Dr. Bloodmoney (30 page)

“Tell him about Bluthgeld,” Hoppy said suddenly.

“Okay,” Stockstill said. “I will.”

“You can tell him my name,” Hoppy said. “Tell him I did it; listen, Doctor—this is how he’ll sound when he tells it.” The phocomelus assumed a peculiar expression and from his mouth, as before, issued the voice of Walt Dangerfield. “Well, friends, I have a bit of good, good news here … I think you’ll all enjoy this. Seems as if—” The phocomelus broke off, because from the speaker came a faint sound.

“… hello, Doctor. This is Walt Dangerfield.”

Doctor Stockstill said instantly into the microphone, “Good. Dangerfield, what I want to talk to you about is the pains you’ve been having. Now, do you have a paper bag up there in the satellite? We’re going to try a little carbon dioxide therapy, you and I. I want you to take the paper bag and blow into it. You keep blowing into it and inhaling from it, so that you’re finally inhaling pure carbon dioxide. Do you understand? It’s just a little idea, but it has a sound basis behind it. You see, too much oxygen triggers off certain diencephalic responses which set up a vicious cycle in the autonomic nervous system. One of the systems of a too-active autonomic nervous system is hyperperistalsis, and you may be suffering from that. Fundamentally, it’s an anxiety symptom.”

The phocomelus shook his head, turned and rolled away.

“I’m sorry…” the voice from the speaker came faintly. “I don’t understand, Doctor. You say breathe into a paper bag? What about a polyethylene container? Couldn’t asphyxiation result?” The voice, querulous and unreasonable, stumbled uncertainly on, “Is there any way I can synthesize phenobarbital out of the constituents available to me up here? I’ll give you an inventory list and possibly—” Static interrupted Dangerfield; when he next was audible he was talking about something else. Perhaps, Doctor Stockstill thought, the man’s faculties were wandering.

“Isolation in space,” Stockstill broke in, “breeds its own disruptive phenomena, similar to what once was termed ‘cabin fever.’ Specific to this is the feedback of free-floating anxiety so that it assumes a somatic consequence.” He felt, as he talked, that he was doing it all wrong; that he had failed already. The phocomelus had retired, too disgusted to listen—he was off somewhere else entirely, puttering. “Mr. Dangerfield,” Stockstill said, “what I want to do is interrupt this feedback and the carbon dioxide trick might do just that. Then when tension symptoms have eased, we can begin a form of psychotherapy; including recall of forgotten traumatic material.”

The disc jockey said dryly, “My traumatic material isn’t forgotten, Doctor; I’m experiencing it right now. It’s all around me. It’s a form of claustrophobia and I have it very, very bad.”

“Claustrophobia,” Doctor Stockstill said, “is a phobia directly traceable to the diencephalon in that it’s a disturbance of the sense of spaciality. It’s connected with the panic reaction to the presence or the imagined presence of danger; it’s a repressed desire to flee.”

Dangerfield said, “Well, where can I flee to, Doctor? Let’s be realistic. What in Christ’s name can psychoanalysis do for me? I’m a sick man; I need an operation, not the crap you’re giving me.”

“Are you sure?” Stockstill asked, feeling ineffective and foolish. “Now, this will admittedly take time, but you and I have at least established basic contact; you know I’m down here trying to help you and I know that you’re listening.” You are listening, aren’t you? he asked silently. “So I think we’ve accomplished something already.”

He waited. There was only silence.

“Hello, Dangerfield?” he said into the microphone.

Silence.

From behind him the phocomelus said, “He’s either cut himself off or the satellite’s too far, now. Do you think you’re helping him?”

“I don’t know,” Stockstill said. “But I know it’s worth trying.”

“If you had started a year ago—”

“But nobody knew.” We took Dangerfield for granted, like the sun, Stockstill realized. And now, as Hoppy says, it’s a little late.

“Better luck tomorrow afternoon,” Hoppy said, with a faint—almost sneering—smile. And yet Stockstill felt in it a deep sadness. Was Hoppy sorry for him, for his futile efforts? Or for the man in the satellite passing above them? It was difficult to tell.

