It was March 11. Hanley had been held for a week and a half. He had learned to adjust to life at St. Catherine’s.
Sister Mary Domitilla thought his progress was absolutely wonderful. She began to include Mr. Hanley in her prayers and in her sacrifices, including the sacrifice that involved the pain of cutting her nails severely almost every night. Her fingers were always raw and she refused to put salve on them.
Spring was not ready to come to the valley. There had been snow the previous morning and the valley was enveloped in whiteness from the streets of the old town all the way up the hill to the St. Catherine’s grounds. The four-wheel-drive vehicles marched through the hilly streets and people with ordinary cars did the best they could. They were all accustomed to hills and slick streets and the sense of isolation in endless winter.
Hanley was given clothing as a gift for good behavior on his sixth day. The clothing consisted of blue denims and a blue shirt marked with his name above the left pocket. He looked like a prisoner.
They ate in their own ward at night but there was a time, between three and five, when they went to the enclosure between the two fences for exercise. They could run along the enclosure or they could just stand around and breathe the clear, damp air of the valley. Hanley chose to run. Dr. Goddard said he was pleased because his response to the situation was “appropriate.”
The truth was, Goddard was puzzled.
The dose of HL-4 prescribed for Hanley from the first day was enough to render him harmless, perfectly docile, drowsy and enfeebled. Hanley was certainly more compliant than he had been—but why should he show such extraordinary energy in the afternoons in the yard between the electrified fence and the inner fence?
The electricity was never shut off for these afternoon excursions but the killing voltage was turned down. Now and again, one of the patients would make a bolt for the fence and touch it and be knocked down by the force of the electrical charge.
Hanley had been given a battery of examinations that showed he was in reasonable health for a man of his age. Dr. Goddard, in his second interview, said the absence of any physical cause of Hanley’s illness proved Dr. Goddard’s thesis that Hanley suffered from depression. The depression was induced by a chemical imbalance, Dr. Goddard said, as well as a “cross-wired burnout” in the brain.
Hanley had blinked at that.
“The brain is like a computer,” Goddard said. “The information it can process is controlled by the raw data fed to it. But computers can go haywire. That’s why computer owners have service contracts. That’s why you have government health insurance—it’s your service contract, in a sense.”
Hanley was given pills twice a day, at the morning and evening meals. He and the other patients stood in line at the nurse’s station outside the mess hall and docilely received the pills prescribed by Dr. Goddard. These were issued by the nurse on duty. In the morning, it was Sister Duncan, a simple soul of pressed habit and acne-infested features who could not be more than twenty, Hanley thought. In the evening, it was Nurse Cox, a formidable beast in a nurse’s white pants suit. The difference in their techniques helped Hanley’s game.
Both issued the pill and waited for the patient to swallow it.
There was a technique of slipping the pill under one’s tongue and throwing the paper cup of water back on the tongue and making a swallowing noise. The nurse then was to examine the mouth, to see that the pill had been actually swallowed. The patient opened wide and made an “ah” sound and then lifted his tongue, first on one side and then the other, to show that the pill was not being concealed.
Fortunately, Sister Duncan hated to look into people’s mouths. She was still a nurse in training and she thought there might be matters of human anatomy she might be able to avoid in the future: Men’s sex organs, blood, and bedpans.
Hanley could not fool Nurse Cox. He didn’t even try.
And so, during the days, his strength increased and the nausea and sense of profound depression only returned at night, when the evening pill took effect. He slept badly because of the pill; he would awake at three in the morning, sweating, shivering, wondering where he was.
He knew he would never ask Dr. Goddard about the pills he was forced to take. Dr. Goddard did not invite questions because he had all the answers. Dr. Goddard, Hanley thought, knew exactly what the pills were doing, to Hanley and to the other patients.
They were a sad lot.
Kaplan had been the third-ranking officer inside the Internal Revenue Service until it was revealed he was the self-ordained founder of the Church of Tax Rebellion, a nonprofit enterprise in Falls Church, Virginia. Kaplan had not paid income tax for fifteen years—and somehow this fact had escaped the computers which constantly cross-checked the tax forms for those in IRS to make certain the collectors were collecting from themselves as well. Poor Kaplan: If it had been a simple matter of fraud, it would not have been so bad. But his scheme was perfectly legal, according to at least six experts in the department. There was the matter of freedom of religion, even for IRS employees. It was important to cure Kaplan of his delusion that the Lord had not meant that one should render to Caesar anything more substantial than a Bronx cheer.
Kaplan, Hanley thought, was crazy. And then he learned that Kaplan had been in the place for two years. He had disintegrated in mind and body in that time. He scarcely weighed more than a hundred pounds. He spent his days reciting scriptural verses and summarized rulings from Tax Court.
