Keeper of Dreams Read online

  “Not one thing,” Todd said.

  “Plenty of tests left to run.”

  “No tests left to run except the viral microscopy, and that’s next week.”

  Ryan smiled. “Well, then, the problem must be viral.”

  “You know damn well the problem isn’t viral.”

  Ryan looked at him sharply, his long grey hair tossing in the opposite direction. “What is it then? Sunspots? Aliens from outer space? God’s punishment? The Jews? Yellow Peril?”

  Todd didn’t answer. Just settled down to doublechecking the figures. Outside he heard the Sunday parade. Pentecostal. Jesus Will Save You, Brother, When You Go Without Your Sins. How could he concentrate?

  “What’s wrong?” Ryan asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Todd answered. Nothing. Sweet Jesus, you old man, if I could live to thirty-three I’d let them hang my corpse from any cross they wanted. If I could live to thirty.

  Twenty-four. Birthday June 28. They used to celebrate birthdays. Now everyone tried to keep it secret. Not Todd, though. Not well-adjusted Todd. Even had a few friends over, they drank to his health. His hands shook at night now, like palsy, like fear, and his teeth were rotting in his mouth. He looked down at the paper where his hands were following the lines. The numbers blurred. Have to have new glasses again, second time this year. The veins on his hands stuck out blue and evil-looking.

  And Sandy was over the edge today.

  She was only twenty-two; it hit the women first. He had met her just before college, they had married, had nine children in nine years—duty to the race. It must be child-bearing that made the women get it sooner. But the race had to go on.

  Somehow. And now their older children were grown up, having children of their own. Miracles of modern medicine. We don’t know why you get old so young, and we can’t cure it, but in the meantime we can give you a little more adulthood—accelerated development, six-month gestation, puberty at nine, not a disease left you could catch except the one. But the one was enough. Not as large as a church door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

  His chin quivered and tears dropped down wrinkled cheeks onto the page.

  “What is it?” Ryan asked, concerned. Todd shook his head. He didn’t need comfort, not from a novice of eighteen, only two years out of college.

  “What is it?” Ryan persisted.

  “It’s tears,” Todd answered. “A salty fluid produced by a gland near the eye, used for lubrication. Also serves double-duty as a signal to other people that stress cannot be privately coped with.”

  “So don’t cope privately. What is it?”

  Todd got up and left the room. He went to his office and called the medical center.

  “Psychiatric,” he said to the moronic voice that answered.

  Psychiatric was busy. He called again and got through. Dr. Lassiter was in.

  “Todd,” Lassiter said.

  “Val,” Todd answered. “Got a problem.”

  “Can it wait? Busy day.”

  “Can’t wait. It’s Sandy. She started babbling today.”

  “Ah,” said Val. “I’m sorry. Is it bad?”

  “She remembers her separation therapy. Like it was yesterday.”

  “That’s it then, Todd,” Val said. “I’m really sorry. Sandy’s a wonderful woman, good researcher, but there’s nothing we can do.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be able to see signs before she reaches this stage?”

  “Usually,” Val answered, “but not always. Think back, though. I’m sure you’ll remember signs.”

  Todd swallowed. “Have you got a space, Val? You knew Sandy back in the old days, back when we were kids in the—”

  “Is this pressure, Todd?” Val asked abruptly. “Appeal to friendship? Don’t you know the law?”

  “I know the law, dammit, I’m asking you, one medical researcher to another, is there room?”

  “There’s room, Todd,” Val answered, “for the treatables. But if she’s reverted to separation therapy, then what can I do? It’s a matter of weeks. For your own safety you have to turn her over, never know what’s going to happen during the final senility, you know. Hallucinations. Sometimes violence. There’s still strength in the old bones.”

  “She’s committed no crime.”

  “It’s also the law,” Val reminded him. “Good-bye.”

  Todd hung up the phone. Turn her over? He’d never thought it would come to Sandy so suddenly. He couldn’t just turn her over, she’d hate him, she had enough of herself left in herself to know what was going on. They’d been married thirteen years.

