Capitol Read online

  And only a week, later, the sleepers joined them.

  Dialogue with Thomas N. Cortia, the last of the five to remain sane:

  Good morning, Tom.

  "Morning, George."

  No use hiding this from you.

  "Mrs. Feean went off the deep end."

  You're the miracle man now, Tom. How do you do it?

  "Maybe I'm just stubborn and maybe I'm too old to go crazy and maybe I'm already halfway crazy and we don't know it yet."

  There's not much hope.

  "Can't say I mind."

  What's it feel like, Tom?

  "Doesn't feel too normal. For one thing, it sounds strange even now to have you calling me Tom. All my memories right now have everybody calling me Bill. My brother, right? Don't feel like my brother. It feels like me."

  Really?

  "No."

  Not really?

  "I mean it don't feel like me. I mean those memories-- they just aren't right at all. Not at all. I know Bill pretty well right now, and I know he'd hate it if he knew how complete my knowledge of his past really is. I never knew he screwed my cousin Sally. At a family reunion, right in the bathroom. That memory's just been eating at me, George. Cause I wouldn't have done that. There's no time in my life I would've rutted on a woman like that. That's not my style."

  What is your style, Tom?

  "I don't know, dammit. All my memories is telling me that is my style, but it's wrong. Dead wrong. I don't know why."

  What about yourself? Tom, not the Bill memories.

  "All I know about me is the way Bill remembers me. George, it's impossible to see myself as a stinkin' little tagalong who's worth less than horse manure. I wasn't like that. But Bill knows me better than any other living human being knows me, right? It isn't me, though. Lord, it isn't me. And I wouldn't've said what Bill said."

  When?

  "Ever! George, you don't know what it's like. As far as I know, I'm Bill. But every damn memory I have is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I wouldn't act that way. I wouldn't do those things. I wouldn't've married that tight little bitch he picked up in New York. I wouldn't've raised my kids so pussyfoot easy, they all turned into bastards. My life's turned out all wrong, George, and I can't handle that. I've done everything wrong in my life, at least that's how I remember it, and you can tell me it isn't true and tell me I'm really Tom and not Bill but that doesn't change what I remember and what I remember doesn't change the fact that Bill just doesn't act the way I'd act and...

  Calm down, now, Tom. Don't let it get to you.

  "It was easier the first few days. Hell, George, I was like a man trying out a brand new body. My fingers didn't act right. My legs kept walking shorter than they oughta. I had plenty to occupy my mind. Especially the cancer. My brother's memories don't include himself having any cancer, you know."

  They can cure it.

  "They can't cure my head. George, I promise you I'll hang on as long as I can, but I'll go bonkers soon enough."

  Don't do it on my account.

  "No. No sir, wouldn't put myself out none for you."

  Tom, when you go crazy, if you do, we'll just put you under somec again. And we'll try to bring you out of it when we know how to do it better.

  "Forget it, George. If it means somebody else's head in mine, forget it. It's hell, George. When I die, they're sending me to hell, and it'll be just like this."

  See you tomorrow, Tom.

  "Fat chance, George. But you're a nice young bastard, even if you are screwing up people's heads. Have a good day."

  You too, Tom.

  * * *

  They tried it again. They started with the assumption that it was too confusing to use a near relative as the source of memories. It was too difficult when the patient knew he had once been someone else. So they took five more; again, those with the least advanced cancer. They gave them the braintapes of people their age and their sex, but told the patients nothing of the experiment. Instead, the patients were told that they had had amnesia and a serious illness, but they were getting better.

  It made no difference.

  Dialogue with Marian Williamson, the last of the five to remain sane. She believed her name was Lydia Harper:

  Lydia, how did you sleep?

  "It was hideous."

  Hideous? Why?

  "I kept dreaming."

  About what?

  "You told me you weren't a shrink."

  I lied. Haven't you ever lied?

  "Yes, Dr. Rines, I have."

