‘Let me speak to Mr Virgil Ackerman.’
‘Who is calling, please?’
‘Dr Eric Sweetscent.’
‘Yes of course, Dr Sweetscent. Just a moment.’ The screen became fused over and then Virgil’s face, as dry and weathered as ever, basically unchanged, appeared.
‘Well I’ll be darned! Eric Sweetscent! How the hell are you, kid? Gosh, it’s been – what has it been? Three years? Four? How is it at—’
Tell me about Kathy,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
Eric said, ‘I want to know about my wife. What’s her medical condition by now? Where is she?’
‘Your ex-wife.’
‘All right,’ he said reasonably. ‘My ex-wife.’
‘How would I know, Eric? I haven’t seen her since she quit her job here and that was at least – well, you remember – six years ago. Right after we rebuilt. Right after the war.’
Tell me anything that would help me find out about her.’
Virgil pondered. ‘Well Christ, Eric; you remember how sick she became. Those psychopathic rages.’
‘I don’t remember.’
Raising his eyebrows, Virgil said, ‘You were the one who signed the commitment papers.’
‘You think she’s institutionalized now? Still?’
‘As you explained it to me it’s irreversible brain damage. From those toxic drugs she was taking. So I presume she is. Possibly in San Diego. I think Simon Ild told me that one day, not long ago; you want me to check with him? He said he met somebody who had a friend in a psychiatric hospital north of San Diego and—’
‘Check with him.’ He waited while the screen showed nothing, while Virgil conferred on the interdepartmental circuit with Simon.
At last the elongated, doleful face of his former inventory control clerk appeared. ‘You want to know about Kathy,’ Simon said. ‘I’ll tell you what this fellow told me. He met her in Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital; he had a nervous breakdown, as you call it.’
‘I don’t call anything that,’ Eric said, ‘but go ahead.’
Simon said, ‘She couldn’t control herself, her rages, those destructive binges where she’d break everything, they were coming every day, sometimes four times a day. They kept her on phenothiazine and it had helped – she told him that herself – but finally no matter how much phenothiazine they gave her it didn’t help. Damage to the frontal lobe, I guess. And she had difficulty remembering things properly. And ideas of reference; she thought everyone was against her, trying to hurt her… not grandiose paranoia, of course, but just the never-ending irritability, accusing people as if they were cheating her, holding out on her – she blamed everyone.’ He added, ‘She still talked about you.’
‘Saying what?’
‘Blaming you and that psychiatrist – what was his name? – for making her go into the hospital and then not letting her out.’
‘Does she have any idea why we did it?’ Why we had to do it, he thought.
‘She said she loved you, but you wanted to get rid of her so you could marry someone else. And you had sworn, at the time of the divorce, that there wasn’t anyone else.’
‘Okay,’ Eric said. Thanks, Simon.’ He cut the connection and then called Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital in San Diego.
‘Edmund G. Brown Neuropsychiatric Hospital.’ A rapid, overworked middle-aged female at the hospital switchboard.
‘I wish to ask about Mrs Katherine Sweetscent’s condition,’ Eric said.
‘Just a moment, sir.’ The woman consulted her records, then switched his call to one of the wards; he found himself facing a younger woman, not in white uniform but in an ordinary flowered cotton dress.
‘This is Dr Eric Sweetscent. What can you tell me about Katherine Sweetscent’s condition? Is she making any progress?’
‘There hasn’t been any change since you called last, doctor, two weeks ago. I’ll get her file, however.’ The woman disappeared from the screen.
Good Lord, Eric thought. I’m still watching over her ten years from now; am I caught in this one way or another the rest of my life?
The ward technician returned. ‘You know that Dr Bramel-man is trying the new Gloser-Little unit with Mrs Sweetscent. In order to induce the brain tissue to start repair of itself. But so far—’ She leafed through the pages. ‘Results have been meager. I would suggest you contact us again in another month or possibly two. There won’t be any change before that.’
‘But it could work,’ he said. This new unit you spoke about.’ He had never heard of it; obviously it was a construct of the future. ‘I mean, there’s still hope.’
‘Oh yes, doctor. There’s definitely hope.’ She said it in such a way as to convey to him that this was merely a philosophical answer; there was hope in every case, as far as she was concerned. So it meant nothing.
