at the stained glass bricks beside the door, tensed at a burst of gunshots from outside. He sleepwalked to the kitchen, raised on tiptoes to look through the ventilator window over the sink.
People! The street swarmed with people -- some running, some walking purposefully, some wandering without aim, some clothed, some partly clothed, some nude. The bodies of a man and child sprawled in blood at the opposite curbing.
He shook his head, turned, went into the living room. The lights suddenly flashed on, off, on, stayed. He punched video for a news program, got only wavy lines. He put the set on manual, dialed a Tacoma station. Again wavy lines.
Olympia was on the air, a newscaster reading a weather report: "Partly cloudy with showers by tomorrow afternoon. Temperatures -- "
A hand carrying a sheet of paper reached into the speaker's field of vision. The newsman stopped, scanned the paper. His hand shook. "Attention! Our mobile unit at the Clyde Field jet races reports that the Scramble Syndrome has struck the twin cities of Seattle-Tacoma. More than three million people are reported infected. Emergency measures already are being taken. Road blocks are being set up. There are known to have been fatalities, but -- "
A new sheet of paper was handed to the announcer. His jaw muscles twitched as he read. "A jet racer has crashed into the crowd at Clyde Field. The death toll is estimated at three hundred. There are no available medical facilities. All doctors listening to this broadcast -- all doctors -- report at once to State disaster headquarters. Emergency medical -- " The lights again blinked out, the screen faded.
Eric hesitated. I'm a doctor. Shall I go outside and do what I can, medically, or shall I go down and finish the teleprobe -- now that I've been proved right? Would it do any good if I did get it working? He found himself breathing in a deep rhythm. Or am I crazed like all the others? Am I really doing what I think I'm doing? Am I mad and dreaming a reality? He thought of pinching himself, knew that would be no proof. I have to go ahead as though I'm sane. Anything else really is madness.
He chose the teleprobe, located a handlight in his bedroom, returned to the basement lab. He found the long unused emergency generator under the crates in the corner. He wheeled it to the center of the lab, examined it. The powerful alcohol turbine appeared in working order. The pressure cap on the fuel reservoir popped as he released it. The reservoir was more than half full. He found two carboys of alcohol fuel in the corner where the generator had been stored. He filled the fuel tank, replaced the cap, pumped pressure into the tank.
The generator's power lead he plugged into the lab fuse box. The hand igniter caught on the first spin. The turbine whirred to life, keened up through the sonic range. Lab lights sprang to life, dimmed, steadied as the relays adjusted.
It was 7:22 P.M. by the wall clock when he soldered the final connection. Eric estimated a half hour delay before the little generator had taken over, put the time actually at near eight o'clock. He found himself hesitant, strangely unwilling to test the completed machine. His one-time encephalorecorder was a weird maze of crossed wiring, emergency shielding, crowded tubes, crystals. The only familiar thing remaining in the tubular framework was the half-dome of the head-contact hanging above the test chair.
Eric plugged in a power line, linked it to a portable switchbox which he placed in the machine beside the chair. He eased aside a sheaf of wires, wormed his way through, sat down in the chair. He hesitated hand on the switch.
Am I really sitting here? he wondered. Or is this some trick of the unconscious mind? Perhaps I'm in a corner somewhere with a thumb in my mouth. Maybe I've torn the teleprobe apart. Maybe I've put the teleprobe together so it will kill me the instant I close the switch.
He looked down at the switch, withdrew his hand. He thought, I can't just sit here; that's madness, too.
He reached up to the helmetlike dome, brought it down over his head. He felt the pinpricks of the contacts as they probed through his hair to his scalp. The narco-needles took hold, deadening skin sensation.
This feels like reality, he thought. But maybe I'm building this out of memory. It's hardly likely I'm the only sane person in the city. He lowered his hand to the switch. But I have to act as though I am.
Almost of its own volition, his thumb moved, depressed the switch. Instantly, a soft ululation hung in the laboratory air. It shifted to dissonance, to harmony, wailing, half-forgotten music, wavered up the scale, down the scale.
In Eric's mind, mottled pictures of insanity threatened to overwhelm his consciousness. He sank into a maelstrom. A brilliant spectrograph coruscated before his eyes. In a tiny corner of his awareness, a discrete pattern of sensation remained, a reality to hold onto, to save him -- the feeling of the teleprobe's chair beneath him and against his back.
