by Robert Bloch
The breakfast food of her childhood was out—too much roughage, which produced distressing irritation of the intestinal tract and subsequent colitis. Milk had been suspect for years, ever since the revelation that it might contain strontium-90 and other radioactive matter from fallout. The same went for butter, which was also a source of cholesterol—the villainous agent lurking in pork and beef and those unspeakable tinned-meat products. Cheese and eggs were also to be shunned, and there was this new thing about chickens; poultry fattened by injection-methods could be a source of cancer. That left liver, but it was now demonstrated in the press that liver was a filter and repository for bodily impurities and best avoided.
Mrs. Waring was perfectly content with a vegetarian menu and subsisted on quantities of canned items up until she learned about the use of sulphur dioxide and other additives and preservatives. She switched to fresh produce and the news media informed her about pesticides and sprays. She turned to bread as a staple, but the refined flour was highly controversial; even if bleached flour wasn’t directly harmful, too bland a diet led to constipation, and constipation led to toxic poisoning, or at least hemorrhoids. Seafood seemed a practical solution for a while—but what was all this about the poisoning of freshwater lakes and rivers? And now they said the ocean was polluted too.
So she switched to herbs, nuts and vitamins—a fairly sparse intake, but one which helped solve the dieting problem. Overweight was the great enemy; it caused heart conditions. And over-exercise was no cure; it caused heart conditions too. Of course there was always jogging, but now there seemed to be second thoughts about its benefits. On the other hand, not exercising at all made for loss of muscle tone, and merely lying in bed and watching television produced actual muscular atrophy, impaired circulation, bedsores and eyestrain.
Of course Mrs. Waring didn’t have to worry about television any more; she stopped watching it after the news-releases concerning harmful radiation. Some said it was as bad as X-rays.
Fortunately, she had always been an outdoor type, a great lover of nature, animals, fresh air and sunshine.
The problem here was that so many flowers and plants could produce terrible allergies.
She heard warnings about animals too; you couldn’t feed the squirrels any more, for example, because most of them were rabid.
As for fresh air, there wasn’t any—nothing left but smog.
And sunshine was the source of skin-cancer.
Earth, air, fire and water; all the elements were enemies.
The only way to be safe was to die.
So—being a sensible woman—Mrs. Waring died.
Her brief obituary appeared in the daily paper, alongside of news items heralding a dozen new perils to healthy existence.
Death was attributed to natural causes.
CHAPTER 6
First there was the needle and then there was the voice asking questions. First there was his own voice saying “no” and then came the other needle and his own voice saying “yes.”
After that Graham went back down into the darkness, listening to both voices—the strange voice, asking the questions and his own voice (equally strange now) giving the answers.
Then there was this thing on his head, and he was talking into it and the questions came from inside his head, and then another needle pricked and he knew he could stop talking and just think his answers. Not think, really, but visualize. That’s what the voice wanted, that’s what the needle wanted, that’s what the thing on his head wanted. He was supposed to see the answers, make images out of them. And he couldn’t lie. He couldn’t make up answers out of his imagination. He had to use real images. The voice and the needle and the thing on his head wouldn’t let him lie.
Graham didn’t want to lie anyway. This wasn’t coercion. The thing on his head told him so, or maybe it was the needle, or the voice—it was all very confusing, and it didn’t matter since the three were parts of the same thing. Anyway, he knew he wasn’t being forced into anything. It was just that he had to tell the truth so that he could sleep. They were playing fair with him.
Yes they were, because when he had seen all there was to see, all they wanted to see, they let him sleep. He slept for a long time (minutes, hours, days, weeks, centuries, forever) and when he woke up he felt fine. He could sit up, or even walk if he wanted to. At the moment he was content to sit, because Sigmond was in the room with him.
Sigmond, the Head Shrinker himself. He seemed like a pleasant enough person—a big man, with a pale face and a high forehead. He might have been forty, might have been fifty, or even older. It was hard to say. Of course he wouldn’t be Socially Secured at fifty.
