Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  He paused, “I trust you won’t find it unpleasant. I think our facilities for the entertainment of patients are fairly complete. And now—to get down to business—”

  The talk became definite. A very large check changed hands.

  “Sign here, Mr. Colby.”

  Colby signed the form which said that he was committing himself voluntarily for treatment. Rhoum pushed a buzzit; an exquisite Centaurian girl in a wisp of neonylon appeared.

  “Nurse, take Mr. Colby to his apartments. I hope you will be quite content here, Mr. Colby, just ask Demella for anything you want.”

  When the smirking little man had gone, quite willingly, Dr. Rhoum selected a stylus and made a careful entry in his casebook.

  Then he reached for the telephone.

  The therapist said, “Hello. Mrs. Helen Colby? Dr. Rhoum speaking.”

  The light feminine voice at the end of the telephone sounded disturbed. “Oh! Frank told me he was going there.” A pause. “Tell me, doctor. Is it serious?”

  Dr. Rhoum made his voice professionally serene, but grave. “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Colby, quite serious. You must try to be brave. You see, he decided on the murder therapy. I suppose you have no objection to being murdered?”

  “None whatever, but—oh, that’s so drastic!”

  “Drastic diseases, you know, Mrs. Colby. Let me see, when can you come down for an appointment? Are you free tomorrow afternoon? We will need samples of blood, hair, and so forth, to make the android—as soon as possible. It’s serious.”

  The appointment was made.

  The fifth of Einstein dawned bright and clear. Colby woke up, switching off the all-night hypnotic learner, and ate with a hearty appetite the breakfast that the blue-haired girl from Aldebaran VI brought him. Last week, at his request, Dr. Rhoum had removed him from Demella’s charge; she had been insufferably insubordinate. Besides, he had never cared for those Centaurians—too skinny. Hamilda, now, she was something.

  Dr. Rhoum came for him punctually at nine. His face looked stern and terribly grave. “You are certain that you want to go through with this?” he asked quietly. “There is still time to change your mind, you know. We can convert you to a simpler therapy—mayhem, or simply abusive treatment—or you can go home this morning, get a divorce and forget the whole matter. We’re quite prepared to give you a refund on the murder fee.”

  Colby stared at him between tight-squeezed small eyes. “I’m going through with it,” he snarled furiously. “Didn’t you say you weren’t going to try to rehabilitate or reform me?”

  Dr. Rhoum shrugged. “Very well,” he remarked quietly. “First, remember this: When you murder your wife, you will murder her; we are very thorough. When you leave here—this morning,” he smiled faintly, “she will, to you, be dead. You will never see her again, or she you. We are very thorough about that—since it would, of course, invalidate the entire therapy, and perhaps drive you into severe psychosis for you to meet the woman you had murdered. That is, one reason why the murder therapy is so expensive.”

  Colby smiled quietly. “It’s worth it,” he remarked.

  Rhoum only shrugged again. “Go down the hall, and into that room,” he told him. “And—I’ll see you in the office afterward.”

  Colby stood still for a moment, and Rhoum, watching closely, saw his hands tremble a little, saw his lips thin and set tightly. Then Colby turned and walked down the hall. The door closed behind him, and Rhoum walked into his own office.

  The television cameras had been carefully placed, so that Rhoum and the woman could see, on the wide screen, every corner of the room which Colby had just entered, even the young and lovely woman who sat, dressed in a loose neo-nylon robe, on the divan. Mrs. Colby shuddered as she looked at the woman-image.

  “It’s—it’s terrible—” she breathed in low horror, “she’s— why, she’s me, Doctor—”

  “You don’t have to watch if it’s too painful, Mrs. Colby, but there is a catharsis-therapy in this for you, too. After all, you will never see him again. If you watch him murder you in cold blood, you won’t grieve for him,” said Rhoum gently. “Remember, he is insane. A man who could murder in cold blood—even when he knows it is a robot—a man who could come here, knowing it to be illusory, and who, after five weeks of waiting, clings to the need to release by killing—he is a very sick man, Mrs. Colby.”

  “I—I know—oh!” Mrs. Colby gave a low scream as the two images on the screen coalesced in terrible Conflict. “Oh! Oh!” and covered her eyes with her hands.

