Drug of Choice Page 12

  “In time,” Harvey Blood said, “you will come around to our way of thinking. I don’t need to tell you that we are not a unique corporation in this country. We are merely a little smarter, a little faster than the others. But other firms are springing up, all across America. This is the way of the future—research and development, and commercial application on an imaginative basis.”

  Clark said, “What about me? Why did you involve me in all this?”

  “We needed you.”

  “For what? To pick the Glow Girl?”

  “Oh no. That was just a minor thing. We’ve had major plans for you, right from the start.”

  “You mean for the island?”

  “Well, no. Other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “We expect,” Blood said, “to utilize your knowledge of drugs and testing.” He held up his hand. “And please, no tiresome stories of how you will resist us, and refuse us, and fight us. We can make you do it, and if you are wise you will go along willingly. After all, we can make you a rich man.”

  The limousine pulled up in front of the Advance building. As they got out, Blood looked at his watch and said, “Behind schedule again. You’re late for your appointment.”

  “My appointment?”

  “Yes. With the Glow Girl.”

  “And what am I supposed to do with her?”

  “Examine her, of course,” Blood said. “You’re a doctor; we want a full report on the physical fitness of our girl. After all,” he said, “we’re going to be putting a lot of time, effort and money into her. A hell of a lot.”

  There was a room, a desk, an examining couch and a nurse. The girl, wearing a simple skirt and blouse now, sat in a chair facing the desk. She looked back over her shoulder as he came in.

  The nurse was matronly and forbidding. He said, “You can leave now. I’ll call you when I need you.”

  “A nurse should be in attendance—”

  “Get out,” Clark said quietly, “or I’ll kick you out.”

  “But Dr. Clark—”

  “I’ll worry about Blood, if that’s the problem. Besides,” he said, “the room is bugged.”

  The nurse glared at him, but left. Clark walked around behind the desk and sat down. Immediately, he began going through the drawers. The girl watched him silently.

  “My name,” he said, “is Roger Clark. I’m a doctor.”

  The girl nodded and said nothing. She watched him as he shuffled papers, and poked among the flowers in the vase on the desk. He had no idea what he was looking for: in movies, it was small and black, with wires.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, continuing his search, slamming the drawers, “but I don’t know your name.”

  “Susan Ryle. With a Y. And I wanted to thank you.”

  “Thank me?”

  He lifted the dictaphone and peered underneath, then checked the telephone.

  “Yes,” she said. “For choosing me. I saw you do it, down there in the front row.”

  “Ummm,” Clark said. “I can’t find it.”

  “Find what?”

  “The microphone. I know there’s one here someplace.”

  “But why would there be a microphone—”

  “Because this is a very personal sort of corporation,” Clark said. “They take a personal interest in their employees.”

  “I like that,” Susan Ryle said. She smiled. She had a lot of even white teeth. Close up, her eyes were dark and enormous.

  “Do you? It gets a little wearing.”

  “The only thing is,” she said, sitting back and crossing her legs, “I don’t really know what I was hired for.”

  “You were hired to be the Glow Girl.”

  “Yes, but what’s that?”

  “The Glow Girl is a rock and roll singer. You have a group called the Scientific Coming.”

  “A rock and roll singer! But I can’t sing a note—”

  “They’ll take care of that,” Clark said. “They take care of everything. And you’ll make a lot of money. A well-paid employee is a contented employee.”

  “Yes,” Susan Ryle said, but she was frowning. Still thinking about her singing ability. It occurred to Clark that she might not be over-intelligent.

  “I suppose they’ll give me voice lessons,” she said.

  “I suppose.”

  “In a way, it’s exciting.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Don’t you agree it’s exciting?”

  “Frankly,” he said, “no. I think it’s frightening, I think it’s terrifying, but I do not think it is exciting.”

  “Oh,” she said. “But aren’t you an employee?”

  “I’m well looked-after,” Clark said.

  She was silent. He could tell he had confused her, and she had been confused enough at the outset. It wasn’t really fair, taking out his frustration on her.

  “Listen,” he said. “As a doctor, I have a piece of advice.”

  “Yes?”

  “Get out. Get out of the whole thing, right now. Forget the dough, the fame, the bright lights and the limousine pulling up for opening night—”

  “What?” She was staring at him.

  He threw up his hands. “Just forget the whole damned thing. You’re a nice girl. You’ll make some lucky guy a fine wife. Go out, get married, get divorced, get married again, have some kids, get divorced—do the California thing, and be happy.”

  “You’re very peculiar,” she said, looking at him and tugging down at her short skirt.

  “I was born under an unlucky star,” Clark said.

  “Gee,” she said. “That’s too bad.”

  Clark sighed. She was innocent and wide-eyed and lovely. And he would never in a million years make her understand.

  He went to the door. “Nurse!”

  The examination was brief. The girl was in excellent shape physically. Excellent shape.

  He reported to Blood.

  “That’s very reassuring to hear,” Blood said.

  “She’s a little dumb, of course—”

  “Very reassuring,” Blood nodded.

  “And you’ll have a lot of work to do, whipping her into some kind of shape as a singer—”

  “We are prepared,” he said mildly, “to work.”

