The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk Page 17
But he certainly didn’t feel tranquilized when they let him out. His status as the dominant male didn’t seem to have altered from the day before, as a result of which he was left alone as much as he wished. He stayed well back from the moat and paid little attention to the people who wandered by on the far side. He used his solitude to digest and reflect on what he had learned the previous day.
It seemed that he, Charlie Monk, was a chimpanzee who had been used in some kind of experiment to find out if he could think, speak, and behave like a human being. That strange silvery suit they’d taken him out of had created the illusion that he was not only a man but a special kind of man, a secret agent who had enjoyed some very colorful adventures.
He thought back over that life—his life—trying to remember every detail. It was, of course, impossible. The past was irretrievable, beyond recall in a way that was more absolute than he had ever realized. How could he be sure that his memories derived from events and not from something else? What was it that Sleek Hair had said about Kathy, or Dr. Flemyng, or whatever she was called? That she’d solved some problems with his “visual memory”? What did that mean? That all his memories of being human had been somehow planted in his brain?
But if that was the case and he’d been an ape all along, where were his memories of life as an ape? Why were human memories the only ones he had?
And yet, as he looked around at his fellow chimpanzees, he realized he was coming to feel increasingly at home in this place. The smells, the calls, the playfulness, the whole rhythm of this life, were becoming familiar to a quite extraordinary degree, as though a veil had been drawn aside and what had originally seemed alien was now recognized as home ground, even fondly remembered. Had he truly been here before? Was this who he was, and all the rest some kind of electronic dream?
How could that be? Did he imagine for one second that these creatures all around him, intent as they were on the trivia of their daily routine and relationships, could possibly share any of what was going on inside his head? Sleek Hair had told the general that he, Charlie, couldn’t understand what was being said about him. But that was a lie. He’d understood every word. What was he to make of that? Was it some other kind of test?
He became aware, almost subliminally at first, of someone moving on the periphery of his vision, subtly creeping up on him. He tensed, but didn’t move. If there was going to be a fight, his challenger must start it; he, Charlie, would then finish it, as he had the day before. He was surprised, after yesterday, that any of them still had the nerve to face up to him, but that was their problem.
After several minutes during which nothing happened he became bored and not a little annoyed. It seemed to him absurd that he should have to follow this protocol of sitting still and pretending he was unaware of what was going on. He stood up, stretched, and turned in a way that he knew would bring him into eye contact with his adversary. But what he saw was not an adversary at all. Seated about ten yards away, apparently paying him no attention and playing with a tuft of grass she’d pulled from somewhere, was the young female he’d noticed yesterday, her genitals still swollen and red, proclaiming she was ready for intercourse.
Charlie’s visceral response to the sight of her shook him somewhat, as it had on the previous day. He knew she was aware of him though she didn’t look his way; he suspected that she’d placed herself where she was so that he would have to notice her.
Well, notice her he had, and he felt the same familiar stirring in his groin that he’d felt before. He became aware that she was avoiding his gaze, playing coy.
Charlie’s arousal now was total. He found himself sitting upright and leaning back on his hands, his legs spread apart and his erection displayed. It was then, for the first time, that she looked at him. And something happened in Charlie’s mind. It was as though something had burst, flooding every cell in his brain with one sole purpose, wiping out all thought and leaving only physical desire and straightforward lust.
At that moment she turned and looked fully at him—at his face, his body, his pulsating, bursting penis. Charlie held out his arm in an instinctive gesture of invitation. She got up from where she sat and came toward him. Her movements were confident but oddly shy, as though she was thrilled by what was happening though a little nervous. When she got close enough for him to touch her, she turned, backing the last few inches toward him, crouching low to facilitate his entry.
He felt her warmth and wetness, and thrust deep with all his power, gasping as he built to his near-unbearable release. She gave a sudden shrill scream of climactic pleasure, and Charlie felt a fireball of ecstasy explode somewhere deep within him and engulf his entire being.
It was over as abruptly as it had begun. Almost before he’d registered her departure, she had disappeared into the trees.
Charlie closed his eyes and tried again to recall himself as Charlie Monk, the man. He tried to recall that life: the smell, the touch, the taste, the whole sense and feel of that existence. But he couldn’t. He had come too far. It was a memory now, another life, a dream.
He found he was holding his eyes shut tight, squeezing them, afraid to open them again.
Chapter 36
TOM SCHILLER entered the narrow lobby, walked back past the stairs, and pressed the bell outside the peeling brown door. A light went on over the cheap tele-scanner in the wall. Tom held up his card, somebody buzzed open the door, and he entered.
The pretense at security, he knew, was bullshit. He could have held up his video store card for all the old guy dozing on his stool in his gray uniform could care. It was just an excuse to charge more than necessary to people who, for one reason or another, didn’t want some or even any of their mail sent to where they lived or worked.
