“Here is part of your problem, Mr. Richards. Your blood work reveals that you have not been taking your VitaMinds. VitaMinds build strong personalities twelve ways with their complement of essential elements, like lithium, as well as a well-chosen mix of hormone balancers.”
There was a feeling of pressure as the fluid forced itself into his veins, which gradually subsided. The hypodermic withdrew into the robot’s finger. Much to his surprise, Norm realized that he actually did feel better.
“As to my professional capabilities, you have evidently forgotten that my parallel processing network directly mimics the structure of human consciousness. Thus I can gain additional insight into the condition of my patients through introspection and even through interior modeling.
“For example, even though your legal name is Philip Richards, your cur-rent personality has named itself Norm. This is a not unusual reaction to stress, to the fear of being considered odd. One of the earliest writers about life on other planets took the pen-name ‘Normal Bean’ to assure his readers that he was not as strange as his stories might indicate. The typesetter corrupted the name to ‘Norman.’
“In your case, the important thing is to identify the source of the stress...”
There was a moment of silence, and then a painful eruption of static from the speaker. Steele seemed to have frozen in position. Norm got up carefully from the couch.
Needles erupted from each of Steele’s fingers. The robot’s arm swung at Norm—
—And missed, hitting the shelf of books to one side. Only they weren’t really books, Norm saw, they were only covers, the hollow shells you sometimes see in furniture stores. Civilization and its Discontents and Modem Man in Search of a Soul fluttered to the floor like dying seagulls. Steele’s arm continued its arc. The robot fell to the carpet and lay there paralyzed, in a fetal position.
Norm edged around the collapsed mound of plastic and aluminum, and then sprinted for the door.
“It’s the business about having a baby, isn’t it?” Margery said tightly.
“I really don’t know.…” Norm muttered, not willing to meet her eyes. In the old days, you could ignore people and postpone embarrassing conversations while driving a car, pleading the necessity of safety, of keeping your eyes on the road. Now the car’s computer followed the microwave mini-beacons embedded in the roadway and you were forced to face each other.
“You went to all the Zero Population Growth meetings,” Margery continued, as if she had not heard him. “You nodded when they told you how irresponsible it is to add further strain to the biosphere. You applauded the Women’s Equality candidates telling you how much fairer it was to let me realize my potential through a career, rather than being tied to babies and a home.
“But the truth is, no matter how smart and liberal your mind is, your body has the conservatism of millions of years of evolution. Nothing means anything if I can’t produce an heir, preferably a male heir, to Blackacre.”
“I’m sure I never said anything of the kind,” Norm protested. “Besides which, I don’t own any Blackacre.”
Margery dabbed at her eyes. “No, you never did. Whenever you could tear yourself away from your work, you tried to be sensitive and supportive. But that’s the problem, don’t you see? That’s the strain Steele was talking about before he had that cybernetic seizure, or whatever it was. Your conscious mind doesn’t blame me for being sterile, but the real you, way down deep, can’t handle it. That’s why you’ve fragmented in different personalities.”
Norm considered this. It made sense, in a storybook way, but it just didn’t feel right. Looking at Margery’s reddened eyes, he was struck with a pang of guilt. Maybe it was time to look beyond his own circle of troubles and consider the people he might be hurting.
“I hope you won’t take this wrong,” he began, “but I am grasping at anything that might help me put my past together. Have children been important to me? Is that why I married you?”
To Norm’s relief, Margery smiled. “I used to tell you that you married me because it was cheaper than paying my hourly fee. We met because you were looking for someone to construct a data ferret for you. The same one that was blinking on the monitor this morning. As a free-lance librarian, my job is to assemble odd bits of information from out-of-the-way places into a meaningful, and hopefully profitable, whole.
“You seemed to think that anybody who could do that was really special, which was flattering.” Margery shrugged self-consciously. “On the other hand, you were surprised when I said I was fascinated by anybody who was actually composing an opera. We saw a lot of each other professionally, and then not so professionally.”
“Margery,” Norm began, “I think—”
The tracy on his wrist began to chime insistently. Irritated, he hit the Accept button. A face appeared on the diminutive screen.
“Phil, thank goodness I got through to you.” A man’s face, fleshy and balding, peered up at him. “We’re having real problems with the score. Get down as soon as you can, or Richard IV may be history.”
A man in an old-fashioned business suit stood alone on the stage. Violins fretted in the darkness around him, like worried mosquitoes.
Richard Nixon! Or rather, Norm thought, entering the opera house, a baritone singing in a purposely uncertain voice. A whole complex of memories suddenly emerged from the shadows of his mind and settled into place. For years, he had wanted to do an opera on the president who, more than any other, embodied the Aristotelian idea of the tragic hero. A small-town Quaker who understood international politics better than any of his American contemporaries. A politician as uncomfortable with ordinary voters as with the elites. Who had, in fact, incurred the undying enmity of the elites by unmasking one of their own, Alger Hiss, as a traitor, something for which they never forgave him. A man brought down not so much by vice as by inferior virtues, having chosen loyalty over honesty, expedience over courage.
“Phil, great to see you. We need a few more bars of music to cover the scene changes in the second act.” The speaker was Manny Hirschbaum, his producer. Manny thought Norm’s view of Nixon was right-wing fantasy but, oddly enough, was not bothered by that. “After all,” he had explained soon after they began working together, “there are lots of folks who think that Shakespeare’s take on Richard III is pure Tudor propaganda. Maybe they’re right, but who cares! If you want facts, go read a history book.”
Norman tore himself away from these suddenly blossoming memories. “A few bars of music are worth an emergency call on my tracy?” he asked.
Manny frowned. “I didn’t call. I just figured you showed up ’cause you’re psychic. Glad to have you here, though.” He hurried backstage before Norm could think of a reply.
Wondering if this was further evidence that he was losing his mind, Norm looked at Margery for support. “That was his voice,” she confirmed hesitantly, “and that sure looked like him, at least as much as anybody looks like anybody in a tracy.”
That was reassuring, but another worry immediately took its place. “How am I supposed to provide him the music he wants? I don’t even know where the score is.”
Margery held up the electronic notebook. “You are always forgetting this. So I always try to remember it for you.”