“Two or three thousand out of how many many million?” Flamen snapped.
“Out of how many who are unstable enough to lose their marbles and start shooting at random into the street?” Conroy countered. “You don’t start riots, I don’t start riots, the politically educated leaders of the X Patriots don’t start riots. Paranoids start riots and other people are tipped over the edge by contagious hysteria. Your typical insurrectionary sniper isn’t a revolutionary or a fanatic—he’s someone who’s so devoid of empathy he can treat the human beings below his window as moving targets conveniently offered for his skill. And by clever exploitation of the public’s insecurity the Gottschalks have managed to put over a gang of lies equating gunmanship with masculine potency, which do even more damage than Mogshack’s pernicious dogmas. Damn it, man: anyone who can treat another human being as an object for target practice is stuck even further back in the infantile stage than somebody who’s frightened to move on from the masturbation phase and go to bed with a girl! Do you own a gun?”
“Ah …” Flamen gulped at his own drink. “Yes, naturally. But I don’t belong to any gun clubs or anything. I have a riot-defense system around the house with mines and electrified fences, and if the need arises I just switch them on. The rest is automatic.”
“Fair,” Conroy said in a clinical tone.
“How do you mean, fair?’
“The sane response is to site your home where your neighbors aren’t going to come calling with guns.”
“So name somewhere!” Flamen gibed. “Don’t the Gottschalks buy time on Pan-Can too?”
“Yes, damn it,” Conroy admitted with a sigh. “What’s more I caught one of them actually on our campus during the spring semester. Got rid of him, luckily, but only because the killing I told you about—the student who knifed his boyfriend—was fresh enough in the dean’s mind to make him vulnerable to my arguments. At that one of my colleagues said all the students ought to be armed to teach them responsibility in the use of weapons. Hah! I wonder how long he’d last in front of an armed class—the kids hate him!”
For the first time since their arrival in the bar, there was a pause longer than a few seconds. Flamen exploited it to gather his scattered thoughts, and said eventually, “Coming back to business, Professor, may I take it you’ll cooperate with me even if you disagree with the packling principle in the abstract? Of course, this will only be the start of a long and difficult process; later there may have to be a lawsuit, perhaps a State inquiry, but for the sake of my wife I’m prepared to …”
Once more his words trailed away as he found Conroy gazing steadily at him.
“Mr. Flamen,” the psychologist said at length, “I’ve told you why I detest Mogshack as a person and why I think his influence on the field of mental health is down-right dangerous. Accordingly I’ll be very happy to help you torpedo him. But I will not swallow the line you just fed me. I don’t believe you’re motivated by altruism and love for your wife. I believe you’re going after Mogshack because the targets that most demand your attention, like the Gottschalks, are out of reach. Gottschalks are like ghouls; they live off the carrion of our mutual distrust and bribe us with symbols that equate hatred with manhood. So—No, please don’t interrupt! I’d rather think of you as a frustrated man who would far sooner expose some disgusting truth about the Gottschalks than about a man who is, after all, one teacher among many and probably wouldn’t be so highly regarded if it weren’t for the post he occupies. You—”
“But just a moment!”
“Shut up and hear me out, will you? You can’t expect me to believe you’re going after Mogshack for your wife’s sake, when you’ve admitted that you’d drifted so far apart you didn’t even realize she was taking Ladromide—hm? Oh, I’m not blaming you! Marriage isn’t compulsory and making a success of it is even less so, and anyhow marriage doesn’t conform with Mogshack’s celebrated ideal that can always be approached more closely ‘like a mathematical limit.’ Your motives don’t much concern me, so let’s forget them for the moment, hm?”
Flamen buried his scowl in his glass.
