The Hollow Man (23 page)

Jeremy does Poincaré sections of probability waves crashing and collapsing, and the Cray machines—moving through fractaled regions that Jeremy never hopes to understand—return hard data by the bale and computer images that look like photographs of some distant water world where indigo seas are mottled with sea-horse-shaped islands of many colors and infinite topological complexity.

Jeremy begins to understand. But just as it is coalescing for him … just as Jacob’s data and the Cray fractal images and the beautiful and terrible chaos equations on his chalkboard begin to converge … things in the “real” world begin to fall apart. First Jacob. Then Gail.

It is three months after their first visit to the fertility clinic when Jeremy visits his own doctor for a periodic physical. Jeremy happens to mention the tests that Gail has been going through and their sadness at not having a child.

“And they did just the one semen analysis?” asks Dr. Leman.

“Mmmm?” says Jeremy, rebuttoning his shirt. “Oh, yeah … well, they suggested I come back for a couple
more, but I’ve been really busy. Plus, the first one was pretty conclusive. No problem.”

Dr. Leman nods, but he is frowning slightly. “Do you remember the sperm count?”

Jeremy glances down, inexplicably embarrassed. “Uh … thirty-eight, I think. Yes.”

“Thirty-eight million per milliliter?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Leman nods again and makes a gesture. “Why don’t you keep your shirt off, Jerry? I’ll run another blood pressure test here.”

“Was there a problem?”

“No,” says Dr. Leman, adjusting the cuff. “Did they tell you at the fertility clinic that they like a count of forty million per milliliter with at least sixty percent of the sperm showing good movement with forward progression?”

Jeremy hesitates. “I think so,” he says. “But they said it probably was a little below average because Gail and I … well, we hadn’t abstained quite the full five days before the tests and—”

“And they told you to come in for some averaging tests, but told you that there almost certainly wasn’t anything for you to worry about, that the problem probably lay with Gail?”

“Right.”

“Lower your shorts, Jerry,” says Dr. Leman.

Jeremy does so, feeling the slight embarrassment that men suffer as the doctor handles his scrotum.

“Take your hand and pinch your nose and mouth shut,” orders Dr. Leman. “Yes, that’s right … no air getting through at all … now bear down as if you’re trying to have a bowel movement.”

Jeremy starts to remove his hand to make a joke, but decides not to. He bears down.

“Again,” says Dr. Leman.

Jeremy winces at the pressure the doctor is exerting.

“All right, relax. You can pull up your shorts.” The doctor goes to the counter, removes the plastic glove, drops it in the trash, and washes his hands.

“What was all that about, John?”

Leman turns slowly. “That was known as the Valsalva maneuver. Did you feel that pressure where I had my finger on the vein on either side of your testicles?”

Jeremy smiles and nods. He had felt it, all right.

“Well, by pressing down there, I could feel the flow of blood going through your veins … going the wrong way, Jerry.”

“The wrong way?”

Dr. Leman nods. “I’m fairly certain that you have varicose spermatic veins in both the left and right testicles. I’m surprised that they didn’t check for that at the fertility clinic.”

Jeremy feels a wave of tension and clamminess wash over him. He thinks of all the embarrassing tests Gail has gone through in the past few weeks … all of the tests still awaiting her. He clears his throat. “Could these … these varicose veins … could they be hurting our chances for having a child?”

Dr. Leman leans against the counter and folds his arms across his chest. “They could be the whole problem, Jerry. If it is a bilateral variocele, then that could very well be dropping the motility of the sperm, as well as the actual count.”

“You mean the thirty-eight million at the clinic was an anomaly?”

“Probably,” says the doctor. “And my bet is that the
motility study was done poorly. I’d wager that less than ten percent of the sperm were moving properly.”

Jeremy feels something like anger growing in him. “Why?”

“A variocele—one of these varicose veins in your testicles—is a malfunction of one of the valves in the spermatic vein that causes the blood to flow backward from the kidneys and adrenals into the testicles themselves. That raises the temperature in the scrotum—”

“Which lowers sperm production,” finishes Jeremy.

Dr. Leman nods. “The blood also carries a high concentration of toxic metabolic substances such as steroids, which further inhibit sperm production.”

