The Thinktank That Leaked

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  At the top of Exhibition Road we turned right at the park toward The Royal Academy of Art, then up the steps of a creaky-looking piece of architecture which didn’t match anything else. Vaguely Edwardian by intention, the architecture did not fulfil the specification. It appeared to date from the days when people built railway stations more in keeping with high top hats than with the trains whose racks would judder them along rusting, rickety track.

  Inside, a great grand staircase — evidently a structure that had once been wrapped around the ballroom — led us past a number of double doors whose panelling had been daubed with so many coats of paint through the years that the beading seemed to be encrusted in congealed white sauce. It hardly conveyed the impression of the high technology that Spender had been gabbling on about on the way. But up another flight we duly arrived at the poky little entrance to Spender’s domain; a narrow, green baize door hewn out of a Nash-like, stucco wall. Spender got out some keys and — absurdly — reminded me of Alice about to enter the magic garden.

  Garden it was not. The place was an odd combination of a consulting room and a laboratory; and when I saw the nature of most of the equipment I asked him why on earth he needed me. Clearly, he had his own tame computer expert already.

  In reply he said, “Pottersman has been taken sick. I’m going to have to get someone else.”

  “Not me, though.”

  “I realized that. I’d still value your opinion, if you’ve got a few minutes.”

  “What,” I asked, “is wrong with Pottersman?”

  Spender started flicking on some switches, and stood there blinking as various indicator lights came on. “Pottersman was a patient of mine before he took the job. I knew he was very talented and I needed some scientific help. He’d failed his degree and took an overdose before he finally came to me for treatment.”

  A definite statement: ‘He came to me for treatment’. From anyone else that would have sounded conclusive and final. From Spender it seemed diffident, as if he were speaking in self-defence. I didn’t understand this so I asked him, “Was he referred by his GP, or what?”

  “No. Naturally the students have ready access to me because of my own studies here at the university.”

  “So he sought you out?”

  “I could see he was in trouble.”

  “Is that quite the same thing?”

  Spender said irritably, “May I resume? … It so happens I knew Pottersman quite well enough to see he needed help. He thought he was useless. In this work I very quickly made him realise that he was not. There was a post vacant and with a bit of manipulation with the faculty I got him a job in here, and arranged for it to count towards his M.Sc.”

  “Then what?” — Had Spender reaped the predictable harvest of obsessive people-loving?

  “It worked for a while. Over a year, in fact. Unfortunately you can’t cure depressive illnesses either with basket-weaving or applied Cybernetics. If the disease is endogenous the still waters tend to go deep. At present I’m treating him as an inpatient at University College Hospital.”

  I asked, “Are the symptoms the same as before?”

  Spender blinked at me and said, “Depressive illnesses manifest themselves over a very wide spectrum of the personality. We’re not exactly discussing Whooping Cough.”

  “Quite. So what have we here?”

  His expression at that instant really did disturb me. And in a low, almost sepulchral voice, he said, “It’s a Thought Sink.”

  There was a long silence. I remember staring around that claustrophobic little den at all the electronic gear he’d got around him and in particular I remember asking myself if the man was really sane.

  I knew how he’d concocted the name. In solid state technology — that is, electronics involving transistors and integrated circuitry — it is common practice to drain away unwanted heat by means of relatively large slabs of metal, often with cooling fins. These are manufactured as part of the power transistors themselves and are known as ‘Heat Sinks’.

  After what he’d told me previously, it wasn’t hard to guess at the general meaning of a Thought Sink.

  And I didn’t like it.

  Staring at him, I indicated that I wanted to hear all about it in his own words.

  He seemed to come out of a sort of self-imposed trance, and adopted a more normal tone of voice … almost enthusiastic now, as if he’d cleared some kind of an obstacle within himself. “The basic idea,” he said, “is simple. When you provide a path — in this case an electronic path — for unwanted emotions to go, you must of course arrive at the ‘re-mix’ — remember your own words? — of a personality which the patient can employ so that he might live a normal and untroubled life.” He crossed to the other side of the room. “This mini-computer you see here is in fact hooked up to a very large computer network. The central Master-Computer is actually at Manchester; and this installation — among others — is a Slave. With the help of some of your colleagues we developed a program which, in effect, collects a patient’s symptoms, analyses them, sorts them out and comes back — after a series of sessions in here with the patient — with a reprocessed personality. I then have the task of dovetailing this reconstituted personality within the patient’s mind.”

  I said thoughtfully, “Somewhere for the fear or hate and despair to go … What happens if it doesn’t come back? — I mean, when the software has sorted it all out?”

  Spender seemed irritated by the question. “Naturally it’s all retrievable.”

  “Did it come back for Pottersman?”

  “Yes. But his condition was such that I couldn’t apply it. At least, I haven’t been able to yet.”

  “How do you collect the data?”

  “Principally on this crystal mosaic.” He showed me a device that looked like an animated Ouija board, with improvements. “But there are several backup methods of inputting the data. Sometimes I key it in, when I’m sure my diagnosis is right.” He brandished a limp arm toward a teletype machine. “The crystals confirm it or refute it.”