“Now my motives, on the other hand, are something I want to try and make clear to you. It may take a while, so let’s go and sit down, shall we?” He turned and led the way to a nearby lounge, not allowing the distraction to brake the steamroller progress of his discourse. “To draw on medical images with which you may not be familiar, I regard people like Mogshack as counterparts of the homeopaths who used to teach, in somatic medicine, the virtues of doses of the causative agent as cures for everything from poisoning to pyorrhea. Certainly if someone is pathologically afraid of kneeblank armies marching up his front path, you may stabilize him superficially by training him to use a gun and fire it more quickly and more accurately than his potential attacker. But consider, Mr. Flamen, what is the actual, physical result?” His tone changed completely; he had been alternating between banter and self-deprecatory hectoring, but now he leaned forward with almost painful sincerity.
“It’s a dead man on the path, Mr. Flamen,” he said. “And it’s no part of a doctor’s duty to encourage the taking of life. True?”
To Flamen’s surprise he found that his mouth had gone dry. He gave a wary nod.
“Now an honest cure,” Conroy pursued, “would lie somewhere along the axis where the man coming up the path was invited in, and enjoyed his visit, and left his host pleased to have entertained him. Does the image get across, or are people already too isolated to consider that idea any longer?”
Cautiously Flamen said, “Well, it’s obviously better to have people meeting as friends than as enemies.”
“But it doesn’t end there, in a platitude!” Conroy thumped the arm of the couch and raised a faint cloud of dust. “Or rather, it shouldn’t. When did you last do something to bring people closer together? Isn’t your daily show designed to do the opposite? Spoolpigeons foment distrust in a systematic professional manner.”
“Now look here!” Flamen slammed his glass down on the table before them. “I pick liars and peculators and hypocrites for my targets! I’d be ashamed to do anything else!”
“With the result that people who pay attention to you start to question the motives of everybody around them,”
Conroy said. “They take it for granted that the world is riddled with corruption and chicanery and fraud.”
“You think it’s better to be deceived than to be told the truth?”
“You think it’s good for people to imagine that everyone who’s richer or more powerful or more fortunate than themselves got there by cheating and lying and wriggling through loopholes in the law?”
For a long moment the two men stared at one another, less than arm’s length apart, until Conroy gave a chuckle and reached to retrieve his beer.
“Apologies, Mr. Flamen. The last thing I want to do is attack someone who dislikes hypocrisy. So do I. But, you see, there is this paradox which bothers me terribly. Day in, day out, for—what?—forty-odd weeks of the year, I imagine, you deliver your exposés and your bits of scandal which may, I admit, achieve results like levering corrupt officials out of their jobs or something of that sort. But what you do and say isn’t a function of the number of public injustices you hear about—it depends on the three-vee slot you have to fill. Have to, five times a week! At the very least I’m sure you must often have blown up some triviality into a grand crusade simply because nothing bigger had turned up the same day.”
Flamen said, slowly, “Yes, I’d have to plead guilty on that. And …” He hesitated, then forced the words out, recalling what Diablo had said about gauging the success of a show by the number of suicides it provoked. “And pretty often exposés like that are regarded as especially successful, not because they were really important but because the target was exceptionally badly defended. Like you get some poor son-of-a-bitch killing himself in shame.”
“Which brings me at long last to my main point,” Conroy said. “I will indeed set up a
bunch of parameters for the packling of your wife which will make Mogshack’s vaunted cure look like a mile-wide miss—and what’s more I’ll be right and he’ll be wrong because he doesn’t care whether he suppresses originality or creativity or obstinacy or any other valuable characteristic so long as his computers predict a satisfied client. From there on it’ll be up to you. But I want you to bear two things in mind.”
He leaned earnestly close to Flamen. “One! I can’t give you back your wife as she was when you loved her. Nobody can. It was you who changed her, and if you want her you’ll have to win her back as the person she now is. Which may mean changing yourself, and that can be painful.
“And two! Don’t delude yourself that just bringing down Mogshack will put the world back together all by itself. If you succeed in, say, getting him kicked out of his job, I’ll be pleased—God, will I be pleased! But I’ll also expect you to make use of your success, and exploit it to go after somebody really poisonous, like the Gottschalks.”
