John Brunner - The Whole Man

Singh placed his elbows on the desk, looked down at his hands, and meticulously put the tips of the fingers together. Without raising has head, he said, “In effect, what you want to know is what Ilse Kronstadt can possibly be doing here that we regard as more important than a UN pacification operation.”

Hemmikaini blinked. After a pause, he nodded. “Since you put it so bluntly, I’ll agree to that.”

Singh made a musing sound. He said, “it’s Southern Africa again, I suppose?’

“A fair guess, if you’ve been reading newspapers. But I’ll make one correction.” Hemmikaini leaned forward impressively. “It’s not just ‘Southern Africa again ’, in that tone of voice! Ever since the Black Trek, when half the South African labor force walked out of the country, it’s been a thorn in our flesh — was previously, for pity’s sake! We’ve gone back and back to tidy up after each successive burst of terrorism and violence, and we thought we’d finally solved the problem. We haven’t — quite. But this time we want to do what we’ve been hoping to do ever since we first had telepathists to help us.”

“You want to stop it before it happens,” Singh murmured.

“Correct. We have nearly enough data now — Makerakera has been there for three months, with all the staff we can spare. But the deadline is too close. We need Ilse Kronstadt, to beat it.”

Singh got up from the desk abruptly and strode to the window. Thumbing the switch to “full transparency’, he gazed out over Ulan Bator. His back to Hemmikaini, he said, “You can’t have her, I’m afraid.”

“What?” Hemmikaini bridled. “Now look here, Dr. Singh—!” He checked, realizing the brusqueness of his tone, and went on more politely, “Is that Dr. Kronstadt’s answer?’

“I have no idea. The request hasn’t even been put to her.”

“Then what in hell’s name do you mean?” Hemmikaini made no attempt to remain calm this time.

“You must presumably have wondered,” Singh said, “why Ilse left the UN Pacification Agency, where she virtually pioneered the techniques of non-violent control that have subsequently become standard practice.”

“Yes, of course I have,” Hemmikaini snapped.

“And-?”

“Well — well, I guess I assumed she wanted a change. She worked herself to exhaustion often enough, for pity’s sake!”

“Further than exhaustion, Mr Hemmikaini.” Singh turned now, and the light from the window caught the greying tips of his hair and beard. “Ilse Kronstadt is the next best thing to a dead woman.”

Hemmikaini’s bright pink lips parted. No sound emerged.

“Customarily,” Singh went on inexorably, “someone as indispensable as Ilse is watched by doctors, psychologists, a horde of experts. There was a succession of crises a few years ago—India, Indonesia, Portugal, Latvia, Guiana, in a stream — and these precautions were temporarily let slide. Afterwards we discovered a malignant tumor in Ilse’s brain. If we’d caught it early enough, we could have extricated it micro-surgically; a little later, and we could have used ultrasound or focused electron beams. As it happens, there is now no way of removing it short of major surgery from below the cortex.”

“Oh, my God,” said Hemmikaini. He wasn’t looking at Singh. Probably he couldn’t. “You mean you’d have to cut through her telepathic organ to get to it.”

“Precisely.”

“Does she know?”

“Have you ever tried to keep a secret from a telepathist? Only another telepathist can manage it, and in Ilse’s case I’m not sure anyone else has been born who could keep her out if she was really determined. She’s capable of handling the total personality of another human being, you know — or the ‘I-now’ awareness of about a dozen simultaneously.”

Singh turned his hand over in the air as though spilling a pile of dust from the palm. “You can’t have her, Mr Hemmikaini. So long as she’s here, we can keep her alive and husband her energy for her. She’s not an invalid, exactly — she lives a life similar to anyone else’s on the staff — but she only undertakes one type of work, and that seldom.”

“Because of the strain?’

“Naturally.”

Hemmikaini licked his lips. “What work does she do, then?” “Do you know what a catapathic grouping is?” Singh asked. On the answering headshake, he amplified. “It’s a bastard word, coined from ‘catalepsy’ and ‘telepathic’, of course. Every now and again a telepathist turns out to be an inadequate personality. Maybe he tackles a job too big for him. Maybe he just can’t face the responsibilities that go with his talent. Or maybe he finds the world generally insupportable.” He thought briefly of Howson, crippled, undersized, and hurried on.

“He prefers to retreat into fugue and make a fantasy world which is more tolerable. Well, everyone does that occasionally. A telepathist, though, can do it on the grand scale. He can provide himself with an audience — as many as eight people, if he’s powerful — and take them into fugue with him. We call them ‘reflective personalities’; they mirror and feed the telepathist’s ego.

“When that happens, they forget not just the world but even their bodies. They don’t feel hunger or thirst or pain. And as you’d expect, they don’t want to wake up.”

“Do they never wake up?” Hemmikaini demanded.

“Oh, eventually. But you see, not feeling hunger and thirst doesn’t mean they don’t exist. After five to seven days there is irreversible damage to the brain, and what does finally wake them is the sinking of the telepathist’s power below the level at which he can maintain the complex linkage. And by then, they’re past hope.”

“What’s this got to do with Ilse Kronstadt ?”

“Even an inadequate telepathist is precious,” Singh said. “There is one chance to save a catapathic grouping, if they’re found in time. You have to break into the fantasy world and make it even less tolerable than reality. And Ilse is the one person alive who can consistently succeed. So you see, Mr Hemmikaini” — he permitted himself a grim smile — “I do have an answer to your question: what can possibly be more important as a job for Ilse than a major UN pacification assignment? She’s saved almost two dozen telepathists for the future; collectively, they’ve done far more than she could even as a well woman.”

Hemmikaini was silent for a while. At length he asked, “How long has she got to live?’

“She might die of exhaustion during her next therapeutic session. She might live five years. It’s a guess.”

Again, silence. Then the UN man pulled himself together and rose. “Thank you for the explanation, Dr. Singh,” he muttered. “We’ll just have to make do with our second-best, I suppose.”

It was later in the day that, moved by an unaccountable impulse, Singh went up to the apartment in the west wing of the hospital where Ilse Kronstadt lived. He found her sitting at a typewriter, her fine-boned hands flying over the keys like hummingbirds, the air full of the soft hum of the motor.

“Come in, Pan,” she invited. “One moment and I’ll be with you.”

Singh complied, closing the door. He could not help looking at her, thinking of the way she had changed since he first knew her. The fair hair had gone absolutely white; the strong face was networked with wrinkles, and the healthy tan of her skin was turning to a waxen pallor.

“Yes, Pan, I know,” she said gently. She stripped the paper from the machine and turned to face him. “It makes me frightened sometimes… That’s why I’m exorcising it, of course.”

“What do you mean?” Singh muttered.

“I’ve decided to write my autobiography,” she answered. A mischievous grin crossed her face. “A certain seller, they tell me! Oh, sit down, Pan! No need to be ceremonious with me, is there? Especially since I sent for you.”