Beyond Bedlam

BEYOND BEDLAM

by Wyman Gain

THE OPENING afternoon class for Mary Walden's ego-shift

was almost over, and Mary was practically certain the teacher

would not call on her to recite her assignment, when Carl

Blair got it into his mind to try to pass her a dirty note.

Mary knew it would be a screamingly funny Ego-Shifting

Room limerick and was about to reach for the note when

Mrs. Harris's voice crackled through the room.

"Carl Blair! I believe you have an important message.

Surely you will want the whole class to hear it. Come forward,

please."

As he made his way before the class, the boy's blush-cov-

ered freckles reappeared against his growing pallor. Halting-

ly and in an agonized monotone, he recited from the note:

"There was a young hyper named Phil,

Who kept a third head for a thrill.

Said he. It's all right,

I enjoy my plight.

I shift my third out when it's chill."'

The class didn't dare laugh. Their eyes burned down at

their laps in shame. Mary managed to throw Carl Blair a

compassionate glance as he returned to his seat, but she in-

stantly regretted ever having been kind to him.

"Mary Walden, you seemed uncommonly interested in read-

ing something just now. Perhaps you wouldn't mind reading

your assignment to the class"

There it was, and just when the class was almost over.

Mary could have scratched Carl Blair. She clutched her paper

grimly and strode to the front.

"Today's assignment in Pharmacy History is, 'Schizophrenia

since the Ancient Pre-pharmacy days.' " Mary took enough

breath to get into the first paragraph.

"Schizophrenia is where two or more personalities live m

the same brain. The ancients of the 20th Century actually

looked upon schizophrenia as a disease! Everyone felt it was

very shameful to have a schizophrenic person in the family,

and, since children lived right with the same parents who had

borne them, it was very bad. If you were a schizophrenic

child in the 20th Century, you would be locked up behind

bars and people would call you"

Mary blushed and stumbled over the daring word"crazy".

"The ancients locked up strong ego groups right along with

weak ones. Today we would lock up those ancient people."

The class agreed silently.

"But there were more and more schizophrenics to lock up.

By 1950 the prisons and hospitals were so full of schizophren-

ic people that the ancients did not have room left to lock

up any more. They were beginning to see that soon everyone

would be schizophrenic.

"Of course, in the 20th Century, the schizophrenic people

were almost as helpless and 'crazy' as the ancient Modern

men. Naturally they did not fight wars and lead the silly life

of the Moderns, but without proper drugs they couldn't con-

trol their Ego-shiftability. The personalities in a brain would

always be fighting each other. One personality would cut the

body or hurt it or make it filthy, so that when the other

personality took over the body, it would have to suffer. No,

the schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were almost

as 'crazy' as the ancient Moderns.

"But then the drugs were invented one by one and the

schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were freed of their

troubles. With the drugs the personalities of each body were

able to live side by side in harmony at last. It turned out that

many schizophrenic people, called overendow6d personalities,

simply had so many talents and viewpoints that it took two

or more personalities to handle everything.

"The drugs worked so well that the ancients had to let

millions of schizophrenic people out from behind the bars of

'crazy' houses. That was the Great Emancipation of the

1990s. From then on, schizophrenic people had trouble only

when they criminally didn't take their drugs. Usually, there

are two egos in a schizophrenic personthe hyperalter, or

prime ego, and the hypoalter, the alternate ego. There often

were more than two, but the Medicorps makes us take our

drugs so that won't happen to us.

"At last someone realized that if everyone took the new

drugs, the great wars would stop. At the World Congress of

1997, laws were passed to make everyone take the drugs.

There were many fights over this because some people want-

ed to stay Modern and fight wars. The Medicorps was or-

ganized and told to kill anyone who wouldn't take their

drugs as prescribed. Now the laws are enforced and every-

body takes the drugs and the hyperalter and hypoalter are

each allowed to have the body for an ego-shift of five

days...."

Mary Walden faltered. She looked up at the faces of her

classmates, started to turn to Mrs. Harris and felt the sickness

growing in her head. Six great waves of crescendo silence

washed through her. The silence swept away everything but

the terror, which stood in her frail body like a shrieking rock.

Mary heard Mrs. Harris hurry to the shining dispensary

along one wall of the classroom and return to stand before

her with a swab of antiseptic and a disposable syringe.

Mrs. Harris helped her to a chair. A few minutes after the

expert injection, Mary's mind struggled back from its core of

silence.

"Mary, dear, I'm sorry. I haven't been watching you closely

enough."

"Oh, Mrs. Harris..." Mary's chin trembled. "I hope it

never happens again."

"Now, child, we all have to go through these things when

we're young. You're just a little slower than the others in

acclimatizing to the drugs. You'll be fourteen soon and the

medicop assures me you'll be over this sort of thing just as

the others are."

Mrs. Harris dismissed the class and when they had all

filed from the room, she turned to Mary.

"I think, dear, we should visit the clinic together, don't

you?"

"Yps, Mrs. Harris." Mary was not frightened now. She was

just ashamed to be such a difficult child and so slow to ac-

climatize to the drugs.

As she and the teacher walked down the long corridor to

the clinic, Mary made up her mind to tell the medicop what

she thought was wrong. It was not herself. It was her hypoal-

ter, that nasty little Susan Shorrs. Sometimes, when Susan had

the body, the things Susan was doing and thinking came to

Mary like what the ancients had called dreams, and Mary

had never liked this secondary ego whom she could never

really know. Whatever was wrong, it was Susan's doing. The

filthy creature never took care of her hair, it was always so

messy when Susan shifted the body to her.

Mrs. Harris waited while Mary went into the clinic.

Mary was glad to find Captain Thiel, the nice medicop, on

duty. But she was silent while the X-rays were being taken,

and, of course, while he got the blood samples, she concen-

trated on being brave.

Later, while Captain Thiel looked in her eyes with the bright

little light, Mary said calmly, "Do you know my hypoalter,

Susan Shorrs?"

The medicop drew back and made some notes on a pad

before answering. "Why, yes. She's in here quite often too."

"Does she look like me?"

"Not much. She's a very nice little girl..." He hesitated,

visibly fumbling.

Mary blurted, "Tell me truly, what's she like?"

Captain Thiel gave her his nice smile. "Well, I'll tell you a

secret if you keep it to yourself."

"Oh, I promise."

He leaned over and whispered in her ear and she liked

the clean odour of him. "She's not nearly as pretty as you

are."

Mary wanted very badly to put her arms around him and

hug him. Instead, wondering if Mrs. Harris, waiting outside,

had heard, she drew back self-consciously and said, "Susan

is the cause of all this trouble, the nasty little thing."

"Oh now!" the medicop exclaimed. "I don't think so,

Mary. She's in trouble, too, you know."

"She still eats sauerkraut." Mary was defiant.

"But what's wrong with that?"

"You told her not to last year because it makes me sick on

my shift. But it agrees in buckets with a little pig like her."

The medicop took this seriously. He made a note on the

pad. "Mary, you should have complained sooner."

"Do you think my father might not like me because Susan

Shorrs is my hypoalter?" she asked abruptly.

"I hardly think so, Mary. After all, he doesn't even know

her. He's never on her ego-shift."

"A little bit," Mary said, and was immediately frightened.

Captain Thiel glanced at her sharply. "What do you mean

by that, child?"

"Oh, nothing," Mary said hastily. "I just thought maybe

he was."

"Let me see your pharmacase," he said rather severely.

Mary slipped the pharmacase off the belt at her waist and

handed it to him. Captain Thiel extracted the prescription

card from the back and threw it away. He slipped a new

card in the taping machine on his desk and punched out a

new prescription, which he reinserted in the pharmacase. In

the space on the front, he wrote directions for Mary to take

the drugs numbered from left to right.

Mary watched his serious face and remembered that he

had complimented her about being prettier than Susan. "Cap-

tain Thiel, is your hypoalter as handsome as you are?"

The young medicop emptied the remains of the old pre-

scription from the pharmacase and took it to the dispensary

in the corner, where he slid it into the filling slot. He

seemed unmoved by her question and simply muttered,

"Much handsomer."

The machine automatically filled the case from the punched

card on its back and he returned it to Mary. "Are you taking

your drugs exactly as prescribed? You know there are very

strict laws about that, and as soon as you are fourteen,

you will be held to them."

Mary nodded solemnly. Great strait-jackets, who didn't

know there were laws about taking your drugs?

There was a long pause and Mary knew she was sup-

posed to leave. She wanted, though, to stay with Captain Thiel

and talk with him. She wondered how it would be if he were

appointed her father.

Mary was not hurt that her shy compliment to him had

gone unnoticed. She had only wanted something to talk about.

Finally she said desperately, "Captain Thiel, how is it pos-

sible for a body to change as much from one ego-shift to an-

other as it does between Susan and me?"

"There isn't all the change you imagine," he said. "Have

you had your first physiology?"

"Yes. I was very good..." Mary saw from his smile that

her inadvertent little conceit had trapped her.

"Then, Miss Mary Walden, how do you think it is possi-

ble?"

Why did teachers and medicops have to be this way?

When all you wanted was to have them talk to you, they

turned everything around and made you think.

She quoted unhappily from her schoolbook, "The main

things in an ego-shift are the two vegetative nervous systems

that translate the conditions of either personality to the blood

and other organs right from the brain. The vegetative nervous

systems change the rate at which the liver burns or stores

sugar and the rate at which the kidneys excrete..."

Through the closed door to the other room, Mrs. Harris's

voice raised at the visiophone said distinctly, "But, Mr.

Walden..:'

"Reabsorb," corrected Captain Thiel.

"What?" She didn't know what to listen tothe medicop

or the distant voice of Mrs. Harris.

"It's better to think of the kidneys as reabsorbing salts

and nutrients from the filtrated blood."

"Oh."

"But, Mr. Walden, we can overdo a good thing. The proper

amount of neglect is definitely required for full development

Of some personality types and Mary certainly is one of

those...."

"What about the pituitary gland that's attached to the brain

and controls all the other glands during the shift of egos?"

pressed Captain Thiel distractingly.

"But, Mr. Walden, too much neglect at this critical point

may cause another personality to split off and we can't have

that. Adequate personalities are congenital. A new one now

would only rob the present personalities. You are the ap-

pointed parent of this child and the Board of Education will

enforce your compliance with our diagnosis. . . ."

Mary's mind leaped to a page in one of her childhood

storybooks. It was an illustration of a little girl resting be-

neath a great tree that overhung a brook. There were friend-

ly little wild animals about. Mary could see the page clearly

and she thought about it very hard instead of crying.

"Aren't you interested any more, Mary?" Captain Thiel

was looking at her strangely.

The agitation in her voice was a surprise. "I have to get

home. I have a lot of things to do."

Outside, when Mrs. Harris seemed suddenly to realize that

something was wrong, and delicately probed to find out

whether her angry voice had been overheard, Mary said calm-

ly and as if it didn't matter, "Was my father home when

you called him before?"

"Whyyes, Mary. But you mustn't pay any attention to

conversations like that, darling."

You can't force him to like me, she thought to herself, and

she was angry with Mrs. Harris because now her father would

only dislike her more.

Neither her father nor her mother was home when Mary

walked into the evening-darkened apartment. It was the first

day of the family shift, and on that day, for many periods

now, they had not been home until late.

Mary walked through the empty rooms, turning on lights.

She passed up the electrically heated dinner her father had

set out for her. Presently she found herself at the storage-

room door. She opened it slowly.

After hesitating a while she went in and began an ex-

hausting search for the old storybook with the picture in it.

Finally she knew she could not find it. She stood in the

middle of the junk-filled room and begqn to cry.

The day which ended for Mary Walden in lonely weeping

should have been, for Conrad Manz, a pleasant rest day with

an hour of rocket racing in the middle of it. Instead, he awak-

ened with a shock to hear his wife actually talking while she

was asleep.

He stood over her bed and made certain that she was

asleep. It was as though her mind thought it was somewhere

else, doing something else. Vaguely he remembered that the

ancients did something called dreaming while they slept and

the thought made him shiver.

Clara Manz was saying, "Oh, Bill, they'll catch us. We

can't pretend any more unless we have drugs. Haven't we

any drugs. Bill?"

Then she was silent and lay still. Her breathing was shal-

low and even in the dawn light her cheeks were deeply

flushed against the blonde hair.

Having just awakened, Conrad was on a very low drug

level and the incident was unpleasantly disturbing. He picked

up his pharmacase from beside his bed and made his way

to the bathroom. He took his hypothalamic block and the

integration enzymes and returned to the bedroom. Clara was

still sleeping.

She had been behaving oddly for some time, but there had

never been anything as disturbing as this. He felt that he

should call a medicop, but, of course, he didn't want to do

anything that extreme. It was probably something with a sim-

ple explanation. Clara was a little scatterbrained at times.

Maybe she had forgotten to take her sleeping compound and

that was what caused dreaming. The very word made his

powerful body chill. But if she was neglecting to take any of

her drugs and he called in a medicop, it would be serious.

