The Dream Master (8 page)

“Yes,” he agreed, “I do. I’ve been studying it recently.”

“That’s all I wanted to know—really…”

“Thanks. I’m glad you think I know something.”

“Why is it that you know architecture, though? I’m sure it isn’t a part of the normal curriculum.”

“Nihil hominum.”
He shrugged.

“Okay—I just wondered.” She looked quickly in the direction of her purse. “What do you think of it?” she asked, reaching for her cigarettes.

He smiled.

“What can you think about architecture? It’s like the sun: It’s big, it’s bright, and it’s there. That’s about all—unless you want to get specific.”

She flushed again.

Render lit her cigarette.

“I mean, do you like it?”

“Invariably, if it is old and far away—or, if it is new and I am inside it when it is cold outside. I am utilitarian in matters of physical pleasure and romantic in those pertaining to sensibility.”

“God!” said Jill, and looked at Render. “What have you been teaching your son?”

“Everything I can,” he replied, “as fast as I can.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want him to be stepped on someday by something the size of a skyscraper, all stuffed full of facts and modem physics.”

“It is not in good taste to speak of people as though they were absent,” said Peter.

“True,” said Render, “but good taste is not always in good taste.”

“You make it sound as though someone owes somebody an apology,” he noted.

“That is a matter which the individual must decide for himself, or it is without value.”

“In that case,” he observed, “I’ve just decided that I don’t owe anybody an apology. If anybody owes me one though, I’ll accept it like a gentleman, and in good taste.”

Render stood, stared down at his son.

“Peter—” he began.

“May I have some more punch?” asked Jill. “It’s quite good, and mine is all gone.”

Render reached for the cup.

“I’ll get it,” said Peter.

He took the cup and stirred the punch with its crystal ladle. Then he rose to his feet, leaning one elbow on the back of his chair.

“Peter!”

He slipped.

The cup and its contents fell into Jill’s lap. The contents ran in strawberry tracery through the white fur of her coat. The cup rolled to the sofa, coming to rest in the center of a widening stain.

Peter cried and seized his ankle, sitting down on the floor.

The guest-buzzer sounded.

Render mentioned a long medical term, in Latin. He stooped then and took his son’s foot in one hand, his ankle in the other.

“Does this hurt?”

“Yes!”

“This?”

“Yes! It hurts all over!”

“How about this?”

“Along the side… There!”

Render helped him to his feet, held him balanced on his sound foot, reached for his crutches.

“Come on. Along with me. Dr. Heydell has a hobby-lab in his apartment, downstairs. That fast-cast is coming off. I want to X-ray the foot again.”

“No! It’s not—”

“What about my coat?” said Jill.

The buzzer sounded again.

“Damn everything!” announced Render, and he pushed the call-dot.

“Yes! Who is it?”

There came a sound of breathing.

Then, “Uh, it’s me, boss. Did I pick a bad time?”

“Bennie! No, listen—I didn’t mean to snap at you, but all hell’s just broken loose. Come on up. By the time you get here things will be normal and unhectic again.”

“… Okay, if you’re sure it’s all right, that is. I just wanted to stop in for a minute. I’m on my way to somewhere else.”

“Sure thing. Here’s the door.”

He tapped the other circle.

“You stay here and let her in, Jill. Well be back in a few minutes.”

“What about my coat? And the sofa…?”

“All in good time. Don’t worry. C’mon, Pete.”

He guided him out into the hall, where they entered an elevator and directed it to the sixth floor. On the way down, their elevator sighed past Bennie’s, on its way up.

The door clicked. Before it could open though, Render pressed the “Hold” button.

“Peter,” he said, “why are you acting like a snotty adolescent?”

Peter wiped his eyes.

“Hell, I’m pre-puberty,” he said, “and as for being snotty…”

He blew his nose.

Render’s hand began to rise, fell back again.

He sighed.

“We’ll discuss it later.”

He released the “Hold” button and the door slid open.

