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THE MIND GAME |
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Chapter Thirteen There were still guards at the gate to the Steinhardt mansion compound when Weller drove up in response to Maria's summons, and they still wouldn't let him take the Triumph inside the walls. He had to park outside in the empty parking lot and walk all the way to the front entrance to the house, where a young woman in a blue smock led him inside, through the eerily empty parlor of the ground floor, and up an interior staircase to the living quarters. Now, in the early evening, with the ground floor and courtyard empty and in immaculate order, Weller found the house sterile and depressing, like an immense, plush prison cell, or a scaled-down version of Xanadu in Citizen Kane. He wondered how Maria could bear living alone in such a huge place, with only servants, guards, and flunkies for company. He began to think of her as quite a vulnerable person, and for some reason that thought deeply disturbed him. Maria was waiting for him in a kind of small sitting room overlooking the courtyard, with a skylight ceiling, white wicker furniture, and a jungle of potted palms, ferns, and hanging plants. She was sitting in a big peacock chair in front of a small table, and she was wearing a white sleeveless dress. The whole effect was that of an antebellum mistress-of-the-manor in some depressing Tennessee Williams play. Somehow Weller got the feeling that he was supposed to kiss her hand and call her "ma'am." Instead he gave her a quick kiss on the lips and sat down across the table. A young man dressed in blue appeared with a flagon of white wine and two goblets on a silver tray, served, and departed. "Well, love," Maria said. "I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that I've located your wife." Weller sipped at the cold wine. "And the bad news?" he asked. "The bad news is that Anne Weller has been assigned to the Transformational Research Institute in New York," Maria said. "She's working on one of John's mysterious and boring research projects." She touched Weller's hand and smiled ruefully. "I'm sorry. "What for," Weller said. "That's exactly what I wanted to find out. That's great. I'm really grateful to you." I'm nearing the end-game now, he thought. All I have to do is get into this Institute thing and get her out. There must be other Garry Bailors I can hire if I have to. "I thought the whole idea was that you wanted to see your wife again," Maria said. "Of course." Maria sighed. "I don't think you understand what I'm telling you," she said. "The Institute is under incredible security. A flea couldn't get in or out without a life directive directly from John. There's no way you can get in, there's no way she can get out, and no way you can even get a message through." From somewhere -- perhaps the way Maria was looking at him, desirously, nervously, apologetically -- Weller found himself drawing upon a cold and almost bitchy cruelty. "Then what I need is a life directive from John to get me in, isn't it, Maria?" he said, regarding her coolly. "You think I can --?" "Can't you, Maria?" Weller said evenly. "Look, I may have given you the wrong impression about John," Maria said, almost plaintively. "Most of the time I can pretty much have my own way, but the Transformational Research Institute.... Nobody gets in there without a reason. John's reason." "Well then, we have to give him a reason, don't we?" Weller said relentlessly. Maria laughed. "You can be a ruthless, implacable bastard, can't you?" she said. "But in away, I find that rather attractive." Weller reached under the table and put his hand under Maria's dress, smoothing the soft flesh of her inner thigh. Maria ran her tongue slowly around the edges of her teeth. "Let's go into the bedroom," she said. "Afterward, maybe we can discuss your little problem." "You can be pretty implacable yourself," Weller said. But he let her lead him by the hand across the hall into the bedroom. I know where Annie is, he thought. I know where she is. But the fact seemed only a distant anesthetized reality as Maria slowly undressed him and then slipped her dress over her head, revealing her total nakedness beneath. Yet the things they then proceeded to do to each other, the kissings and lickings, the movements of body on body, also seemed to Weller to be taking place at some great distance from the locus of his consciousness. He performed well, but he performed mechanically. Even as he thrust against Maria, he was thinking about Annie, about knowing where she was, about how to get to see her again. But he did not fantasize about making love to Annie while he was fucking Maria Steinhardt, nor did he feel guilty about the dichotomy between what he was thinking and what his body was doing. The only guilt he felt was over the fact that he had difficulty even forming a mental image of Annie's face. Time passed. Maria had several orgasms, and finally appeared satiated, and Weller's mind returned to where it had been in the sitting room as if