  Rhoum’s voice was low and soothing. “Please try and watch this, Mrs. Colby—”

  “Will it—will it cure him?” she faltered. “Perfectly, madam. He will be discharged, completely cured, sane, this evening.”

  Helen Colby squeezed her eyes tight shut. “Oh no—” she moaned, “Frank—Frank—don’t—did I drive you to this—” Rhoum’s smooth cold eyes watched the screen in professional detachment. “A bad case, Mrs. Colby, a bad case. Sadistic and wild—you were very wise to send him to me when you did. He might have broken down, and—” his voice grew suddenly hard. “It would be you lying there now!” He touched a button on his desk. To the two heavy male nurses who came in, he said curtly, gesturing toward the screen, “Take the patient out of there—the murder cubicle— and clean up the android. And send Demella with a sedative for Mrs. Colby,” he added, glancing at the sobbing girl.

  He rose from his desk and walked around the divan to Helen Colby, placing a light hand on her shoulder. “Try to be brave,” he said. “I’m ordering you a sedative. The .nurse will take you upstairs. Lie down there until you feel better,

  and then any of the staff will call you a cab and take you home.”

  He nodded at the Centaurian girl who came in carrying a drinking-glass and a couple of capsules; then left the office and walked down the hall toward the murder cubicle.

  Colby hung, limp and loose, between the male nurses. There was blood on his hands; he was sweating, slack-limbed and slack-mouthed, breathing in little panting sobs. But his eyes were shrewd and alight.

  He understood the technique. Complete catharsis of the impulses. He felt cool and clean and released, ready for anything . . . sane again. He glanced up at Rhoum, who stood, tall in his white garments, before him. And he marvelled that his voice was so steady. “Well, Doctor?”

  Rhoum’s voice was hard. “Excellent, Mr. Colby. You will very soon be discharged as cured.”

  Colby glanced down at his stained garments. “Can I—get cleaned up a little?”

  “After a bit, Mr. Colby,” Rhoum’s voice was smooth and soothing. “Just come with me, now. Just come with me.”

  Colby hung back; was dragged, suddenly resisting, between the male nurses. “What’s this—where are you taking me? The treatment’s over, isn’t it? I’m a sane man again—”

  Rhoum shoved open a door; the male nurses hauled Colby bodily through it. Colby knew at once where he had been brought. Hard, real and anachronistic in the streamlined, crime-less world—an electric chair is unmistakable anywhere.

  “Not quite,” said Rhoum softly, to the slumped and helpless Colby. “Murder, sir, carries the death penalty.” He paused. “You see, your therapy isn’t quite finished yet. You can’t commit a crime without punishment; and the punishment fits the crime.”

  Colby suddenly began to struggle wildly. “But I didn’t—I didn’t—it was only an android robot, a duplicate—”

  Rhoum came and knelt beside the chair, fastening the final electrodes in place. “A test, sir; a test of your aberration. You might say, a final test. The intention, the means and the method of committing a fatal murder. Were we to leave you without—” he smiled, “without this final therapy, you could not be cured. Either your temperament would demand that you commit more murders, or else you would develop an intense guilt complex, and would, in the end, be more seriously insane than you are now.” He stood up, moving to the great switch. “There is only one cure for a murderer, Mr
. Colby.”

  “But you can’t do this . . .” Colby yelled, his voice hoarse, harsh, unrecognizable. “It was a robot—I signed—it’s murder—murder—murder—”

  Rhoum threw the switch.

  He glanced only briefly at the body as they carried it past his office door.

  “Yes,” he said to Mrs. Colby, as he finished signing his name, “he died sane.” He handed her the check with a ceremonious little bow. “Here you are, madam, minus the cost of the robot, and a few other expenses.”

  Her voice almost failed, and she left the office with a choked, quiet farewell. Rhoum gazed after her for a moment, smiling faintly; then chose a stylus, and wrote in his logbook, “Colby, Frank. ‘Discharged cured—” he glanced at his watch, “11:52, 5th of Einstein, 2467"

  Then he picked up the telephone to make his report to the police psychologists.

  Year of the Big Thaw

  You say that Matthew is your own son, Mr. Emmett?