  He went back to Ryan in the lab and told him to put the computers on the viral microscopy tomorrow.

  “That’s unscientific, to rush it,” said Ryan.

  “Damned unscientific,” Todd agreed. “Do it.”

  “OK,” Ryan answered. “It’s Sandy, isn’t it?”

  “It’s handwriting,” Todd said. “It’s all over the walls.”

  Todd went home and found Sandy in the living room, cuddling a pillow and watching the tube. Someone was yelling at someone else. Sandy didn’t care. She was stroking the pillow, making love noises. Todd sat on the chair and watched her for almost an hour. She never noticed him. She did, however, change pillows.

  “Gog,” she said.

  She listened for an answer, nodded, smiled, held the pillow to her breasts. Todd chewed his fingernails. His heart was fluttering.

  He went into the kitchen and fixed dinner. She ate, though she spilled a great deal and threw her spoon on the floor.

  He put her to bed. Then he showered, came back out, and crawled into bed beside her.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing,” she challenged, her voice husky and mature.

  “Going to bed,” Todd answered.

  “Not in my bed, you bastard,” she said, shoving at him.

  “My bed, you mean,” he said, even though he knew better.

  She growled. Like a tiger, Todd thought. Then she clawed at his face. Her nails were long. He lurched back, his face on fire with pain. The motion carried him off the bed. He landed heavily on the floor. His brittle old bones ached at the impact. He felt for his eyes, to see if they were still there. They were.

  “If you ever come back,” she said, “I’ll have my husband eat you alive.”

  Todd didn’t bother arguing. He went into the living room and curled up on the couch. For the first time he wished that children still lived at home nowadays. That even the two-year-old were there to talk to. He touched the pillow, pulled it toward him, then stopped himself. Pillows. One of the signs.

  Not me, he thought.

  He fell asleep surrounded by nightmares of childhood, attacked on all sides by sagging flesh and fragile bones and eyes and ears that had forgotten all they ever knew how to do.

  He woke with the blood clotted stiffly on his face. His back was sore where he had struck the floor last night. He walked stiffly to the bathroom. When he washed the blood off his face the cuts opened again, and he spent a half hour stanching the bleeding.

  When he left home, Sandy was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a tea party for herself and the pillows.

  “Good-bye, Sandy,” Todd said.

  “More tea, Gog?” she answered.

  He did not go to the lab. Instead he went to the library and used his top security clearance to gain access to the gerontology section. It was illegal to use security clearance for personal purposes, but who would know? Who would care, for that matter. He found a volume entitled Psychology of Accelerated Aging by V. N. Lassiter. He finished it at one o’clock.

  Ryan looked irritated when Todd finally came in.

  “We’ve been running the series without you,” he said, “but holy hell, Todd, everybody’s been on my back for doing it early. If you’re going to give me a screwed-up order, at least be here to take the lumps.”

  “Sorry.” Todd started looking over the early readouts.

  “You won’t find
anything yet,” Ryan said.

  “I know,” Todd answered. “But the meeting is on Friday.”

  Ryan slammed down a sheaf of papers on his desk.

  “We’ll make the report then,” Todd went on.

  “If we make a report then it will be worth exactly nothing,” Ryan said angrily.

  “If we make a report then—and we will make a report then—it will be as accurate as human understanding can make it. Do you think we’ll miss anything now? There’s nothing. Our blood is no different from the blood of our great-great-grandfathers who lived to be ninety-five. There are no microbes. And viruses are just corkscrews.”

  “If you do this,” Ryan said, “I’ll recommend that you be removed from your post and the viral microscopy series be run again.”

  Todd laughed. “Calm down,” he said. “I’m twenty-four.”

  Ryan looked at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey,” Todd said, “don’t worry about it. In a few months, you can run the whole thing over again if you want. And the guy after you, and the one after him, run it over and over and over again through eternity. I won’t care. You’ll have your time in the sun, Ryan. You’ll have six years as head of the department and you’ll write papers, conduct research, and then you’ll roll over like the rest of us and wiggle your feet in the air for a while and then you’ll die.”

