The Heaven Makers (4 page)

“Was Murphey looking out?” Lee asked.

The man’s voice carried an irritating country twang that rasped on Thurlow’s nerves.

“No,” Thurlow said. “I… I guess I just saw a reflection.”

“I don’t know how you can see anything through those glasses,” Lee said.

“You’re right,” Thurlow said. “It was the glasses, my eyes—a reflection.”

“I’ve a lot more questions, Doc,” Lee said. “You wanta stop up at the Turk’s Nightery where we can be comfortable. We can go in my car and I‘ll bring…”

“No,” Thurlow said. He shook his head, feeling the numbness pass. “No. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Hell, Doc, it is tomorrow.”

But Thurlow turned away, ran across the street to his car. His mind had come fully to focus on Murphey’s words: “Take care of Ruthy.”

Thurlow knew he had to find Ruth, offer any help he could. She was married to someone else, but that didn’t end what had been between them.

Chapter 6

The audience stirred, a single organism in the anonymous darkness of the storyship’s empatheater.

Kelexel, seated near the center of the giant room, felt that oddly menacing dark movement. They were all around him, the story cadre and off-duty crewmen interested in Fraffin’s new production. They had seen two reels run and rerun a dozen times while the elements were refined. They waited now for another rerun of the opening scene, and still Kelexel sensed that threatening aura in this place. It was personal and direct, something to do with the story, but he couldn’t define it.

He could smell now the faint bite of ozone from the sensimesh web, that offshoot from Tiggywaugh’s discovery, whose invisible field linked the audience to the story projection. His chair felt strange. It was professional equipment with solid arms and keyed flanges for the editing record. Only the vast domed ceiling with its threads of pantovive force focusing down, down onto the stage far below him (and the stage itself)—these were familiar, like any normal empatheater.

But the sounds, the clicks of editing keys, professional comments— “Shorten that establishment and get to the close-up…” “Hit the olfactory harder as soon as you have light…” “Soften that first breeze effect…” “Amplify the victim’s opening emotion and cut back immediately…”

All this continued to be discord.

Kelexel had spent two working days in here, privileged to watch the cadre at its chores. Still, the sounds and voices of the audience remained discord. His previous experience of empatheaters had always involved completed stories and rapt watchers.

Far off to his left in the darkness, a voice said: “Roll it.”

The pantovive force lines disappeared. Utter blackness filled the room.

Someone cleared his throat. Clearing throats became a message of nervousness that wove out through the dark.

Light came into being at the center of the stage. Kelexel squirmed into a more comfortable position. Always, that same old beginning, he thought. The light was a forlorn, formless thing that resolved slowly into a streetlamp. It illuminated a slope of lawn, a curved length of driveway and in the background the ghost-gray wall of a native house. The dark windows of primitive glass glistened like strange eyes.

There was a panting noise somewhere in the scene and something thudding with a frenzied rhythm.

An insect chirred.

Kelexel felt the realism of the sounds as pantovive circuits reproduced them with all the values of the original. To sit enmeshed in the web, linked to the empathic projectors, was as real as viewing the original raw scene from a vantage point above and to one side. It was, in its own way, like the Chem oneness. The smell of dust from wind-stirred dry grass permeated Kelexel’s awareness. A cool finger of breeze touched his face.

Terror crept through Kelexel then. It reached out from the shadowy scene and through the web’s projectors with a billowing insistence. Kelexel had to remind himself that this was story artistry, that it wasn’t real… for him. He was experiencing another creature’s fear caught and preserved on sensitive recorders.

A running figure, a native woman clad in a loose green gown that billowed around her thighs, fled into the focus on the stage. She gasped and panted as she ran. Her bare feet thudded on the lawn and then on the paving of the driveway. Pursuing her came a squat, moon-faced man carrying a sword whose blade like a silvery snaketrack glittered in the light of the streetlamp.

Terror radiated from the woman. She gasped: “No! Please, dear God, no!”

Kelexel held his breath. No matter the number of times he had seen this, the act of violence felt new each time. He was beginning to see what Fraffin might have in this story. The sword was lifted high overhead.

“Cut!”

The web went blank, no emotion, nothing. It was like being dropped off a cliff. The stage darkened.

Kelexel realized then the voice had been Fraffin’s. It had come from far down to the right. A momentary rage at Fraffin’s action surged through Kelexel. It required a moment for the Investigator to reorient himself and still he felt frustrated.

Lights came on revealing the rising wedge of seats converging on the disc of stage. Kelexel blinked, stared around him at the story cadre. He could still feel the menace from them and from that empty stage. What was the threat here? he wondered. He trusted his instincts in this: there was danger in this room. But what was it?

