Thunder and Roses

by Theodore Sturgeon

He thought, I’ll ask her. I’ll ask her right out, the worst possible thing it could be, and it won’t be that. And then I’ll ask her the next worst thing. He wet his lips. “Did—did he—” But it wouldn’t come out that way. “He—asked you—”

  She nodded again, her cheekbone hard and hot and wet against him. “I just said yes,” she gasped hoarsely. “What else could I say? He knew … he must have known.…”

  Mel Warfield’s stomach twisted into a spastic knot, and his stopped breath made thunder in his ears.

  He stood up, and spoke to himself levelly, with great care. He spoke silent, balanced things about behaviorism, about things which, after all, happen every day to people.… “God damn it!” Peg wasn’t people! Peg was—was—

  “This is crazy,” he said. “This is completely insane, Peg. Listen to me. You’re going to tell me the whole thing, every last little rotten detail, right from the very beginning.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to. Because you’ve got to.” A detached part of his mind wondered what he would have to do to make his voice sound like that on purpose.

  “If you like,” she said, and he knew she was doing it because of him, and not at all for herself.

  She had been looking for Robin. She had been looking for him for weeks—near the theaters which were showing his plays, at the libraries, the parks—anywhere. She had admitted to herself that although his development would follow logic of a sort, the logic would be of a kind, or in a direction, that would be beyond her. Therefore a haphazard search was her most direct course. Random radiation can interfere with any frequency. A siren touches every note on any scale.

  There is a place in the Village which serves no food or hard liquor, but only wines and champagne. There are divans and easy-chairs and coffee tables; it is more like a living-room, thrice compounded, than a café. Dr. Margaretta Wenzell, bound for an obscure Italian place in the neighborhood whence emanated rumors of spaghetti and green sauce, had yielded to some impulse and found herself ordering a wine cooler here instead.

  She sat near the corner and looked at the surprisingly good paintings which filled most of the space between windows. Out of her sight someone stroked a piano with dolorous perfection. Near her a man with a book studied its cover as if he saw all its contents. Opposite, a man with a girl studied her eyes as wordlessly, and as if he saw all her soul.

  Peg sipped and felt alone. And then there was a burst of laughter from the hidden corner, and Peg came up out of her chair as if she had been physically snatched. “It wasn’t that I recognized his voice,” she told Mel, “or even the way it was used. I can’t really describe what happened. It was like the impulse which had made me come into the place—a reasonless, vague tugging, the kind of thing that makes you say ‘Why not?’ … it was that, but a thousand times more intense. That’s important, because it’s one of the few things that shows how he’s changed and—and what he is.”

  She ignored her spilled drink and, like a sleepwalker, went back toward the gentle drumming of voices and the casual piano.

  He was there, facing her, leaning forward over a long, low coffee table, his hands—they seemed larger or heavier than she had remembered—spread on it, his head turned to the girl who sat at the end of the chesterfield at his right.

  She looked at the girl, at the four other people in the group, at the bored man who played the piano, and back again at Robin and it was only in this second glance that she recognized him, though, oddly, she knew he was there.

  He was different. His hair was different—darker, probably because he had used something to control its coarse rebelliousness. His eyes seemed longer, probably because in repose they were now kept narrow. But his face as a whole was the most different thing about him. It was stronger, better proportioned. The old diffidence was gone, gone with the charming bewilderment. But there was charm in the face—a new kind, a charm which she had never associated with him. In that instant of recognition, she knew that she could never couple the words “childish” and “Robin” together again.

  She might have spoken, but her voice had quite deserted her. Robin looked up and rose in the same split second, with an apparent understanding of the whole situation and all of her feelings. “Miss Effingwell!” he said joyfully. He was at her side in three long strides, his strong hand under her elbow—and she needed it. “Remember me? I’m Freddy, from the Accounting Department.” His left eyelid flickered.

  Too faint to think, Peg said, “F-freddy. Of course.”

  He steered her to the chesterfield, into which she sank gratefully. “Miss Effingwell, I want you to meet my quaffing-cohorts. Left to right, Binnie Morrow, Missouri’s gift to show business. Cortlandt—he’s a real travelling salesman. Look out.”

