Fever Dream

Slade said, "You're making no sense. Even to a madman."

Pendergast began rolling the pool balls back and forth in one hand, Queeg-like, clacking them together.

"Stop that," Slade hissed, wincing. "I don't like it."

Pendergast clacked the balls together a little more loudly. "I had pla

Slade shook his head slowly, his lips twitching, the muttered sounds of broken words tumbling from his lips. He groaned with something very much like physical pain, and then gave the morphine drip another pump.

Pendergast reached into his pocket, took out a small test tube half full of black granules. He tipped out a small line of the granules along the edge of the pool table.

The action seemed to bring Slade back around. "What are you doing?"

"I always carry a little activated charcoal. It's useful in so many field tests--as a scientist, you must know that. But it has its own aesthetic properties, as well." From another pocket Pendergast pulled out a lighter, swiftly lit one end of the granules. "For example, the smoke it emits tends to curl upward in such beautiful gossamer patterns. And the smell is far from unpleasant."

Slade leaned backward sharply. He trained the gun, which had sagged to the floor, toward Pendergast again. "You put that out."

Pendergast ignored him. Smoke curled up in the still air, looping and coiling. He leaned back in his chair, forcing it to rock slightly, the old canework creaking. He rolled the pool balls together as he went on. "You see, I knew--or at least guessed at--the nature of your affliction. But I never stopped to think just how awful it would be to endure. Every creak, click, tap, and squeak intruding itself into your brain. The chirping of the birds, the brightness of the sun, the smell of smoke... To be tormented by every little thing carried into your brain by the five senses, to live at the edge of being overwhelmed every minute of every hour of every day. To know that nothing can be done, nothing at all. Even your, ah, unique relationship with June Brodie can provide nothing but temporary diversion."

"Her husband lost his apparatus in Desert Storm," Slade said. "Blown off by an IED. I've stepped in to fill the breach, so to speak."

"How nice for you," said Pendergast.

"Go stuff your conventional morality. I don't need it. Anyway, you heard June." The mad sheen to his eyes seemed to fade somewhat, and he looked almost serious. "We're working on a cure."

"You saw what happened to the Doanes. You're a biologist. You know as well as I do there's no hope for a cure. Brain cells ca

Slade seemed to go off again, his lips moving faster and faster, the hiss of air from his lungs like a punctured tire, repeating the same word, "No! No, no, no, no, no!"

Pendergast watched him, rocking, the snooker balls moving more quickly in his hand, their clacking filling the air. The clock ticked, the smoke curled.

"I couldn't help but notice," Pendergast said, "how everything here was arranged to remove any extraneous sensory trigger. Carpeted floor, insulated walls, neutral colors, plain furnishings, the air cool, dry, and scentless, probably HEPA-filtered."

Slade whimpered, his lips fairly blurring with maniacal, and virtually silent, speech. He lifted the flail, smacked himself.

"And yet even with all that, even with the counterirritant of that flail and the medicines and the constant dosings of morphine, it isn't enough. You are still in constant agony. You feel your feet upon the floor, you feel your back against the chair, you see everything in this room. You hear my voice. You are assaulted by a thousand other things I can't begin to enumerate--because my mind unconsciously filters them out. You, on the other hand, ca

Slade began to shake in his chair. "Nononononononoooo!" spilled off his lips, a single never-ending word. A loop of drool descended from one corner of his mouth, and he shook it away with a savage jerk of his head.

"I wonder--what must it be like to eat?" Pendergast went on. "I imagine it's horrible, the strong taste of the food, the sticky texture, the smell and shape of it in your mouth, the slide of it down your gullet... Isn't that why you're so thin? No doubt you haven't enjoyed a meal or a drink--really enjoyed--for a decade. Taste is just another unwanted sense you can't rid yourself of. I'll wager that IV drip isn't only for the morphine--it's for intravenous feeding as well, isn't it?"

Nonononononononono... Slade reached spastically for the flail, dropped it back on the desk. The gun trembled in his hand.

"The taste of food--mellow ripe Camembert, beluga caviar, smoked sturgeon, even the humblest eggs and toast and jam--would be unbearable. Perhaps baby food of the most banal sort, without sugar or spice or texture of any kind, served precisely at body temperature, would only just be bearable. On special occasions, naturally." Pendergast shook his head sympathetically. "And you can't sleep--can you? Not with all those raging sensations crowding in on you. I can imagine it: lying on the bed, hearing the least of noises: the woodworms gnawing between the lathe and plaster, the beat of your heart in your eardrums, the ticking of the house, the scurry of mice. Even with your eyes closed your sight betrays you, because darkness is its own color. The blacker the room, the more things you see crawling within the fluid of your vision. And everything--everything--pressing in on you at once, always and forever."

Slade shrieked, covering his ears with claw-like hands and shaking his entire body violently, the IV drip line flailing back and forth. The sound ripped through the stillness, shockingly loud, and Slade's entire body seemed to convulse.

"That is why you will kill yourself, Mr. Slade," Pendergast said. "Because you can. I've provided you with the means to do it. In your hand."

"Yaaahhhhhhhhh!" Slade screamed, writhing, the tortured movements of his body a kind of feedback from his own screams.

Pendergast rocked more quickly, the chair creaking, rolling the balls ceaselessly in his hand, faster and faster.

"I could have done it anytime!" Slade cried. "Why should I do it now? Now, now, now, now, now?"

"You couldn't have done it before," Pendergast said.

"June has a gun," Slade said. "A lovely gun, gun, gun."

"No doubt she is careful to keep it locked up."

"I could overdose on morphine! Just go to sleep, sleep!" His voice subsided into a rapid gibbering, almost like the humming of a machine.

Pendergast shook his head. "I'm sure June is equally careful to regulate the amount of morphine you have access to. I would guess the nights are hardest--like about now, as you're quickly using up your allotted dose without recourse for the endless, endless night ahead."

"Eeeyaaahhhhhhhhhh!" Slade screamed again--a wild, ululating scream.

"In fact, I'm sure she and her husband are careful to limit your life in countless ways. You're not her patient--you're her prisoner."