Hanley thought he would not last as long as Kaplan.
There were no women, save the nuns and Nurse Cox, in Ward Seven. Hanley had inquired about that and been told that women were treated at St. Trinian’s in Ohio.
There’s a network of these places, Hanley thought with horror then. And he had been unaware of them.
It was the second Sunday of his incarceration. The model patients from Ward Seven were taken to the chapel for the “Patients’ Mass” at nine in the morning. The chapel was segregated at this mass and no outsiders were allowed. There were no services of other denominations. Kaplan conducted his own services in his room inside Ward Seven but he had only three converts who joined him for the ceremonies involved. He tore up symbolic 1040 forms (actually, since he was not permitted forms, sheets of writing paper with “1040” inscribed on them) and distributed them to the members. They ate them.
On Saturdays and Sundays, Sister Duncan handled the administration of the morning and evening pills. Hanley, by Sunday morning, began to feel much better. The poison of the pills was having less effect on his body.
It was cool and damp and the clouds clung low in the valley. At two in the afternoon, the patients—except those locked in their rooms for various infractions of the rules of St. Catherine’s—were permitted visitors.
Hanley was surprised to see them.
There were Leo and Lydia Neumann, emerging from a large, dirt-streaked gray Oldsmobile, crossing the gravel path that crunched beneath their feet.
He felt so grateful that he realized he might weep. He could not weep. It was more than a sign of weakness now; it was a sign of craziness.
On Sunday afternoon, they were allowed to walk on the grounds beyond the double fence. On Sunday, a special effort was made by staff and patients to show the normality of the surroundings and the institution.
Hanley led them down the path through a grove of elms. Buds decorated the thin branches of the elms. It would be spring, even if there was snow on the valley floor.
Leo Neumann was not in government service. He was a mechanical engineer and he cut his wife’s hair, which is why it was short and spiky and looked terrible. Leo Neumann was a man unaware of his faults; everything he did was a matter of love or self-respect. Cutting his wife’s hair every three weeks was love and Lydia Neumann understood that and accepted it. Leo Neumann knew what his wife did and never said a word about it. They couldn’t talk about their jobs in any case: Lydia did not understand engineering and Leo was horrified by computers.
The gravel path circled back, almost to the double fences, and they did not speak beyond greetings. At the fences, Hanley paused and gazed at the path between the fences where he was confined with the others in Ward Seven on their daily outings during the week.
“You seem a lot better,” said Lydia Neumann.
Hanley turned and looked at her. “Do I?”
“Your old self,” said Leo Neumann. He had met Hanley only once.
“I was wrong,” Lydia said. She stared at Hanley with the gaze of a mother examining a sick child. “I argued against sending you here.”
“You were not wrong,” Hanley said. He looked at Leo. “Can I speak to you for a moment, Mrs. Neumann?”
Mrs. Neumann and Hanley left Leo. They strolled a little farther along the double fence, looking in at the path between the fences. When he thought they were alone, Hanley said:
“I was depressed. It began last summer, during all the spy exchanges. I started to examine them. I used computers to set up scenarios.”
“I know,” she said.
“Of course you know. But not the results. Not the results. The computer logic—I think I’ve learned it well enough to understand that the logic is not really logic but a way out of a puzzle once the puzzle is described.”
“Something like that,” Lydia Neumann said. “It has as much morality as you give to the puzzle.”
“Morality was not a factor,” Hanley said. He stared at the double fences. “We’re confined there, between the fences, during the week. The outer fence is electrified. When the juice is turned down, they let the dogs run between the fences at night. Three Dobermans.”
Lydia Neumann said nothing. Her face was white. Hanley saw her hand was clenched. She stared at the path between the fences.
“They’re killing me,” Hanley said. Quietly.
“No—”
“The pills come morning and night. On Saturday, I get rid of the pills. I feel much better today. Tomorrow, it’s back to the pills. This is called HL-4. Can you find out what HL-4 is?”
And he handed her one of the morning pills, wrapped in Kleenex. She stared at it in her hand and then slipped it into her pocket.
“I have to get out of here,” Hanley said. “The first day here, the psychiatrist in charge, Dr. Goddard, he sprayed me with Mace when I asked for my clothes—”
“You were kept naked?”
“In one of those hospital gowns.”
“This is horrible,” Lydia Neumann said.
“Most of these places are, I think now,” Hanley said. His voice was very soft. “I called Devereaux. Twice, I think, when I was ill—”
“But you were ill, you really were ill—”
“I must have been. It seems like a long time ago. Like thinking of yourself as a child. I really must have been ill.”
