by C. L. Moore
The city had to be built and maintained as a self-sufficient unit within an impossibly small radius.
Consider the problems. Self-sufficient. There were no pipe lines to outside. A civilization had to exist for an indefinite period in its own waste products. Steamships, spaceships, are not parallels. They have to make port and take in fresh supplies.
This lifeboat would be at sea for much longer than six hundred years. And the citizens—the survivors—must be kept not only alive, but healthy physically and mentally.
The smaller the area, the higher the concentration. The builders could make the necessary machines. They knew how to do that. But such machines had never been constructed before on the planet. Not in such concentration!
Civilization is an artificial environment. With the machines that were necessary, the city became so artificial that nobody could live in it. The builders got their efficiency; they made the city so that it could exist indefinitely, supplying all the air, water, food and power required. The machines took care of that.
But such machines!
The energy required and released was slightly inconceivable. It had to be released, of course. And it was. In light and sound and radiation—within the five-mile area under the Barrier.
Anyone living in the city would have developed a neurosis in two minutes, a psychosis in ten, and would have lived a little while longer than that. Thus the builders had an efficient city, but nobody could use it.
There was one answer.
Hypnosis.
-
Everyone in the city was under hypnosis. It was selective telepathic hypnosis, with the so-called Monuments—powerful hypnopedic machines—as the control devices. The survivors in the lifeboat didn't know there was a storm. They saw only placid water on which the boat drifted smoothly.
The city screamed to deaf ears. No one had heard it for six hundred years. No one had felt the radiation or seen the blinding, shocking light that flashed through the city. The citizens could not, and the Controllers could not either, because they were blind and deaf and dumb, and lacking in certain other senses. They had their telepathy, their ESP, which enabled them to accomplish their task of steering the lifeboat. As for the citizens, their job was to survive.
No one had heard the city screaming for six hundred years—except Bill Norman.
-
"He has an inquiring mind," Nehral said dryly. "Too inquiring. His problem's an abstraction, as I've mentioned, and if he gets the right answer it'll kill him. If he doesn't, he'll go insane. In either case, we'll suffer, because we're not conditioned to failure. The main hypnotic maxim implanted in our minds is that every citizen must survive. All right. You've got the facts now, Fleming. Does anything suggest itself?"
"I don't have all the facts. What's Norman's problem?"
"He comes of dangerous stock," Nehral answered indirectly. "Theologians and mathematicians. His mind is ... a little too rational. As for his problem—well, Pilate asked the same question three thousand years ago, and I don't recall his ever getting an answer. It's a question that's lain behind every bit of research since research first started. But the answer has never been fatal till now. Norman's question is simply this—what is truth?"
There was a pause. Nehral went on.
"He hasn't expressed it even to himself. He doesn't know he's asking that question. But we know; we have entree to his mind. That's the question that he's finding insoluble, and the problem that's bringing him gradually out of control, out of his hypnosis. So far there've been only flashes of realization. Split-second rational periods. Those are bad enough, for him. He's heard and seen the city as it is—"
Another pause. Fleming's thoughts stilled. Nehral said:
"It's the only problem we can't solve by hypnotic suggestion. We've tried. But it's useless. Norman's that remarkably rare person, someone who is looking for the truth."
Fleming said slowly, "He's looking for the truth. But—does he have—to find it?"
His thoughts raced into Nehral's brain, flint against steel, and struck fire there.
-
Three weeks later the psychologist pronounced Norman cured and he instantly married Mia. They went up to the Fifth Monument and held hands.
"As long as you understand—" Norman said.
"I'll go with you," she told him. "Anywhere."
"Well, it won't be tomorrow. I was going at it the wrong way. Imagine trying to tunnel out through the Barrier! No. I'll have to fight fire with fire. The Barrier's the result of natural physical laws. There's no secret about how it was created. But how to destroy it—that's another thing entirely."
"They say it can't be destroyed. Some day it'll disappear, Bill."