  Yes, Rev’rend Doane, and a better boy never stepped, if I do say it as shouldn’t. I’ve trusted him to drive team for me since he was eleven, and you can’t say more than that for a farm boy. Way back when he was a little shaver so high, when the war came on, he was bounden he was going to sail with this Admiral Farragut. You know boys that age—like runaway colts. I couldn’t see no good in his being cabin boy on some tarnation Navy ship and I told him so. If he’d wanted to sail out on a whaling ship, I ‘low I’d have let him go. But Marthy—that’s the boy’s Ma—took on so that Matt stayed home. Yes, he’s a good boy and a good son.

  We’ll miss him a powerful lot if he gets this scholarship thing. But I ‘low it’ll be good for the boy to get some learnin’ besides what he gets in the school here. It’s right kind of you, Rev’rend, to look over this application thing for me.

  Well, if he is your own son, Mr. Emmett, why did you write ‘birthplace unknown’ on the line here?

  Rev’rend Doane, I’m glad you asked me that question. I’ve been turnin’ it over in my mind and I’ve jest about come to the conclusion it wouldn’t be nohow fair to hold it back. I didn’t lie when I said Matt was my son, because he’s been a good son to me and Marthy. But I’m not his Pa and Marthy ain’t his Ma, so could be I stretched the truth jest a mite. Rev’rend Doane, it’s a tarnal funny yarn but I’ll walk into the meetin’ house and swear to it on a stack o’Bibles as thick as a cord of wood.

  You know I’ve been farming the old Corning place these past seven year? It’s good flat Connecticut bottom-land, but it isn’t like our land up in Hampshire where I was born and raised. My Pa called it the Hampshire Grants and all that was King’s land whenhis Pa came in there and started farming at the foot of Scuttock Mountain. That’s Injun for fires, folks say, because the Injuns used to build fires up there in the spring for some of their heathen doodads. Anyhow, up there in the mountains we see a tarnal power of quare things.

  You call to mind the year we had the big thaw, about twelve years before the war? You mind the blizzard that year? I heard tell it spread down most to York. And at Fort Orange, the place they call Albany now, the Hudson froze right over, so they say. But those York folks do a sight of exaggerating, I’m told.

  Anyhow, when the ice went out there was an almighty good thaw all over, and when the snow run off Scuttock mountain there was a good-sized hunk of farmland in our valley went under water. The crick on my farm flowed over the bank and there was a foot of water in the cowshed, and down in the swimmin’ hole in the back pasture wasn’t nothing but a big gully fifty foot and more across, rushing through the pasture, deep as a lake and brown as the old cow. You know freshet-floods? Full up with sticks and stones and old dead trees and somebody’s old shed floatin’ down the middle. And I swear to goodness, Parson, that stream was running along so fast I saw four-inch cobblestones floating and bumping along.

  I tied the cow and the calf and Kate—she was our white mare; you mind she went lame last year and I had to shoot her, but she was just a young mare then and skittish as all get-out—but she was a good little mare.

  Anyhow, I tied the whole kit and caboodle of them in the woodshed up behind the house, where they’d be dry, then I started to get the milkpail. Right then I heard the gosh-awfullest screech I ever heard in my life. Sounded like thunder and a freshet and a forest-fire all at once. I dropped the milkpail as I heard Marthy scream inside the house, and I run outside. Marthy was already there in the yard and she points up in the sky and yelled, “Look up yander!”

  We stood looking up at the sky over Shattuck mountain where there was a great big—shoot now, I d’no as I can call its name but it was like a trail of fire in the sky, and it was makin’ the dangdest racket you ever heard, Rev’rend. Looked kind of like one of them Fourth-of-July skyrockets, but it was big as a house. Marthy was screaming and she grabbed me and hollered, “Hez! Hez, what in tunket is it?” And when Marthy cusses like that, Rev’rend, she don’t know what she’s saying, she’s so scared.

  I was plumb scared myself. I heard Liza—that’s our young-un, Liza Grace, that got married to the Taylor boy. I heard her crying on the stoop, and she came flying out with her pinny all black and hollered to Marthy that the pea soup was burning. Marthy let out another screech and ran for the house. That’s a woman for you. So I quietened Liza down some and I went in and told Marthy it weren’t no more than one of them shooting stars. Then I went and did the milking.

