The Simulacra

6

To Richard Kongrosian the McPhearson Act was a calamity because in a single instant it erased his great support in life, Dr Egon Superb. He was left at the mercy of his lifelong illness-process, which, right at the moment, had assumed enormous power over him. This was why he had left Jenner and voluntarily checked in at Franklin Aimes Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Francisco, a place deeply familiar to him; he had, during the past decade, checked in there many times.

However, this time he probably would not be able to leave. This time his illness-process had advanced too far.

He was, he knew, an anankastic, a person for whom reality had shrunk to the dimension of compulsion; everything he did was forced on him -- there was for him nothing voluntary, spontaneous or free. And, to make matters worse, he had tangled with a Nitz commercial. In fact, he still had the commercial with him; he carried it about with him in his pocket.

Getting it out now, Kongrosian started the Theodorus Nitz commercial up, listening once more to its evil message.

The commercial squeaked. ‘At any moment one may offend others, any hour of the day!'

And in his mind appeared the full-colour image of a scene unfolding; a good-looking black-haired man leaning towards a blonde, full-breasted girl in a bathing suit in order to kiss her. On the girl's face the expression of rapture and submission all at once vanished, was replaced by repugnance. And the commercial shrilled, ‘He was not fully safe from offensive body odour! You see?'

That's me, Kongrosian said to himself. I smell bad. He had, due to the commercial, acquired a phobic body odour; he had been contaminated through the commercial, and there was no way to rid himself of the odour; he had for weeks now tried a thousand rituals of rinsing and washing, to no avail.

That was the trouble with phobic odours; once acquired they stayed, even advanced in their dreadful power. At this moment he did not dare get close to any other human being; he had to remain ten feet away so that they would not become aware of the odour. No full-breasted blonde girls for him.

And at the same time he knew that the odour was a delusion, that it did not really exist; it was an obsessive idea only. However, that realization did not help him. He still could not bear to come within ten feet of another human being -- of any sort whatsoever. Full-breasted or not.

For instance, at this very moment Janet Raimer, chief talent scout from the White House, was searching for him. If she found him, even here in his private room at Franklin Aimes, she would insist on seeing him, would force her way close to him -- and then the world would, for him, collapse.

He liked Janet, who was middle-aged, had a waggish sense of humour and was cheerful. How could he bear to have Janet detect the terrible body odour which the commercial had passed on to him? It was an impossible situation, and Kongrosian sat hunched over at the table in the corner of the room, clenching and unclenching his fists, trying to think what to do.

Perhaps he could call her on the phone. But the odour, he believed, could be transmitted along the phone wires; she would detect it anyhow. So that was no good. Maybe a telegram? No, the odour would move from him to that, too, and from it to Janet.

In fact, his phobic body odour could contaminate the entire world. Such was at least theoretically possible.

But he had to have some contact with people; for instance, very soon now he wanted to call his son Plautus Kongrosian at their home in Jenner. No matter how hard one tried one could not entirely suspend inter-personal relationships, desirable as it might be.

Perhaps A.G. Chemie can help me, he conjectured. They might have a new ultra-powerful synthetic detergent which will obliterate my phobic body odour, at least for a time.

Who do I know there that I can contact? He tried to recall.

On the Houston, Texas, Symphony Board of Directors there was ...

The telephone in his room rang.

Carefully, Kongrosian draped a handtowel over the screen. ‘Hell,' he said, standing a good distance from the phone, hoping thereby not to contaminate it. Naturally, it was a vain hope, but he had to make the attempt; he was still trying.

‘The White House in Washington, D.C.,' a voice from the phone stated. ‘Janet Raimer calling. Go ahead, Miss Raimer. I have Mr Kongrosian's room.'

‘Hello, Richard,' Janet Raimer said. ‘What have you put over the phone screen?'