“I’ll keep trying,” Stockstill said.

There was a knock at the door.

Hoppy said, “That will be the official delegation.” A broad, pleased smile appeared on his pinched features; his face seemed to swell, to fill with warmth. “Excuse me.” He wheeled his ’mobile to the door, extended a manual extensor, and flung the door open.

There stood Orion Stroud, Andrew Gill, Cas Stone, Bonny Keller and Mrs. Tallman, all looking nervous and ill-at-ease. “Harrington,” Stroud said, “we have something for you, a little gift.”

“Fine,” Hoppy said, grinning back at Stockstill. “See?” he said to the doctor. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s their appreciation.” To the delegation he said, “Come on in; I’ve been waiting.” He held the door wide and they passed on inside his house.

“What have you been doing?” Bonny asked Doctor Stockstill, seeing him standing by the transmitter and microphone.

Stockstill said, “Trying to reach Dangerfield.”

“Therapy?” she said.

“Yes.” He nodded.

“No luck, though.”

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Stockstill said.

Orion Stroud, his presentation momentarily forgotten, said to Doctor Stockstill, “That’s right; you used to be a psychiatrist.”

Impatiently, Hoppy said, “Well, what did you bring me?” He peered past Stroud, at Gill; he made out the sight of the container of cigarettes and the case of brandy. “Are those mine?”

“Yes,” Gill said. “In appreciation.”

The container and the case were lifted from his hands; he blinked as they sailed toward the phoce and came to rest on the floor directly in front of the ’mobile. Avidly, Hoppy plucked them open with his extensors.

“Uh,” Stroud said, disconcerted, “we have a statement to make. Is it okay to do so now, Hoppy?” He eyed the phocomelus with apprehension.

“Anything else?” Hoppy demanded, the boxes open, now. “What else did you bring me to pay me back?”

To herself as she watched the scene Bonny thought, I had no idea he was so childish. Just a little child … we should have brought much more and it should have been wrapped gaily, with ribbons and cards, with as much color as possible.
He must not be disappointed, she realized. Our lives depend on it, on his being
—
placated
.

“Isn’t there more?” Hoppy was saying peevishly.

“Not yet,” Stroud said. “But there will be.” He shot a swift, flickering glance at the others in the delegation. “Your
real
presents, Hoppy, have to be prepared with care. This is just a beginning.”

“I see,” the phocomelus said. But he did not sound convinced.

“Honest,” Stroud said. “It’s the truth, Hoppy.”

“I don’t smoke,” Hoppy said, surveying the cigarettes; he picked up a handful and crushed them, letting the bits drop. “It causes cancer.”

“Well,” Gill began, “there’re two sides to that. Now—”

The phocomelus sniggered. “I think that’s all you’re going to give me,” he said.

“No, there will certainly be more,” Stroud said.

The room was silent, except for the static coming from the speaker.

Off in the corner an object, a transmitter tube, rose and sailed through the air, burst loudly against the wall, sprinkling them all with fragments of broken glass.

“ ‘More,’ ” Hoppy mimicked, in Stroud’s deep, portentous voice. “ ‘There will certainly be more.’ ”

For thirty-six hours Walt Dangerfield had lain on his bunk in a state of semi-consciousness, knowing now that it was not an ulcer; it was cardiac arrest which he was experiencing, and it was probably going to kill him in a very short time. In spite of what Stockstill, the analyst, had said.

The transmitter of the satellite had continued to broadcast a tape of light concert music over and over again; the sound of soothing strings filled his ears in a travesty of unavailing comfort. He did not even have the strength to get up and make his way to the controls to shut it off.

That psychoanalyst, he thought bitterly. Talking about breathing into a paper bag. It had been like a dream … the faint voice, so full of self-confidence. So utterly false in its premises.

Messages were arriving from all over the world as the satellite passed through its orbit again and again; his recording equipment caught them and retained them, but that was all. Dangerfield could no longer answer.

