Marshall Dreams of Sophie
Michael
Dr. Marshall Redgrave stands in front of a giant map of North and South Vietnam, drinking strong Indonesian coffee from a piece of fine French colonial-era bone china: one hand wrapped around the cup's handle, the other holding a delicate saucer.
The map is pinned to a giant corkboard, with various colored flags, push pins, and other symbols representing various esoteric intelligence-related data. This place — Marshall takes a look around himself — looks like a strange architectural mélange of the Phoenix Program intelligence office he occupied during the majority of his time in-country in Vietnam, its cover front office (an Australian import-export business), and the Mission. Colonial-era ceiling fans whir lazily on the vaulted ceiling, doing very little to dispel the oppressive monsoon-season humidity. But other than the maps, the intelligence equipment, and various intelligence analysts' desks pushed against the room's walls, the room's general architectural style is resolutely California Mission; lots of terracotta, louvered shutters, and exposed adobe plaster. In this weird combination of inner and outer office (and Mission reception area) is the import-export office's reception desk, staffed by Miss Sunshine Parker, wearing for some reason a World War II WAC uniform. (Of course, Sunshine has never been outside the United States; Marshall's subconscious has put her here in the place of the lovely Australian girl who acted as cover secretary for the office.) The smaller analysts' desks, which in Marshall's actual memories would have sat in the inner office and been stacked with shortwave radios and Telex machines connected to IGLOO WHITE and the other computer border security systems proliferating around South Vietnam at the time, instead hold large clunky codebreaking machines, reminiscent of the ones used in World War II to beat Axis codes. Stacks of punchcards, hot from the oven to dry them off in the oppressive Vietnamese humidity, sit in clearly-labeled trays. Manning the IBM machines are two presumed cryptanalysts, a man and a woman. The man wears a long-out-of-fashion tweed suit from the '40s and smokes a pipe as he shuffles through the day's intelligence intercepts. The woman is wearing yet another WWII-vintage military uniform, one from the WAVES women's naval reserve — What is this, a costume party? Dr. Redgrave of the Phoenix Program asks himself — and as the two consult with one another, Marshall sees their profiles dimly through the smoky office, in the hazy orange mid-morning Vietnamese/Californian sun.
The two codebreakers are in their mid-30s, but Marshall's memories of their faces, of how they looked during the War, harried after all those late nights at his office at Berkeley or her late nights doing important "administrative work" at the Presidio, are still crystal clear, 30 years later. They don't pay any attention to Marshall as they consult with each other on their codes.
The door to the back office, the infamous interview room, is treble-locked and iron barred. "Good morning, Dr. Redgrave," Sunshine says in her California lilt, looking and sounding completely out of place in this maddening dreamscape. "Lt. Tran and Sgt. Nguyen have your 9:30 in the interview room, as ordered." She hands Marshall a delicious looking pain au chocolat on a matching plate, having just given him the coffee before the dream started, Marshall can sense in that inimitably dream logic-y way.
Brant
Marshall thanks Sunshine and heads into the interview room. He leaves the coffee and pastry on a nearby filing cabinet.
Michael
Dr. Redgrave has the keys to unlock this high-security area. The "interview room" does double as a meeting room and non-technical interview space—plenty of Saigon-based VC turncoats come in here and double for the US and ARVNs for a little money, a little preferential treatment—but mostly this is a torture chamber. Nothing too too nasty, mind you: tension positions, bright lights, maybe here and there a little bit of the rough work that Tran and Nguyen, two ARVN intelligence thugs, are famous for.
In fact, both Tran and Nguyen are in here now, working on the midsection of the interview subject with a pair of heavy Los Angeles phone directories. Marshall looks to both Tran and Nguyen and yes, they also look familiar from his California, not in-country, life: in an ARVN lieutenant's uniform marked "Tran" is Mitchell Jefferson Hort, and in Nguyen's togs is Andrew H. Krane. They take big gleeful swings at the midsection of the trussed-up interviewee; she's a young VC cadre in the famous "black pajamas," her face bruised, lip swollen, but her teeth gritted through the pain and indignity of being softened up after having been captured by a Marine patrol. This saboteur, one Redgrave has been after for months, has planted her last bomb, seduced and assassinated her last US officer. Before she's done in here, she'll tell the names of all her co-conspirators, her cell leaders, the ARVNs she's bribed and the locations of all tunnels she's dug.
