“Don't worry about me. Doggone that Jenny anyway, getting herself mixed up with an outsider!”
“Don't pick on Jenny. She knows what she's doing.”
“I guess so, but it sure makes a lot of stupid extra work, and you know what's liable to happen if we don't find him pretty soon.”
“So let's hurry it up.”
They went out, closed the door.
Dasein lay quietly absorbing the import of what they'd said. Jenny knew what she was doing, did she? What would happen if they didn't find him?
It felt good to stretch out on the blankets. His shoulder was a steady aching throb. He brought up the flashlight he'd found
here, pressed its switch. The thing produced a dull red glow. The light revealed a tight little nestâblankets, a pillow, a canteen half full of water. He drank some of it thirstily, found it heavy with Jaspers.
He supposed nothing in the cave could escape that flavor.
A fit of shivering took over his muscles. The canteen's cap rattled as he replaced it. When the trembling passed, he sat staring at the canteen in the dim red light.
Nothing in the cave could escape the Jaspers flavor!
That was it!
Exposed!
Something that could exist in this caveâa mould or a fungus, something related to mushrooms and dark places, something that wouldn't travel ⦠a
Jaspers
something invaded anything exposed to this environment.
But why was it so important to keep this fact secret? Why the dogs and the guards?
He heard the louvered door open, close, turned off the red flashlight. Someone ran lightly across the rock floor to a point just below him.
“Gilbert Dasein!” a voice hissed at him.
Dasein stiffened.
“It's Willa Burdeaux,” the voice hissed. “It's Willa, Jenny's friend. I know you're in there, in the place Cal made for us. Now, you listen. Arnulf will be right back from the upper end and I have to be out of here before that. You don't have much time. There's too much Jaspers in here for someone who's not used to it. You're breathing it and it's going in your pores and everything.”
What the hell?
Dasein thought.
He crawled up out of the nest, leaned out and looked down at Willa Burdeaux's dark, harshly-beautiful face.
“Why can't I take too much of it?” he asked.
“Hasn't that Jenny explained anything to you?” she whispered. “Well, no time now. You have to get out of here. Do you have a watch?”
“Yes, but ⦔
“There's no time to explain; just listen. Give me fifteen minutes to get Arnulf out of the way. He's such a prig. In fifteen minutes you come out of this room. Turn left the way
you came in, but go down instead of up. Take the second crossway to your left and after that keep to your left. It's easy to remember. Left turns only. You want the ramp out of Bay 2-G. I've left the ramp's door unlocked. Lock it after you. It'll be about twenty steps straight in front of that door to an emergency gate. The gate's unlocked. Go out and lock it after you. The Inn's right across the road. You ought to be able to make that on your own.”
“Apparently, you've been rather busy.”
“I was in the office when they sounded the alarm. Now, get down out of sight and do just what I told you.”
Dasein ducked back into the nest.
Presently, he heard the door open and close. He looked at his wristwatch: five minutes to three a.m. Where had the time gone?
Could he believe Willa Burdeaux? he wondered.
There'd been something about that black pixie face, an intensity ⦠Dasein thought of compartments loaded with valuable food, all unlocked. Why should this evidence of a basic honesty alarm him? Perhaps it wasn't honesty. Fear could control behavior, too.
Could he believe Willa? Did he have a choice?
So this was a trysting place Cal Nis had made for the two of them. Why not? People in love usually wanted to be alone together.
Jenny knew what she was doing.
What did she know?
His mind felt clear and oiled, working at a furious pace. What was the danger in exposure to Jaspers? He thought of that dull-eyed line he'd glimpsed up there in the Co-op.
Was that what happened?
Dasein fought down a seige of trembling.
Ten minutes after three, the moment of decision, came more quickly than he wanted. He had no choice and knew it. His shoulder had gone stiff and there was a painful burning along his scraped chest and stomach. Favoring his shoulder, Dasein eased himself down off the storage pile.
The ramp door was unlocked as Willa had promised. He let himself out into a darkened side yard, hesitated. The stars overhead looked cold and close. It was cold. He felt goose
pimples along his arms. There was no sign of a guard out here, but he glimpsed lights and motion far up on the hillside.
