The Ninth Configuration (2 page)

Fell’s clinic reeked of defiance. On the walls, in heavy crayon, bold red arrows pointed to jars containing “Aspirin,” “Band-Aids,” “Dental Floss” and “Lemon Drops.” Another pointed out a “Suggestion Box”; and above them all, a master inscription,
crayoned in green, proclaimed:
“self-service.”

Fell was standing by a skeleton that was hanging next to his desk. He tipped a bottle of Scotch that he had set in the base of the skull so that its contents poured through a space where some teeth were missing and into the coffee mug he was holding underneath the mouth of the bottle. “Don’t blame me,” he muttered. “I told them not to operate.” He sipped at the Scotch and coffee and grimaced; then he picked up a stack of folders from his desk and stepped out into the great main hall of the mansion.

Like the exterior, the hall was a mixture of Tudor and Gothic, massive and dense, with stone-block walls and a high cathedral ceiling crisscrossed by beams. Circling the hall were a number of rooms now used as the commanding officer’s office, the adjutant’s office, the clinic, a utility room and a dormitory for the inmates.

Plastered against one wall of the enormous area was a blowup of a poster for the motion picture Dracula; the copy read: “Bloody Terror of Transylvania.” At the opposite end, a winding staircase led upstairs to a second floor, where the staff was billeted. The hub of the main hall below was used as a therapy room for the inmates. It was cluttered with lounge chairs, chess sets, Ping-Pong tables, stereo, a motion picture screen and projectors; coffee and soft-drink and cigarette machines; writing tables and magazines; and canvases, set on easels, vivid with paintings by the inmates. No painting was quite completed. Each was a tale of horror abruptly halted in mid-narration. One showed an index finger that pointed straight up and was pierced by a needle, dripping blood. Another depicted a tree, its terminal branches metamorphosed into the coils of a boa constrictor crushing the head of a male infant; its creator had captioned it “Mother Love.” Still others were infinitely busy and chaotically detailed, yet executed with fine-drawn precision so that in a single painting one could identify a jackhammer, part of an arm and an onrushing train, the wheels of a lathe, a baleful eye, a Negro Christ, a bloody ax, a bullet in flight and a creature half-lizard, half-man. One painting depicted a city in flames, erupting clouds of thick black smoke, while above the scene, high, almost microscopic in size, hung a silvery bomber pierced by a spear; on the fuselage, in red, were the tiny letters ME.

Fell glanced around the hall. It was strangely quiet and deserted. He walked to Kane’s office, opened the door and stepped inside.

Kane was unpacking some books from a large valise on his desk. His back was to Fell, but as the door slid open silently, he turned with a graceful swiftness.

“How’re you doing?” asked Fell. He closed the door behind him.

“Do you plan to get dressed?” Kane asked him. Fell was still trouser-less.

“How the hell can I get dressed when Lieutenant Fromme won’t surrender my pants?” he answered. “You don’t want me to rip them off!”

“No, we mustn’t be repressive,” said Kane.

“We mustn’t wrinkle the pants!”

“Of course.” Kane’s voice was gentle, as though everything living were his patient. He took more books from the suitcase on the teakwood desk and moved toward some bookshelves in a wall on which an American flag now rested at a diagonal where once hung a medieval lance. The room had been a den. It was heavily paneled in a rich dark oak, and stuffed animal trophies brooded on high. Only the flag announced a present time; that, and on the wall behind the desk, photos of President Lyndon Johnson and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in matching frames and posed in attitudes suggesting that the two were no longer speaking.

“Here,” said Fell as he tossed the folders onto the desk. “Here’s a present for you: case histories of the men.”

Fell’s eye fell inadvertently on a book in Kane’s valise. It was a Roman Catholic missal. For the briefest instant he pondered its implications; then he looked up again at Kane.

“May I give you some advice?” said Fell.

The office door flew open, banging against the wall with a crash that loosened plaster from the ceiling. “Can I come in?” asked Cutshaw, the astronaut. He slammed the door behind him and marched toward Kane. “I’m Billy Cutshaw,” he announced with menace. “So you’re the new boy.”

Kane finished shelving some books and turned. “Yes, I’m Colonel Hudson Kane.”

“Do I call you Hud?”

“Why not call me Colonel?”

“Are you the one that makes the chicken?”

“Colonel Kane’s a psychiatrist,” offered Fell, flopping down on the seat of a large bay window.