He sank farther into the maelstrom, saw it change to gray, become suddenly a tiny picture seen through the wrong end of a telescope. He saw a small boy holding the hand of a woman in a black dress. The two went into a hall-like room. Abruptly Eric no longer saw them from a distance but was again himself at age nine walking toward a casket. He sensed again the horrified fascination, heard his mother's sobs, the murmurous, meaningless voice sounds of a tall, thin undertaker. Then, there was the casket and in it a pale, waxed creature who looked somewhat like his father. As Eric watched, the face melted and became the face of his uncle Mark; and then another mask, his high-school geometry teacher. Eric thought, We missed that one in my psychoanalysis. He watched the mobile face in the coffin as it again shifted and became the professor who had taught him abnormal psychology, and then his own analyst, Dr. Lincoln Ordway, and then he fought against this one -- Dr. Carlos Amanti.
So that's the father image I've held all these years, he thought. That means -- That means I've never really given up searching for my father. A fine thing for an analyst to discover about himself! He hesitated. Why did I have to recognize that? I wonder if Pete went through this in his musikron? Another part of his mind said, Of course not. A person has to want to see inside himself or he never will, even if he has the opportunity.
The other part of his mind abruptly seemed to reach up, seize control of his consciousness. His awareness of self lurched aside, became transformed into a mote whipping through his memories so rapidly he could barely distinguish between events.
Am I dying? he wondered. Is it my life passing in review?
The kaleidoscopic progression jerked to a stop before a vision of Colleen -- the way he had seen her in his dream. The memory screen lurched to Pete. He saw the two people in a relationship to himself that he had never quite understood. They represented a catalyst, not good or evil, merely a reagent which set events in motion.
Suddenly, Eric sensed his awareness growing, permeating his body. He knew the condition and action of each gland, each muscle fiber, each nerve ending. He focused his inner eye on the grayness through which he had passed. Into the gray came a tendril of red -- shifting, twisting, weaving past him. He followed the red line. A picture formed in his mind, growing there like the awakening from anaesthetic. He looked down a long street -- dim in the spring dusk -- at the lights of a jet car thundering toward him. The car grew larger, larger, the lights two hypnotic eyes. With the vision came a thought: My, that's pretty!
Involuntary reactions took over. He sensed muscles tensing, jumping aside, the hot blast of the jet car as it passed. A plaintive thought twisted into his mind: Where am I? Where's Mama? Where's Bea?
Tightness gripped Eric's stomach as he realized he sat in another's consciousness, saw through another's eyes, sensed through another's nerves. He jumped away from the experience, pulling out of the other mind as though he had touched a hot stove.
So that's how Pete knew so much, he thought. Pete sat in his musikron and looked through our eyes. Another thought: What am I doing here? He sensed the teleprobe chair beneath him, beard the new self within him say, "I'm going to need more trained, expert help."
He followed another red tendril, searching, discarded it; sought another. The orientation was peculiar -- no precise up or down or compass points until he looked out of the other eyes. He came to rest finally behind two eyes that looked down from an open window in the fortieth story of an office building, sensed the suicidal thoughts building up pressure within this person. Gently, Eric touched the center of consciousness, seeking the name -- Dr. Lincoln Ordway, psychoanalyst.
Eric thought, Even now I turn back to my own analyst.
Tensely, Eric retreated to a lower level of the other's consciousness, knowing that the slightest misstep would precipitate this man's death wish, a jump through that window. The lower levels suddenly erupted a pinwheel of coruscating purple light. The pinwheel slowed, became a mandala figure -- at the four points of the figure an open window, a coffin, a transitus-tree and a human face which Eric suddenly recognized as a distorted picture of himself. The face was boyish, slightly vacant
Eric thought, The analyst, too, is tied to what he believes is his patient. With the thought, he willed himself to move gently, unobtrusively into the image of himself, began to expand his area of dominion over the other's unconscious. He pushed a tentative thought against the almost palpable wall which represented Dr. Ordway's focus of consciousness: Line (a whisper), don't jump. Do you hear me, Line? Don't jump. The city needs your help.