Lock the ramp door, she'd said.
Dasein locked the door, darted across the yard. It was a narrow gate in the chain fence. The hinges creaked and he thought the latch unnaturally loud. There was a hasp and padlock. He closed the lock.
A narrow path led along the fence to the road. There was the Inn across the wayâdark, but inviting. A dim yellow light glowed through the double doors. Using the light as a beacon, Dasein limped down the path and across to the Inn.
The lobby was empty, most of its lights turned off. There was the sound of snoring from the switchboard room behind the desk.
Dasein slipped quietly across the lobby, up the stairs and down the hall to his room.
The keyâhad he turned it in or left it in the truck? No ⦠here it was in his pocket. He opened the door softly, stepped into the darkness of his room. He'd spent only one night in this room but it suddenly was a haven.
The truck! It was still up there on the road to Porterville. The hell with it. He'd hire a ride up tomorrow and drive it down.
That Willa Burdeaux! Why had she done this?
Dasein began slipping out of his clothes. He wanted nothing more than a hot shower and bed. It was slow work undressing in the dark, but he knew a light might tell someone what time he'd returned.
What difference does that make?
he asked himself. His clothing, torn, smeared with dirt, still stinking of the cave, was evidence enough of where he'd been and what he'd done.
Abruptly, he felt he no longer could sneak around.
Angry at himself, he turned on the light.
Directly ahead of him on the bedstand was a bottle of beer with a note attached to it. Dasein lifted the note, read it: “This isn't much, but it's all I could get. You'll need it in the morning. I'll call Jenny and tell her you're all right.âWilla.”
Dasein picked up the bottle, looked at the label. There was a blue stamp on it: “Exposed January 1959.”
A
steady, loud pounding invaded Dasein's dream.
He felt he was trapped inside a giant drum. Reverberations beat through his brain. Each drumbeat became a stab of pain along his temples, through his shoulders, across his stomach.
He was the drum! That was it!
His lips were dry. Thirst spread a scabby dustiness over his throat. His tongue was thick, fuzzy.
My God! Would the pounding never stop?
He awoke feeling he'd been caught in a caricature of a hangover. The blankets were twisted around his body, immobilizing his injured shoulder. The shoulder felt better, and that was a relief, but something had to be done about his head and that insane pounding.
His free arm was asleep. It tingled painfully when he tried to move it. Sunlight filtered through a tear in the curtain on the room's single window. One thin ray outlined in dust motes stabbed across the room. It dazzled him, hurt his eyes.
That damned pounding!
“Hey! Open up in there!”
It was a masculine voice from outside.
Dasein felt he knew that voice. Marden, the CHP captain? What was he doing here at this hour. Dasein lifted his wristwatch, stared at itâten twenty-five.
The pounding resumed.
“Just a minute!” Dasein shouted. His own voice sent waves of pain through his head.
Blessedly, the pounding stopped.
Dasein gasped with relief, twisted himself out of the blankets, sat up. The room's walls began going around and around in a mad circle.
For the love of heaven!
he thought.
I've heard of hangovers, but nothing like this
.
“Open the door, Dasein.”
That definitely was Marden.
“Right with you,” Dasein rasped.
What's wrong with me?
he wondered. He knew he'd had no more than the beers with dinner. They couldn't possibly explain his present malaise. Could it be delayed reaction to the gas?
Beer.
There was something about beer.
Slowly so as not to dislocate his neck, Dasein turned his head toward the bedstand. Yes, there was a beer. Willa had thoughtfully provided an opener. He levered the cap off the bottle, drank hungrily.
Waves of soothing relief spread out from his stomach. He put down the empty bottle, stood up.
Hair of the dog.
he thought.
Hair of the Jaspers dog.
The bottle was redolent with the mushroom tang.
“Are you all right in there, Dasein?”
To hell with you, mister,
Dasein thought. He tried to take a step, was rewarded with instant nausea and a wave of dizziness. He leaned against the wall breathing slowly, deeply.
I'm sick,
he thought.
I've caught something.
The beer felt as though it had begun to boil in his stomach.
