Shift: A Novel (18 page)

“First of all,” he said, his soft voice only mildly inflected by a German mad-scientist accent, “let’s make sure we know what we’re looking for. Have you confirmed what Agent Logan gave him?”

“I went through Logan’s files as well as Scheider’s, and everything else I could find about Ultra and Orpheus. Unfortunately, Agent Logan didn’t survive his encounter with Orpheus, and it didn’t seem prudent for me to ask Doc Scheider too many questions—”

“Because you told them Orpheus was dead,” Keller said, a little smile twitching across his lips.

“Because it didn’t seem prudent,” Melchior repeated. “As far as I can tell, the only thing Logan had access to was pure LSD. A lot of LSD, but completely unadulterated. And he was spreading it around pretty widely too. Presumably if he’d been giving out some kind of altered or amped-up version of the drug, we’d have Orpheuses popping up all over the place—including the White House.”

“So the president is safe,” Keller said. “That still doesn’t tell us much.”

“That what’s I hired you for.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said, and it was hard to tell if he was being ironic or ruminative. “So: it was difficult to do anything at first, since being around Orpheus when he’s on LSD is disorienting, to say the least. However, it occurred to me that Thorazine, which has been used to bring people down from the ‘acid trip,’ might also protect the minds of the people around Orpheus when he’s exercising his power. My surmise proved correct, and, after adding some Preludin to counteract the
numbing effects of the Thorazine, I was able to make some progress with my observations. As near as I can tell,” the doctor continued in his sibilant voice, “Orpheus externalizes LSD’s hallucinatory effects. He pulls images from the unconscious minds of people around him and manifests them to their conscious senses.”

“How do you know he’s not making up the images himself?” Melchior asked, without looking away from Chandler. He lay unconscious on a hospital bed, an IV dripping into his arm, his ankles, wrists, and waist fastened to the bed by leather straps.

“Suffice it to say that he’s produced some rather, ah,
singular
images during our time together.” The smile flickered at the edges of Keller’s mouth again. “However, I think Orpheus
can
manufacture images of his own, once he grows more accustomed to his new ability. But for now he’s seems to be like a television, only able to broadcast external data. But there’s more.”

“Namely?”

“I said Orpheus’s power is like a television: it can only broadcast what it receives. But the similarity is deeper: the person supplying the content—the other mind—can, once the channel is open, push thoughts into Chandler’s head.”

“And you know this because?”

Keller looked up from his clipboard, and this time the smile was broad and constant. Melchior was torn between the urge to vomit or hit him in the face. “The first time I gave Orpheus a dose of LSD and felt him in my mind, I panicked. When I am afraid, I imagine myself in the position of some of my past subjects. In their place. It was so real that if I hadn’t locked myself in the room adjoining Chandler’s, I am sure I would have killed myself as Agent Logan did.”

A part of Melchior was dying to know in what position, exactly, the ex-Nazi had imagined himself, but Keller was still speaking.

“The second time I gave Orpheus the drug, I was more prepared. When I felt him feeling around in my mind, I pushed back, and for a few moments what I concentrated on is what manifested itself around me. It was hard to maintain focus, though, and the illusion faded after just a few seconds. But I think that if someone learned to discipline himself—”

“He could manipulate Chandler without him even knowing it.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s very important that you keep this information from Chandler, Dr. Keller,” Melchior said. “Presumably once he learns it, he can also learn to defend against it.”

Keller nodded. “Of course, of course. Here,” he continued eagerly, “take a look at this.” He showed Melchior a couple of sheets of paper from an EEG printout. “This,” he said, tapping a wavy line on the top sheet, “is Chandler’s beta wave pattern after I gave him a combination of Thorazine and Valium to put him to sleep. And this”—the doctor pulled out the second sheet—“is Chandler’s beta wave immediately after an LSD session, before I’d given him anything.”

Melchior studied the two documents. “They look the same.”

