The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

5

I was highly agitated when I left Building 26, but on reflection I decided that Charles Slycke was probably no more paranoid than a lot of other high-ranking civil service bureaucrats, jealous of-and constantly feeling compelled to defend-their turf. In retrospect, I could see that Mr. Lippitt had probably used poor judgment in issuing me a high-powered Z-13 ID badge, but he had erred out of compassion, total trust, and friendship. There was just no way to describe to the overexcited head psychiatrist the nature of the strong bonds that existed between Lippitt, Garth, and me, a relationship that had begun many years before, in New York City, in connection with a bizarre case I was working on, and which had culminated in the horror and death of the Valhalla Project. In any case, I believed I had made my point with Slycke that I was going to be close by at all times, and expected to be consulted at all stages of Garth's treatment, whatever that treatment might be. Now I thought it might be a good idea to lie low for a while.

That meant I was going to have to find a way to keep myself occupied, off the streets and out of trouble, when I wasn't visiting Garth. To that end, I walked four blocks, turned left, walked down a hill and crossed a large field next to the reservoir to the locked entrance of the Rockland Children's Psychiatric Center, rang the bell.

If at first glance I seemed an unlikely candidate to work as a substitute teacher-a pesky and most trying endeavor in the best of schools with the mellowest of student bodies-in a psychiatric hospital where half the population was unpredictable and dangerous, the educational director, a pleasant and attractive but obviously tough woman by the name of Gladys Jacubowicz, didn't show it; she was simply delighted to find somebody-anybody-who was willing to work as a substitute in her school. I didn't mention my Z-13 badge, which I had put in my pocket; I did tell her I had a Ph.D. and had done a good deal of college teaching. I was hurriedly signed on. She personally took me on an orientation tour, and as she was unlocking the door to let me out asked somewhat tentatively if I could possibly come in the next day to substitute for a social studies teacher who was taking a day of personal leave. I said I would be delighted to come in.

"My name's Frederickson," I said to the seven high-school age students and one huge, black, stony-faced cottage worker who sat in wooden desks, staring at me.

"Who let you in here, shorty?"

I had arrived at the school ninety minutes early in order to familiarize myself with the teacher's class lists and lesson plans, check out the appropriate patient files, and read the "cottage sheet"-a record of disturbances and other incidents that had taken place in the cottages during the night which the teachers should be aware of. If information is a weapon, which it most decidedly is, I was loaded for bear.

The heavyset boy with the pockmarked face and hooded eyes who had spoken would be Dane Potter.

Dane Potter, now a few months shy of eighteen years of age, had, with his parents' consent, enlisted in the Marines at the age of sixteen as an alternative to being sent away to reform school. In the Marines he had gotten into drugs, finally fried his brains with angel dust, then gone over the edge-and the hill; he'd deserted, taking his semiautomatic rifle along with him. He'd paused in his travels long enough to hold up a service station, then tried to call his girl friend in order to tell her he was on the way home. He hadn't much liked it when he found out she was on a date with another boy, and he'd proceeded to shoot up the station. He'd been put into a Detention for Youth facility-"kiddie jail"-and then transferred to RCPC when, as his file phrased it, he had begun to display "bizarre behavior"; he'd tried to rape his social worker. He'd been diagnosed schizophrenic with a personality disorder-one of the most dangerous kinds of psychotics. For the past week he had been extremely prone to violence, in school and down in his cottage, and was now heavily medicated, with enough Thorazine in him to give a rhinoceros the staggers; his muddy brown eyes were glassy, saucer-wide beneath their heavy lids. Also, he had been placed on a "level one," which meant that he had to be accompanied at all times by a male staff member who could never be more than an arm's length away from him. The big man nestled in the desk next to the boy wasn't there to give me moral support, help me maintain class decorum, or help me with anything else; he was there for the sole purpose of pouncing on Dane Potter if the boy went berserk, to prevent him from hurting himself or others. As far as teaching was concerned, I was on my own.

It seemed it was time to try earning my spurs.

"I like to be called Mr. Shorty, Potter," I said evenly, thrusting my hands into my pockets and smiling at him. "Always be polite; courtesy costs nothing, and you never know when it will pay off."

"How the hell do you know who I am?"

"I'm psychic; that's why they let me in here."

"What did you do to your head? Somebody mistake you for a football?"

"My clipper slipped while I was cutting my toenails."

"Fuck you, shorty."

"Thank you very much, Dane. Fuck you, too."

That got a laugh out of the others in the class, which I was beginning to sense was on my side. However, the way I figured it, I was being paid to try to reach and teach all the kids who came into my classroom, not just the ones who didn't give me any trouble. Dane Potter had lobbed a few verbal darts at me, and found that I wasn't that easy a target to hit. Now he was really cranky. I knew hospital procedure, and knew that nobody was likely to play patty-cake with Dane Potter-least of all the burly cottage worker assigned to accompany him throughout the school day. If Potter exploded, which he now seemed very close to doing, he'd be perfunctorily taken down and dragged off to the crisis room-a small, windowless room not much bigger than a closet, where Potter would be restrained until he either calmed down or had to be given a shot and sent back to his cottage to sleep it off. All I had to do was goad him a bit more and he would be gone and out of my hair; but that wouldn't solve my long-range problem with him, assuming I was invited back, and it wouldn't make me feel very good to know I had taken the easy way out of a situation by manipulating a very sick kid. Something else was called for.

"Why the hell do they send us a dwarf teacher?!" a now very distraught Dane Potter shouted.

"Hey, Dane," I said quietly, casually moving across the room to lean against a radiator running beneath a bank of thick, Plexiglas windows, "maybe it's because I'm a crazy dwarf. I actually want to be here teaching you crazy kids. That must make me crazy, right?"

That got another round of appreciative laughter from the other six kids-and just the trace of a smile from the cottage worker.

"Right on, Frederickson," a pretty girl with ugly, puckered scars on her wrists called from the back of the room. "Come on, Dane, give the guy a break. He seems okay."

"Shut up, bitch, or I'll give you a break!" Dane Potter shouted at the girl who had spoken. His fists clenched and unclenched on top of his desk. "And I'll break this fucking dwarf if I ever get the chance!"

