The Prayer Machine

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  ‘Yes, though it’s fairly rare. Why?’

  ‘How premature?’

  ‘That’s difficult to quantify.’

  ‘Could a girl of twenty-two have the physical appearance of a geriatric?’

  On that, Jane did turn round. ‘No. Certainly not.’

  ‘You mean in the normal course of events.’ His turn, now, to glance out of the window. But his eyes were on G Block.

  She said, ‘Not in any course of events. I’m just trying to interpret your reasons for the question … I wonder, for instance, if you’re afraid of growing old?’

  ‘What makes you ask?’

  ‘It’s a fair question. If, in your trance, you experience something on those lines, it could be a projection of a personal anxiety. Be honest. Couldn’t it?’

  ‘I had thought of that.’

  ‘Then why not be frank and discuss the trance in detail?’

  ‘I said, no. Certainly not on the terms you’re implying.’

  ‘Am I implying terms?’

  ‘You can’t help it. Though you keep saying I’m not your patient you still can’t help being a doctor. You’re in your own clinic. You’re talking to an individual with a record of mental illness. You are bound to use the information diagnostically in relation to me, rather than in relation to the object of the exercise.’

  ‘You haven’t yet described the object of the exercise.’

  ‘Still, as far as I am concerned, there was one.’

  ‘Then if I’m not to be a doctor in this context, what do you suggest?’

  ‘That we talk on equal terms. You’re qualified in psychiatry but I’m qualified — in physics. It was from physics that I moved to metaphysics and then to metapsychology. There was a reason. And it was logical. The chain of events arising from work which even Braknell would be forced to accept as valid led to conclusions which he would not accept as valid — and, in research, that is more often than not what happens when you’re up against the old guard.’

  ‘What were you investigating when you were a physicist pure and simple?’

  ‘Physics is no longer pure and simple. It spills over into other fields.’

  ‘No … don’t be cussed. My question is reasonable.’

  ‘I was researching the properties of a thing called a Black Hole. It’s a —’

  ‘I’ve heard about black holes.’

  ‘I suppose to you the idea of doughnuts in the sky is pretty hard to swallow?’

  ‘It’s what you’ve swallowed that counts, Neil! It now seems a whole lot clearer what happened during your trance. You simply made all the links yourself, in your own mind!’

  ‘You can do better than that. You’re trying at all costs to find a neat, classical solution to the problem. You’ve got Braknellitis. And as long as you can go on believing Braknell you’ll sleep nights.’

  ‘And what are you clinging to? — Something sufficiently bizarre to hook-up everything into a lattice of interrelated fantasy. That in itself is schizoid.’

  ‘That in itself — I mean your own attitude — explains why the establishment have invariably held up progress.’

  ‘People can always say that. Going on the ramblings of my unfortunate patients it can’t be true more than one per cent of the time.’

  ‘I haven’t heard their ramblings; but for all I know they check with what I discovered last night.’

  ‘You really are in love with double-dutch, aren’t you? And if you’re so cagey about the details whenever you’re challenged how can you expect people to believe you?’

  He said frankly, ‘It’s because I only half-believe it myself.’

  ‘Ah, that does sound more like sense! So now why don’t you tell me what you half-believe? … You never know, I might half-believe it myself.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Do more. Enlist as my patient. Don’t worry — I won’t abuse that. I have rather a different motive.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It makes what you tell me utterly confidential.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be entitled to tell Dr Braknell, if he asked for details?’

  ‘No. Not unless I referred you to him.’

  ‘If I agreed to this … deal, would you feel entitled to repeat the process of last night?’

  ‘Not unless your condition deteriorated to such an extent that it became therapeutically necessary.’

  Neil said, in cold blood, my condition is very serious, Dr Jane! I believe in an impossible set of fantasies. I relate them with entirely unrelated facts, such as the raid on G Block by your other lunatics and some hazy ideas about young girls with geriatric symptoms. I persist with insane ideas, as put out by my cranky outfit the Institute of Metapsychology. I am hostile to people who talk common sense — like Braknell, and to policemen with barbed-wire minds, like Inspector Andrews. All in all, I’m a psychiatric mess, fully entitled to last-ditch procedures such as trance treatment under TNA.’

  ‘That won’t do.’

  ‘I should have thought it would fully endorse a decision on Dr Braknell’s part to place me under lock and key.’

  ‘None of my patients is under lock and key.’

  ‘After yesterday’s break-out you may find local opinion rather opposed to open-ward treatment.’

  ‘I’m equal to the challenge.’

  ‘But yesterday was quite a panic, surely?’

  Jane said, ‘It was absurdly misplaced. None of my patients are dangerous and — by now — all of them have been found.’

  ‘Then who did panic?’

  ‘The Genetics Department.’

  ‘And what have they got on their conscience? — Perhaps crass interference with natural processes makes them over-react to everything.’

  ‘If you’re so smug about “natural processes” how do you justify the use of TNA?’

  ‘I am trying to use TNA trips as a means of discovering the longterm effects of just what they’re doing down in G Block.’

