"... Mr. Martin has, in the eighteen months since he came to the Belt, run up an enviable record, both as an insurance investigator and as a police detective, although his connection with the Planetoid Police is, necessarily, an unofficial one. Probably not since Sherlock Holmes has there been such mutual respect and co-operation between the official police and a private investigator."
The was only one explanation, Stanton thought. Martin, too, had been treated by the Inst.i.tute. His memory was still blurry and incomplete, but he did suddenly remember that a decision had been made for Martin to take the treatment.
He chuckled a little at the irony of it. They hadn"t been able to make a superman of Martin, but they _had_ been able to make a normal and extraordinarily capable man of him. Now it was Bart who was the freak, the odd one.
_Turn about is fair play,_ he thought. But somehow it didn"t seem quite fair.
He crumpled the newspaper, dropped it into a nearby waste chute, and walked on through the night toward the Neurophysical Inst.i.tute.
XII
INTERLUDE
"You understand, Mrs. Stanton," said the psychiatrist, "that a great part of Martin"s trouble is mental as much as physical. Because of the nature of his ailment, he has withdrawn, pulled himself away from communication with others. If these symptoms had been brought to my attention earlier, the mental disturbance might have been more easily a.n.a.lyzed and treated."
"I"m sorry, Doctor," said Mrs. Stanton. Her manner betrayed weariness and pain. "It was so--so difficult. Martin could never talk very well, you know, and he just talked less and less as the years went by. It was so gradual that I never really noticed it."
_Poor woman_, the doctor thought. _She"s not well, herself. She should have married again, rather than carry the whole burden alone. Her role as a doting mother hasn"t helped either of the boys to overcome the handicaps that were already present._
"I"ve tried to do my best for Martin," Mrs. Stanton went on unhappily.
"And so has Bart. When they were younger, Bart used to take him out all the time. They went everywhere together. Of course, I don"t expect Bart to do that so much any more; he has his own life to live. He can"t take Martin out on dates or things like that. But when he"s home, Bart helps me with Martin all the time."
"I understand," said the doctor. _This is no time to tell her that Bartholomew"s tests indicate that he has subconsciously resented Martin"s presence for a long time. She has enough to worry about._
"I don"t understand," said Mrs. Stanton, breaking into sudden tears. "I don"t understand why Martin should behave this way! Why should he just sit there with his eyes closed and ignore us both?"
The doctor comforted her in a warmly professional manner, then, as her tears subsided, he said: "We don"t understand all of the factors ourselves, Mrs. Stanton. Martin"s reactions are, I admit, unusual. His behavior doesn"t quite follow the pattern that we usually expect from such cases as this. His physical disability has drastically modified the course of his mental development, and, at the same time, makes it difficult for us to make any a.n.a.lysis of is mental state."
"Is there _any_thing you can do, Doctor?"
"We don"t know yet," he said gently. He considered for a moment, then said: "Mrs. Stanton, I"d like for you to leave both the boys here for a few days, so that we can perform further tests. That will help us a great deal in getting at the root of Martin"s trouble."
She looked at him with a little surprise. "Why, yes, of course. But ...
why should Bart stay?"
The doctor weighed his words carefully before he spoke.
"Bart is our control, Mrs. Stanton. Since the boys are genetically identical, they should have been a great deal alike in personality if it hadn"t been for Martin"s accident. In other words, our tests of Bart will tell us what Martin _should_ be like. That way we can tell just how much and in what way Martin deviates from what he should ideally be. Do you understand?"
"Yes. Yes, I see. All right, Doctor--whatever you say."
After Mrs. Stanton had left, the psychiatrist sat quietly in his chair and stared thoughtfully at his desk top for several minutes. Then, making his decision, he picked up a small book that lay on his desk and looked up a number in Arlington, Virginia. He punched out the number on his phone, and when the face appeared on his screen, he said: "h.e.l.lo, Sidney. Look, I have a very interesting case out here that I"d like to talk to you about.
Do you happen to have a telepath who"s strong enough to take a meshing with an insane mind? If my suspicions are correct, I"ll need a man with an impregnable sense of ident.i.ty, because he"s going to get into the weirdest situation I"ve ever come across."
XIII
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
The action in the handball court was beautiful to watch. The robot mechanism behind Bart Stanton would fire out a ball at random intervals ranging from a tenth to a quarter of a second, bouncing them off the wall in a random pattern. Stanton would retrieve the ball before it hit the ground, bounce it off the wall again to strike the target on the moving robot. Stanton had to work against a machine; no ordinary human being could have given him any compet.i.tion.
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
_Pok! Pok! PLUNK._
"One miss," Stanton said to himself. But he fielded the next one nicely and slammed it home.
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
The physical therapist who was standing by glanced at his watch. It was almost time.
_Pok! Pok! Ping!_
The machine, having delivered its last ball, shut itself off with a smug click. Stanton turned away from the handball court and walked toward the physical therapist, who held out a robe for him.
"That was good, Bart," he said, "real good."
"One miss," Stanton said as he shrugged into the robe.
"Yeah. Your timing was a shade off there, I guess. But you ran a full minute over your previous record."
Stanton looked at him. "You re-set the timer again," he said accusingly.
But there was a grin on his face.
The P.T. man grinned back. "Yup. Come on, step into the mummy case." He waved toward the narrow niche in the wall of the court, a niche just big enough to hold a standing man. Stanton stepped in, and various instrument pick-ups came out of the walls and touched his body. Hidden machines recorded his heartbeat, blood pressure, brain activity, muscular tension, and several other factors.
After a minute, the P.T. man said, "O.K., Bart; let"s. .h.i.t the steam box."
Stanton stepped out of the niche and accompanied the therapist to another room, where he took off the robe again and sat down on the small stool inside an ordinary steam box. The box closed, leaving his head free, and the box began to fill with steam.
"Did I ever tell you what I don"t like about that machine?" Bart asked as the therapist draped a heavy towel around his head.
"Nope. Didn"t know you had any gripe. What is it?"
"You can"t gloat after you beat it. You can"t walk over and pat it on the shoulder and say, "Well, better luck next time, old man." It isn"t a good loser, and it isn"t a bad loser. The d.a.m.n thing doesn"t even know it lost, and if it did, it wouldn"t care."
"I see what you mean," said the P.T. man, chuckling. "You beat the pants off it and what d"you get? Not even a case of the sulks out of it."
"Exactly. And what"s worse, I know perfectly good and well that it"s only half trying. The d.a.m.ned thing could beat me easily if you just turned that k.n.o.b over a little more."
"You"re not competing against the machine, anyway," the therapist said.