The thought jolted Graham out of his present acceptance. Socially Secured. His father. That’s why they’d done this to him, given him a laundry-job—
Sigmond was staring at him, and now he reached forward and put his hand on Graham’s shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“You gave me a laundry-job,” Graham said.
Sigmond chuckled. “Nonsense, my boy. We don’t indulge in such measures here. And I assure you, if we did, you wouldn’t be sitting up and ready to take nourishment now, nor for a week. Your stomach couldn’t retain food, any more than your mind could retain a thought. There’s an old saying which applies to laundry-jobs, you know—‘it all comes out in the wash’.”
He chuckled again, but Graham interrupted him. “Then what did you do to me?” he asked.
“Simple script-therapy. We asked for a scenario, and got it. The Ganz method.”
“Visualization of mental images transcribed directly on film?”
“You’ve heard of it, eh?”
“There was talk of adopting it for Talents, in emotion picture work. I guess it was too personalized, though.”
“So I should imagine.” Sigmond smiled. “Your own film is very personalized, I might say. Seldom have I seen such introspection.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“Of course. Would you care to?”
“Why are you seeing me? What do you want of me?”
“Nothing but your honest reaction. That’s the principle of filmanalysis, my dear Graham. Project the unconscious so that the conscious can see it. Then let the superego review and criticize. It’s really the only efficient form of therapy. I’m hoping some day we can make it available generally, for routine use in checkups. As of now it’s a little bit too expensive and complicated for anything except special cases.”
“I’m a special case, then?”
“Let’s see the film and permit you to decide for yourself.” Sigmond rose and beckoned to Graham. “We’ll use my office,” he said. “I’ve got everything set up.”
Graham was not reluctant to leave the windowless cubicle behind—its bed reminded him vaguely of a hospital-area. He followed Sigmond down the corridor, noting that the Psycho Chief was carrying a stunner. Sigmond didn’t flourish it, nor did he allude to its presence in words. That was completely unnecessary. No need for guards, either! not here in Psychocenter. Graham knew that the very idea of rebellion or escape was ridiculous.
A vator took them down. For some reason Graham had assumed Sigmond’s office would be near the top of the huge building. He was surprised to find it on ground-level. He was equally surprised at the modest three-room suite. Guards and office personnel greeted the Psycho Chief deferentially enough, but there was nothing about the furnishings and appointments of the office to indicate Sigmond’s important rank.
There were three rooms, and Sigmond led him to the center chamber. Here was the desk, the couch, and the viewer—no other equipment. Graham wondered if the Psycho Chief used filmanalysis exclusively. And if so, why.
The room darkened as Sigmond seated himself at the desk, the film came on, and then Graham found the answer.
Sigmond had told the truth. Filmanalysis was the only efficient method of therapy.
The film itself was crude, just a simple two-dimensional black-and-
white job such as Graham himself had never seen except in the ancient clips kept in the Space Opera files for obscure reference purposes. It didn’t even have a sound-track, let alone sensories. And the little projector unreeled it jerkily. But none of this mattered. Graham had never seen anything before which could equal its claim upon his interest.
Because it was his film. It was his mind, his life up there on the screen before him. Here were his thoughts, naked and unveiled, for all to see.
How far back had they taken him? Early childhood! Infancy? Pre-natal? The seething kaleidoscope held few clues. There was a visual blur, the kind of blur seen by the unfocussing eyes of a tiny infant. There was a parade of giant images—of huge hands, grotesquely enlarged faces. There were sudden movements holding inexplicable threats, leading to uncomprehended consequences. And there was Father. Father, holding him. He recognized the face, and at the same time it wasn’t really Father’s face at all; just an idealized countenance that smiled and laughed and beamed.
Graham blinked. It wasn’t himself in the picture either. He was small, yes, but strangely enough his features were those of an adult. An adult’s face on a baby’s body.
