“Quite probable,” said Waylock.

  “This energy must be on call to the maniacs. Olaf Gerempsky displayed six times his usual strength, but Olaf actually is a weakling. You should observe our strong ones: Maximilian Hertzog or Fido Vedelius. Either of these would have plunged a hand through the bed, and pulled you back up through the hole. Therefore—” Caddigan’s grin came a trifle broader “—I must warn you, and this is what I have been leading up to, that it is perilous business trifling with a patient, no matter how placid he may seem.”

  Waylock held his tongue. Caddigan leaned back in his chair, pressed his fingers together.

  “I will be blocking out your progress sheet. It goes without saying that I strive for absolute fairness. In this regard, I can’t find it possible to rate your day’s work highly. I don’t know what you were up to. I don’t want to know.”

  Waylock started to speak, but Caddigan held up his hand. “Perhaps you have adopted Basil Thinkoup as your model; perhaps you are seeking to emulate him and his successes. If so, I suggest that you plan more carefully, or else learn the source of his amazing luck.”

  Waylock restrained himself. “I think you misunderstand the situation.”

  “Perhaps I do,” Caddigan exclaimed with mock heartiness. “I feared that you and Basil Thinkoup were the precursors of a whole new trend in psychiatric thought, to be known perhaps as the Hammer and Tongs School.”

  “I find your humor superfluous,” Waylock said.

  Basil Thinkoup had entered the room, stood looking from one to the other. “Is that rascal Caddigan after you already?” He came forward. “When I first came to Balliasse, it was my sole diet. I believe I went Wedge to escape Caddigan.”

  Caddigan made no comment. Basil turned to Waylock. “So you’ve had an adventure.”

  “A trivial matter,” said Waylock. “I’ll be on my guard next time.”

  “That’s the spirit!” said Basil. “Just so.”

  Seth Caddigan rose to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be away. I have two classes tonight and I must make ready.” He bowed his long head and left the room.

  Basil shook his head, smiling indulgently. “Poor Seth, he’s making slope the hard way, cramming himself with uselessness. Tonight—let me see—it will be The Behavior Patterns of Viruses and Absolute Zero Surgery. Tomorrow he studies Recapitulation, Social and Evolutionary, in the Developing Embryo. Next night it’s something else.”

  “Quite a program,” observed Waylock.

  Basil seated himself with a puff and a blowing out of florid cheeks. “Well, the world’s a big place; we can’t all be alike.” He rose to his feet. “Your shift is about over; you might as well go home. We have a big day tomorrow.”

  “Gladly,” said Gavin. “I’ve got some studying of my own to do.”

  “Seriously making the drive, eh, Gavin?”

  “I’ll get to the top,” said Waylock. “One way or another.”

  Basil grimaced. “Don’t go at it so hard that you end up like—” he jerked his thumb toward the ward behind them.

  “I don’t intend to.”

  Chapter VII

  1

  W

  aylock let himself into his apartment, stood for a moment in the small foyer, looking left and right in dissatisfaction. The rooms were cramped, the furniture tasteless; and Waylock recalled The Grayven Warlock’s airy manse in Temple Cloud with regret. His own property, but how could he claim it?

  He felt vaguely hungry, but when he looked through the storage bank, nothing tempted him. Annoyed, he found his texts and his viewer, and departed.

  He dined in a noisy over-sumptuous restaurant which catered to glarks. As he ate, his mind wandered over the events of the last few days: he considered The Jacynth; saw her as she had appeared in the Temple of Truth, slender as a wand, supple as a kitten, unnaturally beautiful. A warm urgency awoke inside him. Suppose he called her on the commu—but what could he say to her? He could hardly mention that he was one of the last persons to see her former version alive. No telling what sort of investigation was going on, although he, Gavin Waylock, could hardly be involved. Neither the new Jacynth, The Denis nor The Albert knew his identity. It would be wise to let matters remain on this basis.

  What should he do with himself, then? He considered and rejected public entertainments. He wanted human companionship, good-fellowship, conversation. The Café Dalmatia? No. Basil Thinkoup? No. Seth Caddigan? Not the most amiable person in the world certainly, and he had manifested small love for Waylock; still—why not?

  Never one to resist an impulse, Waylock went to the commu booth, twisted the directory dial. The screen blurred as the names flowed past. A…B…C…Ca…Caddigan…Seth Caddigan. Waylock centered the name, pressed the call button.

  Seth Caddigan’s face appeared, “Oh—Waylock.”

  “Hello, Caddigan. How did the classes go?”

  “About as usual.” Caddigan was terse, guarded.

  Waylock improvised a pretext for the call. “Are you extremely busy? I have a problem, and you might be able to advise me.”