With part of his mind, Eric realized that if the analyst sensed his mental privacy being invaded that realization could tip the balance, send the man plunging out the window. Another part of Eric's mind took that moment to render up a solution to why he needed this man and others like him: The patterns of insanity broadcast by Pete Serantis could only be counterbalanced by a rebroadcast of calmness and sanity.
Eric tensed, withdrew slightly as he felt the analyst move closer to the window. In the other's mind, he whispered, "Come away from the window. Come away -- " Resistance! A white light expanded in Eric's thoughts, rejected him. He felt himself swimming out into the gray maelstrom, receding. A red tendril approached and with it a question, not of his own origin, lifted into his mind:
Eric? What is this thing?
Eric allowed the pattern of teleprobe development to siphon through his mind. He ended the pattern with an explanation of what was needed.
Thought: Eric, how did the Syndrome miss you?
Conditioning by long exposure to my own teleprobe; high resistance to unconscious distortion built up by that work.
Funny thing; I was about to dive out the window when I sensed your interference. It was something -- the red tendril moved closer -- like this.
They meshed completely.
"What now?" asked Dr. Ordway.
"Well need as much trained help as we can find in the city. Others would censor out this experience below the threshold of consciousness."
"The influence of your teleprobe may quiet everybody."
"Yes, but if the machine is ever turned off, or if people go beyond its area of influence, they'd be back in the soup."
"We'll have to go in the back door of every unconscious in the city and put things in order!"
"Not just this city; every city where the musikron has been and every city where Serantis takes it until we can stop him."
"How did the musikron do this thing?"
Eric projected a mixed pattern of concepts and pictures: "The musikron pushed us deep down into the collective unconscious, dangled us there as long as we remained within its area of influence. (Picture of rope hanging down into swirls of fog.) Then the musikron was turned off. (Picture of knife cutting the rope, the end falling, falling into a swirling gray maelstrom.) Do you see it?"
"If we have to go down into that maelstrom after all these people, hadn't we better get started?"
He was a short man digging with his fingers in the soft loam of his flowerbed, staring vacantly at shredded leaves -- name, Dr. Harold Marsh, psychologist. Unobtrusively, softly, they absorbed him into the network of the teleprobe.
She was a woman, dressed in a thin housecoat, preparing to leap from the end of a pier -- name, Lois Voorhies, lay analyst. Swiftly, they drew her back to sanity.
Eric paused to follow a thin red tendril to the mind of a neighbor, saw through the other's eyes sanity returning around him.
Like ripples spreading in a pond, a semblance of sanity washed out across the city. Electric power returned; emergency services were restored.
The eyes of a clinical psychologist east of the city transmitted a view of a jet plane arrowing toward Clyde Field. Through the psychologist's mind the network picked up the radiating thought patterns of a woman -- guilt, remorse, despair.
Colleen!
Hesitantly, the network extended a pseudopod of thought, reached into Colleen's consciousness and found terror. What is happening to me!
Eric took over. Colleen, don't be afraid. This is Eric. We are getting things back in order thanks to you and the musikron plans. He projected the pattern of their accomplishments.
I don't understand. You're --
You don't have to understand now. Hesitantly: I'm glad you came.
Eric, I came as soon as I heard -- when I realized you were right about Pete and the musikron. She paused. We're coming down to land.
Colleen's chartered plane settled onto the runway, rolled up to a hangar and was surrounded by National Guardsmen.
She sent out a thought: We have to do something about London. Pete threatened to smash the musikron, to commit suicide. He tried to keep me there by force.
When?
Six hours ago.
Has it been that long since the Syndrome hit?
The network moved in: What is the nature of this man Serantis?
Colleen and Eric merged thoughts to project Pete's personality.
The network: He'll not commit suicide, or smash his machine. Too self-centered. He'll go into hiding. We'll find him soon enough when we need him -- unless he's lynched first.
Colleen interrupted: This National Guard major won't let me leave the airport.
Tell him you're a nurse assigned to Maynard Hospital.
Individual thought from the network: I'll confirm from this end.
Eric: Hurry ... darling. We need all of the help we can get from people resistant to the teleprobe.
Thoughts from the network: That's as good a rationalization as any. Every man to his own type of insanity. That's enough nonsense -- let's get to work!

