He forced himself to look at the psychosculpture. The Hamlin over there. An excellent piece of work. Poignance; pathos; a sense of the tragedy of aging, a sense of the heroism of defying time. A soft hum coming from its resonators, subtly coloring the mood it was designed to stimulate. The Hamlin over there. Macy said, “That’s Nathaniel Hamlin who did it?”
“Right,” Griswold said. “God only knows what it’s worth now. On account of Hamlin’s tragic fate. Not that I have the slightest interest in selling, but of course when an artist dies young his work skyrockets amazingly in value.”
He didn’t know, then. He couldn’t just be pretending. And he couldn’t be that dumb. Either Bercovici hadn’t told him, or he’d been told and hadn’t cared enough to remember. That was interesting. Macy was shaken, though, by the intensity of his reaction to the unexpected sight of the sculpture. They hadn’t warned him at the Rehab Center that such things might happen. He made a mental note to ask about it when he went back next week for his first session of outpatient post-therapy therapy. And a mental note, also, to stay out of Griswold’s office as much as possible.
The sculpture was still exerting an effect on him. He felt an undertow, the sucking of a subcerebral ocean in his mind. Hollow echoing sounds of surf from far below. A hammering against the threshold of consciousness. The Hamlin over there. That’s Nathaniel Hamlin who did it? On account of his tragic fate. Jesus. Jesus. A bad attack of wobbly knees. Sweaty forehead. Paroxysms of confusion. Going to collapse, going to fall down in a screaming fit, going to vomit all over Harold Griswold’s nappy green electronic carpet. Unless you regain control fast. He turned apologetically to Stilton Fredericks and said in a thick furry voice, “It’s more upsetting than I thought. You’d better get me out of here fast.”
Fredericks took his arm. A firm grasp. To Griswold: “I’ll explain afterward.” Propelling Macy urgently toward the door. Stumbling feet. Head swaying on neck. Jesus. Outside the office, finally.
The moment of intolerable angst ebbing.
“I feel much better now,” Macy murmured.
“Can I get you a pill?”
“No. No. Nothing.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t look all right.”
“It’ll pass. It shook me up more than I expected. Listen, Fredericks—Stilton—I don’t want you to think that I’m fragile, or anything, but you know I’ve just been released from the Rehab Center, and for the first few days—”
“It’s perfectly natural,” said Fredericks. A comradely pat on the shoulder. “We understand the problem. We can make allowances. This was my fault, anyway. I should have checked things out before I brought you in there. He’s got so many works of art in his office, though—”
“Sure. How could you have known?”
“I should have checked anyway. Now that I see the difficulty, I’ll check the whole building. I simply didn’t realize that it would upset you so much to come face to face with one of your own sculptures.”
“Not mine,” Macy said, shaking his head emphatically. “Not mine.”
2
Daytime it wasn’t so bad. He built a cozy routine for himself and lived within it, just as they had advised him at the Center to do. The Rehab people had found him a little apartment near the upper tip of Old Manhattan, five minutes from the network office by short-hop tube, forty minutes if he walked; he hadn’t wanted to risk exposing himself to the chaotic rush-hour environment of the tubes too soon, and so at first he went to work on foot. The exercise was good for him, and he had nothing better to do with his time anyway. But from the fourth day on he took the tube. The jostling and the screeching of wheels turned out not to bother him as much as he feared it might, and packed belly to rump in the cars, he didn’t have to worry about people staring at him or his Rehab badge.
At work he slipped easily and comfortably into the network’s news-broadcast operation. He had had six months of vocational training at the Center, and so he came to his new career already skilled in voice projection, sincerity dynamics, makeup technique, and other such things; he needed only to learn the details of the network’s daily practice, the authority levels and flow patterns and such. Everybody was kind to him, although after the first few days most of them dropped the maddening exaggerated courtesy that made him feel like such a cripple. They showed him what to do, they covered his blunders, they responded patiently and good-humoredly to his questions.
In the beginning Fredericks didn’t let him do any actual broadcasting, just dummy off-the-air runs under simulated studio circumstances. Instead he was put to work reading scripts aloud for the timing, and monitoring air checks of the other broadcasters. But he did so well at the dummy runs that by the fifth day they were putting him on the late news to do ninety-second capsule reports in what they called the mosaic-texture section, in which a bunch of broadcasters offered quick bouncy segments of the news in swift succession. Fredericks told him that in another few weeks he’d be allowed to handle full-scale stories, even to select his own accompanying hovereye coverage. So all went well professionally.
The nights were something else.
Lonely, for one thing. You’d be wisest to avoid sexual liaisons, at least at the outset, the Center therapists had suggested. They could be disturbing during the initial two or three weeks of adjustment. He paid heed. He refrained from bringing any of the network girls home with him, though plenty of them made it clear that they were available. Just ask, honey. At night he sat alone in the modest apartment. Watching a lot of holovision. Pretending that it was important to his career to study how the various networks handled the news. In truth he simply wanted the companionship of the bright screen and the loud audio; he left it on even when he wasn’t watching anything.
He didn’t go out in the evenings. A matter of economy, he told himself. Supposedly he had been a wealthy man in his former life, or at least pretty damned prosperous. A successful artist, work in constant demand, prices going up at the gallery every year, that kind of thing. But his assets had been forfeit to the state. Most of his money had been used up by the costs of his therapy and the termination settlement awarded his wife. What little was left had gone into renting and furnishing his apartment. He was essentially a pauper until the network salary checks began coming in. But he knew that the real reason for staying home was fear. He wasn’t ready yet to explore the night world of this formidable city. He couldn’t go out there while his new self was still moist and malleable around the edges.
Then there were the dreams.
He hadn’t had nightmares at the Rehab Center. He had them now. Traumatic identity crises punctuated his sleep. He ran breathlessly down long gleaming ropy corridors, pursued by a man who wore his face. He stood by the shore of a viscous gray-green pool that bubbled and steamed and heaved, and a gnarled hairy claw reached up from its depths and groped for him. He tiptoed across a sea of quicksand, sinking deeper and deeper, and something underneath plucked at his toes. Pulling him under with a loud plop. A coven of monsters waiting down below. Teeth and green horns and yellow eyes. Often he woke up shrieking. And then lay awake, listening to something knocking on the inside of his skull. Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out! Great gusts of wind blew through his brain. Vast snorting snores setting the medulla atremble. A slumbering giant, restless, cranky, trapped behind his forehead. Belching and farting within his head. Knock. Knock. Knock.
Also the peculiar doubleness of self assailed him, the sensation of being enshrouded and entangled in the scraps and threads of his old identity, so that he momentarily was sucked back into it. I am Nat Hamlin. Married, successful. Psychosculptor. This is my face. These are my hands. Why am I in this unfamiliar little apartment? No. No. I am Paul Macy. I used to be. Formerly was. In another country, so to speak. And besides the stench is dead. Why does he haunt me? I am not Nat Hamlin.