“Open this door, Dasein! Now!”
All rightâall right,
Dasein thought. He stumbled to the door, unlocked it, stepped back.
The door was flung open to reveal Al Marden in uniform, the captain's bars glistening at his neck. His visored cap was pushed back to reveal a sweaty band of red hair.
“Well,” he said. “Haven't we been the busy one?”
He stepped into the room, closed the door. He carried something
round and chromed in his left handâa thermos. What the devil was he doing here at this hour with a thermos? Dasein wondered.
One hand against the wall to steady himself, Dasein made his way back to the bed, sat on the edge.
Marden followed.
“I hope you're worth all this trouble,” he said.
Dasein looked up at the narrow, cynical face, remembering the glimpse he'd had of the high-wheeled bush buggy wheeling down the road out there with Marden steering, and the dogs beside him. That had been a proper setting for this man. There was an elevated look about him, a peering-down-at-the-world's-stupidity. What was it about him? Was it the Santaroga look? But what had the Porterville deputies seen, then? What had the man in the Chrysler seen.
Do I look that way?
Dasein wondered.
“I brought you some coffee,” Marden said. “You look like you could use it.” He opened the thermos, poured steaming amber liquid into the cup-top.
A rich smell of Jaspers rode on the steam from the cup. The smell set Dasein trembling, sent a pulsing, throbbing ache through his head. The ache seemed timed to a wavering reflection on the surface of the coffee as Marden presented it.
Dasein took the cup in both hands, tipped his head back and drank with a gulping eagerness. The coffee produced the same sensation of soothing as the beer.
Marden refilled the cup.
Dasein held it beneath his nose, inhaled the Jaspers rich steam. His headache began to fade. There was a hunger in him for the coffee that he realized went beyond the cravings from a hangover.
“Drink up,” Marden said.
Dasein sipped the coffee. He could feel it settling his stomach, his mind coming alert. Marden no longer appeared superiorâonly amused.
Why was a hangover amusing?
“The Jaspers, that's what gave me the screaming fantods, isn't it?” Dasein asked. He returned the cup.
Marden concentrated on restoring the cap to the thermos.
“A person can get too much of it, eh?” Dasein persisted, recalling what Willa Burdeaux had said.
“Overexposure too soon can cause a hangover,” Marden admitted. “You'll be all right when you get used to it.”
“So you came up to play the good Samaritan,” Dasein said. He could feel the beginnings of anger.
“We found your truck up on the Porterville road and got worried about you,” Marden said. “You can't abandon a vehicle like that.”
“I didn't abandon it.”
“Oh? What'd you do?”
“I went for a walk.”
“And caused one helluva lot of trouble,” Marden said. “If you wanted a tour of the Co-op and the storage caves, all you had to do was ask.”
“And I'd have had a nice safe guided tour.”
“Any kind of tour you wanted.”
“So you came up to arrest me.”
“Arrest you? Don't talk stupid.”
“How'd you know where I was?”
Marden looked at the ceiling, shook his head. “You're all alike, you young folks,” he said. “That Willa's too damn' romantic, but she doesn't lie worth git all. None of us do, I guess.” He turned his glance full of cynical amusement on Dasein. “You feeling better?”
“Yes!”
“Aren't we the intense one.” He pursed his lips. “By the way, we broke into your truck and hot-wired it to drive it down. It's parked out front.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Dasein looked down at his hands. Anger and frustration twisted through him. He knew Marden wasn't a fit object for this anger ⦠nor Jenny ⦠nor Piaget ⦠No person or thing presented itself to him as an object for angerâyet the emotion remained. He trembled with it.
“You sure you're all right?” Marden asked.
“Yes, I'm all right!”
“Okay, okay,” Marden murmured. He turned away, but not before Dasein saw the smile forming on his lips.
The smile, not the man, brought Dasein's anger to focus.
That smile! It embodied Santarogaâself-satisfied, superior, secretive. He jumped to his feet, strode to the window, whipped up the curtain.
