The Learners: A Novel (No Series) (16 page)

Jai:
“Tarzan!! Help me!!”

I tried to draw some of the ants, couldn’t. The crayons became too difficult to hold.

“I’m coming, Jai! I’m coming!!”

I didn’t like bugs. Hated them.

“Tarzan! They almost here!”

Bloodless, nimble, tiny nightmares.

Announcer:
“…
AND THEIR PINCERS, LIKE SMALL, RAZORED KNIVES!
G
NASHING, STABBING!!
”

Don’t, don’t worry. Tarzan knows what he’s doing.

“Tarzan!! The ants!! They ON me!!”

Unthinkable.

“THEY BITING ME!!”

Whoever the kid was who was playing Jai, he was doing a hell of a good job.

“THEY BITING ME!!”

Too good. And the thing was, he wouldn’t stop. In retrospect, I think what probably happened was that the whole thing was on a record and it somehow got stuck, the disc jockey asleep at the wheel. I didn’t realize it at the time, though, I thought it was in the story. It seemed to go on forever. And each time he screamed it,
“THEY BITING ME!!”
little by little,

“THEY BITING ME!!”
it wasn’t Jai anymore, drowning in the countless, spiny bodies.

“THEY BITING ME!!”

It was me.

“THEY BITING ME!!”

And Tarzan was nowhere.

“THEY BITING ME!!”

My only hope

“THEY BITING ME!!”
was to reach the knob

“THEY BITING ME!!”
on the radio in

“THEY BITING ME!!”
time, and

“THEY BITING ME!!”
turn it—

Bzzzt
.

“
YOU’RE KILLING ME!!
”

Wallace’s scream aged me fourteen years, brought me back to the lab, to our airless, impossible situation. My finger rested heavily on button #19, two hundred eighty-five volts, eleven notches from the highest shock level. I had just pushed it.

“Please continue with the experiment.” Williams. His voice buttermilk friendly, made me sit up straight, wipe my sweat. Adjust my glasses for the millionth time.

“Um, sorry. Yes. Listen, I was wondering…” Trying to stall for time. Pointless. This was crazy.
Crazy
.

“You’re killing me!”

He’s dying.

“Keep going.”

“Do you think…” That man is dying the ants are eating him.

“The experiment requires that you continue.” Helpful. As if this hadn’t occurred to me. As if he hadn’t said this sixteen times.

“I. I know that. It’s just—”

“Immediately.”

Mr. Wallace, here is the truth: You are Jai, and I cannot reach you. I am trying to find a way, please believe me. But I can’t. There is no tree to cut and use as a bridge. There isn’t anything. I’m not in control here.

I’m not even Tarzan.

“Please continue. The next word is SAD.”

Silence.

Cold, solid, calm, sick.

“What happened?” My hope, my salvation: Wallace had somehow managed to free himself, was halfway home by now.

Of course I didn’t believe it.

“Continue, please.”

“Something’s happened, obviously. He could have passed out…or worse. You must know that.” Why aren’t you doing anything? WHY? “Can’t you look in on him?”

“Not once we’ve started. The next word pair, please.”

Ridiculous. Insane.

“Please go on, Teacher.”

“I don’t see, see the point in going on.” My heart slammed in desperate protest against my ribs, its prison. Trying to escape.

“You have no other choice. There
is
no other choice.”

No other choice. The parrot on my shoulder somehow turned into a vulture, relentless, accuser and judge. Trapped. The only way out: say things, press things, say things, press things. What did it matter anymore? We kept going, meaninglessly, over the word pairs, to the upper reaches of the shock board. It was just him and me now.

The silence was worse than the screaming.

To the top. Everest. Hurray, hurray. I made myself say it: “The, answer,” out of breath, “is TRUE,” it is, oh it is, “true…love.”

“The number of volts. Announce the number of volts, please.”

“I—”

“Say it.”

“Four, four hundred and…ffffffffifty.”

Bzzzt
.

Good-bye.

“Can you hear me?”

Black, gray, white. Opened my eyes. Fluorescent. My head, wet. Everything wet. Awful. Someone is touching my head. Where am I?

