John Brunner - The Whole Man

Shyly, the children followed him into the lounge and sat down on a sofa opposite the chair he had taken, at a loss for anything to say. Howson had not had anything to do with children for many years; he felt almost equally tongue-tied.

“Maybe your mother has told you about me,” he ventured. “I’m called Gerry — Gerry Howson. I used to know your mother when she was — uh — before she met your daddy. You’re Jill, aren’t you? And—?”

“I’m Bobby,” said the boy. “Er — do you live near here, Mr Howson ?”

“No, I live at Ulan Bator. I’m a doctor at the big hospital there.”

“A doctor!” This began to thaw Jill’s shyness. She leaned forward excitedly. “Ooh! I’m going to be a nurse when I grow up.”

“How about you, Bobby ? Do you want to be a doctor ?”

“No, I don’t,” said the boy rather slightingly. “I want to be a Mars pilot or a submarine captain,” Then he relented, and with a gravity exactly imitated from some stiff-mannered adult, he added, “I’m sure a doctor’s work is very interesting, though.”

“Mr Howson,” said Jill with a puzzled expression, “if you’re a doctor, why have you got a bad leg? Can’t you have it fixed?”

“Jill!” exclaimed Bobby, horrified. “You know you shouldn’t say things like that to people!”

He was being grown-up, thought Howson with amusement. “I don’t mind,” he said. “No, Jill, I can’t have it fixed. I was born like it, and now there’s nothing than can be done. Besides, I’m not that kind of doctor. I—” He recollected Birberger’s halting, naive description of his work, and finished, “I look into sick people’s minds and tell what’s wrong with them.”

Bobby’s adult manners vanished in a wave of surprise. “You mean you’re a crazy doctor ?”

“Well, now!” Howson countered with a hint of a smile, “I don’t think ‘crazy’ is a very nice word. The people who come to my hospital are pretty much the same as anybody — they just need help because life has got too complicated for them.”

They didn’t contest the statement, but their scepticism was apparent. Howson sighed. “How would you like me to tell you a story about my work?” he suggested. “I used to tell stories to your mother, and she enjoyed it.”

“Depends on the story,” said Bobby cautiously. Jill had been sitting in wide-eyed wonder since Howson’s revelation that he was a “crazy doctor’. Now she spoke up in support of her brother.

“I don’t think we’d like a story about crazy people,” she said doubtfully.

“It’s very exciting,” Howson promised quietly. “Much more exciting than being a spaceman or a submarine captain, really. I have a wonderful job.” He found time to ask himself when he had last realized how completely he meant that declaration before he went on.

“Suppose I tell you about this person who came to my hospital…”

The technique came back to him as though he had used it yesterday, instead of eleven years before. Gently he projected the hint that the children should shut their eyes, just as he had done long ago for the deaf-and-dumb girl whose mind was closed to anything but bright plain images and rich sensory impressions.

First… A hospital ward: efficiency, confidence, kindliness. Pretty nurses — Jill could be one of them for an instant, calming a patient whose face reflected gratitude.

Now…A glance inside the patient’s mind. Nightmare: but not a child’s nightmare, which would have been too terrifying for them. An adult nightmare, rather — too complex for them to recognize more than its superficial nature.

And then… Sharp, well-defined images: the patient running through the corridors of his own mind pursued by monsters from his subconscious; running for help and finding none until the presence of the doctor suggested reassurance and comfort. Then the harrying horrors paused in their chase: armed themselves with weapons which they could create merely by thinking, patient and doctor together cowed the things, drove them back, cornered them — and they were not.

It was a compound of half a dozen cases he had handled as a novice, simple, vigorous and exciting without being too fearful. When he had done, Howson broke the link and suggested that they open their eyes again.

“Goodness!” said Bobby with considerable new respect. “I didn’t know it was like that at all!”

Jill was about to confirm his reaction when she glanced through the open door into the hallway and bounced to her feet. “There’s Mummy!” she exclaimed. “Mummy, here’s somebody to see you — he’s been telling us such an exciting story like the ones he used to tell you!”

Mary Williams pushed the door fully open and looked at Howson. Her face — rather coarse, as he remembered it, but showing more personality and cleverly made up — set in a frozen stare. Through lips which barely opened she said, “That was nice of him. Now you run along so I can talk to Mr How-son on my own.”

Obediently the children started for the door. “Will you tell us some more stories some time, please?” Jill threw over her shoulder as she went out.

“If you like,” Howson promised, smiling, and when they had gone added to Mary, “Two fine children you have there!”

She ignored the remark. With her face still icy cold and empty, she said, “Well, Gerry ? So you’ve come back to plague me, have you?”

Howson waited in blank astonishment for a few seconds. When she did not amplify this amazing statement, he got to his feet. “I came to find out how you were getting on,” he snapped. “If you call it plaguing you, I’ll go. Right now!”

He picked up his valise, half-expecting her to open the door and say it was good riddance. Instead, she burst into tears.

“Mary!” he exclaimed, and realized and added aloud in the same moment: “Why, that’s the first time I’ve ever called you by name! And we knew each other pretty well, didn’t we?”

She mastered her sobs, and gestured for him to sit down again. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly. It was amazing how completely she had learned to use her artificial vocal cords; unless one looked carefully for the scar on her throat it was impossible to detect they had been inserted by the hand of man. “It just took me by surprise, I guess. It — it’s nice of you to call, Gerry.”

“But what did you mean when you said I’d come to plague you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She moved to the place where Jill had been sitting, and waved vaguely at her surroundings — the room, the house, the whole suburb. “Now you have come, what have you found ? An ordinary housewife with a couple of ordinary kids and a decent enough guy for a husband. You can find a million people like me wherever you go. Only—”

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and sat up, crossing her legs. “Only seeing you reminded me of what I was going to be… That was why I stopped coming to see you.”

“I think I understand,” Howson said faintly. A cold weight was settling in the pit of his stomach. “But I never suspected there was anything wrong. You seemed so happy!”

“Oh — I guess I didn’t really suspect it myself.” She stared past him at the plain pastel walls. “It was after I came home that I realized. You remember how — in the stories you used to tell me — I was always beautiful and sought after, and I could hear and talk like anyone else.” She gave a harsh laugh.

“Well, the only part that came true was the ‘like anyone else’! I thought I’d got over it — until I came through the door and saw you sitting there. And it reminded me that instead of being the — the princess in the fairy tale, I’m plain Mary Williams the West Walnut housewife, and I shall never be anything else.”