Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (33 page)

"I was going to call you today," the District Attorney's voice sounded. "I
called you yesterday morning at ten, but no one answered, and I haven't
had time since. Our police psychiatrist, Walters, says you might be able
to snap Bocek out of it in a couple of days—at least long enough so
that we can get some sensible answers out of him. Down underneath his
delusion of killing lizard pirates from Venus, there has to be some reason
for that mass killing, and the press is after us on this."

"But why bring him to my office?" Cedric said. "It's okay, of course, but
… that is … I didn't think you could! Take a patient out of
the ward at City Hospital and transport him around town."

"I thought that would be less of an imposition on you," the D.A. said.
"I'm in a hurry on it."

"Oh," Cedric said. "Well, okay, Dave. He's out in the waiting room. I'll
do my best to snap him back to reality for you."

He hung up slowly, frowning. "
Less of an imposition!
" His whispered
words floated into his ears as he snapped into the intercom, "Send Gerald
Bocek in, please."

The door from the reception room opened, and once again the procession of
patient and police officers entered.

"Well, well, good morning, Gar," Jerry said. "Did you sleep well? I could
hear you talking to yourself most of the night."

"I am Dr. Cedric Elton," Cedric said firmly.

"Oh, yes," Jerry said. "I promised to try to see things your way, didn't
I? I'll try to cooperate with you, Dr. Elton." Jerry turned to the four
officers. "Let's see now, these gear lockers are policemen, aren't they?
How do you do, officers." He bowed to them, then looked around him. "And,"
he said, "this is your office, Dr. Elton. A very impressive office. That
thing you're sitting behind is not the chart table but your desk, I
gather." He studied the desk intently. "All metal, with a gray finish,
isn't it."

"All wood," Cedric said. "Walnut."

"Yes, of course," Jerry murmured. "How stupid of me. I really want to get
into your reality, Gar … I mean, Dr. Elton. Or get you into mine.
I'm the one who's at a disadvantage, though. Tied up, I can't get into the
medicine locker and take a yellow pill like you can. Did you take one
yet?"

"Not yet," Cedric said.

"Uh, why don't you describe your office to me, Dr. Elton?" Jerry said.
"Let's make a game of it. Describe parts of things and then let me see if
I can fill in the rest. Start with your desk. It's genuine walnut? An
executive-style desk. Go on from there."

"All right," Cedric said. "Over here to my right is the intercom, made of
gray plastic. And directly in front of me is the telephone."

"Stop," Jerry said. "Let me see if I can tell you your telephone number."
He leaned over the desk and looked at the telephone, trying to keep his
balance in spite of his arms being encased in the straitjacket. "Hm-m-m,"
he said, frowning. "Is the number Mulberry five dash nine oh three seven?"

"No," Cedric said. "It's Cedar sev—"

"Stop!" Jerry said. "Let me say it. It's Cedar seven dash four three nine
nine."

"So you did read it and were just having your fun," Cedric snorted.

"If you say so," Jerry said.

"What other explanation can you have for the fact that it is my number, if
you're unable to actually see reality?" Cedric said.

"You're absolutely right, Dr. Elton," Jerry said. "I think I understand
the tricks my mind is playing on me now. I read the number on your phone,
but it didn't enter my conscious awareness. Instead, it cloaked itself
with the pattern of my delusion, so that consciously I pretended to look
at a phone that I couldn't see, and I thought, 'His phone number will
obviously be one he's familiar with.' The most probable is the home phone
of Helena Fitzroy in Mars Port, so I gave you that, but it wasn't it. When
you said Cedar, I knew right away it was your own apartment phone number."

Cedric sat perfectly still. Mulberry 5-9037 was actually Helena's
apartment phone number. He hadn't recognized it until Gerald Bocek told
him.

"Now you're beginning to understand," Cedric said after a moment. "Once
you realize that your mind has walled off your consciousness from reality
and is substituting a rationalized pattern of symbology in its place, it
shouldn't be long until you break through. Once you manage to see one
thing as it really is, the rest of the delusion will disappear."

"I understand now," Jerry said gravely. "Let's have some more of it. Maybe
I'll catch on."