Conrad went into the library and found the Family Phar-

macy. He switched on a light in the dawn-shrunken room

and let his heavy frame into a chair. A Guide to Better Un-

derstanding of Your Family Prescriptions. Official Edition,

2831. The book was mostly Medicorps propaganda and al-

most never gave a practical suggestion. If something went

wrong, you called a medicop.

Conrad hunted through the book for the section on sleep-

ing compound. It was funny, too, about that name Bill. Con-

rad went over all the men of their acquaintance with whom

Clara had occasional affairs or with whom she was friendly

and he couldn't remember a single Bill. In fact, the only

man with that name whom he could think of was his own hy-

peralter, Bill Walden. But that was naturally impossible.

Maybe dreaming was always about imaginary people.

SLEEPING COMPOUND: An official mixture of soporific and

hypnotic alkaloids and synthetics. A critical drug; an essen-

tial feature in every prescription. Slight deviations in fol-

lowing prescription are unallowable because of the subtle

manner in which behaviour may be altered over months or

years. The first sleeping compound was announced by

Thomas Marshall in 1986. The formula has been modified

only twice since then.

There followed a tightly packed description of the chemis-

try and pharmacology of the various ingredients. Conrad

skipped through this.

The importance. of Sleeping Compound in the life of

every individual and to society is best appreciated when we

recall Marshall's words announcing its initial development:

"It is during so-called normal sleep that the vicious un-

conscious mind responsible for wars and other symptoms

of unhappiness develops its resources and its hold on our

conscious lives.

"In this normal sleep the critical faculties of the cortex

are paralysed. Meanwhile, the infantile unconscious mind

expands misinterpreted experience into the toxic patterns

of neurosis and psychosis. The conscious mind takes over

at morning, unaware that these infantile motivations have

been cleverly woven into its very structure.

"Sleeping Compound will stop this. There is no uncon-

scious activity after taking this harmless drug. We believe

the Medicorps should at once initiate measures to acclima-

tize every child to its use. In these children, as the

years go by, infantile patterns unable to work during sleep

will fight a losing battle during waking hours with con-

scious patterns accumulating in the direction of adulthood."

That was all there wasmostly the Medicorps patting its

own back for saving humanity. But if you were in trouble

and called a medicop, you'd risk getting into real trouble.

Conrad became aware of Clara standing in the doorway.

The flush of her disturbed emotions and the pallor of her

fatigue mixed in ragged banners on her cheeks.

Conrad waved the Family Pharmacy with a foolish gesture

of embarrassment.

"Young lady, have you been neglecting to take your sleep-

ing compound?"

Clara turned utterly pale. "I1 don't understand."

"You were talking in your sleep."

"Iwas?"

She came forward so unsteadily that he helped her to a

seat. She stared at him. He asked jovially, "Who is this 'Bill'

you were so desperately involved with? Have you been having

an affair I don't know about? Aren't my friends good enough

for you?"

The result of this banter was that she alarmingly began to

cry, clutching her robe about her and dropping her blonde

head on her knees and sobbing.

Children cried before they were acclimatized to the drugs,

but Conrad Manz had never in his life seen an adult cry.

Though he had taken his morning drugs and certain disrupt-

ing emotions were already impossible, nevertheless this sight

was completely unnerving.

In gasps between her sobs, Clara was saying, "Oh, I can't

go back to taking them! But I can't keep this up! I just

can't!"

"Clara, darling, I don't know what to say or do. I think

we ought to call the Medicorps."

Intensely frightened, she rose and clung to him, begging,

"Oh, no, Conrad, that isn't necessary! It isn't necessary at

all. I've only neglected to take my sleeping compound and it

won't happen again. All I need is a sleeping compound.

Please get my pharmacase for me and it will be all right."

She was so desperate to convince him that Conrad got the

pharmacase and a glass of water for her only to appease the

white face of fright.

Within a few minutes of taking the sleeping compound, she

was calm. As he put her back to bed, she laughed with a

lazy indolence.

"Oh, Conrad, you take it so seriously. I only needed a

sleeping compound very badly and now I feel fine. I'll sleep

all day. It's a rest day, isn't it? Now go race a rocket and

stop worrying and thinking about calling the medicops."

But Conrad did not go rocket racing as he had planned.

Clara had been asleep only a few minutes when there was

a call on the visiophone; they wanted him at the office. The

city of Santa Fe would be completely out of balance within

twelve shifts if revised plans were not put into operation im-

mediately. They were to start during the next five days while

he would be out of shift. In order to carry on the first day

of their next shift, he and the other three traffic managers

he worked with would have to come down today and famil-

iarize themselves with the new operations.

There was no getting out of it. His rest day was spoiled.

Conrad resented it all the more because Santa Fe was clear

out on the edge of their traffic district and could have been

revised out of the Mexican offices just as well. But those

boys down there rested all five days of their shift.

Conrad looked in on Clara before he left and found her

asleep in the total suspension of proper drug level. The

unpleasant memory of her behaviour made him squirm, but

now that the episode was over, it no longer worried him.

It was typical of him that, things having been set straight

in the proper manner, he did not think of her again until

late in the afternoon.

As early as 1950, the pioneer communications engineer

Norbert Wiener had pointed out that there might be a close

parallel between disassociation of personalities and the dis-

ruption of a communication system. Wiener referred back

specifically to the first clear description, by Morton Prince,

of multiple personalities existing together in the same human

body. Prince had described only individual cases and his ob-

servations were not altogether acceptable in Wiener's time.

Nevertheless, in the schizophrenic society of the 29th Cen-

tury, a major managerial problem was that of balancing the

communicating and non-communicating populations in a

city.

As far as Conrad and the other traffic men present at the

conference were concerned, Santa Fe was a resort and retire-

ment area of 100,000 human bodies, alive and consuming

more than they produced every day of the year. Whatever

the representatives of the Medicorps and Communications

Board worked out, it would mean only slight changes in the

types of foodstuffs, entertainment and so forth moving into

Santa Fe, and Conrad could have grasped the entire traffic

change in ten minutes after the real problem had been set-

tled. But, as usual, he and the other traffic men had to sit

through two hours while small wheels from the Medicorps

and Communications acted big about rebalancing a city.

For them, Conrad had to admit, Santa Fe was a great deal

more complex than 100,000 consuming, moderately produc-

ing human bodies. It was 200,000 human personalities, two

to each body. Conrad wondered sometimes what they would

have done if the three and four personality cases so common

back in the 20th and 21st Centuries had been allowed to

reproduce. The 200,000 personalities in Santa Fe were diffi-

cult enough.

Like all cities, Santa Fe operated in five shifts. A, B, C,

D, and E.

Just as it was supposed to be for Conrad in his city, today

was rest day for the 20,000 hypoalters on D-shift in Santa

Fe. Tonight at around 6.00 P.M. they would all go to shifting

rooms and be replaced by their hyperalters, who had differ-

ent tastes in food and pleasure and took different drugs.

Tomorrow would be rest day for the hypoalters on E-shift

and in the evening they would turn things over to their hyper-

alters.

The next day it would be rest for the A-shift hyperalters

and three days after that the D-shift hyperalters, including

Bill Walden, would rest till evening, when Conrad and the D-

shift hypoalters everywhere would again have their five-day

use of their bodies.

Right now the trouble with Santa Fe's retired population,

which worked only for its own maintenance, was that too

many elderly people on the D-shift and E-shift had been

dying off. This point was brought out by a dapper young

department head from Communications.

Conrad groaned when, as he knew would happen, a Medi-

corps officer promptly set out on an exhaustive demonstra-

tion that Medicorps predictions of deaths for Santa Fe had

indicated clearly that Communications should have been

moving people from D-shift and E-shift into the area.

Actually, it appeared that someone from Communications

had blundered and had overloaded the quota of people on

A-shift and B-shift moving to Santa Fe. Thus on one rest day

there weren't enough people working to keep things going,

and later in the week there were so many available workers

that they were clogging the city.

None of this was heated exchange or in any way emotional.

It was just interminably, exhaustively logical and boring. Con-

rad fidgeted through two hours of it, seeing his chance for a

rocket race dissolving. When at last the problem of balanced

shift-populations for Santa Fe was worked out, it took him and

the other traffic men only a few minutes to apply their

tables and reschedule traffic to co-ordinate with the popula-

tion changes.

Disgusted, Conrad walked over to the Tennis Club and had

lunch.

There were still two hours of his rest day left when

Conrad Manz realized that Bill Walden was again forcing an

early shift. Conrad was in the middle of a volley-tennis game

and he didn't like having the shift forced so soon. People

generally shifted at their appointed regular hour every five

days, and a hyperalter was not supposed to use his power to

force shift. It was such an unthinkable thing nowadays that

there was occasional talk of abolishing the terms hyperalter

and hypoalter because they were somewhat disparaging to

the hypoalter, and really designated only the antisocial power

of the hyperalter to force the shift.

Bill Walden had been cheating two to four hours on Con-

rad every shift for several periods back. Conrad could have

reported it to the Medicorps, but be himself

constant misdemeanour about which Bill had not yet com-

plained. Unlike the sedentary Walden, Conrad Manz enjoyed

exercise. He overindulged in violent sports and put off sleep,

letting Bill Walden make up the fatigue on his shift. That

was undoubtedly why the poor old sucker had started cheat-

ing a few hours on Conrad's rest day.

Conrad laughed to himself, remembering the time Bill Wal-

den had registered a long list of sports which he wished Con-

rad to be restrained fromrocket racing, deepsea exploration,

jet-skiing. It had only given Conrad some ideas he hadn't

had before. The Medicorps had refused to enforce the list on

the basis that danger and violent exercise were a necessary

outlet for Conrad's constitution. Then poor old Bill had writ-

ten Conrad a note threatening to sue him for any injury

resulting from such sports. As if he had a chance against the

Medicorps ruling!

Conrad knew it was no use trying to finish the volley-tennis

game. He lost interest and couldn't concentrate on what he

was doing when Bill started forcing the shift. Conrad shot the

ball back at his opponent in a blistering curve impossible to

intercept.

"So long," he yelled at the man. "I've got some things to

do before my shift ends."

He lounged into the locker rooms and showered, put his

clothes and belongings, including his pharmacase, in a ship-

ping carton, addressed them to his own home and dropped

them in the mail chute.

He stepped with languid nakedness across, the hall, pressed

his identifying wristband to a lock-free and dialled his cloth-

ing sizes.

In this way he procured a neatly wrapped, clean shifting

costume from the slot. He put it on without bothering to re-

turn to his shower room.

He shouted a loud good-bye to no one in particular among

the several men and women in the baths and stepped out

on to the street.

Conrad felt too good even to be sorry that his shift was

over. After all, nothing happened except you came to, five

days later, on your next shift. The important thing was the

rest day. He had always said the last days of the shift should

be a work day; then you would be glad it was over. He

guessed the idea was to rest the body before another person-

ality took over. Well, poor old Bill Walden never got a rested

body. He probably slept off the first twelve hours.

Walking unhurriedly through the street crowds, Conrad en-

tered a public shifting station and found an empty room. As

he started to open the door, a girl came out of the adjoining

booth and Conrad hastily averted his glance. She was still

rearranging her hair. There were so many rude people nowa-

days who didn't seem to care at all about the etiquette of

shifting, womOn particularly. They were always redoing their

hair or make-up where a person couldn't help seeing them.

Conrad pressed his identifying wristband to the lock and

entered the booth he had picked. The act automatically sent

the time and his shift number to Medicorps Headquarters.

Once inside the shifting room, Conrad went to the lava-

tory and turned on the tap of make-up solvent. In spite of

losing two hours of his rest day, he decided to be decent to

old Bill, though he was half tempted to leave his make-up

on. It was a pretty foul joke, of course, especially on a hu-

mourless fellow like poor Walden.

Conrad creamed his face thoroughly and then washed in

water and used the automatic dryer. He looked at his strong

lined face features in the mirror. They displayed a less dis-

tinct expression of his own personality with the make-up

gone.

He turned away from the mirror and it was only then that

he remembered he hadn't spoken to his wife before shifting.

Well, he couldn't decently call up and let her see him with-

out make-up.

He stepped across to the visiophone and set the machine to

deliver his spoken message in type: "Hello, Clara. Sorry I

forgot to call you before. Bill Walden is forcing me to shift

early again. I hope you're not still upset about that business

this morning. Be a good girl and smile at me on the next

shift. I love you. Conrad."

For a moment, when the shift came, the body of Conrad

Manz stood moronically uninhabited. Then, rapidly, out of

the gyri of its brain, the personality of Bill Walden emerged,

replacing the slackly powerful attitude of Conrad by the

slightly prim preciseness of Bill's bearing.

The face, just now relaxed with readiness for action, was

abruptly pulled into an intellectual mask of tension by habit-

ual patterns of conflict in the muscles. There were also acute

momentary signs of clash between the vegetative nervous ac-

tivity characteristic of Bill Walden and the internal homeostas-

is Conrad Manz had left behind him. The face paled as

hypersensitive vascular beds closed under new vegetative

volleys.

