"It's estimated that the wave will reach its maximum about ten years from now. And that's when the Institute will be ready to put through the second phase of its program. Here it is:
"One, analogue treatment against crimes of violence to be compulsory for all citizens above the age of seven."
The dark man stared at him "Blue balls of fire. Will it work, on that scale?"
"Yes. It will completely eliminate any possibility of a future war, and it will halve our police problem."
The dark man whistled. "Then what?"
"Two," said Martyn, "analogue treatment against peculation, bribery, collusion and all the other forms of corruption to be compulsory for all candidates for public office. And that will make the democratic system foolproof, for all time."
The dark man laid his pencil down. "Dr. Martyn, you're confusing me. I'm a libertarian, but there's got to be some method of preventing this race from killing itself off. If this treatment will do what you say it will do, I don't care if it does violate civil rights. I want to go on living, and I want my grandchildren -- I have two, by the way -- to go on living. Unless there's a catch you haven't told me about this thing, I'm for it."
Martyn said earnestly, "This treatment is a crutch. It is not a therapy, it does not cure the patient of anything. In fact, as I told you before, it makes him less nearly sane, not more. The causes of his irrational or antisocial behavior are still there, they're only repressed -- temporarily. They can't ever come out in the same way, that's true; we've built a wall across that particular channel. But they will express themselves in some other way, sooner or later. When a dammed-up flood breaks through in a new place, what do you do?"
"Build another levee."
"Exactly," said Martyn. "And after that? Another, and another, and another -- "
Nicholas Dauth, cold sober, stared broodingly at the boulder that stood on trestles between the house and the orchard. It was a piece of New England granite, marked here and there with chalk lines.
It had stood there for eight months, and he had not touched a chisel to it.
The sun was warm on his back. The air was still; only the occasional hint of a breeze ruffled the treetops. Behind him he could hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, and beyond that the clear sounds of his wife's voice.
Once there had been a shape buried in the stone. Every stone had its latent form, and when you carved it, you felt as if you were only helping it to be born.
Dauth could remember the shape he had seen buried in this one: a woman and child -- the woman kneeling, half bent over the child in her lap. The balancing of masses had given it grace and authority, and the free space had lent it movement.
He could remember it; but he couldn't see it any more.
There was a quick, short spasm in his right arm and side, painful while it lasted. It was like the sketch of an action: turning, walking to where there was whisky -- meeting the guard who wouldn't let him drink it, turning away again. All that had squeezed itself now into a spasm, a kind of tic. He didn't drink now, didn't try to drink. He dreamed about it, yes, thought of it, felt the burning ache in his throat and guts. But he didn't try. There simply wasn't any use.
He looked back at the unborn stone, and now, for an instant, he could not even remember what its shape was to have been. The tic came once more. Dauth had a feeling of pressure building intolerably inside him, of something restrained that demanded exit.
He stared at the stone, and saw it drift away slowly into grayness; then nothing.
He turned stiffly toward the house. "Martha!" he called. The clatter of dishware answered him.
He stumbled forward holding his arms out. "Martha!" he shouted. "I'm blind!"
"Correct me if I'm wrong," said the dark man. "It seems to me that you'd only run into that kind of trouble with the actual mental cases, the people who really have strong compulsions. And, according to you, those are the only ones who should get the treatment. Now, the average man doesn't have any compulsion to kill, or steal, or what have you. He may be tempted, once in his life. If somebody stops him, that one time, will it do him any harm?"
"For a minute or two, he will have been insane," said Martyn. "But I agree with you -- if that were the end of it, there'd be no great harm. At the Institute, the majority believe with Kusko that that will be the end of it. They're tragically wrong. Because there's one provision that the Institute hasn't included in its program, but that would be the first thought of any lawmaker in the world. Treatment against any attempt to overthrow the government."
The dark man sat silent.
"And from there," said Martyn, "it's only one short step to a tyranny that will last till the end of time." For an instant his own words were so real to him that he believed it would happen in spite of anything he could do: he saw the ghostly figure of Kusko -- big, red-haired, grinning, spraddle-legged over the whole earth.
The other nodded. "You're right," he said. "You are so right. What do you want me to do?"
"Raise funds," said Martyn, feeling the beginning of a vast relief. "At present the Institute has barely enough to operate on a minimum scale, and expand very slowly, opening one new center a year. Offer us a charitable contribution -- tax deductible, remember -- of two million, and we'll grab it. The catch is this: the donors, in return for such a large contribution, ask the privilege of appointing three members of the Institute's board of directors. There will be no objection to that, so long as my connection with the donation isn't known, because three members will not give the donors control. But they will give me a majority on this one issue -- the second phase of the Institute's program.
"This thing is like an epidemic. Give it a few years, and nothing can stop it. But act now, and we can scotch it while it's still small enough to handle."
"Good enough. I won't promise to hand you two million tomorrow, but I know a few people who might reach into their pockets if I told them the score. I'll do what I can. Hell, I'll get you the money if I have to steal it. You can count on me."
Smiling, Martyn caught the waiter as he went by. "No, this is mine," he said, forestalling the dark man's gesture. "I wonder if you realize what a weight you've taken off my shoulders?"
He paid, and they strolled out into the warm summer night. "Incidentally," Martyn said, "there's an answer to a point you brought up in passing -- the weakness of the treatment in the genuinely compulsive cases, where it's most needed. There are means of getting around that, though not of making the treatment into a therapy. It's a crutch, and that's all it will ever be. But for one example, we've recently worked out a technique in which the analogue appears, not as a guardian, but as the object of the attack -- when there is an attack. In that way, the patient relieves himself instead of being further repressed, but he still doesn't harm anybody -- just a phantom."
"It's going to be a great thing for humanity," said the dark man seriously, "instead of the terrible thing it might have been except for you, Dr. Martyn. Good night!"
"Good night," said Martyn gratefully. He watched the other disappear into the crowd, then walked toward the El. It was a wonderful night, and he was in no hurry.
A big, red-haired guy came in just as the waiter was straightening the table. The waiter stiffened his spine automatically: the big guy looked like Somebody.
"Which table was he sitting at -- the tall man with the glasses who just went out?" The red-haired guy showed him a folded bill, and the waiter took it smoothly.
"This one right here," he said. "You a friend of his?"