nothing had happened. Indeed, psychically, nothing had. "Will you help me again?" he asked Maria as they sat side by side against the headboard. "I told you," she said, "I just can't tell John to let you into the Institute. It won't work." "The only way for me to get in there is for John to want me there ... ?" "That's right, love. I can't even get in when John doesn't want me around. "Well, what goes on in this damned place?" Weller asked. Maria shrugged, "Some psychiatrist named Bernstein talked John into setting it up at a ridiculous cost. Supposedly it's a kind of mental Manhattan Project, at least that's what John thinks he's doing, On the other hand, Bernstein may actually be taking John to the cleaners. Who knows? According to John they're experimenting with everything from new-model brainwave monitors to psychedelic drugs. Whenever I ask John what he thinks he's spending all that money to accomplish, I get Transformationalist gibberish. I think he's convinced that the Institute is going to be his monument to history or something." "And what the hell is Annie doing in this place?" "I don't know," Maria said quietly. "You mean there are some things John keeps even from you?" "Yes. I mean no. I mean he'd tell me if I asked, but he'd want to know why ..." Maria seemed uncharacteristically nervous, even furtive, as if they had drifted into an area where her relationship with John B. Steinhardt was not quite what she liked to pretend it was. "Okay," Weller said more sympathetically, "I understand the problem. But will you do what you can to help me? If I come up with a reason for John to want me at the Institute, will you help me sell it to him as best you can?" Maria eyed him narrowly. "You know," she said, ''I'm beginning to get the feeling that you're some kind of agent again, that all this business about your wife is just a cover story." '"You can check out my dossier with the Monitors." "Oh, I already have," Maria said quite earnestly. "Still, if an agency were trying to penetrate the Institute, they might go to considerable lengths, even your wife...." Weller forced a laugh. "Are you really serious?" "Quien sabe?" Maria said more lightly. "On the other hand, the thought does add a certain spice to things. All right, whoever you are, you figure it out, and I'll front for you. Up to a point." "Marvelous," Weller said, giving her a kiss. "My superiors will be very pleased." *** Pacing in his tiny room at the Transformation Center, Weller was unwilling to even go downstairs for dinner, though he knew that in two hours he would have to drag his ass to the kitchen to wash dishes. For days now the disjunctions in his life, the splits in his mind, were driving him up walls, and every additional input -- at work, in the Center, in Maria Steinhardt's bed -- just seemed to wind the spring a little tighter. So near and yet so far. All these months of scheming, of loneliness, of turning himself into someone he no longer knew, had come down to a single point: get inside the Transformational Research Institute. Do that, and it would all be over, the unbearable psychic tension would finally be resolved. No more balling Maria, no more playing the cold demon lover. No more mind games. No more living at the Center. No more washing dishes. No more grinding out commercials for something he hated. But how? How can I make Steinhardt want me to come to the Institute? What can I give to Maria to get to him with? How can I sell myself --? Weller sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. Sell myself? Or sell Steinhardt ...? Something was percolating up from the lower reaches of his mind. Eptify yourself behind the scenario, he told himself. It's there, I can feel it, I've got to reach for it. Sell Steinhardt.... Sell Steinhardt .... What was it about those two words ...? Weller's mind ached, straining for an illusive thought that hovered just beyond his grasp, like the name of an old friend caught on the tip of his tongue, like a word in a foreign language he had studied in high school. Sell Steinhardt.... Of course! he suddenly realized. Those two words have a double meaning! Sell myself to Steinhardt, or literally sell Steinhardt like so much corn flakes. Or both. It finally clicked, like a crystal suddenly forming in a supersaturated-solution. I'm making commercials for Transformationalism, he thought, and they stink. Not because I stink, but because the scripts and actors stink. But Steinhardt on tape.... Steinhardt could sell a Corvair to Ralph Nader. I could make such Transformationalism commercials if I had John B. Steinhardt to use in them! And with his ego, how could he not rise to the bait? How could he not at least want to talk about it? That's it, that is fucking it! But not immediately through Maria, he thought. Have to be more subtle about it. Plant the idea at Changes, let Karel know that I want to do it, and then use Maria to end-run around the Monitors when they come down on it. As no doubt they will. He got up off the bed and began pacing again. He could hardly wait till tomorrow. Tomorrow, Sara and the whole