The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (20 page)

In the dream but not in the dream, in the car but not in the car, he wanted to close his eyes to shut out the street
before him on the screen but was unable to do anything, unable to do anything but hold on, gritting his teeth against the rocking of the car and the sound of the engine and the buffeting wind and rain.

His hand traveled a thousand miles as he reached for the button on the dashboard. Pressed the button. The screen began to break up into a jagged jigsaw puzzle, scattered images clashing and colliding, the sound fading, the car slowing down, everything gentle suddenly, the images gone from the screen and the screen glowing green again, the wind giving one last sad shriek before falling away into silence. His hands trembled, his body shook as he let the meaning of the room and the car and the screen reach full flower in his mind. His nightmare had been manufactured in this room, in the simulated car and the movie on the screen.

He rested his head on the steering wheel, trying to calm his racing heart, trying to keep from running in panic out of the room and down the corridor and into the streets.

He felt the presence behind him a moment before he heard the voice.

“I am sorry you had to learn about it this way, Barney,” the Handyman said.

Barney didn’t move, didn’t want to move, didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to know what had happened, what
was
happening to him. But in the darkness of his closed eyes he was in the car again, slanting down the street.

And the only way he could flee the nightmare was by opening his eyes and facing the Handyman.

L
ET
me tell you what a screen is, Barney,” the Handyman said.

“I know what a screen is,” Barney replied, angry, but the anger hiding something else inside him: a growing, numbing fear. To hold back the fear, he forced himself to concentrate on what the Handyman was saying and keep up his part of the conversation. “There are a lot of screens, doctor. Movie screens, window screens.” Pleased with himself. In control.

“Yes,” the Handyman agreed. “And still others. For instance, the screen that keeps people hidden while they dress. You have seen them in films, perhaps. You find them in the dressing rooms of theater people.”

Barney nodded, impatient but concealing his impatience, waiting for the explanation the Handyman had promised a few moments ago in that terrible room upstairs. “Come,” the Handyman had said, “let us leave this dreadful place and go to my office, and I shall tell you everything.” He had held out his hand to Barney but Barney hadn’t taken it, had kept his arms stiffly at his sides. Feeling betrayed and deceived, he had walked silently beside the Handyman as they went to the elevator, the regular
one, and descended to the first floor. And now, here in his office, the Handyman seemed to be playing games with words—all this talk about screens—with Barney deciding to wait him out, take it easy, tempo, rhythm.

“Screens are also used in the functions of the brain,” the Handyman said. “Memory in particular.”

Dropping the word
memory
like a coin down a well, an expectant look on his face as if waiting for Barney to hear it land. And maybe explode like a bomb on landing.

“You remember, of course, how I explained to you about short-term memory and long-term memory. How we retain what happened yesterday and forget what happened, say, twenty years ago.”

“Yes,” Barney said, waiting, watching, trying to fathom what was going on in the Handyman’s brain, behind those brilliant green eyes.

“But do we really forget, Barney? Is it possible, after all, that there is no such thing as forgetting? That what we learn throughout our lifetime remains recorded permanently in our brains?”

“Then why can’t we remember everything?” Barney asked, curious. More than curious: knowing this was leading somewhere and it involved him.

The Handyman smiled briefly, apparently pleased by Barney’s display of interest. “Because the memories are blocked out. For any number of reasons. Perhaps as time goes by the blocks become heavier and heavier, thicker and thicker, so that it’s more difficult to penetrate a block and retrieve the past. These blocks are mysterious. And they seem to change character as time goes on. For instance, old people suddenly begin to remember what happened fifty years ago and yet are hazy about what happened yesterday. The fact that they remember distant
events indicates that memories may be permanently in the mind, hidden behind blocks.”

But what about me? Barney wanted to ask. Where do I fit in?