It was time to get Dane Potter's attention-and the attention of all the other Dane Potters I was certain to meet at the children's hospital. If I couldn't do that, I thought, I might as well quit; the somewhat less than refined teaching technique I planned to employ might well get me fired, but I didn't intend to quit.

"Dane, my good man," I said with a sigh, "let me tell you a little about myself-if you'll pardon the pun. I used to be a star performer-a tumbler of sorts-with the circus. I also happen to hold a black belt in karate. Not bad for a dwarf, huh?"

"You're full of shit, shorty."

I'd never been much into breaking bricks or boards, since the force I could generate was limited by my stature; the skills I'd parlayed into a black belt were based on quickness of movement and surprise; my moves were designed for self-defense, not showboating. Still, I understood the mechanics of force breaking, and what I wanted to do seemed worth a try.

"Let me show you some of my shit, Dane," I said, then abruptly turned around and did a back handspring in the narrow aisle between the desks and the blackboard. My second back handspring gave me additional height and momentum, and on the third I did a half twist in the air and came down with both feet precisely in the center of the top of the desk at which Dane Potter was sitting.

I was perfectly happy with my performance, which I hoped would impress Potter and calm him down, but as luck would have it I landed perfectly, with maximum force at a critical point; there was a sharp crack, and the desk split very nicely down the center, with me landing on my feet between the halves, inches away from the boy's ashen, open-mouthed face.

"Damn, I missed that last flip," I said as I stepped back to the blackboard. "Sorry about your desk, Dane. I must be out of practice."

Dane Potter's eyes went even wider, and he jumped sideways, virtually into the arms of the big cottage worker. The other students stared at me in shock for a few moments, then began to whoop and applaud. Even the cottage worker began to laugh as he slapped-none too gently-his charge on the back.

"What do you say, Dane?" I continued, stepping up to him and holding out my hand. "How about letting me try to teach you guys something in the twenty minutes we've got left?"

Potter didn't shake my hand-but he remained silent and still, which was fine with me. I spent the rest of the period talking about my years with the Statler Brothers Circus, and the time I had talked a hairy friend of mine-a three-hundred-pound Bengal tiger-back into his cage after he'd escaped.

Word that there was indeed a crazy dwarf in the building who could do super back handsprings and break desks spread almost instantly through the small student population, and my next class-suicidal elementary age children-entered the room, accompanied by a teacher aide, very tentatively, eyes wide. By special request, I did one back handspring, performed a few simple coin tricks I'd picked up from a stockbroker friend of mine whose hobby was performing as a mime in Washington Square Park on weekends, then settled the four children down to what I thought was a pretty fair lesson on American Indians of the northeast. I rewarded them for their good behavior and attentiveness with another back handspring, this one with a half twist. Afterward, the teacher aide told me she'd never seen them quieter or more attentive.

Veil was right, I thought; teaching at RCPC certainly wasn't like lecturing or giving seminars at the university. In many ways, this was more rewarding. A reasonably bright, motivated university student will learn what he or she has to learn, and most good students will learn despite what bad teachers may do to them. Not these kids. Working with emotionally disturbed kids-or any handicapped kids, for that matter-an individual teacher could have an enormous impact. The singer, not the song; that was what I was learning on my first day at RCPC. I was having a good time, and it helped to keep my mind off Garth and my troubles with Slycke.

Four more classes, eight back handsprings, one lunch and one work period later I was finished for the day. By that time I figured I had met-or at least glimpsed-just about every one of the sixty-five students in the school; those who weren't in any of my classes had popped their heads in the doorway to check me out. As I walked through the halls at the end of the day, kids on their way back to their cottages in the opposite end of the building called out to me, and a couple of the little ones jumped into my arms.

It seemed I wasn't to be fired because of my rather unorthodox teaching technique, or even billed for the desk I had broken. A number of the teachers insisted I stick around for coffee and talk, and on the way out Gladys Jacubowicz asked if I would come back the next day to substitute for the science teacher, who wasn't feeling well and would undoubtedly be out. I said I'd be there.

From the children's hospital I went back across the field and up the hill to the main complex, and Building 26. I went directly to Slycke's office to let him know I was there, then went to Garth's room.

Garth was the same-except that he had been rolled onto his other side, and the smell of lotion told me that Tommy Carling had been in recently to rub him down and massage his muscles again. Garth's eyes were still open, but glassy and unseeing. I'd asked Slycke if any decision had been made about medicating Garth, and the man had replied curtly that they were still in the process of observation and evaluation. I'd bitten off a sharp retort, realizing that I was being impatient.

I spent the next two hours pacing around Garth's bed and talking to him, chatting about anything and everything that came into my head. I told my brother all about my first day teaching at the children's hospital, and how exhilarating it had been for me.

Through it all, Garth, with the tubes up his nose and the needles in his arms, lay as still as a corpse, totally unresponsive. When I had talked myself out, I simply sat on the side of the bed and held his hand.

Tommy Carling came in around six o'clock, bringing me a tray of food and a small thermos filled with hot coffee. He was off duty and on his way home, but Slycke had authorized him to tell me that in two or three days Garth might be put on small doses of Halidol, an antipsychotic drug of choice for catatonics, along with other drugs he would be given to counteract some of the nastier side effects of Halidol. The chemotherapy was fine with me; as far as I was concerned, nothing could be worse than Garth's present vegetative state.

Thoroughly depressed by now, the exhilaration I had experienced during the day completely drained from me, I sat with Garth until a little after ten, then went back to my apartment in Building 18. I downed two stiff drinks, then went to bed and slept fitfully.

6.

I got up early to clean my wound, which was healing nicely, and put on a fresh bandage. Once again I arrived at the children's hospital ninety minutes early in order to check my class lists against patient records, and review the teacher's lesson plans.

The cottage sheets were interesting. Two older adolescent boys had been up most of the night arguing-and finally exchanging blows-over the question of which one was really Jesus. A cottage worker had found a young girl sitting on the edge of her bed and talking in the darkness to Satan and two lesser demons. The worker reported that the girl had gone back to bed and slept peacefully after being given some crackers and a glass of milk; the report didn't say whether the girl had shared.