  “I travel in hops,” said Cortlandt surprisingly.

  “The kind of hops they put in beer,” Robin supplemented, and laughed that new, confident laugh again. “And those two gentlemen with spectacles and intense expressions are Doctors Pellegrini and Fels, who are psychiatrists.”

  “I’m still an intern,” said Pellegrini, and blushed. He seemed very young.

  “And this,” said Robin, indicating a tweedy, thin little woman, “is Miss McCarthy, a member of the second oldest profession.”

  “He makes it sound very romantic,” smiled Miss McCarthy. “Actually I’m a pawnbroker’s assistant.”

  “Her motto is ‘In hoc ferplenti,’ ” said Robin, and sat down.

  “How do you do?” murmured Peg faintly, with a small inclusive smile.

  “We were in the middle of a fantastic argument,” Robin said. “I just asked for a simple little definition, and caused no end of fireworks.”

  “Do go on,” said Peg. “What were you trying to define?”

  “Maturity,” said Robin; and immediately, as if to attract attention away from Peg’s white twisted face, “Cortlandt, where on earth do you buy your ties?”

  The salesman dropped his sandy lashes and pulled up his blazing four-in-hand, which then and there served the only real function of its gorgeous life, by holding the eyes of the party until Peg could calm herself.

  “Where were we?” asked Miss McCarthy at length.

  “I had just said,” answered Binnie Morrow, the showgirl, “that all psychiatrists were crazy.” She blushed. It went well with the glossy frame of chestnut hair round her face. “And then Dr. Pellegrini said that he and Dr. Fels were psychiatrists. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t apologize,” said Fels.

  “No, don’t,” said Robin. “If it’s true, it’s true whether or not we have these madmen in our midst. If it’s false, I’m sure they can defend themselves. What about it, Dr. Fels?”

  Fels turned to the showgirl. “Why do you think psychiatrists are crazy?”

  She twirled the stem of her glasses. “It’s the company they keep. The stuff comes off on them.”

  Pellegrini laughed. “You know, I think you’re right! In the clinic, we work in pairs and in groups. That way we can watch each other. Sometimes I think about the influences a psychiatrist must come under when he’s on his own, and I get scared.”

  “What about that?” Robin asked the older doctor.

  “I don’t worry much. Few neurotics are particularly dominating. There are minor monomaniacs, of course, but many of those just stay on the single track and don’t have operating conflicts. It’s the ones with internal frictions who come under our hands mostly, and they’re full of opposed or nearly opposed forces which work out to overall weakness.”

  “And immaturity,” added Robin.

  The salesman looked up. “There’s a definition, then,” he said. “Turn it around and make it positive, and you define maturity as strength and sanity.”

  Robin opened his mouth and closed it again. What was so very different about his face?

  “Strength and sanity,” said Miss McCarthy thoughtfully. “They don’t mean anything. Strength—stronger than what? A man is stronger than an ant
; an ant can move much more, for its size and weight, than a man can. And sanity—who knows what that is?”

  Pellegrini said, “Sanity and maturity are the same thing.”

  “Are all children insane?” smiled Miss McCarthy.

  “You know what I mean,” said Pellegrini, almost irritably. “Maturity is the condition achieved when sanity exists within an organism at its ontogenetic peak.”

  “That’ll hold you,” grinned Robin.

  “It won’t hold me,” said Cortlandt. “What do you mean by ‘ontogenetic peak’? The fullest possible development of function and facilities in the animal concerned?”

  “That’s right.”

  Cortlandt shook his sandy head. “Seems to me I read somewhere that, according to comparative anatomies, among warm-blooded animals, homo sapiens is unique in the fact that physically, he dies of old age before he is fully mature.”

