Somebody was supporting him. He saw, in the reflected glare from the overside floodlights, that it was Tom, the big Polynesian bos'n.
"Captain," asked Tom, "is it true that Melbourne has been destroyed?"
"Yes. And other cities too, perhaps …"
"The familiar pattern," said the bos'n, as though to himself. "The chance contact— The trader— The missionary— The incident— And the gunboat—"
"And after the gunboat?" asked Lessing.
"We learned the answer to that question many years ago," said Tom. "Now it's your turn."
The End
The Yellow Pill
Rog Phillips
Dr. Cedric Elton slipped into his office by the back entrance, shucked off his topcoat and hid it in the small, narrow-doored closet, then picked up the neatly piled patient cards his receptionist, Helena Fitzroy, had placed on the corner of his desk. There were only four, but there could have been a hundred if he accepted everyone who asked to be his patient, because his successes had more than once been spectacular and his reputation as a psychiatrist had become so great because of this that his name had become synonymous with psychiatry in the public mind.
His eyes flicked over the top card. He frowned, then went to the small square of one-way glass in the reception-room door and looked through it. There were four police officers and a man in a straitjacket.
The card said the man's name was Gerald Bocek and that he had shot and killed five people in a supermarket, and had killed one officer and wounded two others before being captured.
Except for the straitjacket, Gerald Bocek did not have the appearance of being dangerous. He was about twenty-five, with brown hair and blue eyes. There were faint wrinkles of habitual good nature about his eyes. Right now he was smiling, relaxed, and idly watching Helena, who was pretending to study various cards in her desk file but was obviously conscious of her audience.
Cedric returned to his desk and sat down. The card for Jerry Bocek said more about the killings. When captured, Bocek insisted that the people he had killed were not people at all, but blue-scaled Venusian lizards who had boarded his spaceship, and that he had only been defending himself.
Dr. Cedric Elton shook his head in disapproval. Fantasy fiction was all right in its place, but too many people took it seriously. Of course, it was not the fault of the fiction. The same type of person took other types of fantasy seriously in earlier days, burning women as witches, stoning men as devils—
Abruptly Cedric deflected the control on the intercom and spoke into it. "Send Gerald Bocek in, please," he said.
A moment later the door to the reception room opened. Helena flashed Cedric a scared smile and got out of the way quickly. One police officer led the way, followed by Gerald Bocek, closely flanked by two officers, with the fourth one in the rear, who carefully closed the door. It was impressive, Cedric decided. He nodded toward a chair in front of his desk, and the police officers sat the straitjacketed man in it, then hovered nearby, ready for anything.
"You're Jerry Bocek?" Cedric asked.
The straitjacketed man nodded cheerfully.
"I'm Dr. Cedric Elton, a psychiatrist," Cedric said. "Do you have any idea at all why you have been brought to me?"
"Brought to you?" Jerry echoed, chuckling. "Don't kid me. You're my old pal, Gar Castle. Brought to you? How could I get away from you in this stinking tub?"
"Stinking tub?" Cedric said.
"Spaceship," Jerry said. "Look, Gar. Untie me, will you? This nonsense has gone far enough."
"My name is Dr. Cedric Elton," Cedric enunciated. "You are not on a spaceship. You were brought to my office by the four policemen standing in back of you, and—"
Jerry Bocek turned his head and studied each of the four policemen with frank curiosity. "What policemen?" he interrupted. "You mean these four gear lockers?" He turned his head back and looked pityingly at Dr. Elton. "You'd better get hold of yourself, Gar," he said. "You're imagining things."
"My name is Dr. Cedric Elton," Cedric said.
Gerald Bocek leaned forward and said with equal firmness, "Your name is Gar Castle. I refuse to call you Dr. Cedric Elton, because your name is Gar Castle, and I'm going to keep on calling you Gar Castle because we have to have at least one peg of rationality in all this madness or you will be cut completely adrift in this dream world you've cooked up."
Cedric's eyebrows shot halfway up to his hairline.
"Funny," he mused, smiling. "That's exactly what I was just going to say to you!"