Over the past five years Tom had always kept at least two of these drops active at any one time, always under different names. He didn’t take the Great Conspiracy theory of government quite as seriously as some of the people whose writing he published; nonetheless, he knew that government worldwide had grown into a many-headed monster that needed to be feared, faced down, and fought on practically all fronts. Because of this, he found it useful to have ways of receiving correspondence that he wouldn’t want read by anyone else, certainly not anyone working for the political-military-industrial complex of which he was so critical—which pretty much included half the adult population.
He’d only had this drop for six weeks, and there was only one person he was expecting to hear from in it. He’d given the address and his code number to Susan Flemyng before she went to Russia. Just in case. If ever. Since then he’d heard nothing from her. He had also discovered after making a few phone calls that she and her son were away on some kind of trip, though nobody knew quite where or for how long. He’d tried to contact her father in Washington. He, too, was strangely hard to locate at the moment.
So Tom Schiller dropped by this address every two or three days—just in case. As always, he produced his key and went to his letter box in a wall of identical ones. To his right a business type in a good suit was poring over the contents of a thick plain envelope that he didn’t want anybody else to see. To his left a middle-aged woman, ordinary-looking in every way, slipped a handwritten letter into her purse, then locked her box and hurried out. In the corner an unhealthy-looking teenage girl had torn open an envelope, tossed it and the note it enclosed into a bin, and was stuffing two or three ten-dollar bills into the waist of her tights.
Tom didn’t know whether he hoped to find something in his box or not. Something from Susan could mean a story; it could also mean she was in trouble. On the whole he’d have preferred a phone call to say she was all right and was maybe even letting the whole thing drop.
The postcard was a bland picture of orange groves. On the back were just two lines, handwritten. The first gave the date, time, and number of a flight from Washington National Airport to Great Falls, Montana. The second line said, “Wear a red tie.”
Chapter 37
By the same token, there seemed to be nothing to prevent any of the other chimps from entering his personal cage and bedding down for the night if they chose to, but none did. Perhaps, he told himself, it was a mark of respect. Or perhaps they, too, felt there was something different and alien about him, something that meant he didn’t belong. Perhaps they preferred that he slept in quarters of his own.
Charlie turned over all these possibilities in his mind, but by the end of the day felt such a weariness that coherent thought was becoming increasingly difficult. It was a mental weariness, not physical. His mind was spinning; there was no longer any center he could cling to.
He ate, as on the previous day, from a tray that was pushed in through a slot. It was afterward that Kathy arrived. He looked up and saw her standing some way off, watching him. Behind her, the section of the lab that he could see was almost empty; a couple of people were tidying things up before leaving. It was the end of their day as well as Charlie’s.
When their eyes met she didn’t react or respond in any way, just went on looking at him, her gaze locked onto his as though in search of something at the source of it.
“You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
It was a statement of fact, not a question, as though she had no doubt. He was surprised, after that, when she asked for proof.
“If you can understand me, clasp your hands in front of you.”
Her own hands remained by her side. She was trying to ensure, Charlie decided, that she didn’t give him any visual clues. Very deliberately he brought his hands together and interlaced his fingers, keeping his eyes on hers for her reaction. She murmured something under her breath. He thought he lip-read, “Oh, my God.”
She looked down for a moment as though to gather her thoughts, then lifted her eyes to his. “You can’t speak and you can’t write, but you can still understand. That’s what I was afraid of. They said you wouldn’t retain anything except a few visual impressions when you came out of the VR suit. You’d recognize me, but you wouldn’t be sure why, and even that would fade quickly, like a dream. But you remember it all, don’t you?”
He looked at her helplessly, not knowing how to answer. Realizing his predicament, she said, “Knock on the floor once for yes, twice for no.”
Charlie realized he’d fallen into his now customary pose, leaning forward and resting the weight of his upper body on his knuckles. He lifted his right hand and rapped the floor once.
She became utterly still, then closed her eyes as though trying to contain an emotion that was too powerful to let go.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said in a whisper. He wasn’t sure whether the words were for him or whether they were spoken to herself.
He waited. After a moment she opened her eyes again and fixed them on him.
“That suit you were in. They call it the Demon Machine—it’s a reference to Descartes. The name probably doesn’t mean much to you. Rene Descartes was a seventeenth-century philosopher who imagined a demon manipulating all his senses, so that he could never be sure what was true and what was false.”
She paused, looking at him perhaps in search of some reaction. He offered none.
“They’ve been using your brain, Charlie. And your brain was where it’s always been, and still is—in there.”
She turned and pointed to the mirror on the wall behind her. He looked at it, and his eyes met their own intense, inquiring reflection.
“They were testing your reactions, Charlie. They needed to find out if the chimpanzee brain was capable of doing what they want it to do.” She paused and looked away for a moment, her voice faltering. “I’m saying ‘they,’ but I was one of them. What’s happened to you is partly a result of things I did. But ‘they’”—she drew in a deep, slightly unsteady breath— “they’re attempting to create a human look-alike—stronger and faster than any man on earth, and totally obedient to his masters. And they’re going to make him out of a genetically mutated chimpanzee.”
