A Scanner Darkly

Hank said, “By a process of elimination. I know who you aren’t, and there aren’t an infinite number of suspects in this group—in fact, they’re a very small group. We thought they’d lead us up higher, and maybe Barris will. You and I have spent a lot of time rapping together. I pieced it together a long time ago. That you’re Arctor.”

“I’m who?” he said, staring at Hank the scramble suit facing him. “I’m Bob Arctor?” He could not believe it. It made no sense to him. It did not fit anything he had done on thought, it was grotesque.

“Never mind,” Hank said. “What’s Donna’s phone number?”

“She’s probably at work.” His voice trembled.”The perfume stone. The number is—” He couldn’t keep his voice steady, and he couldn’t remember the number. The hell I am, he said to himself. I’m not Bob Arctor. But who am I? Maybe I’m—

“Get me Donna Hawthorne’s number at work,” Hank was saying rapidly into the phone. “Here,” he said, holding the phone toward Fred. “I’ll put you on the line. No, maybe I better not. I’ll tell her to pick you up—where? We’ll drive you there and drop you off; can’t meet her here. What’s a good place? Where do you usually meet her?”

“Take me to her place,” he said. “I know how to get in.”

“I’ll tell her you’re there and that you’re withdrawing. I’ll just say I know you and you asked me to call.”

“Far out,” Fred said, “I can dig it. Thanks, man.”

Hank nodded and began to redial, an outside number. It seemed to Fred that he dialed each digit more and more slowly and it went on forever, and he shut his eyes, breathing to himself and thinking, Wow. I’m really out of it.

You really are, he agreed. Spaced, wired, burned out and strung-out and fucked. Completely fucked. He felt like laughing.

“We’ll get you over there to her—” Hank began, and then shifted his attention to the phone, saying, “Hey, Donna, this is a buddy of Bob’s, you know? Hey, man, he’s in a bad way, I’m not jiving you. Hey, he—”

I can dig it, two voices thought inside his mind in unison as he heard his buddy laying it on Donna. And don’t forget to tell her to bring me something; I’m really hunting. Can she score for me or something? Maybe supercharge me, like she does? He reached out to touch Hank but could not; his hand fell short.

“I’ll do the same for you sometime,” he promised Hank as Hank hung up.

“Just sit there until the car’s outside. I’ll put through the call now.” Again Hank phoned, this time saying, “Motor pool? I want an unmarked car and officer out of uniform. What do you have available?”

They, inside the scramble suit, the nebulous blur, shut their eyes to wait.

“It might be I should get you taken to the hospital,” Hank said. “You’re very bad off; maybe Jim Barris poisoned you. We really are interested in Barris, not you; the scanning of the house was primarily to keep on Barris. We hoped to draw him in here … and we did.” Hank was silent. “So that’s why I knew pretty well that his tapes and the other items were faked. The lab will confirm. But Barris is into something heavy. Heavy and sick, and it has to do with guns.”

“I’m a what, then?” he said suddenly, very loud.

“We had to get to Jim Barris and set him up.”

“You fuckers,” he said.

“The way we arranged it, Barris—if that’s who he is—got progressively more and more suspicious that you were an undercover police agent, about to nail him or use him to get higher. So he—”

The phone rang.

“All right,” Hank said later. “Just sit, Bob. Bob, Fred, whatever. Take comfort—we did get the bugger and he’s a—well, what you just now called us. You know it’s worth it. Isn’t it? To entrap him? A thing like that, whatever it is he’s doing?”

“Sure, worth it.” He could hardly speak; he grated mechanically.

Together they sat.

***

On the drive to New-Path, Donna pulled off the road where they could see the lights below, on all sides. But the pain had started for him now; she could see that, and there wasn’t much time left. She had wanted to be with him one more time. Well, she had waited too long. Tears ran down his cheeks, and he had started to heave and vomit.

“We’ll sit for a few minutes,” she told him, guiding him through the bushes and weeds, across the sandy soil, among the discarded beer cans and debris. “I—”

“Do you have your hash pipe?” he managed to say.

“Yes,” she said. They had to be far enough from the road not to be noticed by the police. Or at least far enough so they could ditch the hash pipe if an officer came along. She would see the police car park, its lights off, covertly, a way off, and the officer approach on foot. There would be time.

She thought, Time enough for that. Time enough to be safe from the law. But no time any more for Bob Arctor. His time—at least if measured in human standards—had run out. It was another kind of time which he had entered now. Like, she thought, the time a rat has: to run back and forth, to be futile. To move without planning, back and forth, back and forth. But at least he can still see the lights below us. Although maybe for him it doesn’t matter.