Pressed against the far wall, with as much distance between himself and the phone as possible, Kongrosian said, ‘You shouldn't have tried to reach me, Janet. You know how ill I am. I'm in an advanced compulsive-obsessive state, the worst I've ever experienced. I seriously doubt if I'll ever be playing publicly again. There's just too much risk. For instance, I suppose you saw the item in the newspaper today about the workman in the candy factory who fell into the vat of hardening chocolate. I did that.'

‘You did? How?'

‘Psionicly. Entirely involuntarily, of course. Currently, I'm responsible for all the psychomotor accidents taking place in the world -- that's why I've signed myself in here at the hospital for a course of electroconvulsive shock. I believe in it, despite the fact that it's gone out of style. Personally I get nothing from drugs. When you smell as bad as I do, Janet, no drugs are going to -- ‘

Janet Raimer interrupted. ‘I don't believe you really smell as badly as you imagine, Richard. I've known you for many years and I can't imagine you smelling really genuinely badly, at least enough to force a termination of your brilliant career.'

‘Thanks for your loyalty,' Kongrosian said gloomily, ‘but you just don't understand. This is no ordinary physical odour. This is an idea type odour. Some day I'll mail you a text on the subject, perhaps by Bingswanger or some of the other existential psychologists. They really understood me and my problem, even though they lived a hundred years ago. Obviously they were precogs. The tragedy is that although Minkowski, Kuhn, and Binswanger understood me, there's nothing they can do to help me.'

Janet said, ‘The First Lady is looking forward to your quick and happy recovery.'

The inanity of her remark infuriated him. ‘Good grief don't you understand Janet? At this point I'm thoroughly delusional. I'm as mentally ill as it's possible to be. It's incredible that I can communicate with you at all. It's a credit to my ego-strength that I'm not at this point totally autistic.

Anyone else in my situation would be.' He felt momentary, justified pride. ‘It's an interesting situation that I'm facing, this phobic body odour. Obviously, it's a reaction-formation to a more serious disorder, one which would disintegrate my comprehension of the Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt. What I've managed to do is -- ‘

‘Richard,' Janet Raimer interrupted, ‘I feel so sorry for you. I wish I could help you.' She sounded, then, as if she were about to cry; her voice wavered.

‘Oh well,' Kongrosian said, ‘who needs the Umwelt, Mitwelt and Eigenwelt? Take it easy, Janet. Don't get so emotionally involved. I'll be out of here, just as before.' But he did not really believe that. This time was different. And evidently Janet had sensed it. ‘However,' he went on, ‘I think in the meantime you're going to have to search elsewhere for White House talent. You'll have to forget me and strike out into entirely new areas. What else is a talent scout for, if not to do exactly that?'

‘I suppose so,' Janet said.

My son, Kongrosian thought. Maybe he could appear in my place. What a weird, morbid thought that was; he cringed from it, horrified that he had let it enter his mind.

Really, it demonstrated how ill he was. As if anyone could be interested, take seriously, the unfortunate quasi-musical noises which Plautus made ... although perhaps in the largest, most embracing sense, they could be called ethnic.

‘Your current disappearance from the world,' Janet Raimer said, ‘is a tragedy. As you say, it's my job to find someone or something to fill the void -- even though I know that's impossible. I'll make the try. Thank you, Richard. It was nice of you to talk to me, considering your condition.

I'll right off now, and let you rest.'

Kongrosian said, ‘All I hope is that I haven't contaminated you with my phobic odour.' He broke the connection, then.

My last tie with the interpersonal world, he realized. I may never speak on the phone again; I feel my world contracting even more. God, where will it end? But the electroconvulsive shock will help; the shrinkage process will be reversed or at least stalled.

I wonder if I ought to try to get hold of Egon Superb, he said to himself. Despite the McPhearson Act. Hopeless; Superb no longer exists -- the law has obliterated him, at least as far as his patients are concerned. Egon Superb may still exist as an individual, in essence, but the category ‘psychoanalyst' has been eradicated as if it never existed.