Charlie listened impassively. He didn’t know what felt more unreal: the fact that he was the creature he could still see reflected in that mirror behind her, or the fact that her story no longer surprised him. What he was hearing only confirmed what he’d heard and thought already. He wondered whether the strange numbness he felt was a defense mechanism, a kind of mental anaesthetic to keep at bay the madness that he feared had already overtaken him.
“What they’re going to do,” he heard her saying, “is take a fertilized egg, genetically modify it, then implant it in the womb of a female chimpanzee. The baby, a male, will be taken from her at birth. He’ll be reared in a lab in isolation. When he’s about eight years old he’ll look like a fully grown human being. That’s when they’ll send him to a place where they train killers. He won’t know he’s any different from the rest of them—just that he’s the best. The shrinks say that knowing his true nature would make him impossible to handle. So he’ll have been brainwashed in the lab—they’ve developed a total VR environment to give him the kind of background that will motivate him to become what they want.”
She looked at Charlie again and made a little gesture with her hands that he interpreted as a kind of apology.
“The key to brainwashing isn’t just wiping memories, it’s planting new ones. And the hardest kind of memory to plant is visual memory. That’s where I came in. I’d discovered a way to plant visual images of things the brain had never seen before and yet would recognize when they were encountered in reality. As a test, I even planted a picture of myself in your past—a past that never existed.”
She paused again, still looking at him with a strange look on her face—almost, he thought, a mixture of guilt and denial.
“And you recognized me, didn’t you, Charlie?”
He must have done something—a gesture, a movement, perhaps just the look in his eyes—that confirmed what she had supposed. She dropped her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Charlie.”
Without thinking, he took a step forward and held his hand out through the bars of the cage. He didn’t know what he expected or even what he wanted from her, but his gesture wasn’t an aggressive one; he meant her no harm. When she gave a little gasp and jumped back, he was surprised and strangely hurt. And angry. A sound came from the back of his throat, a grunt, almost a growl.
She seemed to understand and shook her head, not in denial but as though she was affirming what he thought, accepting his anger as her due and his right.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” she repeated, “so sorry.”
Then, turning away and refusing to look at him again, she hurried from his sight.
Chapter 38
TOM SCHILLER SPENT the whole flight from National Airport to Great Falls scanning, as discreetly as possible, the faces of his fellow passengers. Susan Flemyng herself wasn’t among them, but he hadn’t expected her to be. The injunction to wear a red tie meant, he supposed, that someone who didn’t know him was supposed to find him. But despite the slash of crimson at his neck, which he fingered significantly from time to time, no one approached him or even paid him any attention.
So he assumed somebody would be waiting for him at his destination. But there was no familiar face, and nobody holding a card with his name on it.
He went over to a lunch counter and bought himself a cup of coffee and a sandwich, still keeping his eyes peeled and his ears alert for an announcement, but there was none. He checked out the information desk. No message had been left. The woman asked if he wanted to have an announcement made himself; he thought about this a moment, but decided against it.
The next flight back east was in three hours. He took it.
Susan’s apartment in the Irvine Spectrum complex, in which she was ef
fectively a prisoner, was spacious and had its own kitchen where she prepared herself a sparse breakfast of fruit and yogurt. She had slept badly and had got up feeling tired and edgy.
The last time she had talked to her father had been at the ranch. As they watched Christopher’s latest display of horsemanship, she had told him about Tom Schiller and the secret postbox by which she could contact him. That post drop was the last card she had left to play; surely she had been right to play it. Surely, she told herself, it was wrong, morally and in every other way, not to use everything she could lay her hands on to fight these people. Her only regret was that she was putting her father in the front line instead of herself, but what danger could there be in two strangers meeting on a plane and getting into casual conversation?
Amery had been nervous at first, reluctant for her sake and Christopher’s to take any unwise risks. But in the end she had persuaded him. She told him she wasn’t proposing they give the whole story to Schiller, or even any part of it. For one thing, nobody but the converted ever took seriously the kind of thing that Schiller and his kind published. Two months ago she herself would have dismissed talk of secret government and wheels within wheels as paranoid nonsense. Now she knew better. What she didn’t know for sure was how far it went, this strange cancer of shadowy groups and secret powers. Obviously it went high, but maybe not everywhere. She couldn’t believe that a major newspaper or TV network would not run with this story if they could be made to believe it. Then it would be up to the public to decide what they thought, and she had no doubt that most of them would share her revulsion for this project and any like it.
What she needed to know was where, who, and what were the Pilgrim Foundation’s connections. What was the pattern of influence of which it was a part? Schiller and his cohorts would be better than anyone at digging up that kind of information. He would realize the significance of what he was being asked because it was she who was doing the asking, even if only indirectly through her father; but that alone wouldn’t be enough to give Schiller a story to print because he wouldn’t know enough of what was behind her questions. Besides, her father would pass on a message urging discretion, and she had sensed from the beginning that she could trust Schiller.