A Scanner Darkly Read online

  As the computer looped through its banks, it projected every conceivable eye color, hair color, shape and type of nose, formation of teeth, configuration of facial bone structure—the entire shroudlike membrane took on whatever physical characteristics were projected at any nanosecond, and then switched to the next. Just to make his scramble suit more effective, S. A. Powers programmed the computer to randomize the sequence of characteristics within each set. And to bring the cost down (the federal people always liked that), he found the source for the material of the membrane in a by-product of a large industrial firm already doing business with Washington.

  In any case, the wearer of a scramble suit was Everyman and in every combination (up to combinations of a million and a half sub-bits) during the course of each hour. Hence, any description of him—or her—was meaningless. Needless to say, S. A. Powers had fed his own personal physiognomic characteristics into the computer units, so that, buried in the frantic permutation of qualities, his own surfaced and combined … on an average, he had calculated, of once each fifty years per suit, served up and reassembled, given enough time per suit. It was his closest claim to immortality.

  “Let’s hear it for the vague blur!” the host said loudly, and there was mass clapping.

  In his scramble suit, Fred, who was also Robert Arctor, groaned and thought: This is terrible.

  Once a month an undercover narcotics agent of the county was assigned at random to speak before bubblehead gatherings such as this. Today was his turn. Looking at his audience, he realized how much he detested straights. They thought this was all great. They were smiling. They were being entertained.

  Maybe at this moment the virtually countless components of his scramble suit had served up S. A. Powers.

  “But to be serious for just a moment,” the host said, “this man here …”He paused, trying to remember.

  “Fred,” Bob Arctor said. S. A. Fred.

  “Fred, yes.” The host, invigorated, resumed, booming in the direction of his audience, “You see, Fred’s voice is like one of those robot computer voices down in San Diego at the bank when you drive in, perfectly toneless and artificial. It leaves in our minds no characteristics, exactly as when he reports to his superiors in the Orange County Drug Abuse, ah, Program.” He paused meaningfully. “You see, there is a dire risk for these police officers because the forces of dope, as we know, have penetrated with amazing skill into the various law-enforcement apparatuses throughout our nation, or may well have, according to most informed experts. So for the protection of these dedicated men, this scramble suit is necessary.”

  Slight applause for the scramble suit. And then expectant gazes at Fred, lurking within its membrane.

  “But in his line of work in the field,” the host added finally, as he moved away from the microphone to make room for Fred, “he, of course, does not wear this. He dresses like you or I, although, of course, in the hippie garb of those of the various subculture groups within which he bores in tireless fashion.”

  He motioned to Fred to rise and approach the microphone. Fred, Robert Arctor, had done this six times before, and he knew what to say and what was in store for him: the assorted degrees and kinds of asshole questions and opaque stupidity. The waste of time for him out of this, plus anger on his part, and a sense of futility each time, and always more so.

  “If you saw me on the street,” he said into the microphone, after the applause had died out, “you’d say, There goes a weirdo freak doper.’ And you’d feel aversion and walk away.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t look like you,” he said. “I can’t afford to. My life depends on it.” Actually, he did not look that different from them. And anyhow, he would have worn what he wore daily anyhow, job or not, life or not. He liked what he wore. But what he was saying had, by and large, been written by others and put before him to memorize. He could depart some, but they all had a standard format they used. Introduced a couple of years ago by a gung-ho division chief, it had by now become writ.

  He waited while that sank in.

  “I am not going to tell you first,” he said, “what I am attempting to do as an undercover officer engaged in tracking down dealers and most of all the source of their illegal drugs in the streets of our cities and corridors of our schools, here in Orange County. I am going to tell you”—he paused, as they had trained him to do in PR class at the academy— “what I am afraid of,” he finished.

  That gaffed them; they had become all eyes.

  “What I fear,” he said, “night and day, is that our children, your children and my children …” Again he paused. “I have two,” he said. Then, extra quietly, “Little ones, very little.” And then he raised his voice emphatically. “But not too little to be addicted, calculatedly addicted, for profit, by those who would destroy this society.” Another pause. “We do not know as yet,” he continued presently, more calmly, “specifically who these men—or rather animals—are who prey on our young, as if in a wild jungle abroad, as in some foreign country, not ours. The identity of the purveyors of the poisons concocted of brain-destructive filth shot daily, orally taken daily, smoked daily by several million men and women—or rather, that were once men and women— is gradually being unraveled. But finally we will, before God, know for sure.”

  A voice from the audience: “Sock it to ‘em!”

  Another voice, equally enthusiastic: “Get the commies!”

  Applause and reprise severally.

  Robert Arctor halted. Stared at them, at the straights in their fat suits, their fat ties, their fat shoes, and he thought, Substance D can’t destroy their brains; they have none.

  “Tell it like it is,” a slightly less emphatic voice called up, a woman’s voice. Searching, Arctor made out a middle-aged lady, not so fat, her hands clasped anxiously.

  “Each day,” Fred, Robert Arctor, whatever, said, “this disease takes its toll of us. By the end of each passing day the flow of profits—and where they go we—” He broke off. For the life of him he could not dredge up the rest of the sentence, even though he had repeated it a million times, both in class and at previous lectures.

