The Madman - Страница 84

He stole one last look at the Dancer and felt an improbable sadness within him. There's a man who got his release unexpectedly, Francis thought.

But within the ebb and flow of fear and sadness that he felt, Francis perceived something else: a juxtaposition of events that he couldn't quite identify, but which gave him a cold suspicion within that worried him.

A gurney was wheeled into the dormitory to remove the Dancer's body. Gulptilil and Mister Evil oversaw the dead man being rolled out of his bunk and placed under a dingy white sheet. Lucy shook her head, watching what she thought might be a crime scene cavalierly eradicated.

Gulptilil turned, and trailing after the body, spotted Francis. He paused, and said, "Ah, Mister Petrel. I wonder if it might not be time soon for us to have another session."

Francis knew what the doctor wanted. He nodded, because he didn't know what else to do. But then, in a switch that left the medical director almost openmouthed in surprise, Francis lifted his arms above his head, and pirouetted about slowly, moving his feet and arms as gracefully and ballet like as he could, in conscious imitation of the dead man's dance to music only he could hear.

Gulptilil tried to interrupt him, suddenly asking, "Mister Petrel, are you okay?" which Francis thought a most fantastically stupid question, as he simply danced out of the doctor's path.

At their regularly scheduled group session that day, the conversation turned to the space program. Newsman had been spouting headlines for the past few days, but there was widespread disbelief amongst the patients at Western State whether any moon walks had actually taken place. Cleo in particular had been defiant, rumbling about government cover-ups and unknown otherworldly dangers, giggling one instant, then growing morose and quiet the next. The swings in her mood seemed obvious to everyone except Mister Evil, who ignored most of the external signs of madness when they reared up. This was his usual approach. He liked to listen, take a note, and then the patient would discover later, when he or she lined up for the evening medication, that their dosage had been adjusted. This had a stifling effect upon much of the conversation, because everyone at the hospital saw the daily medications as so many links of the chain that kept them there.

The Dancer's death wasn't mentioned, although it was on everyone's minds. Short Blond's murder had fascinated and scared them, but the Dancer dying reminded them all of their own mortality, which was a different fear altogether. More than once, patients sitting in the group's loose circle burst out in a laugh, or choked a sob, none of which had anything to do with the course of the conversation, but seemed to erupt spontaneously from some internal thought or another.

Francis thought that Mister Evil was watching him particularly closely. He attributed this to his bizarre behavior earlier that morning.

"What about you, Francis?" Evans asked abruptly, poking at Francis with a question.

"I'm sorry, what about me what?" Francis replied.

"What do you think about astronauts?"

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "It's hard to imagine," he answered.

"What is hard?"

"To be that far away, connected only by computers and radios. No one has ever traveled as far before. That's interesting. It's not the reliance on all the equipment, it's that no adventure ever has been quite like it."

Mister Evil nodded. "What about explorers in Africa or the North Pole?"

"They faced elements. Unknown. But astronauts face something different."

"What's that?"

"Myths," Francis said. He looked around at all the others, and then asked, "Where is Peter?"

Mister Evil shifted about. "Still in isolation," he said. "But he should be out soon. Let's get back to the astronauts."

"They don't exist," Cleo said. "But Peter does."

Then she shook her head. "Maybe he doesn't," she said. "Maybe all this is a dream and we're going to wake up any second."

An argument broke out then, between Cleo and Napoleon and several others about what really existed and what didn't, and if something took place where you couldn't see it, did it really happen. All of this caused the group to snort and wave their hands excitedly in contradiction and dispute, which Evans allowed to ricochet back and forth. For a moment or two, Francis listened, because, in an odd way, he thought there were some similarities between his position in the hospital and men on their way to space. They were adrift, he thought, the same way he was.

He believed that he had recovered from his fright from the night before, but he had little confidence in his ability to greet the night to come.

He probed his memory for all the words the Angel had spoken, but it was hard for Francis to remember them with the sort of precision that he thought was necessary. Fear, he realized, skews things about. It's like trying to see accurately when staring into a fun house mirror. The image is wavy, indistinct, distorted.

For an instant, he told himself: Stop trying to see the Angel. Start trying to see what the Angel sees.

Deep inside him, voices shouted out in sudden warning. Stop! Don't do that!

Francis shifted about in his seat uncomfortably. The voices wouldn't have warned him, if they hadn't seen something important and dangerous. He shook his head slightly, as if to restore his connection to the group that was continuing to argue, and he looked at the others, just as Napoleon was saying, "… Why do we need to go up into space anyway…" and he saw that Cleo was eyeing him from across the circle with a slightly bemused, slightly curious, almost impressed look of attention. She leaned forward in her seat, ignoring Napoleon, which infuriated the small round man, and she quietly said to Francis, "C-Bird saw something, didn't he?"

Then she cackled, her body quivering with some joke that only she understood, just as Peter stepped into the room.

He immediately waved to the group, and then made a sweeping, formal bow to his fellow patients, like a king's attendant in some sixteenth-century court. Then he grabbed a steel folding chair and pulled himself into the circle.

"None the worse for wear," he said, as if anticipating the question.

"Peter seems to like isolation," Cleo said.

"Nobody snores," Peter replied, which got everyone to grin and chuckle.

"We have been discussing astronauts," Mister Evil said. "In the time remaining, I'd like to conclude that discussion."

"Sure," Peter said. "Didn't mean to interrupt anything."

"Well, fine. Now, does anyone have anything else to add?" Mister Evil turned away from Peter and examined the collected patients. He was met with silence.

Evans let a few seconds pass. "Anyone?"

Again, the group, so vociferous a few minutes earlier, was quiet. Francis thought that this was like them; that sometimes words flowed from all of them almost unchecked, flooding the air, and other moments, they disappeared, and with almost religious fervor, everyone looked inward. Shifts in mood were commonplace.

"Come on," Evans said, exasperation creeping into his voice. "We were making progress a moment or two before we were interrupted. Someone, Cleo?"

She shook her head.

"Newsman?"

For once, he didn't have a headline to spout.

"Francis?"

Francis didn't answer.

"Say something," Evans said stiffly.

Francis was at a loss and he saw Evans shifting about, his own anger increasing. It was, Francis thought, a matter of control. Mister Evil liked to control everything in the dormitory, and once again Peter had disrupted that power. More than any patient, no matter how rigid with madness they were, none of them could compare with Mister Evans's need to own every moment of the day and night inside the Amherst Building.

"Say something," Evans repeated, even colder. This was an order.

Francis hurried about within himself, trying to imagine what it was that Mister Evil wanted to hear, but, in reply, he was only able to blurt out: "I'll never go into space."

Evans shrugged and snorted, "Well, of course not…" as if what Francis had said was the silliest thing he'd ever heard.