by Robert Bloch
Graham hesitated a moment. Then, “What do I have to lose?” he murmured. “Of course I did.”
“Very well,” said Doc. “Consider yourself laundered.” He slipped the stunner into his jacket and sat down.
“But—”
“I told you we didn’t operate the way they would in Holywood. Sigmond thinks we do, of course, and we try to keep him satisfied. That’s why we had to go through with that little comedy the other night, for Krug’s benefit. He’ll report to Sigmond that you’ve been captured and will be given the full treatment. That means you’re safe here for at least a few more weeks. By that time we’ll be ready to act.”
“Wait a minute. What are you trying to tell me?”
“Just what you should already have surmised from reading those books. That you’re in the hands of the rebels.”
“Underground?”
“Why not?” Doc shrugged. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea? You know now that this whole social order is built upon a lie. You saw what happened to the Socially Secured. Isn’t it worthwhile to step in and change things?”
“Yes, but how can you expect to do anything?”
Doc lit a sig. “I’ve been asking that question for years,” he confessed. “When I came here, to take charge, I was armed with nothing but vague doubts. After I discovered the truth about the Socially Secured, those doubts were crystallized. What Clare told you is partly true. There’s no Brass base in this outlying area, beyond the Domes, and one of my duties as Psycho in charge is to send out boats when the Socially Secured flights come over—to make sure that no one escapes by any freak accident after being dumped.
“Well, I send out the boats, but on rescue missions. We can’t save many; most of them are quite dead before they hit the water. But through the past ten years we’ve managed to bring in and revive over a hundred. Some of them are good recruits.
“Then too, I’m in charge of four other Insanatoriums in this region, in addition to this one here. I’ve managed to pick up some interesting additions to our ranks. There are well over three hundred of us, now.”
Graham blinked. “Three hundred, to deal with His MGMinence and Sigmond? People like Hix and Ormsbee and Schwartz, and the millions behind them? They control everything from the top—”
Doc raised his hand. “You needn’t tell me. After all, I am a Psycho. I know the setup very well. And as you say, it is controlled most efficiently from the top. Nothing of importance is delegated. This is its greatest strength, and also its greatest weakness. Since the whole system depends upon holding the media of communication and information, all we need do is take over on that level.”
“But how can you expect to do it with three hundred old men and maniacs?”
“They aren’t maniacs. Forget the orthodox Psycho definitions of aberration. All the values have been inverted, all the standard psychiatric precepts perverted. Today the Insanatoriums are virtually the last refuge of the sane. If they haven’t all been subject to shock-therapy and topectomy and lobotomy, just to dull them into submission. It’s been years since psychotherapy has been used as a curative—the principal purpose of all therapy has been merely to destroy rebellion. No, some of our best minds, our most creative minds, are in Insanatoriums. I’ve utilized their abilities, set up a few laboratories. We aren’t quite as helpless as you may imagine.”
“You’re talking about war, then? You have new weapons to destroy the Domes?” Graham shook his head. “Frankly, I doubt if the end would justify the means.”
“I doubted it, too, for many years, when that seemed to be the only way. Lately, other avenues have opened. But I wasn’t certain of our plans until you arrived.”
“What have I got to do with it?”
“You’re quite important,” Doc smiled. “In a month or so, you’ll be supposedly laundered and fit to return to duty. When the next flight comes down over the Gulf to dump, you’ll be able to return with them to Holywood. That’s the way we’ll work it—through infiltration. You can handle the matter from the inside—”
Graham shook his head. “Nonsense! You’ve been reading too much of that pornography. One man against the Galactic Empire, eh?” He stood up. “Look, I’m in sympathy with your ideas. I’d like to see the present order overthrown. But I’m not going to tackle the job. If you don’t mind, I intend to help all I can, but from right here.”