  All in the large room had fallen silent.

  “Well,” he said, “it isn’t the profits anyhow. It’s something else. What you see happen.”

  They didn’t notice any difference, he noticed, even though he had dropped the prepared speech and was wandering on, by himself, without help from the PR boys back at the Orange County Civic Center. What difference anyhow? he thought. So what? What, really, do they know or care? The straights, he thought, live in their fortified huge apartment complexes guarded by their guards, ready to open fire on any and every doper who scales the wall with an empty pillow-case to rip off their piano and electric clock and razor and stereo that they haven’t paid for anyhow, so he can get his fix, get the shit that if he doesn’t he maybe dies, outright flatout dies, of the pain and shock of withdrawal. But, he thought, when you’re living inside looking safely out, and your wall is electrified and your guard is armed, why think about that?

  “If you were a diabetic,” he said, “and you didn’t have money for a hit of insulin, would you steal to get the money? Or just die?”

  Silence.

  In the headphone of his scramble suit a tinny voice said, “I think you’d better go back to the prepared text, Fred. I really do advise it.”

  Into his throat mike, Fred, Robert Arctor, whatever, said, “I forget it.” Only his superior at Orange County GHQ, which was not Mr. F., that is to say, Hank, could hear this. This was an anonymous superior, assigned to him only for this occasion.

  “Riiiight,” the official tinny prompter said in his earphone. “I’ll read it to you. Repeat it after me, but try to get it to sound casual.” Slight hesitation, riffling of pages. “Let’s see … ‘Each day the profits flow—where they go we—’ That’s about where you stopped.”

  “I’ve got a block against this stuff,” Arctor said.

  “ ‘—w
ill soon determine,’ “ his official prompter said, unheeding, “ ‘and then retribution will swiftly follow. And at that moment I would not for the life of me be in their shoes.’ “

  “Do you know why I’ve got a block against this stuff?” Arctor said. “Because this is what gets people on dope.” He thought, This is why you lurch off and become a doper, this sort of stuff. This is why you give up and leave. In disgust.

  But then he looked once more out at his audience and realized that for them this was not so. This was the only way they could be reached. He was talking to nitwits. Mental simps. It had to be put in the same way it had been put in first grade: A is for Apple and the Apple is Round.

  “D,” he said aloud to his audience, “is for Substance D. Which is for Dumbness and Despair and Desertion, the desertion of your friends from you, you from them, everyone from everyone, isolation and loneliness and hating and suspecting each other. D,” he said then, “is finally Death. Slow Death, we—” He halted. “We, the dopers,” he said, “call it.” His voice rasped and faltered. “As you probably know. Slow Death. From the head on down. Well, that’s it.” He walked back to his chair and reseated himself. In silence.

  “You blew it,” his superior the prompter said. “See me in my office when you get back. Room 430.”

  “Yes,” Arctor said. “I blew it.”

  They were looking at him as if he had pissed on the stage before their eyes. Although he was not sure just why.

  Striding to the mike, the Lions Club host said, “Fred asked me in advance of this lecture to make it primarily a question-and-answer forum, with only a short introductory statement by him. I forgot to mention that. All right”—he raised his right hand—”who first, people?”

  Arctor suddenly got to his feet again, clumsily.

  “It would appear that Fred has something more to add,” the host said, beckoning to him.

  Going slowly back over to the microphone, Arctor said, his head down, speaking with precision, “Just this. Don’t kick their asses after they’re on it. The users, the addicts. Half of them, most of them, especially the girls, didn’t know what they were getting on or even that they were getting on anything at all. Just try to keep them, the people, any of us, from getting on it.” He looked up briefly. “See, they dissolve some reds in a glass of wine, the pushers, I mean—they give the booze to a chick, an underage little chick, with eight to ten reds in it, and she passes out, and then they inject her with a mex hit, which is half heroin and half Substance D—” He broke off. “Thank you,” he said.

  A man called up, “How do we stop them, sir?”

  “Kill the pushers,” Arctor said, and walked back to his chair.

  He did not feel like returning right away to the Orange County Civic Center and Room 430, so he wandered down one of the commercial streets of Anaheim, inspecting the McDonaldburger stands and car washes and gas stations and Pizza Huts and other marvels.

  Roaming aimlessly along like this on the public street with all kinds of people, he always had a strange feeling as to who he was. As he had said to the Lions types there in the hall, he looked like a doper when out of his scramble suit; he conversed like a doper; those around him now no doubt took him to be a doper and reacted accordingly. Other dopers— See there, he thought; “other,” for instance—gave him a “peace, brother” look, and the straights didn’t.

  You put on a bishop’s robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you’re a bishop. So to speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows.

  What really fouled up his sense of who and what he was came when the Man hassled him. When harness bulls, beat cops, or cops in general, any and all, for example, came cruising up slowly to the curb near him in an intimidating manner as he walked, scrutinized him at length with an intense, keen, metallic, blank stare, and then, often as not, evidently on whim, parked and beckoned him over.

