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
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 schi
zophrenic 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.
FB2 document info
Document ID: 87e109d5-ab6f-43da-85bf-f42d63a2f8d6
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 12.4.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.10 software
Document authors :
Wyman Guin
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/