12 Monkeys

5

They kept her all night at the station house. Periodically the faces around her changed, from the local police detectives to FBI agents to a kind-faced staffer who brought her coffee and, later, a small carton of orange juice.

Now, with early morning sunlight slanting in through windows gray with steel mesh and dead flies, the exhausted Kathryn found herself telling her story for the fifth time. Her listener was Lieutenant Halperin, a man approaching retirement whose lined face showed signs of not being able to wait for it much longer.

“…Then I said something to him about cooperating and he said he would do that, so I got in the car and started honking the horn. When I got out, he was gone.”

Halperin took a sip of his coffee, nodding. Behind him another cop entered the room and handed him an 8 X 10 photo.

“You lucked out,” Halperin said, his eyes darting from the photo to the bedraggled woman sitting across from him. She’d combed her hair and washed up, but her clothes were rumpled and stained, her face haggard from her ordeal. “For a while we thought you were a body they found downstate — mutilated.”

Kathryn shook her head resolutely. “He wouldn’t do something like that. He—”

Lieutenant Halperin interrupted her. “This is the man he attacked?”

He handed Kathryn the photo. She stared at it, a gritty black-and-white showing one of the men who’d attacked them in the crackhouse in Philadelphia. He was slumped against the alley wall, his head drooping at an unnatural angle against his shoulder. Kathryn gave a quick nod and pushed the photo back across the table.

“I’d like to hear about this,” she said firmly. “That man—” she stabbed at the photo “—and the other one, were… severely beating us. James Cole didn’t start it. He saved me.”

Halperin leaned back in his chair, sighing. “Funny thing, Doctor — maybe you can explain it to me, you being a psychiatrist. Why do kidnap victims almost always try to tell us about the guys who grabbed ‘em and try to make us understand how kind these bastards really were?”

“It’s a normal reaction to a life-threatening situation,” she replied in a monotone. Suddenly her eyes brightened, and she looked directly at Halperin. “He’s sick. He thinks he comes from the future. He’s been living in a carefully constructed fantasy world and that world is starting to disintegrate. He needs help!”

“Help,” Halperin repeated. His fingers drummed slowly at the table edge. After a moment he shook his head, gathering his notes and the photo. “Well. I’m sure we’ll do all we can to help this guy. Dr. Railly—”

He stood and motioned her to the door. “There’s a little more paperwork for you to finish, and then someone will help you make arrangements to get back home.”

“Thank you,” Kathryn said in a small voice, her burst of excitement played out. “Thank you very much.”

And she followed him out the door.

Voices drown the roar of a jet, the lingering echo of a gunshot. Near the boy’s feet two blond heads lean together, their bright hair tangling, the woman cradling the wounded man where he sprawls on the concourse. Despite his terror the boy wants to dart forward, to join them, but someone holds him back, there is a hand on his shoulder, a voice commanding him.

“Wake up! Wake up!”

He flinched as a second voice chimed in. “I think we gave him too much.”

“WAKE UP PRISONER!”

He woke, blinking as he tried to focus on the blurry faces hovering over him.

“Come on, Cole, cooperate!”

“Spit it out! You went to the home of a famous virologist…”

With great effort Cole shook his head. “You — don’t exist!” he finally said, the words like stones falling from his mouth. You’re only in — my mind…”

Above him the blur continued into a single face: the microbiologist, his sunglasses a heavy bar above his thin mouth. “Speak up, Cole,” he ordered. “What did you do next?”

Cole closed his eyes, forced those other faces from his mind. Instead he tried to bring up the image of a moonlit sky, the shadow of a crocus leaf upon his outstretched palm, Kathryn Railly’s pale eyes and determined frown as she gently pulled gauze across his leg.

“Cole!”

The images grew clearer. He could hear dead leaves rustling, the faint sigh of wind in the trees. He smiled, feeling the wind on his shorn scalp, then cried aloud as cold fingers pressed down upon his shoulder, probed at his neck until they found a vein. There was the sudden stab of a needle, then darkness.

In Kathryn’s apartment, her friends Marilou and Wayne sat huddled together on the couch, riveted by the TV. A film clip showed a fragile looking Kathryn leaving the police station, her face dead white, her hair hidden by a scarf.

“Exhausted, but apparently unharmed by her thirty-hour ordeal, Dr. Railly returned to Baltimore this morning without making a public statement.”

Behind them the bedroom door opened. Wayne fumbled hastily with the remote, turning down the volume as Kathryn crossed the room in her bathrobe, her cat cradles in her arms. Wayne looked up at her, crestfallen.

