He Who Shapes (4 page)

"Carry menus in your head."

"Only a few," he said, "for awkward occasions. What was it

you wanted to seetalk to me about?"

"You're a neuroparticipant therapist," she stated, "a Shaper."

"And you are?"

"a resident in psychiatry at State Psych. I have a year

remaining."

"You knew Sam Riscomb then."

"Yes, he helped me get my appointment. He was my

adviser."

"He was a very good friend of mine. We studied together at

Menninger."

She nodded.

"I'd often heard him speak of youthat's one of the reasons

I wanted to meet you. He's responsible for encouraging me to

go ahead with my plans, despite my handicap."

Render stared at her. She was wearing a dark green dress

which appeared to be made of velvet. About three inches to the

left of the bodice was a pin which might have been gold. It

displayed a red stone which could have been a ruby, around

which the outline of a goblet was cast. Or was it really two

profiles that were outlined, staring through the stone at one

another? It seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he could not

place it at the moment. It glittered expensively in the dim light.

Render accepted his drink from the waiter.

"I want to become a neuroparticipant therapist," she told

him.

And if she had possessed vision Render would have thought

she was staring at him, hoping for some response in his expres-

sion. He could not quite calculate what she wanted him to say.

"I commend your choice," he said, "and I respect your

ambition." He tried to put his smile into his voice. "It is not an

easy thing, of course, not all of the requirements being

academic ones."

"I know," she said. "But then, I have been blind since birth

and it was not an easy thing to come this far."

"Since birth?" he repeated. "I thought you might have lost

your sight recently. You did your undergrad work then, and

went on through med school without eyes . . . That'srather

impressive."

"Thank you," she said, "but it isn't. Not really. I heard about

the first neuroparticipantsBartelmetz and the restwhen I was

a child, and I decided then that I wanted to be one. My life

ever since has been governed by that desire."

"What did you do in the labs?" he inquired. "-Not being

able to see a specimen, look through a microscope . . . ? Or all

that reading?"

"I hired people to read my assignments to me. I taped

everything. The school understood that I wanted to go into

psychiatry, and they permitted a special arrangement for labs.

I've been guided through the dissection of- cadavers by lab

assistants, and I've had everything described to me. I can tell

things by touch . . . and I have a memory like yours with the

menu," she smiled. " "The quality of psychoparticipation

phenomena can only be gauged by the therapist himself, at that

moment outside of time and space as we normally know it,

when he stands in the midst of a world erected from the stuff of

another man's
 
dreams, recognizes there the non-Euclidian

architecture of aberrance, and then takes his patient by the

hand and tours the landscape . . . If he can lead him back to the

common earth, then his judgments were sound, his actions

valid.' "

"From Why No Psychometrics in This Place," reflected

Render.

'-by Charles Render, M.D."

"Our dinner is already moving in this direction," he noted,

picking up his drink as the speed-cooked meal was pushed

toward them in the kitchen-buoy.

"That's one of the reasons I wanted to meet you," she

continued, raising her glass as the dishes rattled before her. "I

want you to help me become a Shaper."

Her shaded eyes, as vacant as a statue's, sought him again.

"Yours is a completely unique situation," he commented.

"There has never been a congenitally blind neuroparticipant

for obvious reasons. I'd have to consider all the aspects of the

situation before I could advise you. Let's eat now, though. I'm

starved."

"All right. But my blindness does not mean that I have never

seen."

He did not ask her what she meant by that, because prime

ribs were standing in front of him now and there was a bottle of

Chambertin at his elbow. He did pause long enough to notice

though, as she raised her left hand from beneath the table, that

she wore no rings.

"I wonder if it's still snowing," he commented as they drank

their coffee. "It was coming down pretty hard when I pulled

into the dome."

"I hope so," she said, "even though it diffuses the light and I

can't 'see' anything at all through it. I like to feel it falling about

me and blowing against my face."

"How do you get about?"

"My dog, Sigmund1 gave him the night off," she smiled,

"he can guide me anywhere. He's a mutie Shepherd."

"Oh?" Render grew curious. "Can he talk much?"

She nodded.

"That operation wasn't as successful on him as on some of

them, though. He has a vocabulary of about four hundred

words, but I think it causes him pain to speak. He's quite

intelligent. You'll have to meet him sometime."

Render began speculating immediately. He had spoken with

such animals at recent medical conferences, and had been

startled by their combination of reasoning ability and their

devotion to their handlers. Much chromosome tinkering,

followed by delicate embryo-surgery, was required" to give a

dog a brain capacity greater than a chimpanzee's. Several

followup operations were necessary to produce vocal abilities.

Most such experiments ended in failure, and the dozen or so

puppies a year on which they succeeded were valued in the

neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars each. He realized

then, as he lit a cigarette and held the light for a moment, that

the stone in Miss Shallot's medallion was a genuine ruby. He

began to suspect that her admission to a medical school might,

in addition to her academic record, have been based upon a

sizeable endowment to the college of her choice. Perhaps he

was being unfair though, he chided himself.

"Yes," he said, "we might do a paper on canine neuroses.

Does he ever refer to his father ag 'that son of a female

Shepherd?"

"He never met his father," she said, quite soberly. "He was

raised apart from other dogs. His attitude could hardly be

typical. I don't think you'll ever learn the functional psychology

of the dog from a mutie."

"I imagine you're right," he dismissed it. "More coffee?"

"No, thanks."

Deciding it was time to continue the discussion, he said, "So

you want to be a Shaper . . ."

"Yes."

"I hate to be the one to destroy anybody's high ambitions,"

he told her. "Like poison, I hate it. Unless they have no

foundation at all in reality. Then I can be ruthless. Sohonestly,

frankly, and in all sincerity, I do not see how it could ever be

managed. Perhaps you're a fine psychiatristbut in my opinion,

it is a physical and mental impossibility for you ever to become

a neuroparticipant. As for my reasons"

"Wait," she said. "Not here, please. Humor me. I'm tired of

this stuffy placetake me somewhere else to talk. I think I might

be able to convince you there is a way."

"Why not?" he shrugged. "I have plenty of time. Sureyou

call it. Where?"

"Blindspin?"

He suppressed an unwilling chuckle at the expression, but

she laughed aloud.

"Fine," he said, "but I'm still thirsty."

A bottle of champagne was tallied and he signed the check

despite her protests. It arrived in a colorful "Drink While You

Drive" basket, and they stood then, and she was tall, but he

was taller.

Blindspin.

A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the

auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands

of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky

high,
 
tires
 
assailing
 
the
 
road
 
below
 
like
 
four
 
phantom

buzzsawsand starting from scratch and ending in the same

place, and never knowing where you are going or where you

have beenit is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling

of individuality in
 
the
 
coldest brainpan,
 
to
 
produce
 
a

momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all

but a sense of motion. This is because movement through

darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itselfat least that's

what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the

place laughed.

Actually now, the phenomenon known as blindspin first

became prevalent (as might be suspected) among certain

younger members of the community, when monitored high-

ways deprived them of the means to exercise their automobiles

in some of the more individualistic ways which had come to

be frowned upon by the National Traffic Control Authority.

Something had to be done.

It was.

The first, disastrous reaction involved the simple engineering