Howson flushed. He made as though to contradict, but before he had a chance to speak, the ambulance attendants came from the freight elevator, and Singh’s entire attention went over to the supervision of their work.
Howson drew back into a corner out of the way, and gazed at the waxworn calm of Choong’s face as they manhandled him on his stretcher.
No, damn you. That’s why there’s such a stench of smugness reeking around you! You can’t have needed help, because you’ve taken so much care to make sure of getting it!
And you will, damn you again. They’ll make me chase after you into that nowhere-land, destroy your dreams, pester and persecute you till you come back. And I’ll take on the job, because this is all I have: my skill that nobody in the world can match.
So who will come after me, to help me, Choong? Who else is there? Damn you to hell.
XVIxvi
His bitterness was still growing, accentuated by his lack of sleep, when the special conference convened the next afternoon. For any ordinary patient, a place on the regular daily agenda sufficed; for anyone else in UN employ, at most a multiline phone link was used to discuss the case. But for Choong the high executives came swarming in by Mach Five express.
In the chair reserved for him at Singh’s right, he sat trying to think of unimportant matters: the long low sea- green ceiling, the exquisite crafting of the beechwood furniture. He failed. He was much too aware of the guiltily curious stares of the strangers, which asked as clearly as a direct telepathic signal: The world’s greatest curative telepathist? Him?
He could barely prevent himself from blasting at them aloud: “What the hell did you expect, anyway? A superman? A pair of horns?”
Fortunately their attention had been distracted by the arrival of copies of the physical-examination reports on Choong and his companions. Now they were doggedly plowing through a welter of detail, hoping to save themselves from asking ignorant questions later and looking foolish.
Except one, he suddenly realized. Lockspeiser, the big Canadian with the red face and the bald patch on his crown, had shut his folder of papers and pushed it away. That was an honest action, anyway. …
“Excuse me for being blunt, Dr. Singh,” the Canadian said. “But this stuff is for doctors, and I’m not one. I’m an allegedly practical politician working with the Trade Coordination Commission, and my interest in Dr. Choong is confined to the fact that he was supposed to arbitrate in the balance-of-credits crisis you may have heard about— the Sino-Indonesian mess. It was hell’s own job cooling people’s tempers to the point where they’d accept an outside referee, and they want Choong or nobody. That’s what counts with me. Can we skip the jargon and boil out some hard facts now?”
So he had been running away from a job, had he? The idea was oddly comforting to Howson. For seconds only, though. Singh raised his head.
“Had he been notified that his services were required?”
“I don’t know,” Lockspeiser granted. “I warned his Hong Kong office, naturally. You’re from there, aren’t you?” He glanced at the worried Chinese opposite him, who had been presented to the meeting as Mr. Jeremy Ho.
“Yes. Ah …” He looked very unhappy. “The answer to Dr. Singh’s question is negative. We hadn’t heard from Dr. Choong in over a week.”
“And it didn’t bother you?” Lockspeiser asked incredulously.
“Put it the other way around: we didn’t—don’t— bother Dr. Choong.” Ho’s tone was mildly reproachful. “We assumed he was making one of his regular study tours. He goes off to sound out public opinion, gathering background data which may prove useful in the future. Only he can say what’s important to him.”
Singh gave a polite cough. “I don’t think we need pursue this any further. We’ve located Choong; our immediate difficulty is getting to him. We’d better concentrate on that.”
“Agreed.” That was the self-possessed woman with auburn hair, age—probably—thirty-five to forty, in black and green, who sat a little apart from her neighbor Lock- speiser. Her status was so far unknown to Howson, and he was curious about her. He was certain she was a telepathist, but when he had made the automatic polite approach to her, he had been met by a well-disciplined mental gesture equivalent to a cool shrug. It was effectively a snub, and it had upset him.
Singh blinked at the woman. “Thank you, Miss Moreno. Now, I understand from you that nothing of importance is known about Dr. Choong’s companions. Correct?”