But how I need him! If I could consult him just one more time -- damn A.G. Chemie and their enormous lobby, their huge influence. Maybe I can get my phobic odour to spread to them.

Yes, I'll put through a call to them, he decided. Ask about the possibility of the super detergent and at the same time contaminate them; they deserve it.

In the phone book he looked up the number of the Bay Area branch of A.G. Chemie, found it, and by psychokinesis dialled.

They'll be sorry they forced passage of that act, Kongrosian said to himself as he listened to the phone connection being put through.

‘Let me talk to your chief psych-chemist,' he said, when the A.G. Chemie switchboard had responded.

Presently a busy-sounding male voice came on to the line, the towel placed over the screen of the phone made it impossible for Kongrosian to see the man but he sounded young, competent, and thoroughly professional. ‘This is B Station. Merrill Judd speaking. Who is this and why do you have the vid portion blocked?' The psych-chemist sounded irritable.

Kongrosian said, ‘You don't know me, Mr Judd.' And then he thought, Now it's time to contaminate them.

Stepping close to the phone he whisked the towel from the screen.

‘Richard Kongrosian,' the psych-chemist said, eyeing him. ‘Yes, I know you, know your artistry at least.' He was a young man, with a competent no-nonsense expression, a thoroughly detached schizoid person indeed. ‘It's an honour to meet you sir. What can I do for you?'

‘I need an antidote,' Kongrosian said, ‘for an abominable Theodorus Nitz offensive body odour commercial. You know the one which begins: "In moments of great intimacy with ones we love, especially then does the danger of offending become acute," and so forth.' He hated even to think about it; his body odour seemed to become more powerful when he did so, if such was possible. He longed, then, for genuine human contact; he felt violently conscious of his encapsulation. ‘Do I scare you?' he asked.

Regarding him with his wise, professional intensity, the A.G. Chemie official said, ‘I'm not worried. Naturally I've heard discussions of your endogenous psychosomatic ailment, Mr Kongrosian.'

‘Well,' Kongrosian said tightly, ‘let me tell you that it's exogenous; it's the Nitz commercial that started it.' It depressed him to realize that strangers, that the entire world was aware of -- was talking about -- his psychological situation.

‘The predisposition must have been there,' Judd said, ‘for the Nitz commercial to so influence you.'

‘On the contrary,' Kongrosian said. ‘And as a matter of fact I'm going to sue the Nitz Agency, sue them for millions -- I'm totally prepared to start litigation. But that's beside the point right now. What can you do, Judd? You smell it by now, don't you? Admit you do, and then we can explore the possibilities of therapy. I've been seeing a psychoanalyst, Dr Egon Superb, but thanks to your cartel that's over, now.'

‘Hmm,' Judd said.

‘Is that the best you can do? Listen, it's impossible for me to leave this hospital room. The initiative has got to come from you. I'm appealing to you. My situation is desperate. If it worsens -- ‘

‘An intriguing request,' Judd said. ‘I'll have to ponder for a while. I can't answer you immediately, Mr Kongrosian. How long ago did this contamination by the Nitz commercial take place?'

‘Approximately one month ago.'

‘And before that?'

‘Vague phobias. Anxieties. Depression, mostly. I've had ideas of reference, too, but so far I've managed to abort them. Obviously, I'm struggling against an insidious schizophrenic process that's gradually eroding my faculties, blunting their acuity.' He felt glum.

‘Perhaps I'll drop over to the hospital.'

‘Ah,' Kongrosian said, pleased. That way I can be certain of contaminating you, he said to himself. And you, in turn, will carry the contamination back to your company, to the entire malign cartel which is responsible for shutting down Dr Superb's practice. ‘Please do,' he said aloud. ‘I'd very much like to consult you tête-à-tête. The sooner the better. But I warn you: I won't be responsible for the outcome. The risk is entirely yours.'

‘Risk? I'll take the risk. What about this afternoon? I have a free hour. Tell me which neuropsychiatric hospital you're in, and if it's local -- ‘ Judd searched for a pen and tablet of paper.

