Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

“All right,” Cedric said. “Over here to my right is the intercom, made of gray plastic. And directly in front of me is the telephone.”

“Stop,” Jerry said, “Let me see if I can tell you your telephone number.” He leaned over the desk and looked at the teleph6ne, trying to keep his balance in spite of his arms being encased in the strait jacket. “Hm-m-m,” he said, frowning. “Is the number Mulberry five dash nine oh three seven?”

“No,” Cedric said. “It’s Cedar sev—”

“Stop!” Jerry said. “Let me say it. It’s Cedar seven dash four three nine nine.”

“So you did read it and were just having your fun,” Cedric snorted.

“If you say so,” Jerry said.

“What other explanation can you have for the fact that it is my number, if you’re unable to actually see reality?” Cedric said.

“You’re absolutely right, Dr. Elton,” Jerry said. “I think I understand the tricks my mind is playing on me now. I read the number on your phone, but it didn’t enter my conscious awareness. Instead, it cloaked itself with the pattern of my delusion, so that consciously I pretended to look at a phone that I couldn’t see, and I thought, ‘His phone number will obviously be one he’s familiar with. The most probable is the home phone of Helena Fitzroy in Mars Port, so I gave you that, but it wasn’t it. When you said Cedar I knew right away it was your own apartment phone number.”

Cedric sat perfectly still. Mulberry 5-9037 was actually Helena’s apartment phone number. He hadn’t recognized it until Gerald Bocek told him.

“Now you’re beginning to understand,” Cedric said after a moment. “Once you realize that your mind has walled off your consciousness from reality, and is substituting a rationalized pattern of symbology in its place, it shouldn’t be long until you break through. Once you manage to see one thing as it really is, the rest of the delusion will disappear.”

“I understand now,” Jerry said gravely. “Let’s have some more of it. Maybe I’ll catch on.”

They spent an hour at it. Toward the end Jerry was able to finish the descriptions of things with very little error.

“You are definitely beginning to get through,” Cedric said with enthusiasm.

Jerry hesitated. “I suppose so,” he said. “I must. But on the conscious level I have the idea—a rationalization, of course—that I am beginning to catch on to the pattern of your imagination so that when you give me one or two key elements I can fill in the rest. But I’m going to try, really try—Dr. Elton.”

“Fine,” Cedric said heartily. “I’ll see you tomorrow, same time. We should make the breakthrough then.”

When the four officers had taken Gerald Bocek away, Cedric went into the outer office.

“Cancel the rest of my appointments,” he said.

“But why?” Helena protested.

“Because I’m upset!” Cedric said. “How did a madman whom I never knew until yesterday know your phone number?”

“He could have looked it up in the phone book.”

“Locked in a room in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital?” Cedric said. “How did he know your name yesterday?”

“Why,” Helena said, “all he had to do was read it on my desk here.”

Cedric looked down at the brass name plate.

“Yes,” he grunted. “Of course. I’d forgotten about that, I’m so accustomed to it being there that I never see it.”

He turned abruptly and went back into his office,

He sat down at his desk, then got up and went into the sterile whiteness of his compact laboratory. Ignoring the impressive battery of electronic instruments he went to the medicine cabinet. Inside, on the top shelf, was the glass stoppered bottle he wanted. Inside it were a hundred vivid yellow pills. He shook out one and put the bottle away, then went back into his office. He sat down, placing the yellow pill in the center of the white note pad.

There was a brief knock on the door to the reception room and the door opened. Helena came in.

“I’ve canceled all your other appointments for today,” she said. “Why don’t you go out to the golf course? A change will do you—” She saw the yellow pill in the center of the white note pad and stopped.

“Why do you look so frightened?” Cedric said, “Is it because, if I take this little yellow pill, you’ll cease to exist?”

“Don’t joke,” Helena said.

“I’m not joking,” Cedric said. “Out there, when you mentioned about your brass name plate on your desk, when I looked down it was blurred for just a second, then became sharply distinct and solid. And into my head popped the memory that the first thing I do when I have to get a new receptionist is get a brass name plate for her, and when she quits I make her a present of it.”

“But that’s the truth,” Helena said. “You told me all about it when I started working for you. You also told me that while you still had your reason about you I was to solemnly promise that I would never accept an invitation from you for dinner or anything else, because business could not mix with pleasure. Do you remember that?”

“I remember,” Cedric said. “A nice pat rationalization in any man’s reality to make the rejection be my own before you could have time to reject me yourself. Preserving the ego is the first principle of madness.”

“But it isn’t!” Helena said. “Oh, darling, I’m here! This is real! I don’t care if you fire me or not. I’ve loved you forever, and you mustn’t let that mass murderer get you down. I actually think he isn’t insane at all, but has just figured out a way to seem insane so he won’t have to pay for his crime.”

“You think so?” Cedric said, interested. “It’s a possibility. But he would have to be as good a psychiatrist as I am— You see? Delusions of grandeur.”

“Sure,” Helena said, laughing thinly. “Napoleon was obviously insane because he thought he was Napoleon.”

“Perhaps,” Cedric said. “But you must admit that if you are real, my taking this yellow pill isn’t going to change that, but only confirm the fact.”

“And make it impossible for you to do your work for a week,” Helena said.

“A small price to pay for sanity,” Cedric said. “No, I’m going to take it.”

“You aren’t!” Helena said, reaching for it.

Cedric picked it up an instant before she could get it. As she tried to get it away from him, he evaded her and put it in his mouth. A loud gulp showed he had swallowed it.

He sat back and looked up at Helena curiously.

“Tell me, Helena,” he said gently. “Did you know all the time that you were only a creature of my imagination? The reason I want to know is—”

He closed his eyes and clutched his head in his hands.

“God!” he groaned “I feel like I’m dying! I didn’t feel like this the other time I took one.” Suddenly his mind steadied, and his thoughts cleared. He opened his eyes.

On the chart table in front of him the bottle of yellow pills lay on its side, pills scattered all over the table. On the other side of the control room lay Jerry Bocek, his back propped against one of the four gear lockers, sound asleep, with so many ropes wrapped around him that it would probably be impossible for him to stand up.

Against the far wall were three other gear lockers, two of them with their paint badly scorched, the third with its door half melted off.

And in various positions about the control room were the half-charred bodies of five blue-scaled Venusian lizards.

A dull ache rose in Gar’s chest. Helena Fitzroy was gone. Gone, when she had just confessed she loved him.

Unbidden, a memory came into Gar’s mind. Dr. Cedric Elton was the psychiatrist who had examined him when he got his pilot’s license for third-class freighters—