Why did I use that axe? I don't know. Maybe because my father kept it around from the time when we had a house out in the country. Do you know the town of Dobbs Ferry, New York? That's where it was. Those years out there were the best I ever had in my life. My sister and I were young and we liked each other very much.
I don't know why. . . . Oh, this is stupid, isn't it? I started out trying to explain to you about the axe and now where am I? Stupid. Really stupid! Dr. Lavery asks me all the time if I'm sorry I did it. Sure, I'm sorry, but on the other hand I very seriously feel that they died at just the right time – just like those lucky samurai warriors in _Shogun_. That's why I did them a kind of special favor. To me, that takes away a lot of the wrong.
Did this letter bore you?
Yours very sincerely,
Alvin Williams
«Dr. Lavery?»
«Yes, Mrs. James?»
«Dr. Lavery, did you see the last letter Alvin Williams wrote to me?»
«Yes, I did. I'm sorry I didn't get to you before it did. I had it down on my calendar to call; it was wrong of me not to do it.»
«But why didn't you intercept it, Doctor? Why did you let it go through?»
«Because Alvin is very protective of his correspondence with you, Mrs. James. He reads me all of your letters and is always very worried if you don't answer his questions.»
«Well, I'm very sorry, Doctor, but I don't want to do this anymore. This last letter scared the hell out of me and I don't want that to happen again. I've been shaking all morning. Would you please tell him to stop writing to me? Because even if he keeps it up, I'm not going to write back to him. I don't ever want to see a letter like that again.»
«I fully understand, Mrs. James. I'll tell Alvin this afternoon.»
There was a pause and then I asked the inevitable: «What will it do to him if I stop writing, Doctor?»
«Naturally it will upset him. Mrs. James; you're one of his only links to the outside world now. If that is suddenly broken, he'll be scared and angry. That's understandable. He won't know what he's done wrong, yet he's being punished for it by someone he cares so much about.»
«Oh great! You make me feel guilty.»
«Guilt is relative, Mrs. James. I understand why you're upset, but there's really no reason to feel guilty. We have a variety of therapies available to us that we can use in cases like Alvin's. The correspondence with you was simply one part of one of them.»
«What do you mean?»
«We've been trying to reconnect him with the real world, Mrs. James. We give him books to read, encourage him to plan for a future, let him have an outside friend he can write to in as normal a way as possible. Now, if that plan worked and he responded, first we would try to bring him back to our world, as it were. Once there, we'd hopefully be able to show him what he'd done wrong on a real-life scale. Right now, the great problem we're having with Alvin is that he honestly doesn't yet understand the enormity of his act. If we were successful, then we would begin to try reintegrating him into the system he so violently broke out of through his . . . aggressive acts.»
I bit the inside of my lips while he spoke.
«All of it makes sense, Doctor, and obviously you know best about these things, but this letter scared the hell out of me, you know? All of his letters do. Each time one arrives and I realize who it's from, it sets me back at least a couple of days. It makes me jumpy and . . . grumpy. . . . Do you know what I mean? Do you understand?»
«I understand completely, Mrs. James. You have every right to ask that they stop.»
«Well, is he getting any better? Have you seen any signs of progress?»
«That's another relative term. Off the record, he's still very much the same disturbed young man he was when he came in, but we're certainly working on it.»
«Doctor, am I being a big rat by doing this?»
Luckily he laughed, which made me feel a little better. «Absolutely not! In fact, your wanting to stop the correspondence might be an effective device for us. Alvin will certainly be upset and he'll want to know your reasons for doing it. But perhaps with some hedging here and there, what I tell him will make him better understand the fact that if he really _does_ want to become a member of society again, he'll have to come to grips with the fact that most people are made very nervous when they come into contact with someone who's done what he has. Yes, I think it might be the right time to talk with him about this. Your act will be just the right thing to trigger the discussion. You've given me another angle, Mrs. James. I hadn't thought of using it before, but it makes perfect sense to me now.»
«This may be a dumb question, Doctor, but what _is_ going to happen to him?»
«It's not a dumb question at all. Sooner or later he will realize what he has done and why he did it. Or else he'll stay in the Institute for the rest of his life, confused and resentful of the fact that we're holding him here against his will. It could go either way.»
«He _really_ doesn't understand what he's done?»
«From all indications so far? No. He's recently been going through a phase that is very common for patients like Alvin: he's convinced he's some kind of god! He feels he took those lives because they belonged to him in the first place. Do you remember his references to the novel _Shogun_? Well, Alvin envisions himself as some kind of supreme shogun these days. He sees himself as the most powerful, most fearsome, wisest leader around. That's why he liked that book so much: he turned its plot and ideas around this way and that, and ended up making them fit his own patterns. He's extremely good at doing that. Do you know what he's been doing the last couple of days? Studying Japanese!
«Not long ago, you'll remember, he wanted to be a veterinarian. When you think about it, it's very much the same thing. The only difference is, a vet controls life and death in animals. God, _or_ a Japanese shogun, controls those things in human beings.»
I ended my pen-pal days with Alvin Williams, but that didn't stop me from thinking about him. At funny times of the day, pictures and questions would run across my mind; what kind of clothes did he wear in the Institute? What did _he_ dream about at night? Did he listen to music? Did he ever finish reading _Shogun_?
Since I hadn't seen him for so long, his plain unmemorable face and ways slipped quickly out of my memory's clear focus. But I remembered the way he described those storm clouds that day – as if they were having a fistfight. I remembered his dirty eyeglasses and the way he walked slowly down the stairs with Loopy, their little old dog who couldn't move too fast. I don't know how to say this, but there was a part of me that wished Alvin well, despite what I had done to push him away from my life.
«Hello, Cullen? This is Weber.»
«Weber. How _are_ you?»
«Fine! Listen, I'm on my way to California; I'm at the airport right now. I've been trying to get you for a couple of days. Cullen, I've got to tell you – the dreams? The Rondua dreams? They're better. You can't believe what a change there's been. Ever since we went out, they've become the most amazing things. It's beautiful!»
«What do you mean, Weber? Are you still having dreams there? Are you still having those nightmares?»
«Not at all. Hey, I _look forward to_ going to sleep at night! Yeah, I'm still in Rondua, but it's become . . . something entirely different. There's no dark stuff anymore, only wonders. Only beautiful, amazing things. I love it. It's like the old days, when we used to do drugs? But the good drugs, the pure ones that flew you right off the earth? I can't tell you how many new ideas it's given me for my new movie. It's all a mishmash right now, but I know it's going to be incredible when I get everything all sorted out. What was that word you used? The magic one?»