Necromancer

Chapter 4

"...How do you feel?"

It was a woman's voice. Paul opened his eyes. Dr. Elizabeth Williams was standing over the chair in which he sat. She put the hypodermic spray gun down on the desk beside him, and walked around to take her seat behind the desk.

"Did I say anything?" Paul sat up straighter in his chair.

"If you mean, did you reply to my questions? no." Dr. Williams looked across the desk at him. She was a small, square-shouldered woman with brown hair and an unremarkable face. "How long have you known about this strong resistance of yours to hypnosis?"

"Is it resistance?" asked Paul. "I'm trying to co-operate."

"How long have you known about it?"

"Since the sailing accident. Five years." Paul looked at her. "What did I say?"

Dr. Williams looked at him.

"You told me I was a foolish woman," she said.

Paul blinked at her.

"Is that all?" he asked. "I didn't say anything but that."

"That's all." She looked at him across the desk. He felt curiosity and a sort of loneliness emanating from her.

"Paul, can you think of anything in particular that you're afraid of?"

"Afraid?" he asked, and frowned. "Afraid . . . ? Not really. No."

"Worried?"

He thought for a long moment

"No - not worried, actually," he said. "There's nothing you could say was actually worrying me."

"Unhappy?"

He smiled. Then frowned, suddenly.

"No," he said, and hesitated. "That is, I don't think so."

"Then why did you come to see me?"

He looked at her in some surprise.

"Why, about my arm," he said.

"Not about the fact that you were orphaned at an early age? Not that you've always led a solitary life, with no close friends? Not that you tried to kill yourself in a sailboat five years ago, and tried again in a mine, less than a year ago?"

"Wait a minute!" said Paul. She looked at him politely, inquiringly.

"Do you think I arranged those accidents to try and kill myself?"

"Shouldn't I think so?"

"Why, no," said Paul.

"Why not?"

"Because ..." A sudden perfect moment of understanding broke through to Paul. He saw her sitting there in complete blindness. He stared at her, and before his eyes, looking back at him, she seemed to grow shrunken and a little older. He got to his feet. "It doesn't matter," he said.

"You should think about it, Paul."

"I will. I want to think over this whole business."

"Good," she said. She had not moved out of her chair, and in spite of the assurance of her tone, she did not seem quite herself since he bad looked at her. "My receptionist will set up your next time in."

"Thanks," he said. "Good-by."

"Good afternoon, Paul."

He went out. In the outer office the receptionist looked up from a filing machine as he passed.

"Mr. Formain?" She leaned forward over the machine. "Don't you want to make your next appointment now?"

"No," said Paul. "I don't think so." He went out.

He went down a number of levels from Dr. Williams' office to the terminal in the base of the building. There were public communications booths nearby. He stepped into one and closed the door. He felt both naked and relieved. He dialed for a listing of the Chantry Guild members in the area. The screen lighted up.

Walter Blunt, Guildmaster (no listed phone number) Jason Warren, Necromancer, Chantry Guild Secretary, phone number 66 433 35246 Kantele Maki (no listed phone number) Morton Brown, 66 433 67420 Warra, Mage,

(The above list contains only the names of those requesting listing under the Chantry Guild heading.)

Paul punched 66 433 35246. The screen lighted up whitely, but it was half a minute before it cleared to show the face of one of the people Paul remembered from the television broadcast in the mine a year before, the face of a thin, black-haired young man with deep-set, un-moving eyes.

"My name is Paul Formain," said Paul. "I'd like to talk to Jason Warren."

"I'm Jason Warren. What about?"

"I've just read a book by Walter Blunt that says the Alternate Forces can grow back limbs that are missing."

Paul moved so that the stub of his left arm was visible to the other.

"I see." Warren looked at him with the movelessness of his dark eyes. "What about it?"

"I'd like to talk to you about it."

"I suppose that can be arranged. When would you like to talk to me?"

"Now," said Paul.

The black eyebrows in the screen went up a fraction.

"Now?"

"I was planning on it," said Paul.

"Oh, you were?"

Paul waited.

"All right, come ahead." Abruptly the screen went blank, but leaving Paul's vision filled with the after-image of the dark face that had been in it looking at him with a curious interest and intent. He rose, breathing out a little with relief. He had moved without thinking from the second of perception that had come to him in Elizabeth Williams' office. Suddenly he had realized that her education and training had made her blind to understanding in his case. She had not understood. That much had been explosively obvious. She had been trying to reconcile the speed of light with the clumsy mechanism of the stop watch she believed in. And if she had made that error, then the psychiatrist at San Diego, after the boating accident, had been wrong in the same way, as well.

Paul had reacted without thinking, but, strongly now, his instinct told him he was right. He had labored under the handicap of a belief in stop watches. Somewhere, he told himself now, there was a deeper understanding. It was a relief to go searching for it at last with an unfettered mind - a mind awake.