The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II (71 page)

He had moved far from the circle of assassins, but the scene did not diminish in size. It retained an electric clarity. It made him feel even further removed, ever more alone and apart.

Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner and stood before him, a blind beggar.

Caesar grasped the front of his garment.

“Have you an ill omen for me this day?”

“Beware!” jeered Render.

“Yes! Yes!” cried Caesar. “ ‘Beware!’ That is good! Beware what?”

“The ides – ”

“Yes? The ides – ?”

“ – of Octember.”

He released the garment.

“What is that you say? What is Octember?”

“A month.”

“You lie! There is no month of Octember!”

“And that is the date noble Caesar need fear – the non-existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion.”

Render vanished around another sudden corner.

“Wait! Come back!”

Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him. The birdcries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.

“You mock me!” wept Caesar.

The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formed like a glassy mask over Caesar’s narrow forehead, sharp nose and chinless jaw.

“I want to be assassinated too!” he sobbed. “It isn’t fair!”

And Render tore the Forum and the senators and the grinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed them into a black sack – with the unseen movement of a single finger – and last of
all went Caesar.

Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons and the two red ones, not really looking at any of them. His right arm moved, in its soundless sling, across the lap-level
surface of the console – pushing some of the buttons, skipping over others, moving on, retracing its path to press the next in the order of the Recall Series.

Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing, Representative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.

There was a soft click.

Render’s hand had glided to the end of the bottom row of buttons. An act of conscious intent – will, if you like – was required to push the red button.

Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair leads and microminiature circuitry. He slid from behind his desk-couch and raised the hood. He walked to the window and transpared
it, fingering forth a cigarette.

One minute in the ro-womb
, he decided.
No more. This is a crucial one. Hope it doesn’t snow till later – those clouds look mean
. . .

It was smooth yellow trellises and high towers, glassy and gray, all smouldering into evening under a shale-colored sky; the city was squared volcanic islands, glowing in the end-of-day light,
rumbling deep down under the earth; it was fat, incessant rivers of traffic, rushing.

Render turned away from the window and approached the great egg that lay beside his desk, smooth and glittering. It threw back a reflection that smashed all aquilinity from his nose, turned his
eyes to gray saucers, transformed his hair into a light-streaked skyline; his reddish necktie became the wide tongue of a ghoul.

He smiled, reached across the desk. He pressed the second red button.

With a sigh, the egg lost its dazzling opacity and a horizontal crack appeared about its middle. Through the now-transparent shell, Render could see Erikson grimacing, squeezing his eyes tight,
fighting against a return to consciousness and the thing it would contain. The upper half of the egg rose vertical to the base, exposing him knobby and pink on half-shell. When his eyes opened he
did not look at Render. He rose to his feet and began dressing. Render used this time to check the ro-womb.

He leaned back across his desk and pressed the buttons: temperature control, full range,
check;
exotic sounds – he raised the earphone –
check
, on bells, on buzzes, on
violin notes and whistles, on squeals and moans, on traffic noises and the sound of surf;
check
, on the feedback circuit – holding the patient’s own voice, trapped earlier in
analysis;
check
, on the sound blanket, the moisture spray, the odor banks;
check
, on the couch agitator and the colored lights, the taste stimulants . . .

Render closed the egg and shut off its power. He pushed the unit into the closet, palmed shut the door. The tapes had registered a valid sequence.

“Sit down,” he directed Erikson.

The man did so, fidgeting with his collar.

“You have full recall,” said Render, “so there is no need for me to summarize what occurred. Nothing can be hidden from me. I was there.”

Erikson nodded.

“The significance of the episode should be apparent to you.”

Erikson nodded again, finally finding his voice. “But was it valid?” he asked. “I mean, you constructed the dream and you controlled it, all the way. I didn’t really
dream
it – in the way I would normally dream. Your ability to make things happen stacks the deck for whatever you’re going to say – doesn’t it?”

