Drug of Choice Read online

  “The drug,” Clark said.

  “Yes indeed. It is the drug of choice for controlling mental state. It produces mental… well, pliability. Suggestiveness is heightened to an extraordinary degree. One is receptive to suggestion, any suggestion, and one will live quite happily within the framework of that suggestion until another suggestion is supplied.”

  “My tennis racket.”

  “Exactly. Two days ago, one of the boys went into your room, cut a string on your racket, and suggested to you that you had broken it in a fierce game of tennis. You accepted that idea quite happily.”

  “I’ve been on the drug all that time?”

  “Oh yes. From your first mango punch. And, of course, the sound…”

  “In the television?”

  “Yes. It is a particular frequency, which can be duplicated with a tuning fork, such as this one here.” He held up a small, polished fork, and struck it against the table. It hummed softly.

  “This fork vibrates at 423 cycles. That is a resonant frequency of an audio output of the brain’s alpha waves. A normal person finds it no more than a passing irritant. But under the influence of the drug—well, shall I show you?”

  Clark said, “Please do.”

  “Very well.”

  They went outside; Lefevre said to the waiters, “Anyone making love tonight?”

  One waiter said, “The one in room 24.”

  “Has she been sounded yet?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “All right.”

  He led Clark to the elevator; they rode up to the second floor, and went down the corridor to room 24. Lefevre unlocked it and went in.

  A girl lay on the bed. It was the same girl that Clark had seen earlier, walking upstairs with the waiter. She was a pretty young blond with a white bikini.

  She sat up and smiled uncertainly as they entered. “Darling?” she said, in a questioning voice. “Yes, darling,” Lefevre said. “It’s me.”

  “Oh,” the girl said, smiling happily, “I was waiting for you.”

  “I’m here now.”

  She smiled, then looked at Clark. “But have you brought someone else with you?”

  “No, darling. You must be mistaken. I am alone.”

  “Oh,” the girl said, staring right at Clark. “I must have been mistaken. Do you love me very much?”

  “Very much, darling.”

  “Have you come to make love to me?”

  “Yes,” Lefevre said.

  “I’m glad,” the girl said.

  “You just undress, and get into bed,” Lefevre said. “I’m going into the bathroom for a moment.”

  “All right,” the girl said. She stood up and began to remove her bikini. Clark and Lefevre remained standing near the bed.

  “I don’t think you can hear me talking in the bathroom, darling,” Lefevre said.

  “No, I can’t,” she said.

  “You see,” Lefevre said to Clark, “she is totally happy with sensations which she manufactures for herself. You’ll notice the tentative way she speaks. That is because she requires the baseline stimulus, the minimal directions, from someone on the outside. From me. Whatever I tell her, she accepts. If I tell her you are not in the room, then of course you are not.”

  Clark said, “Who does she think you are?”

  “I don’t know,” Lefevre said. “And I don’t want to push it. You’ll soon come to understand that people on this drug have a way of telling you what kind of sensations they want to experience. She undoubtedly thinks I’m her husband or lover or whoever it is she wants to believe I am. I have done nothing to change that preconception. If I were to announce, for example, that I were her father, then she would panic. But I haven’t announced that I have only followed her cues, and reinforced the appropriate ones.”

  “And she accepts this, because of the drug.”

  “Yes. But the drug has other powers, a whole new order of powers on a scale quite undreamed of. Because when she hears the sound of the tuning fork—well, watch for yourself.”

  The girl was by now in bed, the sheets pulled up to her chin. She stared calmly at the ceiling.

  “Darling,” she said.

  “I’m here,” Lefevre said. “I love you.”

  The girl did not move. She continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “You make love beautifully,” she said.

  Abruptly, Lefevre struck the tuning fork. The girl’s eyes snapped shut and her body went rigid for a moment and then relaxed. She seemed suddenly fast asleep.

  Clark began to understand. “She’s in a coma,” he said.