Cedric continued to smile. Jerry's serious intenseness slowly faded. Finally an answering smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. When it became a grin, Cedric laughed, and Jerry began to laugh with him. The four police officers looked at one another uneasily.
"Well!" Cedric finally gasped. "I guess that puts us on an even footing! You're nuts to me and I'm nuts to you!"
"An equal footing is right!" Jerry shouted in high glee. Then he sobered. "Except," he said gently, "I'm tied up."
"In a straitjacket," Cedric corrected.
"Ropes," Jerry said firmly.
"You're dangerous," Cedric said. "You killed six people, one of them a police officer, and wounded two other officers."
"I blasted five Venusian lizard pirates who boarded our ship," Jerry said, "and melted the door off of one gear locker and seared the paint on two others. You know as well as I do, Gar, how space madness causes you to personify everything. That's why they drill into you that the minute you think there are more people on board the ship than there were at the beginning of the trip, you'd better go to the medicine locker and take a yellow pill. They can't hurt anything but a delusion."
"If that is so," Cedric said, "why are you in a straitjacket?"
"I'm tied up with ropes," Jerry said patiently. "You tied me up. Remember?"
"And those four police officers behind you are gear lockers?" Cedric said. "Okay, if one of those gear lockers comes around in front of you and taps you on the jaw with his fist, would you still believe it's a gear locker?"
Cedric nodded to one of the officers, and the man came around in front of Gerald Bocek and, quite carefully, hit him hard enough to rock his head but not hurt him. Jerry's eyes blinked with surprise, then he looked at Cedric and smiled. "Did you feel that?" Cedric said quietly.
"Feel what?" Jerry said. "Oh!" He laughed. "You imagined that one of the gear lockers—a police officer in your dream world—came around in front of me and hit me?" He shook his head in pity. "Don't you understand, Gar, that it didn't really happen? Untie me and I'll prove it. Before your very eyes I'll open the door on your policeman and take out the pressure suit, or magnetic grapple, or whatever is in it. Or are you afraid to? You've surrounded yourself with all sorts of protective delusions. I'm tied with ropes, but you imagine it to be a straitjacket. You imagine yourself to be a psychiatrist named Dr. Cedric Elton so that you can convince yourself that you're sane and I'm crazy. Probably you imagine yourself a very famous psychiatrist that everyone would like to come to for treatment. World famous, no doubt. Probably you even think you have a beautiful receptionist. What is her name?"
"Helena Fitzroy," Cedric said.
Jerry nodded. "It figures," he said resignedly. "Helena Fitzroy is the expediter at Mars Port. You try to date her every time we land there, but she won't date you."
"Hit him again," Cedric said to the officer. While Jerry's head was still rocking from the blow, Cedric said, "Now! Is it my imagination that your head is still rocking from the blow?"
"What blow?" Jerry said, smiling. "I felt no blow."
"Do you mean to say," Cedric said incredulously, "that there is no corner of your mind, no slight residue of rationality, that tries to tell you your rationalizations aren't reality?"
Jerry smiled ruefully. "I have to admit," he said, "when you seem so absolutely certain you're right and I'm nuts, it almost makes me doubt. Untie me, Gar, and let's try to work this thing out sensibly." He grinned. "You know, Gar, one of u
s has to be nuttier than a fruitcake."
"If I had the officers take off your straitjacket, what would you do?" Cedric asked. "Try to grab a gun and kill some more people?"
"That's one of the things I'm worried about," Jerry said. "If those pirates came back, with me tied up, you're just space crazy enough to welcome them aboard. That's why you must untie me. Our lives may depend on it, Gar."
"Were would you get a gun?" Cedric asked.
"Where they're always kept," Jerry said. "In the gear lockers."
Cedric looked at the four policemen, at their holstered revolvers. One of them grinned feebly at him.
"I'm afraid we can't take your straitjacket off just yet," Cedric said. "I'm going to have the officers take you back now. I'll talk with you again tomorrow. Meanwhile I want you to think seriously about things. Try to get below this level of rationalization that walls you off from reality. Once you make a dent in it, the whole delusion will vanish." He looked up at the officers. "All right, take him away. Bring him back the same time tomorrow."
