I said: "I've got to read the manuscript."
"Lareen won't let you. Not yet, anyhow."
"But if I wrote it, it's my property."
"You wrote it before the treatment." Seri was looking away from me, across the dark grounds and into the warm scents of flowers. "I'll talk to her tomorrow."
I said: "If I can't actually read it, will you tell me what it's about?"
"It's a sort of fictionalized autobiography. It's about you, or someone with your name. It deals with childhood, going to school, growing up, your family."
"What's fictional about that?"
"I can't tell you."
I thought for a moment. "Where does it say I was born? In Jethra?"
"Yes."
"Is it called Jethra in the manuscript?"
Seri said nothing.
"Or is it called 'London'?"
Still she said nothing.
"Seri?''
"The name you give it is 'London', but we know this means J ethra. You give it other names, too."
"What are they?"
"I can't tell you." At last she looked at me. "How did you know about London?"
"You let it slip once." I was going to tell her about the ghost memories of the delirium, but somehow it seemed too difficult, too unreliable, even in my own mind. "Do you know where London is?''
"Of course not! You made the name up!"
"What other names did I make up?"
"I don't know . . . I can't remember. Lareen and I went through the manuscript trying to change everything to places we knew. But it was very difficult."
"Then how much of what you've taught me is true?"
"As much as possible. When you came back from the clinic you were like a vegetable. I _wanted_ you to be who you were before the treatment, but I couldn't just will it. Everything you are now is the result of Lareen's training."
"That's what scares me," I said.
I stared up the rising lawn to the other chalets; most were in darkness, but lights showed in a few of them. There were my fellow athanasians, my fellow vegetables. I wondered how many of them were suffering the same doubts.
Were they even yet aware that somehow their heads had been emptied of all the dusty possessions of a lifetime, then refurnished with someone else's idea of a better arrangement? I was frightened of what I had been made to think, because I was the product of my mind and I acted accordingly. What had Lareen told me before I acquired taste? Had she and Seri somehow acted in well-intended concert to instil in me beliefs I had not held before the treatment? How would I even know?
The only link with my past was that manuscript; I could not ever be complete until I read my own definition of myself.
There was a wan moon, misted by high clouds, and the gardens of the clinic had a still, monochrome quality. Seri and I walked along the familiar paths, postponing the moment when we went inside the chalet, but at last we headed hack.
I said: "If I get the manuscript, I want to read it on my own. That's my right, I think."
"Don't mention it again. I'll do my best to get it. All night?"
"Yes."
'We kissed briefly as we walked, but there was still a remoteness in her.
When we were inside the chalet, she said: "You won't remember, but before all this we were planning to visit a few islands. Would you still like to?"
"Just you and me?"
"Yes."
"But what about you? Haven't you changed your mind about me?"
"I don't like your hair as short as that," she said, and ruffled her fingers through my new stubble.
That night, when Seri was asleep beside me, I was wakeful. There was a quietness and solitude on the island that in a sense I had grown up with. The picture drawn by Seri and Lareen of the world outside was one of noise and activity, ships and traffic and crowded towns. I was curious to experience this, to see the stately boulevards of Jethra and the clustered old buildings of Muriseay. As I lay there I could imagine the world disposed around Collago, the endless Midway Sea and the innumerable islands. Imagining them I created them, a mental landscape that I could take on trust. I could go out from Collago, island-hop with Seri, invent the scenery and customs and peoples of each island as we came to it. An imaginative challenge lay before me.
What I knew of the world outside was similar to what I knew of myself.
From the verandah of the chalet Seri could point out the neighbouring islands, and name them, and show them to me on a map, and describe their agriculture, industries and customs, but until I actually went to them they could only ever be distant objects drawn to my attention.
Thus was I to myself: a distant object, chanted and described and thoroughly identified, but one which so far I had been unable to visit.
Before I went out to the islands I had some exploring of my own to do.
20
Lareen returned in the morning, and brought the welcome news that I was to he discharged from the clinic in five days' time. I thanked her, but I was watching to see if she produced the typewritten manuscript. If she had it with her, it remained in her bag.
Although I was restless, I settled down to a morning's work with her and Seri. Now I knew that fallibility was a virtue, I used it to strategic effect.
During lunch the two women spoke quietly together, and it seemed for a moment that Seri had put my request to her. Later, though, Lareen announced that she had work to do in the main building, and left us in the refectory.
"Why don't you go for a swim this afternoon?" Seri said. "Take your mind off all this."
"Are you going to ask her?"
"I told you--leave it to me."
So I left her alone and went to the swimming pool. Afterwards, I returned to the chalet but there was no sign of either of them. I felt useless and wasted, so I signed for a pass from one of the security guards and walked down to Collago Town. It was a warm afternoon, and the streets were crowded with people and traffic. I relished the noise and confusion, a hustling, discordant contrast with the solipsism and seclusion of my memories. Seri had told me that Collago was a small island, not densely populated and well off the main shipping routes, yet it seemed in my unpractised life to he the very hub of the world. If this was a sample of modern life, I could not wait to join the rest!
I wandered through the streets for a while, then walked down to the harbour. Here I noticed a number of temporary stalls and shops, erected in a position overlooking the water, where patent elixirs could he purchased. I walked slowly along the now, admiring the photographically enlarged letters of testimonial, the exciting claims, the pictures of successful purchasers. The profusion of bottles, pills and other preparations--herbal remedies, powders, salts for drinking water, isometric exercises, thermal garments, royal jelly, meditational tracts, and every other conceivable kind of patent remedy--was such as to make me think, for a moment or two at least, that I had undergone my ordeal unnecessarily. Business along the row was not brisk, yet curiously none of the vendors solicited my business.
On the far side of the harbour a large steamer was docking, and I assumed that it was this arrival that had caused the congestion in town.
Passengers were disembarking and cargo was being unloaded. I walked as close as I could without crossing the barrier, and watched these people from the world beyond mine as they went through the routines of handing in their tickets and collecting their baggage. I wondered when the ship would be sailing again, and where it was next headed. Would it he to one of the islands Seri had named?
Later, when I was walking back to the town, I noticed a small passenger bus loading up by the quay. A sign on the side announced that it belonged to the Lotterie_Collago, and I looked with interest at the people sitting inside.
They seemed apprehensive, staring silently through the windows at the activity around them. I wanted to talk to them. Because they came, so to speak, from a world of the mind that existed before the treatment, I saw them as an important link with my own past. Their perception of the world was undoctorcd; what they took for granted was all that I had lost. If this was consistent with what I had learned, then many of my doubts would be allayed. And for my part, there was much I could suggest to them.