  Ryan turned away. “I’ve got the point, Todd.”

  “Dr. Halking, boy,” Todd said. “Dr. Halking to you until I’m dead.” Todd walked to the window and opened it. Outside on the lawn was an afternoon rally of the Fatalists. “Hasten the day,” they sang at the top of their decrepit lungs, white hair flashing in the breeze and the sunlight. “Take me away, death is the answer, don’t make me stay.”

  “Shut the window,” Ryan said. Todd opened it wider. Two students, graduate students about sixteen years old, took a few quick steps toward him.

  “Relax,” Todd said. “I’m not jumping.”

  Todd was still standing at the window when Val Lassiter came. “Ryan called me,” Val said.

  “I know,” Todd answered. “I heard him call.”

  “Let’s talk,” Val answered. The students left the room. Val looked at Ryan, and he also left. “They’re gone,” Val said. “Let’s talk.”

  Todd sat in a chair. “I know what you’re thinking,” Todd said. “I’m showing the signs.”

  “What signs?”

  Todd sighed. “Don’t give me any of that psychiatrist crap. I read your book. I’ve got it all: Tears, worries, inability to bear delay, impatience with friends, unwillingness to admit any possibility of hope, suicidal behavior—I’m so far gone that if Jesus whispered in my ear, ‘You’re saved,’ I’d believe and be baptized and not be surprised at all.”

  “You shouldn’t have read that book, Todd.”

  “I read the book but I’m not over the edge, Val. I will be, I know, but not yet. It’s just Sandy—I was a fool, I let myself get too attached, you know? I can’t handle it. Can’t let go. Keep feeling there’s got to be a way.”

  Val smiled and touched Todd’s shoulder. “You’ve devoted your life to finding a way. So have I. So have all of us from the project. Geniuses all, even Sandy, what a damned shame she’s the first to go. But the cure won’t come overnight. Won’t come by trying to reverse what’s irreversible.”

  “Who says it’s irreversible?” Todd demanded.

  “Experience,” Val said. “What, do you think you can go out of your discipline and outdo the experts in a sudden flash of inspiration? All you’ll think of are ideas we’ve thought of and discarded long ago.”

  “How do you know it can’t be reversed? We don’t even know what causes the aging, Val. We don’t even know if it has a cause—why is the cutoff point separation therapy? Why can’t you help people once they revert to that?”

  Val shrugged. “It’s arbitrary. We can’t do that much for others, either.”

  Todd shook his head, saying, “Val, you don’t understand. Maybe what’s going on in separation therapy is part of what causes the senility—”

  Val stood impatiently. “I told you, Todd. You’ll only think of things we already thought of. It can’t be the cause because separation therapy began after the aging epidemic. It was tried as a cure. It was used so we would mature faster, so we would have more adult, productive years. Todd, you know that, you know it can’t be the cause, what is this?”

  Todd picked up a stack of readouts. “Forget it, Val. Tell everyone I’m over my breakdown. It’s Sandy being over the edge. I just couldn’t handle the grief awhile, OK?”

  Val smiled. “OK. Have you turned her over yet?”

  Todd stiffened. “No.”

  Val stopped smiling. “It’s the law, Todd. Do it soon. Do it before I have to report it.”

  Todd looked up at Val with a sickening smile on his face. “And when will you have to report it, Val?”

  Val looked at Todd for a moment, then turned and left. The others came back to the lab. They worked all afternoon and far into the night, pretending nothing had happened. At least Todd hadn’t suicided. So many did these days, especially the brilliant ones; no one would have been surprised. But Todd they needed, at least for a while more, at least until the young ones had a chance to learn. Otherwise they’d be a few years deeper into the hole, there’d be a few more years’ worth of learning lost, a little bit less that one man could hope to do in his short lifetime.

