I sat up in bed with my notes on German grammar. Babette lay on her side staring into the clock-radio, listening to acall-in show. I heard a woman say: "In 1977 I looked in the mirror and saw the person I was becoming. I couldn't orwouldn't get out of bed. Figures moved at the edge of my vision, like with scurrying steps. I was getting phone callsfrom a Pershing missile base. I needed to talk to others who shared these experiences. I needed a support program,something to enroll in."I leaned across my wife's body and turned off the radio. She kept on staring. I kissed her lightly on the head.

　　"Murray says you have important hair."She smiled in a pale and depleted way. I put down my notes and eased her around slightly so that she looked straightup as I spoke.

　　"It's time for a major dialogue. You know it, I know it. You'll tell me all about Dylar. If not for my sake, then for yourlittle girl's. She's been worried—worried sick. Besides, you have no more room to maneuver. We've backed youagainst the wall. Denise and I. I found the concealed bottle, removed a tablet, had it analyzed by an expert. Thoselittle white disks are superbly engineered. Laser technology, advanced plastics. Dylar is almost as ingenious as themicroorganisms that ate the billowing cloud. Who would have believed in the existence of a little white pill thatworks as a pressure pump in the human body to provide medication safely and effectively, and self-destructs as well?

　　I am struck by the beauty of this. We know something else, something crucially damaging to your case. We knowDylar is not available to the general public. This fact alone justifies our demands for an explanation. There's reallyvery little left for you to say. Just tell us the nature of the drag. As you well know, I don't have the temperament tohound people. But Denise is a different kind of person. I've been doing all I can to restrain her. If you don't tell mewhat I want to know, I'll unleash your little girl. She'll come at you with everything she has. She won't waste timetrying to make you feel guilty. Denise believes in a frontal attack. She'll hammer you right into the ground. Youknow I'm right, Babette."About five minutes passed. She lay there, staring into the ceiling.

　　"Just let me tell it in my own way," she said in a small voice.

　　"Would you like a liqueur?""No, thank you.""Take your time," I said. "We've got all night. If there's anything you want or need, just say so. You have only to ask.

　　I'll be right here for as long as it takes."Another moment passed.

　　"I don't know exactly when it started. Maybe a year and a half ago. I thought I was going through a phase, some kindof watermark period in my life.""Landmark," I said. "Or watershed.""A kind of settling-in-period, I thought. Middle age. Something like that. The condition would go away and I'd forgetall about it. But it didn't go away. I began to think it never would.""What condition?""Never mind that for now.""You've been depressed lately. I've never seen you like this. This is the whole point of Babette. She's a joyous person.

　　She doesn't succumb to gloom or self-pity.""Let me tell it, Jack.""All right.""You know how I am. I think everything is correctible. Given the right attitude and the proper effort, a person canchange a harmful condition by reducing it to its simplest parts. You can make lists, invent categories, devise chartsand graphs. This is how I am able to teach my students how to stand, sit and walk, even though I know you thinkthese subjects are too obvious and nebulous and generalized to be reduced to component parts. I'm not a veryingenious person but I know how to break things down, how to separate and classify. We can analyze posture, wecan analyze eating, drinking and even breathing. How else do you understand the world, is my way of looking at it.""I'm right here," I said. "If there's anything you want or need, only say the word.""When I realized this condition was not about to go away, I set out to understand it better by reducing it to its parts.

　　First I had to find out if it had any parts. I went to libraries and bookstores, read magazines and technical journals,watched cable TV, made lists and diagrams, made multicolored charts, made phone calls to technical writers andscientists, talked to a Sikh holy man in Iron City and even studied the occult, hiding the books in the attic so you andDenise wouldn't find them and wonder what was going on.""All this without my knowing. The whole point of Babette is that she speaks to me, she reveals and confides.""This is not a story about your disappointment at my silence. The theme of this story is my pain and my attempts toend it.""I'll make some hot chocolate. Would you like that?""Stay. This is a crucial part. All this energy, this research, study and concealment, but I was getting nowhere. Thecondition would not yield. It hung over my life, gave me no rest. Then one day I was reading to Mr. Treadwell fromthe National Examiner. An ad caught my eye. Never mind exactly what it said. Volunteers wanted for secret research.

　　This is all you have to know.""I thought it was my former wives who practiced guile. Sweet deceivers. Tense, breathy, high-cheekboned,bilingual.""I answered the ad and was interviewed by a small firm doing research in psychobiology. Do you know what thatis?""No.""Do you know how complex the human brain is?""I have some idea.""No, you don't. Let's call the company Gray Research, although that's not the true name. Let's call my contact Mr.

