“So?”
“Did you ever live with a lunatic?” Ford asked. “I’m sure you didn’t. There’s a certain—effect—on sensitive people. The integrators are a damn sight more mentally suggestive than a human being.”
“You’re talking about induced madness,” Crockett said, and Ford nodded in a pleased fashion.
“An induced phase of madness, rather. The integrators can’t follow the madness pattern; they’re not capable of it. They’re simply radioatom brains. But they’re receptive. Take a blank phonograph record and play a tune—cut the wax and you’ll have a disk that will repeat the same thing over and over. Certain parts of the integrators were like blank records. Intangible parts that were the corollary of a finely tuned thinking apparatus. No free will is involved. The abnormally sensitive integrators recorded a mental pattern and are reproducing. Bronson’s pattern.”
“So,” Crockett said, “the machines have gone nuts.”
“No. Lunacy implies consciousness of self. The integrators record and repeat. Which is why six operators had to leave this station.”
“Well,” Crockett said, “so I am. Before I go crazy, too. It’s—rather nasty.”
“What’s it like?”
“I’d kill myself if it weren’t too much trouble,” the Irishman said succinctly.
Ford took out a celoflex notebook and spun the wheel. “I’ve a case history of Bronson here. D’you know anything about types of insanity?”
“Not much. Bronson—I used to know him. Sometimes he’d be way down in the dumps, and then again he’d be the life of the party.”
“Did he ever mention suicide?”
“Not that I know of.”
Ford nodded. “If he’d talked about it, he never would have done it. He w’as that type. A manic-depressive, moods of deep depression alternating with periods of elation. Early in the history of psychiatry, patients were classed in two groups; paranoia or dementia praecox. But that didn’t work. There was no line of demarcation; the types overlapped. Nowadays we have manic-depressive and schizophrenic. Schizoids can’t be cured; the other can. You, Mr. Crockett, are a manic-depressive type, easily influenced.”
“Yeah? That doesn’t mean I’m crazy, though.”
Ford grinned. “Scarcely. Like everyone else, you trend in a certain direction. If you ever became insane, you would be a manic-depressive. While I would be a schizophrenic, for I’m a schizoid type. Most psychologists are: it’s the outgrowth of a compensated complex, inferiority or superiority.”
“You mean—”
The doctor went on; he had a purpose in explaining these matters to Crockett. Complete understanding is part of tile therapy.
“Put it this way. Manic-depressives are fairly simple cases; they swing from elation to depression—a big swing, unlike the steady, quick pulse of a schizoid graph. It covers days, weeks, or months. When a manic-depressive type goes over the border, his worst period is on the descending curve—the down-beat. He sits and does nothing. He’s the most acutely miserable person on earth—sometimes so unhappy he even enjoys it. Not till the upcurve is reached doe.-, he change from passive to active. That’s when he. breaks chairs and requires a strait jacket.”
Crockett was interested now. He was applying Ford’s words to himself, which was the normal reaction.
“The schizoid, on the other hand,” Ford continued, “has no such simple prognosis. Anything can happen. You get the split personality, the mother fixations, and the complexes—Oedipus, return to childhood, persecution, the king complex—an infinite variety almost. A schizoid is incurable—but, luckily, a manic-depressive isn’t. Our ghost here is manic-depressive.”
The irishman had lost some of his ruddy color. “I’m beginning to get the idea.”
Ford nodded. “Bronson went insane here. The integrators were profoundly receptive. He killed himself on the downbeat of his manic-depressive curve, that period of intolerable depression, and the mental explosion—the sheer concentration of Bronson’s madness—impressed itself on the radioatom brains of the integrators. The phonograph record, remember. The electrical impulses from those brains keep sending out that pattern—the downbeat. And the integrators are so powerful that anyone in the station can’t help receiving the impressions.”
Crockett gulped and drank cold coffee. “My God! That’s—horrible!”
“It’s a ghost,” Ford said. “A perfectly logical ghost, the inevitable result of supersensitive thinking mechanisms. And you can’t use occupational therapy on an integrator.”