Bill Walden grasped sight and sound, and the sharp odour

of make-up solvent stung his nostrils. He was conscious of

only one clamouring, terrifying thought: They -will catch

us. It cannot go on much longer -without Helen guessing

about Clara. She is already angry about Clara delaying

the shift, and if she learns from Mary that I am cheating

on Conrad's shift . . . Any time now, perhaps this time, when

the shift is over, I will be looking into the face of a medicop

who is pulling a needle from my arm, and then it'll all be

over.

So far, at least, there was no medicop. Still feeling un-

real but anxious not to lose precious moments, Bill took an

individualized kit from the wall dispenser and made himself

up. He was sparing and subtle in his use of the make-up, un-

like the horrible make-up jobs Conrad Manz occasionally left

on. Bill rearranged his hair. Conrad always wore it too short

for his taste, but you couldn't complain about everything.

Bill sat in a chair to await some of the slower aspects of the

shift. He knew that an hour after he left the booth, his basal

metabolic rate would be ten points higher. His blood sugar

would go down steadily. In the next five days he would lose

six to eight pounds, which Conrad would promptly regain.

Just as Bill was about to leave the booth, he remembered

to pick up a news summary. He put his wristband to the

switch on the telephoto and a freshly printed summary of the

last five days in the world fell into the rack. His wristband,

of course, called forth one edited for hyperalters on the D-

shift.

It did not mention by name any hypoalter on the D-shift.

Should one of them have done something that it was necessary

for Bill or other D-shift hyperalters to know about, it would

appear in news summaries called forth by their wristbands

but told in such fashion that the personality involved seemed

namelessly incidental, while names and pictures of hyperalters

and hypoalters on any of the other four shifts naturally were

freely used. The purpose was to keep Conrad Manz and all

the other hypoalters on the D-shift, one tenth of the total

population, non-existent as far as their hyperalters were con-

cerned. This convention made it necessary for photoprint

summaries to be on light-sensitive paper that blackened illegi-

bly before six hours were up, so that a man might never

stumble on news about his hypoalter.

Bill did not even glance at the news summary. He had

picked it up only for appearances. The summaries were es-

sential if you were going to start where you left off on your

last shift and have any knowledge of the five intervening

days. A man just didn't walk out of a shifting room without

one. It was failure to do little things like that that would start

them wondering about him.

Bill opened the door of the booth by applying his wristband

to the lock and stepped out into the street.

Late afternoon crowds pressed about him. Across the boul-

evard, a helicopter landing swarmed with clouds of rising

commuters. Bill had some trouble figuring out the part of the

city Conrad had left him in and walked two blocks before he

understood where he was. Then he got into an idle two-place

cab, started the motor with his wristband and hurried the

little three-wheeler recklessly through the traffic. Clara was

probably already waiting and he first had to go home and

get dressed.

The thought of Clara waiting for him in the park near her

home was a sharp reminder of his strange situation. He was

in a world that was literally not supposed to exist for him,

for it was the world of his own hypoalter, Conrad Manz.

Undoubtedly, there were people in the traffic up ahead

who knew both him and Conrad, people from the other shifts

who never mentioned the one to the other except in those

guarded, snickering little confidences they couldn't resist telling

and you couldn't resist listening to. After all, the most im-

portant person in the world was your alter. If he got sick,

injured or killed, so would you.

Thus, in moments of intimacy or joviality, an undercover

exchange went on. . . . I'll tell you about your hyperalter if

you'll tell me about my hypoalter. It was orthodox bad man-

ners that left you with shame, and a fear that the other fel-

low would tell people you seemed to have a pathological

interest in your alter and must need a change in your prescrip-

tion.

But the most flagrant abuser of such morbid little exchanges

would have been horrified to learn that right here, in the mid-

dle of the daylight traffic, was a man who was using his anti-

social shifting power to meet in secret the wife of his own

hypoalteri

Bill did not have to wonder what the Medicorps would

think. Relations between hyperalters and hypoalters of oppo-

site sex were punishabledrastically punishable.

When he arrived at the apartment. Bill remembered to or-

der a dinner for his daughter Mary. His order, dialled from

the day's menu, was delivered to the apartment pneumat-

ically and he set it out over electric warmers. He wanted to

write a note to the child, but he started two and threw both

in the basket. He couldn't think of anything to say to her.

Staring at the lonely table he was leaving for Mary, Bill

felt his guilt overwhelming him. He could stop the behaviour

which led to the guilt by taking his drugs as prescribed. They

would return him immediately to the sane and ordered con-

formity of the world. He would no longer have to carry the

fear that the Medicorps would discover he was not taking

his drugs. He would no longer neglect his appointed child.

He would no longer endanger the very life of Conrad's wife

Clara and, of course, his own.

When you took your drugs as prescribed, it was impossible

to experience such ancient and primitive emotions as guilt.

Even should you miscalculate and do something wrong, the

drugs would not allow any such emotional reaction. To be

free to experience his guilt over the lonely child who needed

him was, for these reasons, a precious thing to Bill. In all

the world, this night, he was undoubtedly the only man who

could and did feel one of the ancient emotions. People felt

shame, not guilt; conceit, not pride; pleasure, not desire. Now

that he had stopped taking his drugs as prescribed, Bill

realized that the drugs allowed only an impoverished seg-

ment of a vivid emotional spectrum.

But however exciting it was to live them, the ancient

emotions did not seem to act as deterrents to bad behaviour.

Bill's sense of guilt did not keep him from continuing to

neglect Mary. His fear of being caught did not restrain him

from breaking every rule of inter-alter law and loving Clara,

his own hypoalter's wife.

Bill got dressed as rapidly as possible. He tossed the dis-

carded shifting costume into the return chute. He retouched

his make-up, trying to eliminate some of the heavy, inexpres-

sive planes of muscularity which were more typical of Conrad

than of himself.

The act reminded him of the shame which his wife Helen

had felt when she learned, a few years ago, that her own

hypoalter, Clara, and his hypoalter, Conrad, had obtained

from the Medicorps a special release to marry. Such rare

marriages in which the same bodies lived together on both

halves of a shift were something to snicker about. They

verged on the antisocial, but could be arranged if the bat-

teries of Medicorps tests could be satisfied.

Perhaps it had been the very intensity of Helen's shame

on learning of this marriage, the nauseous display of con-

formity so typical of his wife, that had first given Bill the

idea of seeking out Clara, who had dared convention to make

such a peculiar marriage. Over the years, Helen had continued

blaming all their troubles on the fact that both egos of him-

self were living with, and intimate with, both egos of her-

self.

So Bill had started cutting down on his drugs, the curiosity

having become an obsession. What was this other part of

Helen like, this Clara who was unconventional enough to

want to marry only Bill's own hypoalter, in spite of almost

certain public shame?

He had first seen Clara's face when it formed on a visio-

phone, the first time he had forced Conrad to shift prema-

turely. It was softer than Helen's. The delicate contours were

less purposefully set, gayer.

"Clara Manz?" Bill had sat there staring at the visiophone

for several seconds, unable to continue. His great fear that

she would immediately report him must have been naked on

his face.

He had watched an impish suspicion grow in the tender

curve of her lips and her oblique glance from the visiophone.

She did not speak.

"Mrs. Manz," he finally said. "I would like to meet you in

the park across from your home."

To this awkward opening he owed the first time he had

heard Clara laugh. Her warm, clear laughter, teasing him,

tumbled forth like a cloud of gay butterflies.

"Are you afraid to see me here at home because my hus-

band might walk in on us?"

Bill had been put completely at ease by this bantering indi-

cation that Clara knew who he was and welcomed him as an

intriguing diversion. Quite literally, the one person who could

not walk in on them, as the ancients thought of it, was his

own hypoalter, Conrad Manz.

Bill finished retouching his make-up and hurried to leave

the apartment. But this time, as he passed the table where

Mary's dinner was set out, he decided to write a few words

to the child, no matter how empty they sounded to himself.

The note he left explained that he had some early work to do

at the microfilm library where he worked.

Just as Bill was leaving the apartment, the visiophone

buzzed. In his hurry Bill flipped the switch before he thought.

Too late, his band froze and the implications of this call, an

hour before anyone would normally be home, shot a shaft

of terror through him.

But it was not the image of a medicop that formed on

the screen. The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Harris,

one of Mary's teachers.

It was strange that she should have thought he might be

home. The shift for children was half a day earlier than

for adults, so the parents could have half their rest day free.

This afternoon would be for Mary the first classes of her

shift, but the teacher must have guessed something was wrong

with the shifting schedules in Mary's family. Or had the child

told her?

Mrs. Harris explained rather dramatically that Mary was

being neglected. What could he say to her? That he was a

criminal breaking drug regulations in the most flagrant man-

ner? That nothing, not even the child appointed to him,

meant more to him than his wife's own hypoalter? Bill finally

ended the hopeless and possibly dangerous conversation by

turning off the receiver and leaving the apartment.

Bill realized that now, for both him and Clara, the greatest

joy had been those first few times together. The enormous

threat of a Medicorps retaliation took the pleasure from their

contact and they came together desperately because, having

tasted this fantastic nonconformity and the new undrugged

intimacy, there was no other way for them. Even now as. he

drove through the triffic towards where she would be waiting,

he was not so much concerned with meeting Clara in their

fear-poisoned present as with the vivid, aching remembrance

of what those meetings once had really been like.

He recalled an evening they had spent lying on the

summer lawn of the park, looking out at the haze-dimmed

stars. It had been shortly after Clara joined him in cutting

down on the drugs, and the clear memory of their quiet laugh-

ter so captured his mind now that Bill amost tangled his

car in the traffic.

In memory he kissed her again and, as it had been, the

newly cut grass mixed with the exciting fragrance of her

skin. After the kiss they continued a mock discussion of the

ancient word "sin". Bill pretended to be trying to explain

the meaning of the word to her, sometimes with definitions

that kept them laughing and sometimes with demonstrational

kisses that stopped their laughter.

He could remember Clara's face turned to him in the eve-

ning light with an outrageous parody of interest. He could

hear himself saying, "You see, the ancients would say we

are not sinning because they would disagree with the medi-

cops that you and Helen are two completely different peo-

ple, or that Conrad and I are not the same person."

Clara kissed him with an air of tentative experimentation.

"Mmm, no. I can't say I care for that interpretation."

"You'd rather be sinning?"

"Definitely."

"Well, if the ancients did agree with the medicops that we

are distinct from our alters, Helen and Conrad, then they

would say we are sinningbut not for the same reasons the

Medicorps would give."

"That," asserted Clara, "is where I get lost. If this sinning

business is going to be worth anything at all, it has to be

something you can identify."

Bill cut his car out of the main stream of traffic and to-

wards the park, without interrupting his memory.

"Well, darling, I don't want to confuse you, but the medi-

cops would say we are sinning only because you are my wife's

bypoalter, and I am your husband's hyperalterin other words

for the very reason the ancients would say we are not sinning.

Furthermore, if either of us were with anyone else, the medi-

cops would think it was perfectly all right, and so would

Conrad and Helen. Provided, of course, I took a hyperalter

and you took a hypoalter only."

"Of course," Clara said, and Bill hurried over the gloomy

fact.

"The ancients, on the other hand, would say we are sin-

ning because we are making love to someone we are not

married to."

"But what's the matter with that? Everybody does it."

"The ancient Moderns didn't. Or, that is, they often did,

but..."

Clara brought her full lips hungrily to his. "Darling, I think

the ancient Moderns had the right idea, though I don't see

how they ever arrived at it."

Bill grinned. "It was just an invention of theirs, along with

the wheel and atomic energy."

That evening was long gone by as Bill stopped the little

taxi beside the park and left it there for the next user. He

walked across the lawns towards the statue where he and

Clara always met. The very thought of entering one's own

hypoalter's house was so unnerving that Bill brought himself

to do it only by first meeting Clara near the statue. As he

walked between the trees, Bill could not again capture the

spirit of that evening he had been remembering. The Medi-

corps was too close. It was impossible to laugh that away now.

Bill arrived at the statue, but Clara was not there. He

waited impatiently while a livid sunset coagulated between

the branches of the great trees. Clara should have been there

first. It was easier for her, because she was leaving her shift,

and without doing it prematurely.

The park was like a quiet backwater in the eddying rush of

the evening city. Bill felt conspicuous and vulnerable in the

gloaming light. Above all, he felt a new loneliness, and he

knew that now Clara felt it, too. They needed each other as

each had been, before fear had bleached their feeling to

white bones of desperation.

They were not taking their drugs as prescribed, and for that

they would be horribly punished. That was the only unforgiv-

able sin in their world. By committing it, he and Clara had

found out what life could be, in the same act that would sure-

ly take life from them. Their powerful emotions they had

found in abundance simply by refusing to take the drugs, and

by being together briefly each fifth day in a dangerous breach

of all convention. The closer their discovery and the greater

their terror, the more desperately they needed even their

terror, and the more impossible became the delight of their

first meetings.