He broke off to tilt the last of his beer down his gullet. Uncertain whether to make a promise he was probably not going to be able to keep, Flamen hesitated, and before he could reply there came a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he saw a strange woman leaning down to him.
“Are you Mr. Flamen?” she said.
“Yes—yes, I am!” Flamen drew himself up; it was very reassuring to be recognized by a stranger right now.
“Well, you’ve been being paged for the last ten minutes,” the woman said, and pointed to the screen over the public comweb at the end of the bar. The name matthew flamen was flashing red at two-second intervals.
“Ten minutes!”
“Well, you seemed to be busy, and I wasn’t sure it was you,” the woman said, stepping back defensively as though afraid he might strike her.
“Ah … Yes. Well, thank you anyway.” Flamen rose, scowling, and the woman retreated with a timid nod. “Excuse me,” he added to Conroy, who shrugged.
Heading for the comweb, he wondered furiously who could have tracked him down here; he had hoped to be uninterrupted at least long enough to consult Conroy about a joint approach to Prior. The latter was dubious about having Celia packled according to parameters of Conroy’s—he judged everything by externals, and what counted for him was that Mogshack was in charge of the Ginsberg whereas Conroy was a failure driven to teaching in an obscure college. Worst of all, as Celia’s present legal guardian he could theoretically forbid Conroy to come anywhere near her.
Ripping the fax paper which bore his name out of the message slot, he saw it was Dr. Reedeth who was trying to get in touch with him. His heart sank. What had happened now?
He punched for the Ginsberg, and the screen lit to show Reedeth in the office which Flamen had seen before, looking harassed; his hair was tousled and there were dark rings under his eyes.
“At last!” he snapped. “Get over here and take charge of your ward, will you? Fast! I don’t like people who welsh on their promises the very day they make them—least of all when they expect me to pick up the pieces!”
“What in hell are you talking about?” Flamen blazed back. “And I don’t like your manner—”
“Didn’t you contract to act as legal guardian for Harry Madison yesterday?” Reedeth broke in.
“Why …Why, of course I did.”
“Didn’t take it very seriously, did you?”
“What do you mean? You assured me he was perfectly sane and able to look after himself, so—”
“So you decided to wait for him to show at your office on Monday morning?” Reedeth’s lip curled. “I should have known. Do you realize he nearly got thrown in the Undertombs? Or don’t you care?”
“Now look here! If he did something criminal while the ink still wasn’t dry on his certificate of sanity, that’s a breach of contract on your side, not on mine!” Flamen felt sweat spring out prickly on his skin, but at the back of his mind was a hesitant jubilation: could this too be a stick to beat Mogshack with?
“Know what a sibyl-pill is?” Reedeth snarled. “You ought to—you watched Lyla Clay performing here the other day.”
“Of course I do. What’s that got to do with Madison?”
“Last night he and Lyla Clay were kidnapped by a gang of bully-boys from a party of Michaela Baxendale’s. Do you know her?”
“Oh my God,” Flamen said. All the color suddenly vanished from the world.
“Seems she’d sent them out to drag in a mixed-race couple to play some kind of game with. Only it wasn’t a game. They forced one of the sibyl-pills down Madison’s throat and he went beserk. He wound up throwing a man out of a forty-fifth story window.”
There was a terrible silence. Eventually Flamen said feebly, “But if they were kidnapped …”
“If you’d kept your word it needn’t have happened!” Reedeth roared. “I’ve been stalling the busies all morning with that argument and it’s damned nearly worn out! I know what a sib does to the mind—I’m in that line of business. But Madison’s a knee, and the busies are still furious about the X Patriot riots the other night. It’s a blind miracle they sent him and the girl back here instead of straight to jail. I can get the girl out, but I’m damned if I’m going to hang myself for Madison when you’re legally responsible for him. Move it over here, fast!”
“Good God,” said Conroy from behind Flamen. “It is Jim Reedeth! I thought I recognized the voice. How are you?”