Blazing sunshine on a flower garden, a small stream, and beyond that the flat with its broken edge dropping down into the redwoods. It was a day of brassy heat with the oaks sitting motionless, sun-drenched on the hillsides. He counted three plumes of smoke hanging on the still air, glimpsed a serpentine track of blue-green river in the distance.
This vale of pastoral beauty that was Santaroga, this was a fitting object for his anger, Dasein decided: Santaroga, this island of people in the wilderness. He pictured the valley as a swarming place behind a façade like a pyramid: solid, faceless, enduring. In there, behind the façade, Santaroga did something to its people. They lost personal identity and became masks for something that was the same in all of them.
He sensed a one-pointedness here such that every Santarogan became an extension of every other Santarogan. They were like rays spreading out from a pinhole in a black curtain.
What lay behind the black curtain?
There, he knew, was the real substance against which his anger was directed. The valley existed within an evil enchantment. The Santarogans had been trapped by a black sorcery, transmuted into the faceless pyramid.
With this thought, Dasein's anger faded. He realized he, too, had a place in this pyramid. It was like an ecological pyramid planted in the wilderness except for this gnome-change. The base of the pyramid had been firmly imbedded in the earth, extending roots deep into a moist, dank cave.
He could see the shape of his problem.
One thing set this valley apartâJaspers. It brought Santarogans back as though they were addicted. He thought of his own craving reaction. It was the substance of the cave, the thing the pores drank and the lungs inhaled.
Marden stirred in the room behind him.
Dasein turned, looked at the man.
Santarogans became extensions of that cave and its substance. There was a drug-effect at work in this valley. It was a material in a way similar to lysergic acid diethylamideâLSD.
How did it work? he wondered.
Did it shift the serotonin balance?
Dasein felt his mind working with remarkable clarity, sorting out possibilities, setting up avenues of investigation.
“If you're feeling all right now, I'll be running along,” Marden said. “Before you get any more harebrained ideas for night excursions, let us know, huh?”
“Well, naturally,” Dasein said.
For some reason, this provoked a fit of laughter in Marden. He was still laughing as he let himself out.
“To hell with you, wise-guy Santarogan,” Dasein muttered.
He turned back to the window.
Objectivity was going to be a problem, he saw. He had no guinea pig except himself. What was the Jaspers effect on himself? An impression of heightened awareness? Could it be an actual heightened awareness in the pattern of LSD? This would require careful evaluation. What was the source of the morning-after symptoms? Withdrawal?
He began to focus on the Santaroga personality pattern, their alertness, their abrupt mannerisms, their apparent honesty. If awareness actually were heightened, would that explain the honest advertising? Could you be anything but bluntly honest with a wide-awake human being?
Avenues of attack opened all around. Barriers collapsed like sand walls before the waves of his new awareness, but the exposed vistas contained their own mysteries.
Jenny.
Again, Dasein recalled how she'd been dropped from the university's attempt to evaluate LSD.
No apparent reaction
. The ones running the tests had wanted to explore this phenomenon, but Jenny had refused. Why? She'd been written off, of courseâ“a curious anomaly.” The evaluation had gone on to its natural end in the publicity fiasco.
Jenny.
Dasein went into the shower, humming to himself, his mind busy. His shoulder felt remarkably improved in spite of the way he'd mistreated it during the night ⦠or perhaps because of thatâthe exercise.
I'll call Jenny,
he thought, as he dressed.
Maybe we can meet for lunch.
The prospect of seeing Jenny filled him with a wondering delight. He sensed his own protectiveness toward her, the mutual emotional dependence. Love, that was what it was. It was a sensation that wouldn't submit to analysis. It could only be experienced.
Dasein sobered.
His love for Jenny required that he save her from the Santaroga enchantment. She'd have to help him whether she knew it or not, whether she wanted it or not.
A brisk double knock sounded on his door.
“Come in,” he called.
Jenny slipped in, closed the door.
She wore a white dress, red scarf, red handbag and shoes. The outfit made her skin appear dark and exotic. She paused a moment at the door, her hand resting lightly on the knob, eyes wide and probing.
“Jen!” he said.
All in one swift dash, she was across the room into his arms, hugging him. Her lips were warm and soft on his. There was a clean spicy smell about her.