  Are you good at it?

  "Very, very good." [Patient weeps.]

  What's wrong, Lydia?

  "Doctor, I don't know, I don't know, I keep dreaming terrible dreams, I keep seeing myself doing hideous things, what's wrong with me?"

  I don't know. You were sick.

  "Not that sick. Oh, I have an occasional pain in my stomach, but nothing too serious, I'm not a hypochondriac, I refuse to complain, but doctor, I can't bear living with myself."

  Come now. You've lived with yourself all your life.

  "I don't know how I did it. Dr. Rines, is it possible for a person to keep doing things all her life and then suddenly wish she had never done them? Suddenly wonder how in the world she had ever done them?"

  Like what?

  "I'm not Catholic. I don't like confessing."

  Is it that terrible?

  "Sometimes."

  Tell me the other times.

  "It'll sound so silly."

  I promise not to laugh unless you laugh first.

  "I'll hold you to that, doctor. Because I won't laugh. And I won't tell you something silly. I'll tell you the worst thing of all."

  Only if you want to.

  "I have to. Oh, God, help me. I'm not an old woman, doctor. I'm only thirty-eight. I haven't seen a mirror since I woke up after my amnesia, but even if I'm ugly now, doctor, I was once quite a pretty young woman. Doctor, I-- even this might sound silly, but it's true-- I haven't been particularly inhibited, sexually, during my life."

  It doesn't seem to be expected these days.

  "And I don't regret that. But in college, I was strapped for money. Maybe you don't remember the recession of the seventies, doctor, but my parents couldn't keep me in school any longer and I was determined to get an education. So I started-- I started charging for it."

  For sex?

  "I was a whore. I'd make appointments through a couple of men I had had as lovers. I charged twenty dollars. I was cheap. But I stayed in college."

  You aren't the first woman to have done that.

  "I know it. That isn't it, it isn't that I disapprove, though I do. I mean, I disapprove now, but until I woke up just now I never did. What matters is that I can't believe I ever did it."

  Yet you remember that you did.

  "But I wouldn't do that!"

  But you did it. You're just denying the truth.

  "I know, I know it, but doctor, in the name of God I swear I would never, never, never do that. It is impossible. I can't live with myself having done that!" [Patient weeps uncontrollably.]

  It's just one thing, Lydia.

  "It's not. It's the way I wore my makeup, deliberately to be seductive. I can see myself sitting there at the mirror, relishing the effect. The memory makes me sick. And the way I always let my father run my life. For years I did whatever he said to do. I was so sorry when he died. Now I'm glad he's dead. And that's terrible, because I remembered that I loved him. Why should I forget how much I loved him?"

  I don't know.

  "Because he was a selfish, controlling bastard, that's why. Oh, I can't believe I said that. I don't use language like that, doctor. I sleep with men for money, but I don't use language like that. I'm going crazy, doctor. I'm losing my mind. Nothing in my life seems to fit together anymore. I keep wanting to kill myself."

  I hope you won't.

  "Do you think these pains in my stomach could be cancer?"

  We can have that checked.

 
; "If I have cancer, doctor, I'll kill myself. That would be the last straw."

  We'll have you checked. But don't talk about killing yourself.

  "I'm sorry. I've never talked that way before. I don't know why I'm talking like that now. Thanks for listening to me, Dr. Rines. Am I really insane?"

  You sound quite healthy to me.

  "Really? You wouldn't lie?"

  I would lie, if I thought it would do any good. But right now I'm not lying.

  "Thank you. Thank you very much."

  I'll see you tomorrow.

  When George saw her the next day, she was catatonic and would not speak.

  George examined the dossier that had been vaulted away along with her body when she first went on somec. The dossier on Marian Williamson, not on Lydia Harper. The woman was a ruthless businesswoman, had ruined dozens of other men and women in her race to the top of the business world. She couldn't cope with failure-- she stated that in her own autobiography. She refused to be thwarted, even by cancer. That was why she had taken somec.