Render shook his head slowly, flicked an ash into the southern hemisphere of his globe-made-ashtray, and met Erikson’s eyes.

“It is true that I supplied the format and modified the forms. You, however, filled them with an emotional significance, promoted them to the status of symbols corresponding to your
problem. If the dream was not a valid analogue it would not have provoked the reactions it did. It would have been devoid of the anxiety-patterns which were registered on the tapes.

“You have been in analysis for many months now,” he continued, “and everything I have learned thus far serves to convince me that your fears of assassination are without any
basis in fact.”

Erikson glared.

“Then why the hell do I have them?”

“Because,” said Render, “you would like very much to be the subject of an assassination.”

Erikson smiled then, his composure beginning to return.

“I assure you, doctor, I have never contemplated suicide, nor have I any desire to stop living.”

He produced a cigar and applied a flame to it. His hand shook.

“When you came to me this summer,” said Render, “you stated that you were in fear of an attempt on your life. You were quite vague as to why anyone should want to kill you
– ”

“My position! You can’t be a Representative as long as I have and make no enemies!”

“Yet,” replied Render, “it appears that you have managed it. When you permitted me to discuss this with your detectives I was informed that they could unearth nothing to
indicate that your fears might have any real foundation. Nothing.”

“They haven’t looked far enough – or in the right places. They’ll turn up something.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Why?”

“Because, I repeat, your feelings are without any objective basis. – Be honest with me. Have you any information whatsoever indicating that someone hates you enough to want to kill
you?”

“I receive many threatening letters . . .”

“As do all Representatives – and all of those directed to you during the past year have been investigated and found to be the work of cranks. Can you offer me
one
piece of
evidence to substantiate your claims?”

Erikson studied the tip of his cigar.

“I came to you on the advice of a colleague,” he said, “came to you to have you poke around inside my mind to find me something of that sort, to give my detectives something to
work with – someone I’ve injured severely perhaps – or some damaging piece of legislation I’ve dealt with . . .”

“ – And I found nothing,” said Render, “nothing, that is, but the cause of your discontent. Now, of course, you are afraid to hear it, and you are attempting to divert me
from explaining my diagnosis – ”

“I am not!”

“Then listen. You can comment afterward if you want, but you’ve poked and dawdled around here for months, unwilling to accept what I presented to you in a dozen different forms. Now
I am going to tell you outright what it is, and you can do what you want about it.”

“Fine.”

“First,” he said, “you would like very much to have an enemy or enemies – ”

“Ridiculous!”

“ – Because it is the only alternative to having friends – ”

“I have lots of friends!”

“ – Because nobody wants to be completely ignored, to be an object for whom no one has really strong feelings. Hatred and love are the ultimate forms of human regard. Lacking one,
and unable to achieve it, you sought the other. You wanted it so badly that you succeeded in convincing yourself it existed. But there is always a psychic pricetag on these things. Answering a
genuine emotional need with a body of desire-surrogates does not produce real satisfaction, but anxiety, discomfort – because in these matters the psyche should be an open system. You did not
seek outside yourself for human regard. You were closed off. You created that which you needed from the stuff of your own being. You are a man very much in need of strong relationships with other
people.”

“Manure!”

“Take it or leave it,” said Render. “I suggest you take it.”

“I’ve been paying you half a year to help find out who wants to kill me. Now you sit there and tell me I made the whole thing up to satisfy a desire to have someone hate
me.”

“Hate you, or love you. That’s right.”

“It’s absurd! I meet so many people that I carry a pocket recorder and a lapel-camera, just so I can recall them all . . .”

“Meeting quantities of people is hardly what I was speaking of. Tell me,
did
that dream sequence have a strong meaning for you?”

Erikson was silent for several tickings of the huge wall-clock.

“Yes,” he finally conceded, “it did. But your interpretation of the matter is still absurd. Granting though, just for the sake of argument, that what you say is correct –
what would I do to get out of this bind?”

Render leaned back in his chair.

