John Brunner - The Whole Man

“It reminds me,” Singh said with ghastly calmness, “of the stage at the end of a performance of Hamlet.”

Bodies everywhere! Only — not bodies yet. Wax-pale, they sat or lay immobile, on chairs, couches, stacked cushions, nine of them in a circle around the tenth: a plump man with a Eurasian cast of features, relaxed in a padded arm-chair and wearing a splendid silk robe. At his side, as though this moment removed and set down, lay a pair of old-fashioned horn-rim spectacles. And that was, therefore, Hugh Choong.

Howson’s fists clenched ridiculously. Like a badly jointed puppet he limped towards the trance-lost telepathist, the violence of his anger fouling the air.

Damn you, damn you, damn you—

“Gerry!” Singh’s words lanced into his brain. “You can’t reach him, so don’t waste the effort!”

Howson’s rage, punctured, faded to nothing, leaving only a sick apathy. He made an empty gesture and turned his back.

“Where he’s gone, he doesn’t want anyone to reach him.”

“I’m not so sure,” Singh countered. “Look!” He strode over the soft carpet towards the wall-mounted phone and pointed to something on a low table close by. Howson’s lack-lustre gaze followed him.

“There’s a time-switch on the phone, and it’s set for eight tomorrow morning. And this is a recorder. Let’s see what it says.” He lifted up the small device, cased in a fine lacquered box, and discovered that it was connected to the phone by a gossamer-weight flex. A tug snapped the link; he depressed the replay switch.

At once a firm voice rang out.

“This is Hugh Choong in the penthouse. Good morning. Please do not be alarmed at this recorded message, which is set to repeat in case you don’t take it all in at one go.

“Please contact the director in chief of the WHO therapy centre, Dr. Pandit Singh. Inform him of my identity, and request him or one of his senior aides to come and see me. The elevator door is set to open automatically, so he will have no difficulty in entering. Thank you!”

“Shut it off!” said Howson savagely. “So he had it all worked out! The best of therapy, for no good reason! And now, I presume—” He broke off, his mouth working.

“Yes, Gerry ?” Singh prompted.

“You know exactly what I was going to say!” Howson flared. “Now somebody’s got to go in after him, drag him out of fugue by force, waste time and effort that ought to go to somebody who needs it!”

“As far as I’m concerned, Gerry,” said Singh in a tone he did not need to colour with reproof, “the fact that Hugh Choong is here, in this state, makes him a person in need of therapy. Am I wrong ?”

Howson flushed. He made as though to contradict, but before he had a chance to speak the ambulance attendants came from the freight elevator, and Singh’s entire attention went over to the supervision of their work.

Howson drew back into a corner out of the way, and gazed at the waxwork calm of Choong’s face as they manhandled him on to his stretcher, completing his statement for himself alone.

No, damn you. That’s why there’s such a stench of smugness reeking around you! You can’t have needed help, because you’ve taken so much care to make sure of getting it!

And you will — damn you again. They’ll make me chase after you into that nowhere-land, destroy your dreams, pester and persecute you till you come back. And I’ll take on the job, because this is all I have: my skill that nobody in the world can match.

So who will come after me, to help me, Choong? Who else is there? Damn you to hell.

His bitterness was still growing, accentuated by his lack of sleep, when the special conference convened next afternoon. For any ordinary patient, a place on the regular daily agenda sufficed; for anyone else in UN employ, at most a multi-line phone link was used to discuss the case. But for Choong the high executives came swarming in by Mach Five express.

In the chair reserved for him at Singh’s right, he sat trying to think of unimportant matters — the long low sea-green ceiling, the exquisite crafting of the beechwood furniture. He failed. He was much too aware of the guiltily curious stares of the strangers, which asked as clearly as a direct telepathic signal: The world’s greatest curative telepathist? Him?

He could barely prevent himself from blasting at them aloud: “What the hell did you expect, anyway ? A superman ? A pair of horns?”

Fortunately their attention had been distracted by the arrival of copies of the physical examination reports on Choong and his companions. Now they were doggedly ploughing through a welter of detail, hoping to save themselves from asking ignorant questions later and looking foolish.

Except one, he suddenly realized. Lockspeiser, the big Canadian with the red face and the bald patch on his crown, had shut his folder of papers and pushed it away. That was an honest action, anyway…

“Excuse me being blunt, Dr. Singh,” the Canadian said. “But this stuff is for doctors, and I’m not one. I’m an allegedly practical politician working with the Trade Co-ordination Commission, and my interest in Dr. Choong is confined to the fact that he was supposed to arbitrate in the balance-of-credits crisis you may have heard about — the Sino-Indonesian mess. It was hell’s own job cooling people’s tempers to the point where they’d accept an outside referee, and they want Choong or nobody. That’s what counts with me. Can we skip the jargon and boil out some hard facts now ?”

So he had been running away from a job, had he ? The idea was oddly comforting to Howson. For seconds only, though. Singh raised his head.

“Had he been notified that his services were required ?”

“I don’t know,” Lockspeiser grunted. “I warned his Hong Kong office, naturally. You’re from there, aren’t you?” He glanced at the worried Chinese opposite him, who had been presented to the meeting as Mr Jeremy Ho.

“Yes. Ah—” Ho looked very unhappy. “The answer to Dr. Singh’s question is negative. We hadn’t heard from Dr. Choong in over a week.”

“And it didn’t bother you?” Lockspeiser asked incredulously.

“Put it the other way around: we didn’t — don’t — bother Dr. Choong.” Ho’s tone was mildly reproachful. “We assumed he was making one of his regular study-tours. He goes off to sound out public opinion, gathering background data which may prove useful in the future. Only he can say what’s important to him.”

Singh gave a polite cough. “I don’t think we need pursue this any further. We’ve located Choong; our immediate difficulty is getting to him. We’d better concentrate on that.”

“Agreed.” That was the self-possessed woman with auburn hair, age — probably — thirty-five to forty, in black and green, who sat a little apart from her neighbour Lockspeiser. Her status was so far unknown to Howson, and he was curious about her. He was certain she was a telepathist, but when he had made the automatic polite approach to her he had been met by a well-disciplined mental gesture equivalent to a cool shrug. It was effectively a snub, and it had upset him.

Singh blinked at the woman. “Thank you, Miss Moreno. Now I understand from you that nothing of importance is known about Dr. Choong’s companions. Correct?”

Miss Moreno gave an emphatic nod. “None of them has come to our attention previously,” she confirmed.

“Our attention?” Howson said. All eyes switched to him, and instantly switched away again, except Miss Moreno’s. Her answer was prompt and casual.

“World Intelligence, Dr. Howson.”

Of course. When a man who holds the key to peace over a sixth of the globe defaults, you’d expect them to come running. Embarrassed at his own lack of perspicacity, and more troubled than ever at her refusal to acknowledge him on a telepathic level, Howson mumbled something indistinct.