“I see,” Buckman said. But actually he did not either see or care. I only want to go home, he thought. And forget this.
“That’s very important,” Westerburg said earnestly. “KR-3 is a major breakthrough. Anyone affected by it is forced to perceive irreal universes, whether they want to or not. As I said, trillions of possibilities are theoretically all of a sudden real; chance enters and the person’s percept system chooses one possibility out of all those presented to it. It has to choose, because if it didn’t, competing universes would overlap, and the concept of space itself would vanish. Do you follow me?”
Seated a short way off, at his own desk, Herb Maime said, “He means that the brain seizes on the spatial universe nearest at hand.”
“Yes,” Westerburg said. “You’ve read the classified lab report on KR-3, have you, Mr. Maime?”
“I read it a little over an hour ago,” Herb Maime said. “Most of it was too technical for me to grasp. But I did notice that its effects are transitory. The brain finally reestablishes contact with the actual space-time objects that it formerly perceived.”
“Right,” Westerburg said, nodding. “But during the interval in which the drug is active the subject exists, or thinks he exists–”
“There’s no difference,” Herb said, “between the two. That’s the way the drug works; it abolishes that distinction.”
“Technically,” Westerburg said. “But to the subject an actualized environment envelopes him, one which is alien to the former one that he always experienced, and he operates as if he had entered a new world. A world with changed aspects . . . the amount of change being determined by how great the so-to-speak distance is between the space-time world he formerly perceived and the new one he’s forced to function in.”
“I’m going home,” Buckman said. “I can’t stand any more of this.” He rose to his feet. “Thanks, Westerburg,” he said, automatically extending his hand to the chief deputy coroner. They shook. “Put together an abstract for me,” he said to Herb Maime, “and I’ll look it over in the morning.” He started off, his gray topcoat over his arm. As he always carried it.
“Do you now see what happened to Taverner?” Herb said.
Halting, Buckman said, “No.”
“He passed over to a universe in which he didn’t exist. And we passed over with him because we’re objects of his percept-system. And then when the drug wore off he passed back again. What actually locked him back here was nothing he took or didn’t take but her death. So then of course his file came to us from Data Central.”
“Good night,” Buckman said. He left the office, passed through the great, silent room of spotless metal desks, all alike, all cleared at the end of the day, including McNulty’s, and then at last found himself in the ascent tube, rising to the roof.
The night air, cold and clear, made his head ache terribly; he shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. And then he thought, I could get an analgesic from Phil Westerburg. There’s probably fifty kinds in the academy’s pharmacy, and Westerburg has the keys.
Taking the descent tube he rearrived on the fourteenth floor, returned to his suite of offices, where Westerburg and Herb Maime still sat conferring.
To Buckman, Herb said, “I want to explain one thing I said. About us being objects of his percept system.”
“We’re not,” Buckman said.
Herb said, “We are and we aren’t. Taverner wasn’t the one who took the KR-3. It was Alys. Taverner, like the rest of us, became a datum in your sister’s percept system and got dragged across when she passed into an alternate construct of coordinates. She was very involved with Taverner as a wish-fulfillment performer, evidently, and had run a fantasy number in her head for some time about knowing him as an actual person. But although she did manage to accomplish this by taking the drug, he and we at the same time remained in our own universe. We occupied two space corridors at the same time, one real, one irreal. One is an actuality; one is a latent possibility among many, spatialized temporarily by the KR-3. But just temporarily. For about two days.”
“That’s long enough,” Westerburg said, “to do enormous physical harm to the brain involved. Your sister’s brain, Mr. Buckman, was probably not so much destroyed by toxicity but by a high and sustained overload. We may find that the ultimate cause of death was irreversible injury to cortical tissue, a speed-up of normal neurological decay. . . her brain so to speak died of old age over an interval of two days.”
“Can I get some Darvon from you?” Buckman said to Westerburg.
“The pharmacy is locked up,” Westerburg said.
“But you have the key.”
Westerburg said, “I’m not supposed to use it when the pharmacist isn’t on duty.”