  “I’m not,” Clark said.

  Blood seemed surprised. “I thought we’d been all over this. I thought you had come to understand.”

  “What I understand,” Clark said, “is that a month ago I was a happy doctor working in a happy hospital. I had never heard of blue urine, or comas, or Eden Island. I had never heard of this damned corporation, or Sharon Wilder, or the Glow-Glow Girl.”

  “That’s quite clever. We may use that.”

  “I had never heard of calling the police in the Miami airport, or being abducted, or held a prisoner in the middle of goddamned Santa Monica. And I want out.”

  Blood shrugged. “You can’t get out, I’m afraid.”

  “I can try.”

  “Oh yes, of course you can try. And you may even succeed, for a few hours. But not for long. We’d have you back in no time. You see, Roger, you’re with us now. Outside of here, beyond these walls, you’re nothing. Nothing at all. There is nowhere that you could turn to, nowhere that you could go. Your old friends would shun you. They aren’t your friends, any more. Your old world would reject you—it isn’t your world, any more. You’re with us now.”

  “The hell I am.”

  Blood regarded him steadily for several moments. “I can see that you’re serious. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  “But I am. I hate to use you in this way. I really do. I think it’s a waste of a fine mind. But at the same time, I’m grateful for the opportunity you present. I must admit it was George who thought of it first, but the fact remains, you’re a fine opportunity for us, Roger. You are ideal.”

  He picked up a telephone on a small table behind his desk. “Get me section seven,” he said.

 
While he was waiting, telephone cradled in his shoulder, he said, “They’ll all be delighted. They’re a little like vultures, actually. Hovering about waiting for their chance. And now they have it.”

  He spoke into the phone. “George? Set up the series right away. Yes…yes, I’m afraid so.”

  He hung up.

  “You see, Roger, we can use a man of your talents in many ways. We can use you to help us, to work with us, to prepare our projects and ventures. Or we can use you in other ways. After all, look at your qualifications. You are a trained physician. You have a working knowledge of anatomy, pharmacology, biochemistry. You are experienced in biological matters, and you are a trained observer. All invaluable traits.”

  “Invaluable traits for what?”

  “For an experimental subject, of course.”

  Behind him, the door opened. Two guards came in, and caught him by the arms.

  Harvey Blood stood. “I think you’ll find it interesting, Roger.”

  The guards took him out of the room.

  19. K PUPPY

  “GOOD, GOOD,” GEORGE WASHINGTON said. “Good, good, good.”

  He bent over Clark, securing the leather straps which held him to the wooden chair. They were in a laboratory and the chair was on some kind of metal track, which ran forward to a door in the far wall.

  “We can observe you,” Washington said, “by remote control. I want you to know we’ve taken every safeguard.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “I feel,” Washington said, tightening one of the arm straps, “that you should know a little about this series. There are no drugs involved. None at all. Instead, we are working on the K principle.”

  “It being?”

  “Roger, you’re so hostile. Try to look at it as an interesting experience. The K principle was first elaborated in Montreal. Researchers there experimented with puppies, raised from birth in zero sensory environments. They were kept in total darkness, constant temperature, constant sound for six weeks after birth. And then they were brought out into the real world.”

  “And they went mad.”

  “No. No indeed. But they acted quite peculiarly. They could see, for example; their eyes reacted to light and so forth. But they couldn’t organize visual information. They walked right into walls—that kind of thing. They couldn’t understand what sensory stimuli meant.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Meantime,” George continued, “some people in Ann Arbor were experimenting with sensory deprivation in human beings. Put a person in a room with cardboard tubes on his arms and legs—so he can’t feel—and a blindfold over his eyes—so he can’t see—and earplugs—so he can’t hear. And leave him there for a while. The subjects acted pretty strangely after a few hours.

  “But the experiments were inconclusive. There was some suggestion of increased pliability, of agreeability, after exposure. Our small experiments here have tended to confirm that. But the factor of education is major, and nobody knows how to deal with that. Also, there is a question about the duration of effect. With drugs, we know that suggestibility is strictly limited. The drug wears off, and you go back to normal. But with the K principle—”

  “I see,” Clark said. “No wonder you’re interested.”

  “As a scientific development, it has possibilities,” Washington said. “But now we have you. Ideal subject—you’re educated, informed, aware. And you know exactly what we’re going to do to you.”

  “You’re going to make me a K puppy.”

  “Ha ha,” Washington said, and signaled to one of the technicians. The far door was opened; beyond, he could see a small room, yellowish, with strange walls.

  His chair moved forward on the track.

  “Enjoy yourself,” Washington said.

  The chair moved through the door, and into the room. The door was closed behind him. It shut with a soft, leathery sound.

  A very strange sound.

  And suddenly, he knew. He looked down: his chair was still on tracks, but suspended in the middle of the room, equidistant from all walls, ceiling and floor. And every wall was the same, with strange baffles and projections.

  A sound-killing room.

  “Hello,” he said. His voice was odd, muffled and unfamiliar to him.

