A Scanner Darkly (27 page)

I have seen myself backward.

I have in a sense begun to see the entire universe backward. With the other side of my brain!

“Topology,” one psychologist was saying. “A little-understood science or math, whichever. As with the black holes in space, how—”

“Fred is seeing the world from inside out,” the other man was declaring at the same moment. “From in front and from behind both, I guess. It’s hard for us to say how it appears to him. Topology is the branch of math that investigates the properties of a geometric or other configuration that are unaltered if the thing is subjected to a one-to-one,
any
one-to-one, continuous transformation. But applied to psychology

“And when that occurs to objects, who knows what they’re going to look like then? They’d be unrecognizable. As when a primitive sees a photograph of himself the first time, he doesn’t recognize it as himself. Even though he’s seen his reflection many times, in streams, from metal objects. Because his reflection is reversed and the photograph of himself isn’t. So he doesn’t know it’s the identical person.”

“He’s accustomed only to the reverse reflected image and thinks he looks like that.”

“Often a person hearing his own voice played back—”

“That’s different. That has to do with the resonance in the sinus—”

“Maybe it’s you fuckers,” Fred said, “who’re seeing the universe backward, like in a mirror. Maybe I see it right.”

“You see it
both ways.”

“Which is the—”

A psychologist said, “They used to talk about seeing only ‘reflections’ of reality. Not reality itself. The main thing wrong with a reflection is not that it isn’t real,
but that it’s reversed.
I wonder.” He had an odd expression. “Parity. The scientific principle of parity. Universe and reflected image, the latter we take for the former, for some reason … because we lack bilateral parity.”

“Whereas a photograph can compensate for the lack of bilateral hemispheric parity; it’s not the object but it’s not
reversed, so that objection would make photographic images not images at all but the true form. Reverse of a reverse.”

“But a photo can get accidentally reversed, too, if the negative is flipped—printed backward; you usually can tell only if there’s writing. But not with a man’s face. You could have two contact prints of a given man, one reversed, one not. A person who’d never met him couldn’t tell which was correct, but he could see they were different and couldn’t be superimposed.”

“There, Fred, does that show you how complex the problem of formulating the distinction between a left-hand glove and—”

“Then shall it come to pass the saying that is written,” a voice said. “Death is swallowed up. In victory.” Perhaps only Fred heard it. “Because,” the voice said, “as soon as the writing appears backward, then you know which is illusion and which is not. The confusion ends, and death, the last enemy, Substance Death, is swallowed not down into the body but up—in victory. Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now:
we shall not all sleep in death.”

The mystery, he thought, the explanation, he means. Of a secret. A sacred secret. We shall not die.

  The reflections shall leave

    And it will happen fast.

  We shall all be changed, and by that he means reversed back, suddenly. In the

    twinkling of an eye!

Because, he thought glumly as he watched the police psychologists writing their conclusions and signing them, we are fucking backward right now, I guess, every one of us; everyone and every damn thing, and distance, and even time. But how long, he thought, when a print is being made, a contact print, when the photographer discovers he’s got the negative reversed, how long does it take to flip it? To reverse it again so it’s like it’s supposed to be?

A fraction of a second.

I understand, he thought, what that passage in the Bible means, Through a glass darkly. But my percept system is as fucked up as ever. Like they say. I understand but am helpless to help myself.

Maybe, he thought, since I see both ways at once, correctly and reversed, I’m the first person in human history to have it flipped and not-flipped simultaneously, and so get a glimpse of what it’ll be when it’s right. Although I’ve got the other as well, the regular. And which is which?

Which is reversed and which is not?

When do I see a photograph, when a reflection?

And how much allotment for sick pay or retirement or disability do I get while I dry out? he asked himself, feeling horror already, deep dread and coldness everywhere.
Wie halt ist es in diesem unterirdischen Gewölbe! Das ist natürlich, es ist ja tief.
And I have to withdraw from the shit. I’ve seen people go through that. Jesus Christ, he thought, and shut his eyes.