“I explained to you earlier how chemicals can alter the functions of the brain,” the Handyman went on, but slower in speech now, choosing his words carefully, like a man stepping through a field of broken glass. “Chemicals have been found to affect the memory. A scientist in Europe discovered during experiments with laboratory mice that those that were forced to learn new skills—such as finding their way through a maze or learning to balance on a trapeze—produced a chemical in their brains. A marvelous discovery, Barney, linking a chemical to learning and memory. A landmark event. Later, a scientist here in our own country took the opposite course. He injected mice with a chemical that interfered with the production of the learning chemical. Using this interfering drug, he found that mice that had learned new skills promptly forgot them. In other words, the scientist found that he could block out a short-term memory—the skill the mice had learned the day previously—by injecting the counter-chemical. This was the beginning of our studies of memory, and the control of memory by chemicals.”

“Am I a mouse in a maze?” Barney asked.

“You are much more than that, Barney. You are a precious human being. If we did not regard you as such, we would not have subjected you to the tests. It is unfortunate that you found your way to the laboratory upstairs, which has caused me to disclose this information prematurely.”

Unfortunate.
Another one of the Handyman’s words. Meaning: too bad, tough, your luck has run out.

“Screens,” Barney said, running from his thoughts—his
thoughts like mice in a maze. “You were talking about screens.”

“Exactly,” the Handyman said. “You have anticipated me. We have arrived at the point where the screen becomes involved.” He seemed unsure of himself now, pausing, tugging at his beard, eyes moving away from Barney for the first time. Sighed briefly, then eyes back on Barney again. “A screen, in terms of the memory system, is a device to hide a memory, an image. A chemical is utilized to wipe away this particular memory, in this case a small isolated patch of short-term memory. A screen is then substituted to suppress the original memory. Your screen was the experience of the car ride. While under the influence of a chemical, you were exposed to the experience of the automobile, seated in the improvised car, exposed to the events on the monitor. This experience became the screen—and the screen, Barney, was for your protection, blocking out the original memory whenever your mind threatened to retrieve it.”

“You mean all those times I dreamed—even while awake—of the car going down the hill and me driving it, that meant the old memory was trying to break through and come out?” Scared to death at his question. Tempo, rhythm.

“You have said it well,” the Handyman said. “The screen performed beyond all the projected expectations. There were occasional lapses. Some losses of control. Before you came here. But the proceedings here and, in particular, Dr. Croft’s work, succeeded admirably. Those earlier tests disturbed other facets of your memory. But only to a minimal degree. Occasionally you had trouble recalling a minor memory. This was a sort of fringe reaction. We subjected you to a form of hypnosis, with posthypnotic
suggestions, to reinforce the chemical and the screens. You complained once that you could not recall your mother’s face, that it was like the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. We supplied the proper screen.”

“Wait a minute,” Barney said, alarmed, wanting to leap to his feet, wanting to scream in fact, but keeping calm, letting the blood flow. “Back up, back up.…”

“What do you mean—back up?” the Handyman asked. Frowning, puzzled.

“What you’ve just said. Back up to it. You said: those earlier tests. Before I came here. But I was given the first memory test
here.
Just a couple of weeks ago. When Dr. Croft arrived.”

As Barney spoke, he saw the Handyman change before his eyes. For the first time the Handyman seemed to have lost his composure. His mouth was opened slightly and those eyes, usually so penetrating, were clouded over, as if a film veiled them. Had he mentioned those earlier tests without intending to, or was he realizing for the first time the effect the knowledge would have on his patient? Barney didn’t know, knew nothing but this terrible fear growing in him, like a siren howling in his mind, screaming through his veins and arteries. He didn’t like this perplexed Handyman he saw before him. He wanted the familiar all-knowing Handyman to return, to laugh off Barney’s question—“Do not be absurd, Barney”—and to say that it was all a mistake, another test, more merchandise to test his reactions.

But the old Handyman didn’t return. This new and troubled man sat behind the desk, deep in thought. As if waiting.