crew at Changes were going to start getting a dose of how he really felt about what they were doing, and it was going to be a double pleasure dishing it out! *** At the lunch break Weller casually wandered into Sara English's office, where Sara was sitting alone behind her desk going through some scripts. Since Maria's party there had been a lot of frost in the air between them, and Sara didn't deign to look up until after he had planted himself heavily in a chair beside the desk with a tired, depressed look painted deliberately across his face. When she did look up at him, it was with a somewhat owlish expression, and when she spoke, her voice was diffident and distant. "What's the matter with you? Having trouble on the set?" "No worse than usual," Weller grunted. Now he seemed to have her full, alert, and surprised attention. "No worse than usual? What are you talking about? You've been consistently ahead of schedule since you started directing. There haven't been any complaints." "Marvelous," Weller grunted sarcastically, leading her into it. Sara sat up on the edge of her chair and studied Weller as if he had metamorphosed into some mythical monster. "What the hell's gotten into you, Jack?" she said. "Don't you know? Can't you see it?" "What are you talking about?" "Oh, come on, Sara," Weller said in a carefully crafted tone of tired vehemence. ''You know that what we're doing is shit." Sara's eyes went wide, then narrowed. She sat stiff-backed upright in her chair and her tone of voice became defensive and clipped. "I realize we're not all up to your technical level --" "Oh, can it, Sara!" Weller snapped. "Technical ability has nothing to do with it. What I'm turning out is shit too. A little faster, a little slicker, but just as shitty. It's really starting to get to me." "What is?" Sara said uncertainly, but also somewhat belligerently. "You still haven't told me what you're talking about." "It's the basic stuff," Weller said. ''The scripts, and even more basic than the scripts, the very concepts of the commercials." Sara's expression became rigid and her voice became almost mechanical. "You know where the scripts come from," she said nervously. "What's wrong with them?" "What's wrong with them?" Weller said. ''They're stupid, amateurish, and counterproductive. No matter how well made they might be, they'd still just be well-made garbage." He found himself taking gleeful sadistic satisfaction in finally venting the truth, even if it were for his own Machiavellian ends. But Sara apparently didn't believe her ears or didn't want to believe them. "You know I'm going to have to report this to Karel ...," she stammered. Weller deliberately ignored her and continued his diatribe. ''The actors are impossible too, and the end product is something that couldn't sell thermal underwear to Eskimos. It's really depressing, knowing you're doing your best and nothing but crud is coming about because the concepts, scripts, and actors you're stuck with guarantee a hopeless product...." Now Sara seemed really frightened. "Please stop it," she said shrilly. "Don't you realize what you're saying? Don't you know I have to report this? Don't you know that the scripts have the force of Monitor policy and the casting has the force of life directives?" Weller shifted to a mode of tired resignation. "Of course, I know all that. But I tell you, I've reached the point where I finally don't give a damn. I care too much about what I'm doing to just sit back and let the Monitors fuck it up." "Jack!" Weller bled some wistful longing energy back into his voice. "When we have the potential to make a series of commercials that could double Transformationalism's national membership in a year." "What?" Sara seemed to perk up a bit. "I mean John himself." Weller said. "You've seen him on tape -- now that's star quality! Boy, could I make commercials for Transformationalism if I could use John B. Steinhardt! Why hasn't Changes made commercials using John?" "I don't know.... You know that kind of policy isn't made on our level." "Well, why not? It damn well should be." Weller paused, as if slowly coming to an impromptu decision. "In fact, I think I'm going to make the request myself. In fact, you can consider it formally made as of now. I hereby propose a series of commercials using John to be shot by me. What are you going to do about it?" "Me?" Sara squealed. "I'm not going to do a damn thing. If you think you're going to involve me in --" "Well, then what do I do about it, propose it to Owen Karel?" "Jack, there's nothing you can do. You can't issue a life directive to John. You can't go over the Monitors' heads. You can't --" "Why not? What's wrong with this organization that it can't accept some professional advice?" "Jack, good Lord. You haven't even passed life analysis. Do you know what they'll --" "Fuck it!" Weller snapped, standing up. ''I'm going to go find a typewriter, write a proposal, and give it to Karel." "Please --" "All right, if it makes you so nervous, you hand the proposal to Karel. With a complete report on this conversation. That