The Viet Cong sapper is, of course, Sophie Edelstein.
Brant
Marshall grabs a chair and sits, waving away Hort and Krane. He says in Sanskrit: “Ms. Edelstein — you’re lucky we were able to snatch you before you got to Granite Peak. Imagine what they would’ve done to you.”
Michael
Sophie stares at Marshall, boring holes into him with her pinprick pupils. "I fear no running dog lackeys of the filthy imperialist invader. My power comes from the people," she says back to Marshall in Sophie's standard slightly British-accented English.
Brant
Marshall gestures to Hort, who hands him a file folder. Marshall opens it and pulls out a black and white glossy photo of Charley Helix posed as Charlie Ransom in a Ransom family photograph.
“But we still have the girl, don’t we? What do you make of that?”
He shows her the photograph.
Michael
Sophie peers at Charley in the photo. She smiles.
"This is what you people learned from the German Nazis after the war, yes? They called it Operation Paperclip? While our Soviet comrades were busy shooting Nazis, you took these fascist monsters in, gave them wealth and comfortable homes and new names and the power to continue their vile research. Experimenting on children! On babies! But it does not matter. All these children will be free when we are done. No more child slaves, no more child soldiers. We fight for a world without these things."
Brant
Marshall flags down a passing waiter who hands him a citron and soda. He takes off his sunhat and uses it as a fan.
"I thought you were better than this, Ms. Edelstein. More interesting, at least. You know the world that you fight for is a dream land ruled by dream monsters. You are only trading one nightmare for another."
Marshall looks to Hort: "I thought you hated this kind of thing. I could never get you to throw people out windows."
Michael
Hort/Tran responds in Saigon-accented Vietnamese: "I have to do what it says in the book." He gestures listlessly and looks blankly to one of the LA phone directories they were using to beat the shit out of Sophie. Krane/Nguyen says nothing, but keeps a wary, unsteady eye on yet another multiply-locked door which seems to have appeared at some point during this conversation with Sophie.
Sophie laughs. "Oh, Doctor. You may believe that you're making the world safe for democracy, making little warriors like Charley. 'What humbug! What rot! What false pretense!' The words of your own American socialist leader, Eugene Debs, telling an audience what he thought of such an idea: 'making the world safe for democracy.' They threw him in prison, too. You all seem very good at that. Making prisons and filling their cells. Must be something you learned from They Who Provide."
Sophie sneaks a look at the newly-appeared locked door. "Looks like I'm not even the most important prisoner you have here." She smiles mischievously, almost flirtatiously at Marshall. "But the thing is, I don't fight for a dream. For a flag, for a Coca-Cola ad, for an imaginary god. I fight for my fellow-workers. My fellow luKA'inima [Sumerian word meaning 'magical expert']." That is the first time Sophie has used any words or vocabulary other than English in this interview.
"Debs also said something about the man who denies that he is a socialist at heart, you know. The one who betrays his fellow-workers, who says I can't take the chance at angering the bosses and losing my job. Debs said, 'There was something on this man's conscience and it resulted in a dreadful dream. Men always have such dreams when they betray themselves. A Socialist is free to go to bed with a clear conscience. He goes to sleep with his manhood and he awakens and walks forth in the morning with his self-respect. He is unafraid and he can look the whole world in the face, without a tremor and without a blush. But this poor weakling who lacked the courage to do the bidding of his reason and conscience was haunted by a startling dream and at midnight he awoke in terror, bounded from his bed and exclaimed: "My God, there is nobody in this room."'
"'He was absolutely right. There was nobody in that room.'"