“Confused?” Sigmond murmured, from the darkness behind him. “Remember, this is a visualization of the subconscious. No age-differentiation. Very little contact with actual reality. All subjective, has to be interpreted. Notice that the backgrounds are sketchy and the action jumps. That’s because of the way you were questioned, of course—we weren’t after unimportant details. And also because the subconscious imagery is a sort of mental shorthand. The dream-symbols are there, too.”
Graham was oriented now. He understood why, as his life-pattern unfolded in childhood, the actors often moved against the sketchiest type of scene. A whole room would be symbolized by just a door and a chair—sometimes the door was big, in an instance where the action centered around the need to escape or leave; sometimes the chair was most important as a refuge or a place of comfort.
He saw himself as a small boy. He recognized incidents, and there were many things he didn’t recognize. Interspersing actual events were glimpses of another world; a dream-world, a realm of nightmare. He was engulfed in vast floods of enuresis, he was pursued by the fecal finger of fate, he lost himself in remote fantasies of fear, anger, and—surprisingly enough—infantile lust.
Graham felt his cheeks burn as he watched. His palms grew wet and he stirred in his posture-chair. Was this the way it had been? Were these the secret places of his psyche?
It had to be. There was no other answer, no possible way in which this film could be faked. It was the truth, ripped raw from his inmost self and projected for his outward self to realize.
Adolescence began, and with it a heightening of the sexual element. At the same time the imagery grew subtly more sophisticated in content. Father was reduced to “life-size” proportions, and the various characters in the scenes began to move in response to predictable and recognizable motivations. And yet the growing “realism” in itself formed a background of shocking contrast to the occasional outbursts of fantasy and fugue—the imagined orgies of cruelty and lust, of self-pity, self-abasement, and egomaniac delusions of grandeur. Here was rape, and murder, and suicide, and idiotic euphoria: here was sentiment and sentimentality, oceans of blood and tears and glandular secretion.
Graham shuddered as he watched, yet clung to the intervals of reality—his conversations with his father. He watched himself talk to the older man, and watched the subject matter of their discussions unfold in a sort of superimposition on the screen. It was a sort of double-image taking the place of a spoken or written account of their conversations, and in it he recognized the elements Sigmond must have been seeking.
Indeed, the Psycho Chief admitted as much.
“I want you to watch very closely from this point on,” he said. “I think you’ll begin to see the emergence of a pattern both of thought and of behavior. It’s up to you to determine its significance.”
Graham nodded He felt his cheeks burn once more. This was going to continue, he realized. It would continue, inevitably and inexorably, right up to the present moment. He’d see himself becoming a nonconformist, see himself preaching rebellion, see himself as a cheater, a secret scanner of forbidden microfilms, a secret holdout against authority. He’d see all the fears and frustrations of his later years. Worst of all, he’d see once again the hideous trauma of his father’s leaving—see his departure for the ranks of the Socially Secured. He’d see his own loneliness, and virtually re-experience the acute mental crisis which had grown intolerably in recent months—grown to the point where he’d foolishly flouted Zank and made that Realie film. Graham thought of a thousand things he wanted to conceal—not only from Sigmond but from himself as well. He thought of having to watch himself with Wanda the other night. How could he bear it? And how could he bear the knowledge that Sigmond knew, too?
He started to blink, and Sigmond must have guessed it, because he whispered, “Don’t close your eyes. You’ve got to face it. Face yourself as you really are.”
I can’t, Graham thought. Help me, please help me, stop this, Father—
The buzzer sounded, jerking him back to reality. A vox-box blared.
“Front to Sigmond. Krug here for briefing and orders.”
Sigmond clicked a switch. His own voice was low. “Yes. With him immediately.”
Behind his back, Graham was conscious that the big man had risen and moved across the room.
“Stay where you are and keep watching,” Sigmond said. “I’ll only be a few moments.”