  “Okay, let’s see your I.D.,” the cop would say, reaching out; and then, as Arctor-Fred-Whatever-Godknew fumbled in his wallet pocket, the cop would yell at him, “Ever been ARRESTED?” Or, as a variant on that, adding, “BEFORE?” As if he were about to go into the bucket right then.

  “What’s the beef?” he usually said, if he said anything at all. A crowd naturally gathered. Most of them assumed he’d been nailed dealing on the corner. They grinned uneasily and waited to see what happened, although some of them, usually Chicanos or blacks or obvious heads, looked angry. And those that looked angry began after a short interval to be aware that they looked angry, and they changed that swiftly to impassive. Because everybody knew that anyone looking angry or uneasy—it didn’t matter which—around cops must have something to hide. The cops especially knew that, legend had it, and they hassled such persons automatically.

  This time, however, no one bothered him. Many heads were in evidence; he was only one of many.

  What am I actually? he asked himself. He wished, momentarily, for his scramble suit. Then, he thought, I could go on being a vague blur and passers-by, street people in general, would applaud. Let’s hear it for the vague blur, he thought, doing a short rerun. What a way to get recognition. How, for instance, could they be sure it wasn’t some other vague blur and not the right one? It could be somebody other than Fred inside, or another Fred, and they’d never know, not even when Fred opened his mouth and talked. They wouldn’t really know then. They’d never know. It could be Al pretending to be Fred, for example. It could be anyone in there, it could even be empty. Down at Orange County GHQ they could be piping a voice to the scramble suit, animating it from the sheriff’s office. Fred could in that case be anybody who happened to be at his desk that day and happened to pick up the script and the mike, or a composite of all sorts of guys at their desks.

  But I guess what I said at the end, he thought, finishes off that. That wasn’t anybody back in the office. The guys back in the office want to talk to me about that, as a matter of fact.

  He didn’t look forward to that, so he continued to loiter and delay, going nowhere, going everywhere. In Southern California it didn’t make any difference anyhow where you went; there was always the same McDonaldburger place over and over, like a circular strip that turned past you as you pretended to go somewhere. And when finally you got hungry and went to the McDonaldburger place and bought a McDonald’s hamburger, it was the one they sold you last time and the time before that and so forth, back to before you were born, and in addition bad people—liars—said it was made out of turkey gizzards anyhow.

  They had by now, according to their sign, sold the same original burger fifty billion times. He wondered if it was to the same person. Life in Anaheim, California, was a commercial for itself, endlessly replayed. Nothing changed; it just spread out farther and farther in the form of neon ooze. What there was always more of had been congealed into permanence long ago, as if the automatic factory that cranked out these objects had jammed in the on position. How the land became plastic, he thought, remembering the fairy tale “How the Sea Became Salt.” Someday, he thought, it’ll be mandatory that we all sell the McDonald’s hamburger as well as buy it; we’ll sell it back and forth to each other forever from our living rooms. That way we won’t even have to go outside.

  He looked at his watch. Two-thirty: time to make a buy call. According to Donna, he could score, through her, on perhaps a thousand tabs of Substance D cut with meth.

  Naturally, once he got it, he would turn it over to County Drug Abuse to be analyzed and then destroyed, or whatever they did with it. Dropped it themselves, maybe, or so another legend went. Or sold it. But his purchase from her was not to bust her for dealing; he had bought many times from her and had never arrested her. That was not what it was all about, busting a small-time local dealer, a chick who considered it cool and far-out to deal dope. Half the narcotics agents in Orange County were aware that Donna dealt, and recogniz
ed her on sight. Donna dealt sometimes in the parking lot of the 7-11 store, in front of the automatic holo-scanner the police kept going there, and got away with it. In a sense, Donna could never be busted no matter what she did and in front of whom.

  What his transaction with Donna, like all those before, added up to was an attempt to thread a path upward via Donna to the supplier she bought from. So his purchases from her gradually grew in quantity. Originally he had coaxed her—if that was the word—into laying ten tabs on him, as a favor: friend-to-friend stuff. Then, later on, he had wangled a bag of a hundred for recompense, then three bags. Now, if he lucked out, he could score a thousand, which was ten bags. Eventually, he would be buying in a quantity which would be beyond her economic capacity; she could not front enough bread to her supplier to secure the stuff at her end. Therefore, she would lose instead of getting a big profit. They would haggle; she would insist that he front at least part of it; he would refuse; she couldn’t front it herself to her source; time would run out—even in a deal that small a certain amount of tension would grow; everyone would be getting impatient; her supplier, whoever he was, would be holding and mad because she hadn’t shown. So eventualy, if it worked out right, she would give up and say to him and to her supplier, “Look, you better deal direct with each other. I know you both; you’re both cool. I’ll vouch for both of you. I’ll set a place and a time and you two can meet. So from now on, Bob, you can start buying direct, if you’re going to buy in this quantity.” Because in that quantity he was for all intents and purposes a dealer; these were approaching dealer’s quantities. Donna would assume he was reselling at a profit per hundred, since he was buying a thousand at a time at least. This way he could travel up the ladder and come to the next person in line, become a dealer like her, and then later on maybe get another step up and another as the quantities he bought grew.