should cover you with the Monitors." "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" Sara said quietly. "You won't listen to reason?" "I'm going to do it, Sara. Through you, or over your head to Karel. Your choice." Sara sighed resignedly. "All right," she said. "You type up the proposal, and I'll hand it to Karel. But that's all I'm going to do. No recommendation, and I am going to report this conversation. I'm going to completely disassociate myself from this insanity." "You do that," Weller snapped over his shoulder on the way out. ''I'll have it on your desk in half an hour." The die was cast. Whether the Monitors passed the proposal along to Steinhardt or not, it was going to get there. He'd give channels two or three days, and then play his hole card -- Maria, the Queen of Steinhardts. *** For nearly two days Weller had been waiting for something to happen, for some Monitor ax to fall. He hadn't spoken to Owen Karel since Sara had transmitted his proposal and Karel hadn't spoken to him. But their paths had crossed several times, and each time the Monitor representative had given him a cold, withering, lingering stare. Apparently whatever was going to happen wasn't going to be decided at Karel's level. Was it possible that they would really buck it up directly to Steinhardt? Could it end up being as easy as all that? Sara had been avoiding speaking to him too, as if she feared contamination, as if she were determined to put as much distance between her and whatever was going to come down as possible, so it didn't seem very likely. When the other shoe was finally dropped, Weller was in the kitchen at the Transformation Center washing dishes. A hand tapped him on the shoulder from behind. "Jack Weller?" Weller turned and saw a big, gross bozo in T-shirt and Jeans. "Yes ... ?" "Come with me." ''I've still got a lot of dishes to finish...." "You're to come with me right now. It's a life directive." Weller shrugged, dried his hands, and let himself he led to the fourth floor, to the very same room where he had had his life-analysis sessions with Gomez. And when the door was closed behind him, it was Gomez himself who sat behind the desk, scowling and somewhat harried-looking. "Sit your goddamn ass down, Weller." As Weller sat down in front of the desk, Gomez slid a piece of paper across it at him. "What the fuck is this?" he demanded. "Just what it says," Weller said coldly. Gomez snorted. "Just because you're screwing Maria Steinhardt, you think you can get away with this shit. Is that it?" Weller blanched. "You know about that?" "That's a pretty stupid question, isn't it, Weller?" Gomez said. "Not up to your usual standard. Now what the hell is all this about?" Weller forced himself to be calm. "You tell me," he said. Gomez leaned forward on his elbows and glared at Weller. "Stop jiving me," he snarled. ''I'm not jiving you," Weller said. "I made a suggestion in my professional capacity, and here I am hauled in front of you. Why?" "Your professional capacity is to do as you're told," Gomez snapped. "Not to tell the Monitors their business." Studying Gomez, Weller sensed that the Monitor was not entirely on top of this situation; something was rattling him, and Gomez didn't like it. He decided to probe deeper. "Is that what John said?" Gomez laughed harshly. "You think that thing got to John?" he said contemptuously. "Karel passed it up the chain to Torrez, and Torrez kicked it down to me, and none too gently either." "What are you trying to tell me?" Weller asked ingenuously. Gomez reached across the desk, snatched up the proposal, balled it up in his fist, and tossed it over his shoulder onto the floor. "That's what I'm telling you, Weller," he said. "If it were up to me, I'd declare you a regressive right now and be done with you. You've gone too far." Weller realized that Gomez had given himself away. He leered across the desk at the Monitor. "But it's not up to you, is it, Gomez?" he said. "Someone has ordered you not to give me a negative life analysis. Torrez? Or --" "Cut it out, Weller," Gomez snapped. "You know damn well who protected you." Weller laughed. "Sticks in your craw, doesn't it?" he said. Gomez flushed. He ground his hands into fists. ''You'd better be a great lay, Weller," he said. "Because as soon as Maria Steinhardt gets tired of you, your ass is grass. And that doesn't just come from me, it comes from Torrez." '"But in the meantime ...." Weller insinuated, feeling a marvelous sense of his own power. "In the meantime you'd better keep your nose clean," Gomez said. "We're under orders not to declare you a regressive, but that's as far as it goes. Any more of this crap, and we can still find ways of making it mighty uncomfortable for you around here." It seemed to Weller that Gomez's threat was essentially hollow; in any event he had gone much too far to turn back now. The only way out was to press on. "What about my proposal?" he said. "What about it?" "I want it to go to John." Gomez slammed his list on the desk. "I told you. Torrez himself vetoed it. That's the end of it." "Not good