Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

He wasn’t impotent; he knew that, deep inside. All those other girls, they had been Suzy-surrogates. He’d acted with them as if they were Suzy, imagining them as Suzy.

It was that barrier that still stood now that she was reality and not fantasy.

He loved her, yet there was a gulf there. They were of two different minds, from two different worlds, alien creatures deep inside. This same kind, loving Suzy had cheerfully killed 386 people she didn’t even know and had thought nothing of it, and this same Suzy, who reacted to him as a loving human being, saw all other humans as ciphers, statistics, somehow unreal.

He could not cross that barrier. He had to be one or the other, with Suzy or with humanity, and his subconscious was making that choice.

She was disturbed, but not angry.

“If not now, tomorrow or the next day,” she said philosophically. “We’ll have plenty of chances, Sam, like old times.”

He looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?”

“I arranged for you to be with my team,” she told him. “You and me, Sam, again! Back home and back in action! The Liberation Army rides again, back from the dead past to haunt them!” Her enthusiasm was genuine. She shifted, looked at him, doubt and hesitation creeping into her eyes. “Isn’t that what you want, too, Sam?”

“Yes, Suzy, it is,” he told her, and cursed himself inwardly because he was telling the absolute truth.

The four-year-old mentality of Sandy O’Connell, fortified by the addition of a teddy bear called Mr. Jinks, fell into the routine very easily. The floor she was on was devoted almost entirely to cases such as hers; people who were hot and needed to be put on ice for a while, and were expediently regressed. The drug-induced hypnosis was useful in many ways; those under it could also be persuaded for fairly long periods to see others differently. All in all, there were fourteen “children,” nine males and five females, in the wing. Their average age was forty-four.

This technique allowed a close but relaxed watch on all of their activities. Like most drug-induced things, there were no certainties here, and the human biochemistry differed from individual to individual, making dosages tricky and occasioning a few times when reality began to peer through at inopportune moments. For the most part, though, they saw themselves and each other as children, and they laughed together and cried together and played together. The one drawback to regression was the necessity of keeping their section on the ground floor, since they needed to be outdoors regularly. A playground had been established, and a fence built to prevent wandering, but from the playground could be seen rolling hills and thick green trees, and not too far away a small stream on the other side of which passed a road down which occasional trucks and official cars passed.

There were no ordinary patients at Martha’s Lake Veterans Hospital, as the place was called. There had been, once, before the emergency, but not now. Many of the people there were there without a lot of medical hypnosis; they were there because wives, children, others they were close to were hostage to their willing self-commitments. They, on the other hand, had no reason to believe that this venerable government sanitarium did not contain some real patients, and the impression that it did was reinforced by the staff. The old fellow who insisted that he was Secretary of the Army under Millard might well have been—but he might also have thought he was Napoleon last week. And who remembers the name, let alone the looks, of even current, let alone former, Secretaries of the Army?

So, too, it was unsettling to see the childish adults in the yard over there beyond the fence. Whether they were truly retarded or insane, or whether they were made that way, was not for the others to say. If the latter, those poor people were a reminder of what could happen to those who made trouble or got out of line.

But the drug only made you think you were four; these regressed adults were still in possession of their reasoning faculties under it all, although filtered through their delusion. That fact was becoming an interesting and unforeseen reality to the warders, who found themselves the victims of devilishly sophisticated childish jokes and games, and also caused still greater problems.

Hospitals were fun, Sandy O’Connell thought, but she missed her Mommy and Daddy and her big brother and sister. The longer things went on, the more she thought of them and the more she missed them. They hadn’t come to visit her once, and she was beginning to fear that they had abandoned her here, didn’t want or love her any more.

It was an oversight for the strained technicians at Martha’s Lake; a parental visit could have been easily programmed in. They were simply too busy and too pressed to think of everything.

Finally, Sandy started to stare at the green fields and trees and road beyond the fences. Down that road, maybe, was home, her home and her friends, and her Mommy and Daddy. Maybe they couldn’t come to see her, maybe the doctors wouldn’t let them.

She decided to go to them.

It became one more game, but this time with a purpose. She snuck around, Mr. Jinks in tow, watching how the attendants in their white jackets walked and worked, how closely they watched everybody and how sloppy they sometimes were.

She also found that where the big, tall fence met the brick side of the building, there was a narrow gap. The fence hadn’t been put in with a prison in mind; it was part of the original establishment, and the fence post was prevented by its design and mooring from being too close to the building. Even so, there were roughly twenty centimeters between wall and fence. A terribly tight squeeze, but very inviting to the four-year-old child who discovered it.

Like most children’s plots, though, this one was only partly thought out and not deeply considered. The idea was simply there, and when the opportunity came along it was available.

That opportunity came when a big fellow named Mike suggested hide-and-seek with the seekers to be the warders. The other “children” thought it a tremendous joke for all of them to hide in and around the ward and make the hospital people find them.

There was only one of the white-coated attendants watching them, half-heartedly, his bored mind on a lot of other things than this.

And now it was on. With a yell from Mike a bunch of them started running for the door where the attendant sat, leaning back on the rear legs of a folding chair. They caught him completely by surprise, deliberately bowling him over as they rushed to their hiding places.

He yelled, picked himself up, and ran through the entryway after them, screaming bloody murder. He ran right past Sandy O’Connell, not very well hidden behind some large metal cabinets stuck in the hall just inside the door. When he swept past and she saw she wasn’t discovered, she crept outside, looking for a new and better hiding place. Her eyes went to the fence and that telltale opening she’d discovered but shared with no one except Mr. Jinks. She headed for it, made it, and started trying to squeeze through.

For a while it was tough going; the jagged ends of the fence snared her flimsy hospital gown, which tore when she pulled the material away, and it hurt and scratched when she pressed on. She began to be afraid now, began to be afraid first that the attendant would come and see her and her secret would be lost, afraid, too, that she wasn’t going to make it, that she was going to be stuck between the fence and wall forever. She started to cry and tears welled up,but she kept at it, and suddenly, with a ripping sound, she was through and falling on her side, rolling down a grassy meadow.