The officers urged Jerry to his feet. Jerry looked down at Cedric, a gentle expression on his face. "I'll try to do that, Gar," he said. "And I hope you do the same thing. I'm much encouraged. Several times I detected genuine doubt in your eyes. And—" Two of the officers pushed him firmly toward the door. As they opened it, Jerry turned his head and looked back. "Take one of those yellow pills in the medicine locker, Gar," he pleaded. "It can't hurt you."
At a little before five-thirty, Cedric tactfully eased his last patient all the way across the reception room and out, then locked the door and leaned his back against it.
"Today was rough," he sighed.
Helena glanced up at him briefly, then continued typing. "I only have a little more on this last transcript," she said.
A minute later she pulled the paper from the typewriter and placed it on the neat stack beside her.
"I'll sort and file them in the morning," she said. "It was rough, wasn't it, Doctor? That Gerald Bocek is the most unusual patient you've had since I've worked for you. And poor Mr. Potts. A brilliant executive, making half a million a year, and he's going to have to give it up. He seems so normal."
"He is normal," Cedric said. "People with above normal blood pressure often have very minor cerebral hemorrhages, so small that the affected area is no larger than the head of a pin. All that happens is that they completely forget things that they knew. They can relearn them, but a man whose judgment must always be perfect can't afford to take the chance. He's already made one error in judgment that cost his company a million and a half. That's why I consented to take him on as a—Gerald Bocek really upset me, Helena. I consent to take a five hundred thousand dollar a year executive as a patient."
"He was frightening, wasn't he?" Helena said. "I don't mean so much because he's a mass murderer as—"
"I know. I know," Cedric said. "Let's prove him wrong. Have dinner with me."
"We agreed—"
"Let's break the agreement this once."
Helena shook her head firmly. "Especially not now," she said. "Besides, it wouldn't prove anything. He's got you boxed in on that point. If I went to dinner with you, it would only show that a wish fulfillment entered your dream world."
"Ouch," Cedric said, wincing. "That's a dirty word. I wonder how he knew about the yellow pills? I can't get out of my mind the fact that if we had spaceships and if there were a type of space madness in which you began to personify objects, a yellow pill would be the right thing to stop that."
"How?" Helena said.
"They almost triple the strength of nerve currents from end organs. What results is that reality practically shouts down any fantasy insertions. It's quite startling. I took one three years ago when they first became available. You'd be surprised how little you actually see of what you look at, especially of people. You look at symbol inserts instead. I had to cancel my appointments for a week. I found I couldn't work without my professionally built symbol inserts about people that enable me to see them—not as they really are—but as a complex of normal and abnormal symptoms."
"I'd like to take one sometime," Helena said.
"That's a twist," Cedric said, laughing. "One of the characters in a dream world takes a yellow pill and discovers it doesn't exist at all except as a fantasy."
"Why don't we both take one?" Helena said.
"Uh-uh," Cedric said firmly. "I couldn't do my work."
"You're afraid you might wake up on a spaceship?" Helena said, grinning.
"Maybe I am," Cedric said. "Crazy, isn't it? But there is one thing today that stands out as a serious flaw in my reality. It's so glaring that I actually am afraid to ask you about it."
"Are you serious?" Helena said.
"I am." Cedric nodded. "How does it happen that the police brought Gerald Bocek here to my office instead of holding him in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital and having me go there to see him? How does it happen the D.A. didn't get in touch with me beforehand and discuss the case with me?"
"I … I don't know!" Helena said. "I received no call. They just showed up, and I assumed they wouldn't have without your knowing about it and telling them to. Mrs. Fortesque was your first patient, and I called her at once and caught her just as she was leaving the house and told her an emergency case had come up." She looked at Cedric with round, startled eyes.
"Now we know how the patient must feel," Cedric said, crossing the reception room to his office door. "Terrifying, isn't it, to think that if I took a yellow pill, all this might vanish—my years of college, my internship, my fame as the world's best-known psychiatrist, and you. Tell me, Helena, are you sure you aren't an expediter at Mars Port?"
