Richard Powers - The Echo Maker

“I can imagine,” Weber said.

“No you can’t. You haven’t the slightest idea.” She was sick of people imagining they could imagine. She was ready to tell him exactly what he was. But for Mark’s sake, she calmed herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was inexcusable. I’m not quite together these days.” She reassured him that she understood his choice, and that she’d be fine on her own. Then she thanked him for all his help and said goodbye to him for good.

She all but threw it in his face: You haven’t the slightest idea. Like she deliberately meant to confirm the worst of public accusations. Cold, functionalist opportunist. Not interested in people at all. All that interests you is theories.

The woman’s nerve boggled his mind. He’d handed her a treatment where there was none, an option that had cost him some time and effort to find. Tens of thousands of dollars of care, delivered to her doorstep for free. Two pro bono cross-country trips by a researcher with an international reputation, when she might have been knocking on doors, begging for appointments, dragging her brother around the continent, clinic after unproven clinic, in search of anyone who even knew what he was looking at.

Weber had stayed surprisingly composed, at least in memory. He didn’t, in any case, say what he was feeling. Too much training for that. To the best of his recollection, he’d never lost his temper in a professional capacity. He’d wanted to explain: My leaving is not what you think. But then he would have to tell her what his leaving was .

She was right in one silent accusation: he was no psychologist. Human behavior, so opaque when he’d started his studies, now struck him as worse than religious mystery. He understood no one. He couldn’t begin to grasp her . She’d gone from gratitude to entitlement, on no grounds at all. Vulnerability wheeling to attack, even as she begged for mercy. He’d studied the absurdities of behavior his whole life, and he hadn’t come close to predicting the words she threw at him.

Yes, the damage he’d made a career of studying fell along a spectrum continuous with baseline psychology. But the things he labored to explain in deficits he couldn’t excuse in this healthy person. No medical court would have convicted him had he hung up on her. Instead, he hung on, feeling everything, from far off. He’d seen the same condition in a young woman patient once. Pain asymbolia: damage to the dominant parietal lobe’s supramarginal gyrus. Doctor, I know the pain is there; I feel it. It’s excruciating. But it just doesn’t bother me anymore . Pain everywhere, but just not distressing.

Maybe he’d suffered a lesion and was in full-fledged compensation. But on the phone, he could do nothing but go through the motions: What would Gerald Weber do? He let Karin Schluter abuse him, saying nothing in his own defense. He answered her questions as honestly as possible. He hung up feeling worse than humiliated. But the humiliation did not concern him. The thing dismantling him also exhilarated, lifted him so bodily he hovered above himself. On the brink of sixty, and tomorrow threatened to reveal the mystery his whole life had struggled to unlock. A rush of anticipation flooded through him, worse than something pharmaceutical. He’d fallen in love with a total cipher, a woman he didn’t know from Eve.

He called Christopher Hayes at Good Samaritan, who greeted him warmly. “I’m in the middle of your new book. I haven’t finished it yet, but I just can’t understand the press’s pile-on. It’s no different than anything you’ve ever written.”

Weber had reached the same annihilating conclusion. Everything he’d written now only added to his vague disgrace. He told Hayes that he’d been in town examining Mark. The news silenced Hayes. Weber described Mark’s further deterioration, mentioned the article he found in the ANZJP , and conveyed the case for olanzapine.

Dr. Hayes concurred with everything. “Of course you remember that I thought we should explore this direction, back in June.”

Weber did not remember. Acutely aware of how he appeared to the other man, he nudged the conversation to a close, finally euthanizing it. He drove back to Lincoln that night, waiting on standby until he could get a flight. He called Mark from the airport to say goodbye.

Mark was stoic. “I figured you might be bailing. You tore out of here kinda fast. When you coming back through?”

Weber said he didn’t know.

“Never, huh? Can’t say I blame you. I’d get back to the real deal myself, if I knew how.”

Mark’s not good for squat these daysexcept for failing people’s tests. First, he lets Shrinky down. He’s not sure why — something to do with his less-than-optimal performance in their latest Q and A — but the man tears out of town like he’s taken a fire hose of sweat bees up the ass. No sooner does he drive Shrinky away than the Guard is after him. Some kind of agreement that young Mark signed, and apparently his country is now in desperate need of his services.

You-Know-Who — at least she’s dependable — runs him up to the recruiting office in Kearney. Same place that Rupp and the aforementioned Mark turned up worlds ago, to talk about doing Mark’s bit for Homeland Security. He tries to work it out, on the ride up: the same Specialist Rupp who has finally admitted to communicating with him just after Mark supposedly signs some official papers, and just before somebody runs Mark off the road. As usual, it doesn’t add up, except to implicate the government. But government involvement is generally a no-brainer.

At the Guard office, there’s a heavy conference that he’s not privy to, between the Karin-like person and the Top Guardsman. She’s trying to bust up the deal, whipping out files from the hospital, brother obviously impaired, etc. But the army sees through her, of course. And Mark Schluter is asked to answer a few questions for his country. He does his best; he honestly does. If America is under siege and has to go whip some serious foreign butt to break free again, Mark needs to go, just like everybody else. But he has to laugh out loud at some of the questions. True or false: I believe that meeting people with different backgrounds can improve me as a person. Well, that all depends. Is “people” some Arab waving a gun and trying to crash my airline? I sometimes get angered by repetitive or monotonous situations. You mean, like answering these questions? He asks the recruiting doctor whether we are, in fact, preparing to take the Saddamizer out at last, finish the job, after ten years. But Mr. Ramrod is unbelievably uptight. I couldn’t say, sir. Just answer the questions, sir. Apparently we’re dealing with some heavily classified dope.

Karbon Karin expresses her own opinions on the way home, opinions suspiciously close to his own sister’s. Family is our country kind of noise. Mark forgets about the whole thing until a week later, when he gets a letter from NEARNG, with the little Patriot head logo in the circle of stars on it. Basically: don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Then he whiffs a third time. Pseudo Sib lets slip that the checks he’s been getting from Infernal may dry up after the accident’s anniversary. You can tell she’s sorry as soon as she says it, like he’s not supposed to hear, which of course gets his attention. There’s absolutely no reason why she should be so freaked. So, needless to say, her whole little secretive song and dance freaks him something serious.

He calls the plant. After about a million minutes on hold listening to Surprising Beef Processing Facts while being bounced from one clueless personnel officer to another, they put him through to somebody who seems to know all about his situation. Not a good sign, and it makes him think that Rupp or Cain has gotten to them first and given them the other side of the story, the side that everyone is keeping from Mark. The personnel officer tells him that he’ll need a whole new round of tests — clean bill of health from Good Samaritan — before they’ll consider rehiring him. What the hell do they mean, re-hire? He already works there. The desk man says something rude, and Mark counters with something about: Do you want me to tell the feds about the thirty Hispanic illegals you have working the cutting floors? An idle threat, really, since Mark and the feds aren’t on great terms at the moment. The guy hangs up on him, so there’s nothing to do but take the hospital tests. He’s sure he can do pretty well on these, having had his fair share of practice. But the hospital is pissed at him, apparently, for quitting Thera-Play, and they give him some truly bizarre questions, which he bombs out on again.