The files indicated that one of the older adolescent girls in my third period class, Kim Trainor, was extremely bright and gregarious, but suicidal. As a baby, Kim had been in her grandmother's arms when the lady died; three years later, both Kim's parents had died; four years later, her aunt and uncle, who had taken Kim in, had been killed in an automobile accident. Kim had grown up with the people she loved all dying around her, dropping like flies, and she blamed herself. On an intellectual level, Kim claimed to understand that the deaths were not her fault, but on a much deeper emotional level she considered herself a pariah, a bringer of death, who did not deserve to live. The staff psychiatrists considered her prognosis good.

During the day I had a talk with Chris Yardley, a schizophrenic whose prognosis was not so good, one of the boys who'd been arguing over who was Jesus. I suggested to Chris that it was all right to think he was Jesus, and positively commendable to behave like Jesus, but that he had to learn to function on the outside, to work at a steady job and support himself; I suggested to Chris that if he wanted to get out of the mental hospital he had to stop telling people he was Jesus. Then he would be left alone, and he could go about normal business. Chris indicated that he could see my point, but that God had commanded him to tell people he was Jesus.

So much for the sly intellectual approach with psychotics.

My classes all went well. I'd apparently made a lasting impression the day before, and the kids were eager to come to my class. I kept them entertained with jokes, and I was presumptuous enough to think I might even have taught something to a few of them.

Dane Potter wasn't in any of my classes, but I saw him in the hall and he waved. He was walking alone, which meant he had been taken off his level. I was pleased.

I got through to the end of my second day in the school at the children's hospital without having to do a single back handspring.

After school I took a bus to a large shopping mall in the nearby town of Nanuet, where there was a Music World outlet which I hoped would have what I wanted. They did. I purchased the boxed set of tapes, a hefty supply of A A batteries, and a Sony Walkman. I also picked up a roomy shoulder bag from a leather goods store, then headed back to the hospital.

In a day or two, Garth would be put on psychotropic drugs; before that happened, before whatever perceptions he might still enjoy in his silent world were altered, there was something I wanted to try. I had a few therapeutic notions of my own.

Toward the end of the insane nightmare that had been the Valhalla Project, Garth and I had been captured by Siegmund Loge and imprisoned in a vast underground complex in Greenland. There, for his own twisted reasons, Loge had attempted to explain and justify to us why he'd done what he had done-acts that had caused the deaths of many innocent people, the murders of my teenage nephew and a friend of his. The vehicle for this "explanation" had been a kind of bizarre sound and light show which he had spent most of his life putting together, an epic, sixteen-hour-long film comprised of cascading images-photographs, paintings, movie stills, sketches-depicting humankind's apparently intractable stupidity and cruelty unto itself, from prehistoric times to the present. These horrifying images, hundreds of thousands of them, had been masterfully edited to correspond to the rhythms and melodies of Richard Wagner's titanic masterpiece, Der Ring des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung. The images had been carried to the depths of our souls and branded there by the music; it was an experience neither of us would ever forget, as much as we might want to.

It was hard for me to imagine how Garth's mind could be damaged more than it already was, and Tommy Carling had said there was no way of knowing what Garth heard or didn't hear. If there was a sound he would respond to, anything at all that could reach into the dark silence in his mind and touch some part of him that was undamaged and could fight back, it was Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The four operas making up Wagner's Ring cycle comprised a pretty bulky package of tapes, which was why I had purchased the shoulder bag; I didn't care to get into explanations of my idea of music therapy. I put the tapes, the Walkman, and the batteries into the bag, covered them with books and magazines in case anyone was inquisitive, then went over to the D.I.A. clinic. Slycke was off duty, but I reported my presence to the indifferent psychiatrist in charge before going to Garth's room. Tommy Carling was there, checking Garth's pulse and other vital signs. I chatted with the ponytailed male nurse until he had finished.

Five minutes after Carling had left I glanced out into the corridor, saw no one. I took the Walkman out of the bag, put the player next to Garth's shoulder, under the sheet. I placed the earphones on his head, the connecting metal band behind his neck so that only the tiny earplugs showed. I snapped Act I of Das Rheingold into the cassette player, reached over to turn it on-and hesitated as I felt a chill, a distinct sense of foreboding, run through me. I took the phones out of his ears and took a few minutes to talk at his vacant face, explaining what it was I was going to do, and why. Then I replaced the earplugs, took a deep breath, and turned on the player. Very faintly, I could hear the long, E-flat passage that opened the epic cycle flowing through the plugs into Garth's ears, perhaps his mind and soul.

"He looks different."

I had been so intent on peering into Garth's face, looking for some response, that I hadn't heard Tommy Carling come into the room. Startled, I jumped, then turned to my left to find the male nurse standing at the foot of the bed. I wondered how long he had been there.

"Uh. . hi, Tommy."

"Hi, Mongo," Carling replied somewhat absently. He had crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to be studying Garth intently.

"What did you say?"

"I said that Garth looks a bit different to me. I actually think there's more expressiveness in his face."

Garth didn't look any different to me, and I said so.

The male nurse absently tugged at his earring, said: "Maybe it's my imagination, but his eyes don't seem quite so vacant." He paused, shrugged his broad shoulders. "Then again, maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see. Well, it's time to change his colostomy and urine bag."

"Tommy. .?"

Carling paused on his way to the other side of the bed, looked at me quizzically. "What is it, Mongo?"

"Nothing," I said, and shook my head.

Carling pulled back the sheet, immediately saw the Walkman and the earphones on Garth's head. He looked at me again, raised his eyebrows slightly. "What are you playing for him?"

"I've got Das Rheingold in now. You might say Garth has a thing for the Ring."

"Really?" Carling said, and pursed his lips slightly. "Pretty heavy stuff."

"Oh, yeah. I remembered that you turned the radio on for him, and I figured. . well, I thought it couldn't hurt to play something for him that I know he, uh. . likes. The music has a lot of personal associations for him."

"Does it really?" Carling said in a curiously flat, distant voice. He studied me for a few moments, then looked back into Garth's face. The man seemed momentarily lost in thought.

"Here," I said, reaching for the earphones, "let me get those out of your way."

"No," Carling said quickly, blocking my outstretched hand. "It's all right; nothing's in my way."