Miss Moreno gave an emphatic nod. “None of them has come to our attention previously,” she confirmed.
“Our attention?” Howson said. All eyes switched to him, and instantly switched away again, except Miss Moreno’s. Her answer was prompt and casual.
“World Intelligence, Dr. Howson.”
Of course. When a man who holds the key to peace over a sixth of the globe defaults, you’d expect them to come running. Embarrassed at his own lack of perspicacity, and more troubled than ever at her refusal to acknowledge him on a telepathic level, Howson mumbled something indistinct.
Singh hurried on. “You’ve all been briefed on what’s happened to Choong, naturally. What we can’t figure out yet is why he’s done it. We’re analyzing the confidential psychomedical reports Mr. Ho brought from Hong Kong, but till we’ve done so we can only speculate. Before today I’d have said the reason for setting up a catapathic grouping was the same one for which any non-telepathist may go into fugue—to escape an unbearable crisis in real life. All our data, however, point to Choong being excellently adjusted, to his work, his private life, his talent. … Yes, Miss Moreno?”
“Do we really have to prolong this conference?” the woman said brittlely. Howson tensed. For all her careful control, a leakage of indisputable alarm was reaching him. “There’s only one course of action open and the sooner it’s tackled, the better!”
Lockspeiser slapped the table with his palm. “Great! Will someone tell me what action? I’d never checked up on this—this catapathic thing before I heard about Choong. Seems to me he’s blocked every way of reaching him … hasn’t he?”
“What has to be done is this,” Howson said in a voice as shrill and hard as a scream. “Somebody has to follow him into fantasy. Somebody has to risk his own sanity to work out the rules by which his universe operates— to sort out from ten real personalities and God knows how many schizoid secondaries the ego of the telepathist; to make the fantasy so uninhabitable that from sheer disgust he withdraws the links between himself and the others and reverts to normal perception.”
He raised his eyes to meet Miss Moreno’s directly. She gazed steadily back as he finished, “And it’s not easy!”
“Did I say it was?” A hint of a flush deepened the olive tan of her cheeks.
“You said the sooner we tackled Choong the better.” Howson parodied a bow of invitation. “You’re welcome! For one thing, you have to learn your subject by heart first. If you don’t, he can hide from you behind an infinite succession of masks, until you’re too angry to outthink him, or too worn out to care, or—or too fascinated …” He swallowed and licked his lips, still looking toward Miss Moreno but no longer seeing her. “For another thing, while the body retains its energy reserves, an intruder has to slither in or not enter at all. If he’s clumsy and obvious, he meets the combined resources of the participants head-on, and they deny his existence as they’ve denied their own bodies. This time there are ten in the grouping, and you may bet that Choong hasn’t invited nincompoops and milksops to share his dreams! And lastly—” He stopped. They waited for him, the pause becoming like an interval between the lightning and the thunder.
“And lastly,” Howson repeated very slowly, “Choong isn’t an inadequate personality on the run.”
Then why? Why? WHY?
He left them to get on with it after that. There were only the peripheral questions to settle, and it didn’t matter who asked which; they were all predictable.
“Can’t their resistance be lowe
red … by drugs, maybe?”
“Not by drugs. An electric shock to the organ of Funck is sometimes helpful. But any depressant we used would affect the motor functions—the heart, the breathing reflex—as well as the higher centers involved in imagination. We have nothing that selective on the nervous system.”
“Well … prosthetic hearts, lungs?”
“No good until the telepathic linkage is already broken. Prior to that, they’d welcome it. It would mean that much less demand from their bodies, and the natural functions might cease for good.”
“Does physical separation make any difference?”
“They use telepathists to communicate with Mars. I hope that answers your question!” Singh was getting edgy; his mind wasn’t on the questioner, but on the absent Howson, wondering if he was eavesdropping from elsewhere in the building. He was, of course. He couldn’t resist it.
Sensing the growing impatience of the director in chief, the others changed their minds about asking more questions, and Lockspeiser came straight to the point.
