The sky had completely shrouded itself in the gray clouds that it had been steadily knitting since morning, leaving no blue to give the water color by reflection, no sun to glitter off the teeth of the waves. Nevertheless, to Dusty, the lead-gray Pacific was far darker than it should have been at this hour, marbled with veins of black.
Somber, too, was the long coastline — the shadowed beaches, the slump of hills to the south, and the peopled plains to the west and north — seen from this fourteenth floor. Nature’s green appeared to be thinly painted over a mold-gray base coat, and all the works of man were rubble unrealized, waiting for the thousand-year quake or thermonuclear war.
When he looked away from the view beyond the huge wall of glass, Dusty’s peculiar uneasiness left him as completely and suddenly as if a switch had been thrown. The mahogany-paneled office, the bookshelves with neatly ordered tomes, the array of degrees from the nation’s most prestigious universities, the warm multicolored light from three Tiffany-style lamps — Genuine Tiffany? — and the tasteful furnishings exerted a calming influence. He had been surprised to feel relieved when he’d stepped with Martie into Ahriman’s waiting room; but here, his relief gave way to an almost Zen-like serenity.
His chair stood near the immense window, but Martie and Dr. Ahriman sat apart from him, in two armchairs that faced each other across a low table. With more self-possession than she’d shown since Dusty had encountered her in the garage the previous evening, Martie spoke of her panic attacks. The psychiatrist listened attentively and with an evident compassion that was comforting.
In fact, so comforted was Dusty that he found himself smiling.
This was a safe place. Dr. Ahriman was a great psychiatrist. Everything would be all right now that Martie was in Dr. Ahriman’s care. Dr. Ahriman was deeply committed to his patients. Dr. Ahriman would make this trouble go away.
Then Dusty turned his attention to the view again, and the ocean appeared to be a vast slough, as though its waters were so thick with clouds of mud and tangles of seaweed that only low viscous waves were able to form. And in this peculiar light, the serried whitecaps were not white, but mottled-gray and chrome yellow.
On winter days, under overcast skies, the sea had often looked like this, and never before had he found it so disquieting. Indeed, in the past, he had seen a rare, stark beauty in such scenes.
A small voice of reason told him that he was projecting feelings onto this view that were not actually a response to it, feelings that had another source. The sea was just the sea, as it had always been, and the true cause of this uneasiness lay elsewhere.
That thought was puzzling, because there was nothing
Martie leaned forward slightly in her chair, and Dusty saw that she was anticipating the psychiatrist’s preliminary diagnosis with a half smile, no apparent trepidation visible in her face.
“It’s an intriguing and rare condition,” said the psychiatrist. “Autophobia, fear of oneself. I’ve never encountered a case of it, but
“Autophobia,” Martie marveled, with more fascination and less angst than seemed appropriate, as though the psychiatrist had cured her simply by putting a name to the affliction.
Maybe the Valium accounted for it.
Even as Dusty wondered at Martie’s response, he realized that he, too, was smiling and nodding.
Dr. Ahriman would make this trouble go away.
“Statistically speaking,” Ahriman said, “it’s incredible that your best friend
“Connection? How so, Doctor?” Dusty asked, and that small inner voice of reason couldn’t resist remarking on his tone of voice, which was not unlike that of a twelve-year-old boy posing a question to Mr. Wizard, on the now-canceled children’s television program that had once endeavored to find the fun in science.
Ahriman steepled his fingers under his chin, looked thoughtful, and said, “Martie, you’ve been bringing Susan here for a year now —”
“Since she and Eric separated.”
“Yes. And you’ve been Susan’s lifeline, doing her shopping, other errands. Because she’s shown such little apparent progress, you’ve become ever more worried. As your worry grows, you begin to blame yourself for her failure to respond quickly to therapy.”