“Cigarette? Hm-m-m.” Crockett puffed smoke and scowled. “You’ve convinced me of one thing, doctor. I’m going to get out of here.”
Ford patted the air. “If my theory is correct, there’s a possible cure—by induction.”
“Eh?”
“Bronson could have been cured if he’d had treatment in time. There are therapies. Now”—Ford touched his notebook—“I have built up a complete picture of Bronson’s psychology. I have also located a manic-depressive who is almost a duplicate of Bronson—a very similar case history, background and character. A sick magnet can be cured by demagnetization.”
“Meanwhile,” Crockett said, with a relapse into morbidity, “we have a ghost.”
Nevertheless he became interested in Ford’s curious theories and the man’s therapies. This calm acceptance of superstitious legend—and proof!—had a fascination for the big Irishman. In Crockett’s blood ran the heritage of his Celtic forbears, a mysticism tempered with a hardened toughness. He had lately found the station’s atmosphere almost unendurable. Now—
The station was a self-contained unit, so that only one operator was necessary. The integrators themselves were like sealed lubrication joints; once built, they were perfect of their type, and required no repairs. Apparently nothing could go wrong with them—except, of course, induced psychic crack-up. And even that did not affect their efficiency. The intergrators continued to solve abstruse problems, and the answers were always right. A human brain would have gone completely haywire, but the radioatom brains simply fixed their manic-depressive downbeat pattern and continued to broadcast it—distressingly.
There were shadows in the station. After a few days Dr. Ford noticed those intangible, weary shadows that, vampiric, drew the life and the energy from everything. The sphere of influence extended beyond the station itself. Occasionally Crockett went topside and, muffled in his heat-unit parka, went off on dangerous hikes. He drove himself to the limits of exhaustion as though hoping to outpace the monstrous depression that crouched under the ice.
But the shadows darkened invisibly. The gray, leaden sky of the Antarctic had never depressed Crockett before; the distant mountains, gigantic ranges towering like Yrnir’s mythical brood, had not seemed sentient till now. They were half alive, too old, too tired to move, dully satisfied to remain stagnantly crouching on the everlasting horizon of the ice fields. As the glaciers ground down, leaden, powerful, infinitely weary, the tide of the downbeat thrust against Crockett. His healthy animal mind shrank back, failed, and was engulfed.
He fought against it, but the secret foe came by stealth and no wall could keep it out. It permeated him as by osmosis. It was treacherous and deadly.
Bronson, squatting in silence, his eyes fixed on nothing, sunk into a black pit that would prison him for eternity—Crockett pictured that and shuddered. Too often these days his thoughts went back to illogical tales he had read; M. R. James, and his predecessor Henry Janies; Bierce and May Sinclair and others who had written of impossible ghosts. Previously Crockett had-been able to enjoy ghost stories, getting a vicarious kick out of them, letting himself, for the moment, pretend to believe in the incredible. Can such things be? “Yes,” he had said, but he had not believed. Now there was a ghost in the station, and Ford’s logical theories could not battle Crockett’s age-old superstition-instinct.
Since hairy men crouched in caves there has been fear of the dark. The fanged carnivores roaring outside in the
night have not always been beasts. Psychology has changed them; the distorted, terrible sounds spawned in a place of peril—the lonely, menacing night beyond the firelight’s circle—have created trolls and werewolves, vampires and giants and women with hollow backs.
Yes—there is fear. But most of all, beating down active terror, came the passive, shrouding cloak of infinitely horrible depression.
The Irishman was no coward. Since Ford’s arrival, he had decided to stay, at least until the psychologist’s experiment had succeeded or failed. Nevertheless he was scarcely pleased by Ford’s guest, the manic-depressive the doctor had mentioned.
William Quayle looked not at all like Bronson, but the longer he stayed, the more he reminded Crockett of the other man. Quayle was a thin, dark, intense eyed man of about thirty, subject to fits of violent rage when anything displeased him. His cycle had a range of approximately one week. In that time he would swing from blackest depression to wild exultation. The pattern never varied. Nor did he seem affected by the ghost; Ford said that the intensity of the up-curve was so strong that it blocked the effect of the integrators’ downbeat radiation.
