Sensitive Man — Chapter 9

IX

Dalgetty found a reclining seat and eased himself into it.

One by one he began releasing the controls over himself--sensitivities, nerve blocs, glandular stimulation.

Fatigue and pain mounted within him.

He looked out at the stars and listened to the dark whistle of air with merely human senses.

Elena Casimir came to sit beside him and he realized that his job wasn't done.

He studied the strong lines of her face.

She could be a hard foe but just as stubborn a friend.

"What do you have in mind for Bancroft?"

he asked.

"Kidnapping charges for him and that whole gang," she said.

"He won't wriggle out of it, I can guarantee you."

Her eyes rested on him, unsure, a little frightened.

"Federal prison psychiatrists have Institute training," she murmured.

"You'll see that his personality is reshaped _your_ way, won't you?"

"As far as possible," Simon said.

"Though it doesn't matter much.

Bancroft is finished as a factor to be reckoned with.

There's still Bertrand Meade himself, of course.

Even if Bancroft made a full confession I doubt that we could touch him.

But the Institute has now learned to take precautions against extra-legal methods--and within the framework of the law we can give him cards and spades and still defeat him."

"With some help from my department," Elena said.

There was a touch of steel in her voice.

"But the whole story of this rescue will have to be played down.

It wouldn't do to have too many ideas floating around in the public mind, would it?"

"That's right," he admitted.

His head felt heavy, he wanted to rest it on her shoulder and sleep for a century.

"It's up to you really.

If you submit the right kind of report to your superiors it can all be worked out.

Everything else will just be detail.

But otherwise you'll ruin everything."

"I don't know."

She looked at him for a long while.

"I don't know if I should or not.

You may be correct about the Institute and the justice of its aims and methods.

But how can I be sure, when I don't know what's behind it?

How do I know there wasn't more truth than fiction in that Tau Ceti story, that you aren't really the agent of some non-human power quietly taking over all our race?"

At another time Dalgetty might have argued, tried to veil it from her, tried to trick her once again.

But now he was too weary.

There was a great surrender in him.

"I'll tell you if you wish," he said, "and after that it's in your hands.

You can make us or break us."

"Go on then."

Her tone withdrew into wariness.

"I'm human," he said.

"I'm as human as you are.

Only I've had rather special training, that's all.

It's another discovery of the Institute for which we don't feel the world is ready.

It'd be too big a temptation for too many people, to create followers like me."

He looked away, into the windy dark.

"The scientist is also a member of society and has a responsibility toward it.

This--restraint--of ours is one way in which we meet that obligation."

She didn't speak, but suddenly one hand reached over and rested on his.

The impulsive gesture brought warmth flooding through him.

"Dad's work was mostly in mass-action psych," he said, making his tone try to cover what he felt, "but he has plenty of associates trying to understand the individual human being as a functioning mechanism.

A

lot's been learned since Freud, both from the psychiatric and the neurological angle.

Ultimately, those two are interchangeable.

"Some thirty years ago one of the teams which founded the Institute learned enough about the relationship between the conscious, subconscious and involuntary minds to begin practical tests.

Along with a few others I was a guinea pig.

And their theories worked.

"I needn't go into the details of my training.

It involved physical exercises, mental practice, some hypnotism, diet and so on.

It went considerably beyond the important Synthesis education which is the most advanced thing known to the general public.

But its aim--only partially realized as yet--its aim was simply to produce the completely integrated human being."

Dalgetty paused.

The wind flowed and muttered beyond the wall.

"There is no sharp division between conscious and subconscious or even between those and the centers controlling involuntary functions," he said.

"The brain is a continuous structure.

Suppose, for instance, that you become aware of a runaway car bearing down on you.

"Your heartbeat speeds up, your adrenalin output increases, your sight sharpens, your sensitivity to pain drops--it's all preparation for fight or flight.

Even without obvious physical necessity the same thing can happen on a lesser scale--for example when you read an exciting story.

And psychotics, especially hysterics, can produce some of the damnedest physiological symptoms you ever saw."

"I begin to understand," she whispered.

"Rage or fear brings abnormal strength and fast reaction.

But the psychotic can do more than that.

He can show physical symptoms like burns, stigmata or--if female--false pregnancy.

Sometimes he becomes wholly insensitive in some part of his body via a nerve bloc.

Bleeding can start or stop without apparent cause.

He can go into a coma or he can stay awake for days without getting sleepy.

He can--" "Read minds?"

It was a defiance.

"Not that I know of."

Simon chuckled.

"But human sense organs are amazingly good.

It only takes three or four quanta to stimulate the visual purple--a little more actually because of absorption by the eyeball itself.

There have been hysterics who could hear a watch ticking twenty feet away that the normal person could not hear at one foot.

And so on.

"There are excellent reasons why the threshold of perception is relatively high in ordinary people--the stimuli of usual conditions would be blinding and deafening, unendurable, if there weren't a defense."

He grimaced.

"I _know_!"

"But the telepathy?"

Elena persisted.

"It's been done before," he said.

"Some apparent cases of mindreading in the last century were shown to be due to extremely acute hearing.

Most people sub-vocalize their surface thoughts.

With a little practice a person who can hear those vibrations can learn to interpret them.

That's all."

He smiled with one side of his mouth.

"If you want to hide your thoughts from me just break that habit, Elena."

She looked at him with an emotion he could not quite recognize.

"I see," she breathed.

"And your memory must be perfect too, if you can pull any datum out of the subconscious.

And you can--do everything, can't you?"

"No," he said.

"I'm only a test case.

They've learned a great deal by observing me but the only thing that makes me unusual is that I have conscious control of certain normally subconscious and involuntary functions.

Not all of them by a long shot.

And I don't use that control any more than necessary.

"There are sound biological reasons why man's mind is so divided and plenty of penalties attached to a case like mine.

It'll take me a couple of months to get back in shape after this bout.

I'm due for a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown and while it won't last long it won't be much fun while it does last."

The appeal rose in his eyes as he watched Elena.

"All right," he said.

"Now you have the story.

What are you going to do about it?"

For the first time she gave him a real smile.

"Don't worry," she said, "Don't worry, Simon."

"Will you come hold my hand while I'm recuperating?"

he asked anxiously.

"I'm holding it now, you fool," Elena answered.

Dalgetty chuckled happily.

Then he went to sleep.

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