“Sorry. Did we wake you?”

Kathryn shook her head. “No. I’m too hyped up to sleep.”

Marilou moved over to make room for her on the couch. “Did you take the sedative?”

“God no. I hate those things. They mess my head up.” She took the remote from Wayne’s hand and turned the volume back up.

“Along with the kidnapping of the Baltimore woman, James Cole is now also wanted in connection with the brutal slaying of Rodney Wiggins, an ex-convict from…”

With a sigh, Kathryn crossed the room to the window. She pushed aside the drape, looked down to see a beaten-up old Ford parked on the other side of the street. Inside sat a man wearing sunglasses, his face tilted up toward her window: Detective Dalva, Baltimore PD.

“These damn cops,” Kathryn said to no one in particular. “I told them and told them do they really expect him to come here?” She turned and started for the little kitchen. Marilou followed her, helping her get tea things out.

“And in Fresno, California…”

Kathryn glanced sadly back at the TV. “He’s dead, isn’t he — that little boy?”

Wayne rolled his eyes. “He’s fine. It was just a prank he and his friends pulled.”

Kathryn’s shocked gaze remained fixed on the TV, where a sheepish young boy was being led out of a barn by police.

“…and authorities have so far been noncommittal about whether they will try to file charges against the families of the children involved in the hoax.”

“Kathryn! What is it?” Marilou’s worried face peered over her friend’s shoulder. “Are you—”

Kathryn shook her head. Her hands felt numb; her entire body felt as though it had been drenched in icy spray. She shook her head, still staring in growing fear at the television. She fought to keep her voice steady as she replied.

“A mistake… I think there’s been… a very, very, bad mistake.”

Trees, a sky bluer than any he has ever seen. A softness upon his face that Cole at first thinks is snow, but instead is Kathryn Railly’s hair, her mouth grazing his. He groans with pleasure, smiles as he hears someone singing in a low voice—

The voice grows louder, becomes several voices, many voices, singing raggedly now.

His hand gropes at his face, finds nothing there. The off-key singing continues, louder and more robust. When he opened his eyes, there was no sky, no trees, no Kathryn. Only a ring of earnest scientists crowded around Cole’s bed, belting out a barely listenable tune.

“Huh?” Cole shook his head.

Seeing that he was awake, the scientists broke off singing and burst into applause.

“Well done, James!”

“Nice going! Good for you!”

“Congratulations!”

Cole sat up, confused. The kind-eyed zoologist leaned over him, running a hand across his brow. “During your ‘interview,’ while you were under the influence, you told us you liked music!” she explained happily.

Cole drew away from her and looked around. He was in a small windowless room, his narrow iron cot the only furniture. The stained white walls were adorned with cheap cardboard reproductions of nineteenth-century landscape paintings, trees and hillsides tinted in cheerless shades of green and brown. When he tried to lift his hands, he found that they were very loosely attached with white ribbons to his bed.

The zoologist moved closer, reacting to his disbelief with a disarming smile. “This isn’t the prison, James,” she said soothingly. “This is a hospital.”

“But just until you recover your equilibrium,” interrupted the microbiologist, grinning beneath his black glasses. “You’re still a little — disoriented.”

“Stress!” agreed the astrophysicist. He pushed a shock of silvery hair from his forehead. “Time travel!”

The microbiologist nodded sagely. “You stood up very well, considering.”

“Superior work!” cried the zoologist. “Superior!” She sat on the edge of Cole’s bed, heedless of his dismay and unease. “You connected the Army of the Twelve Monkeys to a world-famous virologist and his son—”

“Others will take over now,” the microbiologist said officiously. “We’ll be back on the surface in a couple of months.”

The others broke in excitedly.

“We’ll retake the planet.”

“We’re very close!”

“Because of you!”

The microbiologist stepped forward, unrolling a document. “This is it, James — what you’ve been waiting for.”

Cole eyed it warily. “A full pardon!” cried the zoologist.

“You’ll be out of here in no time,” the microbiologist added, clapping a hand on Cole’s shoulder. “Women will want to get to know you—”

Shouting, Cole pulled himself free. “I don’t want your women! I want to be well!”

Two guards Cole hadn’t seen until now burst through the little circle and pushed Cole onto the bed.

“Of course you want to be well, James,” the microbiologist said, looking on approvingly as the guards tightened the restraints around Cole’s wrists. “And you will be — soon.”

