Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (32 page)

His eyes flicked over the top card. He frowned, then went to the small
square of one-way glass in the reception-room door and looked through it.
There were four police officers and a man in a straitjacket.

The card said the man's name was Gerald Bocek and that he had shot and
killed five people in a supermarket, and had killed one officer and
wounded two others before being captured.

Except for the straitjacket, Gerald Bocek did not have the appearance of
being dangerous. He was about twenty-five, with brown hair and blue eyes.
There were faint wrinkles of habitual good nature about his eyes. Right
now he was smiling, relaxed, and idly watching Helena, who was pretending
to study various cards in her desk file but was obviously conscious of her
audience.

Cedric returned to his desk and sat down. The card for Jerry Bocek said
more about the killings. When captured, Bocek insisted that the people he
had killed were not people at all, but blue-scaled Venusian lizards who
had boarded his spaceship, and that he had only been defending himself.

Dr. Cedric Elton shook his head in disapproval. Fantasy fiction was all
right in its place, but too many people took it seriously. Of course, it
was not the fault of the fiction. The same type of person took other types
of fantasy seriously in earlier days, burning women as witches, stoning
men as devils—

Abruptly Cedric deflected the control on the intercom and spoke into it.
"Send Gerald Bocek in, please," he said.

A moment later the door to the reception room opened. Helena flashed
Cedric a scared smile and got out of the way quickly. One police officer
led the way, followed by Gerald Bocek, closely flanked by two officers,
with the fourth one in the rear, who carefully closed the door. It was
impressive, Cedric decided. He nodded toward a chair in front of his desk,
and the police officers sat the straitjacketed man in it, then hovered
nearby, ready for anything.

"You're Jerry Bocek?" Cedric asked.

The straitjacketed man nodded cheerfully.

"I'm Dr. Cedric Elton, a psychiatrist," Cedric said. "Do you have any idea
at all why you have been brought to me?"

"Brought to you?" Jerry echoed, chuckling. "Don't kid me. You're my old
pal, Gar Castle. Brought to you? How could I get
away
from you in
this stinking tub?"

"Stinking tub?" Cedric said.

"Spaceship," Jerry said. "Look, Gar. Untie me, will you? This nonsense has
gone far enough."

"My name is Dr. Cedric Elton," Cedric enunciated. "You are not on a
spaceship. You were brought to my office by the four policemen standing in
back of you, and—"

Jerry Bocek turned his head and studied each of the four policemen with
frank curiosity. "What policemen?" he interrupted. "You mean these four
gear lockers?" He turned his head back and looked pityingly at Dr. Elton.
"You'd better get hold of yourself, Gar," he said. "You're imagining
things."

"My name is Dr. Cedric Elton," Cedric said.

Gerald Bocek leaned forward and said with equal firmness, "Your name is
Gar Castle. I refuse to call you Dr. Cedric Elton, because your name is
Gar Castle, and I'm going to keep on calling you Gar Castle because we
have to have at least one peg of rationality in all this madness or you
will be cut completely adrift in this dream world you've cooked up."

Cedric's eyebrows shot halfway up to his hairline.

"Funny," he mused, smiling. "That's exactly what I was just going to say
to you!"

Cedric continued to smile. Jerry's serious intenseness slowly faded.
Finally an answering smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. When it
became a grin, Cedric laughed, and Jerry began to laugh with him. The four
police officers looked at one another uneasily.

"Well!" Cedric finally gasped. "I guess that puts us on an even footing!
You're nuts to me and I'm nuts to you!"

"An equal footing is right!" Jerry shouted in high glee. Then he sobered.
"Except," he said gently, "I'm tied up."

"In a straitjacket," Cedric corrected.

"Ropes," Jerry said firmly.

"You're dangerous," Cedric said. "You killed six people, one of them a
police officer, and wounded two other officers."

"I blasted five Venusian lizard pirates who boarded our ship," Jerry said,
"and melted the door off of one gear locker and seared the paint on two
others. You know as well as I do, Gar, how space madness causes you to
personify everything. That's why they drill into you that the minute you
think there are more people on board the ship than there were at the
beginning of the trip, you'd better go to the medicine locker and take a
yellow pill. They can't hurt anything but a delusion."