The cadre sat around him row on row—trainees and off-duty crewmen at the rear, probationers and specialist observers in the center, the editing crew down near the stage. Taken individually, they appeared such ordinary Chem, but Kelexel remembered what he had felt in the dark—the oneness, an organism bent on harming him, confident of its ability to harm him. He could sense it in the Chem empathy, the all-one-life they shared.

There was an old stillness to the room now. They were waiting for something. Far down near the stage heads bent together in inaudible conversation.

Am I imagining things? Kelexel wondered. But surely they must suspect me. Why then do they permit me to sit in here and watch them work?

The work—that violent death.

Again, Kelexel felt frustration at the way Fraffin had cut off that scene. To have the vision denied him even when he knew how it went… Kelexel shook his head. He felt confused, excited. Once more he swept his gaze over the cadre. They were a gaming board of colors in the giant room, the hue of each uniform coded to its wearer’s duties—red patches of flitter pilots, the motley orange and black of shooting crewmen, green of story continuity, yellow of servicing and repair, purple of acting and white of wardrobe, and here and there the black punctuation marks of Manipulators, subdirectors. Fraffin’s inner circle.

The group near the stage broke apart. Fraffin emerged, climbed up onto the stage and to the very center, the bare circle of image focus. It was a deliberate move which identified him with the action which had occupied that space only moments before.

Kelexel bent forward to study the Director. Fraffin was a gaunt little figure down there in his black cloak, a patch of ebony hair above silver skin, the gashed straightedge mouth with its deep upper lip. He was suddenly something from the shadowy marches of a far and perilous realm that no other Chem had ever glimpsed. There was an arresting individuality to him.

The sunken eyes looked up and searched out Kelexel.

A chill went through the Investigator then. He sat back, his thoughts boiling with alarm. It was as though Fraffin had spoken to him, saying: “There’s the foolish Investigator! There he is, ensnared in my net, trapped! Safely caught! Oh, certainly caught!”

Silence gripped the empatheater now like a held breath. The intent faces of the cadre focused on the image stage.

“I will tell you once more,” Fraffin said, and his voice caressed the air. “Our aim is subtlety.”

Again, Fraffin looked up at Kelexel.

Now, he has felt terror, Fraffin thought. Fear heightens the sex drive. And he has seen the victim’s daughter, a female of the kind to snare any Chem—exotic, not too gross, graceful, eyes like strange green jewels. Ah, how the Chem love green. She is sufficiently similar to other non-Chem pleasure creatures that he will sense new physical excitements in her. Ah, hah, Kelexel! You will ask to examine a native soon—and we’ll permit it.

“You are not keeping the viewer sufficiently in mind,” Fraffin said. His voice had turned suddenly cold.

A shiver of agitation swept up through the empatheater.

“We must not make our viewer feel too deep a terror,” Fraffin said. “Only let him know terror is present. Don’t force the experience. Let him enjoy it—amusing violence, humorous death. The viewer must not think he is the one being manipulated. There is more here than a pattern of intrigue for our own enjoyment.”

Kelexel sensed unspoken messages in Fraffin’s words. A definite threat, yes. He felt the play of emotions around him and wondered at them.

I must get one of these natives to examine intimately and at my leisure, Kelexel thought. Perhaps there’s, a clue that only a native can reveal.

As though this thought were a key to the locked door of temptation, Kelexel found his mind suddenly filled with thoughts about a female from Fraffin’s story. The name, such an exotic sound—Ruth. Red-haired Ruth. There was something of the Subicreatures about her and the Subi were famous for the erotic pleasures they gave the Chem. Kelexel remembered a Subi he had owned once. She had seemed to fade so rapidly, though. Mortals had a way of doing that when paced by the endless life of a Chem.

Perhaps I could examine this Ruth, Kelexel thought. It’d be a simple matter for Fraffin’s men to bring her to me here.

“Subtlety,” Fraffin said. “The audience must be maintained in a detached awareness. Think of our story as a form of dance, not real in the way our lives are real, but an interesting reflection, a Chem fairy story. By now, you all must know the purpose of our story. See that you hew to that purpose with proper subtlety.”

Fraffin drew his black cloak around him with a feeling of amusement at the showmanship of the gesture. He turned his back on the audience, stalked off the stage.

It was a good crew, Fraffin reminded himself. They would play their parts with trained exactitude. This amusing little story would accumulate on the reels. It might even be salable as an interlude piece, a demonstration of artistic deftness. But no matter; it would serve its purpose if it did no more than lead Kelexel around—a fear here, a desire there—his every move recorded by the shooting crews. Every move.

