The Man Who Melted (6 page)

“No,” he continued, “I'm just a bit deaf, as are all of us who belong to the Church of the Christian Criers.” Pretre paused as if waiting for a cue from Mantle.

“Go on,” Mantle said. He was nervous, as he always was in the presence of those who had slippery minds.

“When we're together in a ceremony, when we hook-into a holy Crier, then—for that precious short time—we can hear the voices of the other world which has been silent so long. We can hear the voice of any Crier who wishes to communicate, even if that Crier be dead.”

Josiane! Mantle thought, almost saying her name aloud. For an instant, he thought he actually could see her face before him. It was such a beautiful face: strong yet delicate, framed in a halo of baby-fine, curly hair. I love you, my sister, please let me find you….

He thought of Joan: such was his perversity. But her pleading face could not draw him back.

“Sometimes I can hear the whispering of the other world when I'm alone,” Pretre said. “Sometimes I hear the departed Criers.” He jabbed Mantle lightly in the crotch and, feeling an erection, let his hand linger. “And I suspect that you will hear a voice or two yourself.”

FOUR

Joan took Pfeiffer to her club, which was within walking distance on the Rue de Latour-Maubourg, which angled off from the Boulevard de la Croisette. The club was a seedy bar called The Exchange, and was Irish. It was not a tourist spot as was Hell's Knell, with its sawdust floor and jazz bands, but just a hole in the wall where one could get a stiff drink and an American hamburger.

“I've heard of this place,” Pfeiffer said, sliding into a booth as Joan took the opposite side.

“Is it what you expected?”

“I would imagine that its reputation is mostly a fake,” he replied, looking toward the burly barkeep who was Irish, and then around at the booths and tables, not yet filled.

Joan smiled. Ray was right, she thought. Pfeiffer's lack of humor and subtlety was somehow endearing. For him, everything carried the same weight and deserved the same consideration. “Well,” she said, “there was an incident once that made it a tourist attraction for a while. But now it's mostly fax people, bureaucrats, and an occasional diplomat.”

“I'm worried about Raymond,” Pfeiffer said, looking at her as if he needed to know everything about Mantle now, even before tasting a drink. As if on cue, the barkeep appeared to welcome Joan, make some small talk, and take their order—bourbon with a chaser for him, a Campari for her; then he left, thereby giving Joan a chance to recover from Pfeiffer's question. He was fishing: the least he could do was wait until she'd had a drink.

“I'm sure Ray will be fine,” she said coolly, but she was anxious about him and wondered if he had plugged in yet. It's my own fault I'm not with him, she told herself. But he
would
be fine, she thought, only half believing it. In some ways Mantle was one of the strongest people she had ever met, and yet he was also one of the most insecure. He was open about it, accepted it, and guiltlessly used her to shore himself up from time to time. All those hours spent listening to him talk incessantly about his painting and subliminals and his fear of failure. He constantly compared himself to his peers, especially to Pfeiffer and his wife. There was something repellent about him when he was like that; perhaps it was because Joan needed him to be strong.

“I think this business with the Screamers is crazy,” Pfeiffer said, staring intently at Joan. “And I think this cult of yours is even crazier.” He paused, waiting for a reaction; receiving none, he said, “Raymond's always been on the edge, even before Josiane disappeared.”

There was something about the way Pfeiffer said “Raymond” that Joan didn't like, but she didn't take the bait. Although she agreed with him about Ray being on the edge (and, perhaps because of that, also terribly sane), she made a disbelieving face.

“It's all in his medical records,” he said, slumping down in his chair a bit, as if exposing Mantle's little secrets were a grave and difficult burden to bear. “He has definite right-brain tendencies. And his corpus callosum is slightly thicker than normal, which is the case with many schizophrenics and your Screamers. The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres in the brain—”

“Jesus Christ,” she snapped. “What's wrong with using your whole brain?” She caught herself and said, evenly, “You seem to've made quite a study of Ray. He must be very happy to have a friend who is so concerned.”

“I am concerned,” Pfeiffer said earnestly, seemingly missing her point, or possibly just ignoring her derision. Perhaps Ray was right: Pfeiffer might be
the grand solipsist, wending his way around a world made for him, all the mirrors of the world reflecting only his own face. And yet there was something about him that reminded her of Ray.

