Devil You Don't Know

  Dean Ings

  Maffei, brushing at his cheap suit, produced his papers with confidence. They were excellent forgeries. "I dunno the patient from whozis," he said. "Will she need sedation? A jacket?"

  The receptionist was your standard sanitarium model: stunning, crisp, jargony, her uniform a statement of medical competence as spurious as Maffei's authorization. "Dina Valerie Clarke," she read. "I did an ops transfer profile on her. If I may see your ID, sir?" It was not really a question.

  Both driver's license and psychiatric aide registration were genuine enough. Neither card hinted that this stocky aide, Christopher Maffei, was also M.D., Ph.D., and in his present capacity, SPY. To stay in character he rephrased his question while surrendering the cards. "Will the kid need restraint?"

  "It doesn't say," she murmured, returning his ID. "We can sign her over to you after your exit interview."

  "My interview? Lady, I'm just the taxi to some clinic in Nebraska."

  "It's only a formality," she purred, fashioning him a brief bunny-nose full of sexual conspiracy.

  Maffei avoided laughing. In three years of residency and five of research, he had observed enough morons to be a passable simulacrum on his own. "I never done that before," he lied. He had listened to these sales pitches only too often. "Can I use your phone? Dr. Carmichael can talk to you from Springfield . . .."

  "Sign here, please, and here, and there," in ten-below tones.

  Maffei smiled and signed. You're beaten by invincible ignorance, he thought. Maybe we should start a club. He straightened and looked around, realizing that the receptionist had buzzed for Val Clarke.

  She came toward him slowly at first down the long hallway, made smaller by her outsized luggage. It was very expensive luggage, the guilt-assuaging hardware a wealthy parent would provide for an unwanted child. Chris still chafed at what it had cost him.

  As Val neared him, he saw that her hair had been shorn almost to the scalp. Lice, probably. Her height was scarcely that of a ten-year-old. The frail angular body, still too large for her head, was yet too small for its oddly misaligned and bovine eyes. She wore the same white ankle socks, slippers, and trousers she'd had when entering Nodaway Retreat two weeks before. Her smiling gaze swept up to his, then past, and she broke into a stumbling skip toward the entrance.

  "You must be Valerie Clarke," Maffei said with forced gaiety, catching gently at her pipestem wrist.

  The vacant smile foundered. A silent nod. No more skipping; the girl stood awaiting whatever this vast authoritarian world might dictate.

  "Let's get you to an ice-cream cone," Maffei said, letting her bring the suitcases. He maintained the running patter while strapping her into his electric fourseater and stowing the luggage behind. "I bet you'd like a Frostylite, hm?"

  Tucking his slight paunch under the steering wheel, Maffei whirred them toward the automatic gate. It slid aside, then back, as they emerged onto the highway. Val Clarke slumped in her seat with a lip-blubbering parody of released tension. "Oh, come on, Val, it can't be that bad," Maffei smirked.

  "Not for you it can't. It isn't your screwed-up implants, pal, you try running an inside surveillance with an intermittent transceiver short sometime and I'll patronize you."

  He glanced from the road to her, reached out to her tiny skull and gently stroked behind her ear. "No swelling. If it were a mastoid infection you'd know it for sure."

  The girl shrugged upward in her seat, barely able to see over the battery cowl ahead. "I'll survive. Well, what do you make of Nodaway Retreat?"

  "Typical ultraconservative ripoff," he mused, barely audible over the hum and tire noise. "From your reports I make it one staff member per twenty patients, minimal life-support for everyone concerned except for the up-front crew; one honest-to-God R.N. and a pair of general practitioners who look in once a month from Des Moines to trade sedatives for fees."

  "I've seen worse. Remember Ohio?"

  Maffei nodded sagely. Val Clarke had scarcely been admitted when her transmissions began to read like a bedlam litany. Rickettsia and plain starvation, a "bad ward" where three children of normal intelligence were chained, and a nightly victimization of youthful male patients by the staff. "That's what my survey is about; to change all that. It was the worst I ever saw," he admitted.