“I have his history,” Ford said. “He could have been cured easily at the sanitarium where I found him, but luckily I got my requisition in first. See how interested he’s getting in plastics?” They were in the Brainpan; Crockett was unwillingly giving the integrators a routine inspection. “Did he ever work in plastics before, Doc?” the Irishman asked. He felt like talking; silence only intensified the atmosphere that was murkiest here.
“No, but he’s dexterous. The work occupies his mind as well as his hands; it ties in with his psychology. It’s been three weeks, hasn’t it? And Quayle’s well on the road to sanity.”
“It’s done nothing for . . . for this.” Crockett waved toward the white towers.
“I know. Not yet—but wait a while. When Quayle’s completely cured, I think the integrators will absorb the effect of his therapy. Induction—the only possible treatment for a radioatom brain. Too bad Bronson was alone here for so long. He could have been cured if only—”
But Crockett didn’t like to think about that. “How about Quayle’s dreams?” Ford chuckled. “Hocus-pocus, eh? But in this case it’s justified. Quayle is troubled or he wouldn’t have gone mad. His troubles show up in dreams, distorted by the censor band. I have to translate them, figuring out the symbolism by what I know of Quayle himself. His word-association tests give me quite a lot of help.”
“How?”
“He’s been a misfit. It stemmed from his early relationships; he hated and feared his father, who was a tyrant. Quayle as a child was made to feel ho could never compete with anyone—he’d be sure to fail. He identifies his father with all his obstacles.”
Crockett nodded, idly watching a vernier. “You want to destroy his feeling toward his father, is that it?”
“The idea, rather, that his father has power. I must prove Ouayle’s capabilities to himself, and also alter his attitude that his father was infallible. Religious mania is tied in, too, perhaps naturally, but that’s a minor factor.”
“Ghosts!” Crockett said suddenly. He was staring at the nearest integrator.
In the cold clarity of the fluorescents Ford followed the other man’s gaze. He pursed his lips, turning to peer down the length of the great underground room, where the silent pillars stood huge and impassive.
“I know,” Ford said. “Don’t think I don’t feel it, too. But I’m fighting the thing, Crockett. That’s the difference. If I simply sat in a corner and absorbed that downbeat, it would get me. I keep active—personifying the down-beat as an antagonist.” The hard, tight face seemed to sharpen. “It’s the best way.”
“How much longer—
“We’re approaching the end. When Quayle’s cured, we’ll know definitely.”
—Bronson, crouching in shadows, sunk in apathetic, hopeless dejection, submerged in a blind blank horror so overwhelming that thought was an intolerable and useless effort—the will to fight gone, leaving only fear, and acceptance of the stifling, encroaching dark—
This was Bronson’s legacy. Yes, Crockett thought, ghosts existed. Now, in the Twenty-first Century. Perhaps never until now. Previously ghosts had been superstition. Here, in the station under the ice, shadows hung where there were no shadows. Crockett’s mind was assaulted continuously, sleeping or waking, by that fantastic haunting. His dreams were characterized by a formless, vast, unspeakable darkness that moved on him inexorably, while he tried to run on leaden feet.
But Quayle grew better.
Three weeks—four—five—and finally six passed. Crockett was haggard and miserable, feeling that this would be his prison till he died, that he could never leave it. But he stuck it out with dogged persistence. Ford maintained his integrity; he grew tighter, drier, more restrained. Not by word or act did he admit the potency of the psychic invasion.
But the integrators acquired personalities, for Crockett. They were demoniac, sullen, inhuman afreets crouching in the Brainpan, utterly heedless of the humans who tended them.
A blizzard whipped the icecap to turmoil; deprived of his trips topside. Crockett became more moody than ever. The automats, fully stocked, provided meals, or the three would have gone hungry. Crockett was too listless to do more than his routine duties, and Ford began to cast watchful glances in his direction. The tension did not slacken.