"If that is so," Cedric said, "why are
you
in a straitjacket?"

"I'm tied up with ropes," Jerry said patiently. "You tied me up.
Remember?"

"And those four police officers behind you are gear lockers?" Cedric said.
"Okay, if one of those gear lockers comes around in front of you and taps
you on the jaw with his fist, would you still believe it's a gear locker?"

Cedric nodded to one of the officers, and the man came around in front of
Gerald Bocek and, quite carefully, hit him hard enough to rock his head
but not hurt him. Jerry's eyes blinked with surprise, then he looked at
Cedric and smiled. "Did you feel that?" Cedric said quietly.

"Feel what?" Jerry said. "Oh!" He laughed. "You imagined that one of the
gear lockers—a police officer in your dream world—came around
in front of me and hit me?" He shook his head in pity. "Don't you
understand, Gar, that it didn't really happen? Untie me and I'll prove it.
Before your very eyes I'll open the door on your
policeman
and take
out the pressure suit, or magnetic grapple, or whatever is in it. Or are
you afraid to? You've surrounded yourself with all sorts of protective
delusions. I'm tied with ropes, but you imagine it to be a straitjacket.
You imagine yourself to be a psychiatrist named Dr. Cedric Elton so that
you can convince yourself that you're sane and I'm crazy. Probably you
imagine yourself a very
famous
psychiatrist that everyone would
like to come to for treatment. World famous, no doubt. Probably you even
think you have a beautiful receptionist. What is her name?"

"Helena Fitzroy," Cedric said.

Jerry nodded. "It figures," he said resignedly. "Helena Fitzroy is the
expediter at Mars Port. You try to date her every time we land there, but
she won't date you."

"Hit him again," Cedric said to the officer. While Jerry's head was still
rocking from the blow, Cedric said, "Now! Is it
my
imagination that
your head is still rocking from the blow?"

"What blow?" Jerry said, smiling. "I felt no blow."

"Do you mean to say," Cedric said incredulously, "that there is no corner
of your mind, no slight residue of rationality, that tries to tell you
your rationalizations aren't reality?"

Jerry smiled ruefully. "I have to admit," he said, "when you seem so
absolutely certain you're right and I'm nuts, it almost makes me doubt.
Untie me, Gar, and let's try to work this thing out sensibly." He grinned.
"You know, Gar,
one
of us has to be nuttier than a fruitcake."

"If I had the officers take off your straitjacket, what would you do?"
Cedric asked. "Try to grab a gun and kill some more people?"

"That's one of the things I'm worried about," Jerry said. "If those
pirates came back, with me tied up, you're just space crazy enough to
welcome them aboard. That's why you
must
untie me. Our lives may
depend on it, Gar."

"Were would you get a gun?" Cedric asked.

"Where they're always kept," Jerry said. "In the gear lockers."

Cedric looked at the four policemen, at their holstered revolvers. One of
them grinned feebly at him.

"I'm afraid we can't take your straitjacket off just yet," Cedric said.
"I'm going to have the officers take you back now. I'll talk with you
again tomorrow. Meanwhile I want you to think seriously about things. Try
to get below this level of rationalization that walls you off from
reality. Once you make a dent in it, the whole delusion will vanish." He
looked up at the officers. "All right, take him away. Bring him back the
same time tomorrow."

The officers urged Jerry to his feet. Jerry looked down at Cedric, a
gentle expression on his face. "I'll try to do that, Gar," he said. "And I
hope you do the same thing. I'm much encouraged. Several times I detected
genuine doubt in your eyes. And—" Two of the officers pushed him
firmly toward the door. As they opened it, Jerry turned his head and
looked back. "
Take
one of those yellow pills in the medicine
locker, Gar," he pleaded. "It can't hurt you."

At a little before five-thirty, Cedric tactfully eased his last patient
all the way across the reception room and out, then locked the door and
leaned his back against it.

"Today was rough," he sighed.

Helena glanced up at him briefly, then continued typing. "I only have a
little more on this last transcript," she said.