And now Barney knew what he was waiting for. He was waiting for Barney to ask a question and Barney knew
what the question was. He had told the Handyman to back up but he hadn’t backed up far enough. Hadn’t gone as far back as the original memory.

“What was the memory you blocked out, doctor?” Barney asked, and his voice sounded like that of a stranger, a thin and quivering voice.

The Handyman rose wearily from the chair, leaned against the desk for a moment, and walked to the paneled wall, opened a small door that had been part of the wall a moment before. He withdrew a pitcher of water, poured a bit into a glass, took a pill from a small bottle, placed it on his tongue and swallowed it.

“You see, Barney?” he said, indicating the bottle. “We are not monsters here. We are human beings. We get headaches—I am subject to migraines—but we always hide these things from our patients. Sometimes I think that is a mistake. It makes us appear immune. And we are not immune. We are not gods, either, although some pretend they are.” He directed the eyes, brilliant once again, at Barney. “Yes, you had earlier tests before you arrived here. Three, in fact. You received the original screen there.”

“Where was I before I arrived, doctor?” Barney asked, voice still small, almost a whisper. “I can’t remember.”

“I know you can’t,” the Handyman said, kindly, gentle.

Barney feared the gentleness.

“Was that other place screened out, too?”

“I realize there is no easy way to tell you this, Barney. So let me say it plainly, the way you always insist. First, however, let me point out that you volunteered for this project. You were eager to participate at that other place. Your eagerness provided the first objective: to choose a subject who would benefit immediately, if perhaps only temporarily, by the experiment.”

“Go on,” Barney said, letting the blood flow, tempo, rhythm.

“You see, Barney, that place you came from, which you cannot remember, was a hospice. A facility for persons suffering from terminal diseases.”

Barney closed his eyes, wiping out the Handyman the way his own memory had been wiped out. He held himself stiffly, afraid to move, afraid that he might break into a thousand pieces if he tried to move. He said, “Oh, no,” in a frail and futile attempt to deny what he now knew to be true. He was like the others here, after all, like Billy the Kidney and Allie Roon and Mazzo, who used to be a bastard. He was one of them.

T
HE
trick now was not only to live in separate compartments but to divide
himself
into separate compartments, so that the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing and his mind would be separate from his body. Actually, his hands worked together, each contributing to the task before him, taking the car apart and moving the parts into the Complex, then into the elevator and up to the sixth floor. His legs walked, carrying his body to the junkyard, and his hands manipulated the screwdriver and the small hammer and the chisel he found useful to pry loose stubborn sections.

His mind was separate from these operations, dictating the actions to his body mechanically, the way a computer orders the movements of the machine that it is. He tried to make himself into a machine, functioning smoothly and efficiently, no unnecessary motions, his mind working keenly and analytically, planning ahead, solving the problems as they arose—like stationing Billy the Kidney at Old Cheekbones’ desk to divert her with carefully prepared questions while Barney pushed the wheelchair loaded with automobile parts across the corridor and into the elevator.

He kept his mind separate from his body and he banished
his emotions altogether. Didn’t know how he managed to do this but did it. Realized his emotions were tied to thoughts, and, thus, certain thoughts triggered certain emotions. He kept those thoughts from developing. His screen, most of the time, was the car itself. Planning the theft, timing the movements of parts from junkyard to the Complex, envisioning the grand design and the final outcome. He pictured his mind as a series of rooms—all right, compartments—and there were certain compartments he did not enter. Except sometimes. Sometimes he could not keep the doors closed to all the compartments, and he found himself remembering, his memory, ironically, intact about certain things. Like that talk with the Handyman.

“You were doing me a favor, right, doctor?”

“If a certain patch of knowledge had to be erased, why not the most terrible knowledge of all?”

“You mean, I was going to die anyway and climbing the walls about it?”

“You were not resigned, Barney. Those stages I told you about when you first arrived? You went through them all but did not reach the stage of acceptance.”