They spent an hour at it. Toward the end, Jerry was able to finish the
descriptions of things with very little error.

"You are definitely beginning to get through," Cedric said with
enthusiasm.

Jerry hesitated. "I suppose so," he said. "I must. But on the conscious
level I have the idea—a rationalization, of course—that I am
beginning to catch on to the pattern of your imagination so that when you
give me one or two key elements I can fill in the rest. But I'm going to
try, really try—Dr. Elton."

"Fine," Cedric said heartily. "I'll see you tomorrow, same time. We should
make the breakthrough then."

When the four officers had taken Gerald Bocek away, Cedric went into the
outer office.

"Cancel the rest of my appointments," he said.

"But why?" Helena protested.

"Because I'm upset!" Cedric said. "How did a madman whom I never knew
until yesterday know your phone number?"

"He could have looked it up in the phone book."

"Locked in a room in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital?" Cedric said.
"How did he know your name yesterday?"

"Why," Helena said, "all he had to do was read it on my desk here."

Cedric looked down at the brass nameplate.

"Yes," he grunted. "Of course. I'd forgotten about that. I'm so accustomed
to it being there that I never see it."

He turned abruptly and went back into his office.

He sat down at his desk, then got up and went into the sterile whiteness
of his compact laboratory. Ignoring the impressive battery of electronic
instruments, he went to the medicine cabinet. Inside, on the top shelf,
was the glass stopped bottle he wanted. Inside it were a hundred vivid
yellow pills. He shook out one and put the bottle away, then went back
into his office. He sat down, placing the yellow pill in the center of the
white notepad.

There was a brief knock on the door to the reception room and the door
opened. Helena came in.

"I've canceled all your other appointments for today," she said. "Why
don't you go out to the golf course? A change will do you—" She saw
the yellow pill in the center of the white note pad and stopped.

"Why do you look so frightened?" Cedric said. "Is it because, if I take
this little yellow pill, you'll cease to exist?"

"Don't joke," Helena said.

"I'm not joking," Cedric said. "Out there, when you mentioned about your
brass nameplate on your desk, when I looked down it was blurred for just a
second, then became sharply distinct and solid. And into my head popped
the memory that the first thing I do when I have to get a new receptionist
is get a brass nameplate for her, and when she quits I make her a present
of it."

"But that's the truth," Helena said. "You told me all about it when I
started working for you. You also told me that while you still had your
reason about you I was to solemnly promise that I would never accept an
invitation from you for dinner or anything else, because business could
not mix with pleasure. Do you remember that?"

"I remember," Cedric said. "A nice pat rationalization in any man's
reality to make the rejection be my own before you could have time to
reject me yourself. Preserving the ego is the first principle of madness."

"But it isn't!" Helena said. "Oh, darling, I'm
here!
This is
real!
I don't care if you fire me or not. I've loved you forever, and you
mustn't let that mass murderer get you down. I actually think he isn't
insane at all, but has just figured out a way to seem insane so he won't
have to pay for his crime."

"You think so?" Cedric said, interested. "It's a possibility. But he would
have to be as good a psychiatrist as I am—You see? Delusions of
grandeur."

"Sure," Helena said, laughing thinly. "Napoleon was obviously insane
because he thought he was Napoleon."

"Perhaps," Cedric said. "But you must admit that if you are real, my
taking this yellow pill isn't going to change that, but only confirm the
fact."

"And make it impossible for you to do your work for a week," Helena said.

"A small price to pay for sanity," Cedric said. "No, I'm going to take
it."

"You aren't!" Helena said, reaching for it.

Cedric picked it up an instant before she could get it. As she tried to
get it away from him, he evaded her and put it in his mouth. A loud gulp
showed he had swallowed it.

He sat back and looked up at Helena curiously.

"Tell me, Helena," he said gently. "Did you know all the time that you
were only a creature of my imagination? The reason I want to know is—"

He closed his eyes and clutched his head in his hands.

"God!" he groaned. "I feel like I'm dying! I didn't feel like this the
other time I took one." Suddenly his mind steadied, and his thoughts
cleared. He opened his eyes.