  “Yes. Unarousable for a period of twelve to sixteen hours, but quite safe, I assure you. In fact she is experiencing sensations of fantastic pleasure. That is the beauty of the drug: it stimulates hypothalamic pleasure centers directly, in combination with the correct auditory stimuli. For twelve hours she will experience nothing but pure, total, delightful pleasure.”

  “And afterward?”

  “She will get more drug. And more again, up until the morning of her departure. The doses will be tapered on that final day; she will be just beginning to awake fully when she is aboard the seaplane, taking off for Nassau. When she wakes up, she will be refreshed, tanned, invigorated—and she will carry beautiful memories back with her.”

  “All quite neat.”

  “Yes indeed,” Lefevre said. “This drug is a significant breakthrough.”

  They walked out of the room, down the hallway. Clark said, “What exactly is the drug?”

  “We’re not certain. It hasn’t been fully analyzed yet.”

  “But you’re administering it—”

  “Oh yes,” Lefevre said, with a wave of his hand, “but it’s quite safe. You can see that for yourself. Perfectly safe.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “It hasn’t got a name. After all, why name it? Who needs to know its name? It will never be marketed, never be made available to the public. Can you imagine what would happen if it were available?” Lefevre shook his head. “The whole world would be lying around in a coma. Industry would grind to a halt. Commerce would cease. Wars would end in mid-battle. Life as we know it would simply stop.”

  Clark said nothing.

  “When we at Advance developed this drug, we were aware of its potential. We were most careful to guard it, and to plan for its limited commercial use. In this setting, you see, the drug is superb. People come here, have a fine time, and go home refreshed and happy. They return to normal, active lives none the worse for their experience—indeed, much improved. Don’t you think we’ve accomplished something marvelous?”

  “No,” Clark said.

  “That’s very odd,” Lefevre said. “An opinion like that, coming from an employee of the corporation.”

  “What corporation?”

  “Advance, of course. Why do you think we woke you up? You’ve got to start working right now.”

  Back in his office, Lefevre showed him the material. “You see,” he said, “there’s no question about it. You are an employee of Advance. Here is the contract you signed when you visited the Santa Monica office.”

  He pushed a photostat of a form across the desk.

  “I signed—”

  And then he remembered the little lady at the desk. There was something that he had signed.

  “And your picture, of course. Shaking hands with Harvey Blood, president of the Corporation. Shaking hands with George K. Washington. The contract states, by the way, that you have full knowledge of the experimental drug, and have agreed to supervise activities at the resort for the month.”

  He smiled.

  “And here,” he said, “is a canceled check, deposited to your account. And another check, here. And a third. Totaling slightly more than seven thousand dollars. So you see, you’re an employee, all right. And a rather well-paid employee at that.”

  Clark said nothing. He was thinking over everything, from the beginning, from the Angel, and then Sharon…<
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  “This was all planned,” he said. “You planned a way to get me out here, you engineered it all—”

  “Let’s say,” Lefevre said, “that we helped you to make up your mind. Now then. For the duration of your stay here—for the rest of the month, until our regular physician in residence comes back from his vacation—you are going to be a rather busy man. We run into minor problems here and there, you know. Nothing to do with the drug, but peripheral things. A young lady sleeps on the balcony to her room and neglects to wear her bathing suit; that can give you a nasty burn, and it must be attended to so that she is not unhappy when she finally goes home. Or a gentleman gets pneumonia. We have two cases of that now, because of the bad weather. They’ll need penicillin treatment, and whatever else you deem appropriate. After all,” he said, “you’re the doctor.”

  Clark sat calmly in his chair. He stared at Lefevre and said, “Sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Yes. Sorry. I won’t play.”

  Lefevre frowned. “That’s a rather serious decision on your part.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I strongly advise you to reconsider.”

  Clark shook his head. “No.”