“That may sound like metaphysics,” one of them was saying, “but the math people say we may be on the verge of a new cosmology so much—”

The other said excitedly, “The infinity of time, which is expressed as eternity, as a loop! Like a loop of cassette tape!”

He had an hour to kill before he was supposed to be back in Hank’s office, to listen to and inspect Jim Barris’s evidence.

The building’s cafeteria attracted him, so he walked that way, among those in uniform and those in scramble suits and those in slacks and ties.

Meanwhile, the psychologists’ findings presumably were being taken up to Hank. They would be there when he arrived.

This will give me time to think, he reflected as he wandered into the cafeteria and lined up. Time. Suppose, he thought,
time is round, like the Earth. You sail west to reach India. They laugh at you, but finally there’s India in front, not behind. In time—maybe the Crucifixion lies ahead of us as we all sail along, thinking it’s back east.

Ahead of him a secretary. Tight blue sweater, no bra, almost no skirt. It felt nice, checking her out; he gazed on and on, and finally she noticed him and edged off with her tray.

The First and Second Coming of Christ the same event, he thought; time a cassette loop. No wonder they were sure it’d happen, He’d be back.

He watched the secretary’s behind, but then he realized that she could not possibly be noticing him back as he noticed her because in his suit he had no face and no ass. But she senses my scheming on her, he decided. Any chick with legs like that would sense it a lot, from every man.

You know, he thought, in this scramble suit I could hit her over the head and bang her forever and who’d know who did it? How could she identify me?

The crimes one could commit in these suits, he pondered. Also lesser trips, short of actual crimes, which you never did; always wanted to but never did.

“Miss,” he said to the girl in the tight blue sweater, “you certainly have nice legs. But I suppose you recognize that or you wouldn’t be wearing a microskirt like that.”

The girl gasped. “Eh,” she said. “Oh, now I know who you are.”

“You do?” he said, surprised.

“Pete Wickam,” the girl said.

“What?” he said.

“Aren’t you Pete Wickam? You always are sitting across from me—aren’t you, Pete?”

“Am I the guy,” he said, “who’s always sitting there and studying your legs and scheming a lot about you know what?”

She nodded.

“Do I have a chance?” he said.

“Well, it depends.”

“Can I take you out to dinner some night?”

“I guess so.”

“Can I have your phone number? So I can call you?”

The girl murmured, “You give me yours.”

“I’ll give it to you,” he said, “if you’ll sit with me right now, here, and have whatever you’re having with me while I’m having my sandwich and coffee.”

“No, I’ve got a girl friend over there—she’s waiting.”

“I could sit with you anyhow, both of you.”

“We’re going to discuss something private.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Well, then I’ll see you, Pete.” She moved off down the line with her tray and flatware and napkin.

He obtained his coffee and sandwich and found an empty table and sat by himself, dropping little bits of sandwich into the coffee and staring down at it.

They’re fucking going to pull me off Arctor, he decided. I’ll be in Synanon or New-Path or some place like that withdrawing and they’ll station someone else to watch him and evaluate him. Some asshole who doesn’t know jack shit about Arctor—they’ll have to start all over from the beginning.

At least they can let me evaluate Barris’s evidence, he thought. Not put me on temsuspens until after we go over that stuff, whatever it is.

If I did bang her and she got pregnant, he ruminated, the babies—no faces. Just blurs. He shivered.

I know I’ve got to be taken off. But why necessarily right away? If I could do a few more things … process Barris’s info, participate in the decision. Or even just sit there and see what he’s got. Find out for my own satisfaction finally what Arctor is up to. Is he anything? Is he not? They owe it to me to allow me to stay on long enough to find that out.

If I could just listen and watch, not say anything.

He sat there on and on, and later he noticed the girl in the tight blue sweater and her girl friend, who had short
black hair, get up from their table and start to leave. The girl friend, who wasn’t too foxy, hesitated and then approached Fred where he sat hunched over his coffee and sandwich fragments.

“Pete?” the short-haired girl said.

He glanced up.

“Um, Pete,” she said nervously. “I just have a sec. Um, Ellen wanted to tell you this, but she chickened out. Pete, she would have gone out with you a long time ago, like maybe a month ago, like back in March even. If—”

“If what?” he said.