Carling removed and emptied Garth's colostomy and urine bags, replaced them with new ones. He again checked my brother's pulse, recorded liquid intake and outtake levels on a chart hanging from a cord attached to the foot of Garth's bed. He continued to appear deep in thought, and he frequently looked back into Garth's face. I still couldn't see any change in Garth's eyes or expression-but the trained eyes of Tommy Carling apparently did. My heart began to beat a little faster, and I could feel the muscles in my stomach tighten.

"So," Carling said at last as he let the chart drop on its cord and replaced his pen in the pocket of his white coat, "how are all the little LITs down at the children's hospital?"

"LITs?"

'' Loonies-in-training.''

"Oh," I said, and smiled. "They're loony, all right, and some of them aren't so little. How did you know I'd been down there?"

"I'm friendly with a couple of the cottage workers there. We were having a beer last night, and they mentioned this superdwarf who had come in to substitute. How many superdwarfs can there be wandering around here? You made quite an impression-on kids and staff."

"It's the natural ham in me," I said, and suddenly felt sad. It was the kind of thing my brother would say.

"You've got some very dangerous kids over there, Mongo," Carling said seriously.

"Yeah, but you've also got some very pleasant and bright ones-a lot of the suicidals are like that. I really enjoy working there, Tommy."

"A little different from college teaching, huh?"

"To say the least."

Being careful not to disturb the tape player or the earphones on my brother's head, Tommy Carling rolled Garth over on his right side, facing away from me. "Are you hungry, Mongo? I can bring you something to eat."

"No, thanks," I replied. The male nurse headed for the door. I cleared my throat, said, "Tommy?"

Carling paused in the doorway, turned back. "Yes, Mongo?"

"The music. Do you think I could be harming Garth in any way by playing it for him?"

Carling laughed good-naturedly. "There are some people who'd claim that listening to Richard Wagner would damage anybody's brain." He paused, continued seriously: "No. On the contrary; if I'm right about there being a bit more life in his eyes, it's probably good for him. What harm could music do?"

"In that case … I didn't ask anybody about this, and maybe I should have. If there's any possibility that Garth really is getting something out of the music, I'd hate to see it taken away from him just because I didn't ask permission and somebody's nose got out of joint."

Tommy Carling smiled easily. "I won't mention it to Slycke, Mongo. Don't worry about it." He gave me a thumbs-up sign and walked from the room.

I wanted to play the entire Ring cycle through, opera by opera, with as few interruptions during the course of each opera as possible, and nights seemed the best time to do this. The next day I stopped by the clinic early in the morning, before my third straight day of substituting, and sat and talked with Tommy Carling while he shaved and bathed my brother. I stopped by again after school, then left just before six.

I ate dinner in a pleasant Italian restaurant in nearby Orangeburg, then went back to the apartment, set my alarm clock to wake me at midnight, and went to bed. At midnight I rose, made myself some coffee and shaved, then packed the Walkman and tapes of Die Walkure into my leather shoulder bag, headed over to Building 26.

It seemed there was no guard in the kiosk outside the building at night, and I used my own keys to gain entry to the building, took the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. Three male nurses I hadn't seen before were standing and talking in the vestibule in front of the elevator, and they seemed startled when the elevator door sighed open and I stepped out. However, after one glance at the ID badge clipped to my shirt pocket, they resumed their conversation.

I couldn't find any psychiatrist around, so I signed my name on a piece of paper I got from one of the nurses, slipped it under Slycke's door. I didn't note the time.

I found Garth rolled over on his left side, staring-as always-at nothing. I covered his face with a towel to protect his eyes, then quietly closed the door and turned on the lights. I uncovered his face, put on the earphones, then loaded the cassette player with the first tape and turned it on. Then I sat down with a magazine to wait through the three hours of Die Walkure.

Siegfried.

The next night I checked the chart at the foot of Garth's bed; there was no indication that chemotherapy had begun. I put the earphones on Garth's head, snapped the first tape of the third opera in the Ring cycle into the cassette player, turned it on.

I'd brought a book with me to read, but I must have nodded off; when I woke up, the book was on the floor by my feet and I had the urgent, distressing feeling that something was wrong-no, not wrong; but different. Strange. I quickly got up, looked around the room; there was no one there, and the door was still closed. Garth, of course, hadn't moved; he was still in the same position, turned away from me on his side, with earphone and half his face hidden by the sheet. I yawned, stretched, glanced at my watch; it was almost time to put in the next cassette. I took the second tape out of my bag, walked around to the other side of the bed-and almost cried out.

Tears were streaming from Garth's eyes, dripping from his face, soaking the sheet beneath him.

"Garth!"

My brother's bloodshot eyes rolled, then came into focus on my face.

"Garth?!" I cried, snatching the earphones from his head. "Are you all right?! Can you hear me?! Can you talk?!"

The fact that he could indeed hear and understand me was now clearly reflected in Garth's eyes-but that was all. He still couldn't-or wasn't prepared to-talk.

But he was coming back, I thought, slowly riding wave after sonic wave of the most profoundly moving music ever written, dripping tears as evidence of his long, tortuous passage. I would settle for that, not be impatient.

After gently trying and failing for close to twenty minutes to elicit some response in addition to his tears, I put the earphones back on his head, changed the cassette, turned on the Walkman. I sat on the edge of the bed, holding his hand and smiling down into his tear-streaked face, until the opera was finished. I packed up the tapes and the Walkman, hugged and kissed my brother, then went back to Building 18 and contentedly went to bed. I was confident that I would see some change in Garth in the morning.

I was wrong, and bitterly disappointed.

At eight o'clock, it was impossible to tell that Garth was the same man I had seen copiously weeping only a few hours before; his eyes were once again glassy and vacant, and the only change was that he seemed even paler than usual. I debated whether I should tell Slycke, or Tommy Carling, about what had happened during the night, decided not to. It would have meant trying to explain why the Ring — and only the Ring — could elicit such a response from Garth, and I was not yet prepared to do that, at least not until the complete cycle of four operas was finished.

Despite Garth's present unresponsiveness, I had seen unmistakable evidence that the music of the Ring — combined with the images of horror and unrelenting cruelty that he and I would always associate with it-was a bridge that had reached across the unfathomable void in his mind and touched his consciousness. Now that bridge had to be maintained-and expanded. Now, more than anything, I was afraid of being second-guessed and interfered with. Charles Slycke might be a fine psychiatrist, if not so fine a person, and the D.I.A. facility might be a fine psychiatric clinic, but Der Ring des Nibelungen evoked a realm of consciousness shared by only Garth and me in a way no one else would ever be able to understand. I had now taken Garth back three-quarters of the way through that realm, and I felt I had no choice but to take him the rest of the way. Whatever happened at the end of the journey, if anything, would be my responsibility.

