LITMIR.BIZ

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Without stopping to plan his words, or consider what he was after, Tinker suddenly grabbed Witkin’s arm, seeking to re-establish that contact that had saved him.

      “Listen, Bill, can you come with me now? Just for a drink. Or do they have you locked up?”

      “Are you nuts, Don? Of course we’re not locked up. This is the Institute, not a prison. Sure, I can leave anytime.”

      Tinker thought of the songbirds caged in Thorngate’s office, and wondered if he should disillusion Witkin. Deciding against it as being contrary to whatever inchoate goals he might have, Tinker said only, “Good. Then let’s go.”

      He tugged on Witkin’s arm—his friend didn’t resist—and they left the building. The outer security guards watched them until they turned a corner, when Tinker stopped.

      He felt irrationally proud, as if he had accomplished something dramatic and important. He had stolen a flasher right out from under Thorngate’s nose. Now they stood together on an anonymous corner, their breath pluming out—Witkin’s coming in laborious puffs—and coalescing in a frosty cloud. Tinker fantasized—for even his heightened olfactory sense was not this keen—that he could small leftover molecules of CEEP on Witkin’s breath. He felt strengthened by the hallucination.

      Witkin freed his arm from Tinker’s grasp and said, “Hey, Don, I said I could leave if I wanted. But you didn’t ask if I did. As if so happens, I’ve got something to do—”

      “Forget it,” Tinker interjected. “What I’ve got to tell you is more important. Just give me a few minutes of your time. We’ll go to that bar just down the block.”

      “I don’t even have my coat,” complained Witkin.

      “Here. Take mine.” Tinker shrugged off his own coat. Seemingly touched, Witkin put it on and shut up. They went to the nearby bar.

      Inside the dimly lit bar, they took a booth and ordered drinks. Witkin wanted something to eat, and soon was devouring a corned-beef sandwich while Tinker poured out everything he had thought and seen regarding the psychic tremors shaking the globe.

      When Tinker finished, he took his fist sip of beer to wet his aching throat. Witkin, done with his meal, looked up at the ex-flasher.

      “Things can’t be as bad as you make them sound,” Witkin said. “Science will catch up. It’s just out of practice. Pretty soon the intellectual basis of society will be reformed. For the past eighty years—roughly since World War II—science—basic theorizing, if you will—has led the way, with technology following. First came the theory, then the practice. But it hasn’t always been that way. For a long time technology came first, then the theory to explain it. Take electricity, for instance. Batteries were developed before anyone understood electron-flow. Now we’re in a similar situation, and people have to readjust their thinking. It’s just a matter of time.”

      Witkin sat back, full-bellied and self-satisfied. He jumped when Tinker banged his fist down on the table, and a few customers turned, looked, then turned away.

      “Damn it, Bill, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. It’s impossible to incorporate the things the Institute turns out into any rational framework. Or if it is possible, it’s beyond our best minds right now. And people have come to need and depend on such a framework to make sense of the universe and their place in it. We need explanations that make sense, and there are none forthcoming. Science has claimed the right to underpin culture, and now can’t do it. Society is going to collapse. Do you want the world to consist of a bunch of brain-burnt savages huddling amid all these technological wonders that you and the others are so keen on producing?”

      Witkin frowned. “Now you’re trying to make it sound like it’s my personal fault, when I’m only doing what I was hired to do.”

      Tinker abandoned his previous tack, reluctant to alienate his final contact within the NIS. “Okay, I’m not blaming anyone. We’re in this fix—no matter how we got here—and we have to seek a solution. Part of the trouble, I think, is the deliberate restriction of the drug to only those with certain mindsets. For instance, what if we could distribute the drug to people with less of a technological bent? We know that there’s a certain correlation between what you’re looking for and what you get during a synchrogenesis experience. What if, say, a Buddhist monk were to take it? Who knows what saving philosophy he might come up with?”

      Laughing, Witkin said, “Oh, great. I can just see it. Thorngate ushering in some guy in a robe into his office and sharing his prize sacrament with him. No way. You can’t expect me to seriously propose such a thing. In fact, I don’t see what I can do for you.”

      Witkin crumpled his napkin, and Tinker felt his hopes dissolving. The pudgy man begin to get to his feet, and Tinker felt desperation overwhelm him. What could he say that would penetrate?

      Witkin was standing by the table now, anxious to go. Tinker stood, and forced a last insane plea out of his bloodless lips.

      “Steal me a dose of cheep.”

      Witkin reared back, as if shocked. Tinker pressed him. “If no one else wants to work on the problem, at least I should be able to. I’ve got a feeling that I can make some progress with one final flash. Just one dose, Bill. That’s all I want—all I need to make some headway.”

      “No,” said Witkin, obviously appalled. “No, I couldn’t. Don’t ask again. Goodbye, Don. Goodbye.”

      Witkin rushed out, taking Tinker’s coat with him.

      Tinker stood, feeling as if drowning.

      Coins dropped in the jukebox, and a song began: “Flasher’s Fantasy,” by the Pair of Dimes.

      Tinker felt a tic start in his left eye that seemed to keep time with the music. He began to laugh loudly, until they threw him out.

      * * * *

      A week went by. Perhaps the worst week Tinker had ever experienced.

      In the world at large, the situation was deteriorating drastically.

      Because more and more people were having first-hand contact with instances of aparadigmatic psychosis in a friend or relative, the suicide rate was rising exponentially. People were opting for self-destruction rather than madness, and the possibility that there would soon be no one left sane enough to care for them.

      Rumors proliferated during this time, although official newsmedia tried to discourage them. But in stores and workplaces and over the internet, people exchanged speculation over what the NIS would release next.

      Teleportation, matter-duplication, body-switching, artificial humans, magic spells, evil spirits, juju, voodoo… Distinctions were hard to make anymore between what was possible and what was not. People were not even making the attempt much now. Everything was starting to seem equally likely, and a kind of superstitious awe was beginning to replace rational thought.

      Mass migrations flowed across borders, as people sought to escape the inescapable.

      Tinker’s personal life was less dramatic, but still discouraging. He lay apathetically in his room, or occasionally summoned up the willpower to visit Helen in the hospital and make sure she was receiving proper treatment.

      But such visits only served to accentuate his basic impotence, and he found them harder and harder to make. The recorder on which he had been dictating his memoirs gathered dust, forgotten.

      One day, while he was trying to make patterns out of the flakes of paint on the ceiling, his phone rang. He had almost forgotten he owned one. It seemed to take forever to find the strength to answer it.

      “Hello, Don?” said Witkin’s voice. Tinker didn’t answer, but the voice persisted anyway. “Listen, Don, things have changed. I’m going to do what you asked. Meet me in the bar in an hour. “

      The connection was broken.

      * * * *

      But a new one had been made inside Tinker.

      At

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