  Todd called in sick the next morning. He was not sick. He took Sandy by the hand, led her to the car, and drove her to the childhouse. He flashed his security pass and rushed Sandy through the halls as quickly as possible, so no one would notice she was over the edge.

  The rushing about left Todd’s heart fluttering, his old hopeless heart, he thought, only a few more months, only a few more weeks of pumping away. They were met at the observation window by several young researchers; couldn’t be out of college yet, maybe fifteen. Hair still young, eyes still bright, skin still smooth. Todd felt angry, looking at them.

  They were impressed to be meeting the Todd Halking. “Gee, Dr. Halking,” the heavyset young women enthused, “we never thought our work would have any application on the biological end of things.”

  “It probably doesn’t,” Todd said. “But we need to check every angle. This is my wife. She has a cold, so I’d advise you to keep your distance.”

  Sandy showed no sign of paying attention to the conversation around her. She only watched the large window in front of her. On the other side a child was playing with two stuffed animals. One was a bear, the other a lion.

  “Poogy,” Sandy whispered. “Gog.”

  A research supervisor walked into the observation room and began the testing. For a moment Todd tuned in to the heavyset woman’s droning explanation: “. . . check to make sure the child’s reliance is not pathological, in which case special treatment is necessary. In most cases separation therapy is judged to be safe, and so we proceed immediately . . ..”

  The tests were simple—the supervisor knelt by the child and showed affection to each love object in turn, first by patting, then by kissing, then by taking the love object briefly and hugging it. Though the little girl showed some signs of anxiety when the researcher took the love object away for a moment to hug it, she was considered ready for therapy. “After all,” the student explained to Todd, “for a five-year-old to show no anxiety would be as startling as extreme anxiety.”

  And so the separation therapy began. The attendant took both stuffed animals and left the room.

  The little girl’s anxiety was immediately more acute. She watched the door for a few moments, then stood up, went to the door, and tried to make it open. Of course the buttons didn’t respond to her touch. She paced for a little while, then sat back down and waited, watching the door.

  “You see,” said the student, “you see how patient she is? That can be a sign of exceptional maturity.”

  Then the little girl ran out of patience.
She began to call out. Her words were inaudible, but Todd could hear Sandy beside him, mumbling, “Poogy, Gog, Poogy, Gog,” in time with the little girl’s silent cries. She was reacting. Todd felt a shiver of fear run through him, upward, from his feet. She would react, but would it do any good?

  The little girl was screaming now, her face red, her eyes bugging out. “She may, because she is an exceptionally affectionate and reliant child, continue this until she is unconscious,” said the student. “We are monitoring her, however, in case she needs a sedative. If we can avoid the sedative, we do, because it does them good, like a purgative, to work it out of their system.”

  The little girl lay on the floor and kicked. She beat her head brutally against the floor. “Padded, of course,” said the student. “Persistent little devil, isn’t she?”

  Todd noticed that tears were rolling down Sandy’s cheeks. Profusively, making a latticework of tear tracks.

  The little girl jumped up and ran as fast as she could against the wall, striking it with her head. The force of the impact was so great that she rebounded a full five feet and landed on her back. She jumped up again and screamed and screamed. Then she began running around the room in circles.

  “Oh, well,” said the student. “This could go on for hours, Dr. Halking. Would you like to see something else?”

  “I’d like to continue watching a while longer,” Todd said softly.

  The little girl abruptly stopped moving and slowly removed all her clothing. Then she started tearing at her naked skin with her teeth and fingernails. Streaks of bloody wounds followed after her fingers.

  “Uh-oh,” said the student. “Self-destructive. Have to stop her, she might go for the eyes and cause permanent damage.”

  The last word was lost as the door slammed behind her. In a moment the observers saw the student researcher enter the therapy room. The little girl flew at her, screaming and clawing. The student, despite her weight, was well trained—she subdued the child quickly without sustaining or causing any wounds. Todd watched as the woman deftly forced a straitjacket on the child.

  “Dr. Halking,” one of the other students said, interrupting his observation. “I beg your pardon, but what is your wife doing?”