I guess I have to tell them, he said to himself. I guess the time—the time we’ve been expecting, all of us—has finally come at last.

On his hands and knees he crept until he reached the seat by the microphone, the seat in which for seven years he had broadcast to the world below. After he had sat there for a time resting he turned on one of the many tape recorders, picked up the mike, and began dictating a message which, when it had been completed, would play endlessly, replacing the concert music.

“My friends, this is Walt Dangerfield talking and wanting to thank you all for the times we have had together, speaking back and forth, us all keeping in touch. I’m afraid though that this complaint of mine makes it impossible for me to go on any longer. So with great regret I’ve got to sign off for the last time—” He went on, painfully, picking his words with care, trying to make them, his audience below, as little unhappy as possible. But nevertheless he told them the truth; he told them that it was the end for him and that they would have to find some way to communicate without him, and then he rang off, shut down the microphone, and in a weary reflex, played the tape back.

The tape was blank. There was nothing on it, although he had talked for almost fifteen minutes.

Evidently the equipment had for some reason broken down, but he was too ill to care; he snapped the mike back on, set switches on the control panel, and this time prepared to deliver his message live to the area below. Those people there would just have to pass the word on to the others; there was no other way.

“My friends,” he began once more, “this is Walt Dangerfield. I have some bad news to give you but—” And then he realized that he was talking into a dead mike. The loudspeaker above his head had gone silent; nothing was being transmitted. Otherwise he would have heard his own voice from the monitoring system.

As he sat there, trying to discover what was wrong, he noticed something else, something far stranger and more ominous.

Systems on all sides of him were in motion. Had been in motion for some time, by the looks of them. The high speed recording and playback decks which he had never used—all at once the drums were spinning, for the first time in seven years. Even as he watched he saw relays click on and off; a drum halted, another one began to turn, this time at slow speed.

I don’t understand, he said to himself.
What’s happening?

Evidently the systems were receiving at high speed, recording, and now one of them had started to play back, but what had set all this in motion? Not he. Dials showed him that the satellite’s transmitter was on the air, and even as he realized that, realized that messages which had been picked up and recorded were now being played over the air, he heard the speaker above his head return to life.

“Hoode hoode hoo,” a voice—his voice—chuckled. “This is your old pal, Walt Dangerfield, once more, and forgive that concert music. Won’t be any more of that.”

When did I say that? he asked himself as he sat dully listening. He felt shocked and puzzled. His voice sounded so vital, so full of good spirits; how could I sound like that now? he wondered. That’s the way I used to sound, years ago, when I had my health, and when she was still alive.

“Well,” his voice murmured on, “that bit of indisposition I’ve been suffering from … evidently mice got into the supply cupboards, and you’ll laugh to think of Walt Dangerfield fending off mice up here in the sky, but ’tis true. Anyhow, part of my stores deteriorated and I didn’t happen to notice … but it sure played havoc with my insides. However—And he heard himself give his familiar chuckle. “I’m okay now. I know you’ll be glad to hear that, all you people down there who were so good as to transmit your get-well messages, and for that I give you thanks.”

Getting from the seat before the microphone, Walt Dangerfield made his way unsteadily to his bunk; he lay down, closing his eyes, and then he thought once more of the pain in his chest and what it meant. Angina pectoris, he thought, is supposed to be more like a great fist pressing down; this is more a burning pain. If I could look at the medical data on the microfilm again … maybe there’s some fact I failed to read. For instance, this is directly under the breastbone, not off to the left side. Does that mean anything?

Or maybe there’s nothing wrong with me, he thought to himself as he struggled to get up once more. Maybe Stockstill, that psychiatrist who wanted me to breathe carbon dioxide, was right; maybe it’s just in my mind, from the years of isolation here.

But he did not think so. It felt far too real for that.

There was one other fact about his illness that bewildered him. For all his efforts, he could not make a thing out of that fact, and so he had not even bothered to mention it to the several doctors and hospitals below. Now it was too late, because now he was too sick to operate the controls of the transmitter.