The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (75 page)

“So this is Sigmund . . . ? How are you, Eileen?”

“Fine. – Yes, he wanted very badly to come along, and
I
wanted you to meet him.”

Render led her to a chair and seated her. She unsnapped the double guide from the dog’s harness and placed it on the floor. Sigmund sat down beside it and continued to stare at Render.

“How is everything at State Psych?”

“Same as always. – May I bum a cigarette, Doctor? I forgot mine.”

He placed it between her fingers, furnished a light. She was wearing a dark blue suit and her glasses were flame blue. The silver spot on her forehead reflected the glow of his lighter; she
continued to stare at that point in space after he had withdrawn his hand. Her shoulder-length hair appeared a trifle lighter than it had seemed on the night they met; today it was like a
fresh-minted copper coin.

Render seated himself on the corner of his desk, drawing up his world-ashtray with his toe.

“You told me before that being blind did not mean that you had never seen. I didn’t ask you to explain it then. But I’d like to ask you now.”

“I had a neuroparticipation session with Dr. Riscomb,” she told him, “before he had his accident. He wanted to accommodate my mind to visual impressions. Unfortunately, there
was never a second session.”

“I see. What did you do in that session?”

She crossed her ankles and Render noted they were well-turned.

“Colors, mostly. The experience was quite overwhelming.”

“How well do you remember them? How long ago was it?”

“About six months ago – and I shall never forget them. I have even dreamed in color patterns since then.”

“How often?”

“Several times a week.”

“What sort of associations do they carry?”

“Nothing special. They just come into my mind along with other stimuli now – in a pretty haphazard way.”

“How?”

“Well, for instance, when you ask me a question it’s a sort of yellowish-orangish pattern that I ‘see.’ Your greeting was a kind of silvery thing. Now that you’re
just sitting there listening to me, saying nothing, I associate you with a deep, almost violet, blue.”

Sigmund shifted his gaze to the desk and stared at the side panel.

Can he hear the recorder spinning inside?
wondered Render.
And if he can, can he guess what it is and what it’s doing?

If so, the dog would doubtless tell Eileen – not that she was unaware of what was now an accepted practice – and she might not like being reminded that he considered her case as
therapy, rather than a mere mechanical adaptation process. If he thought it would do any good (he smiled inwardly at the notion), he would talk to the dog in private about it.

Inwardly, he shrugged.

“I’ll construct a rather elementary fantasy world then,” he said finally, “and introduce you to some basic forms today.”

She smiled; and Render looked down at the myth who crouched by her side, its tongue a piece of beefsteak hanging over a picket fence.

Is he smiling too?

“Thank you,” she said.

Sigmund wagged his tail.

“Well then,” Render disposed of his cigarette near Madagascar, “I’ll fetch out the ‘egg’ now and test it. In the meantime,” he pressed an unobstrusive
button, “perhaps some music would prove relaxing.”

She started to reply, but a Wagnerian overture snuffed out the words. Render jammed the button again, and there was a moment of silence during which he said, “Heh heh. Thought Respighi was
next.”

It took two more pushes for him to locate some Roman pines.

“You could have left him on,” she observed. “I’m quite fond of Wagner.”

“No thanks,” he said, opening the closet, “I’d keep stepping in all those piles of leitmotifs.”

The great egg drifted out into the office, soundless as a cloud. Render heard a soft growl behind as he drew it toward the desk. He turned quickly.

Like the shadow of a bird, Sigmund had gotten to his feet, crossed the room, and was already circling the machine and sniffing at it – tail taut, ears flat, teeth bared.

“Easy, Sig,” said Render. “It’s an Omnichannel Neural T & R Unit. It won’t bite or anything like that. It’s just a machine, like a car, or a teevee, or a
dishwasher. That’s what we’re going to use today to show Eileen what some things look like.”

“Don’t like it,” rumbled the dog.

“Why?”

Sigmund had no reply, so he stalked back to Eileen and laid his head in her lap.

“Don’t like it,” he repeated, looking up at her.