“YOU DON’T EXIST!” yelled Cole. He kicked at the microbiologist, sent his pardon flying. “YOU’RE NOT REAL! HA HA HA! PEOPLE DON’T TRAVEL IN TIME! YOU AREN’T HERE! I MADE YOU UP! YOU AREN’T HERE! I MADE YOU UP! YOU CAN’T TRICK ME! YOU’RE IN MY MIND! I’M INSANE AND YOU’RE MY INSANITY!”

Hysterical laughter filled the room as the scientists backed toward the door. “YOU CAN’T TRICK ME!” shrieked Cole. “NOT ANYMORE!”

“I think Mr. Cole is tired,” the microbiologist said pointedly to one of the guards. “I think perhaps we need to help him sleep again.”

Nodding, the guard held up a needle and began to struggle with Cole until he had him pinioned to the bed.

“There,” the microbiologist murmured, standing alone in the doorway. “That’s better. We don’t blame you for getting excited, James — pardons don’t come every day. But now, I think it would be best for you to rest now — rest for just as long as you can.”

Kathryn had Dr. Fletcher cornered in his office. The chief of psychiatry looked distinctly uncomfortable in his swivel chair. He removed his tinted glasses, wiped them with a tissue, replaced them on his nose, then a moment later performed the whole little ritual all over again.

“He not only used the word ‘prank,’ he said the boy was hiding in the barn,” Kathryn said intensely.

Fletcher nodded, began tapping his pen on his desk. “He kidnapped you, Kathryn,” he said when she paused for breath. “You saw him murder someone. You knew there was a real possibility he would kill you, too. You were under tremendous emotional stress.”

“For God’s sake, Owen, listen to me — he knew about the boy in Fresno and he says five billion people are going to die!”

Fletcher sighed. He held his pencil in both hands, staring fixedly at her. He’d seen patients like this before, even one or two residents, but never someone on his staff. Certainly not someone who, until recently, he had perceived to be as level-headed as Kathryn Railly. After a moment he leaned forward, hands extended imploringly.

“Kathryn, you know he can’t possibly know that. You’re a rational person. You’re a trained psychiatrist. You know the difference between what’s real and what’s not.”

“And what we believe is what’s accepted as truth now, isn’t it, Owen?” Kathryn exploded. “Psychiatry — it’s the latest religion! And we’re the priests — we decide what’s right and what’s wrong. We decide who’s crazy and who isn’t.”

She whirled and started for the door, stopped and cast one last look back at Fletcher where he sat, his degrees and awards and citations glowing on the wall behind him like so many little windows. “Well, you know what, Owen?” she said, her voice low and shaking. “I’m in trouble. I’m losing my faith.”

Dr. Fletcher sighed again as the door slammed behind her.

Alone in his room, Cole twisted on the bed, trying to free himself from his restraints. Whatever drug they had given him had worn off and left him feeling murderous. He could almost bring one tied wrist over the bedrail, where a rusted hinge rose like a jagged tooth. If he could reach that he might be able to saw the restraint in two, and then…

“You sure fucked up, Bob!”

Cole grew rigid. He glanced quickly around the empty room, the sad excuses for art on the filthy walls, then once more moved his arm against the rusted bedrail.

“But I can understand you don’t want your mistakes pointed out to you,” the hoarse voice went on gleefully. “I can relate to that, Bob.”

In spite of himself, Cole hesitated and looked around again. The room was empty.

“Hey, I know what you’re thinking,” the voice rasped. “You’re thinking I don’t exist except in your head. I can see that point of view. But you could still talk to me, couldn’t you? Carry on a decent conversation.”

Cole’s eyes widened. “I saw you!” he cried. “In the real world! You pulled out your teeth.”

“Why would I pull out my teeth, Bob?” the voice chastened him. “They don’t like that. That’s a no-no. And when did you say you saw me — in 1872?”

The voice cackled as Cole screamed, “FUCK YOU!”

“Yelling won’t get you what you want. You have to be smart to get what you want.”

“Oh, yeah?” panted Cole. “What do I want?”

“You don’t know what you want? Sure you do, Bob. You know what you want.”

“Tell me,” cried Cole. He rocked back and forth on the metal bed. “Tell me what I want.”

Silence. Then, in a suggestive tone, the voice answered.

“To see the sky — and the ocean. To be topside. Breathe the air. To be with her. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what you want?”

Utterly shaken, Cole held his breath for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he could scarcely hear his own words.

“More… than… anything,” he whispered.