On the chart table in front of him, the bottle of yellow pills lay on its
side, pills scattered all over the table. On the other side of the control
room lay Jerry Bocek, his back propped against one of the four gear
lockers, sound asleep, with so many ropes wrapped around him that it would
probably be impossible for him to stand up.

Against the far wall were three other gear lockers, two of them with their
paint badly scorched, the third with its door half melted off.

And in various positions about the control room were the half-charred
bodies of five blue-scaled Venusian lizards.

A dull ache rose in Gar's chest. Helena Fitzroy was gone. Gone, when she
had just confessed she loved him.

Unbidden, a memory came into Gar's mind. Dr. Cedric Elton was the
psychiatrist who had examined him when he got his pilot's license for
third-class freighters—

"God!" Gar groaned again. And suddenly he was sick. He made a dash for the
washroom, and after a while he felt better.

When he straightened up from the washbasin, he looked at his reflection in
the mirror for a long time, clinging to his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes.
He must have been out of his head for two or three days.

The first time. Awful! Somehow, he had never quite believed in space
madness.

Suddenly he remembered Jerry. Poor Jerry!

Gar lurched from the washroom back into the control room. Jerry was awake.
He looked up at Gar, forcing a smile to his lips. "Hello, Dr. Elton,"
Jerry said.

Gar stopped as though shot.

"It's happened, Dr. Elton, just as you said it would," Jerry said, his
smile widening.

"Forget that," Gar growled. "I took a yellow pill. I'm back to normal
again."

Jerry's smile vanished abruptly. "I know what I did now," he said. "It's
terrible. I killed six people. But I'm sane now. I'm willing to take
what's coming to me."

"Forget that!" Gar snarled. "You don't have to humor me now. Just a minute
and I'll untie you."

"Thanks, Doctor," Jerry said. "It will sure be a relief to get out of this
straitjacket."

Gar knelt beside Jerry and untied the knots in the ropes and unwound them
from around Jerry's chest and legs.

"You'll be all right in a minute," Gar said, massaging Jerry's limp arms.
The physical and nervous strain of sitting there immobilized had been
rugged.

Slowly he worked circulation back into Jerry, then helped him to his feet.

"You don't need to worry, Dr. Elton," Jerry said. "I don't know why I
killed those people, but I know I would never do such a thing again. I
must have been insane."

"Can you stand now?" Gar said, letting go of Jerry.

Jerry took a few steps back and forth, unsteadily at first, then with
better coordination. His resemblance to a robot decreased with exercise.

Gar was beginning to feel sick again. He fought it.

"You okay now, Jerry boy?" he asked worriedly.

"I'm fine now, Dr. Elton," Jerry said. "And thanks for everything you've
done for me."

Abruptly Jerry turned and went over to the air-lock door and opened it.

"Good-bye now, Dr. Elton," he said.

"Wait!" Gar screamed, leaping toward Jerry.

But Jerry had stepped into the air lock and closed the door. Gar tried to
open it, but already Jerry had turned on the pump that would evacuate the
air from the lock.

He watched as Jerry glanced toward the side of the air lock and smiled,
then spun the wheel that opened the air lock to the vacuum of space and
stepped out.

Screaming Jerry's name senselessly in horror, Gar watched through the
small square of thick glass in the door as Jerry's chest quickly expanded,
then collapsed as a mixture of phlegm and blood dribbled from his nostrils
and lips, and his eyes enlarged and glazed over. Then one of them ripped
open and collapsed, its fluid draining down his cheek.

And when Gar finally stopped screaming and sank to the deck, sobbing, his
knuckles were broken and bloody from pounding on bare metal.

The End

© 1958, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc, 1986, by the Estate
of Roger Phillips Graham. Originally appeared in ASTOUNDING SCIENCE
FICTION, October 1958 and reprinted by permission of Barry N. Malzberg,
agent for the Estate.

Alfred Bester

The girl driving the jeep was very fair and very Nordic. Her blond hair
was pulled back in a ponytail, but it was so long that it was more a
mare's tail. She wore sandals, a pair of soiled bluejeans, and nothing
else. She was nicely tanned. As she turned the jeep off Fifth Avenue and
drove bouncing up the steps of the library, her bosom danced enchantingly.