Breaking Point

by James E. Gunn

  V

  "_... and there I was, Doctor, in the lobby of the hotel at noon, stark naked!_"

  "_Do you have these dreams often?_"

  "_I'm afraid so, Doctor. Am I--all right? I mean_ ..."

  "_Let me ask you this question: Do you believe that these experiences are real?_"

  "_Of course not!_"

  "_Then, Madam, you are, by definition, sane; for insanity, in the final analysis, is the inability to distinguish the real from the unreal._"

  Paresi and the Captain ran aft together, and together they stopped fourpaces away from the bulging blackness.

  "_Johnny!_" The Captain's voice cracked with the agonized effort of hiscry. He stepped to the black wall, pounded it with the heel of his hand.

  "He won't hear you," said Paresi bleakly. "Come back, Captain. Comeback."

  "Why him? Why Johnny? They've done everything they could to Johnny; yousaid so yourself!"

  "Come back," Paresi said again, soothing. Then he spoke briskly: "Can'tyou see they're not doing anything to him? They're doing it to us!"

  The Captain stood rigidly, staring at the featureless intrusion. Heturned presently. "To us," he parroted. Then he stumbled blindly to thedoctor, who put a firm hand on his biceps and walked with him to theforward acceleration couch.

  The Captain sat down heavily with his back to this new invasion. Paresistood by him reflectively, then walked silently to Hoskins.

  The engineer sat over his chessboard in deep concentration. The far edgeof the board seemed to be indefinite, lost partially in the mysterioussable curtain which covered the bulkhead.

  "Hoskins."

  No answer.

  Paresi put his hand on Hoskins' shoulder. Hoskins' head came up slowly.He did not turn it. His gaze was straight ahead into the darkness. Butat least it was off the board.

  "Hoskins," said Paresi, "why are you playing chess?"

  "Chess is chess," said Hoskins quietly. "Chess may symbolize anyconflict, but it is chess and it will remain chess."

  "Who are you playing with?"

  No answer.

  "Hoskins--we need you. Help us."

  Hoskins let his gaze travel slowly downward again until it was on theboard. "The word is not the thing," he said. "The number is not thething. The picture, the ideograph, the symbol--these are not the thing.Conversely ..."

  "Yes, Hoskins."

  Paresi waited. Hoskins did not move or speak. Paresi put his hand on theman's shoulder again, but now there was no response. He cursed suddenly,bent and brought up his hand with a violent smash and sent board andpieces flying.

  When the clatter had died down Hoskins said pleasantly, "The pieces arenot the game. The symbols are not the thing." He sat still, his eyesfixed on the empty chair where the board had been. He put out a hand andmoved a piece where there was no piece to a square which was no longerthere. Then he sat and waited.

  Paresi, breathing heavily, backed off, whirled, and went back to theCaptain.

  Anderson looked up at him, and there was the glimmer of humor in hiseyes. "Better sit down and talk about something different, Doctor."

  Paresi made an animal sound, soft and deep, far back in his throat,plumped down next to the Captain, and kneaded his hands together for amoment. Then he smiled. "Quite right, skipper. I'd better."

  They sat quietly for a moment. Then the Captain prompted, "About thedifferent breaking point...."

  "Yes, Captain?"

  "Perhaps you can put your finger on the thing that makes different menbreak in different ways, for different reasons. I mean, Johnny's caseseemed pretty clear cut, and what you haven't explained about Hoskins,Hoskins has demonstrated pretty clearly. About Ives, now--we can skipthat for the time he'll be unconscious. But if you can figure out whereyou and I might break, why--we'd know what to look for."

  "You think that would help?"

  "We'd be prepared."

  Paresi looked at him sharply. "Let's hypothesize a child who is afraidof the dark. Ask him and he might say that there's a _something_ in darkplaces that will jump out at him. Then assure him, with great authority,that not only is he right but that it's about to jump any minute, andwhat have you done?"

  "Damage," nodded the Captain. "But you wouldn't say that to the child.You'd tell him there was nothing there. You'd _prove_ there wasn't."

  "So I would," agreed the doctor. "But in our case I couldn't do anythingof the kind. Johnny broke over machines that really didn't work. Hoskinsbroke over phenomena that couldn't be measured nor understood. Ivesbroke over things that scuttled and crawled. Subjectively realphenomena, all of them. Whatever basic terrors hide in you and in mewill come to face us, no matter how improbable they might be. And youwant me to tell you what they are. No, skipper. Better leave them inyour subconscious, where you've buried them."

  "I'm not afraid," said the Captain. "Tell me, Paresi! At least I'llknow. I'd rather know. I'd so _damn_ much rather know!"