  Val flicked him a quick glance, but Maffei intended no sarcasm. He had seen two staff members wearing masks of outraged innocence, and strap marks on Val's thin calves after the general warrant had been served— really more raid than service, brought on by Val's moment-to-moment account via her minuscule implanted transceiver. In the space of thirty-six hours Val had seen two compound femur fractures on a girl who had jumped from her high window, and a gang assault of one profoundly retarded child by besmocked thugs. The worst Maffei had seen in Ohio was not precisely the worst Val Clarke had seen; but then, Maffei bore no stigmata of retardation.

  It was Valerie Clarke's tragedy to have been born with an autosomal dominant inheritance which was instantly diagnosed as mental retardation. The astonishing width between her eyes had a name of its own: hyper-telorism. It explained nothing except that Val's great brown orbs were set a trifle too far apart to please a society which, paradoxically, distrusted eyes set too close together. Her lustrous roan hair normally covered a skull which, from its small size, also had a special stigma with label attached: microcephaly. Her ears flared a bit, particularly noticeable now that her hair was shorn, and at twenty-two, Val Clarke passed for twelve even without her training bra.

  Any competent specialist could adjust to the fact that Val's intelligence was normal, her motivation superb—a recipe for "genius." The unadjusted expectation was something else again. Val, an early victim of maldiagnosis and parental rejection, knew the signs of a good sanitarium from the inside because she had experienced enough bad ones in childhood.

  When Val was thirteen, a supicious young intern named Chris Maffei taught her basic algebra and the scatology of three foreign languages to prove his point. After that, her schooling was more formal if not exactly conventional. Any girl who patterned herself after Chris Maffei could junk the word "convention"

  at the outset, with the obvious exception of medical conventions, where Chris read scholarly papers and pumped for any grant money he could locate.

  Now Chris was a year into a fat HEW grant to study the adequacy of private mental homes; and if he had not actually suggested that Val volunteer for commitment in these places, he had not omitted oblique hints at the notion. Nor turned down her offer. It was a symbiosis : Maffei had his spy, Val her spymaster.

  "Hey," she said. He looked around and briefly laid his hand over the one she offered palm up. "Thanks for reeling me in so fast."

  One corner of his mouth went up. "Had to. That short was interfering with my favorite live soap opera."

  "Schmuck," she said tenderly—Maffei had never entirely managed to socialize her language. "Speaking of soap, you could introduce Nodaway to the idea."

  "I'll note it when I debrief you after supper, I was in the army with a G.P. near here. If I know Farr, he'll do an Onward Christian Soldiers when I send him my notes on the place."

  "Fine. And by the way, good guru, you just passed a Frostylite. You p'omised," she added, expertly faking a vocal retardation slur.

  "First things first. We need a battery recharge to make Joplin tonight."

  Startled: "Why Joplin, of all places? That's south."

  "Because I have you scheduled for a scrub-up and transceiver check there tonight. And because after that we're going into the Deep South."

  She was silent but he lip-read her response: Oh, my God.

  After the Joplin stop, Maffei's little sedan hummed on barrel tires toward Mississippi. Val failed to concentrate on Durrell's Clea. The source of her unease was not the September heat, but the fact that she had slept at the clinic in Joplin. Chris lavished care on her as he would on a rare and exorbitant device, but she did not delude herself on the point. Val needed a secure relationship and physical human warmth. Very well then: he shared motel rooms with her. She also needed passionate attention, as anyone might when in constant proximity to a beloved. Chris dutifully pleased her when, on rare occasions, she was insistent enough. The one thing Valerie Clarke could not elicit from Chris was his desire.

  Durrell's velvet prose wasn't helping Val's mood. She studied her reflection in the car window. Ms.

  Universe I'm not. If I expect this sex object of mine—okay, twenty pounds overweight and why shouldn't he be? — to come fawning over my Dumbo ears I'm worse than microcephalic, I'm scatocephalic. She traced a tentative forefinger along the pink smoothness of one ear. At least she had perfect skin. "Chris, why do you put me out before making the transceiver check if you don't make an incision?"