  “You must realize, of course, that we have anticipated such a maneuver. We are prepared for the possibility that you would reject the plan, and begin scheming. Thinking up ways to blow the whistle on our organization, tell the world, let everyone know about the drug of choice. Eh?”

  Clark kept his face expressionless, but in fact such thoughts had been running through his mind.

  “We have devised a method for dealing with such plans,” Lefevre said.

  He pressed a button on his desk, and two waiters came into the room. They stood quietly by the door.

  “I think,” Lefevre said, “that a demonstration is best.”

  And then, almost before he knew what had happened, the two waiters grabbed him and held him, and Lefevre came forward with a gun in his hand, pressed it to Clark’s arm, and fired. There was a hissing sound, and a slight pain.

  “Release him.”

  The waiters let Clark sit down; he stopped struggling and rubbed his sore arm.

  “And what was that?”

  “I’m rather surprised, doctor,” Lefevre said. “I would have thought you’d have guessed. We have just given you a dose of another compound. It is the reverse of the drug we give here. The exact opposite.”

  Clark waited, preparing himself for some sensation. Nothing happened. He felt a little queasy, but that was all.

  “The posterior thalamic nuclei, on the inferior aspect,” Lefevre said, “can produce most peculiar sensations when stimulated.”

  He held up the tuning fork; the metal glinted in the light.

  Then he swung it down abruptly, striking the table.

  Clark heard a hum.

  15. REVERSAL

  THERE WAS NO IMMEDIATE change. He remained sitting in the office, staring at Lefevre, with the two men at his back. He continued to rub his arm, still sore from the pneumatic hypodermic.

  Gradually, he became aware of an unearthly silence in the room, a still and muffled quality. He looked back at one of the men, and was surprised to see he was talking.

  He glanced at Lefevre, who was replying to the man.

  Clark heard nothing. He saw the lips move, watched as Lefevre gestured and smiled, but he heard nothing.

  “It’s a trick,” he said aloud. “You’re only pretending to talk. You’re trying to frighten me.”

  At this, Lefevre turned to Clark and said something, shaking his head. Clark tried to read the lips but could not… “You’re trying to frighten me.”

  And then, he became aware that he heard nothing at all in the room. Normal sounds—feet on the carpet, the ticking of a clock on the desk, the sounds of breathing, movement, the rain outside—he heard nothing. He could not even hear the beating of his own—

  “My heart,” he said, and put his hand to his chest. He felt nothing. Suddenly afraid, he reached for his wrist to feel the pulse.

  There was no pulse.

  “My heart has stopped.”

  They had poisoned him. He felt a coldness creep over him, beginning in his hands and legs and ears, moving toward the center of his body. An icy, gray coldness.

  “You’re killing me.”

  The room was still silent, the men still standing and watching him. He took a deep breath, but his lungs weren’t working; the air caught in his throat; he was dizzy and gasping.

  They were killing him.

  For a moment, he was able to sit in the chair and tell himself, This isn’t happening, it’s only a drug, and then in the next moment panic washed over him. He leapt up and scrambled for the door. The men stood and watched him as he clawed at the doorknob, his cold fingers slipping off the metal, his hands barely able to grasp and touch. He was shaking now, his body vibrating in an uncontrollable way.

  He fell to his knees, weak and shaking, and leaned against the door. He felt two arms lifting him up, and setting him down in the chair once more.

  Lefevre, behind the desk, lit a cigar, puffing gray smoke at Clark. Clark watched the smoke billow toward him. So that was it: poison gas. The drug was just a ruse. Actually, they were using gas.

  He sniffed the air, and smelled nothing for a moment. Then he began to smell rich tobacco, and then…. something else.

  Acrid, sharp, burning.

  Poison gas.

  Lefevre, watching him, laughed soundlessly. Smoke curled out from his mouth as he laughed.

  Clark was bathed in a cold sweat. He continued to shake and shiver. He closed his eyes and turned away from the gas, a last, final gesture of avoidance, postponing the inevitable.

