Sphere (Page 97)

"Yes, you have," Beth said. "You just don’t remember."

He felt battered, repeatedly punched and battered. He couldn’t seem to get his balance, and the blows kept coming.

"Just the way you don’t remember that I asked you to look up the balloon codes," Beth was saying in her calm voice. "Or the way Barnes asked you about the helium concentrations in E Cyl."

He thought, what helium concentrations in E Cyl? When did Barnes ask me about that?

"There’s a lot you don’t remember, Norman."

Norman said, "When did I go to the sphere?"

"Before the first squid attack. After Harry came out."

"I was asleep! I was sleeping in my bunk!"

"No, Norman. You weren’t. Because Fletcher came to get you and you were gone. We couldn’t find you for about two hours, and then you showed up, yawning."

"I don’t believe you," he said.

"I know you don’t. You prefer to make it somebody else’s problem. And you’re clever. You’re skilled at psychological manipulation, Norman. Remember those tests you conducted? Putting unsuspecting people up in an airplane, then telling them the pilot had a heart attack? Scaring them half to death? That’s pretty ruthless manipulation, Norman.

"And down here in the habitat, when all these things started happening, you needed a monster. So you made Harry the monster. But Harry wasn’t the monster, Norman. You are the monster. That’s why your appearance changed, why you became ugly. Because you’re the monster."

"But the message. It said ‘My name is Harry.’ "

"Yes, it did. And as you yourself pointed out, the person causing it was afraid that the real name would come out on the screen."

"Harry," Norman said. "The name was Harry."

"And what’s your name?"

"Norman Johnson."

"Your full name."

He paused. Somehow his mouth wasn’t working. His brain was blank.

"I’ll tell you what it is," Beth said. "I looked it up. It’s Norman Harrison Johnson."

No, he thought. No, no, no. She can’t be right.

"It’s hard to accept," Beth was saying in her slow, patient, almost hypnotic voice. "I understand that. But if you think about it, you’ll realize you wanted it to come to this. You wanted me to figure it out, Norman. Why, just a few minutes ago, you even told me about The Wizard of Oz, didn’t you? You helped me along when I wasn’t getting the point – or at least your unconscious did. Are you still calm?"

"Of course I’m calm."

"Good. Stay calm, Norman. Let’s consider this logically. Will you cooperate with me?"

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to put you under, Norman. Like Harry."

He shook his head.

"It’s only for a few hours, Norman," she said, and then she seemed to decide; she moved swiftly toward him, and he saw the syringe in her hand, the glint of the needle, and he twisted away. The needle plunged into the blanket, and he threw it off and ran for the stairs.

"Norman! Come back here!"

He was climbing the stairs. He saw Beth running forward with the needle. He kicked with his foot, got upstairs into her lab, and slammed the hatch down on her.

"Norman!"

She pounded on the hatch. Norman stood on it, knowing that she could never lift his weight. Beth continued to pound.

"Norman Johnson, you open that hatch this minute!"

"No, Beth, I’m sorry."

He paused. What could she do? Nothing, he thought. He was safe here. She couldn’t get to him up here, she couldn’t do anything to him as long as he remained here.

Then he saw the metal pivot move in the center of the hatch between his feet. On the other side of the hatch, Beth was spinning the wheel.

Locking him in.

0600 HOURS

The only lights in the laboratory shone on the bench, next to a row of neatly bottled specimens: squid, shrimps, giant squid eggs. He touched the bottles absently. He turned on the laboratory monitor and punched buttons until he saw Beth, downstairs, on the video. Beth was working at the main D Cyl console. To one side, he saw Harry, still lying unconscious.

"Norman, can you hear me?"

He said aloud, "Yes, Beth. I hear you."

"Norman, you are acting irresponsibly. You are a menace to this entire expedition."

Was that true? he wondered. He didn’t think he was a menace to the expedition. It didn’t feel true to him. But how often in his life had he confronted patients who refused to acknowledge what was happening in their lives? Even trivial examples – a man, another professor at the university, who was terrified of elevators but who steadfastly insisted he always took the stairs because it was good exercise. The man would climb fifteen-story buildings; he would decline appointments in taller buildings; he arranged his entire life to accommodate a problem he would not admit he had. The problem remained concealed from him until he finally had a heart attack. Or the woman who was exhausted from years of caring for her disturbed daughter; she gave her daughter a bottle of sleeping pills because she said the girl needed a rest; the girl committed suicide. Or the novice sailor who cheerfully packed his family off on a sailing excursion to Catalina in a gale, nearly killing them all.

Dozens of examples came to mind. It was a psychological truism, this blindness about self. Did he imagine that he was immune? Three years ago, there had been a minor scandal when one of the assistant professors in the Psychology Department had committed suicide, sticking a gun in his mouth over the Labor Day weekend. There had been headlines for that one: "PSYCH PROF KILLS SELF, Colleagues Express Surprise, Say Deceased Was ‘Always Happy.’ "