The man from Washington said interestedly:
“Where do you think he comes from, Dr. Braden?”
Braden spread out his hands. He said doggedly:
“I make no guesses. But I sent photostats of the sketches he made to the Bureau of Standards. I said that they were made by a patient and appeared to be diagrams of atomic structure. I asked if they indicated aknowledge of physics. “You”—he looked at the man from Washington—“turned up thirty-six hours later. I deduce that he has such knowledge.”
“He has!” said the man from Washington, mildly, “The X-ray sketches were interesting enough, but the others— Apparently he has told us how to get controlled atomic energy out of silicon, which is one of earth’s commonest elements. Where did he come from, Dr. Braden?”
Braden clamped his jaw.
“You noticed that the commitment papers referred to shooting stars then causing much local comment? I looked up the newspapers for about that date. They reported a large shooting star which was observed to descend to the earth. Then, various credible observers claimed that it shot back up to the sky again. Then, some hours afterward, various large shooting stars crossed the sky from horizon to horizon, without ever falling.”
The Director of Meadeville Mental said humorously:
“It’s a wonder that New Bedlam—as we were then—was not crowded after such statements!”
The man from Washington did not smile.
“I think,” he said meditatively, “that Dr. Braden suggests a spaceship landing to permit John Kingman to get out, and then going away again. And possible pursuit afterward.”
The Director laughed appreciatively at the assumed jest.
“If,” said the man from Washington, “John Kingrnan is not human, and if he comes from somewhere where as much was known about atomic energy almost two centuries ago as he has showed us, and, if he were insane there, he might have seized some sort of vehicle and fled in it because of delusions of persecution. Which in a sense, if he were insane, might be justified. He would have been pursued. With pursuers close behind him he might have landed—here.”
“But the vehicle!” said the Director, humorously. “Our ancestors would have recorded finding a spaceship or an airplane.”
“Suppose,” said the man from Washington, “that his pursuers had something like … say … radar. Even we have that! A cunning lunatic would have sent off his vehicle under automatic control to lead his pursuers as long and merry a chase as possible. Perhaps he sent it to dive into the sun. The rising shooting star and the other cruising shooting stars would be accounted for. What do you say, Dr. Braden?”
Braden shrugged.
“There is no evidence. Now he is insane. If we were to cure him—”
“Just how,” said the man from Washington, “would you cure him? I thought paranoia was practically hopeless.”
“Not quite,” Braden told him. “They’ve used shock treatment for dementia praecox and schizophrenia, with good results. Until last year there was nothing of comparable value for paranoia. Then Jantzen suggested euphoric shock. Basically, the idea is to dispel illusions by creating hallucinations.”
The Director fidgeted disapprovingly. The man from Washington waited.
“In euphoric shock,” said Braden carefully, “the tensions and anxieties of insane patients are relieved by drugs which produce a sensation of euphoria, or well being. Jantzen combined hallucination-producing drugs with those. The combination seems to place the patient temporarily in a cosmos in which all delusions are satisfied and all tensions relieved. He has a rest from his struggle against reality. Also he has a sort of supercatharsis, in the convincing realization of all his desires. Quite often he comes out of the first euphoric shock temporarily sane. The percentage of final cures is satisfyingly high.”
The man from Washington said, “Body chemistry?”
Braden regarded him with new respect. He said, “I don’t know. He’s lived on human food for almost two centuries, and in any case it’s been proved that the proteins will be identical on all planets under all suns. But I couldn’t be sure about it. There might even be allergies. You say his drawings were very important. It might be wisest to find out everything possible from him before even euphoric shock was tried.”
“Ah, yes!” said the Director, tolerantly. “If he has waited a hundred and sixty-two years, a few weeks or months will make no difference. And I would like to watch the experiment, but I am about to start on my vacation— “
“Hardly,” said the man from Washington.
“I said, I am about to start on my vacation.”
“John Kingman,” said the man from Washington mildly, “has been trying for a hundred and sixty-two years to tell us how to have controlled atomic energy, and pocket X-ray machines, and God knows what all else. There may be, somewhere about this institution, drawings of antigravity apparatus, really efficient atomic bombs, spaceship drives or weapons which could depopulate the earth. I’m afraid nobody here is going to communicate with the outside world in any way until the place and all its personnel are gone over … ah ... rather carefully.”
“This,” said the Director indignantly, “is preposterous!”
“Quite so. A thousand years of human advance locked in the skull of a lunatic. Nearly two hundred years more of progress and development wasted because he was locked up here. But it would be most preposterous of all to let his information loose to the other lunatics who aren’t locked up because they’re running governments! Sit down!”
The Director sat down. The man from Washington said:
“Now, Dr. Braden—”
John Kingman spent days on end in scornful, triumphant glee. Braden watched him somberly. Meadeville Mental Hospital was an armed camp with sentries everywhere, and especially about the building in which John Kingman gloated. There were hordes of suitably certified scientists and psychiatrists about him, now, and he was filled with blazing satisfaction.
He sat in regal, triumphant aloofness. He was the greatest, the most important, the most consequential figure on this planet. The stupid creatures who inhabited it—they were only superficially like himself—had at last come to perceive his godliness. Now they clustered about him. In their stupid language which it was beneath his dignity to learn, they addressed him. But they did not grovel. Even groveling would not be sufficiently respectful for such inferior beings when addressing John Kingman. He very probably devised in his own mind the exact etiquette these stupid creatures must practice before he would condescend to notice them.
They made elaborate tests. He ignored their actions. They tried with transparent cunning to trick him into further revelations of the powers he held. Once, in malicious amusement, he drew a sketch of a certain reaction which such inferior minds could not possibly understand. They were vastly excited, and he was enormously amused. When they tried that reaction and square miles turned to incandescent vapor, the survivors would realise that they could not trick or force him into giving them the riches of his godlike mind. They must devise the proper etiquette to appease him. They must abjectly and humbly plead with him and placate him and sacrifice to him. They must deny all other gods but John Kingman. They would realize that he was all wisdom, all power, all greatness when the reaction he had sketched destroyed them by millions.
Braden prevented that from happening. When John Kingman gave a sketch of a new atomic reaction in response to an elaborate trick one of the newcomers had devised, Braden protested grimly.