Bad Medicine | Page 5

Mr. Follansby cleared his throat. "I was just thinking, Mr. Rath. About that Martian
machine. It won't treat a Terran homicidal case as homicidal, will it?"
"Of course not. Homicide is unknown on Mars."
"Yes. But what will it do? Might it not reject the entire case as unsuitable? Then the
customer would merely return the Regenerator with a complaint and we would--"
Mr. Rath shook his head. "The Rex Regenerator must treat if it finds evidence of
psychosis. By Martian standards, the customer is a very sick man, a psychotic--no matter
what is wrong with him."
Follansby removed his pince-nez and polished them rapidly. "What will the machine do,
then?"
"It will treat him for the Martian illness most analogous to his case. Feem desire, I should
imagine, with various complications. As for what will happen once treatment begins, I
don't know. I doubt whether anyone knows, since it has never happened before. Offhand,
I would say there are two major alternatives: the patient may reject the therapy out of
hand, in which case he is left with his homicidal mania unabated. Or he may accept the
Martian therapy and reach a cure."
Mr. Follansby's face brightened. "Ah! A cure is possible!"
"You don't understand," Rath said. "He may effect a cure of his nonexistent Martian
psychosis. But to cure something that is not there is, in effect, to erect a gratuitous
delusional system. You might say that the machine would work in reverse, producing
psychosis instead of removing it."
Mr. Follansby groaned and leaned against a Bell Psychosomatica.
"The result," Rath summed up, "would be to convince the customer that he was a Martian.
A sane Martian, naturally."
Haskins suddenly shouted, "I remember! I remember now! He said he worked for the

New York Rapid Transit Corporation! I remember distinctly!"
"That's a break," Rath said, reaching for the telephone.
Haskins wiped his perspiring face in relief. "And I just remembered something else that
should make it easier still."
"What?"
"The customer said he had been an alcoholic at one time. I'm sure of it, because he was
interested at first in the IBM Alcoholic Reliever, until I talked him out of it. He had red
hair, you know, and I've had a theory for some time about red-headedness and alcoholism.
It seems--"
"Excellent," Rath said. "Alcoholism will be on his records. It narrows the search
considerably."
As he dialed the NYRT Corporation, the expression on his craglike face was almost
pleasant.
It was good, for a change, to find that a human could retain some significant facts.
-- -- -- -- --
"But surely you remember your goricae?" the Regenerator was saying.
"No," Caswell answered wearily.
"Tell me, then, about your juvenile experiences with the thorastrian fleep."
"Never had any."
"Hmm. Blockage," muttered the machine. "Resentment. Repression. Are you sure you
don't remember your goricae and what it meant to you? The experience is universal."
"Not for me," Caswell said, swallowing a yawn.
He had been undergoing mechanotherapy for close to four hours and it struck him as
futile. For a while, he had talked voluntarily about his childhood, his mother and father,
his older brother. But the Regenerator had asked him to put aside those fantasies. The
patient's relationships to an imaginary parent or sibling, it explained, were unworkable
and of minor importance psychologically. The important thing was the patient's
feelings--both revealed and repressed--toward his goricae.
"Aw, look," Caswell complained, "I don't even know what a goricae is."
"Of course you do. You just won't let yourself know."
"I don't know. Tell me."

"It would be better if you told me."
"How can I?" Caswell raged. "I don't know!"
"What do you imagine a goricae would be?"
"A forest fire," Caswell said. "A salt tablet. A jar of denatured alcohol. A small
screwdriver. Am I getting warm? A notebook. A revolver--"
"These associations are meaningful," the Regenerator assured him. "Your attempt at
randomness shows a clearly underlying pattern. Do you begin to recognize it?"
"What in hell is a goricae?" Caswell roared.
"The tree that nourished you during infancy, and well into puberty, if my theory about
you is correct. Inadvertently, the goricae stifled your necessary rejection of the feem
desire. This in turn gave rise to your present urge to dwark someone in a vlendish
manner."
"No tree nourished me."
"You cannot recall the experience?"
"Of course not. It never happened."
"You are sure of that?"
"Positive."
"Not even the tiniest bit of doubt?"
"No! No goricae ever nourished me. Look, I can break off these sessions at any time,
right?"
"Of course," the Regenerator said. "But it would not be advisable at this moment. You are
expressing anger, resentment, fear. By your rigidly summary rejection--"
"Nuts," said Caswell, and pulled off the headband.
-- -- -- --