"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