“Very well,” Doc said. “You’ll stay. But you’ll go.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I told you we’d managed some rather clever innovations in our laboratory work, with the help of the technicians we recruited. I also told you that you’re quite important to the success of this plan. But perhaps the best way to make things utterly clear is through actual demonstration. I asked to have Considine sent up here, and I believe he’s waiting outside now.”
Doc stepped over to the door. It slid open and he beckoned to a waiting figure outside.
The man stepped into the room.
“This is Considine,” Doc said.
Graham heard the name, but he didn’t believe him. He kept staring at the smiling stranger before him—the stranger who wasn’t a stranger.
“Pretty good job, eh?” Doc asked. “Now are you beginning to understand how we’ll work it? Naturally, I expect you to brief Considine here very thoroughly in the weeks to come. He’ll have to become completely acquainted with all the necessary data—you must cooperate all along the line. Then, when the time comes, he’ll be ready. Once he arrives in Holywood, he knows what to do. It’s your job to see that he can manage to carry out his duties undetected.”
Doc smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “No reason why you shouldn’t get started right away. From now on, you two will stay together; there’s no time for delay. I’ve no doubt you’ll get along well with one another. After all, you have a great deal in common.”
Then he made his exit, and left Graham standing there, staring at Considine. What he had said was all too true; they did have a lot in common. The trouble was, Graham couldn’t accept the stranger as Considine. The name just didn’t fit.
Graham thought of the old books and shuddered.
Call him robot. Call him android.
Whatever he was, however he had been created—feature for feature, the creature named Considine was Graham’s identical twin.
CHAPTER 10
“I’m no monster,” Considine insisted. “I’m as human as you are. Here, feel my arm. It’s flesh, isn’t it?”
“But your face—”
“There was a natural resemblance to begin with. A little cosmetological work and some makeup helped. The big job now is to do as good a job on the inside as was done on the exterior. That’s where you come in. You’re going to have to tell me all about yourself. And about your life in Laguna Dome.” Considine smiled. “There’s a lot to catch up on—it’s been some years since I was Socially Secured.”
“Doc rescued you?”
“That’s right.”
“What did you do—beforehand? Back there?”
“We’ll discuss it some other time. Right now, there’s too much I’ve got to find out from you and we haven’t got much time. Doc insists that you give me every bit of data you can remember; nothing is too trivial and inconsequential to be important. Names, dates, conversations, experiences you shared with others, details of your daily life and work.”
“Think you can remember everything?”
“He’ll supply us with a recording device.”
“Tape or film?”
“Something new. One of his patients, a man named Lawrence, came up with it. I’ll have it brought in. Don’t be afraid, now.”
Graham wasn’t afraid, but he was a bit self-conscious when he saw the hypnotape. Considine set up the apparatus on a table; they took chairs on either side, and then adjusted the head-clamps and electrodes.
“You may find it easier to talk, at first,” Considine said. “But just remember, you really don’t have to. All
that’s necessary is that you think, that you remember. It’s based on the free-association principle, of course. Electroencephalographic patterns are set up mechanically; the machine analyzes the rhythms, yours and mine, and then plots a sort of median beam, a common frequency we can both approximate. You’ll be on sending, I’ll be on receiving, so of course I can’t signal any questions. I’ll just depend on you transmitting your reveries. If anything needs clarifying or supplementing, I can ask you for additional data after a session.”
“But why is it called a hypnotape?” Graham asked. “Isn’t it just mechanical thought-transmission?”
“There’s a built-in signal, through the electrodes, to focus attention,” Considine explained. “The result is definitely a hypnotic state on the part of both sender and receiver. This makes for maximum concentration, maximum ability to absorb impressions and information. But don’t worry about being caught in a trance. The device can be set to break connection at any time. To begin with, I believe we ought to limit our sessions to an hour. Later on, when you’re more relaxed, we can extend the length of contact if it seems advisable. Now don’t worry—the important thing is to use the machine just as it would be used in therapy: for imparting thoughts to the analyst through free fantasy. Let yourself go.”
