“Relax. It’s just if we get a little behind and I don’t get back to a client for maybe a couple hours and they stiffen up…well, them issue boxes is just the one size, you know what I mean?”

  A wave of softness, warmness swept over Bailey as he lay back.

  “Hey, you didn’t eat nothing the last twelve hours?” The thin man’s face was a hazy pink blur.

  “I awrrr mmmm,” Bailey heard himself say.

  “Okay, sleep tight, paisan…” The thin man’s voice boomed and faded. Bailey’s last thought as the endless blackness closed in was of the words cut in the granite over the portal to the Euthanasia Center:

  “…Send me your tired, your poor, your hopeless, yearning to be free. To them I raise the lamp beside the brazen door…”

  Then the poison immobilized his hemoglobin and he was dead.

  Death was a stormwind. It was as if he were blown, whirled, cast up and down and up again, in a howl and a whistle and a noise of monstrous gallopings. He did not know whether the wind was searing him with cold or heat. Nor did he wonder about it, for the lightnings blinded his eyes and the thunders rattled his teeth.

  Eyes? flashed a moment’s startlement. Teeth? But I’m dead. That application I had to fill out in triplicate will be stamped “Completed,” and a bored attendant will wheel me and my box to the crematorium chute and yo-heave-ho. And I will be transfigured; I will no more be Douglas Bailey but a statistic.

  He clawed after reality, any reality, but grabbed only chaos. Dizziness sucked him through an infinite spiral. Somewhere and everywhere God was counting, “Zero, one, ten, eleven, one hundred, one hundred one, one hundred ten, one hundred eleven, one thousand, one thousand one, one thousand ten,” in a small dry voice. Bailey believed that his nonexistent stomach had turned into an octopus with guts for tentacles. It would eat him and thus itself, but that was all right, because the universe inside Douglas Bailey was topologically identical with Douglas Bailey inside the universe, and so maybe when the universe swallowed itself he would be free of his madness.

  Must be sensory deprivation, he though in the maelstrom. Being dead, I have no body, therefore no senses, therefore no sensory input, therefore I hallucinate, therefore I must already have been reduced to ash; as I have no way to gauge time, if time has any meaning after death, centuries may have gone since I became a statistic. Poor little statistic, blown forever in the storm and the counting. I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to die.

  Why was I?

  I can’t remember. I can’t remember. There were the buildings, yes, and tastefully landscaped grounds. I entered—did I?—yes, I think I came in looking for, oh, counsel. Maybe someone to tell me I wasn’t that badly off yet, that I ought to go home and think it over. But already my transformation had begun. The moment I crossed that threshold, I was not a man but a category, to be shunted from desk to desk, courteously, smoothly, but so fast I had no chance to think, inexorably to that room at the corridor’s end.

  What went before my last hour? I don’t know.

  “One hundred thousand one hundred ten,” counted God, “one hundred thousand one hundred eleven, one hundred thousand one thousand ten.” Why did they do it to me? cried the fragments. Why did they let me? They knew I was too sick to think

  I don’t know! the statistic screamed. I can’t remember! “One hundred thousand one thousand one, one hundred thousand one thousand ten.” Why did they do it to me? cried the fragments. Why did they let me? They knew I was too sick to think.

  “One hundred thousand one thousand eleven.”

  More than that. Too many more of us. But giving us our freedom to choose death was no freedom. They murdered us.

  “One hundred thousand one thousand one hundred.”

  Shut up damn You! Where were You when they murdered me? Why did You let them? They were no saner than the pathetic swarms, psychotic, neurotic, psychoneurotic, they invited to come to die. That was no way to behave. They could have cured us—could have tried, anyhow—they should not have—

  Click, said God. And there was silence, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

  —not have given us that saving-their-own-smugness “choice.” They should have shouldered their responsibility to us, committed us, compelled us to get well.

  Let there be Douglas Bailey. And there was Douglas Bailey.