Beaming, he marched up to the comweb.
Reedeth looked totally blank. He said, “Prof, what in heaven’s name are you doing there?”
“Flamen invited me to New York for the weekend. So what’s the trouble and can I help at all?”
“You know each other,” Flamen muttered.
“Sure,” Conroy nodded. “A former student of mine. Bright too—except that he fell in behind Mogshack and gave up thinking for himself. So anyway: what’s wrong?”
“Ah …” Reedeth glanced past him at Flamen. “I’m not sure whether I ought to—”
“The hell with it!” Flamen snapped. “My private life is going to be all over the hemisphere by Monday anyway, so what’s the difference? Tell him! Tell him everything! Maybe he’ll come up with some brilliant idea.”
He turned his back, scowling.
At first reluctantly, then with fluency, Reedeth recounted what had happened to Lyla and Madison. He concluded, “And now here they are, back in the hospital, and if Mogshack discovers I discharged a patient into the care of someone who completely disregarded his obligations, I’ll be ruined!”
With a look of terrible distress, Conroy said, “Oh, Jim, you are following in your boss’s footsteps, aren’t you? I’d have hoped that any student of mine would talk first about the patient’s plight and then about his own. …” Then, hastily as Reedeth bridled: “Never mind, never mind! Just tell me honestly—in your judgment, is this man Madison fit to be let loose or not?”
Reedeth bit back an angry retort. Shrugging, he said, “I think he was fit for release months ago. In fact I sometimes wonder if he was ever as crazy as they claimed when they committed him.”
“Good start,” Conroy nodded. “And you could plead in any court in the world that forcing a sibyl-pill down someone’s throat is enough to cause temporary insanity. I’ve been looking into that; I gave the pythoness phenomenon to my students as a class assignment a few days ago. Presumably there are witnesses to the kidnapping?”
Reedeth was looking a little more cheerful. “Only the girl herself. But I’m sure we could impeach the testimony of the kidnappers. For instance, she has a stab-mark on her thumb, and Madison has one on his shoulder. They took them by surprise on the street and gave them each a shot of Narcolate.”
“Hmmm!” Conroy rubbed his beard with the back of his hand. “Tell me, Mr. Flamen, can even such a—well—notorious poetess as Michaela Baxendale get away with drugging and kidnapping strangers to amuse her guests?”
“I can make damned sure that she doesn’t,” Flamen
assured him. “I’ve been looking for an angle on her for months, because she revolts me so much. And I don’t care what kind of a ‘broken home’ she came from, being raped by her brother and all that garbage.”
“Could you talk about that later?” Reedeth said impatiently from the comweb. “I’ve spent the whole morning staving off the busies, and I’m exhausted!”
“Just hold the fort a while longer,” Conroy said equably. “No doubt Mr. Flamen will have to make some arrangements—defenestration is a fairly serious offense even nowadays.”
“What?” Reedeth looked blank.
“Throwing people out of windows. Now if it had been done with something out of the Gottschalks’ current catalogue … Never mind! But I’m thinking about bail, contacting a lawyer, swearing out a warrant against Miss Baxendale and her confederates, that kind of thing.”
“It’s all set up! I just haven’t been able to get hold of Flamen to sign the documents!”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible,” Flamen sighed, and cut the circuit. Turning to Conroy, he added, “I’m sorry about this, but I guess I have to go. I’ll see you back here in a couple of hours, with luck.”
“Oh no you won’t,” Conroy said. “I’m going to ride along with you. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that mausoleum of Mogshack’s, and I’m not likely to get another chance.”
Taking Flamen’s arm, he led him briskly towards the door.
SEVENTY-NINE
REPRINTED FROM THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN OF 13TH MARCH 1968
Seven burned to death
Mr David Lumsden, aged 26, stood outside his burning home in Toronto and screamed at passing motorists to stop and help as his wife and six children were burned to death. All the drivers ignored his calls.