“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to kill myself.”
“Right. Now what do you think a potential suicide would say?”
Julian tried not to raise his voice. “Do you hear yourself? You mean that if I said, ‘Sure, I think I’ll do it,’ you’d pronounce me safe and let me go home?”
The psychiatrist smiled. “Okay, that’s not a bad response. But you have to see that it could be a calculated one, from a potential suicide.”
“Sure. Anything I say can be evidence of mental illness. If you’re convinced that I’m ill.”
He studied his own palm. “Look, Julian. You know I’ve jacked into the cube that recorded how you felt when you killed that boy. In a way, I’ve been there. I’ve been you.”
“I know that.”
He put Julian’s file away and brought out a small white jar of pills. “This is a mild antidepressant. Let’s try it for two weeks, a pill after breakfast and one after dinner. It won’t affect your intellectual abilities.”
“All right.”
“And I want to see you”—he checked a desk calendar—“at ten o’clock on July ninth. I want to jack with you and check your responses to this and that. It’ll be a two-way jack; I won’t hold anything back from you.”
“And if you think I’m nuts, you’ll send me to the memory eraser.”
“We’ll see. That’s all I can say.”
Julian nodded and took the white jar and left.
* * *
i would lie to Amelia; say it was just a routine checkup. I took one of the pills and it did help me fall asleep, and sleep without dreams. So maybe I would keep taking them if they didn’t affect my mental acuity.
In the morning I felt less sad and conducted an internal debate regarding suicide, perhaps in preparation for Dr. Jefferson’s invasion. I couldn’t lie to him, jacked. But maybe I could bring about a temporary “cure.” It was easy to argue against the act—not only the effect on Amelia and my parents and friends, but also the ultimate triviality of the gesture, as far as the army was concerned. They would just find somebody else my size and send the soldierboy out with a fresh brain. If I did succeed in killing a few generals with my exit, they would likewise just promote some colonels. There’s never any shortage of meat.
But I wondered whether all the logical arguments against suicide would do anything to conceal the depth of my own resolution. Even before the boy’s death I knew I was only going to live as long as I had Amelia. We’ve stayed together longer than most people do.
And when I came home, she was gone. Gone to see a friend in Washington, the note said. I called the base and found I could fly out to Edwards as a supernumerary if I could get my butt down there in ninety minutes. I was in the air over the Mississippi before I realized I hadn’t called the lab to arrange for someone else to monitor the scheduled runs. Was that the pills? Probably not. But there was no way to call from a military plane, so it was ten o’clock Texas time before I was able to phone the lab. Jean Gordie had covered for me, but that was pure luck; she’d come in to grade some papers, seen I wasn’t in, and checked the run schedule. She was more than slightly pissed off, since I couldn’t offer a really convincing excuse. Look, I had to take the first flight to Washington to decide whether or not to kill myself.
From Edwards I took the monorail into old Union Station. There was a map machine on the car that showed me I’d be only a couple of miles from her friend’s address. I was tempted to walk over and knock on the door, but decided to be civilized and call. A man answered.
“I have to talk to Blaze.”
He looked at the screen for a moment. “Oh, you’re Julian. Just a moment.”
Amelia came on, looking quizzical. “Julian? I said I’d be home tomorrow.”
“We have to talk. I’m here in Washington.”
“Come on over then. I was just about to fix lunch.”
How domestic. “I’d rather . . . we have to talk alone.”
She looked offscreen and then back, worried. “Where are you?”
“Union Station.”
The man said something I couldn’t quite overhear. “Pete says there’s a bar on the second floor called the Roundhouse. I can meet you there in thirty or forty minutes.”