He’s as easy to manipulate as the natives, Fraffin thought.

He let himself out through the service tube at the rear of the stage, emerged into the blue walls of the drop hall that curved down past the storage bays to his quarters. Fraffin allowed the drop field to catch him and propel him past the seamless projections of hatchways in a gentle blur.

It’s almost possible to feel sorry for Kelexel, he thought.

The man had been so obviously repelled at first confrontation with the idea of single violence, but oh, how he’d lost himself in the native conflict when shown it.

We identify with individual acts of violence so easily, Fraffin thought. One might almost suspect there were real experiences of this kind in our own pasts.

He felt the reflexive tightening of the armor that was his skin, a sudden turmoil of unfixed memories. Fraffin swallowed, halted the drop at the hatchway outside his salon.

The endlessness of his own personal story appalled him suddenly. He felt that he stood on the brink of terrifying discoveries. He sensed monsters of awareness lurking in the shadows of eternity directly before him. Things loomed there which he dared not identify.

A pleading rage suffused Fraffin then. He wanted to slam a fist into eternity, to still the hidden voices gibbering at him. He felt himself go still with fear and he thought: To be immortal is to require frequent administrations of moral anesthesia.

It was such an odd thought that it dispelled his fear. He let himself into the silvery warmth of his salon wondering whence that thought had come.

Chapter 7

Thurlow sat smoking his pipe, hunched over the wheel of his parked car. His polarizing glasses lay on the seat beside him, and he stared at the evening sky through raindrops luminous on the windshield. His eyes watered and the raindrops blurred like tears. The car was a five-year-old coupe and he knew he needed a new one, but he’d fallen into the habit of saving his money to buy a house… when he’d thought of marrying Ruth. The habit was difficult to break now, although he knew he clung to it mostly out of perverse hope that the past year might yet be erased from their lives.

Why does she want to see me? he wondered. And why here, where we used to meet? Why such secrecy now?

It had been two days since the murder and he found he still couldn’t assemble the events of the period into a coherent whole. Where news stories mentioned his own involvement, those stories read like something written about a stranger—their meaning as blurred as the raindrops in front of him now. Thurlow felt his whole world invaded by Joe Murphey’s psychotic ramblings and the violent reactions of the community.

It shocked Thurlow to realize that the community wanted Murphey dead. Public reaction had struck him with all the violence of the storm which had just passed.

Violent storm, he thought. A violence storm.

He looked up at the trees on his left, wondering how long he’d been here. His watch had stopped, unwound. Ruth was late, though. It was her way.

There’d been the storm. Clouds had grown out of a hard gray sky with rain crouched low in them. For a time the eucalyptus grove around him had been filled with frightened bird sounds. A wind had hummed through the high boughs—then the rain: big spattering drops.

The sun was back now, low in the west, casting orange light onto the treetops. The leaves drooped with hanging raindrops. A mist near the ground quested among scaly brown trunks. Insect cries came from the roots and the bunchgrass that grew in open places along the dirt road into the grove.

What do they remember of their storm? Thurlow wondered.

He knew professionally why the community wanted its legal lynching, but to see the same attitude in officials, this was the shocker. Thurlow thought about the delays being placed in his path, the attempts to prevent his own professional examination of Murphey. The sheriff, district attorney George Paret, all the authorities knew by now that Thurlow had predicted the psychotic break which had cost Adele Murphey her life. If they recognized this as a fact, Murphey had to be judged insane and couldn’t be executed.

Paret already had shown his hand by calling in Thurlow’s own department chief, the Moreno State Hospital director of psychiatry, Dr. LeRoi Whelye. Whelye was known throughout the state as a hanging psychiatrist, a man who always found what the prosecution wanted. Right on schedule, Whelye had declared Murphey to be sane and “responsible for his acts.”

Thurlow looked at his useless wristwatch. It was stopped at 2:14. He knew it must be closer to seven now. It would be dark soon. What was keeping Ruth? Why had she asked him to meet her in their old trysting place?

He felt suddenly contaminated by this way of meeting.

Am I ashamed to see her openly now? he asked himself.

Thurlow had come directly from the hospital and Whelye’s unsubtle attempts to get him to step aside from this case, to forget for the moment that he was also the county’s court psychologist.

The words had been direct: “… personal involvement… your old girlfriend… her father…” The meaning was clear, but underneath lay the awareness that Whelye, too, knew about that report on Murphey which rested now in the Probation Department’s files. And that report contradicted Whelye’s public stand.

