"'No need,' I told her. 'See? It's okay.'
"She stared at the thing as if it were alive, even running a hand over it, to make sure. Then she hung it on the tree.
"'Won't you have a seat for a moment, Mr. Crenson?' she said. 'I'll let Dr. Rudo know you're here.'
"She moved toward the intercom on her desk, and I was about to ask her where that rest room was - so I could get rid of my water - when an inner door opened and Dr. Rudo came into the reception area. He was a six-footer, blond and blue-eyed, who put on a professional smile and extended his hand as he came up to me.
"'Mr. Crenson,' he said. 'It is good to meet you. I am Pan Rudo. Won't you come into my office?' His voice was rich and resonant, his teeth very white.
"'Thanks,' I said.
"He held the door for me and I entered the next room. It was brighter than I'd thought it might be, with a few pastoral watercolors bearing his signature and architectural etchings signed by others on the walls, another oriental rug on the floor, lots of reds and blues in it. A large aquarium occupied a table to the left of the door, bright fish darting and drifting within it, a chain of bubbles along a rear corner.
"'Have a seat,' he told me, his speech slightly accented - German, and maybe something else - and he gestured toward a big, comfortable-looking leather chair facing his desk.
"I took the chair. He moved around the desk and seated himself. He smiled again, picking up a pencil and rolling it between his hands.
"'Everybody who comes here has problems,' he began, maintaining eye-contact.
"I nodded.
"'I'm no exception, I guess,' I told him. 'It's hard to know how to begin, though.'
"'There are certain broad categories most people's probblems fall into,' he said. 'Family, the people you work with....'
"'No problems there,' I said. The pressure of holding the water was bothering me, and I looked around for a suitable container into which I might deposit it. A metal wastebasket would have been fine, but I couldn't see one anywhere about.
"'Money? Sex?' he suggested.
"'No, I've got plenty of money, and I get laid pretty regular,' I said, wondering whether I could move it beyond his window and let it go. Only, it was even farther away than the one in the reception area.
"I shifted in the chair and checked out the other side of the room.
"'Mr. Crenson, is something bothering you - I mean something physical - right now?' he asked.
"'Yeah, I admitted, 'I'm having trouble holding my water.'
"'There is a rest room outside,' he said, beginning to rise. 'I'll show you -'
"'Not that way. I mean, like this water is sort of - in my head, I guess.'
"He froze. He stared at me.
"'I'm afraid I don't understand exactly what you mean,' he said then. 'Water - in your head?'
"I grinned.
"'Well, yes and no; I said. 'I was speaking sort of - figuratively. I mean, there's this water from my coat and I'm holding it with my mind and it's getting to be sort of a strain. So I should put it somewhere. Maybe I will just take it to that rest room and dump it there, if you'll show me -'
"'Mr. Crenson, do you know what a defense mechanism is?' he asked.
"'Sure, I've been doing my homework. It's something you do or say or think to keep from doing or saying or thinking something else you really want to but for some reason are afraid to. Oh, you think that's what this is. No, it's real water, and I'm carrying it and can make it be anywhere I want it to be inside of about a ten-foot radius from where I am right now - I think.'
"He smiled.
"'Then why don't you deposit it in the fish tank?' he said. 'And we can get on with our conversation.'
"'That's not a bad idea,' I said. 'It's pretty full, though.'
"'That's all right,' he said.
"So I moved the water into the tank. Immediately, the thing overflowed. Dr. Rudo's eyes widened as he watched the water run down the sides and spill onto the floor. Then he gave me a strange look and reached out and worked his intercom.
"'Mrs. Weiler, would you come in here a moment?' he said. 'And bring a mop and a pail? We've had a small accident. Thank you.'
"Then he lowered himself back into his chair and studied me for several seconds.
Perhaps you should begin by telling me how you did what you just did,' he said.
"'It's kind of long and involved,' I said. 'On the other hand. It's also the cause of the problem I came to see you about.'
"Take your time,' he told me.
"'It was back in September of '46,' I began, 'the day Jetboy died....'
"Mrs. Weiler came in a couple of minutes later and was about to mop the wet area. I beat her to it and transported it all from the floor into the bucket. She stepped back and stared after the splash occurred.
"'Just take it away,' Dr. Rudo told her. 'Then phone everyone who has an appointment this afternoon. Cancel all of them.
"'Go ahead, Mr. Crenson, the whole story, please,' he said then, after she'd left.
"So I told him what it was like, and the thing that made my case different from all the others - how I fear sleeping more than anything else, and the things I do to postpone it. He questioned me at great length about the sleeping; and that was the first time I can remember hearing the word dauerschlaf. He seemed taken by my case and its parallels to an experimental European therapy technique he'd apparently once had something to do with. Also, as it turned out, he had heard of my case; and from the way he quoted medical journals, it seemed he'd read every important paper published on the wild card virus.
"I talked all afternoon. I told him about my family and old Bentley and the second-story work I used to do. I told him about my transformations, about my friends, about some of the scrapes I'd been involved in. I found myself starting to like the guy. I'd never really talked that way to anybody before. He seemed fascinated by the jokers and aces, by the different manifestations of the wild card virus I'd seen. Got me to talking about them at some length, shaking his head at my descriptions of some of the worst joker cases I've known. Even got into a long philosophical discussion with me as to what I thought it might be doing to the whole human race. I told him that not too many nats dated jokers, if it was the genetic angle he was thinking about, but he just kept shaking his head and said that wasn't the point, that their existing at all was like a cancer on human life in general, that you had to think of it sociologically as well as biologically. I allowed as he could have a point, but that it seemed one of those 'So what?' points. The situation was already in place, and the real questions involved what you were going to do about it. He agreed with me then, saying that he hoped it would be soon.
"Most of all, he seemed fascinated by my long sleeps - my dauerschlafen - and the way they pulled me apart and put me back together again. He questioned me about them at great length - how I felt going into them, coming out of them, whether I remembered anything that happened during them, whether I had any dreams while they were in progress. Then he told me about dauerschlaf as a form of therapy, of how his earlier work in Europe had involved the production of prolonged comas in non-wild card patients, by means of drugs and hypnosis, to capitalize on the remarkable recuperative abilities of the body and mind during sleep. He'd apparently gotten some very positive results with this, which was one of the reasons he found my case intriguing. The parallel struck him so forcibly, he said, that he would want to pursue the matter for that reason alone, even if he couldn't do more than adjust my feelings otherwise. But he felt that it could also be the means for doing even more for me."