Jeremy stares at the wall where there is only a cheap Norman Rockwell print of a country doctor listening to a child’s heartbeat. Both the child and doctor are rosy-cheeked caricatures. “Can you fix a variocele?” he asks.

“There’s an operation,” says Dr. Leman. “With men having sperm counts over ten million per milliliter … a category which you seem to qualify for … there’s usually a quite dramatic improvement. I think the figure’s around eighty-five or ninety percent. I’d have to look it up.”

Jeremy moves his gaze from the Rockwell print and stares at his doctor. “Do you suggest someone who could do it?”

Dr. Leman unfolds his arms and holds his palms six or eight inches apart in a molding gesture. “I think the best thing to do, Jerry, is to go back to the clinic, tell them our suspicion of bilateral varioceles, have them do the other sperm tests, and let them recommend a good man to do the surgery.” He glances down at the checklist on his clipboard. “We’ve drawn blood today, so I’ll alert the lab to do a hormone count—testosterone, of course, but also
the follicle stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone from the pituitary gland. My guess is that these will be low and that you’d be categorized as marginally fertile or subfertile.” He pats Jeremy on the back. “Harsh words, but good news, actually, because the prognosis after surgery for having children is very good. Much better than with most female fertility problems.”

Dr. Leman hesitates and Jeremy reads the man’s hesitation to criticize colleagues, but eventually he says, “The problem is, Jerry, that so many of these fertility-clinic doctors know that in ninety percent of the cases the female’s system is at fault. They get out of the habit of looking at the man carefully once a sperm count is in. It’s sort of a professional myopia. But now that they know about the variocele …” He stops at the door, watching Jeremy button his shirt again. “Do you want me to call them about this?”

Jeremy hesitates only a second. “No. I’ll tell them. They’ll probably call over for your records.”

“Fine,” says Dr. Leman, ready to go on to his next patient. “Jan will get back to you with the results of the blood tests sometime tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have all that data ready to send over to the clinic when they ask for it.”

Jeremy nods, pulls on his sport coat, and goes out through the waiting room and into the open air. Already, as he drives home, he is preparing his mindshield to bury the fact of the variocele.
Only for a while,
he tells himself as he makes the mindshield airtight and then covers it over with random thoughts and images like a trapper hiding the pit with leaves and branches.
Only for a little while, until I think this out
.

He knows even while he works to forget what he has learned that he is lying.

B
remen went up the hill in the dark, past the Jeep parked some yards from where he had left it, past the baying rottweilers in their pen—they were never left in their pen at night—and through the open door of the hacienda.

The interior was dim but not dark; light came from a single brass candlestick lamp and spilled down the hallway from the direction of Miz Morgan’s bedroom. Bremen felt her presence, the warm rush of white noise rising like the volume turned higher on an untuned radio. It made him dizzy and a trifle nauseated. It also excited him. As if sleepwalking, Bremen moved across the silent room and down the hall. Outside, the dogs had ceased their wild barking.

The lights in Miz Morgan’s bedroom were off except for a single twenty-five-watt bulb on a table lamp, and
that was covered with some fabric that bled only a bit of pink light. Bremen stood in the doorway a moment, feeling his balance shift precariously as if he were on the edge of some deep, circular pit. Then he stepped forward and let himself fall into the rush of white noise.

Her bed was a four-poster, canopied with a diaphanous gauze that caught the pink light with a silken web gleam. He could see her on the far side, the light bleeding past her, her body soft and visible under its own thin folds of open lace. “Come in,” she whispered.

Bremen went in, setting his feet uncertainly as if his vision and balance were both impaired. He had started around the bed when Miz Morgan’s voice came again from the shadows. “No, stop there a second.”

Bremen hesitated, confused, on the verge of awakening. Then he saw her motion—a parting of lacy bed curtains, a leaning forward toward a glass or low receptacle on the nightstand, a brief movement of hand and mouth and a quick retreat. The shadows of her face seemed rearranged.

She wears dentures,
he thought, feeling a pang of an emotion quite alien in his thoughts toward Miz Morgan.
She’d forgotten to put them in
.