  Caddigan, not very graciously, invited Waylock to drop by his apartment, and Waylock set forth immediately. Caddigan lived in Vauconford, a suburb to the east, rather bohemian in character. His apartment walls were lively brown, melon-red, black and mustard, embellished with none of the usual inlay or ormolu. The furnishings were period pieces, severe slabs of glass, metal, flat wood, and fabric; illumination came from three balloons of pale yellow slave-light, floating here and there about the room. Distortionist paintings hung on the wall, curious ceramic objects stood on the long low book-cases. Waylock found the total effect rather eccentric.

  Further to Waylock’s surprise, Caddigan had a wife, a woman as tall and homely as Caddigan, but possessed of high vivacity, charm and good will.

  Caddigan introduced her as Pladge, and said sourly, “Pladge has beat me into Wedge. She’s in stage design, and seems to be making a good thing of it.”

  “Stage design!” exclaimed Waylock. “That accounts for the—for the—”

  Pladge Caddigan laughed. “For the antiques? Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone thinks we’re queer. But we just happen to like the simplicity, the feeling of material and mass in these old things. They’re better designed than much of our present-day stuff.”

  “The room is distinctive enough,” said Waylock.

  “Yes, it does have style. But now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got my studying to do; I’m taking up kaleidochrome. It’s fascinating, but complex as tritesimals.”

  Pladge took her odd angular self out of the room, and Caddigan’s eyes followed her with somber pride. He turned back to Waylock, who was examining a section of the wall he had not noticed before. It was papered with slope reports from the Actuarian; the recurrence of lines, angles, curves, and printed statement made a pleasing pattern.

  “There it is,” came Caddigan’s sardonic voice, “the record of our triumphs and defeats, naked and open for all to see. Our biography, the picture of our lives. Sometimes I think I’d prefer going glark. A short life and a merry one.” His voice changed. “Well, here you are. What’s your trouble?”

  “I suppose I can rely on your discretion?” Waylock said.

  Caddigan shook his head. “I’m not a discreet man. I’d be better off, no doubt, if I were.”

  “Well, can you regard what I tell you as confidential?”

  “Frankly,” said Caddigan, “I can’t guarantee anything. I’m sorry if I appear churlish, but it’s better that we risk no misunderstanding.”

  Waylock nodded. This was well enough, since he had no real problem. “I’d better keep my own counsel.”

  Caddigan nodded. “Wiser all around. Although it requires no very agile imagination to deduce what your problem might be.”

  “You’re several steps ahead of me, Caddigan,” said Waylock mildly.

  “I intend to remain so. Do you want to hear how I construe your ‘problem’?”

  “Go ahead—construe.”

  “It clearly concerns Basil Thinkoup. There is no one else from whom you would have me withhold information. Now: what problem troubles you that you cannot take to Basil—a problem which concerns Basil, but which can be resolved not by Basil, but by someone close to him? You are an ambitious man, quite possibly ruthless.”

  “Today everyone is ruthless,” said Waylock. Caddigan paid no heed.

  “You must be asking yourself, how closely should I tie to Basil? Will he rise or fall? You’d rise with him, but you have no desire to share a fall. You want my estimate of Basil’s future. When I propound this estimate, you will listen but reserve judgment, because you know that I represent a school opposed to Basil’s energetic pragmatism. Nevertheless you consider me sufficiently honest and observant to make you a fair appraisal of Basil’s prospects. Am I right?”

  Waylock smilingly shook his head.

  Caddigan’s mouth took on a twist even wryer than usual. “Now,” he said, “we have disposed of the superficialities; may I offer you a glass of tea?”

  “Thank you, yes.” Waylock leaned back. “Caddigan, apparently you’ve taken a dislike or at least a prejudice, to me. May I ask why?”

  “‘Dislike’ is the wrong word.” Caddigan spoke with didactic precision. “‘Prejudice’ is better, but still inexact. I feel that you are not a sincere psychiatrist. I feel that you have no concern for the advancement of knowledge, that you consider psychiatry a field where career-points are easy to pick up. I assure you,” he said in his driest voice, “that they are not.”

  “How did Basil make Wedge so fast?”

  “Luck.”

  Waylock pretended to think this over.

  Presently Caddigan said, “Let me hint of a matter which I’m sure you don’t apprehend.”

  “By all means.”

  “It’s easy to be fooled by Basil. Now he exudes cheer and optimism. But you should have seen him before he made Wedge. He was teetering up and down into melancholia; he almost became one of the patients.”

  “I had no idea his case was that critical.”