It wasn’t quite that simple, Graham told himself. To begin with, he had to accept the notion that such a transference was mechanically possible. Then he remembered how Sigmond had used the Ganz method on him, to make the filmanalysis. That had worked, worked only too well. Graham shuddered as he sank back in his chair, heard the device click on.
The funny part of it was, the device clicked on inside his head. He closed his eyes to concentrate, and felt a stirring beneath his skull. Little waves of horripilation coursed through him, and then an alien rhythm obtruded. It was strong, steady, and oddly soothing. Somewhere outside he could feel himself relaxing. There was no need to open his eyes and look around, no desire to. He could rest just by surrendering to the rhythm, and he wasn’t afraid any more. The rhythm was slow and peaceful, slow and peaceful . . .
And he didn’t have to talk, all he had to do was think. Think about anything that came into his head. About Zank, and about Warner. About his friends—Carson, Davis, Loeb. About his father, down in Gulfport, who wasn’t really down in Gulfport at all but who had gone down in the Gulf. Down in the Gulf with the Socially Secured, because of Krug and men like Krug, the rats. Men like Archer, his MGMinence. MGMenace. Menace, the Bems in his work . . .
He thought about his work, about his day-to-day routine back there under the Dome. He recalled his conversations with Zank, his talks with Wanda. No feelings of embarrassment now. He could recollect every detail. All the little things, things he had consciously forgotten, fell into place. He even remembered the individual movements of that new Psychiatric Suite; they were Trauma, Cathexis, Catharsis and Adjustment. He thought about the Fornivacation and Wanda’s glasses and his last job turned out for Space Opera . . .
Click!
Something shut off in his head, and the session was over. He had a moment of confusion, and then everything was all right once again. There was no self-consciousness, no aftermath of fatigue.
Considine was jubilant. He began talking at once, and now Graham was really startled; out of the mouth of his double poured his own thoughts, his own memories, literally verbatim.
“You see?” Considine exulted. “It really does work. Now, I’ve got a few points I’d like to ask questions about—”
And he did, thus establishing a routine to which they both adhered during the days and weeks that followed. Aside from the hypnotic influence of the machine, there was something definitely compelling about the very process of self-revelation. By opening his mind and memories to Considine, Graham found that he was in turn becoming acquainted with himself.
Once, when Doc stopped by to check on their progress, he said as much. “This is a wonderful adjunct to psychotherapy,” he told him.
“I hope it will be,” Doc answered. “If we ever return to genuine therapeutic concepts again. Right now, of course, they use plenty of narcohypnosis and subliminal suggestion, but only for purposes of control.”
“How did it all start, anyway?” Graham demanded. But Doc shook his head.
“Can’t go into that now. No time. Later on, perhaps, we’ll have more chance to talk.”
Graham didn’t wait for that opportunity to arise. During the third and final week of their daily sessions, he spoke to Considine about it.
They had reached a point where his double was reasonably satisfied with the progress they’d made; for several days, Considine had ceased using the machine and instead improvised a series of testing-periods, during which Graham fired questions and he supplied the answers.
“I don’t think they’ll ever be able to trip me up now,” Considine said. “I know as much about you as you do yourself.”
“Probably more,” Graham admitted. “I’ve recovered a lot of latent memories. And I’m grateful for them. You know, when Sigmond made his filmanalysis, everything seemed so horrible—the infantile period especially. It’s as though he dredged up only the negative concepts: the fears, the blind aggressions, the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity.”
“That’s all he wanted to find,” Considine suggested. “He edited out the rest. Your feelings about your father, for example.”
“My father.” Graham smiled. “Lewis was a great man. You must have noticed how many of my pleasant recollections center about him.”
“Yes, I did notice,” Considine said, softly. “You miss him, don’t you?”