“Sure. And they told me you were a doctor,” Cutshaw rebutted. He pointed
at Fell: “This man treats crocodiles for acne. Listen, pack up and
leave, Hud! I don’t give a shit if you’re Shirley
MacLaine! I am acting on orders to inform you that you’re on the way out! Get moving! Get your ass into gear!” He knocked Kane’s suitcase off the desk.

Kane stared calmly. “Someone ‘ordered’ you?” he asked. “Who ordered you, Cutshaw?”

“Unseen forces far too numerous to enumerate. Check the file; it’s all in the file!” Cutshaw had seized the dossiers on the desk and was rapidly scanning the names on their covers, tossing one folder and then another on the floor. “It’s all in the file,” he announced excitedly, “under the heading ‘Mysterious Voices.’ Joan of Arc was not demented; she had acutely sensitive hearing!” Cutshaw threw away all the folders but one. “Hah! Here it is! My file! This is it! Here, read it, Hud. Read it out loud. It’s my therapy.”

“Why don’t we—”

“Read it or I’ll go crazy, dammit! I swear it! And you’ll be responsible!”

“All right, Cutshaw.” Kane took the folder from the astronaut’s hand.

“Sit down.”

Cutshaw swooped to Fell and sat on his lap. Something crunched. Cutshaw said, “I think the end of the world just came for that bag of Fritos in my pocket.”

Fell continued looking into his coffee mug, his expression unchanged.

“Would you please tell Fromme I’d like my pants,” he said to the astronaut.

“ ‘Consider the lilies of the field.
’ ”

Then Cutshaw leaped up from Fell’s lap and glided to a straight-backed wooden chair by the desk. He stared up unblinkingly at Kane. “I’m waiting,” he told him.

Kane began to read: “Cutshaw, Billy Thomas, Captain, United States Marine Corps….”

Cutshaw silently formed the words with his lips as Kane continued to read aloud:

“… Two days prior to a scheduled space shot, subject officer, while dining on the base, was observed to pick up a plastic catsup bottle, squeeze a thin red line across his throat, and then stagger
and fall heavily across a table then occupied by the director of the National Space Administration, gurgling, ‘Don’t-order-the swordfish.
’ ”
There ensued a silence of several seconds. Kane’s eyes were fixed on the file. Fell picked lint from his shirt.

Cutshaw’s hand flew up to a medal that hung from his neck. “You’re looking at my medal!” he snapped at Kane. “Stop looking at my medal!”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are! You covet it!”

Kane looked down at the file. Once more he began to read. “ ‘On the
following
—’ ”

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes, it’s—”

“Son of a bitch! I knew it. You were looking at it!”

“Sorry.”

“Sure, you’re sorry! What good is ‘sorry’? The damage is done, you envious swine! How can I eat now, how can I sleep! I’ll be a quivering nervous wreck now, waiting for some covetous kleptomaniacal colonel to come padding up to my bedside and rip away my medal!”

“If I were to do that,” Kane said soothingly, “you would awaken.”

“Powerful drugs could be insinuated into my soup.”

Kane’s eyes brushed over him, then returned to the dossier.

“The following morning at 0500, subject officer entered his space capsule, but on receiving instruction from Control to begin his countdown, he was heard instead to say, ‘I am sick unto death of being used!’ While being carried out of the capsule, subject officer plainly announced that if ‘nominated’ he ‘would not run, and if elected would spend his term in office vomiting.’ He later expressed his ‘profound conviction’ that going to the moon was ‘naughty, uncouth, and in any case bad for his skin.
’ ”

Fell’s effort to suppress a giggle attracted a furious glance from Cutshaw. “What’s the matter? You think that’s funny?”

Cutshaw bolted from his chair and began plucking books from out of the shelves and tossing them to the floor. “Pack up and leave, Hud! I’ve had it!”

He broke off and stared at the cover of a book in his hand. “What the hell is this: Teilhard de Chardin?” He looked with surprise at other titles on the shelf. “Douay Bible, Thomas a—” Cutshaw shook his head, then walked over to Kane. “Show me a Catholic and I’ll show you a junkie,” he said; then he ripped the psychiatrist’s shirtsleeve from the wrist all the way to the shoulder and scrutinized his arm. Finally he turned to Fell and scowled. “His needle holes are cleverly hidden,” he accused.

Kane said quietly, “Why won’t you go to the moon?”