They made good time to Tenner. Late in the afternoon they set down at the ‘copter field on the outskirts of the town; there was plenty of time to make the drive by road to Kongrosian's home in the surrounding hills.

‘You mean,' Molly said, ‘we can't land at his place? We have to -- ‘

‘We hire a cab,' Nat Flieger said. ‘You know.'

‘I know,' Molly said. ‘I've read about them. And it's always a local rustic who acquaints you with the local gossip, all of which can be put in a gnat's eye.' She closed her book and rose to her feet. ‘Well, Nat, maybe you can find out from the cab driver what you want to know. About Kongrosian's secret basement of horrors.'

Jim Planck said huskily, ‘Miss Dondoldo -- ‘ He grimaced. ‘I think a lot of Leo but honest to god -- ‘

‘You can't stand me?' she inquired, raising her eyebrows.

‘Why, I wonder why, Mr Planck.'

‘Cut it out,' Nat said as he lugged his gear from the ‘copter and set it down on the damp ground. The air smelled of rain; it was heavy and clinging and he instinctively rebelled against it, against the innate unhealthiness of it. ‘This must be grand for asthmatics,' he said, looking around. Kongrosian, of course, would not meet them; it was their job entirely to find his place -- and him. They would be lucky, in fact, if he received them at all; Nat was well aware of that.

Stepping gingerly from the ‘copter (she was wearing sandals) Molly said, ‘It smells funny.' She took a deep breath, her bright cotton blouse swelling. ‘Ugh. Like rotting vegetation.'

‘That's what it is,' Nat said as he helped Jim Planck with his gear.

‘Thanks,' Planck murmured. ‘I believe I got it, Nat. How long are we going to be up here?' He looked as if he wanted to re-enter the ‘copter and start right back; Nat saw on the man's face overt panic. ‘This area,' Planck said, ‘always makes me think of -- like in the kids' book about the three billygoats gruff. You know.' His voice grated. ‘Trolls.'

Molly stared at him and then sharply laughed.

A cab rolled up to greet them, but it was not driven by a local rustic; it was a twenty-year-old autonomic, with a mute self-guidance system. Presently they had their recording and personal equipment aboard and the auto-cab was rolling from the field, on its way to Richard Kongrosian's home, the address in the instruction-well of the cab acting as the tropism.

‘I wonder,' Molly said, watching the old-fashioned houses and stores of the town pass by, ‘what they do for entertainment up here?'

Nat said, ‘Maybe they come down to the ‘copter field and watch the outsiders who occasionally wander in.' Like us, he thought, seeing people along the sidewalk here and there glance up curiously.

We're the entertainment, he decided. There certainly did not appear to be much else; the town looked as it must have before the fracas of 1980; the stores had tinted glass and plastic fronts, now chipped and in disrepair beyond belief.

And, by a huge, abandoned, obsolete supermarket, he saw an empty parking lot: space for surface vehicles which no longer existed.

For a man of ability to live here, Nat decided, it must be a form of suicide. It could only be a subtle self-destructiveness that would cause Kongrosian to leave the vast and busy urban complex of Warsaw, one of the brightest centres of human activity and communication in the world, and come to this dismal, rain-drenched, decaying town. Or -- a form of penance. Could that be it? To punish himself for god knew what, perhaps something to do with his special-birth son ... assuming that what Molly said was correct.

He thought about Jim Planck's joke, the one about the psychokineticist Richard Kongrosian being in a pubtrans accident and growing hands. But Kongrosian had hands; he simply did not need to employ them in his music. Without them he would obtain more nuances of tonal colouring, more precise rhythms and phrasing. The entire somatic component was bypassed; the mind of the artist applied itself directly to the keyboard.