She beckoned him forward again with a movement more of wrist than fingers. Bremen moved around to the far side of the bed, his body throwing yet another shadow across the occupant there, and paused again, unable to move forward or back. The woman may have spoken again, but Bremen’s senses were filled with the white-hot roar of her mindnoise. It struck him like a torrent of blood-warm water flying from some hidden hydrant, disorienting him even more than he had been a second before.

He reached for the bed curtains, but her long, strong
fingers batted his hands away. She leaned forward on her elbows in a motion at once feline and feminine and moved her face close to his legs. As her shoulders parted the curtains Bremen realized that he could see her breasts clearly through the gaps in her gown but not her face, concealed as it was by shadows and the tumble of her hair.

Just as well,
he thought, and closed his eyes. He tried to think of Gail, remember Gail, but the rush of white noise drove out any thoughts except those of lassitude and surrender. Room shadows seemed to shift around him in the last instant before his eyelids lowered.

Miz Morgan set a flat hand against his belly, another on his thigh. Bremen trembled like a nervous Thoroughbred being inspected by a rough vet.

She unbuckled his belt, lowered his zipper.

Bremen started to move then, to lean toward her, but her left hand returned to his belly, restraining him and freezing him in place. The mindnoise was a hurricane of white static now, buffeting him in all dimensions. He swayed on his feet.

With a single, almost angry movement Miz Morgan tugged his trousers down his hips. He felt the cooler air and then her warm breath on him, but still he did not open his eyes. The white noise battered him like invisible fists to the brain.

She fondled him, cupping his testicles as if raising them to a kiss, then ran a warm hand with cold nails up and down his still-flaccid penis. He grew only slightly excited, although his scrotum contracted as if trying to rise into his body. Her motions became more fluid and urgent, more from her need than his. Bremen felt her head lower, felt the touch of her cheek against his thigh and the silkiness of her hair and the warmth of her brow
against the cusp of his lower belly, and then the buffeting of mindnoise lessened, then ceased, and he was in the eye of the hurricane.

Bremen saw.

Exposed flesh and raw-rimmed
ribs
hanging from hooks. The rictus grin and frozen eyes under white frost. The migrant-family infants on their own row of hooks, turning slightly in frigid breezes.…

“Jesus!” He pulled back instinctively and opened his eyes the instant her mouth snapped shut with a metallic click. Bremen saw the gleam of razor steel between red lips and staggered backward again only to crash into the bedside table, knocking the covered lamp over and sending high shadows flying.

Miz Morgan opened blade-rimmed jaws and lunged again, her shoulders arching and thrusting like some ancient turtle struggling free of its shell.

Bremen threw himself to his right and struck the wall, writhing aside so that her wide-mouthed bite missed his genitals but took a round chunk out of his left thigh, just above the femoral artery. He stared as blood sprayed the curtains in the pink light and fell in droplets on Miz Morgan’s upturned face.

She arched her neck in something like orgasm and ecstasy, her eyes wide and blind, her mouth opened in an almost perfect circle, and Bremen saw the healthy gum-pink of the dental prosthesis as well as the razor blades set in plastic there. His blood spattered on her red lips and on blue steel. As she opened her mouth wider for another lunge he noticed that the blades were set in concentric rows, like sharks’ teeth.

Bremen leaped to his left, blind himself from the mental images now swirling in the eye of the mindnoise hurricane, crashed into the table and lamp again, and
suddenly pulled back as Miz Morgan’s steel teeth cut through his dangling shirttail, leather belt, and the thinner flesh of his side, scraping bone before pulling back, her head shaking like a dog with a mouthful of rat.

Bremen felt the icy shock but no pain, and then he pulled up his jeans and leaped again—not sideways, where she would certainly trap him, but straight over her—his right foot planting itself on the small of her back like a hiker finding a stepping-stone in treacherous rapids, pulling the bed curtains down behind him, then flailing through more curtains on the other side and falling, landing hard on his elbows and crawling toward the doorway even as she flopped and writhed and groped for his legs behind him.

The pain in his thigh and side struck him then, sharp as an electrical shock to the nerves of his spine.