enough," Weller said quietly. "Not good enough?" Gomez shouted. "What the hell do you mean, not good enough?" "I mean I don't accept it," Weller said evenly. "I don't give a shit if you accept it or not; that's the way it is." "Is it?" Weller said softly. "Is it really? You've got a choice, Gomez. You can transmit my proposal to John through the regular Monitor channels ... or I go the alternate route. You and Torrez won't look so good if John overrules you personally, now will you?" Gomez gaped. "You wouldn't dare." "Oh, wouldn't I? You've just told me that my ass is grass if Maria stops protecting me. That's my hole card. What do I have to lose by betting my whole stake on it?" Gomez half leaped out of his chair, raging. "I'm warning you, Weller!" he screamed. "You lay off or --" "Or what?" Weller sneered contemptuously. Gomez subsided back into his chair. "Don't underestimate us," he said. "If you push this thing any further, it's Coventry for you." "Coventry?" "One step from being declared a regressive," Gomez said. "And not such a large step at that. You've been warned. You can take it as being official." Weller stood up. "Do you have anything more to say?" he asked. Gomez sat there silently, as if disbelieving his own senses. "Then I'll he going if it's okay with you," Weller said. Holding his breath, he walked to the door. Gomez was silent. Weller opened the door, glanced back at the immobile Gomez, and stepped through into the hallway. "Motherfucker!" he heard Gomez whisper to empty air as he closed the door behind him. "Hot shit!" Weller exclaimed to himself. You played that beautifully, kid, he told himself. From here on in, the name of the game is escalation. *** Maria Steinhardt lay naked on her bed, her head propped up on one elbow, staring at Weller, who sat up against the headboard looking down at her like the Great Sphinx. "You realize, love," she said, "that you are in my power. Fred Torrez was ready to declare you a regressive, and I don't think you fully realize what that means. Trying to communicate directly with John was pushing it too far; Torrez is an awful enemy for anyone to make. And now you want me to get this proposal to John in direct defiance of the Monitors! Don't you recognize any limits?" "You said you'd do it," Weller said distantly. "You said if I came up with a reason for John to want me there that you'd get it through to him. Isn't this idea something that will appeal to him?" Maria laughed. "Appeal to him? It's just the sort of egoboo that he loves to get drunk on. But how am I supposed to put it to him?" "Tell him the truth," Weller said. "Tell him that the Monitors blocked the proposal and that I appealed directly to you." Maria scowled. "Don't you realize that telling him that would be telling him that you're directly defying a Monitor life directive?" "So what?" Weller said. "So what? So if John doesn't like it, there's no way I can protect you from him." ''You think that's going to happen?" Maria sat up beside him. She shrugged. "With John, even I don't always know," she said. "Don't forget, he'll read your Monitor dossier, maybe even talk it over with Torrez. Anything the movement knows about you, John will know." Weller reached out a hand and flicked at her nipple. "Including what's going on here?" he asked. "Is that what you're afraid of?" "You really think he doesn't know about us already? You think I could go to bed with anyone without John knowing? You think when I stopped Torrez from declaring you a regressive, he didn't report it to John?" "So when you present my proposal to John, he'll know exactly where it's coming from and why?" Weller said. "You think that'll make him turn it down and ax me without ever talking to me?" "On the contrary, pet," Maria said. "He'll want to meet you. It'll probably get you into the Institute. But have you given any thought to getting out?" Weller felt a slight twinge of dread. He hadn't given too much thought to how he would get Annie and himself out.... But the Master Contact Sheet was damned good blackmail material, and the fail-safe copies had already been mailed. And ever since he had begun this course of action, ever since his first night with Maria, his sense of his own power had been growing. There wasn't anything logical about it. It was a psychic thing, a sense of more fully inhabiting his own skin, perhaps something as simple and irrational as a slow and gradual rediscovery of the possibilities of his own courage. The way he had gotten away with defying Gomez had been the capper. Now he was beginning to feel that there was nothing he would not try, nothing he would not dare. "You let me worry about that," he said, surprised at the ominous strength he heard himself putting into his own voice. Maria must have heard it too, for she seemed to shrink back from him slightly. "What if I decide I just don't want to do it?" she said. Weller ran a hand teasingly through her pubic hair. "Then you lose my lovely young bod," he said. On impulse he added, "As well as my goodwill." "What's that supposed to mean?" Maria asked uneasily. Weller felt a