"What are your feelings now, as you recall them."
"The same, all mixed up."
"Are you afraid?"
"N-no. I don't think so."
"Do you want to take a vacation from the thing? Do you feel we've been proceeding too rapidly?"
"No. That's not it at all. It's—well, it's like learning to swim. When you finally learn how, why then you swim and you swim and you swim until you're all exhausted. Then you just lie there gasping in the air and remembering what it was like, while your friends all hover and chew you out for overexerting yourself—and it's a good feeling, even though you do take a chill and there's pins and needles inside all your muscles. At least, that's the way I do things. I felt that way after the first session and after this last one. First Times are always very special times... The pins and the needles are gone, though, and I've caught my breath again. Lord, I don't want to stop now! I feel fine."
"Do you usually take a nap in the afternoon?"
The ten red nails of her fingernails moved across the table-top as she stretched.
"... Tired." She smiled, swallowing a yawn. "Half the
staff's on vacation or sick leave and I've been beating my brains out all week. I was about ready to fall on my face when I left work. I feel all right now that I've rested, though."
She picked up her coffee cup with both hands, took a large swallow.
"Uh-huh," he said. "Good. I was a bit worried about you. I'm glad to see there was no reason.
"Worried? You've read Dr. Riscomb's notes on my analysis—and on the ONT&R trial—and you think I'm the sort to worry about? Ha! I have an operationally beneficient neurosis concerning my adequacy as a human being. It focuses my energies, coordinates my efforts toward achievement. It enhances my sense of identity ..."
"You do have one hell of a memory," he noted. "That's almost verbatim."
"Of course."
"You had Sigmund worried today, too."
"Sig? How?"
The dog stirred uneasily, opened one eye.
"Yes," he growled, glaring up at Render. "He needs, a ride, home."
"Have you been driving the car again?"
"Yes."
"After I told you not to?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I was a, fraid. You would, not, answer me, when I talked."
"I was very tired—and if you ever take the car again, I'm going to have the door fixed so you can't come and go as you please."
"Sorry,"
"There's nothing wrong with me."
"I, see."
"You are never to do it again."
"Sorry." His eye never left Render; it was like a burning lens.
Render looked away.
"Don't be too hard on the poor fellow," he said. "After
all, he thought you were ill and he went for the doctor. Supposing he'd been right? You'd owe him thanks, not a scolding."
Unmollified, Sigmund glared a moment longer and closed his eye.
"He has to be told when he does wrong," she finished.
"I suppose," he said, drinking his coffee. "No harm done, anyhow. Since I'm here, let's talk shop. I'm writing something and I'd like an opinion."
"Great. Give me a footnote?"
"Two or three.—In your opinion, do the general underlying motivations that lead to suicide differ in different cultures?"
"My well-considered opinion is no, they don't," she said. "Frustrations can lead to depressions or frenzies; and if these are severe enough, they can lead to self-destruction. You ask me about motivations and I think they stay pretty much the same. I feel this is a cross-cultural, cross-temporal aspect of the human condition. I don't think it could be changed without changing the basic nature of man."
"Okay. Check. Now, what of the inciting element?" he asked. "Let man be a constant, his environment is still a variable. If he is placed in an overprotective life-situation, do you feel it would take more or less to depress him—or stimulate him to frenzy—than it would take in a not so protective environment?"
"Hm. Being case-oriented, I'd say it would depend on the man. But I see what you're driving at: a mass predisposition to jump out windows at the drop of a hat—the window even opening itself for you, because you asked it to—the revolt of the bored masses. I don't like the notion. I hope it's wrong."
"So do I, but I was thinking of symbolic suicides too-functional disorders that occur for pretty flimsy reasons."
"Aha! Your lecture last month: autopsychomimesis. I have the tape. Well-told, but I can't agree."
"Neither can I, now. I'm rewriting that whole section—
Thanatos in Cloudcuckooland,' I'm calling it. It's really the death-instinct moved nearer the surface."
"If I get you a scalpel and a cadaver, will you cut out the death-instinct and let me touch it?"
"Couldn't," he put the grin into his voice, "it would be all used up in a cadaver. Find me a volunteer though, and he'll prove my case by volunteering."
Tour logic is unassailable." She smiled. "Get us some more coffee, okay?"
Render went to the kitchen, spiked and filled the cups, drank a glass of water, returned to the living room. Eileen had not moved; neither had Sigmund.
"What do you do when you're not busy being a Shaper?" she asked him.
"The same things most people do—eat, drink, sleep, talk, visit friends and not-friends, visit places, read..."
"Are you a forgiving man?"
"Sometimes. Why?"
"Then forgive me. I argued with a woman today, a woman named DeVille."
"What about?"
"You—she accused me of such things it were better my mother had not born me. Are you going to marry her?"
"No, marriage is like alchemy. It served an important purpose once, but I hardly feel it's here to stay."
"Good."
"What did you say to her?"
"I gave her a clinic referral card that said, Diagnosis: Bitch. Prescription: Drug therapy and a tight gag.' "
"Oh," said Render, showing interest.
"She tore it up and threw it in my face."
"I wonder why?"
She shrugged, smiled, made a gridwork on the tablecloth.
" 'Fathers and elders, I ponder,' " sighed Render, " 'what is hell?*"
" 'I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love,' " she finished. "Was Dostoevsky right?"
"I doubt it. I'd put him into group therapy, myself.
That'd be real hell for him—with all those people acting like his characters, and enjoying it so."
Render put down his cup, pushed his chair away from the table.
"I suppose you must be going now?"
"I really should," said Render.
"And I can't interest you in food?"
"No."
She stood.
"Okay, I'll get my coat."
"I could drive back myself and just set the car to return."'
"No! I'm frightened by the notion of empty cars driving around the city. I'd feel the thing was haunted for the next two-and-a-half weeks.
"Besides," she said, passing through the archway, "you promised me Winchester Cathedral."
"You want to do it today?"
"If you can be persuaded."
As Render stood deciding, Sigmund rose to his feet. He stood directly before him and stared upward into his eyes. He opened his mouth and closed it, several times, but no sounds emerged. Then he turned away and left the room.
"No," Eileen's voice came back, "you will stay here until I return."
Render picked up his coat and put it on, stuffing the med-kit into the far pocket.
As they walked up the hall toward the elevator, Render thought he heard a very faint and very distant howling sound.
In this place, of all places, Render knew he was the master
of all things.
He was at home on those alien worlds, without time, those worlds where flowers copulate and the stars do battle in the heavens, falling at last to the ground, bleeding, like so many split and shattered chalices, and the seas part to reveal stairways leading down, and arms emerge from caverns, waving torches that flame like liquid faces—a midwinter night's night-