"When? I'm not going to wait for that. It may take me years, because I'll have to learn how to use my weapons. Years of study and practice and research. But I've got a purpose."
"You can't become an expert nuclear physicist overnight."
He laughed and put his arm around her shoulders. "I don't expect to. First things come first. First I'll have to learn to be a good physicist. Ehrlich and Pasteur and Curie—they had a drive, a motivation. So have I, now. I know what I want. I want out."
"Bill, if you should fail—"
"I expect to, at first. But in the end I won't fail. I know what I want. Out!"
She moved closer to him, and they were silent, looking down at the quiet, familiar friendliness of the city. I can stand it for a while, Norman thought. Especially with Mia. Now that the psychologist's got rid of my trouble, I can settle down to work.
Above them the rippling, soft light beat out from the great globe atop the Monument.
"Mia—"
"Yes?"
"I know what I want now."
-
"But he doesn't know," Fleming said.
"That's all right," Nehral said cheerfully. "He never really knew what his problem was. You found the answer. Not the one he wanted, but the best one. Displacement, diversion, sublimation—the name doesn't matter. It was the same treatment, basically, as turning sadistic tendencies into channels of beneficial surgery. We've given Norman his compromise. He still doesn't know what he's looking for, but he's been hypnotized into believing that he can find it outside the city. Put food on top of a wall, out of reach of a starving man, and you'll get a neurosis. But if you give the man materials for building a ladder, his energy will be deflected into a productive channel. Norman will spend all his life in research, and probably make some valuable discoveries. He's sane again. He's under the preventive hypnosis. And he'll die thinking there's a way out."
"Through the Barrier? There isn't."
"Of course there isn't. But Norman could accept the hypnotic suggestion that there was a way, if only he could find it. We've given him the materials to build his ladder. He'll fail and fail, but he'll never really get discouraged. He's looking for truth. We've told him he can find truth outside the Barrier, and that he can find a way out. He's happy now. He's stopped rocking the lifeboat."
"Truth ..." Fleming said, and then, "Nehral—I've been wondering."
"What?"
"Is there a Barrier?"
Nehral said, "But the city's survived! Nothing from outside has ever come through the Barrier—"
"Suppose there isn't a Barrier," Fleming said. "How would the city look from outside? Like a ... a furnace, perhaps. It's uninhabitable. We can't conceive of the real city, any more than the hypnotized citizens can. Would you walk into a furnace? Nehral, perhaps the city's its own Barrier."
"But we sense the Barrier. The citizens see the Barrier—"
"Do they? Do—we? Or is that part of the hypnosis too, a part we don't know about? Nehral—I don't know. There may be a Barrier, and it may disappear when its half-time is run. But suppose we just think there's a Barrier?"
"But—" Nehral said, and stopped. "That would mean—Norman might find a way out!"
"I wonder if that was what the builders planned?" Fleming said.
The End
DREAM'S END
Startling Stories – July 1947
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Henry Kuttner)
Risking his own life force to cure a patient's psychosis, Dr. Robert Bruno learns of the true individualism of human minds!
-
THE sanitarium was never quiet. Even when night brought comparative stillness, there was an anticipatory tension in the air—for cyclic mental disorders are as inevitable, though not as regular, as the swing of a merry-go-round.
Earlier that evening Gregson, in Ward 13, had moved into the downswing of his manic-depressive curve, and there had been trouble. Before the orderlies could buckle him into a restraining jacket, he had managed to break the arm of a "frozen" catatonic patient, who had made no sound even as the bone snapped.
Under apomorphine, Gregson subsided. After a few days he would be at the bottom of his psychic curve, dumb, motionless, and disinterested. Nothing would be able to rouse him then, for a while.
Dr. Robert Bruno, Chief of Staff, waited till the nurse had gone out with the no longer sterile hypodermic. Then he nodded at the orderly.
"All right. Prepare the patient. I want him in Surgery Three in half an hour."
He went out into the corridor, a tall, quiet man with cool blue eyes and firm lips. Dr. Kenneth Morrissey was waiting for him. The younger man looked troubled.