Gotterdammerung.

As the lush, revolutionary music of the final opera in the Ring cycle flowed through the earphones into Garth's brain and mind, he again began to weep. After a few minutes I realized that I, too, had begun crying. I brushed his wet cheek, then rose from the edge of the bed and walked to the Plexiglas window. I stood looking out over the moonlit grounds of the Rockland Psychiatric Center, remembering the horror. .

"What are you doing?!"

I wheeled around, and was thoroughly startled to see Charles Slycke standing over my silently weeping brother and glaring at me. He abruptly snatched the earphones off Garth's head, ripped off the sheet covering him, and grabbed the Walkman. The psychiatrist's unruly gray hair stuck up from his head as if an electric current were running through him, and his rheumy eyes glinted with rage. I started to say something, but the man was obviously in no mood to listen to any explanations, even if he had requested them.

"What are you doing here?!"

"Just a minute, Doctor. I've signed in every time-"

"Signed in?! That didn't tell me you were here in the middle of the night! That was left for somebody else to tell me!" Slycke's moon face was almost crimson as he marched around the bed, marched up to me, and shook the Walkman in my face. 'Wow I see what you've been up to! What on earth do you think you've been doing?!"

"I think I've been playing some music for my brother," I replied evenly, stepping away from Slycke so that I could see Garth. "In case you haven't noticed, Garth is responding."

"The man is crying!"

"So what? Aren't signs of sorrow better than the vacuum that was there before?"

"That's not for you to say!"

"It's for anybody to say!"

"You're not a doctor!"

"And my brother isn't a Goddamn turnip!" I paused, took a deep breath, lowered my voice. "The tears show that Garth's mind is still there; it hasn't been burned out of him. Whatever door it's locked behind has been opened, even if just a little bit, by the music. I'd think you'd be pleased."

"What you've done is unauthorized! How do you know what effect that music has had on him?''

"We can both see the effect; he's awake, and he's aware."

"You had no right to do something like this! He is my patient!"

"He's my brother, and I've done absolutely nothing but play some music for him. Instead of standing around and screaming at me, why don't you consider the implications of the fact that the music elicited a response?"

"Just because you're a friend of Lippitt's doesn't give you the right to do something like this without my permission! This is my clinic, and in medical matters I have supreme authority! I'll have your pass removed, Frederickson!"

Garth settled the argument when he suddenly sat up in bed. Slycke and I stared, dumbfounded, as my brother swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He swayed for a few moments, supporting himself with one hand on the edge of the bed, finally steadied himself. Then, without really looking at either Slycke or me, he walked forward, almost casually pried the Walkman from Slycke's stiff fingers, turned around, walked back to the bed, and got in. He put the earphones on his head, turned on the player, lay down on his back, and pulled the sheet up to his chin.

I let out a whoop of joy and excitement that must have been earsplitting, because it brought the three male nurses into the room on the run. They stopped just inside the doorway when they saw Slycke and me, exchanged puzzled looks.

Garth was going to be all right, I thought, elation welling up in me and overflowing as tears as I stared at my brother. I let out another whoop, even louder than the first, just for good measure, then did a little hopping dance of celebration. I picked up my shoulder bag, which contained the rest of the tapes and an ample supply of batteries, triumphantly set it down on Garth's stomach.

"Batteries for the Walkman and the rest of the tapes are in here, brother," I said.

I waited, my breathing shallow. Slowly, Garth's hands came out from under the sheet, wrapped themselves around the bag. I wheeled around to face Slycke, who was continuing to stare at Garth with an expression of disbelief.

"You want the tapes and the player, Doctor," I continued, unable to wipe a very large grin off my face, "you take them away from him."

"Frederickson-?!"

"Keep up the good work, Doctor," I said, skipping around the three stupefied male nurses and heading for the door. "I'll see you all later."

7.

AT seven fifteen I found Garth sitting up in bed eating breakfast off a tray by himself. He was wearing his earphones, and the Walkman was on the pillow just behind him; the leather bag was sitting at the foot of the bed. Tommy Carling was leaning against the wall, ankles and arms crossed, looking bemused.

"Yo, brother!" I shouted, running up to the side of the bed and pounding Garth's shoulder. "Welcome back to the land of the living!"

There was no response; Garth simply waited until I had stopped thumping his shoulder, then resumed eating his scrambled eggs. I leaned over the bed, waved my hand in his face. "Hey, Garth," I continued with just slightly less spirit, "it's me-your favorite only brother. Remember me? How about a little 'hello,' just for old times' sake?"

My brother stopped chewing, looked at me. His eyes were clearly in focus on my face, but it was as if he didn't recognize me-or simply didn't care. He studied me without interest for a few moments, then once again resumed eating. Chewing slowly and methodically, he finished his eggs, swallowed some coffee, patted his mouth with a paper napkin, lay back in bed. Bewildered and not a little hurt, I looked inquiringly at Tommy Carling.

"What can I tell you?" the burly male nurse said with a shrug. "What you see is what you get. I can understand how you might be a little disappointed at his lack of response, but you'll have to admit that the overnight change is absolutely remarkable. Garth just isn't ready to talk yet; it's what we call VMS-'Voluntary Muteness Syndrome.' We see it quite often in certain kinds of patients. But the improvement is incredible. I think I'll suggest that we pipe Wagner into the rest of the clinic so all the patients can listen to it."

"Garth?" I said in a voice that had suddenly grown hoarse. I found myself wanting to reach out and take the earphones off his head, demand that he acknowledge my presence, but knew that probably wasn't such a good idea. "Can you speak? Will you speak?"

Garth's eyes momentarily darted to my face, but then he went back to staring at the ceiling as he listened to the music. I peered in the plastic window of the Walkman, saw that Act One of Das Rheingold was playing; he was beginning the cycle of operas all over again.

"How long has he been like this?" I asked Carling.