  The autobiography also mentioned a psychotherapist in Boston, and George used government funds to bring him out to Berkeley.

  "Dr. Manwaring, you don't know how much I appreciate your coming."

  "When you explained the situation, how could I refuse?"

  "I'm going to ask you to violate your ethics, doctor. You know the situation Marian Williamson is in. It would help us a lot to understand what happened to her if you could tell us what she was. like before the somec."

  "It's unethical, all right, but I knew that's what you'd want to know, and that's why I came out. I'm prepared to help. I'm sure she'd approve of my violating her confidence if it might help to save her life. She's in favor of survival. Or rather, of survival on the best possible terms."

  George Rines showed him transcripts of the dialogues with Marian Williamson, who now believed herself to be Lydia Harper.

  "This is odd," Dr. Manwaring pointed out.

  "I know," George said. "How odd?"

  "Well, I should tell you that I don't believe in a soul. I don't even believe in a mind, apart from brain activity. But I don't know how to explain this without resorting to something like that."

  "You haven't told me what you're trying to explain."

  "Marian Williamson was a very religious woman. Not in any formal way, of course. Not with any organization. But she believed profoundly in God. And believed that he was taking a direct role in her life. Whenever she overcame a rival for a position in her business, she ascribed the victory to God. Actually, of course, she had undercut the poor devil and eaten the ground out from under him. Or her. She had no favoritism for either sex. She'd shaft anybody. But, you see, in this dialogue it could be Marian. 'Oh, God, help me,' she says. I think she says that in three of the dialogues, doesn't she?"

  "Yes.

  "And something else. This sex thing. Marian had an active sex life. She was no prude. Never married, never had children, but certainly knew plenty of men and tasted the fruits of the garden of Eden, so to speak. But this passage in the last dialogue, where she talks about selling herself. That was very important to her. She'd neyer sleep with anybody who ever worked in her field. She never involved her business in her love life. She was very emphatic about that-- sex was for love, not for money. You see? This could have been her. Not the speech patterns, necessarily, I'm not an expert on that. But from what you told me of somec, there shouldn't be any survival of memory, should there?"

  "Only learned memory is erased. Instinct remains."

  "I'm a behaviorist of sorts, Dr. Rines, and I just find it impossible to ascribe this to instinct. Bedwetting and fingersucking I can accept. Even homosexuality might be carried on the genes. But the environment has to have some influence."

  "I don't know that much about the different schools of thought."

  "I suppose it isn't all that significant. I'm just telling you where I come from, because that makes my conclusion from all this surprise even me."

  "Conclusion?"

  "Hypothesis. Remarkable things are carried on the genes. Things we never supposed. A proclivity for surmounting all obstacles. A tendency to divorce sex from business. How can that be genetic? All I can guess is that something in the DNA, or a relationship between various proteins, is compatible with certain responses to the environment and incompatible with others. It's in the genes. In which case, what the hell is a psychotherapist good for?"

  George shrugged. "I've always wondered that."

  For a moment Dr. Manwaring looked annoyed. Theo he laughed. "So have I. We don't help very many people, and we never help the people who need help the most. You aren't a psychotherapist, are you? Yet I would have been pleased, despite all my years of training, if one of my dialogues with Marian Williamson had gone so smoothly."

  "Thank you. You've been a tremendous help."

  "Let me read the paper you write."

  "I will. You don't mind my using a tape of this conversation?"

  "Not at all. What are you going to call it?"

  "Call what?"

  "This effect. How about, 'The Soul Syndrome.'"

  "Scientists who talk seriously about the soul get laughed out of symposiums, Dr. Manwaring."

  "Then at least do me a favor and title the article 'The Discovery of the Soul.' Because I think that's what you found here. It may not live on after death, but it sure as hell is an inner force that controls the outer actions. The genuine unconscious. Freud would be proud of you. Even though Freud was an idiot."