streak of cold cruelty leaping from his core to his mouth, like a sudden dagger drawn from a hidden scabbard. "You're always kidding me about working for some agency," he said lightly. "What if it isn't a joke?" Maria's eyes widened. "You're not serious?" she whispered. "Did I say I was?" Weller answered ambiguously. "But what if I was? What if something bigger and stronger than Transformationalism were closing in?" "What could that be?" Maria said scornfully. But there was the slightest edge of nervousness in her voice. Weller laughed. "The federal government," he said. "Maybe even the Mafia ..." "The Mafia ...? Oh, really!" Weller shrugged. "Transformationalism is a large business with a lot of useful contacts," he said. "Might make an attractive-looking meal to an even bigger fish. Someone might want to make you a merger offer you couldn't refuse." "You're not serious ..." "Did I say I was?" Weller repeated archly. "But if I was, who ended up protecting whom might turn out to be a horse of a different color. . ." Maria studied him narrowly. "You're just playing a game with me, right?" she said. "Right." Weller said fatuously. ''I'm just playing a game with you." They stared into each other's eyes for a long, silent moment. "And you're just playing the same game with me," Weller said evenly. "You're going to speak to John as you promised to." He arched an eyebrow at her. "Aren't you?" Maria smiled at him, somewhat nervously, somewhat wantonly. "If you want to play that game, I'll go along with you," she said. She laughed. "I wish I really believed you. I find something feral about it. I think it's turning me on. Grrr!" She leaned over and sunk her teeth into Weller's earlobe, a really hard bite that sent a flash of pain to his brain. He tried to pull away, but she hung on, gnawing and growling. She rolled over onto him, reaching between his thighs. Something snapped inside Weller -- perhaps it was the sharp pain, perhaps it was the persona he had assumed, perhaps it was the need to ram the lesson home, perhaps all three. He threw his arms around Maria and wrestled her off of him. He slapped her lightly across the cheek; she gasped, more in surprise than pain, and released his ear. Weller flipped her over onto her stomach, pinioning her to the bed at the waist with his hands, raised his torso above her, spread her legs, and thrust between them. "No! No!" Maria screamed in shock and outrage. "No?" Weller snarled. "You're telling me you don't want it?" He laughed wildly and drove deeper. Maria screamed in pain, but began to move her body against his, and soon the tone of her screams lowered, became a mewling of pain mixed with pleasure as she thrashed and ground slowly against him, impaled like a vassal, hating it and loving it at the same time. Weller found himself stunned at what he was doing, astonished at his own sadism, and even more astonished at how much it pleased him to have Maria Steinhardt writhing in pain and pleasure beneath him. He snarled gutturally and round himself going with it completely -- the savagery, the feral animal pleasure, the sophisticated mental power trip -- with a demonic energy he had never felt before. He was a stranger to himself. The Jack Weller that had been would not be capable of something like this. But that was in another country, and besides the lad was dead. *** Weller entered the lobby of the Transformation Center at six fifteen, after an unusually long shooting day, feeling bone weary and piano-wire tense. Two days now and he had heard nothing from Maria Steinhardt. He had no idea how long it might take for her to speak to Steinhardt, nor how long it would take Steinhardt to react, nor what form the reaction might take if it turned out to be negative. But the tension of waiting was becoming unbearable. At the studio Sara was totally ignoring him, and even Georgie and Shano seemed reluctant to be seen in conversation with him, as if word of what he was doing had filtered down to their level. Even his own crew seemed rather taciturn and sullen, though that might just be an extension of his own paranoia in an admittedly paranoid situation. Weller paused at the gate desk, waiting to be recognized by the guard and passed through to the inner lobby. But instead of just nodding and passing him through, the guard pointed silently to a piece of paper taped to the front of the desk. "What ... ?" Silently, insistently, the guard jabbed his finger at the notice. Grunting, Weller bent over slightly and read it: NOTICE: GENERAL LIFE DIRECTIVE Jack Weller has been placed in Coventry by directive of the Monitors until further notice. No member of this Transformation Center may speak to Jack Weller except in the necessary course of relaying official directives, instructions, or information authorized over the signature of Benson Allen. Failure to obey this directive will result in one week's Coventry. Second offenses will be considered regressive behavior. Weller stared at the guard in disbelief. The guard pointedly looked away, then buzzed him through the gate. Woodenly Weller walked to the bank