"Since sometime after five this morning. I came on duty at six, and the night guys told me about what had happened earlier between you and Dr. Slycke. When they'd checked Garth an hour earlier, he'd been like you'd left him-lying on his back and clutching that bag. I came here first, and I found him sitting up in bed with his earphones on. He'd removed the tube from his nose and the needles from his arms, which I took as a not so subtle sign that he was ready for some solid food and wanted to feed himself. You saw how he handled breakfast-and that was his third helping of eggs. If he keeps this up for another day or two, I'm sure they'll remove the colostomy tube and sew him up."

"Does Slycke know?"

"He left about a half hour after you did. He's supposed to attend a symposium in New York today, but I called him right after I found Garth sitting up. He should be here any minute."

"Garth obviously knows what's going on," I said tersely, looking directly-perhaps a bit defiantly-at my brother. The hurt I'd felt was now melting into a sourish sense of betrayal; I knew I was losing sight of the proverbial big picture, and was ashamed of myself for my feelings. I'd found more than a bit of Charles Slycke in myself, and I didn't much like it. "Why won't he talk?"

Carling shook his head. "That's not a useful question at this point. We don't really know whether he won't talk, can't talk, or doesn't comprehend nearly as much as we think he does at the moment. I tried to get him to communicate by blinking his eyes, but I didn't get anywhere. He didn't ask me for solid food; I brought it to him, and he ate it. Right now, all we know for certain is that he can move, he can feed himself, and that he constantly listens to the tapes you brought him. Don't assume anything more. Remember that your brother was poisoned with a substance having properties we know virtually nothing about when it is ingested. Garth is obviously better, but he's a long way from being well."

"I understand that, but-"

"You may not understand it as well as you think you do," Tommy Carling interrupted gently. "Understandably, you're also dealing with a lot of emotion. Everything we know about the short- and long-term effects from this drug we're learning now, minute by minute and day by day, as we observe Garth. His EEG has never shown any signs of brain damage, so now we may be looking at just another stage of a chemically induced psychosis. It's quite possible he would have come out of his catatonic state-perhaps last night-even without the music. We can't be certain one way or the other. We can't be certain he recognizes us, understands anything we're saying, or even hears the same thing we'd hear if we were listening to the tapes."

"He hears the same thing," I said, looking hard at Garth. Saw the same images, had the same associations.

Carling shrugged again. "You can never be sure what's going on in the mind of a psychotic, and Garth is still psychotic. Incidentally, I heard that Dr. Slycke was really upset when he found you here last night."

"Oh, yeah. And then some."

The first side of the tape had run out. Garth sat up, unhurriedly flipped the cassette, turned the player back on. Then he lay back, put his hands behind his head, and resumed his careful scrutiny of the square meter of ceiling directly above him. He didn't appear to me to be psychotic or disoriented, but like a man who was simply very, very deep in thought. Try as hard as I might, I couldn't shake my feelings of hurt and betrayal. Garth, I thought, was just being Goddamn. . rude.

"You're taking Garth's behavior much too personally, Mongo," Tommy Carling said, as if he had been reading my thoughts. "You can't do that. Your brother is still a very sick man, perhaps just as sick as when he was catatonic; catatonia is just one symptom of psychosis, not the psychosis itself."

"Garth can speak," my brother said evenly.

The words, delivered as they were in a casual, matter-of-fact tone as he continued to stare at the ceiling, startled both Carling and me, and I found his speech almost as chilling as his previous muteness.

"Garth?" I said tentatively, leaning over him. There was no response, and my brother didn't even look at me. I could hear the Magic Fire Music motif leaking from the earphones. "Garth, talk to me, for Christ's sake. What are you feeling? Do you know who I am?"

I waited; although Garth's eyes were clear and in focus, he didn't look away from the ceiling. I felt Carling's hand gently touch my shoulder.

"You have to be patient, Mongo."

Suddenly the pale blue telephone mounted on the wall next to the door rang. Carling answered, listened for a few moments; he mentioned my name and the fact that I was there, listened some more, then hung up.

"Dr. Slycke is waiting in the infirmary with an internist and a neurologist," the nurse said to me quietly. "He wants me to bring Garth there now; he's got a battery of tests lined up. They'll probably take all day." He paused, sighed softly, dropped his gaze. "He doesn't want you there, Mongo. That's a medical decision-his right to make. I'm sorry I can't invite you to come along."

I grimaced with frustration and irritation, kept my anger to myself. "It's all right; I'm scheduled to teach today, anyway. As I keep saying, I'm not interested in telling Slycke his business, or getting in his way. I'm just sorry this whole thing has become so confrontational."

"He's suspicious of you; he doesn't care much for the Director of the D.I.A., and he thinks the man may be out to get him by sending you here as a spy-notwithstanding the fact, of course, that Garth is here legitimately."

"So Slycke told me."

"Anything to it, Mongo?" he asked in a disarmingly casual tone of voice.

"You've got to be kidding me, Tommy."

"There's word on the grapevine that you, Garth, and the Director are old friends who go back a long way together."

"I haven't even been in touch with Mr. Lippitt since I got here."

"It's all wrong," Garth said to the ceiling. Once again, tears were streaming from his eyes.

"Garth?" I said, again leaning over him. "What's all wrong?"

There was no reply; but then, I knew the answer.

"Garth," Tommy Carling said as he walked around to the other side of the bed, "we have to take you to the infirmary so the doctors can run some tests on you. Can you walk there, or would you prefer that I get a wheelchair?"

Garth gave no indication that he had heard. Carling started toward the telephone, then stopped and turned back when Garth abruptly sat up and got out of bed. He picked up the leather bag filled with tapes and batteries, walked the length of the room and stood waiting by the door. Carling took slippers and a woolen robe from a wardrobe in the corner, slipped the robe over Garth's shoulders. My brother put his feet into the slippers.

"Why don't we leave the tapes and the player here?" Carling continued quietly as he gently slipped the earphones from my brother's head and took the Walkman from his hand. "You won't need them where you're going, and they'll probably get in the doctors' way. I'll hang on to everything myself, so you know they'll be here when you get back."

Garth didn't seem to think much of the idea; he turned, took back the Walkman, put the earphones on his head and the player in the pocket of his robe. I almost smiled.

Carling looked at me, shrugged. "He'll be back around dinnertime, Mongo-six, probably seven at the very latest. You want me to order you up a tray?"