Telegraphing bright beads of sound, a night bird skimmed

the sunset lawns to the looming statue and skewed around

its monolithic base. The bird's piping doubled and then choked

off as it veered frantically from Bill. After a while, far off

through the park, it released a fading protest of song.

Above Bill, the towering statue of the great Alfred Mor-

ris blackened against the sunset. The hollowed granite eyes

bore down on him out of an undecipherable dark... the

ancient, implacable face of the Medicorps. As if to pro-

nounce a sentence on his present crimes by a magical dis-

closure of the weight of centuries, a pool of sulphurous light

and leaf shadows danced on the painted plaque at the base

of the statue:

On this spot in' the Gregorian year 1996, Alfred Morris

announced to an assembly of war survivors the hypothal-

amic block. His stirring words were, "The new drug se-

lectively halts at the thalamic brain the upward flow of

unconscious stimuli and the downward flow of unconscious

motivations. It acts as a screen between the cerebrum and

the psychosomatic discharge system. Using hypothalamic

block, we will not act emotively, we will initiate acts only

from the logical demands of situations."

This announcement and the subsequent wholehearted ac-

tion of the war-weary people made the taking of hypothal-

amic block obligatory. This put an end to the powerful

play of unconscious mind in the public and private af-

fairs of the ancient world. It ended the great paranoid

wars and saved mankind.

In the strange evening light, the letters seemed alive, a cen-

turies-old condemnation of any who might try to go back to

the ancient pre-pharmacy days. Of course, it was not really

possible to go back. Without drugs, everybody and all society

would fall apart.

The ancients had first learned to keep endocrine deviates

such as the diabetic alive with drugs. Later they learned with

other drugs to "cure" the far more prevalent disease, schizoph-

renia, that was jamming their hospitals. This big change

came when the ancients used these same drugs on everyone to

control the private and public irrationality of their time and

stop the wars.

In this new, drugged world, the schizophrene thrived better

than any, and the world became patterned on him. But, just

as the diabetic was still diabetic, the schizophrene was still

himself, plus the drugs. Meanwhile, everyone had forgotten

what it was the drugs did to youthat the emotions experi-

enced were blurred emotions, that insight was at an isolated

level of rationality because the drugs kept true feelings

from ever emerging.

How inconceivable it would be to Helen and the other

people of this world to live on as little drug as possible . . . to

experience the conflicting emotions, the interplay of passion

and logic that almost tore you apart! Sober, the ancients

called it, and they lived that way most of the time, with

only the occasional crude and club-like effects of alcohol or

narcotics to relieve their chronic anxiety.

By taking as little hypothalamic block as possible, he and

Clara were able to desire their fantastic attachment, to delight

in an absolutely illogical situation unheard of in their society. .

But the society would judge their refusal to take hypothalamic

block in only one sense. The weight of this judgment stood

before him in the smouldering words, "It ended the great

paranoid wars and saved mankind."

When Clara did appear, she was searching myopically in

the wrong vicinity of the statue. He did not call to her at

once, letting the sight of her smooth out the tensions in him,

convert all the conflicts into this one intense longing to be

with her.

Her halting search for him was deeply touching, like that of

a tragic little puppet in a darkening dumbshow. He saw sud-

denly how like puppets the two of them were. They were

moved by the strengthening wires of a new life of feeling to

batter clumsily at an implacable stage setting that would

finally leave them as bits of wood and paper.

Then suddenly in his arms Clara was at the same time

hungrily moving and tense with fear of discovery. Little

sounds of love and fear choked each other in her throat. Her

blonde head pressed tightly into his shoulder and she clung

to him with desperation.

She said, "Conrad was disturbed by my tension this morn-

ing and made me take a sleeping compound. I've just awak-

ened."

They walked to her home in silence and even in the dark-

ened apartment they used only the primitive monosyllables of

apprehensive need. Beyond these mere sounds of compas-

sion, they had long ago said all that could be said.

Because Bill was the hyperalter, he had no fear that Con-

rad could force a shift on him. When later they lay in dark-

ness, he allowed himself to drift into a brief slumber. Without

the sleeping compound, distorted events came and went

without reason. Dreaming, the ancients had called it. It was

one of the most frightening things that bad begun to happen

when he first cut down on the drugs. Now, in the few sec-

onds that he dozed, a thousand fragments of incidental knowl-

edge, historical reading and emotional need melded and, in a

strange contrast to their present tranquillity, he was dream-

ing a frightful moment in the 20th Century. These are the

great paranoid wars, he thought. And it was so because he

had thought it.

He searched frantically through the glove compartment of

an ancient car. "Wait," he pleaded. "I tell you we have sul-

phonamide-14. We've been taking it regularly as directed. We

took a double dose back in Paterson because there were

soft-bombs all through that part of Jersey and we didn't

know what would be declared Plague Area next."

Now Bill threw things out of his satchel on to the floor

and seat of the car, fumbling deeper by the flashlight Clara

held. His heart beat thickly with terror. Then he remem-

bered his pharmacase. Oh, why hadn't they remembered sooner

about their pharmacases. Bill tore at the belt about his waist.

The Medicorps captain stepped back from the door of their

car. He jerked his head at the dark form of the corporal

standing in the roadway. "Shoot them. Run the car off the

embankment before you burn it."

Bill screamed metallically through the speaker of his radia-

tion mask. "Wait. I've found it." He thrust the pharmacase

out the door of the car. "This is a pharmacase," he ex-

plained. "We keep our drugs in one of these and it's belted

to our waist so we are never without them."

The captain of the Medicorps came back. He inspected the

pharmacase and the drugs and returned it. "From now on,

keep your drugs handy. Take them without fail according to

radio instructions. Do you understand?"

Clara's head pressed heavily against Bill's shoulder, and

he could hear the tinny sound of her sobbing through the

speaker of her mask.

The captain stepped into the road again. "Well have to

bum your car. You passed through a Plague Area and it

can't be sterilized on this route. About a mile up this

road you'll come to a sterlization unit. Stop and have your

person and belongings rayed. After that, keep walking, but

stick to the road. You'll be shot if you're caught off it."

The road was crowded with fleeing people. Their way was

lighted by piles of cadavers writhing in gasoline flames. The

Medicorps was everywhere. Those who stumbled, those who

coughed, the delirious and their helping partners . . . these

were taken to the side of the road, shot and burned. And

there was bombing again to the south.

Bill stopped in the middle of the road and looked back.

Clara clung to him.

"There is a plague here we haven't any drug for," he said,

and realized he was crying. "We are all mad."

Clara was crying too. "Darling, what have you done?

Where are the drugs?"

The water of the Hudson hung as it had in the late after-

noon, ice crystals in the stratosphere. The high, high sheet

flashed and glowed in the new bombing to the south, where

multicoloured pillars of flame boiled into the sky. But the muf-

fled crash of the distant bombing was suddenly the steady

click of the urgent signal on a bedside visiophone, and Bill

was abruptly awake.

Clara was throwing on her robe and moving towards the

machine on terror-rigid limbs. With a scrambling motion, Bill

got out of the possible view of the machine and crouched at

the end of the room.

Distinctly, he could hear the machine say, "Clara Manz?"

"Yes," Clara's voice was a thin treble that could have been

a shriek had it continued.

"This is Medicorps Headquarters. A routine check discloses

you have delayed your shift two hours. To maintain the sta-

tistical record of deviations, please give us a full explanation."

"I . . ." Clara had to swallow before she could talk. "I must

have taken too much sleeping compound."

"Mrs. Manz, our records indicate that you have been de-

laying your shift consistently for several periods now. We

" made a check of this as a routine follow up on any such

deviation, but the discovery is quite serious." There was a

harsh silence, a silence that demanded a logical answer. But

how could there be a logical answer.

"My hyperalter hasn't complained and Iwell, I have just

let a bad habit develop. I'll see that itdoesn't happen again."

The machine voiced several platitudes about the respon-

sibilities of one personality to another and the duty of all to

society before Clara was able to shut it off.

Both of them sat as they were for a long, long time while

the tide of terror subsided. When at last they looked at each

other across the dim and silent room, both of them knew

there could be at least one more lime together before

they were caught.

Five days later, on the last day of her shift, Mary Walden

wrote the address of her appointed father's hypoalter, Conrad

Manz, with an indelible pencil on the skin just below her

armpit.

During the morning, her father and mother had spoiled

the family rest day by quarrelling. It was about Helen's hypo-

alter delaying so many shifts. Bill did not think it very

important, but her mother was angry and threatened to com-

plain to the Medicorps.

The lunch was eaten in silence, except that at one point

Bill said, "It seems to me Conrad and Clara Manz are guilty

of a peculiar marriage, not us. Yet they seem perfectly hap-

py with it and you're the one who is made unhappy. The

woman has probably just developed a habit of taking too

much sleeping compound for her rest-day naps. Why don't

you drop her a note?"

Helen made only one remark. It was said through her teeth

and very softly. "Bill, I would just as soon the child did not

realize her relationship to this sordid situation."

Mary cringed over the way Helen disregarded her hearing,

the possibility that she might be capable of understanding, or

her feelings about being shut out of their mutual world.

After lunch Mary cleared the table, throwing the remains

of the meal and the plastiplates into the flash trash disposer.

Her father had retreated to the library room and Helen was

getting ready to attend a Citizens' Meeting. Mary heard her

mother enter the room to say good-bye while she was wiping

the dining table. She knew that Helen was standing well-

dressed and a little impatient, just behind her, but she pre-

tended she did not know.

"Darling, I'm leaving now for the Citizens' Meeting."

"Oh. . . yes."

"Be a good girl and don't be late for your shift. You only

have an hour now." Helen's patrician face smiled.

"I won't be late."

"Don't pay any attention to the things Bill and I discussed

this morning, will you?"

"No."

And she was gone. She did not say good-bye to Bill.

Mary was very conscious of her father in the house. He

continued to sit in the library. She walked by the door and she

could see him sitting in a chair, staring at the floor. Mary

stood in the sun room for a long while. If he had risen from

the chair, if he had rustled a page, if he had sighed, she

would have heard him.

It grew closer and closer to the time she would have to

leave if Susan Shorrs was to catch the first school hours of

her shift. Why did children have to shift half a day before

adults?

Finally, Mary thought of something to say. She could let

him know she was old enough to understand what the quarrel

had been about if only it were explained, to her.

Mary went into the library and hesitantly sat on the edge

of a couch near him. He did not look at her and his face

seemed grey in the midday light. Then she knew that he was

lonely, too. But a great feeling of tenderness for him went

through her.

"Sometimes I think you and Clara Manz must be the only

people in the world," she said abruptly, "who aren't so silly

about shifting right on the dot. Why, I don't care if Susan

Shorrs is an hour late for classes!"

Those first moments when he seized her in his arms, it

seemed her heart would shake loose. It was as though she had

uttered some magic formula, one that had abruptly opened

the doors to his love. It was only after he had explained to

her why he was always late on the first day of the family

shift that she knew something was wrong. He did tell her,

over and over, that he knew she was unhappy and that it was

his fault. But he was at the same time soothing her, petting

her, as if he was afraid of her.

He talked on and on. Gradually, Mary understood in his

trembling body, in his perspiring palms, in his pleading eyes,

that he was afraid of dying, that he was afraid she would

kill him with the merest thing she said, with her very pres-

ence.

This was not painful to Mary, because, suddenly, something

came with ponderous enormity to stand before her: / would

just as soon the child did not realize her relationship to this

sordid situation.

Her relationship. It was some kind of relationship to Conrad

and Clara Manz, because those were the people they had

been talking about.

The moment her father left the apartment, she went to

his desk and took out the file of family records. After she

found the address of Conrad Manz, the idea occurred to her

to write it on her body. Mary was certain that Susan Shorrs

never bathed and she thought this a clever idea. Sometime on

Susan's rest day, five days from now, she would try to force

the shift and go to See Conrad and Clara Manz. Her plan

was simple in execution, but totally vague as to goal.

Mary was already late when she hurried to the children's

section of a public shifting station. A Children's Transfer Bus

was waiting, and Mary registered on it for Susan Shorrs to be

taken to school. After that she found a shifting room and

opened it with her wristband. She changed into a shifting

costume and sent her own clothes and belongings home.

Children her age did not wear make-up, but Mary always

stood at the mirror during the shift. She always tried as hard

as she could to see what Susan Shorrs looked like. She giggled

over a verse that was scrawled beside the mirror...

Rouge your hair and comb your face;

Many a third head is lost in this place.

... and then the shift came, doubly frightening because of

what she knew she was going to do.

Especially if you were a hyperalter like Mary, you were

supposed to have some sense of the passage of time while

you were out of shift. Of course, you did not know what was

going on, but it was as though a more or less accurate

chronometer kept running when you went out of shift. Ap-

parently Mary's was highly inaccurate, because, to her horror,

she found herself sitting bolt upright in one of Mrs. Harris's

classes, not out on the playgrounds, where she had expected

Susan Shorrs to be.