  He yawned before answering, flexing strong hands on the wheel. "We do, Val. Those antennae are so fine I can run 'em just inside the dermis, on the fossa of your helix—uh, inside your ear rim. A microscalpel does it; almost no bleeding and it heals quick as boo. But I have to keep you abso-bloody-lutely still. Same for the X-ray check on your implant circuitry. It's a whole lot bigger in area than it might be, since I wanted it spread out for easy maintenance."

  "You didn't cut down to the mastoid?"

  "No need to fix the resonator; I just incised a tiny slit to your circuit chip. It was a hairline circuit fracture, just right for laser repair. Total heat doesn't amount to a paramecium's hotfoot, using the miniaturized Stanfo

rd rig. See, you don't have to hurt the one you love." He grinned.

  "I'll remind you of that after supper." He clucked his tongue in mock dismay, still grinning. Message clear, will comply, out. She returned to Durrell as the kilometers hummed away.

  The supper hush puppies in Vicksburg were a pleasant surprise, not by being in the least digestible but in their lingering aftertaste. When she and Chris vented simultaneous belches later, her fit of giggles might have caused a lesser man to make war, not love. All credit to the Maffei mystique, she decided still later, as she lazed on the motel bed and watched Chris attack his toenails. "You never told me how you got those mangled toes," she murmured. "We beautiful people are repelled by physical deformity, y'know."

  He looked up, preoccupied, then grinned. "Same way I got this," he rubbed his finger over the broken nose that gave him a faintly raffish look. "Soccer. Did I ever tell you I once played against Pele?"

  She fetched him a wondering smile. "Wow; no."

  Deadpan: "Well, I never did—but Lord knows what I may've told you." Dodging the flung pillow, he went on. "You'd best save your energy for tomorrow, Val. We'll be delivering you up to the graces of Gulfview Home around noon."

  Retrieving the pillow, she placed it in her lap and hugged it, eyes half closed, dreaming awake. "A view of the gulf will be nice. I hope this is a clean place—and please, God, air conditioned."

  "Don't count on it. It's forty kilometers from the gulf; how's that for an auspicious start?"

  She shrugged. "It figures. But why this place? We're kind of off our itinerary." She wriggled beneath the covers, hiding her thin limbs.

  He put away his clippers and reached for the light-plate, waving it to a diffuse nightlight. "A tip from HealthEdWelfare," he said, swinging under the coverlet. After a long pause he added, "You'll have a contact inside: a Ms. May Endicott. She won't know about you, but she knows something, I guess. And an insider's tip is a good place to start. Better the devil you know, and all that. I'll find out what sent her running to HEW after we commit you. Most likely a snoopy old dowager with fallen arches and clammy handshake." He grew silent, realizing that Val's response was the softest of snores. Chris Maffei fell asleep wondering if Gulfview and old Ms. Endicott would fit his preconceptions.

  Gulfview Home squatted precisely in the center of its perimeter fencing; held its white clapboard siding aloof like skirts from the marauding grass. Viewing the grounds, it was hard to imagine much organized recreation for patients. Chris identified himself to the automatic gate, then rolled his window back up to escape the muggy air. In silence, they pulled up before the one-story structure.

  Their expectations followed earlier studies which, since the 1950s, had always shown higher per capita need for institutional treatment in the Southeast—and lower per capita effectiveness. The region was catching up; but, in 1989, still lagged. To Chris, it was a problem in analysis. To Val, stumbling up Gulfview's steps with her luggage, the first problem was a dread akin to stage fright. It always was; and as always, she hid her fear from Chris. The air conditioning was a relief, but a new fear sidled up to Val when they found the receptionist. She was, and wasn't, old Ms. Endicott.

  Chris saw that Ol' Miz Endicott had very high arches for such small feet. He stood watching as May Endicott ushered a vacant-eyed Val Clarke from the reception room. A waist he could span with two hands, but la Endicott hourglassed to very nice extremes. Rather like a pneumatic gazelle by Disney, he judged.

  Endicott boasted thick brown curls. "Dye job" was Val's whispered aside as she stumbled, entirely in character, with her luggage. But Chris was not listening.

  The Endicott woman returned in moments, to help Chris complete papers placing Val Clarke squarely in the hands of a private jail—or asylum, rehab home, whatever it might prove to be. "We were expectin'

  you, but the senior staff are busy at the moment. The child's history seems well documented," she remarked in a soft patrician drawl. "Do you think she might be a trainable?"