"Order me up some time with Dr. Slycke, Tommy," I said, staring at Garth's back. "At his convenience, when all the tests are done."

"I'll tell him-and I will order you a tray. It's roast beef tonight, and it'll be good."

"See you later, Garth," I said loudly.

Garth did not reply. Carling put his hand on my brother's arm, and without any further prompting Garth walked from the room.

The big news on the cottage sheets was that Dane Potter had somehow escaped from the locked facility during the night.

Having a psychotic, potentially murderous teenager on the loose in the county wasn't anyone's idea of a happy event; the local police had been notified; and a search was in progress. RCPC wasn't exactly Folsom prison, and kids sometimes ran away-but usually when they were outside on the grounds. Potter wasn't allowed outside, and no one was sure how he had managed to get away. There was some speculation that the boy had stolen a staff member's keys, or that a door had inadvertently been left unlocked. Whatever had happened, Dane Potter was long gone.

Tense and anxious, wondering if I had done the right thing in exposing Garth to the Ring with all of its attendant emotional shocks and associations, I didn't have a particularly good day at the school. I was moody and snappish, and probably hurt the feelings of a number of kids who'd come to look for fun and games from me in addition to their lessons. It wasn't a performance that would win me a nomination for Mental Health Worker of the Year, and I tried to make amends by staying after school and going back to visit with some of the children in their cottages on the two floors at the rear of the building. I talked with Kim Trainor, Chris Yardley, and a few other older adolescents who were walking by the reservoir, and then played checkers with an eight-year-old boy by the name of Steven Wallis.

Steven, with his doe eyes and dark, silky hair, was a beautiful child who, for some years, had been the object of sexual abuse by both his father and his uncle. He had managed to tolerate the abuse until he entered the third grade, when his marks had begun to fall precipitously. A bright boy, Steven had been able to function in his nightmare world at home because of his success in school, and with failure had come a complete loss of self-esteem and desire to live. He had tried to kill himself by drinking close to a quart of gasoline.

Garth hadn't been too far off the mark when he'd said it was all wrong.

It wasn't quite four thirty when I left the children's hospital; not feeling like hanging around Garth's room until he was brought back, I headed for my apartment. Still anxious and agitated, I was pleasantly surprised to find Veil waiting for me outside the staff building. The yellow-haired man with the glacial blue eyes was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and he was lounging on a bench set on the grass a few feet back from the sidewalk. He saw me coming down the street, stood up and waved with his good arm.

"Hello, my friend," Veil said as I came up to him. "I figured it was time to get out into the country for some fresh air, so I rented a car, and here I am."

"Hi, Veil," I said, gripping his hand. "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't been in touch."

"Don't be ridiculous. You've got a few things on your mind."

"How's the arm?"

"The cast comes off next week." Veil's smile vanished. "How's Garth?"

"You want a drink or something, Veil?"

"Not really."

"Neither do I," I said, and we sat down together on the bench. I brought Veil up to date on everything that had happened, shared my misgivings about Slycke's behavior-and my own.

Veil was silent for some time when I had finished, staring out over the grounds where patients and staff members were walking in groups of two and three. "This is the first time I've been back here," he said at last. "It's been more than twenty years since I was committed. The place hasn't changed much-except, of course, for the fact that we didn't have a children's hospital then, and we were housed in these buildings with the adults." He paused, pointed down the street. "I was in Building 11-just around the corner from the fire-house."

"God, you must feel spooky sitting here."

"Yes and no," Veil replied easily. "It's like something that happened to a different person, in a different world." He paused, looked at me. "My point is that I have a lot more experience being certifiably crazy than you do. I hear you loud and clear when you say you're worried about Garth. Of course you are. But you can't press. That nurse is right when he tells you that you really have no idea what's going on inside Garth's head. It sounds to me like something close to a miracle has happened virtually overnight, and you're bitching about it. Think of where Garth has been."

"I know where he's been, and I know I'm probably being childish and ungrateful. But to have Garth simply ignore me now that he's up and around is upsetting."

"Are you sure he recognizes you?"

"No. . I'm not sure. But I think he recognizes me, and he just doesn't seem to give a damn. His responses are totally flat, if you know what I mean."

Veil nodded thoughtfully, then pointed to my forehead. "How's the cut?"

"Clean as a whistle. You do good work."

Veil reached out and gently peeled back the small bandage, grunted. "You should have listened to me and gone to see a plastic surgeon, Mongo. You're going to have a pretty nasty scar there."

"Veil, I really don't give a shit."

"Anyway, the wound seems to have healed. I think you can have the stitches taken out now."

"Can you do it? You'll save me the trouble of waiting around some doctor's office for two hours for five minutes' work."

Veil shrugged. "Hell, I put them in, so I may as well take them out."

I found a pair of small scissors in a drawer in the kitchen. Veil sterilized them with boiling water, sat me down over by a window, then proceeded to remove the stitches from the wound in my forehead.

"By the way," Veil said, "it looks like we won't have to wait around for Garth to tell us who poisoned him-assuming he knows."

I reached up, pushed Veil's hand away from my forehead. "Did you. .?"

"I didn't do anything."

"But the police have caught him?"

Veil shook his head. "Not him; them. Two men. The police don't even know about it yet, although they probably will by this evening. Chances are very good that they're K.G.B. They'd managed to infiltrate the manufacturing section of Prolix."

"How do you know all this?"

"Mr. Lippitt called earlier this afternoon to tell me. I was planning on coming up here anyway, so I said I'd tell you."

"Why the hell didn't Lippitt call me?"

"He said he tried to reach you a number of times, but you were never around. He also called your answering service in the city, but it seems you don't bother checking in with them anymore. He knew you'd be spending a lot of time up in the clinic, but for some reason he preferred not to call you there; he said it might make someone nervous."

I thought about it, nodded. It seemed Mr. Lippitt wasn't quite as oblivious to Charles Slycke's sensibilities as I'd thought. "He's right. I should have touched base with him, or made it easier for him to get hold of me."

"No problem. He wanted you to have the information as soon as possible, and now you've got it. Before I leave, it might be a good idea to set up some kind of system to make it easier for Lippitt or me to get in touch with you if we need to."

"Agreed. You say the police don't even know about these guys yet. Then how. .?"