Mary was terrified, and the ugly school dress Susan had

been wearing accented, by its strangeness, the seriousness of

her premature shift. Children weren't supposed to show much

difference from hyperalter to hypoalter, but when she raised

her eyes, her fright grew. Children did change. She hardly rec-

ognized anyone in the room, though most of them must be

the alters of her own classmates. Mrs. Harris was a B-shift and

overlapped both Mary and Susan, but otherwise Mary recog-

nized only Carl Biair's hypoalter because of his freckles.

Mary knew she had to get out of there or Mrs. Harris

would eventually recognize her. If she left the room quietly,

Mrs. Harris would not question her unless she recognized

her. It was no use trying to guess how Susan would walk.

Mary stood and went towards the door, glad that it turned

her back to Mrs. Harris. It seemed to her that she could feel

the teacher's eyes stabbing through her back.

But she walked safely from the room. She dashed down' the

school corridor and out into the street. So great was her fear

of what she was doing that her hypoalter's world actually

seemed like a different one.

It was a long way for Mary to walk across town, and

when she rang the bell, Conrad Manz was already home from

work. He smiled at her and she loved him at once.

"Well, what do you want, young lady?" he asked.

Mary couldn't answer him. She just smiled back.

"What's your name, eh?"

Mary went right on smiling, but suddenly he blurred in front

of her.

"Here, here! There's nothing to cry about. Come on in

and let's see if we can help you. Clara! We have a visitor, a

very sentimental visitor."

Mary let him put his big arm around her shoulder and

draw her, crying, into the apartment. Then she saw Clara

swimming before her, looking like her mother, but. . . no, not

at all like her mother.

"Now, see here, chicken, what is it you've come for?"

Conrad asked when her crying stopped.

Mary had to stare hard at the floor to be able to say it.

"I want to live with you."

Clara was twisting and untwisting a handkerchief. "But,

child, we have already had our first baby appointed to us.

He'll be with us next shift, and after that I have to bear a

baby for someone else to keep. We wouldn't be allowed to

take care of you."

"I thought maybe I was your real child." Mary said it help-

lessly, knowing in advance what the answer would be.

"Darling," Clara soothed, "children don't live with their nat-

ural parents. It's neither practical nor civilized. I have had a

child conceived and born on my shift, and this baby is my

exchange, so you see that you are much too old to be my

conception. Whoever your natural parents may be, it is just

something on record with the Medicorps Genetic Division and

isn't important."

"But you're a special case," Mary pressed. "I thought be-

cause it was a special arrangement that you were my real

pareats." She looked up and she saw that Clara had turned

white.

And now Conrad Manz was agitated, too. "What do you

mean, we're a special case?" He was staring hard at her.

"Because..." And now for the first time Mary realized

how special this case was, how sensitive they would be

about it.

He grasped her by the shoulders and turned her so she

faced his unblinking eyes. "I said, what do you mean, we're

a special case? Clara, what in thirty heads does this kid

mean?"

His grip hurt her and she began to cry again. She broke

away. "You're the hypoalters of my appointed father and

mother. I thought maybe when it was like that, I might be

your real child. . . and you might want me. I don't want to

be where I am. I want somebody. . ."

Clara was calm now, her sudden fear gone. "But, darling,

if you're unhappy where you are, only the Medicorps can re-

appoint you. Besides, maybe your appointed parents are just

having some personal problems right now. Maybe if you tried

to understand them, you would see that they really love

you."

Conrad's face showed that he did not understand. He spoke

with a stiff, quiet voice and without taking his eyes from

Mary. "What are you doing here? My own hyperalter's kid

in my house, throwing it up to me that I'm married to his

wife's hypoalter!"

They did not feel the earth move, as she fearfully did.

They sat there, staring at her, as though they might sit for-

ever while she backed away, out of the apartment, and

ran into her collapsing world.

Conrad Manz's rest day fell the day after Bill Walden's kid

showed up at his apartment. It was ten days since that

strait jacket of a conference on Santa Fe had lost him a chance

to blast off a rocket racer. This time, on the practical knowl-

edge that emergency business conferences were seldom called

after lunch, Conrad had placed his reservation for a racer in

the afternoon. The visit from Mary Walden had upset him

every time he thought of it. Since it was his rest day, he had

no intention of thinking about it and Conrad's scrupulously

drugged mind was capable of just that.

So now, in the lavish coolness of the lounge at the Rocket

Club, Conrad sipped his drink contentedly and made no con-

tribution to the gloomy conversation going on around him.

"Look at it this way," the melancholy face of Alberts, a

pilot from England, morosely emphasized his tone. "It takes

about 10,000 economic units to jack a forty-ton ship up to

satellite level and snap it around the course six times. That's

just practice for us. On the other hand, an intellectual fellow

who spends his spare time at a microfilm library doesn't use

up 1,000 units in a year. In fact, his spare-time activity may

turn up as units gained. The Economic Board doesn't

argue that all pastime should be gainful. They just say rocket

racing wastes more economic units than most pilots make on

their work days. I tell you the day is almost here when

they ban the rockets."

"That's just it," another pilot put in. "There was a time

when you could show that rocket races were necessary for

better spaceship design. Design has gone way beyond that.

From their point of view we just bum up units as fast

as other people create them. And it's no use trying to argue

for the television shows. The Board can prove people would

rather see a jet-skiing meet at a cost of about one-hundredth

that of a rocket race."

Conrad Manz grinned into his drink. He had been aware

for several minutes that pert little Angela, Alberts' soft-eyed,

husky-voiced wife, was trying to catch his eye. But stranded

as she was in the buzzing traffic of rockets, she was trying to

hail the wrong rescuer. He had about fifteen minutes till the

ramp boys would have a ship ready for him. Much as he

liked Angela, he wasn't going to miss that race.

Still, he let his grin broaden and, looking up at her, he

lied maliciously by nodding. She interpreted this signal as he

knew she would. Well, at least he would afford her a grace-

ful exit from the boring conversation.

He got up and went over and took her hand. Her full lips

parted a little and she kissed him on the mouth.

Conrad turned to Alberts and interrupted him. "Angela and

I would like to spend a little time together. Do you mind?"

Alberts was annoyed at having his train of thought broken

and rather snapped out the usual courtesy. "Of course not.

I'm glad for both of you."

Conrad looked the group over with a bland stare. "Have

you lads ever tried jet-skiing? There's more genuine excite-

ment in ten minutes of it than an hour of rocket racing. Per-

sonally, I don't care if the Board does ban the rockets soon.

I'll just hop out to the Rocky Mountains on rest days."

Conrad knew perfectly well that if he had made this asser-

tion before asking Alberts for his wife, the man would have

found some excuse to have her remain. All the faces present

displayed the aficionado's disdain for one who has just dem-

onstrated he doesn't belong. What the strait-jacket did they

think they weresome ancient order of noblemen?

Conrad took Angela's yielding arm and led her serenely

away before Alberts could think of anything to detain her.

On the way out of the lounge, she stroked his arm with

frank admiration. "I'm so glad you were agreeable. Honestly,

Harold could talk rockets till I died."

Conrad bent and kissed her. "Angela, I'm sorry, but this

isn't going to be what you think. I have a ship to take off in

just a few minutes."

She flared and dug into his arm now. "Oh, Conrad

Manz! You . . . you made me believe . . "'

He laughed and grabbed her wrists. "Now, now. I'm neg-

lecting you to fly a rocket, not just to talk about them. I

won't let you die."

At last she could not suppress her husky musical laugh. "I

found that out the last time you and I were together. Clara

and I had a drink the other day at the Citizens' Club. I don't

often use dirty language, but I told Clara she must be keep-

ing you in a strait-jacket at home."

Conrad frowned, wishing she hadn't brought up the sub-

ject. It worried him off and on that something was wrong

with Clara, something even worse than that awful dreaming

business ten days ago. For several shifts now she had been

cold, nor was it just a temporary lack of interest in himself,

for she was also cold to the men of their acquaintance of

whom she was usually quite fond. As for himself, he had had

to depend on casual contacts such as Angela. Not that they

weren't pleasant, but a man and wife were supposed to main-

tain a healthy love life between themselves, and it usually

meant trouble with the Medicorps when this broke down.

Angela glanced at him. "I didn't think Clara laughed well

at my remark. Is something wrong between you?"

"Oh, no," he declared hastily. "Clara is sometimes that

way. . . doesn't catch a joke right off."

A page boy approached them where they stood in the

rotunda and advised Conrad that his ship was ready.

"Honestly, Angela, I'll make it up, I promise."

"I know you will, darling. And at least I'm grateful you

saved me from all those rocket jets in there." Angela raised

her lips for a kiss and afterwards, as she pushed him towards

the door, her slightly vacant face smiled at him.

Out on the ramp, Conrad found another pilot ready to

take off. They made two wagersfirst to reach the racing

course, and winner in a six-lap heat around the six-hundred-

mile hexagonal course.

They fired together and Conrad blasted his ship up on a

thunderous column of flame that squeezed him into his seat.

He was good at this and he knew he would win the lift to

the course. On the course, though, if his opponent was any

good at all, Conrad would probably lose, because he enjoyed

slamming the ship around the course in his wasteful, swash-

buckling style much more than merely winning the heat.

Conrad kept his drive on till the last possible second and

then shot out his nose jets. The ship shuddered up through

another hundred miles and came to a lolling halt near the

starting buoys. The other pilot gasped when Conrad shouted

at him over the intership, "The winner by all thirty heads!"

It was generally assumed that a race up to the course con-

sisted of cutting all jets when you had enough lift, and using

the nose brakes only to correct any overshot. "What did you

do, just keep your power on and flip the ship around?" The

other racer coasted up to Conrad's level and steadied with a

brief forward burst.

They got the automatic signal from the starting buoy and

went for the first turn, nose and nose, about half a mile

apart. Conrad lost 5,000 yards on the first turn by shoving

his power too hard against the starboard steering jets.

It made a pretty picture when a racer hammered its way

around a turn that way with a fan of outside jets holding it in

place. The other fellow made his turns cleanly, using mostly

the driving jets for steering. But that didn't look like much

to those who happened to flip on their television while this

little heat was in progress. On every turn, Conrad lost a little

in space, but not in the eye of the automatic televisor on the

buoy marking the turn. As usual, he cut closer to the buoys

than regulations allowed, to give the folks a show.

Without the slightest regret, Conrad lost the heat by a full

two sides of the hexagon. He congratulated his opponent and

watched the fellow let his ship down carefully towards earth

on its tail jets. For a while Conrad lolled his ship around

near the starting buoy and its probably watching eye, flipping

through a series of complicated manoeuvres with the steering

jets.

Conrad did not like the grim countenance of outer space.

The lifeless, gem-like blaze of cloud upon cloud of stars in

the perspectiveless black repelled him. He liked rocket rac-

ing only because of the neat timing necessary, and possibly

because the knowledge that he indulged in it scared poor old

Bill Walden half to death.

Today the bleak aspect of the Galaxy harried his mind

back upon its own problems. A particularly nasty associa-

tion of Clara with Bill Walden and his snivelling kid kept

dogging Conrad's mind and, as soon as stunting had exhaust-

ed his excess of fuel, he turned the ship to earth and sent it

in with a short, spectacular burst.

Now that he stopped to consider it, Clara's strange be-

haviour had begun at about the same time that Bill Walden

started cheating on the shifts. That kid Mary must have

known something was going on, or she would not have done

such a disgusting thing as to come to their apartment.

Conrad had let the rocket fall nose-down, until now it was

screaming into the upper ionosphere. With no time to spare,

be swivelled the ship on its guiding jets and opened the

drive blast at the uprushing earth. He had just completed

this wrenching manoeuvre when two appalling things happened

together.

Conrad suddenly knew, whether as a momentary leak from

Bill's mind to his, or as a rapid calculation of his own, that

Bill Walden and Clara shared a secret. At the same mo-

ment, something tore through his mind like fingers of chill

wind. With seven gravities mashing him into the bucket-

seat, he grunted curses past thin-stretched lips.

"Great blue psychiatrists! What in thirty strait-jackets is

that three-headed fool trying to do, kill us both?"

Conrad just managed to raise his leaden hand and set the

plummeting racer for automatic pilot before Bill Walden

forced him out of the shift. In his last moment of conscious-

ness, and in the shock of his overwhelming shame, Conrad

felt the bitter irony that he could not cut the power and kill

Bffl Walden.

When Bill Walden became conscious of the thunderous

clamour of the braking ship and the awful weight of deceler-

ation into which he had shifted, the core of him froze. He

was so terrified that he could not have thought of reshifting

even had there been time.

His head rolled on the pad in spite of its weight, and he

saw the earth coming at him like a monstrous swatter aimed

at a fly. Between his fright and the inhuman gravity, he lost

consciousness without ever seeing on the control panel the

red warning that saved him: Automatic Pilot.

