PURE FIRE!
It scorched my throat like acid! I couldn't talk! He watched me carefully. Then he said, "Ah, no convulsions. Which means the fusel oil has distilled off. Can you still see?" I coughed. "Of course I can see. Good Gods! What is this?" "The very finest Kentucky bourbon or possibly white mule. One of the many gifts to Heavens from the planet Earth. I learned how to make it from a professor there in a higher institute of learning called Bellevue." A glow was springing out of my stomach. My alarm faded. Actually, I suddenly felt very good. I looked around. I said, "I see you also have a lot of books." He smiled at the shelf. "They're a bit dog-eared now, but Noble Stuffy insisted they be brought for me from the townhouse long ago. He seemed to think I might need them." I stared at their titles. The letters? didn't make any sense. "Psychology, psychiatry," said Crobe, "and all the works of Sigmund Freud. All the basic texts of psychotherapy on Earth. But they won't let me use it here. They are very unenlightened and retarded. I could clean out this whole asylum for them but every day they gag me before they let the cleaning crew in. However, I have lots of friends, such as yourself, dropping around all the time. Have another shot?" He poured me one from a jug and then took one himself. He shuddered as it went down. He said, "Gods!" and after a second, "but that's good." Then he sighed. "I wish they'd let me have some retorts, for without them I can't make LSD. So you'll just have to be content. Drink up." I threw down the second drink. It sizzled like the first. But shortly, the room looked quite rosy. "Well, we've wasted enough time," said Crobe, glancing at his wrist where he had no watch. "I have other patients coming in, so you'll just have to rush it a bit. Now lie down on the couch and start talking." I lay back. I said, "What about?" "Does it matter?" he said. "We will simply begin by free association. You leave it to me. Just say anything that jumps into your head." Well, of course, the first thing that jumped into my head was the continual plotting of my family to manage my life for me. I said, "If my book is not a success, I am finished utterly. My uncles will crush me into some awful job or I'll have to marry that ghastly Lady Corsa and spend my life, much like you, in a cultural desert, Modon, an exile." "Ah," he said, "trouble with your mother!" "How did you know?" I said. "Obvious," he said. "Sigmund Freud covered it like a blanket. An Oedipus complex! I can get to the bottom of your case at once. It is a classic example of psycho-pathology. You see, there is the anal passive, followed by the anal erotic. Then there is the oral passive, followed by the oral erotic. There is also the genual stage but no one ever really reaches that. These are ALL the mental stages there are. Everything is based on sex. Sex is the single and only motivation for all behavior. So there you are." I thought maybe it was the white mule. "I don't quite understand." "That's because you have yet to achieve insight into your condition," said Crobe. "But it is VERY plain to me. Your mother did not let you play with her nipples when you were a baby. Correct?" "I don't think so," I said. "Itbu see? And that inhibited your natural sexual outlets! ALL your trouble with your family comes from that. This will inhibit you from freedom of expression and movement. The cure is simple. Just face up to the fact-and you MUST face up to it-that you are arrested in the oral erotic stage. You will NEVER find any remission of symptoms unless you ride roughshod over your repression and find yourself a nice young man and practice, unremittingly, fellatio" I stared at him. "I see I am being too technical for a layman. I am giving you pure Freud. Your insanity can be cured only by a life of dedication to making love only to young boys and men-orally, of course. Now, I am sorry," and he glanced at his watchless wrist, "but your appointment is over for the day. However, you are now cured so you need not come back. My calendar is overfull."