  Chris hesitated. A trainable might have free run of the place, or might be closely watched if it were more of a prison. Suddenly he remembered that May Endicott was, after all, a potential ally. "Depends on how good you are, I guess," he said. "I'm told you're concerned for the patients."

  "We try—I think," she said as if genuinely pondering.

  "I mean you, personally."

  A flicker of subtlety in the dark sloe eyes. "I can't imagine who ..."

  "Just a friend in the discipline," he said easily. "Henry E. Wilks. How's that for a set of initials?"

  "I don't ..." she began, and then she did. "Well," she said in a throaty whisper. It set Maffei atingle. "And what are all the Wilkses doin' these days?"

  "Waiting to hear from me," he replied, enjoying the respect in her oval face. "And I'm waiting to hear from you. I don't need to meet the staff just yet."

  "I'm in the book, M. A. Endicott, in town. Perhaps this evenin'?"

  He nodded and continued with the forms, pointedly sliding a blank set into his disreputable attache case.

  As he rose, he noted that May Endicott's hands trembled. Anticipation? Fear?

  Chris made a leisurely trip into town, bought a sandwich, then found the Endicott address. It was after five P.M. when he parked. He began to study the commitment forms—the fine print could sometimes raise hackles—and remembered the barbecue sandwich. During his third bite he remembered Val Clarke and fumbled for his comm unit. Although the major amplification and tight-band scrambling modes were built into the car, they also enhanced the signal to and from his pocket unit. Without the car, his range was perhaps two kilometers. With it, over thirty. Val, behind high fencing and well beyond the town limits, should be within range. But you never knew ...

  He thumbed the voice actuator. The cassette, as usual, was recording all transmission into the system.

  "Val? How'sa girl? I haven't heard a peep." Nor thought about one, he told himself. He waited for a moment and was about to try again.

  "i gave up on you around suppertime," the speaker replied. Implant devices did not yet rival conventional transmission. Val could receive a voice with fair fidelity but could only transmit by subvocalizing. With lips parted slightly she could transmit almost silently and as well as, say, a tyro ventriloquist; but bone conduction and minute power sources had their limitations. Val Clarke's nuances of intonation and verbal style were sacrificed for the shorthand speech of covert work. In short, she sounded very like a machine.

  Maffei would have denied that he preferred it that way.

  "I was doing errands. And it's only getting to be suppertime now," he objected.

  "not when you're running a money mill," Val replied. "it's on cassette, these people use patients to serve meals—and to cook 'em, from the taste of it. yuchhh."

  "If you're bitching about the food, you can't have much worse on your mind."

  "yeah? try thinking of me in here on an army cot, and you outside with miz handy cot."

  "Endicott," he chuckled at the mike. "I'll review the tape later. What else is new?"

  "i'm in isolation 'til they figure how to use me, i think, two males, a female, all young and retarded, doing chores."

  He thought for a moment. "Good therapy for 'em, unless the chores include lobotomies and group gropes. Who's in charge?"

  "you got me, chris. and i wish you did, this doesn't smell right, quiet as a tomb in my room with very soft wallpaper and no view at all. when i say isolated, i mean locked away, but the kids gave me a toy."

  "Something educational?"

  "a rubber duckie, swear to god. well, they're nice kids."

  "Look; I have some reading to do, and a session with the Endicott lady so we can plan. I'll check with you later. Don't eat your duckie."

  "same to you, fella," in monotonic reply. He smirked at the speaker, but no answer seemed very useful.

  He pocketed the comm unit and returned to his sandwich and forms.

  Although commitment forms varied, they generally claimed almost total control over their wards. Chris Maffei had doctored Val's records to assure that she would not be subjected to insulin shock treatment, surgery, or unusual medication. The forms implied that Gulfview could damned well amputate her head if they chose, but there were safeguards against such treatment. For one thing, Val could transmit her plight and get help from Maffei. Or, if it came to that, she could simply admit her charade. In sixteen previous investigations, she had never blown her cover.

 

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