its monolithic base. The bird's piping doubled and then choked
off as it veered frantically from Bill. After a while, far off
through the park, it released a fading protest of song.
Above Bill, the towering statue of the great Alfred Mor-
ris blackened against the sunset. The hollowed granite eyes
bore down on him out of an undecipherable dark... the
ancient, implacable face of the Medicorps. As if to pro-
nounce a sentence on his present crimes by a magical dis-
closure of the weight of centuries, a pool of sulphurous light
and leaf shadows danced on the painted plaque at the base
of the statue:
On this spot in' the Gregorian year 1996, Alfred Morris
announced to an assembly of war survivors the hypothal-
amic block. His stirring words were, "The new drug se-
lectively halts at the thalamic brain the upward flow of
unconscious stimuli and the downward flow of unconscious
motivations. It acts as a screen between the cerebrum and
the psychosomatic discharge system. Using hypothalamic
block, we will not act emotively, we will initiate acts only
from the logical demands of situations."
This announcement and the subsequent wholehearted ac-
tion of the war-weary people made the taking of hypothal-
amic block obligatory. This put an end to the powerful
play of unconscious mind in the public and private af-
fairs of the ancient world. It ended the great paranoid
wars and saved mankind.
In the strange evening light, the letters seemed alive, a cen-
turies-old condemnation of any who might try to go back to
the ancient pre-pharmacy days. Of course, it was not really
possible to go back. Without drugs, everybody and all society
would fall apart.
The ancients had first learned to keep endocrine deviates
such as the diabetic alive with drugs. Later they learned with
other drugs to "cure" the far more prevalent disease, schizoph-
renia, that was jamming their hospitals. This big change
came when the ancients used these same drugs on everyone to
control the private and public irrationality of their time and
stop the wars.
In this new, drugged world, the schizophrene thrived better
than any, and the world became patterned on him. But, just
as the diabetic was still diabetic, the schizophrene was still
himself, plus the drugs. Meanwhile, everyone had forgotten
what it was the drugs did to youthat the emotions experi-
enced were blurred emotions, that insight was at an isolated
level of rationality because the drugs kept true feelings
from ever emerging.
How inconceivable it would be to Helen and the other
people of this world to live on as little drug as possible . . . to
experience the conflicting emotions, the interplay of passion
and logic that almost tore you apart! Sober, the ancients
called it, and they lived that way most of the time, with
only the occasional crude and club-like effects of alcohol or
narcotics to relieve their chronic anxiety.
By taking as little hypothalamic block as possible, he and
Clara were able to desire their fantastic attachment, to delight
in an absolutely illogical situation unheard of in their society. .
But the society would judge their refusal to take hypothalamic
block in only one sense. The weight of this judgment stood
before him in the smouldering words, "It ended the great
paranoid wars and saved mankind."
When Clara did appear, she was searching myopically in
the wrong vicinity of the statue. He did not call to her at
once, letting the sight of her smooth out the tensions in him,
convert all the conflicts into this one intense longing to be
with her.
Her halting search for him was deeply touching, like that of
a tragic little puppet in a darkening dumbshow. He saw sud-
denly how like puppets the two of them were. They were
moved by the strengthening wires of a new life of feeling to
batter clumsily at an implacable stage setting that would
finally leave them as bits of wood and paper.
Then suddenly in his arms Clara was at the same time
hungrily moving and tense with fear of discovery. Little
sounds of love and fear choked each other in her throat. Her
blonde head pressed tightly into his shoulder and she clung
to him with desperation.
She said, "Conrad was disturbed by my tension this morn-
ing and made me take a sleeping compound. I've just awak-
ened."
They walked to her home in silence and even in the dark-
ened apartment they used only the primitive monosyllables of
apprehensive need. Beyond these mere sounds of compas-
sion, they had long ago said all that could be said.
Because Bill was the hyperalter, he had no fear that Con-
rad could force a shift on him. When later they lay in dark-
ness, he allowed himself to drift into a brief slumber. Without
the sleeping compound, distorted events came and went
without reason. Dreaming, the ancients had called it. It was
one of the most frightening things that bad begun to happen
when he first cut down on the drugs. Now, in the few sec-
onds that he dozed, a thousand fragments of incidental knowl-
edge, historical reading and emotional need melded and, in a
strange contrast to their present tranquillity, he was dream-
ing a frightful moment in the 20th Century. These are the
great paranoid wars, he thought. And it was so because he
had thought it.
He searched frantically through the glove compartment of
an ancient car. "Wait," he pleaded. "I tell you we have sul-
phonamide-14. We've been taking it regularly as directed. We
took a double dose back in Paterson because there were
soft-bombs all through that part of Jersey and we didn't
know what would be declared Plague Area next."
Now Bill threw things out of his satchel on to the floor
and seat of the car, fumbling deeper by the flashlight Clara
held. His heart beat thickly with terror. Then he remem-
bered his pharmacase. Oh, why hadn't they remembered sooner
about their pharmacases. Bill tore at the belt about his waist.
The Medicorps captain stepped back from the door of their
car. He jerked his head at the dark form of the corporal
standing in the roadway. "Shoot them. Run the car off the
embankment before you burn it."
Bill screamed metallically through the speaker of his radia-
tion mask. "Wait. I've found it." He thrust the pharmacase
out the door of the car. "This is a pharmacase," he ex-
plained. "We keep our drugs in one of these and it's belted
to our waist so we are never without them."
The captain of the Medicorps came back. He inspected the
pharmacase and the drugs and returned it. "From now on,
keep your drugs handy. Take them without fail according to
radio instructions. Do you understand?"
Clara's head pressed heavily against Bill's shoulder, and
he could hear the tinny sound of her sobbing through the
speaker of her mask.
The captain stepped into the road again. "Well have to
bum your car. You passed through a Plague Area and it
can't be sterilized on this route. About a mile up this
road you'll come to a sterlization unit. Stop and have your
person and belongings rayed. After that, keep walking, but
stick to the road. You'll be shot if you're caught off it."
The road was crowded with fleeing people. Their way was