I rose up from the couch. "Well, I certainly thank you for your therapy," I said. "And I can understand how busy you must be, but do you mind if I ask you for your professional opinion?" "About what?" said Crobe. I got out some puffsticks-I had taken to smoking them since I had seen that all the reporters did at the Ink Club. I offered one to Crobe and was about to light it for him when he ate it. I didn't know they were comestible. I lit my own. "Doctor Crobe," I said, "you may very well have been illegally incarcerated here." "I've said so all the time," he replied. "These barbarians do not appreciate professional technology." "Do you know the man who put you here?" "I certainly do. I saw him issue the order. I would have run away at once the way I am supposed to, but they restrained me." "So you know that it was Jettero Heller." He flinched a little, looked around. We were still alone. He nodded. "What is your professional opinion of that man?" Crobe sat back. He rubbed his overlong nose. He stroked his overlong chin. Finally, he said, "You can appreciate that I have made a considerable study of Jettero Heller. Our doctor-patient relationship goes back many years. He disregarded my earliest advices to him and so, you understand, I cannot be held responsible for his mental state. Had I been permitted to give him true professional help-his physiomental composition was entirely wrong for Mission Earth-none of this ever would have happened." He sighed and then he tapped the top of his radio. "I have, of course, followed his subsequent career, but anything I have heard of him only confirms my first spontaneous analysis." He shook his head sadly. Then he got busy fortifying himself with a long gurgle of white mule, after which he sat and stared out into space. "What was that analysis?" I prompted. Crobe recalled himself. "Of what?" he said. "Jettero Heller," I prompted, eagerly. "Oh, him. Well, I can tell you but you must remind me to explain if I go in too deep for a layman to follow. It is a very difficult case, not well covered in some points by the textbooks. "To begin with, he likes height. This is very grave, for it is a deviation from normal alto-phobia. I know, therefore, that he suffers from alto-libido" I stared. "Yes, very grave," said Crobe. "But that is far from all. He likes to go very fast. This is a condition of velocitus-libido. "The next symptom is no less strange. Everyone knows that people are just riffraff, yet-and I witnessed this myself in the early days when he was my patient-he is pleasant to people. This shows that he has urbanus-populi-libido. Very bad. "He also erects a facade of pretending to be fair to others-an utter sham, but it takes many people in, since it is, in fact, a fixation. An utterly craven insistence on justice for others. This detects that he has justitious-Iibido. "Now his record-although it is very confidential, he is no longer my patient and I can disclose it to you– shows that he is very athletic. He runs and jumps and exercises and engages in sports. This reveals deep-seated lascivus-libido-roughly translated from professional language, a love of sports. Damning. "Libido means a desire, craving or love of something. But in Heller's case, it is a deviation since it is NOT confined to sex. As the word libido is used constantly by Freud to describe the gravest mental conditions, you can begin to see where this is leading us with Heller. "Now, were it to stop there, possibly we could classify the man only as extremely neurotic. But unfortunately, it doesn't. A resume of his career discloses that he persists until he gets a job done. This puts us in very dangerous waters. According to the best texts, it means," and he paused and frowned, "that he is achiever-oriented! "Nor is this alclass="underline" unlike the normal person, he does not get confused or dispersed easily. According to the most exacting psychology authorities, this is equally bad. He is GOAL-ORIENTED!" Crobe sat back and sadly looked at the floor. "Actually, I hate to tell you the last and worst thing, it is so very awful." "Oh, you must," I said. "Well, it is pretty technical," said Crobe. "While it is just standard Earth psychology, it may exceed your grasp. Now let me define the word schizo for you: it means split or divided like two of something. Do you follow that?" I said that I did. "Very well," continued Crobe, "then you must realize that schizophrenia is a very dreadful psychosis. A schizophrenic is an insane person, as any psychologist or psychiatrist on Earth will tell you. "And so, to return to the case we are examining, you are aware that he once called himself Jettero Heller." "That's right," I said. "But NOW," said Crobe, with a meaningful look, "he calls himself the Duke of Manco! TWO NAMES! TWO IDENTITIES! SCHIZOPHRENIA!" He sat back and shook his head. "So we are forced, then, to conclude that the man in question is totally, utterly and completely insane! "HE should be the one in here. Not I!" He sat for some time, lost in thought. Then he said, "But I should not be spending my valuable time discussing this with a layman. It is a matter only understood, in its awful enormity, by fully trained Earth professionals. You must excuse me now. I have to get busy making more white mule." He started to get out of his chair.
I stopped him from rising. "Wait!" I said. "My business is not done." I pointed at the bars which divided the room. It was very dark in the other half and I had not been able to see clearly. There was a swivel glowplate at the top of the couch. I tipped it up so it would shine through the bars into the gloom. A shadowy shape was sitting there, a sort of small mountain on the floor. The chin lifted and the light struck into yellow eyes.