Beyond Bedlam

by Wyman Guin

  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-