Whelye had come up just as they were about to go into a Ward Team conference to consider the possible discharge of a patient. Thurlow thought of that conference now, sensing how it encapsulated the chief of psychiatry.

They’d been in the ward office with its smell of oiled floors and disinfectant—the Protestant chaplain, a small sandy-haired man whose dark suits always seemed too large and made him appear even smaller; the ward nurse, Mrs. Norman, heavy, gray-haired, busty, a drill sergeant’s rocky face with cap always set squarely on her head; Dr. Whelye, an impression of excess bulk in a tweed suit, iron gray at the temples, and in patches through his black hair, a sanitary and barber-scraped appearance to his pink cheeks, and a look of calculated reserve in his washed blue eyes.

Lastly, almost something to overlook around the scarred oval table, there’d been a patient: a number and a first name, Peter. He was seventeen, mentally limited by lack of the right genes, lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of proper nutrition. He was a walking lack, blonde hair slicked down, veiled blue eyes, a narrow nose and pointed chin, a pursed-up little mouth, as though everything about him had to be shelled up inside and guarded.

Outside the room had been green lawns, sunshine and patients preparing the flower beds for Spring. Inside, Thurlow felt, there had been little more than the patient’s smell of fear with Whelye conducting the interview like a district attorney.

“What kind of work are you going to do when you get out?” Whelye asked.

Peter, keeping his eyes on the table, “Sell newspapers or shine shoes, something like that.”

“Can’t make any money like that unless you have a big corner stand and then you’re in big business,” Whelye said.

Watching this, Thurlow wondered why the psychiatrist would suppress ideas instead of trying to draw the boy out. He asked himself then what Whelye would do if he, Thurlow, should stop the proceedings and take the patient’s place to describe “… a thing I saw the other night, something like a flying saucer. It was interested in a murderer.”

Mrs. Norman had Peter’s social service files on the table in front of her. She leafed through them, obviously not paying much attention to Whelye. The chaplain, Hardwicke, had taken Thurlow’s own psychometry file on Peter, but wasn’t studying it. He seemed to be interested in the play of a sprinkler visible out the window at his right.

“Could you tell us your general attitude today, Peter?” Whelye asked. “How do you feel?”

“Oh, I’m all right.”

“Are you still working in the sewing room? Seems to me you’d be more interested in that kind of work outside.”

“Yes, I’m working there. I’ve been working there ever since I came.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Pert’ near two years now.”

“How do you like it here?”

“Oh, it’s all right But I been wondering when you’re going to let me out… so I can get back home an’ help support my mother.”

“Well, that’s one thing we have you in here for,” Whelye said, “so we can think it over.”

“Well, that’s what they been telling me for six months, now,” Peter said. “Why do I have to stay here? The chaplain” (Peter shot a covert glance at Hardwicke) “told me you were going to write my mother to see if she wanted me home. An’ if she did want me home, he’d take me down there.”

“We haven’t heard from your mother yet.”

“Well, I got a letter from my mother an’ she says she wants me home. The chaplain said if you’d let me go he’d take me home. So I don’t see any reason why I can’t go.”

“It’s not a simple decision, Peter. It’s not just the chaplain’s decision.”

Hardwicke opened the psychometry file, made a pretense of studying it. Thurlow sighed, shook his head.

What was that thing I saw? Thurlow wondered. Was it real there beside Murphey’s window? Was it illusion? The question had been plaguing him for two days.

“Well, he said he’d take me,” Peter said.

Whelye stared at Hardwicke, disapproval on his face. “Did you say you’d take him down to Mariposa?”

“If he were discharged,” Hardwicke said. “I said I’d be glad to give him the trip down there.”

Whelye faced Peter, said: “Well, we have to do some more looking into this matter, generally to find out if your mother wants you and if the chaplain’s schedule will allow him to take you down there. If all these things work out, we’ll let you go.”

Peter was sitting very still now, no emotion on his face, his gaze intent upon his hands. “Thank you.”

“That’s all, Peter,” Whelye said. “You can go now.”

Mrs. Norman signaled an attendant waiting at the screened window to the Common Room. The attendant opened the door. Peter got up and hurried out.

Thurlow sat for a moment, the realization growing in him that Peter had taken away what amounted to a promise to be released, but that because of the way he had conducted the conference, Dr. Whelye wasn’t aware of this. Whelye would be thinking that all the “ifs” involved made this a hypothetical case.

“Well, Dr. Whelye,” Thurlow said, “you’ve made a definite commitment to this patient to discharge him—promptly.”

“Oh, no—I didn’t promise I’d discharge him.”

“Well, the patient certainly understood he’d be home in short order—and the only qualifications are Chaplain Hardwicke’s schedule and confirmation of the mother’s letter.”