“Exactly! Chandler’s nervous system seems to go into a kind of stasis after he’s been given LSD. First there’s an incredible acceleration—his heart rate reaches two hundred beats per minute, yet at the same time he doesn’t seem to feel any cardiac distress. And the trip itself only lasts for an hour or two, even though the normal duration is anywhere from eight to twenty-four. And then immediately afterwards he appears to go into some kind of hibernation so that his body can recover.”

“Hibernation?”

“Look,” the doctor said, pointing at Chandler through the glass.

“At what?”

“His face.”

Melchior looked. “He’s a good-looking guy, Doctor, but not exactly my type.”

“There’s no stubble! It’s been at least four days since he shaved, but his cheeks are completely smooth! Nor has he urinated or had a bowel—”

“I get the picture, Doctor. So, what next?”

“There are still a thousand tests to run. But I need a subject. Someone on whom I can gauge the extent and effect of Chandler’s abilities.”

Melchior looked back at Chandler for a moment, and then his gaze flicked to the right. To a second bed, accoutred with straps like Orpheus’s, but empty.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

Chandler felt the
needle’s prick, the adrenaline entering his bloodstream. For the first time in days he became aware of his body, although it felt heavy, immobile, less flesh and blood than steel sarcophagus. Something flashed far off in the darkness that surrounded him, bright, fiery. The boy! The one who’d led Naz inside him, the one who had tried to save her right before she, before she … before she disappeared. He tried to follow but his legs wouldn’t obey him, and almost as soon as he’d appeared, the boy winked out of existence. The adrenaline was coursing through his veins now, nudging, prodding, accelerating.
Wake up
. Chandler stared at the after-image of the fiery angel until the last glow died away, and then, reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

Strange, but he knew what the room was going to look like before he saw it. The unpainted drywall, the crooked asbestos tiles in the ceiling, the metal cabinetry. A typical examining room, sure, but he knew this particular one before he opened his eyes. Knew, for example, that there was a wastebasket in the corner behind him. Army green on the outside, black on the inside, rust on the bottom from a mop pushing against it a thousand times.

He turned. There was the can. But how did he know it was there?

“Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Chandler jerked his head around even as a wheeled stool creaked up to the side of the bed. He knew he was tied to the bed but he pulled once anyway, felt the restraints bite into his wrists and ankles. A man in his fifties sat on the stool, graying blond hair combed back from a pinched, pale face, white coat draped over his shoulders. Chandler thought he was the one who’d spoken until he saw the second bed off to the right, the second man.

“Howdy,” this man said. A big man, with olive skin and curly hair coming free from a layer of brilliantine. The shit-eating grin on his face seemed at odds with the fact that he, too, was tied in place.

“Who are you?” Chandler said.

“You’d be amazed how often I get asked that.”

There was a clink, and Chandler turned to see that the older man had set a vial containing clear liquid on a metal tray. More to the point, he had a syringe in his hand, from which he was squeezing the air. A
tiny bubble emerged from the tip of the syringe, and Chandler felt an ice cube of fear slide down his back. He pulled at the restraints again, uselessly.

“Where am I? What are you doing with me?”

“Settle down, Mr. Forrestal,” the man on the bed said. “You’re state property now, no point getting all worked up.” He twitched one of his hands against his bonds. “Scratch my nose, would you, Keller?”

The man on the stool ignored him. Instead he wiped the hollow of Chandler’s elbow with an alcohol swab. Chandler jerked at the chilly sensation, but of course his arm only moved a fraction of an inch.

“What are you talking about? And what in the hell have you done with Naz?”

“Miss Haverman is no longer of concern.”

“I swear to God, if you’ve hurt her—”

Chandler broke off as the needle entered his arm like a sliver of ice, freezing the blood in his veins.

“What are—what—” It was hard to speak. Even his jaw seemed frozen.

“Relax, Chandler,” the man on the bed said. “It’s just a little acid. Well, not a little. About two thousand mics, which, if I understand these things, is several hundred times the normal dose.”