The ship settled itself on the ramp in a mushroom of fire.

Bill regained awareness several seconds later. He was too

shaken to do anything but sit there for a long time.

When at last he felt capable of moving, he struggled with

the door till he found how to open it, and climbed down to

the still hot ramp he had landed on. It was at least a mile to

the Rocket Club across the barren flat of the field, and he

set out on foot. Shortly, however, a truck came speeding

across to him.

The driver leaned out. "Hey, Conrad, what's the matter?

Why didn't you pull the ship over to the hangars?"

With Conrad's make-up on. Bill felt he could probably

get by. "Controls aren't working," he offered noncommittally.

At the club, a place he had never been to before in his

life. Bill found an unused helicopter and started it with his

wrist band. He flew the machine into town to the landing

station nearest his home.

He was doomed, he knew. Conrad certainly would report

him for this. He had not intended to force the shift so

early or so violently. Perhaps he had not intended to force

it at all this time. But there was something in him more

powerful than himself... a need to break the shift and be

with Clara that now acted almost independently of him and

certainly without regard for his safety.

Bill flew his craft carefully through the city traffic, working

his way between the widely spaced towers with the uncertain

hand of one to whom machines are not, an extension of the

body. He put the helicopter down at the landing station

with some difficulty.

Clara would not be expecting him so early. From his apart-

ment, as soon as he had changed make-up, he visiophoned

her. It was strange bow long and how carefully they needed to

look at each other and how few words they could say.

Afterwards, he seemed calmer and went about getting

ready with more efficiency. But when he found himself ad-

dressing the package of Conrad's clothes to his home, he

chuckled bitterly.

It was when he went back to drop the package in the mail

chute that he noticed the storage-room door ajar. He disposed

of the package and went over to the door. Then he stood still,

listening. He had to stop. his own breathing to hear clearly.

Bill tightened himself and opened the door. He flipped

on the light and saw Mary. The child sat on the floor in the

comer with her knees drawn up against her chest. Between

the knees and the chest, the frail wrists were crossed, the

hands closed limply likelike those of a foetus. The fore-

head rested on the knees so that, should the closed eyes stay

open, they would be looking at the placid hands.

The sickening sight of the child squeezed down on his

heart till the colour drained from his face. He went forward

and knelt before her. His dry throat hammered with the

words, what have I done to you, but he could not speak.

The question of how long she might have been here, he

could not bear to think.

He put out his hand, but he did not touch her. A shudder

of revulsion shook him and he scrambled to his feet. He hur-

ried back into the apartment with only one thought. He must

get someone to help her. Only the Medicorps could take care

of a situation like this.

As he stood at the visiophone, he knew that this involuntary

act of panic had betrayed all that he had ever thought

and done. He had to call the Medicorps. He could not face

the result of his own behaviour without them. Like a ghostly

after-image, he saw Clara's face on the screen. She was lost,

cut off, with only himself to depend on.

A part of him, a place where there were no voices and a

great tragedy, had been abruptly shut off. He stood stupidly

confused and disturbed about something he couldn't recall.

The emotion in his body suddenly had no referent. He stood

like a badly frightened animal while his heart slowed and

blood seeped again into whitened parenchymas, while tides

of epinephrine burned lower.

Remembering he must hurry, Bill left the apartment. It

was an apartment with its storage-room door closed, an apart-

ment without a storage-room.

From the moment that he walked in and took Clara in his

arms, he was not worried about being caught. He felt only

the great need for her. There seemed only one difference from

the first time and it was a good difference, because now

Clara was so tense and apprehensive. He felt a new tender-

ness for her, as one might feel for a child. It seemed to him

that there was no end to the well of gentleness and compas-

sion that was suddenly in him. He was mystified by the depth

of his feeling. He kissed her again and again and petted her

as one might a disturbed child.

Clara said, "Oh Bill, we're doing wrong! Mary was here

yesterday!"

Whoever she meant, it had no meaning for him. He said,

"It's all right. You mustn't worry."

"She needs you, Bill, and I take you away from her."

Whatever it was she was talking about was utterly unim-

portant beside the fact that she was not happy herself. He

soothed her. "Darling you mustn't worry about it. Let's be

happy the way we used to be."

He led her to a couch and they sat together, her head

resting on his shoulder.

"Conrad is worried about me. He knows something is

wrong. Oh, Bill, if he knew, he'd demand the worst penalty

for you."

Bill felt the stone of fear come back in his chest. He

thought, too, of Helen, of how intense her shame would be.

Medicorps action would be machine-like, logical as a set

of equation; they were very likely to take more drastic steps

where the complaints would be so strong and no request for

leniency forthcoming. Conrad knew now, of course. Bill had

felt his hate.

It was nearing the end. Death would come to Bill with elec-

tronic fingers. A ghostly probing in his mind and suddenly. . .

Clara's great unhappiness and the way she turned her head

into his shoulder to cry forced him to calm the rising

panic in himself, and again to caress the fear from her.

Even later, when they lay where the moonlight thrust into

the room an impalpable shaft of alabaster, he loved her only

as a succour. Carefully, slowly, smoothing out her mind,

drawing it away from all the other things, drawing it down

into this one thing. Gathering all her mind into her senses and

holding it there. Then quickly taking it away from her in a

moaning spasm so that now she was murmuring, murmuring,

palely drifting. Sleeping like a loved child.

For a long, long time he watched the white moon cut

its arc across their window. He listened with a deep pleasure to

her evenly breathing sleep. But slowly he realized that her

breath had changed, that the body so close to his was tens-

ing. His heart gave a great bound and tiny moths of horror

fluttered along his back. He raised himself and saw that

the eyes were open in the silver light. Even through the make-

up he saw that they were Helen's eyes.

H did the only thing left for him. He shifted. But in

that terrible instant he understood something he had not antic-

ipated. In Helen's eyes there was not only intense shame

over shifting into her hypoalter's home; there was not only

the disgust with himself for breaking communication codes.

He saw that, as a woman of the 20th Century might have

felt, Helen hated Clara as a sexual rival. She hated Clara

doubly because he had turned not to some other woman,

but to the other part of herself whom she could never know.

As she shifted, Bill knew that the next light he saw would

be on the adamant face of the Medicorps.

Major Paul Grey, with two other Medicorps officers, en-

tered the Walden apartment about two hours after Bill left it

to meet Clara. Major Grey was angry with himself. Important

information on a case of communication breaks and drug

refusal could be learned by letting it run its course under ob-

servation. But he had not intended Conrad Manz's life to

be endangered, and certainly he would not have taken the

slightest chance on what they found in the Walden apart-

ment if he had expected it this early.

Major Grey blamed himself for what had happened to Mary

Walden. He should have had the machines watching Susan

and Mary at the same time that they were relaying wrist-

band data for Bill and Conrad and for Helen and Clara to

his office.

He had not done this because it was Susan's shift and he

had not expected Mary to break it. Now he knew that Helen

and Bill Walden had been quarrelling over the fact that

Clara was cheating on Helen's shifts, and their conversations

had directed the unhappy child's attention to the Manz cou-

ple. She had broken shift to meet them. . . looking for a loving

father, of course.

Stillthings would not have turned out so badly if Cap-

tain Thiel, Mary's school officer, had not attributed Susan

Shorrs' disappearance only to poor drug acclimatization. Cap-

tain Thiel had naturally known that Major Grey was in

town to prosecute Bill Walden, because the major had called

on him to discuss the case. Yet it had not occurred to

him, until eighteen hours after Susan's disappearance, that

Mary might have forced the shift for some reason associated

with her aberrant father.

By the time the captain advised him, Major Grey already

knew that Bill had forced the shift on Conrad under desperate

circumstances and he had decided to close in. He fully ex-

pected to find the father and daughter at the apartment, and

now... it sickened him to see the child's demented condi-

tion and realize that Bill had left her there.

Major Grey could see at a glance that Mary Walden would

not be accessible for days even with the best treatment. He

left it to the other two officers to hospitalize the child and set

out for the Manz apartment.

He used his master wristband to open the door there, and

found a woman standing in the middle of the room, wrapped

in a sheet. He knew that this must be Helen Walden. It was

odd how ill-fitting Clara Manz's softly sensual make-up

seemed, even to a stranger, on the more rigidly composed

face before him. He guessed that Helen would wear colour

higher on her cheeks and the mouth would be done in se-

vere lines. Certainly the present haughty face struggled with

its incongruous make-up as well as the indignity of her dress.

She pulled the sheet tighter about her and said icily, "I will

not wear that woman's clothes."

Major Grey introduced himself and asked, "Where is Bill

Walden?"

"He shifted! He left me with... Oh, I'm so ashamed!"

Major Grey shared her loathing. There was no way to es-

cape the conditioning of childhoodsex relations between

hyperalter and hypoalter were more than outlawed, they were

in themselves disgusting. If they were allowed, they could

destroy this civilization. Those idealiststhey were almost all

hypoalters, of coursewho wanted the old terminology

changed didn't take that into account. Next thing they'd want

children to live with their actual parents!

Major Grey stepped into the bedroom. Through the bath-

room door beyond, he could see Conrad Manz changing his

make-up.

Conrad turned and eyed him bluntly. "Would you mind

staying out of here till I'm finished? I've had about all I

can take."

Major Grey shut the door and returned to Helen Walden.

He took a hypothalamic block from his own pharmacase and

handed it to her. "Here, you're probably on very low drug

levels. You'd better take this." He poured her a glass of pop

from a decanter and, while they waited for Conrad, he dialled

the nearest shifting station on the visiophone and ordered up

an emergency shifting costume for her.

When at last they were both dressed, made up to their satis-

faction and drugged to his satisfaction, he had them sit on a

couch together across from him. They sat at opposite ends

of it, stiff with resentment at each other's presence.

Major Grey said calmly, "You realize that this matter is

coming to a Medicorps trial. It will be serious."

Major Grey watched their faces. On hers he saw grim

determination. On Conrad's face he saw the heavy movement

of alarm. The man loved his wife. That was going to help.

"It is necessary in a case such as this for the Medicorps to

weigh your decisions along with the scientific evidence we will

accumulate. Unfortunately, the number of laymen directly

involved in this caseand not on trialis only two, due to

your peculiar marriage. If the hypoalters, Clara and Conrad,

were married to other partners, we might call on as many

as six involved persons and obtain a more equitable lay judg-

ment. As it stands, the entire responsibility rests on the two

of you."

Helen Walden was primly confident. "I don't see how we

can fail to treat the matter with perfect logic. After all, it is

not we who neglect our drug levels. . . They were refusing to

take their drugs, weren't they?" she asked, hoping for the

worst and certain she was right.

"Yes, this is drug refusal." Major Grey paused while she

relished the answer. "But I must correct you in one impres-

sion. Your proper drug levels do not assure that you will

act logically in this matter. The drugged mind is logical.

However, its fundamental datum is that the drugs and

drugged minds must be protected before everything else." He

watched Conrad's face while he added, "Because of this, it

is possible for you to arrive logically at a conclusion that. . .

death is the required solution." He paused, looking at their

white lips. Then he said, "Actually, other, more suitable solu-

tions may be possible."

"But they were refusing their drugs," she said. "You talk

as if you are defending them. Aren't you a Medicorps prose-

cutor?"

"I do not prosecute people in the ancient 20th Century

sense, Mrs. Walden. I prosecute the acts of drug refusal and

communication breaks. There is quite a difference."

"Well!" she said almost explosively. "I always knew Bill

would get into trouble sooner or later with his wild, antisocial

ideas. I never dreamed the Medicorps would take his side."

Major Grey held his breath, almost certain now that she

would walk into the trap. If she did, he could save Clara

Manz before the trial.

"After all, they have broken every communication code.

They have refused the drugs, a defiance aimed at our very

lives. They"

"Shut up!" It was the first time Conrad Manz had spoken

since he sat down. "The Medicorps spent weeks gathering

evidence and preparing their recommendations. You haven't

seen any of that and you've already made up your mind. How

logical is that? It sounds as if you want your husband dead.

Maybe the poor devil had some reason, after all, for what he

did." On the man's face there was the nearest approach to

bate that the drugs would allow.

Major Grey let his breath out softly. They were split per-

manently. She would have to trade him a mild decision on

Clara in order to save Bill. And even there, if the subsequent

evidence gave any slight hope. Major Grey believed now that

he could work on Conrad to hang the lay judgment and let

the Medicorps' scientific recommendation go through unmodi-

fied.

He let them stew in their cross-purposed silence for a while

and then nailed home a disconcerting fact.

"I think I should remind you that there are a few ad-

vantages to having your alter extinguished in the mnemonic

eraser. A man whose hyperalter has been extinguished must

report on his regular shift days to a hospital and be placed

for five days in suspended animation. This is not very healthy

for the body, but necessary. Otherwise, everyone's natural dis-

taste for his own alter and the understandable wish to spend

twice as much time living would generate schemes to have

one's alter sucked out by the eraser. That happened exten-

sively back in the 21st Century before the five-day suspension.

was required. It was also used as a 'cure' for schizophrenia,

but it was, of course, only the brutal murder of innocent

personalities."

