Read Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 for Free Online Page A

and I remember only the
stories of breakdown, disaster, malfunction, pollution. I read, and I am
impressed only by the bad parts of life. . . . Is it the world, or is it me? Or
could it be both of us? Now Dick is gone away again and Dennis stays the same.
. . . I do not know. I just do not know....
                   Lydia put her arm about her shoulders.
                   You have looked and seen and you are afraid,
she told her. Fear is often a good thing. Despair is not. Fear can increase
your awareness, strengthen your will to fight. Despair is withdrawal —
                   But what is there to fight? And how do I fight
it?
                   There is hope for Dennis. I would not persist
in my efforts if I did not believe this. I could as easily be working on other
cases where the results are more readily apparent. Yet, somewhere along the
way, a therapist develops a feeling about a patient, about his chances for
recovery. I have such a feeling here. I do not believe that it will be easy, or
that it will occur soon. It may even take years, and it will be extremely
difficult. But remember, I know him better than anyone else — even yourself —
and I feel there is reason for you to have hope. You have had only a brief
glimpse of that which is within him. I have seen more. As to your other fears,
perhaps it is that there is some correspondence. At some level within yourself,
it may be that the fragmentation of his developing personality is analogous to
all the things which affected you so strongly until you met Richard. Perhaps
Dennis seems the image of a schizoid world. The fact that Richard can do
nothing to help him may have stirred up these other matters with the arousal of
this anxiety. It is easy to see how Dennis’ condition might symbolize for you
the spirit of the times. He is not a single person, but pieces of the many he
has touched. And these pieces do not fit together. They clash. Still, he is
there, somewhere, fust like humanity. — What is there to fight, and how do you
fight it? You hold with the hope, which is not unwarranted. You do not let your
fear slide over into despair. You do not withdraw. You feed your fear to the
hope. Burn it. Transform it into a patient expectancy.
                   You counsel a hard course, Lydia .. ..
                   I know. I know, too, that you will do it.
                   I will — try.. ..
                   A cold wind from the mountains came and
rustled the geraniums. Vicki leaned back and felt it on her face, her eyes
looking past the adobe wall, up to the place where the shadow-clad mountain
seemed suddenly poised above them.
                   "He is a child of a special time,"
she said then. "I will learn to wait for him."
                   Lydia studied her profile, nodded finally, rose.
                   "I wish to be with him again for a
time," she said.
                   "Yes. Go."
                   Vicki sat until night with its stars came
above her. At length, she realized it was cold and withdrew.
                   Autumn, winter, spring... Summer.
                   The evening before, I had had a drink in the
bar of La Fonda, the old hotel at the end of the Santa Fe Trail . Now, I regarded the front of the building
and waited. Hot up here, atop the row of buildings across San Francisco . I looked past the low screening wall and
up the street to my right. All the buildings were low. Very few things in this
town over three stories. La Fonda itself is an exception. Adobe, stucco.
Varying shades of brown, set off here and there with brick and tile. No
problem, getting to this spot before daybreak, coming across rooftops as I had.
But now, the sun ... God! It blazed down on the plaza, on my back. Should have
worn a long-sleeved shirt. Then I would only be roasting now. This way, I would
shortly be a sunburnt