Her eyes flutter, open, her face convulsed with horror. Perhaps he has said this last a little loudly, charged his voice with affect again; at any rate she does not seem to be taking this information well. There is almost no way in which he can tell her that he is driven by large forces outside of himself and really has no choice. “Oh my God,” she said, “oh my God, this is really happening.”
“Of course it’s happening—”
“Get me out of here! Get me out of here before I die. I can’t—”
“You are dead,” Scop says somewhat metaphysically. “You have already died.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t believe this.” Little animals seemed to be moving underneath the planes of her cheeks; Scop with his profound grasp of organic and neurological insight sensed that she was on the verge of a cataclysmic cerebral accident. “Be calm,” he said. “Do not move.” He reached a hand to her forehead, patted it absently. “You will understand,” he said. “In due course there will come a time when you understand—”
She brought her hands to his wrist, pushed it away, continued the motion in spasm so that Scop lost balance, rolled all the way onto his back, having misjudged her strength he looked at her sullenly. “I can’t believe this,” she said, “this cannot be happening,” and then she began to cry. Scop looked at her trying to measure the depth of her feeling, the temper of his own response thinking that it was strange, it was always strange how it had ended this way time and again: always he had led up to this moment and then in his imagination away from it, little tracks down the other side where she accepted all with quiet and credulous eyes, nodding slowly, tracing little circles on his wrist as she listened, knowing then the justice of what he had done and its necessity: encounter and at the end of it illumination. Instead only this. She cries in pain but all he knows is sorrow.
CHAPTER VII
CLANGOROUS CIRCUMSTANCE: Summoned by the Temporal Administrator Scop tries to maintain a bland and controlled exterior but by the time he has come into the offices he is in a clamorous state, a clangorous circumstance: it is all that he can do to keep himself from falling down in paroxysms of excitement. The colder, darker part of him advises that this would be pointless and would in fact only work against him and it is that to which he listens, settling only for a stray giggle now and then when he feels that his control cannot be absolute. The receptionist looks at him with distaste but takes him into the administrator’s office without undue delay and for a while Scop sits there alone, looking at the photographs and drawings of vulgarities on the walls, observing the bizarre sculptures of human copulation on the administrator’s desk while he waits for the man to appear. The administrator is often known to do this, to leave his interviewees alone for some minutes before appearing but Scop takes it in stride. He knows that he is being observed through special mirrors but aside from a snort of laughter there, a little cackle of pleasure over here he is perfectly controlled and his snorts and cackles could be taken only for the mild instability of the traveler which he certainly is.
After a time the administrator opens a side door and comes in. He looks like all of the other administrators which is to say completely unremarkable and leaves no physical impression upon Scop, now or hereafter. In certain recurrent but nearly-forgotten dreams he will occasionally see him and many, many months from now when he is on the verge of his last crisis Scop will have a sudden image of the man coming up hard against the preconscious like a dummy on a stick but not until that very moment and maybe not even then will he realize how deeply the administrator has affected him at a subterranean level. On the surface there is nothing. Twenty-five minutes from now he will be unable to recall a single feature of the man or hear his voice.
“You may think you are dreaming this,” the administrator begins, “but I want to assure you that you are not. All of this is happening, all of it matters.”
“I know that.” He chokes on a giggle.
“I am not sure that you are prepared to accept this yet. Certain of your activities indicate that you feel yourself to be in a dreaming condition and therefore in lessened risk but this is not so at all.”
Scop knows, of course, that he is being closely monitored but the administrator’s offhand confirmation of this gives him a thrill of realization which undercuts the easy hilarity with which he had approached the interview. Everything that he does is being observed; he can perpetrate nothing that does not clear through the mechanisms. “I know that it is objectively true,” he says carefully.
“Your conduct in Dealey Plaza raises the suggestion that you may not. You were very off hand there, very reckless and our interview with the old man was suggestive.”
“Suggestive of what?”
“And the force you used with the two women was excessive. It went beyond the situation.”
Scop shrugs. “I was on a narrow time-line. I felt that I only had a few moments—”
“Whether or not you had a few moments, your actions were excessive. They came close to being unacceptable. Now and in the future you are going to have to be far more aware of the risks here.”
“I have always been aware of the risks,” Scop says. He is on the verge of asking the administrator how his sexual performance with Elaine Kozciouskos compared with normative standards—he really would like to know—but at the last instant holds back. This is none of his business and to display curiosity would be to suggest weakness which is better not implied in these circumstances. He feels the laughter beginning to churn within him and folds his hands together tightly, his eye caught by a vivid black-and-white of pederasty on the wall to the administrator’s right just above a window. It causes him to become solemn again as he turns toward the administrator. They are serious. They have always been serious; he must accept this. Their seriousness is of a different order than his but no less consequential.
“Is something wrong?” the administrator asks.
“Nothing.”
“You seem to be a little mystified, a little withdrawn.”
“Nothing. I was busy recently and am still, perhaps, a little tired.”
“We know you were busy. We are quite certain of your business. But I am afraid that I suspect some hilarity in you. Do you think that this is hilarious?”
“No.”
“Then why were you smirking and smiling in the outer offices?”
“An accident of feature, sir.”
“There are no accidents of feature. The face is merely the projection of the unconscious will.” But the administrator seems to lose interest in the argument even as he states it; the line runs down, his own face becomes sad and slack as he reaches forward to fondle one of the sculptures on his desk. “Essentiallyyou are doing the work very well,” he says. “We have no quarrel with your approach nor with the really admirable energy that you’ve displayed, at least intermittently. You are doing well in many regards and yourmodusoperandi is one of the most original we have yet seen. We are merely afraid that much of this energy comes from your assumption that this is not serious. It is serious.”
“I know that,” Scop says again. “I can only repeat it. I know that it is serious.”
The administrator shrugs. “Very well,” he says. “We could deep-probe you to find whether your statement is credible but at this stage of matters it would not be helpful, it would only hold up your progress and it might damage you permanently.” He squeezes the sculpture, the metal yields in his hand, slowly it puffs in its grasp and Scop sees a little extra breast beginning to extrude from the material. “We are therefore going to allow you to continue.”
“That is appreciated.”
“Our decision is liable to constant review of course.” The administrator brings over his other hand, rubs a fingernail carefully over the breast, blinks his eyes, his mouth slowly falling open. “But for the time being we are willing to make a continuation.”
“That is very kind of you.”
“That is very kind of me,” the administrator repeats in a different tone, rubbing the breast. There is a long pause into which Scop dares not insert speech. Finally the administrator says, “I think you may be excused now.”
Scop stands. “Thank you.”
“You must have an attitude of pity and condecension toward me. Admit that.”
“What?”
“Or at least some genuine hilarity. Perhaps that is why you were so comedic in the outer offices, thinking about me.”
“I’m sorry,” Scop says, feeling like a less frightened but equally confused Elaine Kozciouskos. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Squeezing the sculpture with both hands now the administrator says, “You must feel that I’m expressing some kind of abnormal transferred sexuality with this device, that I’m some kind of a pitiable character not in control of himself. Come on, admit it.”