Dr. Heydell’s suite was located at the end of the corridor. A large wreathe of evergreen and pine cones hung upon the door, encircling its brass knocker.

Render raised the knocker and let it fall.

From within, there came the faint sounds of Christmas music. After a moment, there was a footfall on the other side, and the door opened.

Dr. Heydell stood before them, looking up from behind thick glasses.

“Well, carolers,” he announced in a deep voice. “Come in, Charles, and…?”

“My son, Peter,” said Render.

“Glad to meet you, Peter,” said Heydell. “Come in and join the party.”

He drew the door all the way open and stepped aside.

They entered into a blast of Christmas, and Render explained, “We had a little accident upstairs. Peter’s ankle was broken a short time ago, and he fell on it again just now. I’d like to use your X-ray to check it out.”

“Surely,” said the small doctor. “Come this way. Sorry to hear about it.”

He led them through his living room, about which seven or eight people were variously situated.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Hi there, Charlie!”

“Merry Christmas, Doc!”

“How’s the brain-cleaning business?”

Render raised one hand automatically, nodded in four different directions.

“This is Charles Render. He’s in neuroparticipation,” Heydell explained to the rest, “and this is his son, Peter. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Need my lab.”

They passed out of the room, moved two steps into a vestibule. Heydell opened the insulated door to his insulated laboratory. The laboratory had cost him considerable time and expense. It had required the consent of the local building authorities, it had had to subscribe to more than full hospital shielding standards, and it had required the agreement of the apartment management, which in turn had been predicated upon the written consent of all the other tenants. Some of the latter had required economic suasion, Render understood.

They entered the laboratory, and Heydell set his apparatus in operation. He took the necessary pictures and ran them through the speed-dry, speed-develop process.

“Good,” he announced, as he studied them. “No more damage, and the fracture is healing nicely.”

Render smiled. He noticed that his hands had been shaking.

Heydell slapped him on the shoulder.

“So come on out and try our punch.”

“Thanks, Heydell. I believe I will.” He always called him by his last name, since they were both Charlies.

They shut down the equipment and left the lab.

Back in the living room, Render shook a few hands and sat down on the sofa with Peter.

He sipped his punch, and one of the men he had only just met, a Dr. Minton, began talking to him.

“So you’re a Shaper, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve always wondered about that area. We had a bull-session going back at the hospital, just the other week…”

“Oh?”

“Our resident psychiatrist mentioned that neuropy treatments are no more nor less successful than ordinary therapeutic courses.”

“I’d hardly consider him in a position to judge—especially if it’s Mike Mismire you’re talking about, and I think you are.

Dr. Minton spread his hands, palms upward.

“He said he’s been collecting figures.”

“The change rendered the patient in a neuropy session is a qualitative one. I don’t know what he means by ‘successful.’ The results are successful if you eliminate the patient’s problem. There are various ways of doing it—as many as there are therapists—but neuropy is qualitatively superior to something like psychoanalysis because it produces measurable, organic changes. It operates directly upon the nervous system, beneath a patina of real and simulated afferent impulses. It induces desired states of self-awareness and adjusts the neurological foundation to support them. Psychoanalysis and allied areas are purely functional. The problem is less likely to recur if it is adjusted by neuropy.”

“Then why don’t you use it to cure psychotics?”

“It has been done, a couple times. But it is normally too risky an undertaking. Remember, ‘participation’ is the key word. Two nervous systems, two minds are involved. It can turn into a reverse-therapy session—anti-neuropy—if the pattern of aberrance is too strong for the operator to control.
His
state of self-awareness is then altered, his neurological underpinnings are readjusted. He becomes psychotic himself, suffering actual organic brain damage.”

“It would seem that there’d be some way to cut down on that feedback,” said Minton.

“Not yet,” Render explained, “there isn’t—not without sacrificing some of the operator’s effectiveness. They’re working on the problem right now in Vienna, but so far the answer seems far away.”

“If you find one you can probably go into the more significant areas of mental distress,” said Minton.

Render drank his punch. He did not like the stress that the man had laid upon the word ‘significant.’