"Surgery, Doctor?"
"Come on," Bruno said. "We've got to get ready. How's Wheeler?"
"Simple fracture of the radius, I think. I'm having plates made."
"Turn him over to one of the other doctors," Bruno suggested. "I need your help." He used his key on the locked door. "Gregson's in good shape for the experiment."
Morrissey didn't answer. Bruno laughed a little.
"What's bothering you, Ken?"
"It's the word experiment," Morrissey said.
"Pentothal narcosynthesis was an experiment when they first tried it. So is this— empathy surrogate. If there's a risk, I'll be taking it, not Gregson."
"You can't be sure."
They stepped into the elevator.
"I am sure," Bruno said, with odd emphasis. "That's been my rule all my life. I make sure. I've got to be sure before I undertake anything new. This experiment can't possibly fail. I don't run risks with patients."
"Well—"
"Come in here." Bruno led the way from the elevator to an examination room. "I want a final check-up. Try my blood-pressure." He stripped off his white coat and deftly wound the pneumatic rubber around his arm.
"I've explained the whole situation to Gregson's wife." Bruno went on as Morrissey squeezed the bulb. "She's signed the authorization papers. She knows it's the only chance to cure Gregson. After all, Ken, the man's been insane for seven years. Cerebral deterioration's beginning to set in."
"Cellular, you mean? Um-m. I'm not worried about that. Blood-pressure okay. Heart—"
Morrissey picked up a stethoscope. After a while he nodded.
"A physician hasn't any right to be afraid of the dark," Bruno said.
"A physician isn't charting unmapped territory," Morrissey said abruptly. "You can dissect a cadaver, but you can't do that to the psyche. As a psychiatrist you should be the first to admit that we don't know all there is to know about the mind. Would you take a transfusion from a meningitis patient?"
Bruno chuckled. "Witchcraft, Ken—pure witchcraft! The germ theory of psychosis! Afraid I'll catch Gregson's insanity? I hate to disillusion you, but episodic disorders aren't contagious."
"Just because you can't see a bug doesn't mean it isn't there," Morrissey growled. "What about a filterable virus? A few years ago nobody could conceive of liquid life."
"Next you'll be going back to Elizabethan times and talking about spleen and humors." Bruno resumed his shirt and coat. He sobered. "In a way, though, this is a transfusion. The only type of transfusion possible. I'll admit no one knows all there is to know about psychoses. Nobody knows what makes a man think, either. But that's where physics is beginning to meet medicine. Witchcraft and medicine isolated digitalin when they met. And scientists are beginning to know the nature of thought—an electronic pattern of energy."
"Empirical!"
"Compare not the brain, but the mind itself, to a uranium pile," Bruno said. "The potentialities for atomic explosion are in the mind because you can't make a high-specialized colloid for thinking without approaching the danger level. It's the price humans pay for being homo sapiens. In a uranium pile you've got boron-steel bars as dampers, to absorb the neutrons before they can get out of control. In the mind, those dampers are purely psychic, naturally—but they're what keep a man sane."
"You can prove anything by symbolism," Morrissey said sourly. "And you can't stick bars of boron-steel in Gregson's skull."
"Yes, I can," Bruno said. "In effect."
"But those dampers are—ideas! Thoughts! You can't—"
"What is a thought?" Bruno asked.
Morrissey grimaced and followed the Chief of Staff out.
"You can chart a thought on the encephalograph—" he said stubbornly.
"Because it's a radiation. What causes that radiation? Energy emitted by certain electronic patterns. What causes electronic patterns? The basic physical structure of matter. What causes uranium to throw off neutrons under special conditions? Same answer. If an uranium pile starts to get out of control, you can damp it, if you move fast, with boron or cadmium."
"If you move fast. Why use Gregson? He's been insane for years."
"If he'd been insane for only a week, we couldn't prove it was the empathy surrogate that cured him. You're just arguing to dodge the responsibility. If you don't want to help me, I'll get somebody else."