  “How?”

  “They glow.”

  “Gosh.”

  “You can make fun of me if you wish … The program is also capable of marrying aberrations in the EEG — the brain rhythms — with pre-programmed macros and any other information provided.”

  “That must be quite some program.”

  “It does work though.” He produced a benign smile. “I’d like you to talk with one of my patients.”

  “Which one? The chap who became your helper?”

  He shook his head. “You can do nothing for Pottersman. He’s a defeatist of a kind I know only too well — old before his time.”

  “You dismiss all your patients with such a sense of gloom? Surely, that makes you something of a defeatist yourself.”

  “You’d see what I mean if you met them both.”

  “Why should I see either?”

  “You might find it stimulating.” Again, the arch attitude of before. I was perplexed. I also felt that for all its complexity, on the showing so far Spender didn’t seem to be meeting with too much success with his new methods. One case had become his helper, only to become incarcerated as a psychiatric inpatient. The other — the one I was to see — was, judging from Spender’s tone, not exactly responding to treatment. I wanted to know more but I certainly didn’t want to get involved. “Who is this other patient?”

  “A fellow called Mike Crabtree.”

  I knew him. It seemed odd, somehow, that Spender had nabbed me when it now turned out that his recalcitrant patient Crabtree was a member of a flying club of which I was a member. And I said so.

  “No mystery there,” said Spender, mysteriously. “At one time I was myself psychiatric adviser to a major airline.”

  “Which one?”

  “London International Airlines. Obviously I got to know about the flying community. I had heard of you in that connection —”

  “ — I just fly for fun.”
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br />   He ignored this. “ — from Mike Crabtree himself. It seems he envies your relaxed approach to flying.”

  “If he thinks I’m relaxed in an aeroplane he’s out of his mind. My patent way of staying alive is to be alert the whole time. Also, I’m far from being an expert. So what’s he on about?”

  Spender didn’t actually shrug. Physically he didn’t look capable of moving his shoulders that way. He had a poorly-kept body which was a bit of a shrug in itself. In reply he said, “Some form of hero-worship, perhaps. They seek father figures.”

  “That’s hardly in my line.”

  “Mike Crabtree is not a homosexual.”

  “What difference would it make if he were?” He was making me increasingly irritable. “I judge people other than by guessing what they do for amusement behind locked doors. He needs a flying instructor.”

  “But I would value your opinion.”

  “On him? — or his flying? Look, as I said, I fly for kicks, not psychiatric research. Just what are you trying to prove to me that you can’t prove to yourself? If he’s okay, he’s okay. If not, surely you need a second opinion from another specialist.”

  “Mr. Kepter, you are — as well as being a fun-pilot — very much a specialist.”

  “But not the right kind. Am I supposed to judge his condition from the way he handles an aeroplane or programs a computer? — You must see how absurd that sounds to me.”

  “I honestly do not see why you’re reacting so aggressively.”

  “Because I don’t like prying — especially when not qualified to do so. Let’s hope he dials the Samaritans pronto if he suffers a relapse and doesn’t particularly want a second go of your computer treatment.”

  I’d socked Spender on the jaw without meaning to. The truth was that his suggestion seemed to me totally absurd, if not dangerous. I hadn’t meant to respond with such vehemence.

  Spender leaned against one of his great boxes of tricks. He was trying to look relaxed (the way he thought I looked when I was flying?) but actually he seemed almost winded. He managed to keep his feelings out of his voice, though. “All right. You’ve guessed it. He copped out.”

  “Before his treatment was completed?”

  Spender said, “Well, it would be a pity if he had some kind of relapse midair.”

  I said curtly, “You have a perfect right to step in immediately and put in a report stating that he is psychiatrically flawed and unfit to fly. His licence would then be withdrawn until it became totally safe — for him and other people — for him to undergo fresh dual-control checks prior to resuming solo flight.”

  “And suppose,” said Spender, “he interpreted that as moral blackmail to get him back to my consulting room?”

  “That’s a lot better than discovering him inextricably embedded in the red hot engine of a crashed aircraft.”

  “Everyone’s a risk, Kepter. Even you.”

  “Point taken. But one doesn’t have to narrow the odds. I passed my medical; and to the best of my knowledge and belief I do not suffer — nor have I ever suffered — from a crippling neurosis that would enable you or any other psychiatrist to put in the kind of report which you are duty bound to file on this fellow Mike Crabtree. Or is it your pride that’s stopping you?”

  He said, “I really didn’t think you’d react so violently, I must say, or I would never have suggested it.”