  She watched him quizzically. ‘That does sound … aberrated.’

  ‘At least it’s an idea. Have you any means of busting through the top security grading of their work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doesn’t it worry you that the work is top secret?’

  ‘It worries me that you should suppose that a trance state on your part can determine its longterm effects. That would take … several generations.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was silent while more concrete was crushed down below. ‘Let’s get back to something we can agree about. You say they use radioactive isotopes in G Block? — I take it you mean they irradiate animals, that kind of thing?’

  Neil said stubbornly, ‘They use isotopes.’

  ‘And you’re afraid one of my patients might have pinched a canister?’

  ‘And possibly have opened it.’

  ‘How lethal is it, Neil? Do you know what they use?’

  ‘Radio-cobalt. The police, of course, didn’t even go through the motions of wondering about possible dangers to your patients. They were only concerned with the great British public.’

  ‘You think the danger of radioactivity was why they mounted such a large search operation?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because, although the police have found all your inmates, they’re still persisting with the search.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yes. Inspector Andrews phoned me about it this morning.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘For some reason he wasn’t too keen to phone you, that’s why. He asked me if you’d expressed any anxiety about the physical condition of your patients — burns, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I don’t see why Andy couldn’t have phoned me direct.’

  ‘Oh, he’s lovable Andy now, is he?’

  ‘Just plain Andy.’

  ‘Well, Just Plain Andy. Obviously he phoned me in the hope of not drawing too much attention to what has been
evidently lost — the cannister. You might have got upset on behalf of your patients.’

  She said, ‘Unlikely. Andy isn’t like that.’

  ‘Andy is obeying orders.’

  ‘And in any case, radiation sickness doesn’t show in the early stages — except in vomiting. And if any of them had been vomiting they would have told Sister Ann Marie.’

  ‘That’s just what a schizophrenic wouldn’t do, and you know it.’

  She nodded. ‘Secretive. I see. If they did have a … group motive for raiding G Block they wouldn’t draw attention to the after-effects.’

  ‘More than that. Surely, if they are insane they’re pretty unlikely to react normally or to think normally or to know what the course of radiation poisoning normally takes?’

  ‘I can’t believe Andy wouldn’t have told me.’

  ‘Jane, if it isn’t a rude question, what do you normally discuss with him in bed?’

  ‘That’s not fair and you know it.’

  ‘But it does make it pretty ominous. He has an affair with you and cares so little about your patients he won’t even confide what the problem really is.’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Because you blush at all the right moments.’

  ‘All the wrong ones, evidently.’ She fiddled with a rubber band. ‘Your own deductions might be accurate enough about my personal life but you could be wrong about the canister.’

  ‘Then you’d better come up with a better idea of what the police are still looking for and why Andy didn’t phone you direct.’

  Jane spoke aloud. ‘A blood count at this stage would reveal nothing.’

  ‘You could feed them steroids, or something, to make sure.’

  ‘The risks are too great. Drugs like that have a devastating effect on the psyche — especially on psychotics. I’d have to know before I acted.’

  ‘Jane, if you gave me another shot of TNA I might be able to find out, one way or the other.’

  ‘No go. And how could you possibly find out?’

  ‘By asking.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My people.’

  ‘The ones inside your head, I suppose. Did you really think I’d fall for that?’

  ‘I’m your patient, now. And I’m talking such paranoic balls that I must be in need of truly desperate measures.’

  ‘At the moment I’m merely being taken for a ride by someone who is trying to twist my arm.’

  ‘Jane. Allow yourself to think. Obviously you must have had some time for my theories or you would never have got me down here. Nothing has changed to disprove them. Everything points to the odd fact that on the very day I arrive the patients all go berserk — even before I’ve met them. There must be a link between me and them and there must be a link in that trance with events that are happening now. My people will know from their records, Jane.’ He gazed at her intently, to see if the penny had dropped.

  She said, very quietly, ‘Are you saying that your people — as you call them — are in the future?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘God. If Braknell could hear you now.’

  ‘Only he can’t.’

  Jane Schuber rustled through some papers on her desk. ‘You wrote to two of my patients. Why?’

  ‘I wrote to them only after I’d written to the Registrar concerning what you people call “Earthless Quakes”. The Registrar was unhelpful.’

  ‘And my patients?’

  ‘One didn’t answer. The other wrote quite lucidly and simply said that you were as frightened by Earthless Quakes as he was.’

  Jane said angrily, ‘I’ve never discussed that phenomenon with any of them.’

  ‘That doesn’t prevent comment on their part. Does it?’

  She gazed hard at him. ‘The explanation we have been given is that various atomic explosions throughout the world have given rise to disturbed air masses, which form mini-cyclones in order to restore atmospheric stability.’

  ‘That’s hilarious. It must take some really hard work on your part to keep on believing it.’

  ‘I prefer not to comment.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘But how did you get to hear of them — or is that shrouded in mystery as well?’

  ‘There is such a thing as the press. And even the papers came up with a better answer than the official one.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘The disturbances come from the wake of UFOs.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘No. And since UFOs are hallucinatory they can’t very well leave a trail of wash behind them.’