Major Grey smiled grimly to himself. "Now I will have to

'ask you both to accompany me to the hospital. I will want

you, Mrs. Walden, to shift at once to Mrs. Manz. Mr.

Manz, you will have to remain under the close observation of

an officer until Bill Walden tries to shift back. We have to

catch him with an injection to keep him in shift."

The young medicop put the syringe aside and laid his

hand on Bill Walden's forehead. He pushed the hair back

out of Bill's eyes.

"There, Mr. Walden, you don't have to struggle now."

Bill let his breath out in a long sigh. "You've caught me.

I can't shift any more, can I?"

"That's right, Mr. Walden. Not unless we want you to."

The young man picked up his medical equipment and stepped

aside.

Bill noticed then the Medicorps officer standing in the

background. The man was watching as though he contem-

plated some melancholy distance. "I am Major Grey, Bill. I'm

handling your case."

Bill did not answer. He lay staring at the hospital ceiling.

Then he felt his mouth open in a slow grin.

"What's funny?" Major Grey asked mildly.

"Leaving my hypoalter with my wife," Bill answered can-

didly. It had already ceased to be funny to him, but he saw

Major Grey smile in spite of himself.

"They were quite upset when I found them. It must have

been some scramble before that." Major Grey came over

and sat in the chair vacated by the young man who had

just injected Bill. "You know, Bill, we will need a complete

analysis of you. We want to do everything we can to save

you, but it will require your co-operation."

Bill nodded, feeling his chest tighten. Here it came. Right

to the end they would be tearing him apart to find out

what made him work.

Major Grey must have sensed Bill's bitter will to resist.

His resonant voice was soft, his face kindly. "We must

have your sincere desire to help. We can't force you to do

anything."

"Except die," Bill said.

"Maybe helping us get the information that might save

your life at the trial isn't worth the trouble to you. But your

aberration has seriously disturbed the lives of several people.

Don't you think you owe it to them to help us to prevent

this sort of thing in the future?" Major Grey ran his hand

through his whitening hair. "I thought you would like to know

Mary will come through all right. We will begin shortly to

acclimatize her to her new appointed parents, who will be

visiting her each day. "That will accelerate her recovery a

great deal. Of course, right now she is still inaccessible."

The brutally clear picture of Mary alone in the storage-

room crashed back into Bill's mind. After a while, in such

slow stages that the beginning was hardly noticeable, he be-

gan to cry. The young medicop injected him with a sleeping

compound, but not before Bill knew he would do whatever

the Medicorps wanted.

The next day was crowded with battery after battery of

tests. The interviews were endless. He was subjected to a

hundred artificial situations and every reaction from his blood

sugar to the frequency ranges of his voice was measured.

They gave him only small amounts of drugs in order to test

his reaction to them.

Late in the evening. Major Grey came by and interrupted

an officer who was taking an electro-encephalogram for the

sixth time after injection of a drug.

"All right. Bill, you have really given us co-operation. But

after you've had your dinner, I hope you won't mind if I

come to your room and talk with you for a little while."

When Bill finished eating, he waited impatiently in his

room for the Medicorps officer. Major Grey came soon after.

He shook his head at the mute question Bill shot at him.

"No, Bill. We will not have the results of your tests evalu-

ated until late tomorrow morning. I can't tell you a thing

until the trial in any case."

"When will that be?"

"As soon as the evaluation of your tests is in." Major

Grey ran his hand over bis smooth chin and seemed to sigh.

'Tell me, Bill, how do you feel about your case? How did

you get into this situation and what do you think about it

now?" The officer sat in the room's only chair and motioned

Bill to the cot.

Bill was astonished at his sudden desire to talk about

his problem. He had to laugh to cover it up. "I guess I

feel as if I am being condemned for trying to stay sober."

Bill used the ancient word with a mock tone of rigliteousness

that he knew the major would understand.

Major Grey smiled. "How do you feel when you're sober?"

Bill searched his face. "The way the ancient Moderns did,

--. I guess. I feel what happens to me the way it happens to

roe, not the artificial way the drugs let it happen. I think

there is a way for us to live without the drugs and really enjoy

life. Have you ever cut down on your drugs, Major?"

The officer shook his head.

Bill smiled at him dreamily. "You ought to try it. It's as

though a new life has suddenly opened up. Everything looks

different to you.

"Look, with an average life span of a hundred years, each

of us only lives fifty years and our alter lives the other

fifty. Yet even on half-time we experience only about half the

living we'd do if we didn't take the drugs. We would be

able to feel the loves and hatreds and desires of life. No

matter how many mistakes we made, we would be able

occasionally to live those intense moments that made the

ancients great."

Major Grey said tonelessly. "The ancients were great at

killing, cheating and debasing one another. And they were

worse sober than drunk." This time he did not smile at the

word.

Bill understood the implacable logic before him. The logic

that had saved man from himself by smothering his spirit.

The carefully achieved logic of the drugs that had seized upon

the disassociated personality, and engineered it into a smooth-

ly running machine, where there was no unhappiness because

there was no great happiness, where there was no crime ex-

cept failure to take the drugs or cross the alter sex line.

Without drugs, he was capable of fury and he felt it now.

"You should see how foolish these communication codes

look when you are undrugged. This stupid hide-and-seek of

shifting! These two-headed monsters simpering about their ar-

tificial morals and their endless prescriptions! They belong in

crazy houses! What use is there m such a world? If we are

all this sick, we should die. . ."

Bill stopped and there was suddenly a ringing silence in the

barren little room.

Finally Major Grey said, "I think you can see, Bill, that

your desire to live without drugs is incompatible with this

society. It would be impossible for us to maintain in you an

artificial need for the drugs that would be healthy. Only if we

can clearly demonstrate that this aberration is not an inher-

ent part of your personality can we do something medical-

ly or psycho-surgically about it."

Bill did not at first see the implication in this. When he

did, he thought of Clara rather than of himself, and his

voice was shaken. "Is it a localized aberration in Clara?"

Major Grey looked at him levelly. "I have arranged for you

to be with Clara Manz a little while in the morning." He

stood up and said good night and was gone.

Slowly, as if it hurt him to move, Bill turned off the light

and lay on the cot in the semi-dark. After a while he could

feel his heart begin to take hold and he started feeling bet-

ter. It was as though a man who had thought himself per-

manently expatriated had been told, "Tomorrow, you walk

just over that hill and you will be home."

All through the night he lay awake, alternating between

panic and desperate longing in a cycle with which finally he

became familiar. At last, as rusty light of dawn reddened his

silent room, he fell into a troubled sleep.

He started awake in broad daylight. An orderly was at

the door with his breakfast tray. He could not eat, of course.

After the orderly left, he hastily changed to a new hospital

uniform and washed himself. He redid his make-up with a

trembling hand, straightened the bedclothes 'and then he sat

on the edge of the cot.

No one came for him.

The young medicop who had given him the injection that

caught him in shift finally entered, and was standing near

him before Bill was aware of his presence.

"Good morning, Mr. Walden. How are you feeling?"

Bill's wildly oscillating tensions froze at the point where he

could only move helplessly with events and suffer a constant,

unchangeable longing.

It was as if in a dream that they moved in silence together

down the long corridors of the hospital and took the lift to

an upper floor. The medicop opened the door to a room and

let Bill enter. Bill heard the door close behind him.

Clara did not turn from where she stood looking out the

window. Bill did not care that the walls of the chill little

room were almost certainly recording every sight and sound.

All his hunger was focused on the back of the girl at the

window. The room seemed to ring with his racing blood.

But he was slowly aware that something was wrong, and

when at last he called her name, his voice broke.

Still without turning, she said in a strained monotone, "I

want you to understand that I have consented to this meeting

only because Major Grey has assured me it was necessary."

--i t was a long time before he could speak. "Clara, I need

you."

She spun on him. "Have you no shame? You are married

to my hyperalterdon't you understand that?" Her face was

suddenly wet with tears and the intensity of her shame flamed

at him from her cheeks. "How can Conrad ever forgive me

for being with his hyperalter and talking about him? Oh,

how can I have been so mad?"

"They have done something to you," he said, shaking with

tension.

Her chin raised at this. She was defiant, he saw, though

not towards himselfhe no longer existed for herbut to-

wards that part of herself which once had needed him and

now no longer existed. "They have cured me," she declared.

"They have cured me of everything but my shame, and

they will help me get rid of that as soon as you leave this

room."

Bill stared at her before leaving. Out in the corridor, the

young medicop did not look him in the face. They went

back to Bill's room and the ofBcer left without a word. Bill

lay down on his cot.

Presently Major Grey entered the room. He came over to

the cot. "I'm sorry it had to be this way. Bill."

Bill's words came tonelessly from his dry throat. "Was it

necessary to be cruel?"

"It was necessary to test the result of her psycho-surgery.

Also, it will help her over her shame. She might other-

wise have retained a seed of fear that she still loved you."

Bill did not feel anything any more. Staring at the ceiling,

he knew there was no place left for him in this world and

no one in it who needed him. The only person who had really

needed him had been Mary, and he could not bear to think

of how he had treated her. Now the Medicorps was efficiently

curing the child of the hurt he had done her. They had

already erased from Clara any need for him she had ever

felt.

This seemed funny and he began to laugh. "Everyone is

being cured of me."

"Yes, Bill. That is necessary." When Bill went on laughing

Maor Grey's voice turned quite sharp. "Come with me. It's

time for your trial."

The enormous room in which they held the trial was utter-

ly barren. At the great oaken table around which they all

sat, there were three Medicorps officers m addition to Major

Grey.

Helen did not speak to Bill when they brought him in.

He was placed on the same side of the table with an offi-

cer between them. Two orderlies stood behind Bill's chair.

Other than these people, there was no one in the room.

The great windows were high above the floor and displayed

only the blissful sky. Now and then Bill saw a flock of pi-

geons waft aloft on silver-turning wings. Everyone at the ta-

ble except himself had a copy of his case report and they

discussed it with clipped sentences. Between the stone floor

and the vaulted ceiling, a subtle echolalia babbled about

Bill's problem behind their human talk.

The discussion of the report lulled when Major Grey

rapped on the table. He glanced unsmiling from face to face,

and his voice hurried the ritualized words: "This is a court

of medicine, co-joining the results of medical science and con-

sidered lay judgment to arrive at a decision in the case

of patient Bill Walden. The patient is hospitalized for a his-

tory of drug refusal and communication breaks. We have

before us the medical case record of patient Walden. Has ev-

eryone present studied this record?"

All at the table nodded.

"Do all present feel competent to pass judgment in this

case?"

Again there came the agreement.

Major Grey continued, "It is my duty to advise you, in

the presence of the patient, of the profound difference be-

tween a trial for simple drug refusal and one in which that

aberration is compounded with communication breaks.

"It is true that no other aberration is possible when the

drugs are taken as prescribed. After all, the drugs are the

basis for our schizophrenic society. Nevertheless, simple drug

refusal often is a mere matter of physiology, which is easy

enough to remedy.

"A far more profound threat to our society is the break

in communication. This generally is more deeply motivated

in the patient, and is often inaccessible to therapy. Such a pa-

tient is driven to emotive explorations which place the various

ancient passions, and the infamous art of historical gesture,

such as 'give me liberty or give me death', above the wel-

fare of society."

_ Bill watched the birds flash down the sky, a handful of

""Heavenly coin. Never had it seemed to him so good to look

at the sky. // they hospitalize me, he thought, I will be

content forever to sit and look from windows.

"Our schizophrenic society," Major Grey was saying, "holds

together and runs smoothly because, in each individual, the

" personality conflicts have been compartmentalized between

hyperalter and hypoalter. On the social level, conflicting per-

sonalities are kept on opposite shifts and never contact each

other. Or they are kept on shifts where contact is possible no

more than one or two days out of ten. Bill Walden's break

of shift is the type of behaviour designed to reactivate these

conflicts, and to generate the destructive passions on which

an undrugged mind feeds. Already illness and disrupted lives

have resulted."

Major Grey paused and looked directly at Bill. "Exhaus-

tive tests have demonstrated that your entire personality is

involved. I might also say that the aberration to live without

the drugs and to break communication codes is your person-

ality. All these Medicorps oflicers are agreed on that diagno-

sis. It remains now for us of the Medicorps to sit with the

laymen intimately involved and decide on the action to be

taken. The only possible alternatives after that diagnosis are

permanent hospitalization or. . . total removal of the per-

sonality by mnemonic erasure."

Bill could not speak. He saw Major Grey nod to one of the

orderlies and felt the man pushing up his sleeve and inject-

ing his nerveless arm. They were forcing him to shift, he

knew, so that Conrad Manz could sit in on the trial and

participate.

Helplessly, he watched the great sky blacken and the room

dim and disappear.

