Orson Card: Capitol

"I'll hold you to that, doctor. Because I won't laugh. And I won't tell you something silly. I'll tell you the worst thing of all."

Only if you want to.

"I have to. Oh, God, help me. I'm not an old woman, doctor. I'm only thirty-eight. I haven't seen a mirror since I woke up after my amnesia, but even if I'm ugly now, doctor, I was once quite a pretty young woman. Doctor, I-- even this might sound silly, but it's true-- I haven't been particularly inhibited, sexually, during my life."

It doesn't seem to be expected these days.

"And I don't regret that. But in college, I was strapped for money. Maybe you don't remember the recession of the seventies, doctor, but my parents couldn't keep me in school any longer and I was determined to get an education. So I started-- I started charging for it."

For sex?

"I was a whore. I'd make appointments through a couple of men I had had as lovers. I charged twenty dollars. I was cheap. But I stayed in college."

You aren't the first woman to have done that.

"I know it. That isn't it, it isn't that I disapprove, though I do. I mean, I disapprove now, but until I woke up just now I never did. What matters is that I can't believe I ever did it."

Yet you remember that you did.

"But I wouldn't do that!"

But you did it. You're just denying the truth.

"I know, I know it, but doctor, in the name of God I swear I would never, never, never do that. It is impossible. I can't live with myself having done that!" [Patient weeps uncontrollably.]

It's just one thing, Lydia.

"It's not. It's the way I wore my makeup, deliberately to be seductive. I can see myself sitting there at the mirror, relishing the effect. The memory makes me sick. And the way I always let my father run my life. For years I did whatever he said to do. I was so sorry when he died. Now I'm glad he's dead. And that's terrible, because I remembered that I loved him. Why should I forget how much I loved him?"

I don't know.

"Because he was a selfish, controlling bastard, that's why. Oh, I can't believe I said that. I don't use language like that, doctor. I sleep with men for money, but I don't use language like that. I'm going crazy, doctor. I'm losing my mind. Nothing in my life seems to fit together anymore. I keep wanting to kill myself."

I hope you won't.

"Do you think these pains in my stomach could be cancer?"

We can have that checked.

"If I have cancer, doctor, I'll kill myself. That would be the last straw."

We'll have you checked. But don't talk about killing yourself.

"I'm sorry. I've never talked that way before. I don't know why I'm talking like that now. Thanks for listening to me, Dr. Rines. Am I really insane?"

You sound quite healthy to me.

"Really? You wouldn't lie?"

I would lie, if I thought it would do any good. But right now I'm not lying.

"Thank you. Thank you very much."

I'll see you tomorrow.

When George saw her the next day, she was catatonic and would not speak.

George examined the dossier that had been vaulted away along with her body when she first went on somec. The dossier on Marian Williamson, not on Lydia Harper. The woman was a ruthless businesswoman, had ruined dozens of other men and women in her race to the top of the business world. She couldn't cope with failure-- she stated that in her own autobiography. She refused to be thwarted, even by cancer. That was why she had taken somec.

The autobiography also mentioned a psychotherapist in Boston, and George used government funds to bring him out to Berkeley.

"Dr. Manwaring, you don't know how much I appreciate your coming."

"When you explained the situation, how could I refuse?"

"I'm going to ask you to violate your ethics, doctor. You know the situation Marian Williamson is in. It would help us a lot to understand what happened to her if you could tell us what she was. like before the somec."

"It's unethical, all right, but I knew that's what you'd want to know, and that's why I came out. I'm prepared to help. I'm sure she'd approve of my violating her confidence if it might help to save her life. She's in favor of survival. Or rather, of survival on the best possible terms."

George Rines showed him transcripts of the dialogues with Marian Williamson, who now believed herself to be Lydia Harper.

"This is odd," Dr. Manwaring pointed out.

"I know," George said. "How odd?"

"Well, I should tell you that I don't believe in a soul. I don't even believe in a mind, apart from brain activity. But I don't know how to explain this without resorting to something like that."

"You haven't told me what you're trying to explain."

"Marian Williamson was a very religious woman. Not in any formal way, of course. Not with any organization. But she believed profoundly in God. And believed that he was taking a direct role in her life. Whenever she overcame a rival for a position in her business, she ascribed the victory to God. Actually, of course, she had undercut the poor devil and eaten the ground out from under him. Or her. She had no favoritism for either sex. She'd shaft anybody. But, you see, in this dialogue it could be Marian. 'Oh, God, help me,' she says. I think she says that in three of the dialogues, doesn't she?"

"Yes.

"And something else. This sex thing. Marian had an active sex life. She was no prude. Never married, never had children, but certainly knew plenty of men and tasted the fruits of the garden of Eden, so to speak. But this passage in the last dialogue, where she talks about selling herself. That was very important to her. She'd neyer sleep with anybody who ever worked in her field. She never involved her business in her love life. She was very emphatic about that-- sex was for love, not for money. You see? This could have been her. Not the speech patterns, necessarily, I'm not an expert on that. But from what you told me of somec, there shouldn't be any survival of memory, should there?"

"Only learned memory is erased. Instinct remains."

"I'm a behaviorist of sorts, Dr. Rines, and I just find it impossible to ascribe this to instinct. Bedwetting and fingersucking I can accept. Even homosexuality might be carried on the genes. But the environment has to have some influence."

"I don't know that much about the different schools of thought."

"I suppose it isn't all that significant. I'm just telling you where I come from, because that makes my conclusion from all this surprise even me."

"Conclusion?"

"Hypothesis. Remarkable things are carried on the genes. Things we never supposed. A proclivity for surmounting all obstacles. A tendency to divorce sex from business. How can that be genetic? All I can guess is that something in the DNA, or a relationship between various proteins, is compatible with certain responses to the environment and incompatible with others. It's in the genes. In which case, what the hell is a psychotherapist good for?"

George shrugged. "I've always wondered that."

For a moment Dr. Manwaring looked annoyed. Theo he laughed. "So have I. We don't help very many people, and we never help the people who need help the most. You aren't a psychotherapist, are you? Yet I would have been pleased, despite all my years of training, if one of my dialogues with Marian Williamson had gone so smoothly."

"Thank you. You've been a tremendous help."

"Let me read the paper you write."

"I will. You don't mind my using a tape of this conversation?"

"Not at all. What are you going to call it?"

"Call what?"

"This effect. How about, 'The Soul Syndrome.'"

"Scientists who talk seriously about the soul get laughed out of symposiums, Dr. Manwaring."

"Then at least do me a favor and title the article 'The Discovery of the Soul.' Because I think that's what you found here. It may not live on after death, but it sure as hell is an inner force that controls the outer actions. The genuine unconscious. Freud would be proud of you. Even though Freud was an idiot."