"They took off; in effect, they fingered themselves. They must have been feeling the heat, and got a bad case of nerves.

"Lippitt told me that the D.I.A. had been working on the case overtime-but keeping a low profile, because they didn't want what's happened to happen. There were a dozen people under surveillance; yesterday morning, two of those people failed to show up for work. The surveillance people let themselves into the men's apartments, found them both cleaned out. Both guys had split during the night without being spotted. But they were in such a big hurry that they left some tracks, and those tracks appear to lead out of the country, probably to Russia. Mr. Lippitt is pissed."

"The hurry and the sloppiness sounds very un-K.G.B.-ish."

"Agreed."

"Maybe they were just amateurs selling information to another company."

"Mr. Lippitt thinks not. I don't know what the evidence is, but he seems certain they were K.G.B."

I thought about it, frowned. "You say they may have been feeling the heat, but they were only two of a dozen people under surveillance. From what I understand, the K.G.B. is usually pretty good at making clean, orderly retreats. Why would they have suddenly panicked and taken off like that?"

"Mr. Lippitt has a rather interesting theory on that subject."

"Which is?"

"Think about it. What's been happening the past couple of days?"

"For Christ's sake, Veil, I haven't exactly been keeping up on current events."

Veil's response was to go back to work on my forehead. When he had removed the last stitch and cleansed the wound with peroxide, he leaned back against a counter and made a gesture which seemed to indicate the building-or the entire hospital complex.

"Garth?” I said.

Veil nodded. "That's Mr. Lippitt's notion. It was four days ago that Garth first showed signs of coming around-after you started playing the Ring for him."

"Wrong. Four days ago I played Das Rheingold for him, and he didn't respond at all. He cried two nights ago, but I was the only one who saw that. Nothing heavy happened until last night, and according to you these guys were gone by then."

"To your eyes, Garth didn't respond to Das Rheingold. One of Garth's nurses made a note on Garth's chart four days ago that Garth had possibly displayed emotional reaction to a stimulus. The music, and your role, wasn't mentioned, but the possibility of increased awareness was."

"How the hell does Lippitt know that?"

"It seems your old friend has his own means of keeping track of what goes on in that clinic. He's been closely following Garth's progress since the day he arrived here. He knows all about the conflict between Slycke and you, because Slycke has been bitching about Lippitt and you to anyone who'll listen."

"That's almost funny," I said, and laughed without humor.

"What's almost funny?"

"Slycke has been worried about me being sent to spy on him, and all the while Lippitt must know every time the man farts. It makes me wonder if Lippitt gave me that high-powered pass to distract Slycke from the real spy, or spies, Lippitt has in there."

"That seems unlikely, Mongo, judging from the way he obviously feels about the two of you. But you know Mr. Lippitt better than I do."

"Nobody really knows Mr. Lippitt. I don't think anyone but Lippitt even knows how old he is; they just know he's old."

"Mr. Lippitt's thinking is that Garth, in hindsight, would know exactly who it was who tried to kill him. The K.G.B.-if that's who was behind it-would be very much afraid of that. As soon as it looked like Garth might be coming around, the two agents were given hasty marching orders."

"I told you: Garth hardly talks at all, and what he does say doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

"When the information was passed on, nobody knew what Garth would or wouldn't say; the source of concern was that he might be talking at all."

"That would mean Lippitt isn't the only one with eyes and ears in the clinic."

"Precisely Mr. Lippitt's concern. If his notion has any validity at all, it means there's a K.G.B. agent operating right under Slycke's nose."

Even paranoids could have real enemies, I thought. And valid reasons to be afraid. "Jesus," I said, "it could be Slycke himself. It would certainly explain the supersnit he's been in since Garth and I showed up, wouldn't it? Maybe he has damn good reasons for fearing that Lippitt sent me to spy on him."

Veil shrugged. "He's certainly made no secret of his distrust and suspicion of you. I think a trained operative would be a good deal more subtle."

"Maybe he's being subtle by not being subtle."

Veil smiled. "That's too subtle. Of course, it could be Slycke-but it could also be anybody with access to clinical information; it could be any of the psychiatrists, nurses, or other workers up there. It could even be a patient who'd been carefully planted; from what I understand, virtually anyone up there could have walked into Garth's room at any time, day or night, and seen the notation on Garth's chart."

"True-except for the patients in the secure unit."

Veil raised his eyebrows slightly. "People easily fall into predictable routines, Mongo, as you well know. People working at night often take naps at certain times. If I were an operative working a place like that, I'd prefer to be in a secure unit where my movements were supposedly severely restricted. I'd simply make certain I had a key."

"A good point. But all this talk is highly hypothetical, right?"

"Highly. Mr. Lippitt simply asked me to share his notion with you-and to tell you not to try to look into it on your own, in case you're curious."

"I'm much more skeptical than I am curious, but even if it were the other way around, I wouldn't do any kind of snooping while Garth is up there. He's too vulnerable."

"Yes. Lippitt didn't come right out and say so, Mongo, but I got the feeling he might like it if I rode shotgun for you for a while. Is there anything I can do for you or Garth?"

I shook my head, absently touched the slightly puckered, still tender flesh just above my eyebrows. "I really can't think of anything, but thanks for the offer. Besides, the more I think about it, the more I doubt there's any connection between Garth coming around and the two guys taking off. Any spy sneaking in to read the chart could see with his own eyes that Garth wasn't ready to give speeches. Garth was nowhere until last night. I say you were right the first time; the K.G.B. agents, if that's what they are, got wind of the surveillance and decided to leave while the getting was good."

"You could be right," Veil said evenly. "But you'll keep your eyes open, won't you?"

"Sure."

"You want to look at your scar?"

"Not really. I hope it's sexy."

"I'm sure."

"Thanks for coming up to see me, Veil, and for delivering the message. I'll call Lippitt as soon as I get a chance and thank him, too."

"How about letting me take you out to dinner?"

I shook my head. "I'd really enjoy spending some time with you, and it would be good for me, but Garth should be back in his room soon. They've been running tests on him all day, and I'm a little anxious to find out the results."

"Of course."

"Thanks again for driving up. I needed to see a friendly face."

"You'll see me again-soon. How about if I walk you to wherever it is you're going?" "I'd like that."