“In the meantime,” said Render, after a moment, “we treat what we
can
treat in the best way we know, and neuropy is certainly the best means known.”

“There are those who say that you don’t really cure neuroses, but cater to them—that you satisfy patients by giving them little worlds all their own to be neurotic in—vacations from reality, places where they’re second in command to God.”

“That is not the case,” said Render. “The things which occur in those little worlds are not necessarily things which please them. They are not near to command at all; the Shaper—or, as you say, God—is. It is a learning experience. You learn by pleasure and you learn by pain. Generally, in these cases, it is more painful than it is pleasurable.” He lit a cigarette, accepted another cup of punch.

“So I do not consider the criticism a valid one,” he finished.

“… And it is quite expensive,” said Minton.

Render shrugged.

“Did you ever price an Omnichannel Neural Transmission and Receiver outfit?”

“No.”

“Do it sometime,” said Render.

He listened to a Christmas carol, put out his cigarette, and stood.

“Thanks a lot, Heydell,” he said. “I’ve got to be going now.”

“What’s the hurry?” asked Heydell. “Stay awhile.”

“Like to,” said Render, “but there are people upstairs I have to get back to.”

“Oh? Many?”

“A couple.”

“Bring them down. I was about to set up a buffet, and there’s more than enough. I’ll feed them and ply them with drinks.”

“Well—” said Render.

“Fine!” said Heydell. “Why not just call them from here?”

So he did.

“Peter’s ankle is all right,” he said.

“Great. Now what about my coat?” asked Jill.

“Forget it for now. I’ll take care of it later.”

“I tried some lukewarm water, but it’s still pinkish…”

“Put it back in the box, and don’t fool around with it any more! I
said
I’d take care of it.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll be down in a minute. Bennie brought a gift for Peter, and something for you. She’s on her way to her sister’s place, but she says she’s in no hurry.”

“Capital. Drag her down. She knows Heydell.”

“Fine.” She broke the connection.

Christmas Eve.

… The opposite of New Year’s:

It is the personal time, rather than the social time; it is the time of focusing upon self and family, rather than society. It is a time of many things: A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. It is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted…

They ate from the buffet. Most of them drank the warm Ronrico and cinnamon and cloves and fruit cocktail and ginger-flavored punch. They talked of plastasac lungs and blood screens and diagnosis by computer, and of the worthlessness of penicillin. Peter sat with his hands folded in his lap: listening, watching. His crutches lay at his feet. Music flooded the room.

Jill sat listening, also.

When Render talked everyone listened. Bennie smiled, took another drink. Playboy doctor or not, when Render talked it was with the voice of a disc jockey and the logic of the Jesuits. Her boss was
known.
Who knew Minton? Who knew Heydell? Other doctors, that’s all. Shapers were big-time, and she was his secretary-receptionist.
Everybody
knew of the Shapers. There was nothing controversial about being a heart specialist or a bone man, an anesthesiologist or an internal medicine buff. Her boss was her measure of glory. The other girls always asked her about him, about his magic machine… “Electronic Svengalis,” that’s what
Time
had called them, and Render had gotten three paragraphs, two more than any of the others—excepting Baitelmetz, of course.

The music changed to light classical, to ballet. Bennie felt a year’s end nostalgia and she wanted to dance again, as she had once long ago. The season and the company, compounded with the music and the punch and the decorations, made her foot tap, slowly, and turned her mind to memories of a spotlight and a stage filled with color and movement and herself. She listened to the talk.

“… If you can transmit them and receive them, then you can record them, can’t you?” Minton was asking.

“Yes,” said Render.

“That’s what I thought. Why don’t they write more about that angle of the thing?”

“Another five or ten years—perhaps less—and they will. Right now though, the use of playback is restricted to qualified personnel.”

“Why?”

“Well”—Render paused to light another cigarette—“to be completely frank, it is to keep the whole area under control until we know more about it. The thing could be exploited commercially—and perhaps with disastrous results—if it were left wide open.”