administered by Taverner while Miss Buckman was
either sleeping or in a state
“They give the time of the murder as yesterday,” Heather said. “Where were you yesterday? I called your apartment and didn’t get any answer. And you just now said–”
“It wasn’t yesterday. It was earlier today.” Everything had become uncanny; he felt weightless, as if floating along with the apartment into a bottomless sky of oblivion. “They backdated it. I had a pol lab expert on my show once and after the show he told me how they–”
“Shut up,” Heather said sharply.
He ceased talking. And stood. Helplessly. Waiting.
“There’s something about me in the article,” Heather said, between clenched teeth. “Look on the back page.”
Obediently, he turned to the back page, the continuation of the article.
as a hypothesis pol officials offered the
theory that the relationship between Heather
Hart, herself also a popular TV and recording
personality, and Miss Buckman triggered
Taverner’s vengeful spree in which
Jason said, “What kind of relationship did you have with Alys? Knowing her–”
“You said you didn’t know her. You said you just met her today.”
“She was weird. Frankly I think she was a lesbian. Did you and she have a sexual relationship?” He heard his voice rise; he could not control it. “That’s what the article hints at. Isn’t that right?”
Tlie force of her blow stung his face; he retreated involuntarily, holding his hands up defensively. He had never been slapped like that before, he realized. It hurt like hell. His ears rang.
“Okay,” Heather breathed. “Hit me back.”
He drew his arm back, made a fist, then let his arm fall, his fingers relaxing. “I can’t,” he said. “I wish I could. You’re lucky.”
“I guess I am. If you killed her you could certainly kill me. What do you have to lose? They’ll gas you anyhow.”
Jason said, “You don’t believe me. That I didn’t do it.”
“That doesn’t matter. They think you did it. Even if you get off it means the end of your goddamn career, and mine, for that matter. We’re finished; do you understand? Do you realize what you’ve done?” She was screaming at him, now; frightened, he moved toward her, then, as the volume of her voice increased, away again. In confusion.
“If I could talk to General Buckman,” he said, “I might be able to–”
“Her _brother?_ You’re going to appeal to him?” Heather strode at him, her fingers writhing clawlike. “He’s head of the commission investigating the murder. As soon as the coroner reported that it was homicide, General Buckman announced he personally was taking charge of the incident– can’t you manage to read the whole article? I read it ten times on the way back here; I picked it up in Bel Aire after I got my new fall, the one they ordered for me from Belgium. It finally arrived. And now look. What does it matter?”
Reaching, he tried to put his arms around her. Stiffly, she pulled away.
“I’m not going to turn myself in,” he said.
“Do whatever you want.” Her voice had sunk to a blunted whisper. “I don’t care. Just go away. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you. I wish you were both dead, you and her. That skinny bitch–all she ever meant to me was trouble. Finally I had to throw her bodily out; she clung to me like a leech.”
“Was she good in bed?” he said, and drew back as Heather’s hand rose swiftly, fingers groping for his eyes.
For an interval neither of them spoke. They stood close together. Jason could hear her breathing and his own. Rapid, noisy fluctuations of air. In and out, in and out. He shut his eyes.
“You do what you want,” Heather said presently. “I’m going to turn myself in at the academy.”
“They want you, too?” he said.
“Can’t you read the whole article? Can’t you just do that? They want my testimony. As to how you felt about my relationship with Alys. It was public knowledge that you and I were sleeping together then, for Christ’s sake.”
“I didn’t know about your relationship.”
“I’ll tell them that. When”–she hesitated, then went on– “when did you find out?”
“From this newspaper,” he said. “Just now.”
“You didn’t know about it yesterday when she was killed?” At that he gave up; hopeless, he said to himself. Like living in a world made of rubber. Everything bounced. Changed shape as soon as it was touched or even looked at.
“Today, then,” Heather said. “If that’s what you believe. You would know, if anyone would.”