‘Thank you.’ And then he said, ‘Check your files, please, and see what it says as to my place of business. I’ve changed jobs recently so it may be wrong.’
After a pause the ward technician said, ‘You’re listed as Chief Org-trans Surgeon at Kaiser Foundation in Oakland.’
‘That’s correct,’ Eric said. And rang off.
He obtained the number from information and dialed Kaiser Foundation in Oakland.
‘Let me talk to Dr Sweetscent.’
‘Who is calling, please?’
That stopped him momentarily. Tell him it’s his younger brother.’
‘Yes sir. Just a moment, please.’
His face, his older, grayer face, appeared on the screen. ‘Hi.’
‘Hello,’ Eric said. He was not sure what to say. ‘Am I bothering you when you’re busy?’ He did not look bad, ten years from now. Dignified.
‘No, go ahead. I’ve been expecting the call; I remember the approximate date. You just called Edmund G. Brown Neuro-psychiatric Hospital and learned about the Gloser-Little unit. I’ll tell you something the ward technician didn’t. The Gloser-Little unit constitutes the only brain artiforg they’ve managed to come up with. It replaces portions of the frontal lobe; once it’s installed it stays as long as the person lives, If it helps. To be truthful with you, it should have worked right away.’
‘So you don’t think it’s going to.’
‘No,’ the older Eric Sweetscent said.
‘Do you think if we hadn’t divorced her—’
‘It would have made no difference. Tests we give now – believe me.’
Then even that wouldn’t help, Eric realized. Staying with her, even for the rest of my life. ‘I appreciate your help,’ he said. ‘And I find it interesting – I guess that’s the word – that you’re still keeping tabs on her.’
‘Conscience is conscience. In some respects the divorce put more of a responsibility on us to see about her welfare. Because she got so much worse immediately after.’
‘Is there any way out?’ Eric asked.
The older Eric Sweetscent, of the year 2065, shook his head.
‘Okay,’ Eric said. Thanks for being honest with me.’
‘Like you yourself say, you should always be honest with yourself.’ He added, ‘Good luck on the commitment proceedings; they’re going to be rough. But that won’t come for a while.’
‘How about the rest of the war, in particular the takeover of Terra by the ‘Starmen?’
The older Eric Sweetscent grinned. ‘Hell, you’re too bogged down in your own personal trouble to notice. War? What war?’
‘So long,’ Eric said, and rang off.
He left the vidphone booth. He’s got a point, he admitted to himself. If I were rational – but I’m not. The ‘Starmen are probably assembling an emergency plan right now, getting ready for the jump-off; I know this and yet I don’t feel it, I feel-The need for death, he thought.
Why not? Gino Molinari made his death into an instrument of political strategy; he outwitted his opponents through it and he’ll probably do so again. Of course, he realized, that’s not what I had in mind. I’m outwitting nobody. Many people will die in this invasion; why not one more? Who loses by it? Who am I close to? He thought, Those future Sweetscents are going to be sore as hell about it but that’s just too bad. I don’t particularly give a damn about them anyhow. And, except that their existences depend on mine, they feel the same about me. Perhaps, he decided, that’s the problem. Not my relationship with Kathy but my relationship with myself.
Passing through the lobby of the Caesar Hotel, he emerged on the daytime, busy Tijuana street of ten years hence.
Sunlight blinded him; he stood blinking and adjusting. The surface vehicles, even here, had changed. Sleeker, more attractive. The street, now, was adequately paved. There came the tamale vendors and the rug vendors except that now they were not robants; they were, he saw with a start, reegs. Evidently they had entered Terran society at the bottom rung, would have to work their way to the equality he had witnessed a century from his own time, ninety years from now. It did not seem fair to him, but there it was.
Hands in his pockets, he walked with the surging crowd that inhabited the sidewalks of Tijuana throughout all the ages, until he arrived at the pharmacy at which he had bought the capsules of JJ-180. As always it was open for business. It, too, had not altered in a decade, except that now the hernia belt display had gone. In its place he saw a contrivance unfamiliar to him. Halting, he examined the Spanish sign propped behind it. The thing evidently increased one’s sexual potency, he decided. Permitted – as he translated the Spanish – an infinitude of orgasms, one immediately following the other. Amused, he continued on inside the pharmacy, to the counter in the rear.