“Why?”

“No words,” he decided. “We go home now?”

“No,” she answered him. “You’re going to curl up in the corner and take a nap, and I’m going to curl up in that machine and do the same thing – sort
of.”

“No good,” he said, tail drooping.

“Go on now,” she pushed him, “lie down and behave yourself.”

He acquiesced, but he whined when Render blanked the windows and touched the button which transformed his desk into the operator’s seat.

He whined once more – when the egg, connected now to an outlet, broke in the middle and the top slid back and up, revealing the interior.

Render seated himself. His chair became a contour couch and moved in halfway beneath the console. He sat upright and it moved back again, becoming a chair. He touched a part of the desk and half
the ceiling disengaged itself, reshaped itself, and lowered to hover overhead like a huge bell. He stood and moved around to the side of the ro-womb. Respighi spoke of pines and such, and Render
disengaged an earphone from beneath the egg and leaned back across his desk. Blocking one ear with his shoulder and pressing the microphone to the other, he played upon the buttons with his free
hand. Leagues of surf drowned the tone poem; miles of traffic overrode it; a great clanging bell sent fracture lines running through it; and the feedback said: “. . . Now that you are just
sitting there listening to me, saying nothing, I associate you with a deep, almost violet, blue . . .”

He switched to the face mask and monitored,
one –
cinnamon,
two –
leaf mold,
three –
deep reptilian musk . . . and down through thirst, and the tastes of
honey and vinegar and salt, and back on up through lilacs and wet concrete, a before-the-storm whiff of ozone, and all the basic olfactory and gustatory cues for morning, afternoon, and evening in
the town.

The couch floated normally in its pool of mercury, magnetically stabilized by the walls of the egg. He set the tapes.

The ro-womb was in perfect condition.

“Okay,” said Render, turning, “everything checks.”

She was just placing her glasses atop her folded garments. She had undressed while Render was testing the machine. He was perturbed by her narrow waist, her large, dark-pointed breasts, her long
legs. She was too well-formed for a woman her height, he decided.

He realized though, as he stared at her, that his main annoyance was, of course, the fact that she was his patient.

“Ready here,” she said, and he moved to her side.

He took her elbow and guided her to the machine. Her fingers explored its interior. As he helped her enter the unit, he saw that her eyes were a vivid seagreen. Of this, too, he disapproved.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, we’re set. I’m going to close it now. Sweet dreams.” The upper shell dropped slowly. Closed, it grew opaque, then dazzling. Render was staring down at his own
distorted reflection.

He moved back in the direction of his desk.

Sigmund was on his feet, blocking the way.

Render reached down to pat his head, but the dog jerked it aside.

“Take me, with,” he growled.

“I’m afraid that can’t be done, old fellow,” said Render. “Besides, we’re not really going anywhere. We’ll just be dozing, right here, in this
room.”

The dog did not seem mollified.

“Why?”

Render sighed. An argument with a dog was about the most ludicrous thing he could imagine when sober.

“Sig,” he said, “I’m trying to help her learn what things look like. You doubtless do a fine job guiding her around in this world which she cannot see – but she
needs to know what it looks like now, and I’m going to show her.”

“Then she, will not, need me.”

“Of course she will.” Render almost laughed. The pathetic thing was here bound so closely to the absurd thing that he could not help it. “I can’t restore her
sight,” he explained. “I’m just going to transfer her some sight-abstractions – sort of lend her my eyes for a short time. Savvy?”

“No,” said the dog. “Take mine.”

Render turned off the music.

The whole mutie-master relationship might be worth six volumes
, he decided,
in German
.

He pointed to the far corner.

“Lie down, over there, like Eileen told you. This isn’t going to take long, and when it’s all over you’re going to leave the same way you came – you leading.
Okay?”

Sigmund did not answer, but he turned and moved off to the corner, tail drooping again.

Render seated himself and lowered the hood, the operator’s modified version of the ro-womb. He was alone before the ninety white buttons and the two red ones. The world ended in the
blackness beyond the console. He loosened his necktie and unbuttoned his collar.