“Call the patient back and we’ll settle this with him right now.” Whelye said. He looked angry.

Mrs. Norman sighed, went to the Common Room door, signaled an attendant. Peter was brought back and returned to his chair. The boy kept his eyes down, shoulders bent, unmoving.

“You understand, don’t you, Peter,” Whelye asked, “that we haven’t made any definite promise to discharge you? We’re going to look into your home situation and see if everything is all right and if you can get a job. We’d also like to look into the possibility of you returning to school for a year or so. Perhaps you could get a better job. You understand, don’t you, that we aren’t making any definite commitment?”

“Yeah, I understand.” Peter looked at Chaplain Hardwicke who refused to meet the boy’s gaze.

“What’s this about school?” Thurlow asked.

“The boy hasn’t finished high school,” Whelye said. He faced Peter. “Wouldn’t you like to go back and finish high school?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like to go to school?” Whelye asked.

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t you like to finish your education and get a job where you could pay your own way and save money and get married?”

“Yeah.”

Whelye glanced triumphantly at Thurlow. “Anybody got any questions?”

Thurlow had slowly been building up in his mind the analogy of a stud poker game. Peter was in the position of a player who didn’t believe anything happening here, nor did he disbelieve anything. He was waiting to see the rest of the cards.

“Isn’t it true, Peter,” Thurlow asked, “that you’d rather be hungry than on a full stomach?”

“Yeah.” The boy had turned his attention to Whelye now.

“Isn’t it true, Peter,” Thurlow asked, “that you’d rather eat a dry crust of bread than have a nice juicy piece of meat on your dinner plate?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s all,” Thurlow said.

At Mrs. Norman’s signal, the attendant took Peter once more from the room.

“I think when we get to the next patient,” Thurlow said, “we should swear him in like they do in court.”

Whelye remained silent for a moment. He shuffled his papers, then: “I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

“You reminded me of a district attorney of my acquaintance,” Thurlow said.

“Oh?” Whelye’s eyes glazed with anger.

“By the way,” Thurlow said, “do you believe in flying saucers?”

The heads of both Mrs. Norman and Chaplain Hardwicke snapped up. They stared at Thurlow. Whelye, however, drew back, his eyes veiled, watchful.

“What is the meaning of that question?” Whelye demanded.

“I’d like to know your position,” Thurlow said.

“On flying saucers?” There was a cautious disbelief in Whelye’s tone.

“Yes.”

“They’re delusional material,” Whelye said. “Utter nonsense. Oh, there could be a few cases of mistaken identity, weather balloons and that sort of thing, but the people who insist they’ve seen spaceships, these people are in need of our services.”

“A sound opinion,” Thurlow said. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Whelye nodded. “I don’t care what you think of my methods,” he said, “but you’re not going to find my opinions based on delusional material—of any type. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear,” Thurlow said. He saw that Whelye was convinced the question had carried a subtle intent to discredit.

Whelye got to his feet, glanced at his watch. “I fail to see the point in all this, but doubtless you had some idea in mind.” He left the room.

Mrs. Norman took a deep breath, bent a look of sympathy on Thurlow. “You like to play with fire, evidently,” she said.

Thurlow stood up, smiled.

Hardwicke, catching Thurlow’s eyes, said: “The defense rests.”

As the scene passed through his mind, Thurlow shook his head. Again, he glanced at his wristwatch, smiled at himself as the unconscious gesture displayed the stopped hands. The air coming in the car window smelled of wet leaves.

Why did Ruth ask me to meet her here? She’s another man’s wife now. Where is she—so damned late! Could something have happened to her?

He looked at his pipe.

Damn pipe’s gone out. Always going out. I smoke matches, not tobacco. Hate to burn myself with this woman again. Poor Ruth—tragedy, tragedy. She was very close to her mother.

He tried to remember the murdered woman. Adele Murphey was photographs and descriptions in stories now, a reflection from the words of witnesses and police. The Adele Murphey he’d known refused to come out from behind the brutal new images. Her features were beginning to grow dim in the leaf whirl of things that fade. His mind held only the police pictures now—color photos in the file at the sheriff’s office—the red hair (so much like the daughter’s) fanned out on an oil-stained driveway.

Her bloodless skin in the photo—he remembered that.

And he remembered the words of the witness, Sarah French, the doctor’s wife from next door, words on a deposition. Through Mrs. French’s words, he could almost visualize that violent scene. Sarah French had heard shouting, a scream. She’d looked out of her second floor bedroom window onto moon-flooded night just in time to see the murder.