He Who Shapes (7 page)

"Maybe. I'll see. The headmaster is going to call me this

afternoon. I don't like to keep shuffling him, but I do want him

to finish school in one piece."

"A kid can't grow up without an accident or two.

Ifs-statistics."

"Statistics
 
aren't
 
the
 
same
 
thing
 
as
 
destiny,
 
Bennie.

Everybody makes his own."

"Statistics or destiny?"

"Both, I guess."

"I think that if something's going to happen, it's going to

happen."

"I don't. I happen to think that the human will, backed by a

sane mind can exercise some measure of control over events. If

I didn't think so, I wouldn't be in the racket I'm in."

"The world's a machineyou knowcause, effect. Statistics

do imply the prob"

"The human mind is not a machine, and I do not know cause

and effect. Nobody does."

"You have a degree in chemistry, as I recall. You're a

scientist, Doc."

"So I'm a Trotskyite deviationist," he smiled, stretching,

"and you were once a ballet teacher." He got to his feet and

picked up his coat.

"By the way, Miss DeVille called, left a message, She said:

'How about St. Moritz?' "

"Too ritzy," he decided aloud. "It's going to be Davos."

Because the suicide bothered him more than it should have,

Render closed the door to his office and turned off the windows

and turned on the phonograph. He put on the desk light only.

How has the quality of human life been changed, he wrote,

since the beginnings of the industrial revolution?

He picked up the paper and re-read the sentence. It was the

topic he had been asked to discuss that coming Saturday. As

was typical in such cases he did not know what to say because

he had too much to say, and only an hour to say it in.

He got up and began to pace the office, now filled with

Beethoven's Eighth Symphony.

"The power to hurt," he said, snapping on a lapel

microphone and activating his recorder, "has evolved in a

direct relationship to technological advancement." His imagi-

nary audience grew quiet. He smiled. "Man's potential for

working simple mayhem has been multiplied by mass-produc-

tion; his capacity for injuring the psyche through personal con-

tacts has expanded in an exact ratio to improved communica-

tion facilities. But these are all matters of common knowledge,

and are not the things I wish to consider tonight. Rather, I

should like to discuss what I choose to call autopsychomimesis

the self-generated anxiety complexes which on first scrutiny

appear quite similar to classic patterns, but which actually rep-

resent radical dispersions of psychic energy. They are peculiar

to our times . . ."

He paused to dispose of his cigar and formulate his next

words.

"Autopsychomimesis," he thought aloud, "a self-perpetuated

imitation
 
complexalmost
 
an
 
attention-getting
 
affair.A

jazzman, for example, who acted hopped-up half the time, even

though he had never used an addictive narcotic and only dimly

remembered anyone who hadbecause all the stimulants and

tranquilizers of today are quite benign. Like Quixote, he

aspired after a legend when his music alone should have been

sufficient outlet for his tensions.

"Or my Korean War Orphan, alive today by virtue of the Red

Cross and UNICEF and foster parents whom he never met. He

wanted a family so badly that he made one up. And what then?

He hated his imaginary father and he loved his imaginary

mother quite dearlyfor he was a highly intelligent boy, and he

too longed after the half-true complexes of tradition. Why?

"Today, everyone is sophisticated enough to understand the

time-honored patterns of psychic disturbance. Today, many of

the reasons for those disturbances have been removednot as

radically as my now-adult war orphan's, but with as remarkable

an effect. We are living in a neurotic past.Again, why? Be-

cause our present times are geared to physical health, security,

and well-being. We have abolished hunger, though the back-

woods orphan would still rather receive a package of food

concentrates from a human being who cares for him than to

obtain a warm meal from an automat unit in the middle of the

jungle.

"Physical welfare is now every man's right, in excess. The

reaction to this has occurred in the area of mental health.