He removed the helmet from its receptacle and checked its leads. Donning it then, he swung the half-mask up over his lower face and dropped the darksheet down to meet with it. He rested his
right arm in the sling, and with a single tapping gesture, he eliminated his patient’s consciousness.

A Shaper does not press white buttons consciously. He wills conditions. Then deeply implanted muscular reflexes exert an almost imperceptible pressure against the sensitive arm-sling, which
glides into the proper position and encourages an extended finger to move forward. A button is pressed. The sling moves on.

Render felt a tingling at the base of his skull; he smelled fresh-cut grass.

Suddenly he was moving up the great gray alley between the worlds.

After what seemed a long time, Render felt that he was footed on a strange Earth. He could see nothing; it was only a sense of presence that informed him he had arrived. It was the darkest of
all the dark nights he had ever known.

He willed that the darkness disperse. Nothing happened.

A part of his mind came awake again, a part he had not realized was sleeping; he recalled whose world he had entered.

He listened for her presence. He heard fear and anticipation.

He willed color. First, red . . .

He felt a correspondence. Then there was an echo.

Everything became red; he inhabited the center of an infinite ruby.

Orange. Yellow . . .

He was caught in a piece of amber.

Green now, and he added the exhalations of a sultry sea. Blue, and the coolness of evening.

He stretched his mind then, producing all the colors at once. They came in great swirling plumes.

Then he tore them apart and forced a form upon them.

An incandescent rainbow arced across the black sky.

He fought for browns and grays below him. Self-luminescent, they appeared – in shimmering, shifting patches.

Somewhere, a sense of awe. There was no trace of hysteria though, so he continued with the Shaping.

He managed a horizon, and the blackness drained away beyond it. The sky grew faintly blue, and he ventured a herd of dark clouds. There was resistance to his efforts at creating distance and
depth, so he reinforced the tableau with a very faint sound of surf. A transference from an auditory concept of distance came slowly then, as he pushed the clouds about. Quickly, he threw up a high
forest to offset a rising wave of acrophobia.

The panic vanished.

Render focused his attention on tall trees – oaks and pines, poplars and sycamores. He hurled them about like spears, in ragged arrays of greens and browns and yellows, unrolled a thick
mat of morning-moist grass, dropped a series of gray boulders and greenish logs at irregular intervals, and tangled and twined the branches overhead, casting a uniform shade throughout the
glen.

The effect was staggering. It seemed as if the entire world was shaken with a sob, then silent.

Through the stillness he felt her presence. He had decided it would be best to lay the groundwork quickly, to set up a tangible headquarters, to prepare a field for operations. He could
backtrack later, he could repair and amend the results of the trauma in the sessions yet to come; but this much, at least, was necessary for a beginning.

With a start, he realized that the silence was not a withdrawal. Eileen had made herself immanent in the trees and the grass, the stones and the bushes; she was personalizing their forms,
relating them to tactile sensations, sounds, temperatures, aromas.

With a soft breeze, he stirred the branches of the trees. Just beyond the bounds of seeing he worked out the splashing sounds of a brook.

There was a feeling of joy. He shared it.

She was bearing it extremely well, so he decided to extend the scope of the exercise. He let his mind wander among the trees, experiencing a momentary doubling of vision, during which time he
saw an enormous hand riding in an aluminum carriage toward a circle of white.

He was beside the brook now and he was seeking her, carefully.

He drifted with the water. He had not yet taken on a form. The splashes became a gurgling as he pushed the brook through shallow places and over rocks. At his insistence, the waters became more
articulate.

“Where are you?” asked the brook.

Here! Here!

Here!

. . . and here!
replied the trees, the bushes, the stones, the grass.

“Choose one,” said the brook, as it widened, rounded a mass of rock, then bent its way down a slope, heading toward a blue pool.

I
cannot
, was the answer from the wind.

“You must.” The brook widened and poured into the pool, swirled about the surface, then stilled itself and reflected branches and dark clouds. “Now!”