  “I’m in a soundproofed room,” he said. He shouted it, but it came out as little more than a whisper. A soft, dull whisper.

  He sat and waited. Nothing happened. He continued to sit in the chair for what seemed like a very long time; how long, he could not be sure. Perhaps five minutes, perhaps half an hour.

  Then white smoke began to hiss softly into the room. It was a funny kind of smoke, opaque and totally odorless. He thought it would make him cough, but it did not.

  Soon he was surrounded by white smoke, so dense that he could not see the walls. It was as if he were floating in the center of a cloud.

  He remained that way for a long time. And then the sound began. It was a bizarre sound, like radio static, and maddening.

  White sound.

  That was what they called it: a mixture of frequencies of sound, just as white light was a mixture of wavelengths of light. It was a steady, monotonous, unvarying crackling.

  White sound.

  He spoke. He could hear nothing but the static, his words were lost in it, disappearing into the blanket of sound.

  Very neat, he thought. White light, white sound, floating in a foggy cloud. No up, no down, no stimuli. Nothing to look at, nothing to listen to, nothing to smell or feel.

  But there was something to feel—he ran his fingers over the wooden arms of the chair. He tensed his arms against the straps until it hurt. He forced himself to pay attention to the sensations in his hands.

  He continued to do this for a long time. But then, when next he noticed, his hands and legs were free; someone had taken away the straps.

  He must have slept.

  But he didn’t remember.

  He thought of getting out of the chair, of moving around, but he was afraid to move in the white fog and the white sound which came to him evenly in all directions. He was lost. He told himself that he was in a little room, that outside was a laboratory, and people checking on him, that there was a door outside to the laboratory, and that door was right ahead of him.

  Ahead?

  No, behind.

  Behind where? What if they had turned him around, when they removed the straps. What if they had changed his orientation?

  He sighed. Perhaps they had, perhaps not. In any case, it was too much trouble. Too much trouble to bother with. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. There was no point in keeping them open: there was nothing to look at.

  He tried to relax.

  The first electric shock traveled up his spine, snapping him awake and instantly alert. He blinked his eyes. The fog was still there, and the sound.

  What were they doing?

  There were more shocks, and still more. He sat limply in the chair, not understanding. Sensory deprivation meant absence of sensation. By shocking him, they were providing stimuli.

  Why?

  He closed his eyes. He was feeling very tired now. He ran his fingers through his hair, and touched—

  Wires.

  Wires?

  Someone had put wires on his head, he thought sleepily. That was strange of them.

  Shocks again. He was sleepy in a way he had never been before; after each shock came, he dozed off immediately afterward. His bones ached and his eyes hurt with fatigue.

  Another shock.

  Why?

  And then he realized that they were keeping him awake, purposely keeping him awake, and the electrodes on his head were connected to an encephalograph.

  So they would know when he was dreaming.

  Vaguely, he remembered the studies. In sleeping, a normal person dreamed with great regularity ten minutes out of every hour. If you missed a night of sleep, you dreamed twice as much the next night.

  If you were awak
ened each time you started to dream—as indicated by changes in brain wave activity—then the sleep did you no good. You could be awakened during non-dreaming periods without harm. But if you were prevented from dreaming….

  Another shock.

  He responded sluggishly. Psychosis, that was what it produced. Sleep deprivation psychosis. The absence of dreaming drove a man—

  Shock.

  Mad. Drove him mad.

  He had never been so tired. No one in the history of the world had been so tired. There was no greater blessing than sleep, it was better than cold mountain water, better than caviar, better than Hogarth’s mother.

  Hogarth’s mother?

  Rocking herself to sleep.

  There was another shock.

  He saw it all very clearly now, despite the white fog and the white sound and the shocks. He saw that the elephant king had overcome the giants in the land of Peruvian Green, and the queen of the homeostasis had integrated all the mega-functions on the top of her crystal blackboard. Meanwhile the gun was pointed at the cap of the archduke who flew over the castle tops wearing his pink beret while he selected a suitable tree upon which to perch and lay his nest of eggs. That was to be expected since there was Dante’s voyage across the seven seas in glorious meritocracy and seaside playpens of laughing infants who played in the seaside digging sandcastles and innovating in the ocean before they were finally allowed to sleep, and then they were happy and gurgling, and soft voices of their dear departed mother would whisper into their ear, all sorts of marvelous reassurances about the future of the Holy Grail and IBM lost ten points in heavy low rubberneck.

  Forester, a rubber of whist, eh? And then we fixed on the fort, all guns blazing for her majesty.

  Eh?

  20. EIGHTEENTH NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

  “YOU’LL BE PLEASED TO know,” George Washington said, smiling kindly, “that everything was a complete success. An unqualified success.”

  Clark felt a surging thrill, a moment of great pleasure. “That’s wonderful.”

  “We’re still concerned about how long the effects will last—”

  Oh dear, Clark thought, suddenly worried.

  “—but we can hope, at least, that they are permanent.”

  Permanent? How delightful that was, how thrilling. They were truly on the verge of a breakthrough in science. He felt an almost palpable sense of discovery. It was very exciting, working here in Advance. It was the most exciting thing a young man could do.