“I'm afraid he
will
go over the edge if he plugs-into a Screamer,” Pfeiffer continued.

“There's always that chance,” she said evenly, but she was feeling panic. Her relationship with Mantle had been a series of small losses and loneliness leading up to tonight. It could have been different tonight, she told herself. I should have been with him. It's my fault. I've lost him now, really lost him….

“But there's no chance of him finding Josiane,” Pfeiffer said with finality. “She's probably dead or else she's running slack-jawed with a gang of Screamers somewhere in New York. Either way, she's beyond his reach.”

“Perhaps not,” Joan said, recovering.

“Bunk,” Pfeiffer said, waving for a drink. There was a waiter on duty now, and a battered old Thring domestic robot keeping the back station where Joan and Pfeiffer were sitting. The club was becoming crowded.

“Do you want another drink?” Pfeiffer asked Joan as the robot hesitated beside their booth. The robot, although otherwise clean and burnished, had the flag of the old Irish Republic sloppily painted on its chest. It had a jolly, stereotyped Irish face on its video display; and it spoke in brogue. Although the robot moved smoothly on hidden wheels, it had the rectangular look of something that should rattle and squeak, like a twentieth-century automobile.

Joan and Pfeiffer ordered another drink, and the robot whispered off.

“Raymond won't find anything inside the Screamer but the last flickers of a dying mind,” Pfeiffer said. “Did you know that Raymond had to be incarcerated in a sanatorium after he plugged into his psychiatrist?”

“What?” Joan asked.

“Ah, that he didn't tell you.”

“I did know that he was in a private sanatorium for a time.”

“Well,” Pfeiffer continued, “it was an experiment to regain his memory—the idea being that the psych could gain access to whatever it was that Mantle was hiding from himself.”

“And…?”

“Raymond plugged into the psych, and then went over the edge when the psych started probing. Raymond must have had quite a stake in hiding the information, for he almost killed the psych before the connection was broken. And this doctor was supposed to be experienced in using the psyconductor with patients. The irony is that both of them ended up in the same sanatorium.”

“You really don't like Ray, do you?” Joan asked, angry at the way Pfeiffer had told her the story, and angry at herself for being here, for not being with Mantle. And damn the church and Pretre for taking him away, she thought.

“Of course, I like Raymond. Christ, I've known him for twenty years.”

“You don't seem to be much of a friend. You talk about him as if he were a thing, not a person.”

“I'm sorry you misunderstand me. I know Raymond better than anyone else. I'm speaking of the things about him that worry me. Since I assumed you to be his friend too, I didn't think it necessary to review his good points, although I can do that if you wish.” He gave her a wide, boyish grin, then bowed his head to disappear it.

“Okay,” Joan said, “
I'm
sorry.”

“Forget it.”

You asshole, she thought. No wonder Ray hates him. She wondered how Pfeiffer would be sexually. Probably not very good, but then again…. He was probably not bisexual, probably fucked-up sexually.

“Do you really believe that Raymond can find Josiane by sticking into a Screamer?”

Another gibe, Joan thought, but she would play a game and take everything seriously, ignore nuance. She could excuse herself, get rid of him; but there was too much she wanted to find out about Ray, and about his relationship with Pfeiffer and Josiane.

“Yes,” she said matter-of-factly, “I believe Ray has a chance of finding out about his wife.” Smiling, she said, “And one doesn't ‘stick-in,' one plugs-in.”

Pfeiffer grinned, then his face became serious again, as if the muscles could only hold a smile for an instant. “Is that as bad as calling San Francisco ‘Frisco'?” he asked, but the joke fell dead. “I don't think Raymond will ever find Josiane, and I think it's cruel for you and your fanatical friends to endanger him and give him false hopes.”

“There
is
a chance,” Joan said quietly, praying she was right and that he wouldn't be harmed. After her holy initiation (she had also plugged into a dying Crier), her faith in the church and its methods seemed unshakable. Now she was having second thoughts. But I
must
believe, she told herself. “Many nonbelievers become converts after plugging in and contacting a lost relative. There are enough documented cases to convince—”

“And how many of your ‘cases' went bonkers afterward? You sound like a rabid spiritualist from the last century.”

“One cannot trick someone with a psyconductor.”

“I'm not at all sure of that.”

“And least of all Ray. Tricking people into believing things is
his
business.”

