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George Webber leaned back in the soft chair, turning a quizzical glancetoward the younger man across the room. He lit a long black cigar.
"Well?" His heavy voice boomed out in the small room. "Now that we'vegot him here, what do you think?"
The younger man glanced uncomfortably through the glass wall panel intothe small dark room beyond. In the dimness, he could barely make out thestill form on the bed, grotesque with the electrode-vernier apparatusalready in place at its temples. Dr. Manelli looked away sharply, andleafed through the thick sheaf of chart papers in his hand.
"I don't know," he said dully. "I just don't know what to think."
The other man's laugh seemed to rise from the depths of his huge chest.His heavy face creased into a thousand wrinkles. Dr. Webber was a largeman, his broad shoulders carrying a suggestion of immense power thatmatched the intensity of his dark, wide-set eyes. He watched Dr.Manelli's discomfort grow, saw the younger doctor's ears grow red, andthe almost cruel lines in his face were masked as he laughed stilllouder.
"Trouble with you, Frank, you just don't have the courage of yourconvictions."
"Well, I don't see anything so funny about it!" Manelli's eyes wereangry. "The man has a suspicious syndrome--so you've followed him, andspied on him for weeks on end, which isn't exactly highest ethicalpractice in collecting a history. I still can't see how you'rejustified."
Dr. Webber snorted, tossing his cigar down on the desk with disgust."The man is insane. That's my justification. He's out of touch withreality. He's wandered into a wild, impossible, fantastic dream world.And we've got to get him out of it, because what he knows, what he'strying to hide from us, is so incredibly dangerous that we don't darelet him go."
The big man stared at Manelli, his dark eyes flashing. "Can't you seethat? Or would you rather sit back and let Harry Scott go the way thatPaulus and Wineberg and the others went?"
"But to use the Parkinson Field on him--" Dr. Manelli shook his headhopelessly. "He'd offered to come over, George. We didn't need to useit."
"Sure, he offered to come--fine, fine. But supposing he changed his mindon the way? For all we know, he had us figured into his paranoia, too,and never would have come near the Hoffman Center."
Dr. Webber shook his head. "We're not playing a game any more, Frank.Get that straight. I thought it was a game a couple of years ago, whenwe first started. But it ceased to be a game when men like Paulus andWineberg walked in sane, healthy men, and came out blubbering idiots.That's no game any more. We're onto something big. And, if Harry Scottcan lead us to the core of it, then I can't care too much what happensto Harry Scott."
Dr. Manelli stood up sharply, walked to the window, and looked down overthe bright, clean buildings of the Hoffman Medical Center. Out acrossthe terraced park that surrounded the glassed towers and shining metalof the Center rose the New City, tier upon tier of smooth, functionalarchitecture, a city of dreams built up painfully out of the rubble ofthe older, ruined city.
"You could kill him," the young man said finally. "The psycho-integratorisn't any standard interrogative technique; it's dangerous andtreacherous. You never know for sure just what you're doing when you digdown into a man's brain tissue with those little electrode probes."
"But we can learn the truth about Harry Scott," Dr. Webber broke in."Six months ago, Harry Scott was working with us, a quiet, affable,pleasant young fellow, extremely intelligent, intensely co-operative. Hewas just the man we needed to work with us, an engineer who could takeour data and case histories, study them, and subject them to acompletely nonmedical analysis. Oh, we had to have it done--theproblem's been with us for a hundred years now, growing ever since the1950s and 60s--insanity in the population, growing, spreading withoutrhyme or reason, insinuating itself into every nook and cranny of ourcivilized life."
The big man blinked at Manelli. "Harry Scott was the new approach. Wewere too close to the problem. We needed a nonmedical outsider to take alook, to tell us what we were missing. So Harry Scott walked into theproblem, and then abruptly lost contact with us. We finally track himdown and find him gone, out of touch with reality, on the same wretchedroad that all the others went. With Harry, it's paranoia. He's beingpersecuted; he has the whole world against him, but most important--thefactor we don't dare overlook--_he's no longer working on the problem_."
Manelli shifted uneasily. "I suppose that's right."
"Of course it's right!" Dr. Webber's eyes flashed. "Harry foundsomething in those statistics. Something about the data, or the casehistories; or something Harry Scott himself dug up opened a door for himto go through, a door that none of us ever dreamed existed. We don'tknow what he found on the other side of that door. Oh, we know what he_thinks_ he found, all this garbage about people that look normal butwalk through walls when nobody's looking, who think around cornersinstead of in straight-line logic. But what he _really_ found there, wedon't have any way of telling. We just know that whatever he _really_found is something new, something unsuspected; something so dangerous itcan drive an intelligent man into the wildest delusions of paranoidpersecution."
A new light appeared in Dr. Manelli's eyes as he faced the other doctor."Wait a minute," he said softly. "The integrator is an _experimental_instrument, too."
Dr. Webber smiled slyly. "Now you're beginning to think," he said.
"But you'll see only what Scott himself believes. And _he_ thinks hisstory is true."
"Then we'll have to break his story."
"_Break_ it?"
"Certainly. For some reason, this delusion of persecution is far saferfor Harry Scott than facing what he really found out. What we've got todo is to make this delusion _less_ safe than the truth."
The room was silent for a long moment. Manelli looked up, his fingerstrembling. "Let's hear it."
"It's very simple. Up to now, Harry Scott has had _delusions_ ofpersecution. But now we're _really_ going to persecute Harry Scott, ashe's never been persecuted before."
The Dark Door Page 2