Fox drew his fist back.
Martyn's guest had half-turned in his seat. He was watching, relaxed and interested.
The big man's face turned abruptly, as if someone had spoken to him. He stared at an invisible something a yard away, and his raised arm slowly dropped. He appeared to be listening. Gradually his face lost its anger and became sullen. He muttered something, looking down at his hands. Then he turned to the wizened man and spoke, apparently in apology: the little man waved his hand as if to say, Forget it, and turned back to his drink.
The big man slumped again on the bar stool, shaking his head and muttering. Then he scooped up his change from the bar, got up and walked out. Someone else took his place almost immediately.
"That happens every night, like clockwork," said Martyn. "That's why they serve him. He never does any harm, and he never will. He's a good customer."
The dark little man was facing him alertly once more. "And?"
"A year and a half ago," Martyn said, "no place in the Loop would let him in the door, and he had a police record as long as your arm. He liked to get drunk, and when he got drunk he liked to start fights. Compulsive. No cure for it, even if there were facilities for such cases. He's still incurable. He's just the same as he was -- just as manic, just as hostile. But -- he doesn't cause any trouble now."
"All right, doctor, I check to you. Why not?"
"He's got an analogue," said Martyn. "In the classical sense, he is even less sane than he was before. He has auditory, visual and tactile hallucinations -- a complete integrated set. That's enough to get you entry to most institutions, crowded as they are. But, you see, these hallucinations are pro-societal. They were put there, deliberately. He's an acceptable member of society, because he has them."
The dark man looked half irritated, half interested. He said, "He sees things. What does he see, exactly, and what does it say to him?"
"Nobody knows that except himself. A policeman, maybe, or his mother as she looked when he was a child. Someone whom he fears, and whose authority he acknowledges. The subconscious has its own mechanism for creating these false images; all we do is stimulate it -- it does the rest. Usually, we think, it just warns him, and in most cases that's enough. A word from the right person at the right moment is enough to prevent ninety-nine out of a hundred crimes. But in extreme cases, the analogue can actually oppose the patient physically -- as far as he's concerned, that is. The hallucination is complete, as I told you."
"Sounds like a good notion."
"A very good notion -- rightly handled. In ten years it will cut down the number of persons institutionalized for insanity to the point where we can actually hope to make some progress, both in study and treatment, with those that are left."
"Sort of a personal guardian angel, tailored to fit," said the dark man.
"That's exactly it. The analogue always fits the patient because it is the patient -- a part of his own mind, working against his conscious purposes when they cross the prohibition we lay down. Even an exceptionally intelligent man can't defeat his analogue, because the analogue is just as intelligent. Even knowing you've had the treatment doesn't help, although ordinarily the patient doesn't know. The analogue, to the patient, is absolutely indistinguishable from a real person -- but it doesn't have any of a real person's weaknesses."
The other grinned. "Could I get one to keep me from drawing to inside straights?"
Martyn did not smile. "That isn't quite as funny as it sounds. There's a very real possibility that you could, about ten years from now... If Kusko has his way -- and that's exactly what I want you to help prevent."
The tall, black-haired young man got out of the pickup and strolled jauntily into the hotel lobby. He wasn't thinking about what he was going to do; his mind was cheerfully occupied with the decoration of the enormous loft he had just rented on the lower East Side. It might be better, he thought, to put both couches along one wall, and arrange the bar opposite. Or put the Capehart there, with an easy chair on either side?
The small lobby was empty except for the clerk behind his minuscule counter and the elevator operator lounging beside the cage. The young man walked confidently forward.
"Yes, sir?" said the clerk.
"Listen," said the young man, "there's a man leaning out a window upstairs, shouting for help. He looks sick."
"What? Show me."
The clerk and the elevator operator followed him out to the sidewalk. The young man pointed to two open windows. "It was one of those, the ones in the middle on the top floor."
"Thanks, mister."
The young man said, "Sure," and watched the two hurry into the elevator. When the doors closed behind them, he strolled in again and watched the indicator rise. Then, for the first time, he looked down at the blue rug. It was almost new, not fastened down, and just the right size. He bent and picked up the end of it.
"Drop it," said a voice.
The young man looked up in surprise. It was the man, the same man that had stopped him yesterday in the furniture store. Was he being followed?
He dropped the rug. "I thought I saw a coin under there."
"I know what you thought," the man said. "Beat it."
The young man walked out to his pickup and drove away. He felt chilly inside. Suppose this happened every time he wanted to take something -- ?
The dark man looked shrewdly at Martyn. "All right, doctor. Spill the rest of it. This Dr. Kusko you keep talking about -- he's the head of the Institute, right? The guy who developed this process in the first place."
"That's true," said Martyn, heavily.
"And you say he's a paranoid. Doesn't that mean he's crazy? Are you asking me to believe a crazy man could invent a thing like this?"
Martyn winced. "No, he isn't crazy. He's legally as sane as you or I, and even medically we would only call him disturbed. What we mean when we speak of a paranoid is simply that -- well, here is a man who, if he did become insane, would be a paranoiac. He belongs to that type. Meanwhile, he has unreal attitudes about his own greatness and about the hostility of other people. He's a dangerous man. He believes that he is the one man who is right-standing on a pinnacle of rightness -- and he'll do anything, anything, to stay there."
"For instance?" the dark man said.
"The Institute," Martyn told him, "has already arranged for a staff of lobbyists to start working for the first phase of its program when the world legislature returns to session this fall. Here's what they want for a beginning:
"One, analogue treatment for all persons convicted of crime 'while temporarily insane,' as a substitute for either institutionalization or punishment. They will argue that society's real purpose is to prevent the repetition of the crime, not to punish."
"They'll be right," said the dark man.
"Of course. Second, they want government support for a vast and rapid expansion of analogue services. The goal is to restore useful citizens to society, and to ease pressure on institutions, both corrective and punitive."
"Why not?"
"No reason why not -- if it would stop there. But it won't." Martyn took a deep breath and clasped his long fingers together on the table. It was very clear to him, but he realized that it was a difficult thing for a layman to see -- or even for a technically competent man in his own field. And yet it was inevitable, it was going to happen, unless he stopped it.
"It's just our bad luck," he said, "that this development came at this particular time in history. It was only thirty years ago, shortly after the war, that the problem of our wasted human resources really became so acute that it couldn't be evaded any longer. Since then we've seen a great deal of progress, and public sentiment is fully behind it. New building codes for big cities. New speed laws. Reduced alcoholic content in wine and liquor. Things like that. The analogue treatment is riding the wave.