"Who's in the room right now, Marshall?" Sophie gestures as best she can with her head at the newly-appeared locked door.
Brant
“You think the illusions will drop away when conditions change. Didn’t your man Marx say something like that? But he’s wrong and you know it — new conditions will just create new illusions.” Marshall shakes his head and stands up.
“No … no this … this isn’t right. You — you’re not her. None of this is real. You’re just that … that girl I killed — you’re not Sophie.” He walks behind Sophie, draws out his service weapon and shoots her in the back of the head. Then he drops the gun, wraps his bright red kāṣāya robes around himself and tries his keys in the locked door.
Michael
A new set of keys is found in the pockets of Marshall's robes, and he works them one by one: this time there are seven locks on the door, all different, all unique. As he turns the last one — a cheap plastic toy key of the type you'd see on an infant's teething ring — behind him Krane/Nguyen says, "Be careful, sir. The prisoners in there are ... dangerous. We're not cleared for them."
A holy aura appears around Mitch/Tran's and Krane/Nguyen's heads, flaring in violet out from both their crown chakras; as Marshall squints through the glare, he sees that both of the former ARVN men are now wearing the uniforms of NVA regulars, red stars gleaming on their chests and caps. Mitch/Tran says in Mitch's Alabama-tinged accent, "We're all like this. I'm sorry, man."
Marshall opens the door to what he knows innately and oneirically as … The Electrical Room.
Marshall's real-life Vietnam memories place this location in one of the various shithole rendition sites scattered across Saigon and South Vietnam that Phoenix used for enhanced interrogations — i.e., hooking up a poor VC bastard to a field telephone (or a car battery) and jolting them with electricity. As Marshall's eyes acclimate to the low lighting in here thrown off a single bare lightbulb in the ceiling, he sees the electrical generator sat on a table and hooked to the pair of chairs in the center of the room. Near the generator is a side table upon which is an old-fashioned gramophone scratchily playing Side A of Mansa's Ikenga album; the polyrhythms and bass of the band made tinny and trebley as the sound comes from the big listening horn.
Manning the generator is Sebastian Keiner, wearing a US Army uniform for a technical sergeant. He has turned to face Marshall upon his entry into the Electrical Room, the top of Keiner's cranium sawed cleanly off, the top half of his brain open to the air. A whisper-thin wire, an antenna, sticks out of his forebrain. He grins at Marshall the easily-recognizable (for a trained psychiatrist who's had multiple internships in 1950s-era American mental institutions) trademark vacant stare and infantile grin of the lobotomized. His hands, however, as he turns back to the electrical equipment, fly like a savant across the dials and levers and connectors of the electrical generator, which is a great deal bigger and more powerful than Marshall and Phoenix would have used in 'Nam: the transformers make this look more like the leads for an electric chair. Sitting in the pair of seats, fully wired to the generator, are J.B. and Louisa E. Rhine. They are the same age as the kindly old couple who Marshall met back in May at Estes Park, but their clothing is slightly out of fashion, and as Marshall looks at how they're dressed, he realizes that in the manner of Krane and Hort and Edelstein, they are not just the Rhines. He remembers the countless omnipresent newspaper above-the-fold photos from back during his freshman year at Harvard, and indeed throughout his time in Cambridge until their execution in 1953 at Sing Sing.
On the dirt floor at the Rhines'/Rosenbergs' feet are a scattering of Zener cards; mixed in among the stars and crosses and wavy lines are cards with GU.SHUB and SANGUSH glyphs on them which have no effect on Marshall's dreaming self.
The Rhines/Rosenbergs clasp each other's hands tightly, their faces resolute but with an unmistakable undercurrent of animal fear in their brows and eyes.
Brant
Marshall looks to Keiner and says, rakishly: "Between these two and the Librarian, really have to wonder whose side the Jews are on, right?" He laughs.
"Treason, treason. Liberalism fails because it makes all things — all sides — relative. You two didn't know how good you had it. Do you know why you're here?"