  Fate the Second

  They caught him practicing solitary vice in his affluent bachelor’s apartment. The door flew open. Two large men entered. “Stop where you’re at,” one of them said in a gravel-truck basso. “Hands up. Stand back. This is a raid.”

  The fact was like a boot to the stomach. Bailey lurched, almost fell, and strangled for breath. Sunlight and traffic murmurs through an open window, familiar shapes of chairs, tables, drapes, clean smell of turpentine, were suddenly unreal in his awareness. Instead he knew is pulsebeat, sweat on his skin, strength gone from his knees.

  “Okay,” said the other detective to the building superintendent. That little man cowered in the hall. “Beat it.”

  “Y—yes, sir. Right away!”

  “But don’t leave your own place. Somebody will want to talk with you later.”

  “Of course,” chattered the superintendent. “Anything I can do to help.” He scuttled from sight.

  He must have furnished a passkey, Bailey thought in the sickness that held him by the throat. So every precaution had been for nothing.

  “Well, well, well.” The first detective planted himself before the easel. “Whaddayou think of this, Joe?”

  “Looks like a case for sure.” They were hard to tell apart, those two, when one’s mind was splitting with terror. They were dressed alike in correctly drab civilian clothes; they were both crew-cut, slab-faced. and overpoweringly big; they regarded his work with equal, slightly sickened distaste, as if it were the leftovers from an ax murder.

  “But that’s just a hobby of mine!” Bailey heard himself croak. “I never— I never—never any secret—everybody knows I paint pictures—why, the President recommends hobbies—”

  “This kind of picture?” Joe snorted.

  “You don’t show stuff like this around, do you, now?” Joe’s companion added.

  No, Bailey thought. I was careful.

  Item: The conventional works he turned out, landscapes, portraits, tinkering with them like Penelope with her web. They bored him, but should have forestalled any curiosity about the art supplies in his home.

  Item: His door locked whenever he painted in earnest. A false-backed cabinet open, ready to receive and conceal the canvas, a standard picture half-finished and ready to substitute, in a total fifteen seconds of well-rehearsed motions…should there be a knock. Since the apartment was on a third floor, with a warehouse across the street, he had not needed to arouse suspicion by drawing any blinds.

  Item: The location, not very convenient to his work, but right in the Haight-Ashbury district. Before the Mental Health Act, this had been a traditional hangout for eccentrics. Therefore it had been so thoroughly treated and cleansed—the very buildings torn down, reconstructed in hygienic styles, redevoted to sound purposes—that it became the most respectable part of San Francisco. Surveillance was close around the waterfront or Nob Hill. But the bourgeoisie of Haight-Ashbury? Why, they had the highest average stability index in the city.

  Item: The whole concealment that was his life.

  Was that what betrayed him in the end: himself? Too much laughter, or too little; insufficient ambition; negligence within social organizations; too little chastity or too much—had something like that made someone think Douglas Bailey had better be reported as a possible psycho? Maybe, maybe, maybe. But how was a sane man supposed to behave?

  “Awright,” Joe said, “let’s see your cards.”

  “But it—it’s only a painting…manner of Van Gogh—”

  “Which ear do you figure to cut off?” Joe asked surprisingly. Or perhaps not surprisingly. They said the mental health squad of this town maintained a collection of pathological, pornographic, and other prohibited work that compared favorably with the FBI’s. The second man continued staring at the violent blues and yellows of the buttercup field Bailey had been doing. “Flowers don’t grow that big,” he said. “And you got no perspeckative.” He shook his head, clicked his tongue. “Man, you’re sick.”

  “That’s for the Clinic to decide,” Joe said. “But let’s see those cards, Mac.”

  Bailey got out his wallet in a mechanical fashion. Joe flipped through the driver’s license, work permit, draft card, immunization record, permit to consume alcoholic beverages, social security, library card—“Hey, whatcha doing with a Class B?”

  “I’m a sociologist,” Bailey mumbled. “Research. I need to consult specialized books sometimes…journals—”

  “Yeah? Next thing you’ll put in for a Class A, huh, and maybe check out a copy of Krafft-Ebing?” Joe laughed, but kept on until he found the psychocheck record.