“Make an exception,” Herb said sharply. “This time.”
Westerburg moved off, sorting among his keys.
“If the pharmacist was there,” Buckman said, after a time, “he wouldn’t need the key.”
“This whole planet,” Herb said, “is run by bureaucrats.” He eyed Buckman. “You’re too sick to take anymore. After he gets you the Darvon, go home.”
“I’m not sick,” Buckman said. “I just don’t feel well.”
“But don’t stick around here. I’ll finish up. You start to leave and then you come back.”
“I’m like an animal,” Buckman said. “Like a laboratory rat.”
The phone on his big oak desk buzzed.
“Is there any chance it’s one of the marshals?” Buckman said. “I can’t talk to them tonight; it’ll have to wait.”
Herb picked up the phone. Listened. Then, cupping his hand over the receiver, he said, “It’s Taverner. Jason Taverner.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Buckman took the phone from Herb Maime, said into it, “Hello, Taverner. It’s late.”
In his ear, Taverner said tinnily, “I want to give myself up. I’m at the apartment of Heather Hart. We’re waiting here together.”
To Herb Maime, Buckman said, “He wants to give himself up.”
“Tell him to come down here,” Herb said.
“Come down here,” Buckman said into the phone. “Why do you want to give up?” he said. “We’ll kill you in the end, you miserable murdering motherfucker; you know that. Why don’t you run?”
“Where?” Taverner squeaked.
“To one of the campuses. Go to Columbia. They’re stabilized; they have food and water for a while.”
Taverner said, “I don’t want to be hunted anymore.”
“To live is to be hunted,” Buckman rasped. “Okay, Taverner,” he said. “Come down here and we’ll book you. Bring the Hart woman with you so we can record her testimony.” You goddamn fool, he thought. Giving yourself up. “Cut your testicles off while you’re at it. You stupid bastard.” His voice shook.
“I want to clear myself,” Taverner’s voice echoed thinly in Buckman’s ear.
“When you show up here,” Buckman said, “I’ll kill you with my own gun. Resisting arrest, you degenerate. Or whatever we want to call it. We’ll call it what we feel like. Anything.” He hung up the phone. “He’s coming down here to be killed,” he said to Herb Maime.
“You picked him. You can unpick him if you want. Clear him. Send him back to his phonograph records and his silly TV show.”
“No.” Buckman shook his head.
Westerburg appeared with two pink capsules and a paper cup of water. “Darvon compound,” he said, presenting them to Buckman.
“Thank you.” Buckman swallowed the pills, drank the water, crushed the paper cup and dropped it into his shredder. Quietly, the teeth of the shredder spun, then ceased. Silence.
“Go home,” Herb said to him. “Or, better yet, go to a motel, a good downtown motel for the night. Sleep late tomorrow; I’ll handle the marshals when they call.”
“I have to meet Taverner.”
“No you don’t. I’ll book him. Or a desk sergeant can book him. Like any other criminal.”
“Herb,” Buckman said, “I intend to kill the guy, as I said on the phone.” Going to his desk he unlocked the bottom drawer, got out a cedar box, set it on the desk. He opened the box and from it brought forth a single-shot Derringer twenty-two pistol. He loaded it with a hollow-nosed shell, half cocked it, held it with its muzzle pointed at the ceiling. For safety’s sake. Habit.
“Let’s see that,” Herb said.
Buckman handed it to him. “Made by Colt,” he said. “Colt acquired the dies and patents. I forget when.”
“This is a nice gun,” Herb said, weighing it, balancing it in his hand. “A fine handgun.” He gave it back. “But a twenty-two slug is too small. You’d have to get him exactly between the eyes. He’d have to be standing directly in front of you.” He placed his hand on Buckman’s shoulder. “Use a thirty-eight special or a forty-five,” he said. “Okay? Will you do that?”
“You know who owns this gun?” Buckman said. “Alys. She kept it here because she said if she kept it at home she might use it on me sometime during an argument, or late at night when she gets–got–depressed. But it’s not a woman’s gun. Derringer made women’s guns, but this isn’t one of them.”