Almost as quickly as the ice came, it thawed. Within seconds his blood was boiling. Beads of sweat appeared on his skin and popped like balloons, releasing vaporous genies. Already the room was starting to swim.

“You see it happens quickly,” Keller said, even as he pulled a second syringe from his pocket. “Faster every time.” Chandler expected him to inject the man on the bed, but instead he swabbed his own arm. “I give myself the Thorazine now,” he continued, “lest I suffer poor Agent Logan’s fate.”

Chandler closed his eyes against the rippling walls, but the vision continued to dance behind his shuttered lids. Only—only it had shifted slightly. To the right. It was as though he was seeing the room through the eyes of the man on the bed beside him. When the man turned his head toward Chandler, he had the disconcerting experience of seeing himself with his eyes closed.

“Talk about
mise en abyme,”
the man beside him said. “I feel like
I’m inside an Escher drawing. You don’t know what you’re missing, Doc.”

There was a grunt and then a click as the door locked behind Keller. The sound echoed in Chandler’s ears like cathedral bells, so loud that he almost missed the other man’s question.

“How’d you kill him anyway?”

Chandler squeezed his eyes tighter, but still he saw everything. The man on the bed turned his head from side to side and Chandler saw the room swirl and melt before his eyes.

“Whoa. Heavy.” The man’s head continued to turn, the room fracturing into a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds. “Miss Haverman struck me as one tough cookie,” he continued in a voice that was somewhat distracted, but not confused or overwhelmed. The only other person who’d reacted like that had been Naz—everyone else had been terrified, but this man was excited by what was happening. “But I’m pretty sure she couldn’t’ve got the drop on Eddie, let alone stabbed him in the chest. And Leary Malarkey just ain’t the type. Which leaves you. So fill me in. Did you really stab him? Or”—he turned back to Chandler, and once again Chandler saw himself repeat and retreat in an endless, diminishing stream of reflections—“did you use your
mental powers?”

Chandler opened his eyes, turned to the man next to him.

“Please. I don’t want this. Not anymore. Not
again.”

The man’s head jerked forward, back, as if he’d fallen asleep and snapped himself awake. His eyes widened, in fear at first, then wonder. “Jesus H. Christ. I have smoked some serious shit in my life, but this …!” He looked back at Chandler, wiggled his hands. “I told Keller not to let me out no matter how much I scream. Somehow I don’t think he would anyway. So come on, Chandler. Do your worst. Show me how you got Eddie to kill himself.”

But Chandler didn’t know what he was doing, and all he could do was repeat his first question.

“Who
are
you?”

The man’s eyes floated around the room, sparkling wildly, and a rapturous smile spread across his face like a miser opening the door to his vault and basking in the glow of his gold.

“Talk to me, Chandler. Is what I’m seeing what you’re seeing? Is that how it works?”

Chandler thrashed at his bonds helplessly. He turned on his tormentor, shot daggers with his eyes. The man smashed his curly locks into his pillow.

“Yowza!” he said, wincing and laughing at the same time. “Fuck!” He shook his head gingerly. “Do that again.”

But Chandler didn’t know what he’d done. He stared at the man. His face—the man’s face—glistened with sweat. Not as if he were scared or exhausted. No. It was a sexual sheen. The face of a man in a brothel. A Cuban brothel. A slender brown back bent over a pillow, a pair of buttocks thrust in the air, the man’s face hovering over it. He saw it in all its disgusting detail, and he saw the man—Melchior, that’s what he called himself—see him seeing it.

The smile on Melchior’s face grew rapturous.

“What was her name?”

Again Chandler thought of Naz. That’s what she’d said to him, in his apartment in Boston. What was her mother’s name.

“Saba,” he whispered. “A gentle breeze.”

“You’re not trying hard enough, Chandler,” the man said, his voice turning ugly. “Tell me her
name.”