Kid, you're nuts.
I know, but I'll win.
Prob'ly, he agreed. I was like you once, all full of the necessary ingredients and ready to go ... Gettin' much action these days? And he stroked his pepper-and-salt beard and gave me an evil grin from inside it.
Enough, I said, and, Have a drink, because he had made me think of Eva.
He did, and I left it at, Enough, for a time. She was not like that, though. I mean, it was not something he would really want to hear about.
It had been about four months earlier that we had broken up. It was not religion or politics; it was much more basic.
So I lied to him about an imaginary girl and made him happy.
I had met her in New York, back when I was doing the same things she was, vacationing and seeing plays and pix.
She was a tall girl, with close-cropped blond hair. I helped her find a subway station, got on with her, got off with her, asked her to dinner, was told to go to hell.
Scene:
I'm not like that.
Neither am I. But I'm hungry ... So will you?
What are you looking for?
Someone to talk to, I said. I'm lonesome.
I think you're looking in the wrong place.
Probably.
I don't know you from anywhere.
That makes two of us, but I could sure use some spaghetti with meat sauce and a glass of Chianti.
Will you be hard to get rid of?
No. I go quietly.
Okay. I'll eat spaghetti with you.
And we did.
That month we kept getting closer and closer until we were there. The fact that she lived in one of those crazy little bubble cities under the sea meant nothing. I was liberal enough to appreciate the fact that the Sierra Club had known what it was doing in pushing for their construction.
I probably should have gone along with her when she went back. She had asked me.
She had been on vacation, seeing the Big Place, and so had I, I didn't get into New York that often.
Marry me, though, I'd said.
But she would not give up her bubble and I would not give up my dream. I wanted the big, above-the-waves world, all of it. I loved that blue-eyed bitch from five hundred fathoms, though, and I realize now that I probably should have taken her on her own terms. I'm too damned independent. If either of us had been normal ... Well, we weren't, and that's that.
Eva, wherever you are, I hope you and Jim are happy.
Yeah, with Coke, I said. It's good that way, and I drank Cokes and he drank doubles with Cokes until he announced his weariness.
It's starting to get to me. Mister Hemingway, he said.
Well, let's sack out.
Okay. You can have the couch there.
Great.
I showed you where the blankets are?
Yes.
Then good night, Ernie. See you in the morning.
You bet, Bill. I'll make breakfast for us.
Thanks.
And he yawned and stretched and went away.
I gave him half an hour and went to work.
His weather station had a direct line into the central computer. I was able to provide for a nice little cut-in. Actuated by short wave. Little-used band. I concealed my tamperings well.
When I was finished, I knew that I had it made.
I could tell Central anything through that thing, from hundreds of miles away, and it would take it as fact.
I was damn near a god.
Eva, maybe I should have gone the other way. I'll never know.
I helped Bill Mellings over his hangover the following morning, and he didn't suspect a thing. He was a very decent old guy, and I was comforted by the fact that he would never get into trouble over what I had done. This was because nobody would ever catch me; I was sure. And even if they do, I don't think he'll get into trouble. After all, his uncle was a Senator.
I had the ability to make it as anybody I cared to. I'd have to whip up the entire past history, birth, name, academics, and et cet, and I could then fit myself in anywhere I wanted in modern society. All I had to do was tell Central via the weather station via short wave. The record would be created and I would have existence in any incarnation I desired. Ab initio, like.
But Eva, I wanted you. I, Well ...
I think the government does occasionally play the same tricks. But I am positive they don't suspect the existence of an independent contractor.
I know most of that which is worth knowing, more than is necessary, in fact, with respect to lie detectors and truth serums. I hold my name sacred. Nobody gets it. Do you know that the polygraph can be beaten in no fewer than seventeen different ways? It has not been much improved since the mid-twentieth century. A lower-chest strap plus some fingertip perspiration detectors could do it wonders. But things like this never get the appropriations. Maybe a few universities play around with it from this standpoint, but that's about it. I could design one today that damn near nobody could beat, but its record still wouldn't be worth much in court. Drugs, now, they're another matter.
A pathological liar can beat Amytal and Pentothal.
So can a drug-conscious guy. What is drug-consciousness?
Ever go looking for a job and get an intelligence test or an aptitude test or a personality inventory for your pains? Sure. Everybody has by now, and they're all on me in Central. You get used to taking them after a time. They start you in early, and throughout your life you learn about taking the goddamn things. You get to be what psychologists refer to as test-conscious. What it means is that you get so damned used to them that you know what kind of asininity is right, according to the book.
So okay. You learn to give them the answers they're looking for. You learn all the little time-saving tricks. You feel secure, you know it is a game and you are game-conscious.
It's the same thing.
If you do not get scared, and if you have tried a few drugs before for this express purpose, you can beat them.
Drug-consciousness is nothing more than knowing how to handle yourself under that particular kind of fire.
Go to hell. You answer my questions, I said. I think that the old tried-and-true method of getting answers is the best: pain, threatened and actual. I used it.
I got up early in the morning and made breakfast. I took him a glass of orange juice and shook him by the shoulder.
What the goddam ... !
Breakfast, I said. Drink this.
He did, and then we went out to the kitchen and ate.
The sea looks pretty good today, I said. I guess I can be moving on.
He nodded above his eggs.
You ever up this way, you stop in again. Hear?
I will, I said, and I have, several times since, because I came to like him. It was funny.
We talked all that morning, going through three pots of coffee. He was an M.D. who had once had a fairly large practice going for him. (At a later date, he dug a few bullets out of me and kept quiet about their having been there.) He had also been one of the early astronauts, briefly. I learned subsequently that his wife had died of cancer some six years earlier. He gave up his practice at that time, and he did not remarry. He had looked for a way to retire from the world, found one, done it.
Though we are very close friends now, I have never told him that he's harboring a bastard input unit. I may, one day, as I know he is one of the few guys I can trust. On the other hand, I do not want to make him a genuine accomplice to what I do. Why trouble your friends and make them morally liable for your strange doings?
So I became the man who did not exist. But I had acquired the potential for becoming anybody I chose. All I had to do was write the program and feed it to Central via that station. All I needed then was a means of living. This latter was a bit tricky.
I wanted an occupation where payment would always be made to me in cash. Also, I wanted one where payment would be large enough for me to live as I desired.