He leered at her mockingly as he slowly closed the door, cutting off his view of her.
Cedric put his coat away and went directly to the small square of one-way glass in the reception-room door. Gerald Bocek, still in straitjacket, was there, and so were the same four police officers.
Cedric went to his desk and, without sitting down, deflected the control on the intercom.
"Helena," he said, "before you send in Gerald Bocek get me the D.A. on the phone."
He glanced over the four patient cards while waiting. Once he rubbed his eyes gently. He had had a restless night.
When the phone rang, he reached for it. "Hello? Dave?" he said. "About this patient, Gerald Bocek—"
"I was going to call you today," the District Attorney's voice sounded. "I called you yesterday morning at ten, but no one answered, and I haven't had time since. Our police psychiatrist, Walters, says you might be able to snap Bocek out of it in a couple of days—at least long enough so that we can get some sensible answers out of him. Down underneath his delusion of killing lizard pirates from Venus, there has to be some reason for that mass killing, and the press is after us on this."
"But why bring him to my office?" Cedric said. "It's okay, of course, but … that is … I didn't think you could! Take a patient out of the ward at City Hospital and transport him around town."
"I thought that would be less of an imposition on you," the D.A. said. "I'm in a hurry on it."
"Oh," Cedric said. "Well, okay, Dave. He's out in the waiting room. I'll do my best to snap him back to reality for you."
He hung up slowly, frowning. "Less of an imposition!" His whispered words floated into his ears as he snapped into the intercom, "Send Gerald Bocek in, please."
The door from the reception room opened, and once again the procession of patient and police officers entered.
"Well, well, good morning, Gar," Jerry said. "Did you sleep well? I could hear you talking to yourself most of the night."
"I am Dr. Cedric Elton," Cedric said firmly.
"Oh, yes," Jerry said. "I promised to try to see things your way, didn't I? I'll try to cooperate with you, Dr. Elton." Jerry turned to the four officers. "Let's see now, these gear lockers are policemen, aren't they? How do you do, officers." He bowed to them, then looked aro
und him. "And," he said, "this is your office, Dr. Elton. A very impressive office. That thing you're sitting behind is not the chart table but your desk, I gather." He studied the desk intently. "All metal, with a gray finish, isn't it."
"All wood," Cedric said. "Walnut."
"Yes, of course," Jerry murmured. "How stupid of me. I really want to get into your reality, Gar … I mean, Dr. Elton. Or get you into mine. I'm the one who's at a disadvantage, though. Tied up, I can't get into the medicine locker and take a yellow pill like you can. Did you take one yet?"
"Not yet," Cedric said.
"Uh, why don't you describe your office to me, Dr. Elton?" Jerry said. "Let's make a game of it. Describe parts of things and then let me see if I can fill in the rest. Start with your desk. It's genuine walnut? An executive-style desk. Go on from there."
"All right," Cedric said. "Over here to my right is the intercom, made of gray plastic. And directly in front of me is the telephone."
"Stop," Jerry said. "Let me see if I can tell you your telephone number." He leaned over the desk and looked at the telephone, trying to keep his balance in spite of his arms being encased in the straitjacket. "Hm-m-m," he said, frowning. "Is the number Mulberry five dash nine oh three seven?"
"No," Cedric said. "It's Cedar sev—"
"Stop!" Jerry said. "Let me say it. It's Cedar seven dash four three nine nine."
"So you did read it and were just having your fun," Cedric snorted.
"If you say so," Jerry said.
"What other explanation can you have for the fact that it is my number, if you're unable to actually see reality?" Cedric said.
"You're absolutely right, Dr. Elton," Jerry said. "I think I understand the tricks my mind is playing on me now. I read the number on your phone, but it didn't enter my conscious awareness. Instead, it cloaked itself with the pattern of my delusion, so that consciously I pretended to look at a phone that I couldn't see, and I thought, 'His phone number will obviously be one he's familiar with.' The most probable is the home phone of Helena Fitzroy in Mars Port, so I gave you that, but it wasn't it. When you said Cedar, I knew right away it was your own apartment phone number."
Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 Page 24