Michael
Keiner drools and laughs and applauds like a circus seal at Marshall's bon mot. “I …” J.B./Julius clears his dry cracked throat.
"I assume it has something to do with our research? Our ESP research?"
Brant
"Yes! Yes. Now we're getting somewhere," Marshall says that last part to himself, almost. He picks up some of the Zener cards and holds one out, the back facing the Rhines-Rosenbergs.
"What symbol do you see?"
Michael
Louisa/Ethel closes her eyes and says, quietly, with tears running down her face, "[I BELONG HERE/SAN.GUSH]," simultaneously in English and Sumerian. Marshall … feels that. His SANDMAN training allows him to slough it off, but he felt (or maybe just "remembers" feeling, in a dream?) the oomph of the Anunnaki source code behind it. The symbol on the card is indeed SANGUSH.
A "hit," in the parlance of psi research.
Brant
Marshall takes a padmasana pose on a red and gold embroidered lotus cushion. He looks at Louisa/Ethel: "How did you do that? The code doesn't work that way — it shouldn't work that way."
Michael
"We've been training. Us, and Ehrich, and Klaus, and Lafayette, and of course Uri and Ingo. There's so much the mind can do if its potential is just unleashed." Louisa/Ethel sniffles.
"Hmm. Yes. Practice makes perfect," J.B./Julius says. "Anyone can be a psychic, doctor. Anyone."
Brant
"No. No, that's wrong. I've seen the real deal — I know the special ones, the enlightened. They can do these things but you can't. No amount of training can do that." Marshall is starting to sound a little panicked. "Where's the door? I can't talk to you to about this … you're just liars, you don't know shit."
Michael
"We know why Sophie was so interested in us, doctor," J.B./Julius says. "We know why she recruited us into her network, why she left you holding the bag. It doesn't take ESP to realize why, if you really empty your mind and think and really look." J.B./Julius seems much cannier and calmer than Louisa/Ethel, but Louisa/Ethel's power is the thing spooking Marshall right now.
Brant
Marshall leans forward. "Look? All I do is look! I am the Panopticon. I am the-Eye-at-the-Center-of-the-World! I see everything."
He closes his eyes. He is sweating. He starts to chant in Sanskrit, hoping to delve deeper into his subconscious, to clear his mind completely: "I am not the body. I am not even the mind. I am not the body. I am not even the mind."
Michael
Louisa/Ethel says, "You don't seek Union, doctor. You are still your Ego. Don't you understand? Anyone who truly unleashes their psychic potential can't remain an agent of Control. Once you've touched another human's mind — really, deeply, richly touched it — you understand what it means to be Another. True empathy, not the pale simulacrum you practice. How many VC did you kill? A dozen, maybe more? How many others' deaths were you indirectly responsible for? Hundreds? You think you're a human being? You're not. You're a drone in their hive, buzzing around inside their granite peak, doing what the queen tells you."
Brant
Marshall screams: “I create the world with my MIND!”
He stands up suddenly and walks over to the wall. A surveillance photograph of Sophie is pinned to it; a red string is tied from there to a surveillance photograph of Charley. More red strings link up Sophie to all sorts of things, only half-recognizable in the dream-state.
"They both have mother issues. Abandonment. Both dead. The Librarian … she — she's a traitor like you. She feels for the girl because she identifies with her. She blames the Hive for her mother's death and for what it is doing to Charley. Is it that simple? You have to tell me." He looks at Louisa/Ethel and J.B./Julius. His eyes are full of tears.
Michael
Through the watery tears in his eyes, Marshall's view of the Rhines/Rosenbergs blurs and fades. As he blinks his tears away and his vision clears, it is his parents, in their clothes from back in the decoding office, in the chairs.
"You're getting close, son." Raymond smiles proudly at his eldest. "A brilliant psychologist and a peerless analyst? He truly is what we made him, isn't he Clara?"