“Terribly.” Graham stood up, fumbling for a sig. “Oh, I know what such an admission would mean to the average Psycho. But I’m not ashamed. If I could only be half the man my father was—” He faced Considine abruptly. “Why wouldn’t they let me? Why won’t they let anyone develop in the old patterns? How did it all start, when did it change, why?”
Considine pointed upwards, his finger gesturing towards the window and stabbing at the sky.
“Bombs,” he said. “They brought more than physical destruction—they brought psychic destruction, too. The panic resulting from wholesale atomic and biological warfare caught the military and the industrialists unprepared. And the psychiatrists, already culture heroes and authority symbols in the 1980s, took over. Actually, they were already in key positions. During the war, they nominally controlled all media of communication—the press, television, motion pictures, radio. Quaint devices, primitive by our standards, but quite effective for psychological warfare and completely controlled by government psychologists in charge of censorship and propaganda.
“During the ensuing confusion after the war, they retained control and augmented their positions of authority. As for so-called private industry, by this time almost every executive had his own personal analyst; these men merely pooled their influence and took over smoothly to dictate policy. First they acted in an advisory capacity and then, as more and more so-called ‘bosses’ or ‘big wheels’ cracked under the strain, the therapists moved into open control of business channels. You know something of what followed, I’m sure.
“The Declaration of Dependence abolished old-style political government, and the Psychos set out to establish a ‘sane’ world free of war and individual threats of aggression. Their initial premise seemed sound enough. They pinpointed the sources of tension in the familial situation, romantic love, competitive economics, competitive religion, nationalism. Using fear of technology and physical sciences as potential threats of future war, they developed new concepts based on a therapeutic social order. ‘Sanity’ became equated with ‘adjustment’ and what was that but conformity and obedience to Psycho dictates?
“There wasn’t much attempt to develop psychiatry or psychoanalysis any further. While it had once been freely admitted that mental therapy was still in the experimental stage, it was now postulated that the Science of the Mind was exact and ordained. They freely
discarded anything which seemed contradictory or obscure; there was no more experimentation with ESP or PSI, for example. A lot of the work of Freud, Adler, Jung and the others was ignored or actually suppressed. This wasn’t too difficult, because by this time they’d started banning books and distorting the educational process. Narchohypnosis, perfected during the war, was a great aid to power. Birth-conditioning followed. Subliminal perception was freely employed—but I needn’t tell you that, I’m sure.
“What gradually evolved was a drugged society. The Domes were built, to protect survivors from radioactivity, and no one hostile to the Psychos was permitted asylum in them. The rebels stayed outside and perished.
“Within the Domes, the new era really began. Atomic power and jet propulsion were developed, hydroponics became a necessary survival technique, but no free research was permitted in the field of physical sciences. After the first decade or so of success, space flight experiments ended, because they were associated with weapons and the threat of destruction. Computers were abandoned because they symbolized industrial domination of society. There was an end to ‘free enterprise’ and ‘communism’ alike, for the same reason. The surviving population was conditioned to believe they lived in a world without war, murder, suicide or aberration. Here in the Ideal States of America, the worker started out with birth-conditioning for immediate adjustment, lived as a ward of the state in a univercity, graduated to a farmarea or industarea, dwelt in a suburbannex, visited consumarkets for pleasure, and ended up Socially Secured at fifty.”
“Murder,” said Graham, softly. “Living a lie and dying a lie.”
“Remember they’re not villains,” Considine answered. “They tried to cope with a real situation as best they knew. The panic after the war created an emergency; someone had to take immediate and decisive action. Military and civil authorities failed, so the medical authorities took over. Building the Domes was a great initial achievement, and a necessity, too. Two-thirds of the entire country, three-quarters of the entire world was seared by radioactivity. Epidemics wiped out virtually the entire population of Europe, Asia, South America—wherever survivors huddled in masses. The Domes brought physical security. The Psychos imposed a secure social order. They tried to rebuild society along idealistic lines. But they had to work too fast, there wasn’t enough to work with.