“All right, Dr. Singh! All that remains to be settled is this: will Dr. Howson tackle the job, and what are his chances of success in a reasonably short time?”
1 I wish I knew— But Singh masked that thought skilfully; maybe not even Miss Moreno detected it. He said aloud, “As to tackling the job: I’m sure he will. As to succeeding in a reasonably short time: he has an unbroken record of success in his previous cases, and few of his cures took more than forty-eight hours once they got started. Mark you, the ground has to be prepared, as he pointed out; he has to learn his patient from birth on, before he enters the fantasy.”
“Fair enough,” Lockspeiser grunted, and rose to his feet.
But Miss Moreno lingered, catching Singh’s eye, and spoke when the door had closed behind Ho and Lockspeiser.
“I’m going to put that question again, Dr. Singh, if you don’t mind. It’s essential that we don’t gamble in this matter. Are you sure Dr. Howson will get Choong back?”
Instantly, rage, as much as Pandit Singh ever allowed himself. And, spoken aloud: Don’t let yourself say or even think that! Damnation, I’ve worked with Gerry for eleven years. I’ve seen him develop from a frightened, shy, retarded adolescent into a capable—hell, a brilliant! —therapist. His mind’s as keen as a scalpel. I know that; how is it you don’t? You’re a telepathist yourself, aren’t you?”
There was a moment of chill. Eyes closed, rocking a little on his special chair, Howson waited to feel Singh hear the answer. He had no wish to investigate Miss Moreno’s mind if she had refused him contact previously.
Then: “How did you know? My office was under orders not to tell you, and I think I made it pretty clear to Howson that I—”
“I didn’t have to be told!” Singh waved the words aside with an impatient gesture. “I’ve seen better than two hundred telepathists, sick and well, trained and novice. I still want an answer, though. How is it you don’t know that Gerry is the one and only living man who can get Choong back?”
“Because …” There was a pause, colored by the gathering of will power toward a decision. “Because Choong scares me, if I’ve got to be frank! Ever since Vargas discovered the catapathic linkage, out of—I don’t know— frustration, maladjustment. … Oh, skip that. Ever since, anyway, it’s been a standing temptation to all of us. You’re probably an exception if you’ve worked with so many telepathists, but most people imagine the talent is absolutely rewarding and satisfying. For all the careful propaganda to the contrary, they get jealous.” The words were bitter now. “Well, a telepathist can be frustrated, or depressed, or lose heart. And any of us could say at any time, ‘Let the world go to blazes! I can make my own!’ But we’re held back. We think, ‘It’s the weaklings who give in!’
“But Choong has done it now. A weakling? Him? Never! He apparently went into fugue by simple choice, in full possession of his faculties. Is that where I’m going to end up? Or Howson? Or all of us? I’ve been refusing rapport with Gerry Howson, doctor. I know it’s upsetting him. But you see … I’m afraid that if I find he’s as tempted as I am, and if he finds I’m tempted, we’ll have lost not only Choong, but him, and me as well.”
Singh had no answer. He merely bowed his head.
So there it was, in all its nakedness: the fear. Abruptly Howson didn’t dislike Miss Moreno any longer. She had meant well. She had simply not realized that it was more help to him to know that his terror was shared, rather than a product of his individual plight.
How had Marlowe put it in the mouth of Mephistoph- eles? Something about it being sweet to have companions in adversity? He couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. The principle applied, and he felt comforted.
His hand went to the switch of the intercom. A pause, and then Deirdre van Osterbeck spoke.
“Yes?”
“Gerry here, Deirdre. Send me the background on the Choong case, please. I’m ready to start work on it now.”
XVIIxvii
Usually he relied at least in part on inspiration to achieve his ultimate success. Many times in the past he had brought about a swift and drastic disruption of a catapathic grouping by exploiting a weakness revealed only in the fantasy itself, never previously admitted by the telepathist even to his analyst, even to his wife—if he had a wife; rather few telepathists bothered to marry, in view of the unlikelihood of their having children with the gift.
