— Get up. Look. Listen. Think. All right, I have listened and thought. Thought this. That I go my own way from now on. You understand?
— I understand.
— Don’t suppose … I mean, I hope –
— Goodbye, Someone. Say goodbye to your father, Dippermouth.
— See you, dad.
He does. He sees me in the amphitheatre, all dark and empty now, watching the harvest moon big and balanced on the outer rim of hi, dad.
— Go away, Dippermouth, I want to think.
— Can I think with you, dad?
— No, I don’t want you.
— But you’ve got me, dad. Sometimes, of course, I’ve got you, ha!
— I don’t care who’s got whom. Go away. She should know better than to send you.
— She didn’t send me, dad, you’ve got me. The alarm may go off at any minute.
— What alarm? I haven’t touched you.
— You’ll have to wake up, though, everyone does.
— As if I believed that. Wicked stories to frighten kids like you. I haven’t done anything.
— You’ve done me.
— I haven’t touched you.
— No. You’ve forgotten me, haven’t you, dad?
— I haven’t forgotten you. I just want you to shut up.
— I shall scream for attention in five seconds from now, just like you deep inside yourself.
— I never scream for attention.
— Everyone does, dad, things come back, boomerang, boomerang, three two one zero. He dips his mouth and screams.
I hit him hard across his stupid dial. The needles oscillate violently, swing round with a loud creak, the alarm shrieks then goes suddenly silent, the whole machinery slows down to an intermittent tick as Dippermouth falls and all his brain uncoils over the crumbling stones of the amphitheatre ground. The creaking of the hands turns to a rattling splutter until at last the ticking comes to a full stop. The harvest moon rides high and silent as I sit and howl at it like a child of three.
My wife visits me every day, I think, how do you feel, she says, and things like that. She brings me grapes and oranges. The grapes I suck the pulp of, leaving the deflated skins they won’t allow me to swallow, I remember that. The oranges she peels for me in segments and it aches the muscles of my heart to watch her but why me?
— I don’t know, darling. Nobody knows these things.
— Oh, things … Have people come? The journalists.
— What journalists?
— He’d better rest now, dear.
The gall-bladders sail into space, filled with galling remarks. But what do they accuse me of? I haven’t done anything. The worms in my head squirm. I remember –
— Yes, darling?
— I remember something.
— What, darling? Try to remember. The psychiatrist says–
— The what?
— The hospital psychiatrist.
— Oh, no, not that. Tell him to go away. I know the names of things.
— Of course you do, darling. But he says — well the surgeon says you mustn’t talk, and the psychiatrist says you must, otherwise the shock –
— will … counter … the elasticity … of pressure.
— Something like that.
— Something …
— Yes, darling?
— The spheres … it all goes round.
— Close your eyes. Try to remember. He said I should, I mean, that, with me you might …
— So you still follow secret instructions?
— Not secret, darling, not against you. For you. Nobody –
— I must … exercise my … meridians.
— Yes?
She writes things down in a small book. She dials secret numbers and works out the laws that I have bent and broken, the shock will counter, mass times velocity, time heals, and things like Larry, it all came as such a shock.
— Pressure.
— But the man said he couldn’t sleep, he swore he’d seen you breathing.
— I breathe all the time, unbeknown to you.
— I know, darling, you did, you do. I gave you the … kiss of life, Larry. But he said you’d breathed before. You looked so dead, darling, so very dead. Three days. It came as such a –
— shock.
— And then they didn’t believe me.
— No, they wouldn’t. Not without photographic evidence. But she wouldn’t allow me. Breathe in, she said, madam, you shall not sit on me.
— Sorry.
She removes her hand from my arm. She dials secret numbers and listens to the laws transmitted from the centre. Who do you work for now?
— Who? Larry, I work in the same place, for Professor Head. In the automation room. Don’t you remember anything? Oh yes, the little orange lights flickering like stars on the big grey control panel, each over clear white lettering that says Hot Spots, Erase, Inhibit, Alarm Reset, Auto Man, Emergency Off, Next Instruction and things like that. And the face in the round window of the door leaves a trail of anxiety bleeping across the dial in flattened lines that bulge suddenly into peaks like the nervous handwriting of distant nebulae. It comes from way beyond the visual range, in which the layers of my atmosphere distort the light-waves travelling through it and upset the definition. But something creaks, the coffin-lid opening, Larry, can you remember that? You see, the man said, the man from the hospital morgue I mean, he said he couldn’t sleep. He’d let you go and they’d nailed down the coffin. So he went to see the doctors but –
— Those hands …
— Yes, they’d signed the certificate. So he came to me and, well, they thought I’d gone out of my mind with grief. But I had my rights. I insisted … Oh Larry. I nearly had you cremated.
— Now, now, my dear, you promised. I thought I could trust you.
— I couldn’t help it, doctor, he wormed the story out of me. Surely, surely, well, what difference does it make?
The strip-cartoon of cubic rooms with the gall-bladders in them slips to the left. You could raise the cubic room to the fifth power simply by letting A run down and B wind up and adding the pyramid numbers. Then the strip story would end to be continued in our next life where I have no name but darkness. They have removed the scaffolding of tubes around me, out of mouth, throat, wrists, belly and private parts. I must have died since then. They have removed the great big chromium drum that gurgled to the left and the dials behind, where someone read the nervous handwriting of all my atoms and jotted down their infinite calculations. But what do they accuse me of? Why me?
— My dear Laurence, everything has a reason. You won’t understand it now, my boy, so pass it over, as Arago said to a pupil long ago, when you don’t understand something, continue as if you did, things will come clear later. Mathematics works that way. You should know that, Laurence, even in your own weird geometry of human nature from which we all benefit here. Yes, yes, we miss you. Dekko, and of course your wife. Good girl, good people all. She came straight back to work, you know. Said she couldn’t –
— Dekko?
— Yes, Tim Dekko, my junior colleague, once a patient of yours I believe. Good man, all things and civilization considered. He said he’d come and see you as soon as … well, as soon as you can take it. I must admit, ah, no, I don’t admit, I agree as he would say, yes, well I confess I discouraged him a little. Difficult man to talk to, in your condition, or in any condition really.
— When do you think Really will come back?
— Hard to say, Laurence, hard to say. A long time, probably, I mean, really to come back. You must build up your strength. Above all sleep, Laurence, I hope you can sleep all right. I suppose they give you pills, well, no, you can’t take anything, can you.