  Then something new happened. He felt cool air around him, fresh and clean; he heard voices, and he stopped shaking.

  When he opened his eyes, Lefevre was handing him the towel and saying, “Not bad, eh?”

  Clark could not speak. He sat in the chair, weak and exhausted, gasping for breath.

  “Of course,” Lefevre said, “that was only a small dose. Fifteen seconds—that’s all we let you go through—and even that on a small dose. You didn’t even dream. And,” he said, “you may be thankful for that.”

  He sat down behind the desk.

  “However, Dr. Clark, the next time we will not use a small dose, and we will not limit the stress to fifteen seconds. I can assure you the experience will be vastly more unpleasant.” He sighed.

  “It is a most interesting drug, you know,” he said. “In the experimental trials on monkeys and chimpanzees, we found that the animals did not survive prolonged exposure to the effects. They all killed themselves, in the most bizarre ways. One spider monkey strangled itself with its tail—very curious. You see, the drug is intolerable. A creature will do anything to be free of its influence. Anything. I think you can understand that.”

  “I think so,” Clark said, wiping his face with the towel.

  “Good. Then let us get down to business. There is a lady in room fourteen with a bad sunburn on her back. It needs attending. The gentleman in room twelve has incipient bronchopneumonia. He needs medication. The woman in….”

  Clark listened, and when Lefevre was through, he went to work.

  In the following days, he came to understand the system of the resort very well. Guests were given an initial dose of the drug in their mango punch; thereafter, it was administered as a simple white pill, taken with a glass of water. The drug was given by an attendant, who stood by, watching to be sure it was taken.

  The duration of drug effect seemed to be sixteen hours, and it was remarkably constant. Dosages and schedules for each guest were charted on a large sheet at the registration desk. Nearby was another large sheet, which listed some personal information about each guest, his predominant fantasies about what was happening (“Vigorous sportsman. Has been hunting and fishing all trip.” “Compulsive gambler, on big winning streak.” “Spending vacation with secretary, na
me of Alice.”) in order to guide the waiters who had to interact with the guests, from time to time.

  Every second day, each guest was given a “high”, meaning an episode of pleasure-coma brought on by a hum from the television set. Lefevre explained that the highs had to be spaced out, because of the intensity of the experience.

  Meals were brought around three times a day to guests not on a high. They were prepared in a dingy kitchen, located behind the main building of the hotel. The food was always abominable, but it was delivered in a careful way.

  The waiter would bring the tray, and set it down. He would say to the guest, “Where would you like to dine tonight?”

  “Oh, the main ball dining room.”

  “That’s where you are.”

  “Oh, good.”

  The waiter would then say, “And what would you like for dinner?”

  “May I see the menu please?”

  “You have it in your hand.”

  “Oh yes,” the guest would say. “So I do.” He would stare down at his empty hands. “Now let me see…is your crab fresh?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then I’ll have the crab. To begin, caviar. And a bottle of Dom Perignon ’49.”

  “Very good sir. And here you are.” The waiter would indicate the tray.

  “Superb,” the guest would say, beginning to eat “Marvelous food, really marvelous.”

  Lefevre had an additional comment about the food. “You know,” he said, “most of our guests lose weight during their stay here. They think they are eating heartily, and think it is excellent, but in fact they don’t eat a lot. So they lose—two pounds, three pounds, five pounds. They notice it on the way home, and are invariably pleased. They think they’ve been so active and vigorous that the weight was lost despite their heavy eating. It is a peculiarity of our culture,” he said, “that nobody is unhappy about losing weight.”

  The guests spent nearly all of their time in their rooms. On sunny days, they would be taken out to the balcony to lie in the sun and get tanned; otherwise, they were hardly bothered. Every second day a group of “fixers” would go around to each room, talking to the guests. The fixers were people who reinforced fantasies by altering the environment.