Death Qualified

Death Qualified: A Mystery Of Chaos

    By: Kate Wilhelm

    Synopsis:

    What's the link between a powerful mind-altering computer program and two murders in the Oregon woods? Seven years ago Lucas Kendricks deserted his young family and took off for mathematician Emil Frobisher's research project in Colorado. Now, after one day's warning--he ordered a monster computer to be sent to his old address--he's back, and then, moments later, he's dead, along with a young woman he gave a lift to only a few hours before. The police think Lucas raped and killed the hitchhiker and was shot down by his tiny, sharpshooting wife Nell; but defense attorney Barbara Holloway, needled by her estranged father into coming back to him and the law (she'd been on the run from both for five years after a dose of professional disillusionment) is convinced that Lucas's death had more to do with the mysterious men who followed him from Colorado. Taking on her share of cliches--alliance with her curmudgeonly, reluctantly supportive father; opposition from prosecutor/former lover Tony DeAngelo; romance with mathematician Mike Dinesen (whom she's called in to make sense of the connections Lucas had with Frobisher, psychiatrist Ruth Brandywine, and computer expert Walter Schumaker)--Barbara delves into those blank seven years, and comes up with answers that are even scarier than the questions: a set of the most user-unfriendly computer disks in literature.

    Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas? Edward N. Lorenz

    They always called him Tom. The maintenance crew, the doctors, everyone called him that, and although he knew it was not really his name, he responded. Tom do this, do that. Tom come here, help with this. Sometimes he could almost think of another name for himself, but it never seemed to finish forming in his mind. It started--a thought, an idea, an impulse to say a different name, not to look around when they said Tom--but then he was swept by terror and it vanished again. Good morning Tom. How are you? Any more episodes, any dreams? Here's your medicine. That's a good boy. Go on to work now. See you in the morning Tom.

    He lived in a small apartment on the grounds. Sometimes he made his meals there, but most of the time he ate in the cafeteria. He had a meal ticket. Good morning Tom. Bacon, eggs. What'll it be? From the cafeteria to the doctor's office. From the doctor's office to the maintenance office. Out on the grounds, sometimes cleaning up in the buildings, running the waxer, or carrying out trash. He liked waxing best of the inside work, but he liked to work on the grounds best of all. Weeding, spreading mulch, riding the mower, making long, sweeping patterns in the grass that smelled like a memory. Once they made him repair some windows, and he had hated that. Looking in through the glass, like seeing into a separate world that was not his world and was not even real, had made him edgy. It was not that he was afraid of windows, he had told the doctor; it was that the windows were wrong. That wasn't how it was.

    Then how is it Tom? Tell me what you mean.

    He couldn't tell her. He had tried to guide her hand to the window like shell around him, not hard like the building windows, but yielding, stretching when it had to stretch, coming back to fit snugly, but always there. He had tried to make her feel her own casing, her shell, tried to explain that it didn't have to fit so tightly. When he tried to touch her shell, she had called for someone to come, and someone had given him a shot. Yesterday. This morning. Sometime. Everything that was not right now was sometime.

    They made him wash windows sometime, and they asked him if the windows were frightening. He said no.

    They asked him if he could see their shells. He said no. He said he didn't know what they meant. They asked him if he had a shell that could expand and contract. He said no. He said he didn't know what they meant. He was afraid of the doctor. If he told her the truth she called someone who gave him a shot. And then when he walked outside it was different. Instead of green leaves, they might be gone altogether, or there might be snow on the ground. Or it could be different in some other way that made him edgy.

    He never told them about the leaves' not being right.

    Sometime. He woke up in front of his television, clutching a piece of paper with writing on it: Don't take the medicine. He threw it away.

    Sometime. He woke up in a chair in his tiny living room, clutching a slip of paper: Don't take the medicine. He threw it away.

    Sometime. He woke up clutching his hand, which was bloody. When he cleaned it he saw scratches on his palm, as if made with a pin: Don't.

    Good morning Tom. How are you ? Any more episodes ?

    Any dreams ? Here's your medicine. That's a good boy. Go on to work now. The medicine was a long red capsule in a little white paper cup, with another little cup of water by it. He put the capsule in his mouth and took a drink and walked out toward the maintenance office for his daily assignment. On the way he spat the capsule into his hand and thrust it down into his pocket.

    He touched the capsule in his pocket several times.

    Sticky. He broke it with a touch and felt grains like fine sand in his pocket.

    Tom weed out those dandelions in the daffodils. He bent over to start, but he was shaking, chilled. Hey Tom you sick or something? Must be flu. Everyone's getting it. Go on home Tom. Pile up in bed a day or two, you "II be okay.

    Sometime. Good morning Tom. They said you were sick so I brought your medicine over for you. You want to see the doctor?

    When she was gone he spat out the red capsule. He was shaking so hard he dropped it. No doctor. No medicine.

    No doctor. No medicine. No doctor. He slept.

    Sometime. Good morning Tom. Are you any better? Half the maintenance crew is down with it, whatever it is. The doctor says just rest and drink plenty of fluids and take aspirin if you feel too bad. Here's your medicine. Go on now. , She watched so long that the sticky red capsule started to melt in his mouth and he felt the grains like sand. He coughed it out into a tissue. She backed away.

    He sweated and got chilled. His heart raced, slowed, pounded. Deep whole-body spasms doubled him over with pain, and when they subsided he shook so hard he could not hold a glass, could not hold a spoon to eat the soup with. When they asked how he was he always said better.

    They brought food every day, and one day he picked up the bowl and drank all the soup, then drank all the milk and juice. He had not eaten for a long time.