Do these people along these deteriorating streets know who lives among them? Nat wondered. Probably not. Probably Kongrosian keeps to himself, lives with his family and ignores the community. A recluse, and who wouldn't be, up here? And if they did know about Kongrosian they would be suspicious of him, because he was an artist and because he was also a Psi; it was a double burden to bear. No doubt in his concourse with these people -- when he bought at the local grocery store -- he eliminated his psychokinetic faculty and used his manual extremities like everyone else. Unless Kongrosian had even more courage than Nat realized ...

‘When I get to be a world famous artist,' Jim Planck said, ‘The first thing I'm going to do is move to a backwater boondock like this.' His voice was laden with sarcasm. ‘It'll be my reward.'

‘Yes,' Nat said, ‘it must be nice to be able to cash in on one's talent.' He spoke absently; ahead he saw a throng of people and his attention had turned that way. Banners and marchers in uniform ... he was seeing, he realized, a demonstration by political extremists, the so-called Sons of Job, neo-Nazis who seemed to have sprung up everywhere, of late, even here in this god-forsaken town in California.

And yet wasn't this actually the most likely place for the Sons of Job to show themselves? This decadent region reeked of defeat; here lived those who had failed, Bes who held no real role in the system. The Sons of Job, like the Nazis of the past, fed on disappointment, on the disinherited. Yet these backwater towns which time had bypassed were the movement's authentic feeding-ground ... it should not have surprised him, then, to see this.

But these were not Germans; these were Americans.

It was a sobering thought. Because he could not dismiss the Sons of Job as a symptom of the ceaseless, unchanging derangement of the German mentality, that was too pat, too simple. These were his own people marching here today, his countrymen. It could have been him, too; if he were to lose his job with EME or suffer some crushing, humiliating social experience …

‘Look at them,' Molly said.

‘I am looking,' Nat answered.

‘And you're thinking, "It could be me." Right? Frankly I doubt if you have the guts to march in public in support of your convictions; in fact I doubt if you have any convictions. Look. There's Goltz.'

She was correct. Bertold Goltz, the Leader, was present here today. How oddly the man came and went; it was never possible to predict where and when he might pop up.

Perhaps Goltz had the use of von Lessinger's principle.

The use of time travel.

That would give Goltz, Nat reflected, a certain advantage over all the charismatic leaders of the past, in that it would make him more or less eternal. He could not in the customary fashion be killed. This would explain why the government had not crushed the movement; he had wondered about that, why Nicole tolerated it. She tolerated it because she had to.

Technically, Goltz could be murdered, but an earlier Goltz would simply move into the future and replace him; Goltz would go on, not ageing or changing, and the movement would ultimately benefit because they would have a leader who could be counted on not to go the way of Adolf Hitler: who would not develop paresis or any other degenerative disease.

Jim Planck, absorbed in the sight, murmured, ‘Handsome son-of-a-gun, isn't he?' He, too, seemed impressed. The man could have a career in the movies or TV, Nat reflected. Been that sort of entertainer, rather than the kind he was. Goltz had style. Tall, clouded-over in a sort of tense gloom ... and yet, Nat noticed, just a trifle too heavy. Goltz appeared to be in his mid-forties and the leanness, the masculinity of youth, had abandoned him. As he marched he sweated. What a physical quality the man had; there was nothing ghostly or ethereal about him, no spirituality to offset the stubborn beef.

The marchers turned, came head-on towards their autocab.

The cab halted.

Molly said caustically, ‘He even commands the obedience of machines. At least the local ones.' She laughed briefly, uneasily.

‘We'd better get out of the way,' Jim Planck said, ‘or they're going to be swarming over us like Martian column ants.' He fiddled with the controls of the auto-cab. ‘Damn this worn-out contraption: it's dead as a doornail.'

‘Killed by awe,' Molly said.

The first line of marchers contained Goltz, who strode along in the centre, transporting a flowing, multi-coloured cloth banner. Seeing them, Goltz yelled something. Nat could not catch it.