  But you know, while we were sitting down to supper there came the most awful grinding, screeching, pounding crash I ever heard. Sounded if it were in the back pasture but the house shook as if somethin’ had hit it.

  Marthy jumped a mile and I never saw such a look on her face.

  “Hez, what was that?” she asked.

  “Shoot, now, nothing but the freshet,” I told her.

  But she kept on about it. “You reckon that shooting star fell in our back pasture, Hez?”

  “Well, now, I don’t ‘low it did nothing like that,” I told her. But she was jittery as an old hen and it weren’t like her nohow. She said it sounded like trouble and I finally quietened her down by saying I’d saddle Kate up and go have a look. I kind of thought, though I didn’t tell Marthy, that somebody’s house had floated away in the freshet and run aground in our back pasture.

  So I saddled up Kate and told Marthy to get some hot rum ready in case there was some poor soul run aground back there. And I rode Kate back to the back pasture.

  It was mostly uphill because the top of the pasture is on high ground, and it sloped down to the crick on the other side of the rise.

  Well, I reached the top of the hill and looked down. The crick were a regular river now, rushing along like Niagary. On the other side of it was a stand of timber, then the slope of Shattuck mountain. And I saw right away the long streak where all the timber had been cut out in a big scoop with roots standing up in the air and a big slide of rocks down to the water.

  It was still raining a mite and the ground was sloshy and squanchy under foot. Kate scrunched her hooves and got real balky, not likin’ it a bit. When we got to the top of the pasture she started to whine and whicker and stamp, and no matter how loud I whoa-ed she kept on a-stamping and I was plumb scared she’d pitch me off in the mud. Then I started to smell a funny smell, like somethin’ burning. Now, don’t ask me how anything could burn in all that water, because I don’t know.

  When we came up on the rise I saw the contraption.

  Rev’rend, it was the most tarnal crazy contraption I ever saw in my life. It was bigger nor my cowshed and it was long and thin and as shiny as Marthy’s old pewter pitcher her Ma brought from England. It had a pair of red rods sticking out behind and a crazy globe fitted up where the top ought to be. It was stuck in the mud, turned halfway over on the little slide of roots and rocks, and I could see what had happened, all right.

  The thing must have been—now, Rev’rend, you can say what you like but that thing must have flew across Shattuck and landed on the slope in the trees,
then turned over and slid down the hill. That must have been the crash we heard. The rods weren’t just red, they were red-hot. I could hear them sizzle as the rain hit ‘em.

  In the middle of the infernal contraption there was a door, and it hung all to-other as if every hinge on it had been wrenched halfway off. As I pushed old Kate alongside it I heared somebody hollering alongside the contraption. I didn’t nohow get the words but it must have been for help, because I looked down and there was a man a-flopping along in the water.

  He was a big fellow and he wasn’t swimming, just thrashin’ and hollering. So I pulled off my coat and boots and hove in after him. The stream was running fast but he was near the edge and I managed to catch on to an old tree-root and hang on, keeping his head out of the water till I got my feet aground. Then I hauled him onto the bank. Up above me Kate was still whinnying and raising Ned and I shouted at her as I bent over the man.

  Wal, Rev’rend, he sure did give me a surprise—weren’t no proper man I’d ever seed before. He was wearing some kind of red clothes, real shiny and sort of stretchy and not wet from the water, like you’d expect, but dry and it felt like that silk and India-rubber stuff mixed together. And it was such a bright red that at first I didn’t see the blood on it. When I did I knew he were a goner. His chest were all stove in, smashed to pieces. One of the old tree-roots must have jabbed him as the current flung him down. I thought he were dead already, but then he opened up his eyes.

  A funny color they were, greeny yellow. And I swear, Rev’rend, when he opened them eyes I felt he was readin’ my mind. I thought maybe he might be one of them circus fellers in their flying contraptions that hang at the bottom of a balloon.

  He spoke to me in English, kind of choky and stiff, not like Joe the Portygee sailor or like those tarnal dumb Frenchies up Canady way, but—well, funny. He said, “My baby—in ship. Get—baby . . . ” He tried to say more but his eyes went shut and he moaned hard.