of elevators. Another copy of the same notice was taped to the wall between the two doors. There was another Coventry notice inside the elevator, and between the elevator doors on his floor. And further down the hall near his room. What was this juvenile horseshit? Did they expect anyone to take this boarding-school hazing tactic seriously? Did they expect him to take it seriously? He took a quick piss, washed his bands, and went down to the dining room where he spotted Coventry notices outside the entrance, at the head of the food line, and on the garbage bins. The silly fucking things were everywhere. He got a plate of franks and beans and potato salad at the steam tables, where the servers wouldn't meet his eyes, and looked around for a place to sit. This time, perversely, he wanted to sit with people he knew, with some of the nerds who had been sucking up to him, to blast this stupid Coventry thing apart before it really got started. Tina Davies was sitting at the end of a table opposite Ted and Lori Brenner. There was an empty seat next to Tina, and Weller took it. "Hi, Tina," he said. "How's it going?" Tina stared down at her plate and continued to shovel spaghetti into her mouth. "Ted? Lori?" They wouldn't even meet his eyes. "What the fuck is this?" Weller snapped. "Are you people actually going along with this juvenile nonsense?" Tina gave him a furtive look, Ted and Lori ignored him completely, It was beginning to get to Weller. The whole thing was like some kind of stupid high-school joke, and it was getting on his nerves on exactly that sort of credulous level. "What's the matter with you assholes?" Weller said conversationally. "You have shit for brains?" Still no response. This was no longer funny. Weller was really getting pissed off, and now he was determined to get a rise out of these bastards. "You stupid motherfuckers!" he shouted loudly. "You spineless dog-faced baboons! Don't you have any minds of your own?" The noise level in the dining room suddenly dipped as everyone looked to find the source of this unseemly disturbance. But when people saw who was doing the shouting, they immediately looked away again. Weller had the feeling he could have whipped out his cock and pissed in his plate and no one would dare to notice. Tina, Ted, and Lori exchanged nervous looks. Then, without a word, the three of them got up at once and moved to another table, far across the room. "Son of a bitch," Weller muttered to himself. He was surprised at how quickly this silent treatment had gotten under his skin. It was not so much that he craved the conversation of any of these nerds as it was anger and amazement that people who had been pestering him for attention for weeks were actually obeying this asshole directive to the letter. As if they had no minds of their own at all. Was that what this was supposed to be too, in addition to everything else -- a demonstration of total Monitor power? Weller looked around the dining room. Two tables away, Harry, the aging nobody who wanted to be a processor, sat alone picking at his food. Weller decided to give old Harry a try; no one had been forcing his company on him more than Harry. Weller picked up his tray, walked over, and sat down across the table. Harry deigned to look up at him with a sad, somewhat wistful expression. "Hi, Harry," Weller said gently, forcing himself to swallow his anger. "Are you playing along with this silent treatment too?" Harry deliberately met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at his plate. "I see," Weller said. "Because you're afraid not to?" Harry looked up. His expression hardened. He glared at Weller. The meaning of it seemed totally incomprehensible. "Do you even know why this is happening?" Harry looked down at his plate. Weller found that the anger was quickly leaching out of him, replaced by a certain sadness, not for himself, but for the poor zombies who were willing to eat this kind of shit, play this stupid game, without even knowing why. But as he thought of the games he had successfully run on Maria Steinhardt and the way he had faced down Gomez, that sadness became less sympathetic, became overlaid with contempt. The suckers and the suckees ... he thought. "You know, Harry, I feel sorry for you," he said. "You've got to feel like a fool doing this. They've made you into a gutless coward. You want to be a processor, but don't you also want to be a man?" Harry looked up angrily. His lips began to move as if he were about to break the silence. Then he caught himself, gave Weller a hang-dog look, and got up and walked away. Weller sat there, isolated, but taking a certain comfort in it now. After all, he thought, I never really wanted to have anything to do with these people anyway, and this doesn't exactly make them more attractive. Now, at least, they'll really leave me alone. He cut off a piece of frankfurter and forked it into his mouth with some baked beans. Yech! The food was greasy and tasteless as usual, but by now it was also as cold and limp as a wet washcloth.
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