"Norman, I don't need to be psychoanalyzed right now."
"Just tell me your name."
"Harry Adams, for Christ's sake. What's the matter with you? Oh, my head."
"You didn't remember before," Norman said. "When we found you."
"When you found me?" he asked. He seemed confused again.
Norman nodded. "Do you remember when we found you?"
"It must have been ... outside."
"Outside?"
Harry looked up, suddenly furious, eyes glowing with rage. "Outside the sphere, you goddamn idiot! What do you think I'm talking about?"
"Take it easy, Harry."
Chapter 9
"Your questions are driving me crazy!"
"Okay, okay. Take it easy."
Emotionally labile. Rage and irritability. Norman made more notes.
"Do you have to make so much noise?"
Norman looked up, puzzled.
"Your pen," Harry said. "It sounds like Niagara Falls."
Norman stopped writing. It must be a migraine, or something like migraine. Harry was holding his head in his hands delicately, as if it were made of glass.
"Why can't I have any aspirin, for Christ's sake?"
"We don't want to give you anything for a while, in case you've hurt yourself. We need to know where the pain is."
"The pain, Norman, is in my head. It's in my goddamn head! Now, why won't you give me any aspirin?"
"Barnes said not to."
"Is Barnes still here?"
"We're all still here."
Harry looked up slowly. "But you were supposed to go to the surface."
"I know."
"Why didn't you go?"
"The weather went bad, and they couldn't send the subs."
"Well, you should go. You shouldn't be here, Norman."
Levy arrived with more lemonade. Harry looked at her as he drank.
"You're still here, too?"
"Yes, Dr. Adams."
"How many people are down here, all together?"
Levy said, "There are nine of us, sir."
"Jesus." He passed the glass back. Levy refilled it. "You should all go. You should leave."
"Harry," Norman said. "We can't go."
"You have to go."
Norman sat on the bunk opposite Harry and watched as Harry drank. Harry was demonstrating a rather typical manifestation of shock: the agitation, the irritability, the nervous, manic flow of ideas, the unexplained fears for the safety of others - it was all characteristic of shocked victims of severe accidents, such as major auto crashes or airplane crashes. Given an intense event, the brain struggled to assimilate, to make sense, to reassemble the mental world even as the physical world was shattered around it. The brain went into a kind of overdrive, hastily trying to reassemble things, to get things right, to re-establish equilibrium. Yet it was fundamentally a confused period of wheel-spinning.
You just had to wait it out.
Harry finished the lemonade, handed the glass back.
"More?" Levy asked.
"No, that's good. Headache's better."
Perhaps it was dehydration after all, Norman thought. But why would Harry be dehydrated after three hours in the sphere?
"Harry ... ?"
"Tell me something. Do I look different, Norman?"
"No."
"I look the same to you?"
"Yes. I'd say so."
"Are you sure?" Harry said. He jumped up, went to a mirror mounted on the wall. He peered at his face.
"How do you think you look?" Norman said.
"I don't know. Different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know!" ... He pounded the padded wall next to the mirror. The mirror image vibrated. He turned away, sat down on the bunk again. He sighed. "Just different."
"Harry..."
"What?"
"Do you remember what happened?"
"Of course."
"What happened?"
"I went inside."
He waited, but Harry said nothing further. He just stared at the carpeted floor.
"Do you remember opening the door?" Harry said nothing.
"How did you open the door, Harry?"
Harry looked up at Norman. "You were all supposed to leave. To go back to the surface. You weren't supposed to stay.
"How did you open the door, Harry?"
There was a long silence. "I opened it." He sat up straight, his hands at his sides. He seemed to be remembering, reliving it.
"And then?"
"I went inside."
"And what happened inside?"
"It was beautiful. ..."
"What was beautiful?"
"The foam," Harry said. And then he fell silent again, staring vacantly into space.
"The foam?" Norman prompted.
"The sea. The foam. Beautiful ..."
Was he talking about the lights? Norman wondered. The swirling pattern of lights?
"What was beautiful, Harry?"
"Now, don't kid me," Harry said. "Promise you won't kid me."
"I won't kid you."
"You think I look the same?"
"Yes, I do."
"You don't think I've changed at all?"
"No. Not that I can see. Do you think you've changed?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I - maybe."
"Did something happen in the sphere to change you?"
"You don't understand about the sphere."
"Then explain it to me," Norman said.
"Nothing happened in the sphere."
"You were in the sphere for three hours. ..."