  “One thing I’ll say for Basil, he sincerely wants to improve the world.” And Caddigan turned Waylock a sharp look. “He’s discharged nine patients—not a bad record, all in all. But he has the ingenuous idea that if a little bit of his therapy discharges nine patients, a lot will discharge nine hundred. He’s like an imbecile with a pepper shaker; a little makes his food taste good, therefore a lot will make it wonderful.”

  “Then you don’t think he’s going on up?”

  “Nothing is impossible, naturally.”

  “What of this therapy he’s been hinting about?”

  Caddigan shrugged. “The imbecile with the pepper shaker.”

  Pladge Caddigan came jingling into the room, with a dozen bronze anklets and an equal number of bracelets. She wore a batik sari of red, gold, black and brown, a pair of absurd red sandals with green glass baubles.

  “I thought,” Caddigan remarked drily, “that you were studying your tectonics—or was it kaleidochrome?”

  “Kaleidochrome. But I had this marvellous idea, and I had to get into costume to show it to myself.”

  “Grasshopper-thinking never slants lifeline,” observed Caddigan.

  “Oh, slope. Bah and nitchevo.”

  “You’ll sing a different song, when I make Wedge and then Third.”

  Pladge rolled up her eyes. “Sometimes I’m sorry I’m Wedge. Who wants to be Amaranth?”

  “Me,” said Waylock with a grin. He approved of Pladge, and was amused to notice that Seth, realizing this, was annoyed.

  “I do too,” Seth said stiffly. “And so do you, if you’d only talk sense.”

  “I am talking sense. In the old days they feared extinction—”

  “Pladge!” said Seth in a curt voice, with a side glance at Waylock.

  Pladge flourished her jingling wrists. “Don’t be such a silly prude. All of us are mortal—except the Amaranth.”

  “It’s hardly a nice thing to talk about.”

  “I don’t see why. Let’s bring these things into the open, that’s what I say.”

  “Don’t mind me,” said Waylock. “Bring them out as far as you like.”

  Pladge settled into one of the stark old chairs. “I have a theory. Want to hear it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Pladge,” Caddigan remonstrated, but Pladge ignored him.

  “Latent in everyone, so I believe, is a dissolution urge. There might be fewer patients in the palliatories if we were open and forthright about it.”

  “Nonsense,” said Seth. “I’m a trained psychiatrist. That urge to which you refer has little if any connection with the catatonics. They’re victims of anxiety and melancholia.”

  “Perhaps so, but look how people act when they go to Carnevalle!”

  Seth nodded at Waylock. “He’s an authority on Carnevalle; he worked there seven years.”

  Pladge gave Waylock a look of delight and admiration. “How utterly lovely to live among all the color and lights, to meet people while they’re off guard!”

  “It was interesting enough,” said Waylock.

  “Tell me,” said Pladge breathlessly, “there’s a rumor about Carnevalle; I wonder if you can verify it.”

  “What’s the rumor?”

  “Well, Carnevalle is supposed to be outside the law, isn’t it?”

  Waylock shrugged. “More or less. People do things they’d get arrested for in Clarges.”

  “Or that they’d be ashamed to do,” muttered Seth.

  Pladge ignored him. “How deep does this lawlessness go? I mean—well, the rumor I heard was that in one of the Houses, in a very secret exclusive depraved House, people paid to see extinction! On young men and beautiful girls!”

  “Pladge,” Seth croaked, “what are you saying? Are you completely insane?”

  “I’ve heard even,” Pladge went on in a hoarse whisper, leaning forward, “that not only do they transite people for profit, but that if you have enough money—thousands and thousands of florins—you can buy a person, and despatch him or her yourself, in any way you want…”

  “Pladge!” Seth’s hands kneaded the arms of his chair. “This kind of talk is absolutely vile!”

  Pladge snapped, “Seth, I heard this rumor and I wonder what Mr. Waylock has to say. If he can verify it, I think something should be done!”

  “I agree with you.” Waylock thought of Carleon and his Museum, of Rubel and the Twisting Place, of Loriot and other Berbers. “I’ve met this rumor,” he said, “but I consider it just that—rumor. Or at least, I’ve never spoken to anyone with direct knowledge of such doings. As you know, visitors to Carnevalle do play at—at, well, transition: they throw darts at frogs, electrocute fish with probes; but I hardly think they consider what they’re doing; it’s a subconscious release.”

  Seth turned away in disgust. “Nonsense.”

  “Now, Seth, you’re the nonsensical one. You’re a scientist, but you ignore any ideas leading where you don’t choose to look.”

  Seth paused a moment, then said in a mock-gallant voice, “I’m sure Mr. Waylock is deriving an entirely false impression of you.”