  “See,” Bailey got past the dryness in his gullet. “Properly punched. Every year for the—the…past six years?…Just as the law requires. Last time was…four months ago?”

  “Look, friend,” Joe said with elaborate weariness, “let’s not play games. You know how much one lousy annual EEG shows, when you got three hundred million people in the country to give it to. If that could spot all the whackos, I’d be out of a job, wouldn’t I, now?” He tucked the wallet inside his coat. “You might as well sit down, Bailey. In that corner, out of the way. Come on. Sam, let’s give this place the once over quick.”

  The other man nodded and went to the bookshelf. From his pocket he extracted a list of titles which he compared with those on the volumes. It was a slow process, especially since everything in a dust wrapper must be opened, and others at random to be certain nothing had been re-bound. His lips moved. Joe was more organized, ransacking drawers like a terrier chasing rats.

  Bailey sat in an armchair as directed. A numbness crept up into him. Why care? What did it matter? If only he could sleep. Perchance to dream, to sleep, to die…No, wait there you go. Withdrawal. Retreat. The wish for isolation. The basic schizoid pattern, that you’ve fought, adapted to (?), hidden ever since the treatment of mental illness was made compulsory—because I am not insane, not, not, not.

  But I am so tired. If only the world would go away and leave me alone.

  After an hour, Joe and Sam compared notes. They hadn’t found the secret compartment, but there appeared to be significance in various items. Bailey didn’t know what or which. He was sure that he’d left nothing forbidden out in the open. But no doubt the law allowed a good many things, simply because their possession was indicative to the trained eye. Bailey had no idea what the things might be—psychiatric information above the most elementary level wasn’t available to anyone without an A card—and the detectives muttered too low for him to overhear much.

  It didn’t matter. His apathy had reached black full tide.

  “Okay, we’ll take him in and arrange for a detail to come and pull this joint apart,” Joe said.

  “You mean you and me didn’t?” Sam must be new to this business, probably transferred from another division.

  “Sheest, no! Why’d you think orders is to put everything back the way you found it? A real expert can tell you from, uh, the way his underwear is folded whether down underneath the whacko wants to murder his father or hump his mother.”

  “Or both?” Sam grinned.

  “In this case, could be, I guess. You remember we got an urgency warrant on him. ’Nother reason why we better get him up there pronto.” Joe strode to the chair—­the floor trembled ever so faintly beneath his weight—and grabbed Bailey’s arm. “On your feet, tubehead. Got a nice doctor waiting to see you.”

  Bailey dragged along with them. They stopped to lock the door and placard it. Word must have run through the building, for the corridors and stairs were empty. Footfalls echoed.

  The sunlight outside was heartlessly brilliant, pouring from a summer sky where a few gulls wheeled on rakish wings. Such a day even managed to brighten the stiff utilitarian facades that lined the street, the stiff utilitarian garments of pedestrians going soberly about their business. Cars purred past with electric quiet; they still had a certain gaudiness, Bailey thought. The police vehicle was unmarked, a 1989 Chevrolet, and therefore it had a bubble canopy.

  In a flicker of rebellion, Bailey exclaimed, “Why?”

  Joe gave him a hard look. “Why what?”

  “Civilian cars. Required to have fully visible interiors. Isn’t that carrying our anti-privacy fetish to ridiculous extremes?”

  Sam pulled out a notebook and started writing. “How do you spell ‘ridiculous’?” he asked.

  “Oh, never mind,” Joe said. Bailey fell silent again. Joe unlocked the car and took the wheel. The other two sat in the rear. Because Bailey had no wish to look at either of his captors, he stared out at the view as it passed.

  They went by the local service telly. For the first time since he had moved to this area and learned to ignore that screen, he paid attention. It was set into a wall near a bus stop. As usual when there was no particular announcement to make, it urged hygiene upon the public.

