Bad Medicine | Page 5

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.
-- -- -- -- --
The silence was wonderful. Caswell stood up, yawned, stretched and massaged the back of his neck. He stood in front of the humming black machine and gave it a long leer.
"You couldn't cure me of a common cold," he told it.
Stiffly he walked the length of the living room and returned to the Regenerator.
"Lousy fake!" he shouted.
Caswell went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of beer. His revolver was still on the table, gleaming dully.
Magnessen! You unspeakable treacherous filth! You fiend incarnate! You inhuman, hideous monster! Someone must destroy you, Magnessen! Someone....
Someone? He himself would have to do it. Only he knew the bottomless depths of Magnessen's depravity, his viciousness, his disgusting lust for power.
Yes, it was his duty, Caswell thought. But strangely, the knowledge brought him no pleasure.
After all, Magnessen was his friend.
He stood up, ready for action. He tucked the revolver into his right-hand coat pocket and glanced at the kitchen clock. Nearly six-thirty. Magnessen would be home now, gulping his dinner, grinning over his plans.
This was the perfect time to take him.
Caswell strode to the door, opened it, started through, and stopped.
A thought had crossed his mind, a thought so tremendously involved, so meaningful, so far-reaching in its implications that he was stirred to his depths. Caswell tried desperately