“Hello there, Brant,” Moore called.
Van looked up, feigning surprise. “Well, hello, Moore. Long time no. Pull up a chair.”
“Thanks.” The psych hooked a small foam cushion with his toe, pulled it toward him and plopped down on it. Van studied the tall thin man, his eyes roaming over the immaculate Vandyke, the eager eyes in the intense face. Moore cocked one raven brow now and said, “Nice party.”
“Not bad,” Van admitted. “I didn’t know you knew Deborah.”
“Oh yes,” Moore said. “Quite well.” He passed a clawlike hand over his naturally hairy chest, scratched idly at one pectoral. “One of my favorite patients, in fact.”
“That right?”
“Yes.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the two men. Van felt somehow uneasy. He wasn’t used to psychs, and had never held a lengthy conversation with one. Moore seemed to be experiencing the same discomfort. They sat and stared at each other while a few long minutes dragged their feet laboriously through a field of molasses.
Finally, in desperation, Van asked, “So how’s the psych business these days?”
Moore shrugged broad shoulders. “Not too good. Not for a Vike man, anyway. The Ree boys seem to be getting all the work.”
Van wondered if he were kidding, but he didn’t express skepticism. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“It’s a question of finding a norm,” Moore said slowly.
“I still don’t groove.”
Moore spread his palms wide. “I was taught in a Ree school, Van. Got my B.A. from a Ree college, my M.D. from a Ree medical school, and all my specialized training at Ree clinics. The emphasis was a little different.”
“How so?”
“Great God Freud. Chew a cigar? You were weaned too early. Wash your hands often? You’re a mastur. Glove anesthesia? You’ve got a guiltplex. You know the Ree pitch.”
“So?”
“So along comes the Vikes. And everybody flees into a dream world. Your norm is kicked to hell.”
Van didn’t say anything because he still didn’t know what the psych was talking about.
“Look at it this way,” Moore continued. “You establish a pattern. The majority of people don’t go around picking their noses on duo-pneumotubes. All right, this is the norm. You get a guy who does pick his nose in public — he’s a delegate for a booby bin. But what happens when the norm is reversed? What happens when everyone seeks the world heretofore reserved for the schizoid? Who’s normal then? And how do you treat the person who isn’t?”
“Are you saying that Vikes are...” Van forced the words out, “...mentally unbalanced?”
Moore smiled thinly. “I’m a Vike myself. It’s been ten years since I’ve touched a woman or wanted to touch one. I was a morphict for three years, a herrict for four, and I’ve been on Corradon for the last three, ever since it hit the market. My biggest charge is the Sensos, but I’m not above a cheap kick from the pabacks. A wild tape still gets a rise out of me. I know all the tricks and all the gimmicks, and I haven’t opened my mouth in public, Lord knows. I’ve even come along with the language, which was probably the hardest part. Who am I to say Vikes are nuts?”
Van was beginning to get a little irritated. “What are you saying then?”
“I’m not saying anything. I came here tonight for the same thing you did. Something like a cat house, isn’t it?”
“Listen, Moore...”
“All right, you don’t like what I’m saying. I don’t much like it, either. I keep thinking about tomorrow, though. And the tomorrow after that. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. What’s the step beyond schizophrenia? Or mania? I’m afraid its catatonia — and that means doom.” He saw the look on Van’s face. “I’m not using it in the Vike sense, Brant. I mean doom. Plain old doom. The end. Finis. Pffft!”
“You through?”
“Sure, sure, I’m through. I understand that Deb has some new stuff at the bar.” He stood wearily and his eyes met Van’s for an instant, and then fled into their own retreat. “Maybe I’ll try some. So long, Brant.”
Brant closed his eyes for an instant, and suddenly there was a cool hand on his bare flesh, and the heady aroma of Lizbeth’s perfume in his nostrils.
He shrugged her hand away. “Don’t paw me,” he said. “Sorry, father. You look sad. Want to pop?”
“No.”
Liz giggled. “I’ve got a confession. I already did. The new stuff. It’s doom, Dad. Whoo!”
“I want solo,” he said. “Take a powder.”
“Sure, Van. They’re starting a round of Coverup, anyway, and I want to get in on it.”
“Have fun,” he said.
“Grooved.”
She turned and walked away from him, her hips swiveling, her high heels clicking against the marble floor. Van looked across the room to the bar, saw Walt elbow his way free, straighten his hair, and start over toward him. Van stood up, walked to meet Alloway halfway, and said, “Let’s step outside, Walt. I don’t want this tapped.”
“You act like a Martian spy.”
“How the hell would you know what a Martian spy acts like?”
“I read the sci-fi. Interesting.”
“That Ree junk?”
“It’s their one salvation,” Walt said, grinning crookedly.
They’d reached the balcony, and Van yanked open the manual door, stepping outside into the night. A mild breeze played over the balcony, and Deborah had covered the place with rose bushes that oozed their perfume onto the mild air, with a probable assist from a hundred hidden odophones.
“So what’s the big one?” Walt asked.
“Are you in?”
“I can’t draw blind,” Alloway said. “You’ve got to sneak-speak first.”
Van weighed this, estimating the gamble, and then decided he could trust Walt no matter what his final decision would be. “A new Senso,” he said. “So big you can’t imagine, Walt. Individual Sensory Experiences. Individual, Walt! A man sees, feels, smells one thing; a woman another. Walt it’s gigantic. It’s like nothing we’ve got. I’m sinking all I own into it. I need scribes.”
Alloway screwed up his black brows. He was a moment before answering. “You like it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in.”
“Just like that?”
“My friend, before you took me into the fold, I was writing for the pabacks. I made an average of fifteen gee a year, and you know how far that gets you. You came on the scene then. Last year, I stacked close to half a stone. This year, with six months to go yet, I’ve made that much already. I’ve never made a move you didn’t suggest, and you’ve never suggested a move that wasn’t right.” Walt shrugged, a little overwhelmed by his own sincerity. “You say this is big, it’s big. You say I should get into it now, I get into it now. That’s the way it is, Van. That’s the kind of stupid bastard I am.”
Van grinned in the darkness. “That’s Ree talk, Walt.”
“All right, change it to ‘stupid illidge.’ It’s still the way I am, so let’s go inside and get into the Coverup. Hell, this is a dull party.”
Van clapped Walt on the shoulder, starting to head back to the party, and that was when he noticed how unusually quiet it was inside. Alloway must have detected the lack of sound at about the same time, because he turned to Van with a puzzled expression on his face. They both knew Coverup was usually a pretty noisy game during the dressing stage. The stripping half was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, but hardly enough time had progressed for the game to have been in that stage yet. As if by common consent, they both ran for the doors and into the room.