He crossed to the door and opened it. A flash of light and then the door closed behind him once more. Graham was alone. Alone with the film. It ground on and on—but he wasn’t watching. He didn’t have to watch, now.
He stood up, deliberately turning his back, and faced the projector on Sigmond’s desk. In its beam he surveyed the room. No windows. Just the door through which Sigmond had made his exit, and another door leading to the rear office.
It was a waste of time even to think about looking for an avenue of escape. There was no escape, not here. Not any more, after the filmanalysis had been made. Graham acknowledged the fact wryly. He didn’t have to see the rest. He knew what it would be—a self-damning portrait of a maladjusted individual. The inevitable sequel would be a laundry-job or perhaps even a trip to the Womb.
Graham nodded absently. His gaze focused on the desktop. Something shone in the projector’s light. A long, silver cylinder—Sigmond’s stunner! He’d left it there when he went out of the room!
Graham moved toward it. His hand grasped quickly. Here, at least, was a weapon.
Holding the stunner in his palm, he walked over to the door, then halted at the sound of Sigmond’s voice, faint yet intelligible.
He placed his ear against the panel, and his eye focused on the tiny sliver of light between door and frame. He could see into the front office.
Sigmond stood there, talking to a short, squat man in a Brass uniform.
“—papers are all in order,” Sigmond was saying. “You’re in charge of tonight’s Jetfleet. Destination, Miami Consumarket. Six in the lot, total cargo of eighteen hundred. Officers as listed. By the way, you’ve a new assistant. Name is Mellot. He’s to meet you here.”
“What happened to Smith?” Krug scowled, and it made his face look older.
“Transferred to Sadies. But Mellot’s a capable man. You’ll have to break him in, of course, and he doesn’t know anything about procedure. He’s due to report here now and—”
Graham turned away. He had suddenly remembered the other door here in the office. It led, presumably, through the third room of Sigmond’s suite to a corridor beyond.
There would be guards there, of course, and guards all the way to the outer level. But now he had a stunner.
Graham weighed his chances. They were slim, slim as the outline of the stunner in his hand. He glanced once more at the screen. The film was
still unreeling; he caught sight of himself in an erotic fantasy and shuddered. Sigmond knew all about him, and as a Psycho he would take the inevitable steps. Anything was better than to await his return and passively submit. If he moved quickly, now—
He moved quickly, but not quickly enough. As he reached the other door it swung open and a khaki-clad man entered the room.
He stood there, surprised, blinking in the dimness. “I must have made a mistake,” he murmured. “They told me this would be Sigmond’s office.”
“It is,” Graham quickly assured him.
“Good. Mellot reporting.” The tall young man noticed the screen for the first time. “What’s this, something special going on?”
“Very special. Would you care to stay and watch?” Without waiting for an answer, Graham raised the stunner and pressed the switch. He aimed at the center of the forehead, above the pineal area.
Mellot froze.
He stood there like an old-fashioned window dummy, and like an old-fashioned window dummy he was divested of his garments.
Graham stripped hastily and donned the khaki uniform. He felt in one pocket for the idento. Mellot was approximately his size and build, and his hair was dark—curly instead of straight, but maybe that wouldn’t matter. Graham could only hope. Hope and act.
Mellot was on the floor now, rigid in paralysis. Graham had to take the risk of lowering him, even if the bones were broken, in order to remove his trousers and shoes. Mellot’s eyes stared up at him glassily—the stunner had done its work well, and even the optic nerve was temporarily paralyzed.
Graham tried to remember the duration of the stunner’s effect. Two hours, or was it three? Long enough to get out of here, if he was going to get out at all.
He rose, adjusting his uniform. Now, if he could get past Sigmond in some way and contact Krug—
Once more he approached the other door, just in time to hear Sigmond’s voice.
“—try to locate him immediately. I’ll step in and check with Front to see if he reported in yet.”