　　Gray. Mr. Gray is a composite. I was eventually in touch with three or four or more people at the firm.""One of those long low pale brick buildings with electrified fencing and low-profile shrubbery.""I never saw their headquarters. Never mind why. The point is I took test after test. Emotional, psychological, motorresponse, brain activity. Mr. Gray said there were three finalists and I was one of them.""Finalists for what?""We were to be test subjects in the development of a super experimental and top secret drug, code-name Dylar, thathe'd been working on for years. He'd found a Dylar receptor in the human brain and was putting the finishing toucheson the tablet itself. But he also told me there were dangers in running tests on a human. I could die. I could live butmy brain could die. The left side of my brain cquld die but the right side could live. This would mean that the left sideof my body would live but the right side would die. There were many grim specters. I could walk sideways but notforward. I could not distinguish words from things, so that if someone said 'speeding bullet,' I would fall to the floorand take cover. Mr. Gray wanted me to know the risks. There were releases and other documents for me to sign. Thefirm had lawyers, priests.""They let you go ahead, a human test animal.""No, they didn't. They said it was way too risky—legally, ethically and so forth. They went to work designingcomputer molecules and computer brains. I refused to accept this. I'd come so far, come so close. I want you to try tounderstand what happened next. If I'm going to tell you the story at all, I have to include this aspect of it, this grubbylittle corner of the human heart. You say Babette reveals and confides.""This is the point of Babette.""Good. I will reveal and confide. Mr. Gray and I made a private arrangement. Forget the priests, the lawyers, thepsychobiologists. We would conduct the experiments on our own. I would be cured of my condition, he would beacclaimed for a wonderful medical breakthrough.""What's so grubby about this?""It involved an indiscretion. This was the only way I could get Mr. Gray to let me use the drug. It was my last resort,my last hope. First I'd offered him my mind. Now I offered my body."I felt a sensation of warmth creeping up my back and radiating outward across my shoulders. Babette looked straightup. I was propped on an elbow, facing her, studying her features. When I spoke finally it was in a reasonable andinquiring voice—the voice of a man who seeks genuinely to understand some timeless human riddle.

　　"How do you offer your body to a composite of three or more people? This is a compound person. He is like a policesketch of one person's eyebrows, another person's nose. Let's concentrate on the genitals. How many sets are wetalking about?""Just one person's, Jack. A key person, the project manager.""So we are no longer referring to the Mr. Gray who is a composite.""He is now one person. We went to a grubby little motel room. Never mind where or when. It had the TV up near theceiling. This is all I remember. Grubby, tacky. I was heartsick. But so, so desperate.""You call this an indiscretion, as if we haven't had a revolution in frank and bold language. Call it what it was,describe it honestly, give it the credit it deserves. You entered a motel room, excited by its impersonality, thefunctionalism and bad taste of the furnishings. You walked barefoot on the f.re-retardant carpet. Mr. Gray wentaround opening doors, looking for a full-length mirror. He watched you undress. You lay on the bed, embracing.

　　Then he entered you.""Don't use that term. You know how I feel about that usage.""He effected what is called entry. In other words he inserted himself. One minute he was fully dressed, putting thecar rental keys on the dresser. The next minute he was inside you.""No one was inside anyone. That is stupid usage. I did what I had to do. I was remote. I was operating outside myself.

　　It was a capitalist transaction. You cherish the wife who tells you everything. 1 am doing my best to be that person.

　　"All right, I'm only trying to understand. How many times did you go to this motel?""More or less on a continuing basis for some months. That was the agreement."I felt heat rising along the back of my neck. I watched her carefully. A sadness showed in her eyes. I lay back andlooked at the ceiling. The radio came on. She began to cry softly.

　　"There's some Jell-O with banana slices," I said. "Steffie made it.""She's a good girl.""I can easily get you some.""No, thank you.""Why did the radio come on?""The auto-timer is broken. I'll take it to the shop tomorrow.""I'll take it.""it's all right," she said. "It's no trouble. I can easily take it.""Did you enjoy having sex with him?""I only remember the TV up near the ceiling, aimed down at us.""Did he have a sense of humor? I know women appreciate men who can joke about sex. I can't, unfortunately, andafter this I don't think there's much chance I'll be able to learn.""It's better if you know him as Mr. Gray. That's all. He's not tall, short, young or old. He doesn't laugh or cry. It's foryour own good.""I have a question. Why didn't Gray Research run tests on animals? Animals must be better than computers in somerespects."'That's just the point. No animal has this condition. This is a human condition. Animals fear many things, Mr. Graysaid. But their brains aren't sophisticated enough to accommodate this particular state of mind."For the first time I began to get an inkling of what she'd been talking about all along. My body went cold. I felthollow inside. I rose from my supine position, once again propping myself on an elbow to look down at her. Shestarted to cry again.

　　"You have to tell me, Babette. You've taken me this far, put me through this much. I have to know. What's thecondition?"The longer she wept, the more certain I became that I knew what she was going to say. I felt an impulse to get dressedand leave, take a room somewhere until this whole thing blew over. Babette raised her face to me, sorrowing andpale, her eyes showing a helpless desolation. We faced each other, propped on elbows, like a sculpture of loungingphilosophers in a classical academy. The radio turned itself off.

　　"I'm afraid to die," she said. "I think about it all the time. It won't go away.""Don't tell me this. This is terrible.""I can't help it. How can I help it?""I don't want to know. Save it for our old age. You're still young, you get plenty of exercise. This is not a reasonablefear.""It haunts me, Jack. I can't get it off my mind. I know I'm not supposed to experience such a fear so consciously andso steadily. What can I do? It's just there. That's why I was so quick to notice Mr. Gray's ad in the tabloid I wasreading aloud. The headline hit home. FEAR OF DEATH, it said. I think about it all the time. You're disappointed. Ican tell.""Disappointed?""You thought the condition would be more specific. I wish it was. But a person doesn't search for months and monthsto corner the solu............