had been studying before, even though a great many of these problems had become phrased in such a way as to be unsolvable. The emotions came and departed, though the earlier dizzy pendulum-swing between anguish and ecstasy had now ceased almost completely. Here and there a ghostly semipersonality half-formed, then faded out again. Her roles in life hung empty in the simplicity of her mind, like costumes in a deserted theater. It had become night on the stage of the world and only one bank of worklights remained on, dimly illuminating the canvas-and-stick flats that only a short time earlier had stood for reality.
Balkani had been right, or at least half right. Happiness did exist here, the greatest happiness possible for a human being.
Unfortunately, no one remained to enjoy it.
VIII
Robots lifted Joan gently from the pool and laid her with infinite care on a table nearby. Removing her helmet Balkani said, “Hello, Miss Hiashi.” “Hello, Doctor.” Her voice echoed as if far away and he recognized the sound; after the therapy this often came about, this dreamlike aspect of speech and mentation.
“Looks like she’s in a trance,” Ringdahl said prosaically. “Let me see if she will react to a direct command.”
“If you must, go ahead,” Balkani said with irritation; he felt irked that his unprofessional military superior had intervened at this crucial stage.
“Miss Hiashi,” Ringdahl said, in what he obviously hoped constituted a properly hypnotic voice. “You are going to sleep, sleep, sleep. You’re falling into a deep trance.”
“Am I?” The girl’s voice lacked any trace of emotion.
Ringdahl said, “I am your friend. Do you understand that?”
“Every living being is my friend, Joan answered in the same far-distant voice.
“What’s she mean by that?” Ringdahl asked Balkani.
“They often come up out of extended sense- deprivation spouting nonsense,” Balkani answered. “And she won’t do anything you tell her to, either. So you might as well not waste your valuable time.” “But she’s hypnotized, isn’t she?” the major demanded with exasperation; clearly he did not understand.
Before Balkani could reply Joan spoke again. “It is you who are hypnotized.”
“Snap her out of it,” Ringdahl growled. “She gives me the creeps.”
“I can’t snap her out of anything,” Balkani said with a slight ironic smile; he felt mildly amused. “She’s as wide awake as we are, if not more so.” “Are you just going to leave her like that?” “Don’t worry.” Balkani patted his military superior patronizingly on the shoulder. “She’ll return to normal in a few hours all by herself, if she wants to.”
“If she wants to?” Clearly Ringdahl did not like the sound of that.
“She may decide she wants to stay this way.” Balkani turned and spoke softly to Joan. “Who are you, dear?”
“I am you,” she answered promptly.
Ringdahl cursed. “Kill her or cure her, Balkani, but don’t leave her like this.”
“There is no death,” Joan said, mostly to herself. She did not really seem inclined to communicate; she seemed, in fact, virtually unaware of the two of them. “Listen, Balkani,” Ringdahl said angrily. “I
thought you said you could cure her of political maladjustment. Now she’s worse than ever. Let me remind you that—”
“Major Ringdahl, allow me to remind you of three things. One, that I did not promise anything. Two, that the treatments have hardly begun. And three, that you are meddling where you lack the specialized training to know what you’re doing.”
Ringdahl had raised his finger skyward to make an angry pronouncement, but forgot what he intended to say when Joan sat up suddenly and said, in the same detached voice, “I’m hungry.”
“Would you like a meal served in your room?” Balkani asked her, feeling sudden sympathy for her.
“Oh yes,” she said expressionlessly, then reached back and unzipped her cellophane coveralls. She slipped out of them without the slightest trace of embarrassment, but Major Ringdahl turned a mottled red and glanced the other way. Balkani watched her dress, a strange pain in his chest; it was a new feeling to him, one which he had never in his life felt before. Her body seemed so small and childlike and helpless; he wanted to protect her, to help her stay in her waking dream where everyone was her friend and death did not exist.
Joan led the way out of the room, a slight smile on her face, like a Mona Lisa or a Buddha, and as she passed Balkani he reached out and touched her arm. As if she had become a saint.
After she had eaten, Joan Hiashi moved to the window of her cell and looked out. The sun had sunk low; evening lay ahead and very close. Autumn came
early here, and a leaf, its rusty red made all the more brilliant by the sun, hung from its branch a few feet from Joan’s barred window, twisting meagerly in the breeze. Joan studied the leaf.
The sun disappeared.
The leaf became a black silhouette against the fading sky, and stars appeared behind it, faint but distinct. The smell of the sea hung in the air, and the taste of salt.
Joan continued to watch the leaf while the breeze grew colder and stronger, rising and falling with a great rushing sound, like someone breathing in her ear. Still she stood motionless, one hand resting on the smooth metal sill of the window, the other by her side.
Still she watched the leaf as the last fragments of daylight departed and the wind, growing stronger with each moment, rushed in her face and played in her hair.
An hour passed.
Two.
The leaf danced wildly to unheard music, tossing, twisting, swirling its cape in the darkness, seeming to sense that it had an audience.
At midnight Joan was still standing there, watching the leaf.
All night long she watched, and all night long the leaf danced for her with frantic abandon in the gale.
At dawn the wind slackened and the leaf drooped.
One brief weary turn, like a bow, and it fell, zigzagging downward to lose itself in the multitude of other leaves on the ground below. Joan’s eyes followed it, then lost it.
The sun came up.
Joan sighed. She suddenly realized that she felt cold. Her skin had turned blue and was covered with goosebumps. Her teeth began to chatter and she shivered and rubbed herself vigorously, trying to get warm. Joan Hiashi had returned to normality, if by normality one meant this leafless world in which humans normally live.
Percy X stared stupidly at his bandaged left hand. He had cut it himself, smashed a drinking glass and attacked himself with one of the fragments; the sharp pain had dragged him back from that sucking void into which he had followed Joan, the void that drew her in and had almost drawn him in after her. He had realized with sudden terror that his whole personality had begun dissolving, evaporating, and he had tried to break his telepathic contact with her but had been unable to, at least not until he had cut himself.
Now he cautiously entered her mind again—and found himself a stranger there. Everything had been moved about. He withdrew again, icy sweat breaking out on his forehead.
All at once he sensed someone coming. Guards.
The door unlocked and opened; one of the guards leaned in and said in a bored voice, "Come along now, buddy. Make it fast.”
Presently, with a guard on each side, he made his way briskly down a long corridor, past endless processions of locked doors. I wonder where they’re taking me, he mused—and scanned their minds to find out. They were taking him to Joan, on orders from Balkani. But why had Balkani given such orders? On a whim, most likely; on a drug-induced impulse. Still, Percy felt uneasy. Even Balkani’s whims seemed to have some enigmatic, almost unnatural, purpose.
To his amazement he found the door to her cell unlocked; in fact it hung slightly ajar.
“A visitor for you Miss Hiashi,” one of the guards announced.
Joan, who had been lying on her bunk gazing blankly at the ceiling, sat up and smiled. “Hello, Percy.”