Had there been a change, even the slightest variation in the deadly monotony of the downbeat, there might have been hope. But the record was frozen forever in that single phase. Too hopeless and damned even for suicide, Crockett tried to keep a grip on his rocking sanity. He clung to one thought; presently Quayle would be cured, and the ghost would be laid.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the therapy succeeded. Dr. Ford, never sparing himself, tended Quayle with gentle care, guiding him toward sanity, providing himself as a crutch-on which the sick man could lean. Quayle leaned heavily, but the result was satisfying.
The integrators continued to pour out their downbeat pattern—but with a difference now.
Crockett noticed it first. He took Ford down to the Brainpan and asked the doctor for his reactions.
“Reactions? Why? Do you think there’s—”
“Just—feel it,” Crockett said, his eyes bright. “There’s a difference. Don’t you gel it?”
“Yeah,” Ford said slowly, after a long pause. “I think so. It’s hard to be sure.”
“Not if both of us feel the same thing.”
“That’s true. There’s a slackening—a cessation. Hm-m-in. What did you do today, Crockett?”
“Fb? Why—the usual. Oh, I picked up that Aldous Huxley book again.”
“Which you haven’t touched for weeks. It’s a good sign. The power of the downbeat is slackening. It won’t go on to an ascending curve, of course; it’ll just die out. Therapy by induction—when I cured Quayle, I automatically cured the integrators.” Ford took a long, deep, breath. Exhaustion seemed to settle down on him abruptly.
“You’ve done it, doc,” Crockett said, something like hero-worship in his eyes.
But Ford wasn’t listening. “I’m tired.” he muttered. “Oh, my God, I’m tired! The tension’s been terrific. Fighting that damned ghost every moment . . . I haven’t dared allow myself a sedative, even. Well, I’m going to break out the amytal now.”
“What about a drink? We ought to celebrate. If—” Crockett looked doubtfully at the nearest integrator. “If you’re sure.”
“There’s little, doubt about it. No, I want my sleep. That’s all!”
He took the lift and was drawn up out of sight. Left alone in the Brainpan, Crockett managed a lopsided grin. There were still shadows lurking in the distance, but they were fading.
He called the integrators an unprintable name. They remained imperturbable.
“Oh, sure,” Crockett said, “you’re just machines. Too damn sensitive, that’s all. Ghosts! Well, from now oh, I’m the boss. I’m
going to invite my friends up here and have one drunken party from sunrise to sunset. And the sun doesn’t set for a Jong time in these latitudes!”
On that cogent thought, he followed Ford. The psychologist was already asleep, breathing steadily, his face relaxed in tired lines. He looked older, Crockett thought. But who wouldn’t?” The pulse was lessening; the downbeat was fading. He could almost detect the ebb. That unreasoning depression was no longer all-powerful. He was—yeah!—beginning to make plans!
“I’m going to make chile,” Crockett decided. “The way that-guy in F! Paso showed me. And wash it down with Scotch. Even if I have to celebrate by myself, this calls for an orgy.” He thought doubtfully of Quayle, and looked in on the man. But Quayle was glancing over a late novel, and waved casually at his guest.
“Hi, Crockett. Anything new?”
“N-no. I just feel good.”
“So do I. Ford says I’m cured. The man’s a wonder.”
“He is,” Crockett agreed heartily. “Anything you want?”
“Nothing I can’t get for myself.” Quayle nodded toward the wall automat-slot. “I’m due to be released in a few days. You’ve treated me like a brother Christian, but I’ll be glad to get back home. There’s a job waiting for me—one I can fill without trouble.”
“Good. Wish I were going with you. But I’ve a two-year stretch up here, unless I quit or fainaigue a transfer.”
“You’ve got all the comforts of home.”
“Yeah!” Crockett said, shuddering slightly. He hurried off to prepare chile, fortifying himself with smoky-tasting, smooth whiskey. If only he wasn’t jumping the gun—Suppose the down-beat hadn’t been eliminated? Suppose that intolerable depression came back in all its force?
Crockett drank more whiskey. It helped.
Which, in itself, was cheering. Liquor intensifies the mood. Crockett had not dared touch it during the downbeat. But: now he just got happier, and finished his chile with an outburst of tuneless song. There was no way of checking the psychic emanation of the integrators with any instrument, of course; yet the cessation of that deadly atmosphere had unmistakable significance.
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