“Rechannel the energies that went into producing the thing. Meet some people as yourself, Joe Erikson, rather than Representative Erikson. Take up something you can do with other people
– something non-political, and perhaps somewhat competitive – and make some real friends or enemies, preferably the former. I’ve encouraged you to do this all along.”

“Then tell me something else.”

“Gladly.”

“Assuming you
are
right, why is it that I am neither liked nor hated, and never have been? I have a responsible position in the Legislature. I meet people all the time. Why am I so
neutral a – thing?”

Highly familiar now with Erikson’s career, Render had to push aside his true thoughts on the matter, as they were of no operational value. He wanted to cite him Dante’s observations
concerning the trimmers – those souls who, denied heaven for their lack of virtue, were also denied entrance to hell for a lack of significant vices – in short, the ones who trimmed
their sails to move them with every wind of the times, who lacked direction, who were not really concerned toward which ports they were pushed. Such was Erikson’s long and colorless career of
migrant loyalties, of political reversals.

Render said:

“More and more people find themselves in such circumstances these days. It is due largely to the increasing complexity of society and the depersonalization of the individual into a
sociometric unit. Even the act of cathecting toward other persons has grown more forced as a result. There are so many of us these days.”

Erikson nodded, and Render smiled inwardly.

Sometimes the gruff line, and then the lecture
. . .

“I’ve got the feeling you could be right,” said Erikson. “Sometimes I do feel like what you just described – a unit, something depersonalized . . .”

Render glanced at the clock.

“What you choose to do about it from here is, of course, your own decision to make. I think you’d be wasting your time to remain in analysis any longer. We are now both aware of the
cause of your complaint. I can’t take you by the hand and show you how to lead your life. I can indicate, I can commiserate – but no more deep probing. Make an appointment as soon as
you feel a need to discuss your activities and relate them to my diagnosis.”

“I will,” nodded Erikson, “and – damn that dream! It got to me. You can make them seem as vivid as waking life – more vivid . . . It may be a long while before I
can forget it.”

“I hope so.”

“Okay, doctor.” He rose to his feet, extended a hand. “I’ll probably be back in a couple weeks. I’ll give this socializing a fair try.” He grinned at the word
he normally frowned upon. “In fact, I’ll start now. May I buy you a drink around the corner, downstairs?”

Render met the moist palm which seemed as weary of the performance as a lead actor in too successful a play. He felt almost sorry as he said, “Thank you, but I have an
engagement.”

Render helped him on with his coat then, handed him his hat and saw him to the door.

“Well, good night.”

“Good night.”

As the door closed soundlessly behind him, Render recrossed the dark Astrakhan to his mahogany fortress and flipped his cigarette into the southern hemisphere of a globe
ashtray. He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, eyes closed.

“Of course it was more real than life,” he informed no one in particular, “I shaped it.”

Smiling, he reviewed the dream sequence step by step, wishing some of his former instructors could have witnessed it. It had been well-constructed and powerfully executed, as well as being
precisely appropriate for the case at hand. But then, he was Render, the Shaper – one of the two hundred or so special analysts whose own psychic makeup permitted them to enter into neurotic
patterns without carrying away more than an esthetic gratification from the mimesis of aberrance – a Sane Hatter.

Render stirred his recollections. He had been analyzed himself analyzed and passed upon as a granite-willed, ultra-stable outsider – tough enough to weather the basilisk gaze of a
fixation, walk unscathed amidst the chimarae of perversions, force dark Mother Medusa to close her eyes before the caduceus of his art. His own analysis had not been difficult. Nine years before
(it seemed much longer) he had suffered a willing injection of novocain into the most painful area of his spirit. It was after the auto wreck, after the death of Ruth, and of Miranda, their
daughter, that he had begun to feel detached. Perhaps he did not want to recover certain empathies; perhaps his own world was now based upon a certain rigidity of feeling. If this was true, he was
wise enough in the ways of the mind to realize it, and perhaps he had decided that such a world had its own compensations.