"That's because you'd been poisoned, Garth!"
My brother blinked slowly, as if momentarily disoriented, then leaned back in his chair. "Yes," he said in an odd, distant tone of voice. "Garth was poisoned by one of two men-possibly both of them. Their names-at least the names they were using-are Larry Rhodes and Michael Watt. When Garth first started working on the case, he thought it might be a matter of one company trying to steal secrets from another. Now Garth thinks that Rhodes and Watt are foreign agents."
"Then you know?! You realize you've been poisoned, and you even know who did it?!"
Garth shrugged, smiled faintly. "Now Garth realizes that he was being slowly poisoned, and who was doing it. The three of us were always bringing each other coffee. Garth was very stupid."
"It's the poison that's making you think the way you are, Garth! Realizing what's been done to you is the first step in fighting back."
"No, Mongo. It was the poison that sent Garth to the bottom of the ocean, yes. . but the ocean was always there, before the poisoning, and it was the weight of the ocean that crushed Garth and destroyed his 'I'."
"You're going to get better."
"Better?"
"Yes, better."
"You believe Garth will somehow get 'better' only because you do not understand how Garth is now."
I sighed, shook my head. "Rhodes and Watt took off yesterday, and they're probably already out of the country. Mr. Lippitt thinks they're K.G.B."
"Oh, really?"
"You don't seem all that interested."
"Who they really are, what they did, and where they are isn't important. They were two silly men doing silly things for silly reasons."
"Yeah, the problem is that they made you silly."
"Do you really find Garth silly, Mongo?"
"Damn it, you know I don't! But the poison they fed you screwed up your head, and it's still screwing up your head. You've got to understand and accept that if you want to get better. Unless you want the doctors here to start doping you up with psychotropic drugs, and unless you're ready for a lengthy stay in mental hospitals like this one, you'd better start giving a lot of serious thought to attitude adjustment. You have to will yourself to fight against the effects of the poison and get better. You have to want to get better. That isn't at all what I'm getting from you now."
"Garth understands what you're saying, Mongo, but you don't seem to be able-or want-to understand what Garth is saying. You don't even seem to want to hear it. When Garth was telling you about the ocean, you interrupted him to talk about unimportant things."
"I'm sorry, Garth," I said, feeling as if I were talking to a child. "Go ahead and tell me about the ocean."
'It's thousands of feet deep, filled with needless pain, cruelty, stupidity, waste. It's the ocean Siegmund Loge showed us. All his life, he lived under that ocean, Mongo. All his life. He took the two of us down for only sixteen hours, and the experience almost shattered us. He'd lived there all his life, feeling all that pain, and yet he continued to function. And he functioned brilliantly. Siegmund Loge was a very great man, Mongo."
"Yeah; a real prince, that one. I seem to remember a time-not all that long ago-when you weren't quite so impressed with his character. It was about the time you were growing fur and I was growing scales. You remember beastie time, Garth? You remember our nephew's funeral?"
"Garth hasn't forgotten what Loge did to us and others, Mongo, but that isn't the point. He's trying to explain something to you."
"Go ahead."
"The music brought him back to the surface of that ocean."
"But the music just served to remind you of all the misery in the world."
"You still don't understand. He didn't need to be reminded of the misery; it was all sitting on top of him, crushing him. It was the music that reached down into the ocean and allowed him to deal with the misery, bit by bit. Do you understand what he's saying?"
"I understand that I made a serious mistake-a criminal mistake-in bringing you Der Ring des Nibelungen," I said quietly, guilt and grief swelling in me and making it difficult to breathe. "Slycke was right; I had absolutely no business doing anything like that, and I damn well wish it could be undone. If I was going to bring you music, it should have been something you could associate with joy and hope, not despair."
Garth shook his head. "It wouldn't have worked, Mongo. Joy and hope are illusions, and that kind of music could never have reached him; joy and hope would have dissolved on the surface of the ocean, and he would still be lying in that bed. The Ring was like a lifeline he could climb back to the surface precisely because it reminded him of someone who not only had survived at those great depths, but had at least done something to try to drain the ocean."
"Jesus Christ, you're talking about Siegmund Loge again."
"Yes. Everything must always come back to Siegmund Loge. He was our teacher, remember? He taught us what the world is really like, for the vast majority of people. But of course you remember; it's why you brought the Ring to Garth. You remembered the incredible power of that lesson, and you thought it might bring Garth back. You were right. . and now you seem to want to deny the power of the lesson."
"Loge was crazy, Garth! You know Loge was crazy!"
"Yes. And now Garth is crazy. Like Loge."
"No, damn it, not like Loge! You don't want to destroy the world!"
"Siegmund Loge didn't want to destroy the world, Mongo, only change it so that we would not destroy ourselves. It was an impossible task. We can't change the world; we can only live in it until the end finally comes. And the best we can hope to accomplish as individuals is to drain just a little bit of that ocean off, or at least not make it deeper, while we're waiting for the end."
"You sound like a Goddamn street-corner evangelist, Garth, the only difference being that at least the evangelist tells people they can be saved if they repent."
"You know that nobody will be saved, Mongo."
"I don't know any such damn thing. Nobody's ever been able to get those human extinction numbers out of the Triage Parabola but Loge, and we both agree that Loge was crazy."
"Despair drives people crazy, Mongo. You may think you understand that, but you don't. For example, what do you smell here?"
"Roast beef."
"Despair. It's very, very thick in this place."
"You're telling me you can smell despair?"
"Garth can; and he can see it. And it's not only here; despair is all around us. It's suffocating the world."
"But there's also hope, Garth. Hope is the antidote to despair."
"Hope is an illusion."
"Hope is no more an illusion than despair; both are feelings. Feelings affect attitude, and attitude affects behavior."
"Hope is for strong people like you, Mongo."