  “Not like this!” it shouted, and for a moment flashed the image of a squalid person who crouched and gibbered while picking imaginary fleas off himself. The moment was short, lest a latent hypochondria be triggered in some viewer. “Like this!” There followed an all-American family: stalwart father, beautiful though decorous and not too bosomy mother, four healthful children, marching into the future with toothpaste smiles. The children were, in order, one Nordic, one Negro, one Oriental, and one whose Jewish nose was exaggerated precisely enough to be unmistakable. The avoidance of tension-producing minority-group grievances was, after all, more important than strict genetics. “Yes, like this!” (Flourish of trumpets.) “To be clean, to be straight, to be happy—” (Ruffle of drums.) “Think clean! Think Straight! Think happy!”

  A little farther on was a poster which, Bailey recalled, offered a reward of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for information leading to the arrest and treatment of any person suffering from unreported psychic disorder.

  On the sidewalk nearby, a uniformed policeman handed a summons to a middle-aged woman. Maybe she’d back-talked him, maybe it was a spot check; at any rate, Bailey recognized the pink slip. “You are hereby directed to report to the center at which you are registered…prior to the date of…examination and recertification of nervous stability…failure to comply without proof of impossibility will result in—” The woman looked more annoyed than frightened. You wouldn’t have gotten as drastic a measure as the Act passed if a majority of the public had not felt something ought to be done about the growing incidence of mental illness. And the law would not have been enforceable without the cooperation of that same majority.

  The police car took a route through a corner of Golden Gate Park, past Kezar Stadium. A grade-school hygiene class sat on the lawn, in neat white uniforms. Before them stood their teacher. She was young and comely, and you didn’t often see that much exposed female flesh anymore. (What a narrow tightrope to walk, between causing shame at natural functions on the one hand and exciting prurient interest on the other!) Once Bailey had enjoyed such spectacles. He would switch his attention from what she chanted: “Now, children, this is Good-thinking time. Let us first think about the beautiful sunshine. A-one, and a-two, and a-three, and a-four…” But today he was enclosed in his private night. And the car whipped him by too fast.

  The street climbed steeply, until at its crest the Clinic buildings appeared like sheer cliffs. Bailey remembered when this had been the University Medical Center. But that was before a single class of diseases got absolute priority.

  The car stopped at the main gate for identification. Beyond a pair of burly guards could be seen the usual queue at the dispensary: outpatients, borderline cases required to report daily for their prescribed tranquilizers. In spite of all the propaganda about emotional problems being no more disgraceful than any other kind, the line shuffled in the entrance with hanging heads, and slunk out the exit, each individual alone. The attendant who kept them moving was bored and hardly polite.

  Still…maybe I could have escaped with that, Bailey thought. Had I confessed the turmoil in me at the very beginning, maybe it could have been arrested; I could have been adjusted—but no. He slumped. I didn’t want to be adjusted. I wanted to go my own way. And now it’s too late. In his wretchedness, he hardly noticed when the car started again, or when it stopped and he was conducted into the very biggest house. The elevator that bore him upward, though, was so like a coffin built for three that he must struggle not to scream.

  Afterward there was a long hall, featureless, white, faintly rustling, faintly odorous of antiseptic. At the end was an office with a counter. An orderly sat behind it. Behind him, in turn, worked a number of secretaries and machines. They paid no attention to the new arrival.

  “Here he is,” Joe said. “Bailey.”

  “So let’s get positive ID,” the orderly said. He picked a form off a stack and handed it, with a pen, to Bailey. It was clipped together with several carbons. “Fill this out.”

  UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT

  OF HYGIENE

  Northern California Facility

  APPLICATION FOR TREATMENT

  Form 1066 Print or type

  Name__________________________________ Date__________________

  (last) (first) (middle)

  Sex M______ F______ MH______ FH______ Other (specify)____________

  Registry number______________________ Birthdate____________________

  (month) (day) (year)

  Address______________________________ Occupation________________

  Employer____________________ Address___________________________

  Name of spouse_______________________ Registry number_____________