“Well, she wanted me to tell you that for some time she’s wanted to clue you into the fact that you’d do a whole lot better if you used like, say, Scope.”

“I wish I had known,” he said, without enthusiasm.

“Okay, Pete,” the girl said, relieved now and departing. “Catch you later.” She hurried off, grinning.

Poor fucking Pete, he thought to himself. Was that for real? Or just a mind-blowing put-down of Pete by a pair of malice-head types who cooked it up seeing him—me—sitting here alone. Just a nasty little dig to— Aw, the hell with it, he thought.

Or it could be true, he decided as he wiped his mouth, crumpled up his napkin, and got heavily to his feet. I wonder if St. Paul had bad breath. He wandered from the cafeteria, his hands again shoved down in his pockets. Scramble suit pockets first and then inside that real suit pockets. Maybe that’s why Paul was always in jail the latter part of his life. They threw him in for that.

Mindfucking trips like this always get laid on you at a time like this, he thought as he left the cafeteria. She dumped that on me on top of all the other bummers today—the big one out of the composite wisdom of the ages of psychological-testing pontification. That and then this. Shit, he thought. He felt even worse now than he had before; he could hardly walk, hardly think; his mind buzzed with confusion. Confusion
and despair. Anyhow, he thought, Scope isn’t any good; Lavoris is better. Except when you spit it out it looks like you’re spitting blood. Maybe Micrin, he thought. That might be best.

If there was a drugstore in this building, he thought, I could get a bottle and use it before I go upstairs to face Hank. That way—maybe I’d feel more confident. Maybe I’d have a better chance.

I could use, he reflected, anything that’d help, anything at all. Any hint, like from that girl, any suggestion. He felt dismal and afraid.
Shit,
he thought,
what am I going to do?

If I’m off everything, he thought, then I’ll never see any of them again, any of my friends, the people I watched and knew. I’ll be out of it; I’ll be maybe retired the rest of my life—anyhow, I’ve seen the last of Arctor and Luckman and Jerry Fabin and Charles Freck and most of all Donna Hawthorne. I’ll never see any of my friends again, for the rest of eternity. It’s over.

Donna. He remembered a song his great-uncle used to sing years ago, in German.
“Ich seh’, wie ein Engel im rosigen Duft/Sich tröstend zur Seite mir stellet,”
which his great-uncle had explained to him meant “I see, dressed like an angel, standing by my side to give me comfort,” the woman he loved, the woman who saved him (in the song). In the song, not in real life. His great-uncle was dead, and it was a long time ago he’d heard those words. His great-uncle, German-born, singing in the house, or reading aloud.

Even if his brain’s not burned out, he realized, by the time I’m back on duty somebody else will have been assigned to them. Or they’ll be dead or in the bucket or in federal clinics or just scattered, scattered, scattered. Burned out and destroyed,
like me, unable to figure out what the fuck is happening. It has reached an end in any case, anyhow, for me. I’ve without knowing it already said good-by.

All I could ever do sometime, he thought, is play the holo-tapes back, to remember.

“I ought to go to the safe apartment …” He glanced around and became silent. I ought to go to the safe apartment and rip them off now, he thought. While I can. Later they might be erased, and later I would not have access. Fuck the department, he thought; they can bill me against the back salary. By every ethical consideration those tapes of that house and the people in it belong to me.

And now those tapes, they’re all I’ve got left out of all this; that’s all I can hope to carry away.

But also, he thought rapidly, to play the tapes back I need the entire holo transport cube-projection resolution system there in the safe apartment. I’ll need to dissemble it and cart it out of there piece by piece The scanners and recording assemblies I won’t need; just transport, playback components, and especially all the cube-projection gear. I can do it bit by bit; I have a key to that apartment. They’ll require me to turn in the key, but I can get a dupe made right here before I turn it in; it’s a conventional Schlage lock key. Then I can do it! He felt better, realizing this; he felt grim and moral and a little angry. At everyone. Pleasure at how he would make matters okay.