He said nothing. The air in the room felt as though it were tensing and becoming brittle around him: any word or motion might shatter it.
“What if I told you,” said Stiles, swivelling around to gaze out the window behind him, “that what you saw didn’t happen?”
“Sir?” Ralph’s eyes jerked to the back of the imitation-leather chair.
Stiles swung back around to face him. “It didn’t happen, Metric. It was an illusion. That stupid jerk Stimmitz sneaked into the Thronsen Home the other day. We know all about it. Those kids live in a very controlled environment over there; it’s part of the treatment, and the therapists are very careful about what they’re allowed to see. Because what they see during the day is incorporated into their dreams at night. That’s how the sequences are programmed. Several of the kids saw Stimmitz when he was snooping around. We didn’t find out about it until just before all of you watchers were starting your shift last night. We pulled Stimmitz off the line just as it was being activated.”
“But Stimmitz was on the field last night—”
Stiles gestured impatiently. “That was an illusion. What you saw was the image of Stimmitz that got mixed in with the kids’ dreams. You expected him to be there on the field with you, and so your subconscious filled in the details of the image’s movements, talking and so on.”
“But he was there,” said Ralph. “I saw the slithergadee attack him, and—”
“No. We pulled the real Stimmitz off the line and fired him for breaking Opwatch regulations. He was over in Norden waiting for a bus out of here when the image you saw of him got ripped up. The stimulus of the new image—this is what the therapists over at Thronsen told me—triggered a hostility-release sequence that’s programmed around the slithergadee. It’s supposed to be used later on in the program.”
So this is what he told the others, thought Ralph. “Stimmitz isn’t dead, then? The real one, I mean.”
“No. He deserved it though.” Stiles tilted back in his chair and watched him.
Now what? Ralph avoided the other’s eyes. If what Stiles had told him was the truth, then there was nothing to worry about. But if it wasn’t, if something was still being hidden . . . He suddenly felt his universe become vague and insubstantial, like the dreamfield itself. It had been so clear and solid, if dangerous, only a few moments ago. Foggy knives, he thought, the odd image creeping through his mind.
“Not convinced, eh?” Stiles lifted his hand. “No, that’s okay, I understand, Metric. You were the one who saw it, you’re the one who should insist on proof.” He reached down and lifted a large plastic bag from behind the desk, then dumped its contents on top of the papers. “Go ahead. Take a look.”
It was a wadded-up Opwatch jumpsuit, the kind worn by the watchers during their shifts on the dreamfield.
Ralph picked it up and looked inside the collar. His own initials, RDM, were stamped inside.
“It’s yours,” said Stiles. “It’s the one you were wearing last night. We took it out of the locker room after you had gone back to your apartment.
“Now, if the slithergadee’s attack was as vicious as you described it to the other watchers, and if that had been the real Stimmitz on the field last night, then surely some of his blood would have gotten on you. Right?
“Well, go ahead, take a look. Not a spot on it.”
Carefully, Ralph inspected the jumpsuit. He could remember the blood spraying toward him after the slithergadee’s first lunge at Stimmitz. The warm fluid from the severed leg had been like some nightmare fountain, pulsing in time with Ralph’s own heartbeat.
There were no bloodstains on the jumpsuit. Ralph laid it down upon the commander’s desk.
“That’s the way it is,” said Stiles. “It was too bad that Stimmitz had to go and be so stupid, cause so much trouble for us and so much worry for you. But you’re a good man, Metric, and we don’t want to lose you. That’s the bottom line of it all. Tell you what; you’ve been here long enough to qualify for a week’s vacation. Get your mind off what you saw on the field.”
He gestured expansively with his cigarette.
“Maybe,” said Ralph. It felt as though a hollow cylinder had formed inside him. Dimly, he wondered if this was the same way he had always felt before. “Maybe I’ll do that. I’ll let you know.”
“Sure, sure. Anytime will do. Close the door after you, will you? Dust gets on everything.”
The thought struck him as Ralph closed the door and stepped away from the commander’s office. They could have switched jumpsuits. They could have taken one of my others from the laundry bin and showed me that. They could have gotten rid of the one with the blood on it. It would have been simple.
“Do you really believe it?”
“Well, sure, Ralph.” Kathy brushed her unkempt hair from her shoulders. “Don’t you?”
Goodell leaned forward in his Rec hall chair and wiped a line of beer from his upper lip. “Come on,” he said. “Do you have a better explanation for what happened?”
“What didn’t happen,” corrected Ralph vaguely. He looked around at the twenty or so watchers, male and female, gathered in the Rec hall’s main room. Some unspoken need had made them seek each other’s company. Even Glogolt was there, slouched down in one of the chairs with a beer can perched on his stomach. Some of them look a little vexed, noted Ralph. The ripples from the stone that fell in their shallow waters haven’t quite gone away yet.
“Well? Do you?” said Goodell.
“No,” said Ralph. His fingers slowly blurred a trickle of sweat on his forehead. “They told us their story, and nobody can tell one any different, so what Stiles and the others said must be the truth.”
“Ralph, don’t be so creepy.” Kathy looked annoyed at the trace of sarcasm she had detected in his voice. “You’re just imagining things.”
“Did anybody see Stimmitz leave?” Ralph felt his own desperation, trying to connect the last amorphous bit of suspicion with something solid. “How come he left all of his stuff back in his apartment?”
“I’d want to cut out before anybody saw me, too,” said Goodell, “if I’d pulled anything so stupid. Sneaking into Thronsen . . . what a jerk.”
“You mean you’re not curious? You don’t wonder about what might be going on over there?”
“Why should I be?”
Ralph looked from Goodell’s face to those of the other watchers. They all had the same expression around the eyes. He got up without speaking, pushed past their outstretched legs and then out through the dark glass door.
Outside, his shoulders bore the weight of the noon sun. Through the glare he could see the hills and desert beyond the base’s grounds; the rocks and sand dunes resembled the other watchers’ eyes—flat, solid, objects rather than human. Looking away, he walked on towards the apartment building.
Two men were busily working in Stimmitz’s old second-floor apartment. They were loading the books and other things into large cartons. As Ralph looked in through the open doorway he saw the words Zenith Van and Storage on the backs of their gray overalls.
“Howdy,” said one of the men, turning and spotting him in the doorway. “Hey, do you know somebody around here named—what was it—hey, who was that package for?”
“Ralph Metric,” said the other mover, lifting Stimmitz’s tape deck from the bookshelves.
“That’s me.”
“Here,” said the first mover. “This guy left this behind for you.” He picked up a flat square object from the floor and handed it to Ralph.