  “Elstree,” I said, “is quite a busy aerodrome. There are a lot of people doing circuits in light aircraft that crumple remarkably easily should they collide. If your Mr. Crabtree forgets himself and wanders all over the sky into controlled airspace he could blunder, dazed, straight into the path of an airliner with anything up to four hundred-odd passengers aboard. That would be rather expensive in terms of human life. You must know that, as adviser to LIA. You have doubts about Crabtree or you wouldn’t want me to keep a parental eye on him. I don’t know on what those doubts are based; but you’re now putting me in the impossible position of having to consider seriously the possibility of discussing this with the Chief Instructor at the Flying School.”

  This time he did get angry. The voice still calm but little red patches appeared on his curiously boneless-looking face. “You can’t possibly do that. You would be acting on medical information which is private between the patient and me.”

  “The patient and you and a computer network.”

  “It’s protected data.”

  “Fine, let’s forget the computer. You have now leaked privileged information to me about a patient of your own.”

  “You’re being smug, Kepter.”

  “It’s so much better than being wise after the event. I’d feel a little inadequate if, during an accident enquiry, I had to admit I knew he should never have been up there.”

  “I think you are greatly exaggerating the whole business.”

  “Then why are you anxious about it?”

  “I’m anxious about all my patients — even if and when I have been able to deal effectively with their symptoms.”

  “But in this case you are by no means satisfied that you have effectively dealt with the symptoms. The patient got away.”

  Spender changed his tune. “Do you mind if I ask you something quite different?”

  “Go ahead … if you think I can make any sense of it.”

  Spender almost managed to look straight at me, but not quite. That is to say, the eyes were directed at me, but the face was oblique. “What is your definition of a psychiatric case?”

  “Someone who seeks psychiatric treatment.”

  “Then you would accept that there may be people flying who have not sought psychiatric treatment but do in fact need it?”

  I wasn’t going to fall into this trap. “When it comes down to people’s performance at the controls of an aircraft, Dr. Spender, it is up to the flying instructor to decide whether or not a pupil is fit to fly. If, on the other hand, you as a doctor have information which bears on a pupil’s state of mind, it is the equivalent of an airline’s doctor having medical information on a line pilot. In that position you yourself would be conducting regular medicals and would be forced to put in a report to the Training Captain. The fitness of the pilot concerned would then have to be mutually discussed on the basis of your report and some very searching training flights during which the pilot’s conduct would be closely observed. What you’re doing is hiding in this place and asking me to prevent a possible accident by remote control …”

  Although the meeting ended on that particular unsavoury note, I hadn’t even mentioned the issue that was really bothering me and I was very careful not to do so.

  It was this: If — as was evidently the case — Spender was using a computer network as an aid to psychiatry, did I have the ethical right to illegally access the information it contained in the interests of the safety both of the pupil concerned and of other people who might be his victim in the sky?

  I couldn’t recall a precedent for this. For whereas I’ve always had an absolute horror of private information leaking in this way, equally I had never been the confidante of a practising psychiatrist who had, through his own indiscretion, handed me not only the opportunity but very possibly the obligation to satisfy myself that I was justified in remaining silent and keeping my fingers out of the data processing pie.

  *

  At the time I thought that was all there was to it: an unpleasant ethical problem to solve and, if necessary, act upon. To comment that this was merely the tip of the iceberg would be putting things mildly.

  I walked home, trying to think it out. It’s quite a long way from Exhibition Road to Sloane Street and it was not until the early hours of the morning that I got to my flat there.

  To my surprise, my ex-wife was waiting for my return in the living room. We were on reasonably friendly terms, but she shouldn’t really have used her old key — if only for reasons of discretion — and I said so.

  “I know,” said Paula. “But I felt bored and —”

 
“— Even boredom doesn’t entitle you to bust into my place.”

  “As usual, you won’t let me finish. I thought you might buy me a drink and they told me at the College that you were at one of those Common Room Orgies we both know and love.” — Paula had taken her degree there and we’d divorced exactly halfway through her course. “I phoned the Common Room and someone said you’d left, as in the case of Cinderella, at precisely midnight. Though I’d be the first to concede that that is the only thing you have in common with Cinderella — as a good many Cinderellas at the College would readily testify — you were seen to leave with a man called Dr. Spender.”

  “And?”

  “Dr. Spender,” said Paula expressionlessly, “as you may have discovered by now, has a passion for convincing other people that he knows what he’s doing, since he’s evidently been quite unable to convince himself on that very point.”

  “Paula. I’m tired. Don’t be maddening, come to the point.”

  “When you and I were on far less affable — if somewhat more intimate — terms, Roger, I took my mind off the vitriol by passing the time of day — not the night, in case you’re wondering about a sort of retroactive cross-litigation — the time of day with this Dr. Spender, and eventually found myself in that peculiar sanctuary of his at that gutted Nash building you’ve obviously just come from. By the way, you’re soaked to the skin. Did you know? Can’t you stop dripping?”

  “Not at the moment. I’m waiting to have a bath.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “You.”

  “I’m not stopping you, Roger.”

  “You must be bored, then.”

  “Right, we’ve settled that point. I am. Eventually, Dr. Spender hooked me up, just for kicks, to his Muppet Scientific Contrivance or Device —”