This time, however, nothing was left to last-moment improvisation. He employed every trick in the book.
First there were the long, long hours under the hood— the close-fitting device combining microfilm viewer, microphone and audible commentary outputs. He used a mild stimulant to help him fix the endless facts in his brain, and came out from each session limp and sweating.
Then there were the direct investigations. They brought him anyone and everyone they could find who had known Choong at all closely: former schoolfellows, elderly relatives, ex-girl friends, professional colleagues—in all more than two hundred minds for him to dip into, sift, pick clues and hints from.
Last, they brought Choong’s wife.
He had not wanted to face her. He had tried to tell himself, her and Singh that it wasn’t necessary, he had enough material to satisfy him. But in the end he had to accept the ordeal. She herself insisted. She wanted her husband back, and if her memory held anything of use to Howson, she wanted him to have it.
She was a small woman, pudgy, not very attractive, a receptive telepathist of fair accomplishment. Her ancestors were mostly Polynesian, but her present work was largely concerned with cultural adjustment in New Guinea, cushioning the impact of modern technology on people whose grandfathers had been born in the Stone Age. She had been away working for more than three months, and had not expected to see her husband again for another six weeks.
When Howson first probed her, he was already convinced of what he would find. Here if anywhere must be the intolerable situation Choong was running from, surely! He looked for the signs of marital, probably sexual, strain —and was bewildered.
They weren’t there. He found only a hurt puzzlement, a mute question: why did he go without me?
And she didn’t know the answer, even when he burrowed into the chaos of her subconscious. To all outward and inward appearance, Choong was the best-adjusted telepathist Howson had ever run across, and his adjustment to his wife was as good as any other part of his existence.
Shaken, he resisted the growing impulse to cut short his preparations. He knew Lockspeiser and Ho were getting anxious; he knew even Singh, whose confidence in him was tremendous, had started to wonder whether these elaborate precautions were necessary or just an attempt to postpone the eventual therapy. Not even if the Sino-Indonesian crisis flared into violence would he dare to face Choong without knowing his weak points.
And since Choong didn’t have any, to speak of, that left his companions.
Here the task was infinitely easier. Although none of these nine people
would have succumbed to escapist fantasy of their own accord, they had required little persuading to join with Choong. Consequently he found hopeful indications in their psychological records.
This man: repressed will-to-power, king-and-slave fantasies revealed in analysis a few years earlier.
And this man: a childhood history of lying, petty theft and furniture-breaking.
And this woman: attempted suicide after an unhappy love affair.
I’m a ghoul, Howson thought, not for the first time. Here are people at the end of their tethers, and in despair they’ve tried to break loose. So what do I do? I play on their private misery, and make even escape unbearable.
“Set them up, Deirdre. I’m on my way down now.”
“Good! We’ll be ready when you arrive; I’ve had staff standing by all day.”
Howson turned off the intercom, got to his feet and stretched. He wished he could stretch completely, and tense the withered muscles of his back, which had never been drawn out. Still, wishing was futile. He ought to have learned that by now.
His mind buzzed with the information he had packed into it over the past few days as he limped through the corridors toward the room where his patient waited. It was like being pursued by hornets.
Moreover, there was memory to dog his footsteps. Maybe it was a mistake that he had never moved from the room he was first assigned when he came here. Maybe he should have gone to an apartment out in the city. Then he wouldn’t now be walking the same route he had followed, blind with tears, when Ilse Kronstadt came so near to death in her encounter with Pericles Phranakis.
Was this his own hour of crisis? UseIlse, too, had had an unblemished record, until (what had she compared it to?) the bullet-sized tumor in her brain weakened her. His physical powers were no worse than they had ever been, but his control had nonetheless been subtly undermined, for just the reasons Miss Moreno had confided to Pandit Singh. He was embarking, scared, on an enterprise in which only the most sublime confidence in his own ability could uphold him. And there was no reluctant novice to come storming to his rescue at the eleventh hour.