  “That’s right,” nodded Dr. Fels. “Just as anatomy comparisons indicate that man should have a period of gestation of eleven months instead of nine. The law recognizes that one—did you know? Anyhow, in psychiatry we run into immaturity all the time. I might almost say that our job is primarily to mature our patients … man is the only animal which stays kittenish all its life. Maturity to a bull gorilla or a full-grown lion is a very serious thing. The basics become very close—procreation, self-preservation, the hunt. There isn’t time for the playful amusements which preoccupy most of humanity.”

  “Ah,” said Robin. “Poetry, then, and music and sculpture—they’re all the results of the same impulses that make a kitten roll a ball of yarn around?”

  Fels hesitated. “I—suppose they are, viewed objectively.”

  The sandy-haired Cortlandt broke in again. “You just came out with another definition, by implication, Doctor. You said that a psychiatrist’s job is primarily to mature his patients. Maturity, then, would be what a psychiatrist would call adjustment?”

  “Or psychic balance, or orgastic potency, or ‘cured,’ ” grinned Robin, “depending on his school.”

  Fels nodded. “That would be maturity.”

  Miss McCarthy, the pawnbroker’s assistant, had spoken next. “I’m interested,” she said to Pellegrini, “in what you said a moment ago about the onto—uh—that fullest possible development of function and facilities that you were talking about. If it’s true that humans die of old age before they can grow up—then what would one be like if he did fully mature?”

  Pellegrini looked startled. The other psychiatrist, Fels, answered. “How can we extrapolate such a thing? It has never happened.”

  “Hasn’t it?” asked Robin quietly. No one heard, apparently, but Peg. What was so different about his face?

  Cortlandt said, “That’s quite a thought. In terms of other animals, your fully developed man would be a silent, predatory, cautious, copulating creature to whom life and living was a deadly serious business.”

  “No!” said the showgirl unexpectedly and with violence. “You’re turning him into a gorilla instead of a making him something better.”

  “Why must he be something better?” asked Robin.

  “He would have to be,” said the girl. “I just know it. Maybe he would be like that if he was just an animal; but a man is more than that. A man’s got something else that—that—” She floundered to a stop, tried again. “I think he would become like—like Christ.”

  “Or Leonardo?” mused Cortlandt.

  “Well, doctor?” Robin asked Fels.

  “Don’t ask me,” said the psychiatrist testily. “You’re out of my field with a thing like this. This is pure fantasy.”

  Robin grinned broadly. “Is it, now?”

  “It is,” said Fels, and rose. “If you’ll excuse me, it’s getting late, and I have a heavy day tomorrow. Coming, Pellegrini?”

  The young doctor half-rose, sat down, blushed, and said, “If you don’t mind, Fels, I’d just as soon—I mean, I’d kind of like to see where this is leading.”

  “Into pure fantasy,” reiterated Dr. Fels positively. “Come on.”

  “Dr. Fels makes a good point,” said Robin to Pellegrini, not unkindly. “You’d better take his advice.”

  Bewildered, not knowing whether he had been asked to leave, torn between his obvious respect for Fels and his desire to pursue the subject, Pellegrini got up and left the table. As he turned away, the elder doctor said to Robin, “You, sir, show an astonishing degree of insight. You should have been a psychologist.”

  Robin waved his hand. “I knew you’d understand me, doctor. Good night.”

  They all murmured their good-nights. When the psychiatrists were out of earshot, Cortlandt turned to Robin, “Hey,” he said, frowning. “Something happened here that I missed. What was it?”

  “Yes,” said Miss McCarthy. “What did he mean by that remark about your insight?”

  Robin laughed richly. “Dr. Fels was guarding the young Dr. Pellegrini against evil influences,” he said through his laughter, “and I caught him at it.”

  “Evil—what are you talking about?” asked Binnie Morrow.

  Robin said patiently, “Do you remember what Fels said a while back—that the business of psychiatry is to mature its patients? He’s right, you know. A psychiatrist regards emotional balance and maturity as almost the same thing. And a patient who has achieved that kind of balance is one whose inner conflicts are under control. These inner conflicts aren’t just born into a person. A clubfoot or a blind eye or a yearning for a womb with a view produce no conflicts except in terms of other people; the thing called society. So—” he spread his heavy hands—“what modern psychiatry strives to do is to mature its patients, not in ontogenetic terms, not on an individualized psychosomatic basis, but purely and necessarily in terms of society, which is in itself illogical, unfunctional, and immature.”