  She said, ‘Odd, isn’t it? You’re so ready to say UFOs are imagined: yet you claim that so much of your own imagined experience is real.’

  ‘We have to define the word “imagine”.’

  ‘I’m a little weary for that just at present.’

  ‘Jane, thoughtquakes are paranormal phenomena to do with dents made in space itself.’

  ‘I’m trying to imagine a space with a dent in it.’

  ‘Don’t play dumb. Even Einstein got farther than that.’

  ‘What causes these dents?’

  ‘Well, it’s not done with a hammer and chisel … I hate to repeat myself, but under TNA I could probably find out.’

  ‘If I used TNA on you now, Neil, one or other or both of two things could happen. The first is you might become seriously ill —’

  ‘— and the second is you might get struck off the register. What’s it matter if a few loonies die of radiation sickness? Lovable Andy is right: people like them don’t count. In fact, they might as well be dead —’

  ‘Damn you! At least half of those patients have a chance of almost total recovery!’

  ‘Well, you’d better go and pump them full of steroids and all that guff. It might not improve their minds very much but at least it’s legal. The BMA won’t turn a hair. And you can go about with a clear conscience.’

  ‘You’re pretty ruthless, aren’t you? You expect me to take such risks merely on your say-so; to believe that a process that I have been taught is psychotic will somehow provide me with vital information about the health of a handful of schizophrenics?’

  ‘Then phone Andy. Perhaps he’s psychic enough to know whether your patients handled that stuff or not. You can also ask him — while you’re about it — if he’s altogether happy about a conspiracy to keep his mistress uninformed about the consequences to her own patients.’

  ‘You know — don’t you — that you have a talent for being just about the most infuriating person in my experience?’

  ‘You’re angry with Andrews — not me. Face it: he’s a sham. There’s the phone. Pick it up and tell him so.’

  ‘I will … as long as you get out of here before I show a side of my nature I’d much prefer not to expose.’ But the rubber band snapped, exposing it.

  *

  The nun waited just outside the chapel. Father Stillwell, the man who struck so many as intolerant, came down the narrow, creaky stairs by the west entrance and stopped there, still holding the old-fashioned fabric stair-rope that took the place of bannisters.

  Ann Marie often found him not quite real — this tall, forbidding creature who now stood in the gloom of the panelled ante-room. His detachment from matters of the flesh was not simply that of a celibate man, but of a doctrinaire preacher incapable of regarding mind and body as one.

  It was evident that he had assessed what was on her mind and he nodded very slightly as he let go the tassel of the stair-rope. Then, with a barely perceptible movement that amounted to invitation, he led the way — not, as she had anticipated, to the refectory (the usual scene of friendly discussions) but to the small waiting room used only by the lay. Here, in the suffocating atmosphere of pot plants and poorly reproduced religious prints, he motioned her into a chair that still smelled of furniture polish but chose to remain standing himself. ‘So you’ve decided.’

  She said, ‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

&nbs
p; ‘You do realize what this means?’

  Ann Marie spoke with some precision. ‘I know what it means to you, yes.’

  ‘Sister, you took a vow. You served as a novitiate and you then were welcomed fully into the Order. You did much good work for that Order and we were proud of you. We still are. But you do not even apply for special dispensation. You just want to quit. That’s what hurts me.’

  ‘The last thing I want to do is to hurt anyone.’

  ‘I believe you, which is why I’m not sure you know what you’re really doing.’

  She met his eyes head-on. ‘I regret that I do.’

  ‘So judging from your present mood, I take it that you no longer regard a vow before God as meaningful?’

  ‘I am very much afraid not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I believe that my motives for entering the convent, Father, were neurotic in the first place.’

  ‘Whereas your reasons for leaving it are not?’

  ‘Of that, father, no-one can be sure.’

  ‘What will you do? Simply abandon the church and forget you were ever a Catholic?’

  She nodded firmly. ‘I shall try.’

  ‘It won’t be easy.’

  ‘I know that. I have gone through a great deal of conditioning. But now that you have lined up with Dr Braknell I have no choice.’

  ‘So that’s it. Because Dr Braknell and I care about the sanctity of the human soul, you wish to leave?’

  ‘Sanctity?’

  ‘I mean we are against mind-bending drugs.’

  ‘Dr Braknell is clutching at straws, Father. He sees his whole position challenged — classical psychiatry, authority without question — and cussedly opposes anything else.’

  Stillwell moved swiftly across to the window and little gusts blew from the swish of his robe. He spoke with his back to Ann Marie as if this way he could keep his temper. ‘Dr Braknell is hardly a novice in his profession.’

  ‘But he is wrong.’

  ‘He saw, on television, something he knew to be wrong.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘I did. And it is quite evident that Dr Schuber is meddling with forces she doesn’t begin to understand.’

  ‘Would you be more sympathetic to Dr Schuber’s work if she were a Christian instead of a Jew?’

  Something about her tone made him swing round to face her. ‘A Jew? I didn’t even realize she was one. She doesn’t have Jewish features.’