“Why do camels have humps and cobras none? Good Christ, man, don’t ask the heart for reasons! Reasons are dangerous! The truth of the matter is Custer called Sitting Bull a Spic. Now, aren’t you glad you found that out?”

“Why won’t you go?” persisted Kane.

“Why should I? What the hell’s up there?”

“When Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain, did he ever dream that he’d find America?”

“All he ever dreamed about was compasses. Idiot starts out looking for India and then plants the flag on Pismo Beach.”

“It’s—”

“Hud, I’ve seen the moon rocks! They’ve got little bits of glass inside them: isn’t that exciting?”

“You still haven’t given me a reason, Cutshaw.”

“Only schmucks dance after dinner,” Cutshaw intoned. “Sheiks sleep.”

“What does that mean?” asked Kane.

“How do I know?” yipped Cutshaw defensively. “The voices told me to say that!”

“Cutshaw—”

“Wait a minute, wait wait wait!” The astronaut sat in the chair again as his hand flew up to his brow. His eyes pressed tightly shut in thought. “I’m getting a message from the astral plane. It’s Attila the Hun. He wants to know if you’ll accept the charges.”

“No,” said Fell.

“You tell him!”

The door flew open.

“Dr. Fell, I need attention.”

An inmate in a beret stood framed in the doorway. In one hand he held a palette, in the other a brush.

“What’s the problem?” Fell asked.

“Who but Leslie! Always Leslie!”

“Captain Leslie Morris Fairbanks,” Fell told Kane.

The beret quivered with outrage. “Once again he has given me that fiendish Mark of Fairbanks! Look!” He pouted, turning. “I am bleeding!”

He wasn’t. But slashed into his trouser seat was a very visible F.

“Is this wound self-inflicted?” asked Fell.

But the inmate was eying Kane. “You are Colonel Kane?”

Kane nodded.

“Charmed. I am Michelangelo Gomez.” Gomez rubbed his paintbrush into the palette. “Your coloring is bilious,” he said.

“Look out!” cried Fell; but too late: in a lightning movement, Gomez had brushed red paint onto both Kane’s cheeks.

“There!” Gomez beamed. “Not a Portrait of Jenny, but at least no more Dorian Gray!” He raised his paintbrush high in salute. “Ciao!” he said, and left.

Kane heard heavy breathing. Cutshaw was standing inches away, his eyes staring madly, shining and wide. “Okay, now I’m ready for my ink-blot test,” he said. He swooped to the chair, dragged it over to the desk, sat down, and looked expectant. “Come on, let’s go.”

“You want an ink-blot test?” asked Kane.

“What the hell, am I talking to myself? I want it now while you’re fresh with all those roses in your cheeks.”

Kane wiped his face with a handkerchief. “We have no Rorschach cards.”

“Like hell. Take a look in the drawer,” Cutshaw told him.

Kane pulled the desk drawer open and removed a stack of

Rorschach cards. “Very well,” he said, sliding into the chair behind the desk. “Sit down.”

Fell ambled toward the desk to observe.

Kane held a Rorschach card up and the astronaut leaned his head in close, his eyes scrunched up in concentration as he studied the ink blot.

“What do you see?” asked Kane.

“My whole life rushing past me in an instant.”

“Please.”

“Okay, okay, okay: I see a very old lady in funny clothes blowing poisoned darts at an elephant.”

Kane replaced the card with another. “And this one?”

“Kafka talking to a bedbug.”

“Correct.”

“You’re full of shit, do you know that?”

“I thought it was Kafka,” Fell interjected, studying the card with interest.

“You wouldn’t know Kafka from Bette Davis,” Cutshaw accused him. “And you, you’re a mental case,” he told Kane.

“Yes, maybe I am.”

Cutshaw rose and said, “Ingratiating bastard. Do you always play kiss-ass with the loonies?”

“No.”

“I like you, Kane. You’re regular.”

Cutshaw tore the medal and chain from his neck and tossed them on the desk. “Here, take the medal. I’ll take a book.” He snatched How I Believe by Teilhard de Chardin.

“And now you’ll be good for a week?” asked Kane.

“No. I’m an incorrigible liar.” Cutshaw walked over to the door and threw it open with such force that again the crash loosened plaster from above. “May I go?” His voice had a childlike earnestness.

“Yes,” said Kane.

“You’re a very wise man, Van Helsing,” said Cutshaw in an imitation of Dracula, “for one who has lived only one life.” Then he loped out the door and disappeared from view.

Kane picked up the medal. “Saint Christopher,” he murmured.