Thanks to technology, the reasons for many of the old social

problems have passed, and along with them went many of the

reasons for psychic distress. But between the black of yesterday

and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with

nostalgia, and fear of the future, which cannot be expressed on a

purely material plane, is now being represented by a willful

seeking after historical anxiety-modes . . ."

The phone-box buzzed briefly. Render did not hear it over

the Eighth.

"We are afraid of what we do not know," he continued, "and

tomorrow is a very great unknown. My own specialized area of

psychiatry did not even exist thirty years ago. Science is

capable of, advancing itself so rapidly now that there is a

genuine public uneasiness1 might even say 'distress'as to the

logical outcome: the total mechanization of everything in the

world..."

He passed near the desk as the phone buzzed again. He

switched off his microphone and softened the Eighth.

"Hello?"

"Saint Moritz," she said.

"Davos," he replied firmly.

"Charlie, you are most exasperating!"

"Jill, dearso are you."

"Shall we discuss it tonight?"

"There is nothing to discuss!"

"You'll pick me up at five, though?"

He hesitated, then:

"Yes, at five. How come the screen is blank?"

"I've had my hair fixed. I'm going to surprise you again."

He suppressed an idiot chuckle, said, "Pleasantly, I hope.

Okay, see you then," waited for her "goodbye," and broke the

connection.

He transpared the windows, turned off the light on his desk,

and looked outside.

Gray again overhead, and many slow flakes of snowwan-

dering, not being blown about muchmoving downwards and

then losing themselves in the tumult . . .

He also saw, when he opened the window and leaned out,

the place off to the left where Irizarry had left his next-to-last

mark on the world.

He closed the window and listened to the rest of the

symphony. It had been a week since he had gone blindspinning

with Eileen. Her appointment was for one o'clock.

He remembered her fingertips brushing over his face, like

leaves, or the bodies of insects, learning his appearance in the

ancient manner of the blind. The memory was not altogether

pleasant. He wondered why.

Far below, a patch of hosed pavement was blank once again;

under a thin, fresh shroud of white, it was slippery as glass. A

building custodian hurried outside and spread salt on it, before

someone slipped and hurt himself.

Sigmund was the myth of Fenris come alive. After Render

had instructed Mrs. Hedges, "Show them in," the door had

begun to open, was suddenly pushed wider, and a pair of

smoky-yellow eyes stared in at him. The eyes were set in a

strangely inisshapen dog-skull.

Sigmund's was not a low canine brow, slanting up slightly

from the muzzle; it was a high, shaggy cranium, making the

eyes appear even more deep-set than they actually were.

Render shivered slightly at the size and aspect of that head.

The muties he had seen had all been puppies. Sigmund was full

grown, and his gray-black fur had a tendency to bristle, which

made him appear somewhat larger than a normal specimen of

the breed.

He stared in at Render in a very un-doglike way and made a

growling noise which sounded too much like; "Hello, doctor,"

to have been an accident.

Render nodded and stood.

"Hello, Sigmund," he said. "Come in."

The dog turned his head, sniffing the air of the roomas

though deciding whether or not to trust his ward within its

confines. Then he returned his stare to Render, dipped his head

in an affirmative, and shouldered the door open. Perhaps the

entire encounter had taken only one disconcerting second.

Eileen followed him, holding lightly to the double-leashed

harness. The dog padded soundlessly across the thick rughead

low, as though he was stalking something. His eyes never left

Render's.

"So this is Sigmund . . . ? How are you, Eileen?"

"Fine.Yes, he wanted very badly to come along, and /

wanted you to meet him."

Render led her to a chair and seated her. She unsnapped the

double guide from the dog's harness and placed it on the floor.

Sigmund sat down beside it and continued to stare at Render.

"How is everything at State Psych?"

"Same as always.May I bum a cigarette, doctor? I forgot

mine."

He placed it between her fingers, furnished a light. She was

wearing a dark blue suit and her glasses were flame blue. The

silver spot on her forehead reflected the glow of his lighter; she