“Goodbye,” he said. Sitting down, he fished his shoes out from beneath the couch, put them on, tied the laces, stood up. Then, reaching, he lifted the cardboard box from the coffee table. “For you,” he said, and tossed it to her. Heather clutched at it; the box struck her on the chest and then fell to the floor.
“What is it?” she asked.
“By now,” he said, “I’ve forgotten.”
Kneeling, Heather picked up the box, opened it, brought forth newspapers and the blue-glazed vase. It had not broken. “Oh,” she said softly. Standing up she inspected it; she held it close to the light. “It’s incredibly beautiful,” she said. “Thank you.”
Jason said, “I didn’t kill that woman.”
Wandering away from him, Heather placed the vase on a high ‘shelf of knickknacks. She said nothing.
“What can I do,” he said, “but go?” He waited but still she said nothing. “Can’t you speak?” he demanded.
“Call them,” Heather said. “And tell them you’re here.”
He picked up the phone, dialed the operator.
“I want to put through a call to the Los Angeles Police Academy,” he told the operator. “To General Felix Buckman. Tell him it’s Jason Taverner calling.”
The operator was silent.
“Hello?” he said.
“You can dial that direct, sir.”
“I want you to do it,” Jason said.
“But, sir–”
“Please,” he said.
27
Phil Westerburg, the Los Angeles Police Agency chief deputy coroner, said to General Felix Buckman, his superior, “I can explain the drug best this way. You haven’t heard of it because it isn’t in use yet; she must have ripped it off from the academy’s special-activities lab.” He sketched on a piece of paper. “Time-binding is a function of the brain. It’s a structuralization of perception and orientation.”
“Why did it kill her?” Buckman asked. It was late and his head hurt. He wished the day would end; he wished everyone and everything would go away. “An overdose?” he demanded.
“We have no way of determining as yet what would constitute an overdose with KR-3. It’s currently being tested on detainee volunteers at the San Bernardino forced-labor camp, but so far”–Westerburg continued to sketch–“anyhow, as I was explaining. Time-binding is a function of the brain and goes on as long as the brain is receiving input. Now, we know that the brain can’t function if it can’t bind space as well . . . but as to why, we don’t know yet. Probably it has to do with the instinct to stabilize reality in such a fashion that sequences can be ordered in terms of beforeand-after—-that would be time–and, more importantly, space-occupying, as with a three-dimensional object as compared to, say, a drawing of that object.”
He showed Buckman his sketch. It meant nothing to Buckman; he stared at it blankly and wondered where, this late at night, he could get some Darvon for his headache. Had Alys had any? She had squirreled so many pills.
Westerburg continued, “Now, one aspect of space is that any given unit of space excludes all other given units; if a thing is there it can’t be here. Just as in time if an event comes before, it can’t also come after.”
Buckman said, “Couldn’t this wait until tomorrow? You originally said it would take twenty-four hours to develop a report on the exact toxin involved. Twenty-four hours is satisfactory to me.”
“But you requested that we speed up the analysis,” Westerburg said. “You wanted the autopsy to begin immediately. At two-ten this afternoon, when I was first officially called in.”
“Did I?” Buckman said. Yes, he thought, I did. Before the marshals can get their story together. “Just don’t draw pictures,” he said. “My eyes hurt. Just tell me.”
“The exclusiveness of space, we’ve learned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them. Trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space is not exclusive. In fact, in itself, space does not exist at all.”
“Meaning?”
Westerburg, refraining from sketching, said, “A drug such as KR-3 breaks down the brain’s ability to exclude one unit of space out of another. So here versus there is lost as the brain tries to handle perception. It can’t tell if an object has gone away or if it’s still there. When this occurs the brain can no longer exclude alternative spatial vectors. It opens up the entire range of spatial variation. The brain can no longer tell which objects exist and which are only latent, unspatial possibilities. So as a result, competing spatial corridors are opened, into which the garbled percept system enters, and a whole new universe appears to the brain to be in the process of creation.”