Marshall's mother looks with pride at her son, the tears of Louisa/Ethel still fresh in her eyes and on her cheeks. "I'm so proud, son. You're so close. Take it the rest of the way. Sophie sees abuse of power, she sees SANDMAN as part of a cycle of abuse, she seeks to infiltrate and discover what happened to Charley's mother … and she leaves you all with the SRI dossier, why. Why." Clara gestures with her head and brow, as if to say, go on, you're almost there
Brant
"I — I don't see it. I don't see it! I could never do it like you two could! I can see the system but not the pattern!" He is furious with himself. Ashamed, stupid. (Is there some kind of roll I could make to help Marshall 'deduce' the last connection hinted to him by his mother?)
Michael
(Oh, you've got the Meditation roll in your back pocket for just this. And honestly, "I could never do it like you two could" is the kind of revelation that justifies using it.)
Marshall looks back to his Crazy Wall. The other members of Sophie's network clarify in his vision through the tears and oneiric haze. There are Mitch, Roger, and Jo closely clustered around Sophie and Charley on the board. A little further out, Archie. And then, much further away, there is a promotional photo of Marshall himself. There is also, growing off the SRI node of the crazy wall, an anonymous genderless silhouette with a white question mark superimposed over it, linked to both SRI and URIEL.
"She means URIEL to get to the Real Psychic at SRI before the CIA can," Raymond says. "Before SANDMAN can." Keiner's guttural voice rings out from the corner of the room. "Should I give them the juice? I can give them the juice!" as he laughs moronically, making his way to the main switch to electrocute Marshall's interview subjects.
Brant
Marshall slams his hands into the crazy wall. "Fuck! It was right there and I didn't see it. Blind! I'm fucking blind!" He whirls on Keiner, rushes up to him, and jams an Army knife into his throat. He then goes to untie his parents from the chairs.
"You both have to get out here now. Through that other door there. I can cover for you."
Michael
Raymond and Clara both look nonplussed. “But … but son.” Clara says. “We're spies. We were convicted by a jury of our peers. And we're due to be executed.” Neither of them get up.
Brant
"No … no that was them, the Rosenbergs — or the, that couple from Colorado.” He pauses and wipes his forehead with his sleeve. "But … right, right! — this isn't real. You're not real. None of this is real.” Marshall starts looking around for an exit.
Michael
As Marshall frantically looks around for an exit, he finds himself suddenly on the same Sonoma vista he showed to Jocasta near the end of their interview last weekend. Except standing with him isn't Jo, but Diane Keaton. She's dressed just like Kay Adams in The Godfather. "Marsh," she says casually, taking Marshall's arm, "what does your father do?"
Brant
Marshall smiles and folds his arms into his robes. "We don't talk about the family. You know that."
Michael
"But you're not like him, Marshall. I thought you weren't going to become a man like your father. That's what you told me … " As Diane/Kay says this, Marshall looks down to the Mission. The rich fecund vineyards are suddenly cracked and brown, the olive groves and orange orchards in danger from a huge wildfire encroaching from all directions, the sky blood red, like something out of Revelations. Huge figures loom from within the haze, six-wingèd angels and vast unknowable beings stalking within the smoke. Marshall himself is about 90 years old now, suddenly, like Dave Bowman near the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. His legs collapse out from underneath him as Kay's arm slips out of his. Marshall cannot walk and can barely see: he has become old and infirm in a heartbeat.
Standing where Diane Keaton once stood are Sophie Edelstein and a man who Marshall has only ever seen in SANDMAN file photos: David Wolf. Both Sophie and David are dressed in odd clothing, Sophie fiddles with a small black rectangle in her hands that sets off a reflection of a glow in her stylish futuristic-looking spectacles. Behind both their pairs of glasses, though, Sophie's and David's eyes are all-white: no iris, no pupil.
"Dr. Redgrave," David says, "I'm so sad we never got the chance to meet. I feel like you would have understood me best. Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come."
Sophie says, "He was right, Marshall. He was right all along. But don't worry. I'm going to save us all from all this."
Marshall wakes up.