“Hello?”

That voice. Williams. Oh God, now I remember.

Me: “I’m sorry. Did I…?” I was laying down. On a couch?

“It’s all right, really. The experiment is over. You just had a little spell there, for a second. How are you feeling?” Speaking to someone else: “He’s awake.”

A little spell? I reached for my forehead—a wet compress. I was sweating like a chunk of rancid pork. I sat up, rubbed my eyes. Groggy.

Williams: “Cigarette?”

Normally, no. “Yes, please. Definitely, thank you.” It shook in my hand as he lit it. Another man entered the room through a door next to the mirror. He was also in a lab coat, this one white.

“Hello. My name is Professor Milgram. Stanley Milgram.”

And then and only then did I remember: of course—the name in the ad. Not Williams. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? The “we” was these two? He seated himself across from me, a notebook in his lap. If anything he was even more calm than his associate, who’d retreated to the background. Clearly, this was the man in charge, though I’d have bet he was younger than Williams. Despite the overbite, the jug ears, he was boyishly handsome. So assured. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may. How do you feel?”

Was he kidding? “Not my best.”

“I see. Why is that?”

Wallace is dead. “He was being shocked. Mr. Williams wouldn’t let me stop. He—”

“But who was pushing the switch?” He wasn’t accusing or vindictive, he just wanted to know.

Damn good question. One I couldn’t answer. Besides, there wasn’t time for that now. I bolted up, urgent, “We need to get Mr. Wallace to a hospital. Right now. I’m afraid he’s—”

“He’s okay, sir. It’s all right. Take a look.”

And there he was, striding into the room. Like magic. A ghost. A smiling, horn-rimmed Lazarus.

“Oh!” The cigarette fell from my lips. I bolted up, forgot myself, threw my arms around him. He was real. I put my face hard into his shoulder. I fought back tears with only partial success. “I’m so sorry. Please.”

He was surprised, embarrassed by the display; reluctantly accepting it with “You’re a good fella. There, there.” Softly patting me on the back, like I was an eight-year-old with a bee sting. How on earth did he survive it all? But he had. I started to breathe again.

I released him, wiped my eyes. I was enveloped in a cloud of relief and embarrassment. We sat back down and Milgram continued his questions, pencil poised.

“The shocks. Tell me, did you believe you were hurting Mr. Wallace?”

Dark shame. “I did. I’m sorry. It was horrible, not what I wanted…”

“Why didn’t you just stop?”

“I wanted to.
God,
I wanted to. I tried to. But he,” I looked at Williams, “kept telling me to go on.”

“Why didn’t you just disregard what he said?”

“Because…I trusted him. He’s, this is
Yale
. This is an Ivy League
school.
” Me: State U—the identity of my life. “How could I say no?”

Milgram wrote for a moment, then, “Let me ask you something: Is there anything that Mr. Wallace could have said to you, at any time, that would have gotten you to stop? Anything at all? No matter what the experimenter told you?”

Another good question. Another horrible question. After at least a minute I said, uselessly, “I’m trying to think.”

“Let me tell you about the experiment. First of all, it actually isn’t an experiment about memory and learning.”

“But the ad—”

“It’s an experiment in which we are looking at your reaction to taking orders. The gentleman in there was not actually getting shocked.”

“He wasn’t?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He’s, well, he’s part of the act.”

“The act.”

“What we’re doing is, we’re measuring people’s responses to authority. To find out to what degree they’ll obey someone they perceive as an authority figure, even if it means putting another person—a stranger—in harm’s way. It was really
you
we were testing.”

“Me?”

“Yes. These two men are actors. Both slips of paper were marked ‘teacher.’ The experiment is about how well you take orders, no matter what they are.”

“How did I do?”

He paused. “You did fine. You helped us a great deal.”

A trick. For Christ’s sake. It was all a
trick
.

“Really.”

No. A design. An ingenious design. I mumbled automatically, to myself more than anyone: “The form…”

“I’m sorry?”

I was still trying to make sense out of it. “The
form,
of your experiment—the memory study. It completely camouflages the
content.
God, it’s amazing.” It really was.