"It would take weeks to train another man," Morrissey said. "No, I'll operate. Only —have you thought of the possible effect on your own mind?"
"Certainly," Bruno said. "Why the devil do you suppose I've been running exhaustive psychological tests on myself? I'm completely oriented, I'm so normal that my mind must be full of boron dampers." He paused at the door of his office. "Barbara's here. I'll meet you in Surgery."
Morrissey's shoulders slumped. Bruno smiled slightly and opened the door. His wife was sitting on a leather couch, idly turning the pages of a psychiatric review.
"Studying?" Bruno said. "Want a job as a nurse?"
"Hello, darling," she said, tossing the magazine aside.
She came toward him quickly. She was small and dark and, Bruno thought academically, extremely pretty. Then his thoughts stopped being academic as he kissed her.
"What's up?"
"You're doing that operation tonight, aren't you? I wanted to wish you luck." "How'd you know?"
"Bob," she said, "we've been married long enough so I can read your mind a little. I don't know what the operation is, but I know it's important. So—for luck!"
She kissed him again. Then, with a smile and a nod, she slipped out and was gone. Dr. Robert Bruno sighed, not unhappily, and sat behind his desk. He used the annunciator to check the sanitarium's routine, made certain everything was running smoothly, and clicked his tongue with satisfaction.
Now—the experiment ...
-
SURGERY THREE had some new equipment for the experiment. Bruno's collaborator, Andrew Parsons, the atomic physicist, was there, small and untidy, with
a scowling, wrinkled face that looked incongruous under the surgeon's cap. There was to be no real surgery; trepanning wasn't necessary, but aseptic precautions were taken as a matter of course.
The anesthetist and two other nurses stood ready, and Morrissey, in his white gown, seemed to have forgotten his worry and had settled down to his usual quiet competence. Gregson was on one of the tables, already prepped and unconscious. Intravenous anesthesia would presently supplement the apomorphine in his system, as it would also be administered to Bruno himself.
Ferguson and Dale, two other doctors, were present. At worst quick
cerebral surgery might be necessary, if anything went badly amiss. But nothing could, Bruno thought. Nothing could.
He glanced at the sleek, shining machines, with their attachments and registering dials. Not medical equipment, of course. They were in Parsons' line ; he had planned and built them. But the idea had been Bruno's to begin with, and Bruno's psychiatric knowledge had complemented Parsons' technology. Two branches of science had met, and the result would be—a specific for insanity.
Two spots on Bruno's head had been shaved clean. Parsons carefully affixed electrodes, which were already in place on Gregson's skull.
"Remember," Parsons said, "you should be as relaxed as possible."
"You took no sedative, Doctor," Morrissey said.
"I don't need one. The anesthetic will be enough."
The nurses moved with silent competence about the table. The emergency oxygen apparatus was tested. The adrenalin was checked; the sterilizer steamed on its table. Bruno emptied his mind and relaxed as a nurse swabbed his arm with alcohol.
Superimposure of the electronic mental matrix of sanity ... psychic rapport ... the pattern of his sanity-dampers would be fixed unalterably in the twisted, warped mind of the manic-depressive.
He felt the sting of the needle. Automatically he began counting. One. Two. Three ...
He opened his eyes. The face of Morrissey, intent and abstracted, hung over him. Beyond Morrissey was the bright ceiling fluorescent, glaring down with a brilliance that made Bruno blink. His arm stung slightly
but otherwise there were no after effects. "Can you hear me, Doctor?" Morrissey said.
Bruno nodded. "Yes. I'm. awake now." His tongue was a little thick. That was natural. "Gregson?"
But Morrissey's face was growing smaller. No. it was receding. The ceiling light shrank. He was falling—
He shot down with blinding rapidity. White walls rushed up past him. Morrissey's face receded to a shining dot far above. It grew darker as he fell. Winds screamed, and there was" a slow, gradually increasing thundering like an echo resounding from the floor of this monstrous abyss.