"Of course. I'm sorry. So after you were through, she let you into the files."
"That's right."
"And what have you found out?"
"A few interesting things." Sammy consulted his notes. "First of all, there's some interesting data concerning this Archibald Ogilvie and his draft board. He was due to be inducted, but he was rejected on psychiatric grounds. Two factors influenced this rejection. The first was a letter from his mother, a carbon of which was in his file at the Institute. It detailed a whole history of failure to make a masculine identification. It told how he continued to play with dolls well into his teens. It indicated a fixation on his mother as a love object. In a psychiatric way it backed up the homosexuality for which the draft board rejected him."
"Homosexuality!" Llona was indignant. "Not my Archer!"
"That was his mother's attitude, too, of course. In an interview with the head of the Institute, she gave a completely different picture than she'd given the draft board. She'd told the board that his homosexuality was a reaction against too much heterosexuality. She made him appear something of a satyr until he reached a sort of turning point where all women tended to disgust him. All women except his mother, of course. But there was a variance in the picture she gave the Institute. From what she confided to them, it would appear that Archibald was nowhere near as effeminate as the draft board was led to believe. On the contrary, he would seem to have been a compulsive heterosexual to a marked degree. Evidently there was some hanky-panky in convincing the draft board otherwise. At this point, the mother's account seems a little blurred. But there seems to have been a violent argument between mother and son which resulted in her having him committed to Happy Acres."
"What was the argument about?"
"Evidently he wanted to be drafted. Indeed, his mother used this as evidence of his having lost touch with reality."
"The way things are today, I'd be inclined to agree with that," Llona mused.
"Perhaps. Anyway, it's one of the reasons why he's being held under maximum security conditions. The one time he escaped, they apprehended him right outside a Marine Corps enlistment booth. The other reason is that he keeps trying to prove he's not homosexual by attacking the female nurses at Happy Acres. Why, he even tried to rape Hannah Urbach."
"Did he succeed?"
"No. According to her, he kept rolling off. There's a knack, you know? If you're obese, it comes naturally. Anyway, before he mastered it, one of the attendants came in and Hannah had to scream. It was quite a struggle then, from what she said. Ogilvie kept screaming about how he wanted to get into the thick of it and kill all those Red bastards and how his mother was a latent sissie-maker trying to keep him home. He was still yelling about how she was over-protective when they got him under sedation."
"Maybe she is over-protective," Llona ventured.
"Probably. From what she confided to Archibald's doctor, she seems obsessed with her son becoming the victim of an accident."
"You mean she's afraid of his being killed in action if he goes in the service?"
"Not exactly. She's really more afraid of what I just said. Accidents. Even if he was sent to Viet Nam, she isn't so afraid that the Reds would knock him off as that he'd catch it in one of those mistakes that are always happening there."
"Is he accident-prone?" Llona wondered.
"No. But she feels that our military establishment in Viet Nam is. She's not such a fool, Archibald's mother. She expounded on it all very logically to Archibald's doctor. She feels that the average American fighting man in Viet Nam stands a better than average chance of survival at the hands of the enemy. But she claims that he's on the short end of the odds where our own logistics are concerned. The Viet Cong, she says, can't do anything like the damage our own artillery can wreak on our own infantry. She's worried he might not get through strafing and bombing our own planes. The way she sees it, the brass running the war-both American and South Vietnamese-are the real danger. According to her, the South Vietnamese men of draft age are well aware of this. She cites figures proving that seventy-five percent of them manage to avoid the draft. She looks on this as a sign of sanity. And she seems honestly convinced that her son's gung-ho attitude is really a symptom of his madness."
"I wouldn't know about that," Llona said. "But I wonder if he really is my Archer. How can I see him and find out?"
"Well, officially, he's not allowed any visitors. Not even his mother. Or maybe particularly not his mother. But I have reason to think it might be arranged for you to see him."
"Your friend Hannah?" Llona guessed.
"Yes. She's become quite enamored of me," Sammy Spayed said modestly.
"I see. Well, how soon can you arrange it?"
"I thought you'd want to see him. So I got the ball rolling for day after tomorrow. I just have to straighten the details out with Hannah tonight."
"Well, don't get any of the details on your shirt collar or your handkerchief," Llona advised. "I'll hear from you, then?" she said as she got up to leave.
"Yes."
"Good." Llona nodded and left. Her heart was singing. At last she would be seeing Archer again. She'd be seeing him, that is, if Archibald Ogilvie really was her Archer. But Spayed was so positive that she felt encouraged.
Only two days and she'd know for sure. Only two days and she'd see for herself. Only two days and she'd be inside the asylum.
Would it be any nuttier than the outside world?
Chapter Six
The madhouse?
A microcosm of the road of absolute logic starting from unexamined premises and arriving at complete lunacy. Haunted by the ghosts of Dienbienphu ogling Madame Nu. Creaky with the sounds of misdirected mortar fire and the crackle of defoliated human skin. Strictly run as a directive from Premier Ky sans apologia by Rusk, Mac-Namara, et al. Doctrinaire as a Freudian nightmare in Technicolor by Zanuck and edited by LBJ. Echoing with the cries of the Fugs in khaki enthusiastically huzzahing "Kill! Kill! Kill for Peace!"
Such was the looneybin to the overdrugged but still obsessively functioning mind of Archibald Ogilvie. To Llona, however, it appeared somewhat different. She saw no Reds under beds, no Viet Cong springing from the shadows, no treacherous, white-coated houseboys lobbing grenades, no peasants poisoning the wells, no snipers leaning out of the trees to threaten Democracy, Motherhood, and the American way. What she did see was Happy Acres, five thousand miles behind the front lines, peaceful, tranquil, green in the starlight, gracious brick beyond the green, security behind high hedges unobtrusively backed by a barbed-wire fence.
Sammy Spayed had picked out the hole in the fence by the light of the stars and led Llona through it. Keeping to the shadows of the trees, he steered her toward the main building. There was a light on behind one of the windows on the lower floor. Sammy guided Llona toward it. When they were directly under it, Sammy tapped on the glass.
The moon rose over the sill. The moon was putty-white with craters for eyes and mouth and a crag for a nose. It was round and full and beaming. Now it beamed a greeting at Sammy Spayed.
"Give us a hand up, Hannah," Sammy requested.
The moon sprouted hamhock arms and reached over the windowsill to grasp Llona beneath the arms as Sammy gave her a lift up from behind. Llona scrambled into the room. Sammy pulled himself up behind her. Panting a little, he introduced Llona to Hannah Urbach.
Not only Hannah's moon-face, but her entire physique was round as a zero. At first glance she was like a living op-art happening, a happening devoted to representations of the circle in all one hundred and forty three dimensions. Even the neck attaching the globe of her head to the sphere of her body appeared circular. Circles of fat ringed the bodice of her low-cut dress and overlapped larger circles borne down by their own weight. Her waist was an overstuffed circle with two orb-like hips bulging out from it. Between the hips, the largest circle of all fought a rear-guard action against a besieging girdle. Beneath the hem of the dress, round knees with surrealist dimples hung over small, dainty feet shaped like perfectly curved discs of flesh. Her eyes were also round as she stared devouringly at Sammy and addressed him with a mouth shaped like an O.