A minute later she pulled the paper from the typewriter and placed it on
the neat stack beside her.

"I'll sort and file them in the morning," she said. "It was rough, wasn't
it, Doctor? That Gerald Bocek is the most unusual patient you've had since
I've worked for you. And poor Mr. Potts. A brilliant executive, making
half a million a year, and he's going to have to give it up. He seems so
normal."

"He is normal," Cedric said. "People with above normal blood pressure
often have very minor cerebral hemorrhages, so small that the affected
area is no larger than the head of a pin. All that happens is that they
completely forget things that they knew. They can relearn them, but a man
whose judgment must always be perfect can't afford to take the chance.
He's already made one error in judgment that cost his company a million
and a half. That's why I consented to take him on as a—Gerald Bocek
really upset me, Helena. I consent to take a five hundred thousand dollar
a year executive as a patient."

"He was frightening, wasn't he?" Helena said. "I don't mean so much
because he's a mass murderer as—"

"I know. I know," Cedric said. "Let's prove him wrong. Have dinner with
me."

"We agreed—"

"Let's break the agreement this once."

Helena shook her head firmly. "Especially not now," she said. "Besides, it
wouldn't prove anything. He's got you boxed in on that point. If I went to
dinner with you, it would only show that a wish fulfillment entered your
dream world."

"Ouch," Cedric said, wincing. "That's a dirty word. I wonder how he knew
about the yellow pills? I can't get out of my mind the fact that
if
we had spaceships and
if
there were a type of space madness in
which you began to personify objects, a yellow pill would be the right
thing to stop that."

"How?" Helena said.

"They almost triple the strength of nerve currents from end organs. What
results is that reality practically shouts down any fantasy insertions.
It's quite startling. I took one three years ago when they first became
available. You'd be surprised how little you actually see of what you look
at, especially of people. You look at symbol inserts instead. I had to
cancel my appointments for a week. I found I couldn't work without my
professionally built symbol inserts about people that enable me to see
them—not as they really are—but as a complex of normal and
abnormal symptoms."

"I'd like to take one sometime," Helena said.

"That's a twist," Cedric said, laughing. "One of the characters in a dream
world takes a yellow pill and discovers it doesn't exist at all except as
a fantasy."

"Why don't we both take one?" Helena said.

"Uh-uh," Cedric said firmly. "I couldn't do my work."

"You're afraid you might wake up on a spaceship?" Helena said, grinning.

"Maybe I am," Cedric said. "Crazy, isn't it? But there is one thing today
that stands out as a serious flaw in my reality. It's so glaring that I
actually am afraid to ask you about it."

"Are you serious?" Helena said.

"I am." Cedric nodded. "How does it happen that the police brought Gerald
Bocek here to my office instead of holding him in the psychiatric ward at
City Hospital and having me go there to see him? How does it happen the
D.A. didn't get in touch with me beforehand and discuss the case with me?"

"I … I don't know!" Helena said. "I received no call. They just
showed up, and I assumed they wouldn't have without your knowing about it
and telling them to. Mrs. Fortesque was your first patient, and I called
her at once and caught her just as she was leaving the house and told her
an emergency case had come up." She looked at Cedric with round, startled
eyes.

"Now we know how the patient must feel," Cedric said, crossing the
reception room to his office door. "Terrifying, isn't it, to think that if
I took a yellow pill, all this might
vanish
—my years of
college, my internship,
my fame as the world's best-known psychiatrist,
and you. Tell me, Helena, are you sure you aren't an expediter at Mars
Port?"

He leered at her mockingly as he slowly closed the door, cutting off his
view of her.

Cedric put his coat away and went directly to the small square of one-way
glass in the reception-room door. Gerald Bocek, still in straitjacket, was
there, and so were the same four police officers.

Cedric went to his desk and, without sitting down, deflected the control
on the intercom.

"Helena," he said, "before you send in Gerald Bocek get me the D.A. on the
phone."

He glanced over the four patient cards while waiting. Once he rubbed his
eyes gently. He had had a restless night.

When the phone rang, he reached for it. "Hello? Dave?" he said. "About
this patient, Gerald Bocek—"