“You called him. I thought that’s who it was. When Yackley had the conference. On what to do with you—”
“And you stuck up for me.” Hanley’s eyes were wet. “Don’t mistake my tears, Mrs. Neumann. I’m not crazy. I’m really not crazy. I feel so broken down. Tears are the last refuge of the weak—”
“Cut it out, man,” Lydia Neumann said. “I don’t think you’re crazy. You were sick. You called Devereaux—”
“Mrs. Neumann. I need an outside contractor. I wanted Devereaux to… come back into the trade for a while. I have to find out something—”
“What?”
“The computer analyzed the spy transactions of last summer. Before the summit. First there were two men from the West German intelligence agency who defected East. Then the Brits picked up the mole in Copenhagen and revealed he had been turned for three years. Then CIA picked up that Soviet in Rome. And then he defects back to the Soviet embassy in D.C. There was also the Chinese agent in Seoul and the two ROKs uncovered in Peking. Trumpets and flourishes. So I went through our own network. Who belongs to us and who, on our side, belongs to them? And how do we know which is which?”
Lydia Neumann blinked. Hanley seemed so intense. He was staring at the path between the two fences. Hanley’s face was pale and his eyes were dull. He seemed very tired.
“I wondered if there were any spies at all,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“We go into budget crunch and the people at NSA can show figures—what they are based on, I don’t know—they can show figures that show eighty-five to ninety percent of all intelligence is done by machine. Satellites, computers, bugs. Raw data. The listening post at Cheltenham, at Taipei. The goddamn space shuttle overflies the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc on every second mission. It all comes down to coming down to the mountain. I was convinced of it.”
Tears again. Mrs. Neumann looked away while Hanley found a handkerchief and used it.
“Yackley was on me day and night. Cutbacks in stationmasters, networks… my God, he thought it was all just so much meat cut off the bone. It wasn’t that. And then there was Nutcracker—”
He stopped, frightened.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. Forget that. It was over long ago.” Frightened. He gazed at Mrs. Neumann. “I played with the computer and there were all these coincidences in which we got their spies to defect to us and our spies defected at the same time, almost as part of a game. Musical chairs. But aren’t there real spies?”
She said, “You should know that.”
“But Yackley doesn’t believe in them.”
“Yackley is a fool,” she said.
“Yackley does not believe in spies. He says there are no spies any more than there are elves or leprechauns. There are only intelligence agents on each side analyzing computer materials, making value judgments…”
“Hanley, get hold of yourself.”
He was crying again.
“Pawns. He said they are pawns. The game moves in feints and little gestures. I said he was wrong. I would prove it. I could have proved it—”
“Proved what?”
He looked through his tears at her. She wanted to understand, he thought.
And he knew he didn’t trust her at all.
“They know our secrets, the Opposition,” he said. “We know their secrets. That’s all it is, two sides equal, starting from scratch just to stay even. But what if they had advantages over us that we didn’t have?”
“What are you talking about?”
Hanley looked puzzled. He put his handkerchief away. “I called November, I wanted him to understand. At least, he said he was outside the game. Maybe everyone was in it together. Even you?”
Mrs. Neumann bit her lip.
“I have to get out of here,” Hanley said. He looked at the path between the fences. “Dr. Goddard keeps saying ‘eventually’ as though he knew it was never going to happen. Eventually can mean when I die. I have to get out of here.”
“What do you want me to do?”
He stared at her. “Whatever you do, don’t pray for me. I have a nun here. She prays for me. It is sufficient. I couldn’t stand any more prayers.”
“Hanley—”
“Get me out of here,” Hanley said in a low and terrible voice. “I need to get away, get away from the drugs and routine. I have to think about—” He almost said something and stopped. “I have to think.”
“I’ll talk to the New Man, to Yackley—”
“No, Mrs. Neumann.” Very cold, very much like the old Hanley who had not been ill. “You will not talk to that man. I’ve talked to you too much. Do you want my secrets? Try my test: Do not talk to Yackley. You are going to have to help me get out of here.”
“I can’t.”
“November,” he said.
She shrank from his grasp and the name. “He’s buried, dead in files.”
“Asleep,” Hanley said.
“Buried,” she said.
“Wake him.” His eyes glittered. “But you’re afraid, aren’t you? You don’t want him to wake up, do you? My God, is it all true?”
“Is what true?”
But he had turned. He began to run back toward the ward. She started after him. She stopped, listened to his footsteps. Poor frightened man, she thought.
Perhaps the horrible best thing to do for Hanley was to keep him here.
Right between the fences.