“He's as vulnerable as anyone else,” Pfeiffer said. “You should realize that. And as I understand it, the procedure won't work
unless
he's in a suggestible state.”

“A trance can help you initially break with the world, which you must do when you plug-into the dead, especially into a Crier. But you can't locate a lost friend or wife or relative with a trick. Either the hook-in works or it doesn't. The psyconductor is a scientific instrument, and communicating with the dead is a common and indisputable fact.” Joan caught herself, and her face became warm with embarrassment: she was anxiously singing the party song, and even to her, it sounded hollow and foolish. What she had felt as true—and, yes, profound—now sounded silly when put into words. She thought about Ray hooking into the Crier and remembered her own plug-in ceremony, the sense of expansion and uplift, of passing through the layers of the world and drifting through the black and silver spaces; and all she could communicate were a few trite phrases, true as they might be.

“He won't find her,” Pfeiffer said. There was a strident edge to his voice.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I really don't think he wants to find her.”

“Then why would he go to all this trouble?”

“To deceive himself, to give himself something to live for; maybe to forget his failings. He is, by his own standards, a failure. Surely you can see that.”

“I see nothing of the sort,” Joan replied angrily. “And don't you think you're being a bit too condescending? People who live in glass houses, and all that sort of thing…?”

Pfeiffer smiled, this time genuinely, or so it seemed, for the smile passed slowly across his face. “Ah, so we return to maxims of great moral truth. You English are so fond of them.”

Joan blushed. “The maxim does contain some truth. And I'm not English, I'm American, it's just that I've developed an accent from living abroad—”

“But for every maxim there's a countermaxim,” Pfeiffer said, ignoring her protest. “We aren't so removed from the medieval mind, after all.”

“What do you mean?” Joan asked, content to let the conversation drift away from Ray for the moment. She would let Pfeiffer puff himself up.

“The Middle Ages were ruled by maxims and parables from history, legend, and Scripture. They contained all the great moral truths of the age, and were used to defend every action.”

“Did you know that Ray has an interest in history?” Joan asked, feeling that she was on safe ground now.

“No, I didn't. He never showed much of an interest in the old days.”

“Yes, he's fascinated by the twentieth century.”

“Raymond always did have to have an escape.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You really don't have a single good word for him, do you?” Joan asked.

“I'm sorry. It's not the way you think.”

“Do you think yourself so much nobler and more in touch with reality than he? Is
your
profession so much better?”

Now Pfeiffer began to redden, although whether out of anger or humiliation, Joan could not tell. “I don't think of myself as noble, and I see the news medium as the filthy business it is. When I met Raymond, he was unformed but brilliant. Anyone could see that. I've watched him grow and develop and gain control over his craft. And watched him fail on his own terms. He wanted to be an artist, not an illustrator or, worse yet, a subliminal engineer.”

“Glass houses….” Joan said.

“Well, I—”

Joan smiled, and Pfeiffer returned it. “Tell me about Josiane,” she asked.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything. I want to get a feel for what she was like.” She watched Pfeiffer's hands as she spoke. He had the annoying habit of twiddling his thumbs, an American mannerism she had forgotten existed; it looked somehow obscene.

“You know, of course, that they're brother and sister.”

“Yes.”

“Actually, they look quite alike,” Pfeiffer said, untangling his fingers and taking a sip of his drink, which was watered down by now. “You can't see it in holos, even if you set them side by side; only in the flesh. Perhaps it was because they had a similar sort of intensity. Of course, they had some of the same facial features. The same kind of bodies, I guess, too. Both long and lanky. But they had very different turns of mind.”

“How do you mean?”

“Josiane was a scatter-head. Never finished anything. Very young and immature, really. Always falling in and out of love.”

“But that was before she settled down with Ray.” She said that like a question.

“Josiane never settled down. It was just that she and her brother shared a mutual romantic dream for a while.”

“It seemed to have worked.”

“For a while, and in its fashion, but there were always problems.”

“As in any relationship,” she said, looking into his eyes for a reaction. There was none.

“But Raymond was more stable,” Pfeiffer continued. “Except in matters of the heart. Somehow he'd convinced himself that he was in love with his sister.”

“She must have felt the same way.”

“She was talked into it,” Pfeiffer said. “But he had the talent. She was always a nice middle-class wife type.”

“That's a sexist thing to say.”