  “That makes sense,” said Cortlandt. “Society as a whole gets away with things which are prohibited in any well-run kindergarten, in the violence, greed, injustice, and stupidity departments. We have to wear clothes when the weather’s too hot for it; we have to wear the wrong kind of clothes when the weather’s too cold. We can be excused of any crime if we do it on a large enough scale. We—but why go on? What was Fels protecting Pellegrini from?”

  “Any further consideration of maturity in terms of the individual, completely disregarding society. When we started considering the end-product, the extrapolated curve on the graph, we were considering an end which negates everything that modern psychiatry is and is trying to do. So Fels called it fantasy and cleared out.”

  “You mean he didn’t want Pellegrini’s fresh young convictions in the worth of psychiatry upset,” said Miss McCarthy sardonically.

  “But—” Binnie Morrow’s voice was anxious—“you mean that psychiatry and analysis are worthless?”

  “No!” Robin exploded. “I didn’t say that! The psychos are doing a noble job, considering what they’re up against. The fact remains that their chief occupation is in fitting individuals to a smooth survival in a monstrous environment. Fels realizes that very clearly. I don’t think Pellegrini does, yet. He will when he’s been practicing for as long as Fels. But Fels is right; when a youngster has gone as far as an internship there’s no point in shaking him to his roots. Not until he has been practicing long enough to learn the objectivity of competence.”

  Cortlandt whistled. “I see what Fels meant by your insight.”

  “Cut it out,” smiled Robin. “Let’s get back to maturity, just to sum up. Then I have a date with one Morpheus.… Binnie, you said that there’s more to a man than his physiology. What’s your idea on what a fully developed, truly mature man would be?”

  “What I said before,” murmured the girl. “Like Christ. Someone who would understand everything, and do what he could for people.”

  “Cortlandt?”

  The salesman shifted his feet. “I don’t know. Maybe Binnie’s right. Maybe it would be like the grim gorilla, too.” He wet his lips. “
Maybe both. An extension of the basic urges—hunger and sex and self-preservation, but carried so far that in self-preservation he might try to save humanity purely to keep it from killing him off when everything went to blazes.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Robin. “Miss McCarthy?”

  “I think,” she said slowly, “that he would be something quite beyond our understanding. I think that physically he would be superb—not muscle-bound, no; but balanced and almost impervious to diseases, with the kind of reflexes which would make him almost invulnerable to any physical accident. But the big difference would be in the mind, and I can’t describe that. He couldn’t describe it himself. If he tried, he would be like a teacher—a really good teacher—trying to teach algebra to a class of well-trained, unusually intelligent—chimpanzees.”

  “Superman!” said Robin. “Miss Effingwell?”

  He looked directly at Peg, who, just in time, checked herself from looking behind her to see whom he was talking to. “M-me?” she squeaked stupidly. “I really don’t know, Ro—uh, Freddy. I think Miss McCarthy has the right idea. What do you think?”

  Laughing, Robin rose and tossed a bill on the table. “It would be a man with such profound understanding that he could define maturity in a sentence. A simple sentence. He wouldn’t be asking other people what they thought. Good night, chillun. Going my way, Miss Effingwell?”

  Peg nodded mutely.

  “We wus robbed!” Cortlandt called after them. “You have an answer tucked away in your insight, Freddy!”

  “Sure I have,” winked Robin, “and I’m taking it outsight with me!”

  Followed by reverent groans, Robin and Peg departed.

  Out on the street, Robin squeezed her upper arm and said, “Hello, Peg.…” When he spoke quietly, his voice was almost the same as the one she remembered.

  She said, “Oh, Robin—”

  “How long have you been looking for me?”

  “Three months. Ever since you—”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I wanted to know how you were. I wanted to know what was happening to you. Your glands—”

  “I can assume your clinical interest. That’s not what I meant by why. So—why?”