Major Grey did not avert his face, as did the others, while

the shift was in progress. Helen Walden, he saw, was drama-

tizing her shame at being present during a shift, but the Medi-

corps officers simply stared at the table. Major Grey watched

the face of Conrad Manz take form while the man who was

going to be tried faded.

Bill Walden had been without make-up, and as soon as

he was sure Manz could hear him. Major Grey apologized.

"I hope you won't object to this brief interlude in public

without make-up. You are present at the trial of Bill Wal-

den."

Conrad Manz nodded and Major Grey waited another full

minute for the shift to complete itself before he continued.

"Mr. Manz, during the two days you waited in the hospital

for us to catch Walden in shift, I discussed this case quite

thoroughly with you, especially as it applied to the case of

Clara Manz, on which we were already working.

"You will recall that in the case of your wife, the Modi-

corps diagnosis was one of a clearly localized aberration.

It was quite simple to apply the mnemonic eraser to that

small section without disturbing in any way her basic per-

sonality. Medicorps agreement was for this procedure and

the case did not come to trial, but simply went to opera-

tion, because lay agreement was obtained. First yourself and

eventually" Major Grey paused and let the memory of

Helen's stubborn insistence that Clara die stir in Conrad's

mind"Mrs. Walden agreed with the Medicorps."

Major Grey let the room wait in silence for awhile. "The

case of Bill Walden is quite different. The aberration in-

volves the whole personality, and the alternative actions

to be taken are permanent hospitalization or total erasure.

In this case, I believe that Medicorps opinion will be divided

as to proper action and" Major Grey paused again and

looked levelly at Conrad Manz"this may be true, also, of the

lay opinion."

"How's that, Major?" demanded the highest ranking Medi-

corps officer present, a colonel named Hart, a tall, handsome

man on whom the military air was a becoming skin. "What

do you mean about Medicorps opinion being divided?"

Major Grey answered quietly, "I'm holding out for hospitali-

zation."

Colonel Hart's face reddened. He thrust it forward and

straightened his back. "That's preposterous! This is a clear-

cut case of a dangerous threat to our society, and we, let me

remind you, are sworn to protect that society."

Major Grey felt very tired. It was, after all, difficult to un-

derstand why he always fought so hard against erasure of

these aberrant cases. But he began with quiet determination.

"The threat to society is effectively removed by either of the

alternatives, hospitalization or total erasure. I think you can

all see from Bill Walden's medical record that his is a well-

rounded personality with a remarkable mind. In the environ-

ment of the 20th Century, he would have been an outstanding

citizen, and possibly, if there had been more like him,

our present society would have been better for it.

--"Our history has been one of weeding out all personalities

that did not fit easily into our drugged society. Today there

are so few left that I have handled only one hundred and

thirty-six in my entire career. . . ."

Major Grey saw that Helen Walden was tensing in her

chair. He realized suddenly that she sensed better than he the

effect he was having on the other men.

"We should not forget that each time we erase one of

these personalities," he pressed on relentlessly, "society loses

irrevocably a certain capacity for change. If we eliminate

all personalities who do not fit, we may find ourselves without

any minds capable of meeting future change. Our direct an-

cestors were largely the inmates of mental hospitals. . . we

are fortunate they were not erased. Conrad Manz," he asked

abruptly, "what is your opinion on the case of Bill Walden?"

Helen Walden started, but Conrad Manz shrugged his mus-

cular shoulders. "Oh, hospitalize the three-headed monster!"

Major Grey snapped his eyes directly past Colonel Hart

and fastened them on the Medicorps captain. "Your opinion,

Captain?"

But Helen Walden was too quick. Before he could rap the

table for order, she had her thin words hanging in the echo-

ing room. "Having been Mr. Walden's wife for fifteen years,

my sentiments naturally incline me to ask for hospitalization.

That is why I may safely say, if Major Grey will pardon me,

that the logic of the drugs does not entirely fail us in this

situation."

Helen waited while all present got the idea that Major

Grey had accused them of being illogical. "Bill's aberration

has led to our daughter's illness. And think how quickly it

contaminated Clara Manz! I cannot ask that society any

longer expose itself, even to the extent of keeping Bill in

the isolation of the hospital, for my purely sentimental rea-

sons.

"As for Major Grey's closing remarks, I cannot see how it is

fair to bring my husband to trial as a threat to society, if

some future change is expected, in which a man of his behav-

iour would benefit society. Surely such a change could only be

one that would ruin our present world, or Bill would hardly

fit it. I would not want to save Bill or anyone else for such

a future."

She did not have to say anything further. Both of the other

Medicorps officers were now fully roused to their duty. Colo-

nel Hart, of course, "humphed" at the opinions of a woman

and cast his with Major Grey. But the fate of Bill Walden

was sealed.

Major Grey sat, weary 'and uneasy, as the creeping little

doubts began. In the end, he would be left with the one big

stone-heavy doubt. . . could he have gone through with thistf -

he had not been drugged, and how would the logic of the trial

look without drugs?

He became aware of the restiveness in the room. They were

waiting for him, now that the decision was irrevocable. With-

out the drugs, he reflected, they might be feelingwhat was

the ancient word, guilt? No, that was what the criminal felt.

Remorse? That would be what they should be feeling. Major

Grey wished Helen Walden could be forced to witness the

erasure. People did not realize what it was like.

What was it Bill had said? "You should see how foolish

these communication codes look when you are undrugged.

This stupid hide-and-seek of shifting. . . ."

Well, wasn't that a charge to be inspected seriously, if you

were taking it seriously enough to kill the man for it? As soon

as this case was completed, he would have .to return to his

city and blot himself out so that his own hyperalter, Ralph

Singer, a painter of bad pictures and a useless fool, could

waste five more days. To that man he lost half his possible

living days. What earthly good was Singer?

Major Grey roused himself and motioned the orderly to in-

ject Conrad Manz, so that Bill Walden would be forced back

into shift.

"As soon as I have advised the patient' of our decision,

you will all be dismissed. Naturally, I anticipated this decision

and have arranged for immediate erasure. After the erasure,

Mr. Manz, you will be instructed to appear regularly for

suspended animation."

For some reason, the first thing Bill Walden did when he

became conscious of his surroundings was to look out the

great window for the flock of birds. But they were gone.

Bill looked at Major Grey and said, "What are you going

to do?"

The officer ran his hand back through his whitening hair,

but he looked at Bill without wavering. "You will be erased."

Bill began to shake his head. "There is something wrong,"

he said.

"Bill . . ." the major began.

"There is something wrong," Bill repeated hopelessly.

"Why must we be split so there is always something missing

na-each of us? Why must we be stupefied with drugs that

keep us from knowing what we should feel? I was trying to

live a better life. I did not want to hurt anyone."

"But you did hurt others," Major Grey said bluntly. "You

would do so again if allowed to function in your own way in

this society. Yet it would be insufferable to you to be hospi-

talized. You would be shut off forever from searching for

another Clara Manz. Andthere is no one else for you, is

there?"

Bill looked up, his eyes cringing 'as though they stared at

death. "No one else?" he asked vacantly. "No one?"

The two orderlies lifted him up by his arms, almost carry-

ing him into the operating room. His feet dragged helplessly.

He made no resistance as they lifted him on to the operating

table and strapped him down.

Beside him was the great panel of the mnemonic eraser

with its thousand unblinking eyes. The helmet-like prober

cabled to this calculator was fastened about his skull, and he

could no longer see the professor who was lecturing in the

amphitheatre above. But along his body he could see the

group of medical students. They were looking at him with

great interest, too young not to let the human drama interfere

with their technical education.

The professor, however, droned in a purely objective voice.

"The mnemonic eraser can selectively shunt from the brain

any identifiable category of memory, and erase the synaptic

patterns associated with its translation into action. Circulating

memory is disregarded. The machine only locates and shunts

out those energies present as permanent memory. These are

there in part as permanently echoing frequencies in closed

cytoplasmic systems. These systems are in contact with the rest

of the nervous system only during the phenomenon of remem-

brance. Remembrance occurs when, at all the synapses in a

given network 'y', the permanently echoing frequencies are

duplicated as transient circulating frequencies.

"The objective in a total operation of the sort before us

is to distinguish all the stored permanent frequencies, typical

of the personality you wish to extinguish, from the frequen-

cies typical of the other personality present in the brain."

Major Grey's face, very tired, but still wearing a mask of

adamant reassurance, came into Bill's vision. "There will be a

few moments of drug-induced terror, Bill. That is necessary

for the operation. I hope knowing it beforehand will help you

ride with it. It will not be for long." He squeezed Bill's shoul-

der and was gone.

"The trick was learned early in our history, when this type

of total operation was more often necessary," the professor

continued. "It is really quite simple to extinguish one per-

sonality while leaving the other undisturbed. The other per-

sonality in the case before us has been drug-immobilized to

keep this one from shifting. At the last moment, this personal-

ity before us will be drug-stimulated to bring it to the highest

possible pitch of total activity. This produces utterly disor-

ganized activity, every involved neutron and synapse being

activated simultaneously by the drug. It is then a simple

matter for the mnemonic eraser to locate all permanently

echoing frequencies involved in this personality and suck

them into its receiver."

Bill was suddenly aware that a needle had been thrust

into his arm. Then it was as though all the terror, panic and

traumatic incidents of his whole life leaped into his mind. All

the pleasant experiences and feelings he had ever known

were there, too, but were transformed into terror.

A bell was ringing with regular strokes. Across the panel

of the mnemonic eraser, the tiny counting lights were alive

with movement.

There was in Bill a fright, a demand for survival so great

that it could not be felt.

It was actually from an island of complete calm that part of

him saw the medical students rising dismayed and white-

faced from their seats. It was apart from himself that his

body strained to lift some mountain and filled the operating

amphitheatre with shrieking echoes. And all the time the

thousand eyes of the mnemonic eraser flickered in swift pat-

terns, a silent measure of the cells and circuits of his mind.

Abruptly the tiny red counting lights went off, a red beam

glowed with a burr of warning. Someone said, "Now!" The

mind of Bill Walden flashed along a wire as electrical energy,

and, converted on the control panel into mechanical energy,

it spun a small ratchet counter.

"Please sit down," the professor said to the shaken stu-

dents. "The drug that has kept the other personality immo-

bilized is being counteracted by this next injection. Now that

the sickly personality has been dissipated, the healthy one can

be brought back rapidly.

"As you are aware, the synapse operates on the binary

'yes-no' choice system of an electronic calculator. All synapses

which were involved in the diseased personality have now

~been reduced to an atypical, uniform threshold. Thus they

can be re-educated in new patterns by the healthy personality

remaining. .. . There, you see the countenance of the healthy

personality appearing."

It was Conrad Manz who looked up at them with a wry

grin. He rotated his shoulders to loosen them. "How many

of you pushed old Bill Walden around? He left me with

some sore muscles. Well, I did that often enough to him. . . ."

Major Grey stood over him, face sick and white with the

horror of what he had seen. "According to law, Mr. Manz,

you and your wife are entitled to five rest days on your next

shift. When they are over, you will, of course, report for sus-

pended animation for what would have been your hyperal-

ter's shift."

Conrad Manz's grin shrank and vanished. "Would have

been? Bill isgone?"

"Yes."

"I never thought I'd miss him." Conrad looked as sick as

Major Grey felt. "It makes me feel1 don't know if I can

explain itsort of amputated. As though something's wrong

with me because everybody else has an alter and I don't.

Did the poor son of a strait-jacket suffer much?"

"I'm afraid he did."

Conrad Manz lay still for a moment with his eyes closed

and his mouth thin with pity and remorse. "What will happen

to Helen?"

"She'll be all right," Major Grey said. "There will be Bill's

insurance, naturally, and she won't have much trouble finding

another husband. That kind never seems to."

"Five rest days?" Conrad repeated. "Is that what you

said?" He sat up and swung his legs off the table, and he was

grinning again. "I'll get in a whole shift of )et-skiing! No,

waitI've got a date with the wife of a friend of mine out at

the rocket grounds. I'll take Clara out there; she'll like some

of the men."

Major Grey nodded abstractedly. "Good idea." He shook

hands with Conrad Manz, wished him fun on his rest shift,

and left.

Taking a helicopter hack to his city. Major Grey thought

of his own hyperalter, Ralph Singer. He'd often wished that

the silly fool could be erased. Now he wondered how it would

be to have only one personality, and, wondering, realized that

Conrad Manz had been rightit would be like imputation,

the shameful distinction of living in a schizophrenic society

with no alter.

No, Bill Walden had been wrong, completely wrong, both

about drugs and being split into two personalities. What one

made up in pleasure through not taking drugs was more than

lost in the suffering of conflict, frustration and hostility. And

having an alterany kind, even one as useless as Singer

meant, actually, not being alone.

Major Grey parked the helicopter and found a shifting star

tion. He took off his make-up, addressed and mailed his

clothes, and waited for .the shift to come.

It was a pretty wonderful society he lived in, he realized.

He wouldn't trade it for the kind Bill Walden had wanted.

Nobody in his right mind would.