  They laughed. They had dinner together. And the next day, after George took Dr. Manwaring to the airport, he sat watching the planes take off. It surprised him, vaguely, that the planes were still following their normal domestic schedules. France had surrendered the day before-- millions of American soldiers were coining home under terms of the surrender treaty. Britain was becoming a client state of Russia. A war had been fought and lost in thirty weeks, and during all that time America hadn't stopped, hadn't gone on rationing, hadn't even buckled her belt a little tighter. The airlines still flew. And George Rines had an uninterrupted budget for researching into the human soul, of all things.

  No wonder we lost, George thought. We don't even know when we're at war.

  He went back to the laboratory and made a decision. The next experiment would have an entirely different purpose. The sleepers were beyond saving. But somec wasn't. Somec might be useful.

  In the morning he had his own brain taped. And then, while the assistants were busy speculating on why the boss had done that, he went into another laboratory, put the normal dosage of somec into a syringe, and in front of a horrified graduate student he injected himself with the drug.

  It coursed through him quickly and painfully and it surprised him. "Dr. Rines," the graduate student shouted. "That was somec."

  "I know," he answered impatiently, "and it hurts like hell. The braintapers have a tape of my own brain. Leave me for a couple of days, revive me, and play myself back into me."

  "Why did you do this to yourself?"

  "It's against the law to use human beings as guinea pigs. I promised myself I wouldn't sue." And then the somec turned hot in his veins and his memories fled out of his mind and he was asleep.

  * * *

  He awoke disoriented. He remembered sitting down to be taped, remembered the helmet on his head with the needles that carried the currents. And now, abruptly, he was lying on a bed in the patient section of the lab, surrounded by his assistants.

  "Good morning," he said.

  "You're an idiot," said Doran Waite. "Scientists don't try their own magic potions anymore."

  "I couldn't legally ask anyone else to do this, and we had to know."

  "So we'll know. And if we were wrong about the rats and even your own brain patterns don't fit inside your head anymore, what will you do then?"

  "Be out of circulation before the Russians come." George laughed. No one else did.

  While waiting to s
ee how George turned out, they kept working. They tried a control group, to see if any residual memories did, in fact, remain after the somec. They revived another five patients but did not play any braintapes into their heads. They remained like infants, utterly out of control of their bodies. After two weeks of no more progress than an infant of the same age, they were put back on somec.

  And George had no ill effects at all. "No disorientation," he told the assistants who interviewed him. "No feeling that my memories are wrong at all. I feel fine."

  When he had said that for five weeks, he started work on writing the final report. It took more than a month, with all the papers to be sorted through and interpreted, but the conclusion was basically this: There was nothing to be done to help the current sleepers, but by pretaping a person's memories and then putting him on somec, with the tape to be replayed after he awakened, a person could be kept alive for an indefinite period of time with no damage whatsoever. It meant that now people who were dying of cancer could be safely put to sleep and revived when the cure was available. It meant that now a crew could be put on a spaceship and sleep their way to the stars and awaken at the other end, probably with no ill effects-- though, of course, there hadn't been time to test the effects of somec over several centuries. But it meant there was a chance.

  It meant that immortality of a sort was within reach.

  And, report in hand-- or rather, in briefcase-- George Rines flew back to Washington and went straight to Senator Maxwell's office. The senator was in a meeting. George waited. And when the senator returned, George didn't give him time to say hello.

  After a few minutes of George explaining all the implications of somec combined with braintaping, the senator wearily shook his head.

  "Starships, George? Immortality? Who really gives a damn anymore?"

  The despair was so thick in the room that George caught himself holding his breath, as if not to breathe it in. A moment ago he had been excited, had been sure he could communicate that excitement to Senator Maxwell.

  Instead the senator handed him a short press release. "Go ahead and read it. The President's reading it to the press right now."