  "You're sure I can tell you?"

  "Yes."

  "I haven't psychoanalyzed you, you know. Some of these things are veryhard to--"

  "You do know, don't you?"

  "Damn you, yes!" Paresi wet his lips. "All right, then. I may be doing awrong thing here.... You've cuddled up to the idea that I'm a veryastute character who automatically knows about things like this, andit's been a comfort to you. Well, I've got news for you. I didn't figureall these things out. I was told."

  "Told?"

  "Yes, told," said Paresi angrily. "Look, this is supposed to berestricted information, but the Exploration Service doesn't rely onindividual aptitude tests alone to make up a crew. There's anotherfactor--call it an inaptitude factor. In its simplest terms, it comes tothis: that a crew can't work together only if each member is the mostefficient at his job. He has to _need_ the others, each one of theothers. And the word _need_ predicates _lack_. In other words, none ofus is a balanced individual. And the imbalances are chosen to match andblend, so that we will react as a balanced unit. Sure I know Johnny'sbugaboos, and Hoskins', and yours. They were all in my indoctrinationtreatments. I know all your case histories, all your psychicpush-buttons."

  "And yours?" demanded the Captain.

  "Hoskins, for example," said Paresi. "Happily married, no children.Physically inferior all his life. Repressed desire for pure sciencewhich produced more than a smattering of a great many sciences and madehim a hell of an engineer. High idealistic quotient; self sacrifice.Look at him playing chess, making of this very real situation atheoretical abstraction ... like leaving a marriage for deep space.

  "Johnny we know about. Brought up with never failing machines. Stillplays with them as if they were toys, and like any imaginative child,turns to his toys for reassurance. He needs to be a hero, hence thestars....

  "Ives ... always fat. Learned to be easy-going, learned to laugh _with_when others were laughing _at_, and bottling up pressures every time ithappened. A large appetite. He's here to satisfy it; he's with us so hecan eat up the galaxies...."

  There was a long pause. "Go on," said the Captain. "Who's next? You?"

  "You," said the doctor shortly. "You grew up with a burning curiosityabout the nature of things. But it wasn't a scientist's curiosity; itwas an aesthete's. You're one of the few people alive who refused asubsidized education and worked your way through advanced studies as acrewman on commercial space-liners. You became one of the youngestprofessors of philosophy in recent history. You made a romantic marriageand your wife died in childbirth. Since then--almost a hundred missionswith E.A.S., refusing numerous offers of advancement. Do I have to tellyou what your bugaboo is now?"

  "No," said Anderson hoarsely. "But I'm ... not afraid of it. I had noidea your ..." He swallowed. "... information was that complete."

  "I wish it wasn't. I wish I had some things to--wonder about," saidParesi with surprising bitterness.

  The Captain looked at him shrewdly. "Go on with your case histories."


  "I've finished."

  "No you haven't." When Paresi did not answer, the Captain nudged him."Johnny, Ives, Hoskins, me. Haven't you forgotten someone?"

  "No I haven't," snarled Paresi, "and if you expect me to tell you why apsychologist buries himself in the stars, I'm not going to do it."

  "I don't want to be told anything so general," said the Captain. "I justwant to know why _you_ came out here."

  Paresi scowled. The Captain looked away from him and hazarded, "Big frogin a small pond, Nick?"

  Paresi snorted.

  Anderson asked, "Women don't like you, do they, Nick?"

  Almost inaudibly, Paresi said, "Better cut it out, skipper."

  Anderson said, "Closest thing to being a mother--is that it?"

  Paresi went white.

  The Captain closed his eyes, frowned, and at last said, "Or maybe youjust want to play God."

  "I'm going to make it tough for you," said Paresi between his teeth."There are several ways you can break, just as there are several ways tobreak a log--explode it, crush it, saw it, burn it.... One of the waysis to fight me until you win. Me, because there's no one else left tofight you. So--I won't fight with you. And you're too rational to attackme unless I do. _That_ is the thing that will make it tough. If you mustbreak, it'll have to be some other way."

  "Is that what I'm doing?" the Captain asked with sudden mildness. "Ididn't know that. I thought I was trying to get your own case historyout of you, that's all. What are you staring at?"

  "Nothing."

  There was nothing. Where there had been forward viewports, there wasnothing. Where there had been controls, the communication station, theforward acceleration panels and storage lockers; the charts andcomputers and radar gear--there was nothing. Blackness; featureless,silent, impenetrable. They sat on one couch by one wall, to which wasfixed one table. Around them was empty floor and a blackness. Thechess-player faced into it, and perhaps he was partly within it; it wasdifficult to see.

  The Captain and the medical officer stared at one another. There seemedto be nothing to say.