‘He's telling us to get out of the way,' Molly said. ‘Maybe we'd better forget about recording Kongrosian and step out and join him. Sign up for the movement. What do you say, Nat? Here's your chance. You can rightfully say you were forced to.' She opened the door of the cab and hopped lightly out on to the sidewalk. ‘I'm not giving up my life because of a stalled circuit in an auto-cab twenty years out of date.'

‘Hail, mighty leader,' Jim Planck said shortly, and also hopped out to join Molly on the sidewalk, out of the path of the marchers, who were now, as a body, shouting angrily and gesturing.

Nat said, ‘I'm staying here.' He remained where he was surrounded by the recording equipment, his hand reflexively resting on his precious Ampek F-a2; he did not intend to abandon it, even to Bertold Goltz.

Coming rapidly down the street, Goltz all at once grinned.

It was a sympathetic grin, as if Goltz, despite the seriousness of his political intentions, had room left in his heart for a trace of empathy.

‘You got troubles, too?' Goltz called to Nat. Now the first rank of marchers -- including the Leader -- had reached the old, stalled auto-cab; the rank divided and dribbled past, raggedly, on both sides. Goltz, however, halted. He brought out a rumpled red handkerchief and mopped the shiny, steaming flesh of his neck and brow.

‘Sorry I'm in your way,' Nat said.

‘Heck,' Goltz said, ‘I was expecting you.' He glanced up, his dark, intelligent, luminous eyes alert. ‘Nat Flieger, head of Artists and Repertoire for Electronic Musical Enterprise of Tijuana. Up here in this land of ferns and frogs to record Richard Kongrosian ... because you don't happen to know that Kongrosian isn't home. He's at Franklin Aimes Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Francisco.'

‘Christ,' Nat said, taken aback.

‘Why not record me instead?' Goltz said. Amiably.

‘Doing what?'

‘Oh, I can shout or rant a few historic slogans for you. Half an hour's worth or so ... enough to fill up a small record. It may not sell well today or tomorrow, but one of these days -- ‘ Goltz winked at Nat.

‘No thanks,' Nat said.

‘Is your Ganymedean creature too pure for what I have to say?' The smile was empty of warmth, now; it was fixed starkly in place.

Nat said, ‘I'm a Jew, Mr Goltz. So it's hard for me to look on neo-Nazism with much enthusiasm.'

After a pause Goltz said, ‘I'm a Jew, too, Mr Flieger. Or more properly, an Israeli. Look it up. It's in the records. Any good newspaper or media news morgue can tell you that.'

Nat stared at him.

‘Our enemy, yours and mine,' Goltz said, ‘is the der Alte system. They're the real inheritors of the Nazi past. Think about that. They, and the cartels. A.G. Chemie, Karp und Sohnen Werke ... didn't you know that? Where have you been, Flieger? Haven't you been listening?'

After an interval Nat said, ‘I've been listening. But I haven't been very much convinced.'

‘I'll tell you something, then,' Goltz said. ‘Nicole and the people around her, our Mutter, is going to make use of von Lessinger's time travel principle to make contact with the Third Reich, with Hermann Goering, as a matter of fact. They'll be doing it soon. Does this surprise you?'

‘I've -- heard rumours.' Nat shrugged.

‘You're not a Ge,' Goltz said. ‘You're like me, Flieger, me and my people. You're forever on the outside. We're not even supposed to hear rumours. There shouldn't have been a leak. But we Bes are not going to talk -- do you agree! Bringing Fat Hermann from the past into our time is just too much, wouldn't you say?' He studied Nat's face, waiting for his reaction.

Presently Nat said, ‘If it's true -- ‘

‘It's true, Flieger.' Goltz nodded.

‘Then it puts your movement in a new light.'

‘Come and see me,' Goltz said. ‘When the news is made public. When you know it's true. Okay?'

Nat said nothing. He did not meet the man's dark intense gaze.

‘So long, Flieger.' Goltz said. And picking up his banner, which had been resting against the auto-cab, he strode on down the street to rejoin his marching followers.