    The day he ate the soup, he realized that he was dirty, that he was unshaven, that he had not changed his clothes since.... He didn't know since when. He showered. At the mirror, shaving, he studied his face, the way he sometimes did. His face, not Tom's. When he did this, it was with great eagerness, as if maybe today that stranger face would become familiar, that stranger mouth would open and tell him something he needed to know. Blue eyes, badly bloodshot as if he had been crying. He remembered curling up on the bed crying like a baby. Brown hair with a slight wave. Thin face, thin lips, sharp chin. He was well nourished, well muscled.

    For a second, he thought his mirror self would tell him the other name; he almost knew it, his real name; it was there, waiting for him to say it. He opened his mouth as if to encourage that other self to speak, and the terror flashed through him, made him clutch the rim of the sink bowl and squeeze his eyes closed. When he could breathe normally again and opened his eyes again, he did not look at himself in the mirror.

    He finished shaving and quickly got clean clothes on:

    blue jeans, undershirt, heavy sweater, socks, boots. Then he sat down on the side of his bed. He didn't know what he was supposed to do next. He began to shake, but this was only a tremor, not the wrenching spasms that he had been enduring. He waited for the shaking to pass, then got up and began to look over his apartment.

    It was very small. A sofa and chair and one lamp were in the living room, and a television on a stand. Everything was brown or tan, even a shabby rug. A small kitchen with a half-size refrigerator; a three-burner stove; two tiny cabinets that held a couple of plates, a few glasses, a single cup A tan Formica-topped table with two metal and plastic chairs took up most of the space. In the bedroom it was more of the same, barren and institutional: a single bed, a narrow chest of drawers, and a small closet that held working clothes like the ones he now wore.

    And something else, he thought vaguely, but nothing more than that came. Something else. He looked in the refrigerator: milk that had gone bad, a few eggs, cheese, juice, apples.. .. Something else, he thought again.

    He went back to the living room and tried the television.

    Three channels came in clearly, a game show, a children's show, and a show about lions. He became aware of two windows across the room, darkness beyond, and hard rain hitting the glass. He started to get up to pull down the shades, then checked himself. Tom never had noticed that he was like a fish in a bowl. He knew all about Tom, what he did, how he spent his time in front of the television, falling asleep in front of it most nights, dragging himself to bed in a stupor when snow filled the screen. Never noticing if the shades were up or down. He knew all about Tom. He knew that he and Tom were the same man, and he knew his name was not Tom, and in some way he could not comprehend, he knew that Tom was not real and that he could not let anyone know he had learned this.

    He forced himself to sit in front of the television, on which people were jumping up and down and screaming and hugging one another. His head was starting to ache, and his eyes burned again, but the tears were contained, and this time they were not caused by fear or pain, but by frustration because he hated the shades' being up, hated being watched from out there in the darkness, and he did not know what to do about it. His fear of the doctor was greater than his hatred of being watched.

    The rain beat against the windows harder than before, swept against them by gusting winds. Sleet, he thought then. It was sleeting. The idea made him shiver. He be came very still, considering, and abruptly got up and went to the bedroom, pulled a blanket off the bed, and wrapped it around himself. When he returned to the living room, he pulled down the shades. He went to the kitchen and pulled down the shade on the single window there, then did the same in the bedroom.

    Someone would come with his dinner tray and find him huddled on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket, freezing. It was okay that the television sound was turned all the way down; Tom often watched it without sound. He sat with his eyes closed, the blanket ready, and he thought about Tom's routine. This week it had been different; they had brought him his food every day. He had to stop and try to think if week was the right length of time, and he realized he didn't know. He had been too sick to notice. Suddenly he knew he had not been suffering from the flu, but withdrawal Withdrawal, he repeated silently. The red capsules He could have died, withdrawing like that. He dismissed the thought; he didn't even know what it was he had withdrawn from. A heavy-duty tranquilizer; the answer came as fast as he phrased the statement of ignorance.

    Just as suddenly the thought came to him that he didn't know how long he had been Tom. He didn't know the month, the day, even what year it was. He moistened his lips, then did it again.

    He was almost too startled to grab the blanket when he heard a key turning in the lock on his door. The door opened and one of the men from the cafeteria entered with the tray.

    "Hey, how you doing? You pulled down the shades.

    Thought you'd gone out dancing or something."

    "Cold," he mumbled, clutching the blanket, burying his face in it.

    "Yeah. It's a mean one out there tonight. Freezing rain, sleet, snow by morning. Springtime in the Rockies." He went on through to the kitchen and returned with the lunch tray.

    "You stay bundled up, stay warm. See you tomorrow."

    He felt his shell touch the young man, stretch to accompany him as he ran across the parking lot that separated the apartments from the dormitory cafeteria. The sleet was driving in like icicles. Inside the big building across the way the young man stopped to wipe his face with a nap kin.

    "Oh, Michael, glad I caught you. How is he?"

    The shell almost snapped back when the doctor approached the young man. She was gray-haired, wearing a burgundy raincoat, carrying an umbrella. Her eyes were very dark, the darkest eyes he had ever seen. The most frightening eyes he had ever seen.

    "Hi, Dr. Brandywine. Better, I'd say. At least he ate lunch. First time. He's freezing, all wrapped up in a blanket, watching TV. Shades all down, trying to keep out the sleet, I guess."

    "Well, if he's eating, that's an improvement. This is a nasty bug going around."

    Michael left for the cafeteria, and she looked the other way and called, "Are you coming, Herbert?"

    The man who joined her was tall and overweight with white hair and light blue eyes--Dr. Margolis. He was grinning.

    "I heard what he said. Too bad. Better luck next time."

    "Oh, stop. That isn't funny."

    He laughed. He had on a raincoat and now pulled a hat from his pocket and pushed it into shape, jammed it on his head, and they left the building. They hurried to a parked car, got in, and she drove them away.