"And that the planet has disappeared because he has amnesia?" Herman demanded on a rising note.
Secundus beamed. "Concisely expressed. I myself, being, so to speak, saturated with the thoughts and habits of human beings, who are, you must admit, a garrulous race, could not--"
"Oh, no!" said Herman.
"Oh, yes," Secundus corrected. "I can understand that the idea is difficult for you to accept, since you naturally believe that you yourself have a real existence, or, to be more precise, that you belong to the world of phenomena as opposed to that of noumena." He beamed. "Now I will be silent, a considerable task for me, and let you ask questions."
Herman fought a successful battle with his impulse to stand Up and shout "To h.e.l.l with it!" He had been through a great deal, but he was a serious and realistic young man. He set himself to think the problem through logically. If, as seemed more than probable, Secundus, Primus, Hairy, Four-eyes, and this whole Alice-in-Wonderland situation existed only as his hallucinations, then it did not matter much whether he took them seriously or not. If they were real, then he wasn"t, and vice versa. It didn"t make any difference which was which.
He relaxed deliberately and folded his hands against his abdomen. "Let me see if I can get this clear," he said. "I"m a noumenon, not a phenomenon. In cruder terms, I exist only in your mind. Is that true?"
Secundus beamed. "Correct."
"If _you_ got amnesia, I and the rest of the human race would disappear."
Secundus looked worried, "That is also correct, and if that should happen, you will readily understand that we _would_ be in difficulty.
The situation is extremely--But pardon me. I had promised to be silent except when answering questions."
"This is the part I fail to understand, Mr. Secundus. I gather that you brought me here to treat Mr. Primus. Now, if I exist as a thought in your mind, you necessarily know everything I know. Why don"t you treat him yourself?"
Secundus shook his head disapprovingly. "Oh, no, Dr. Raye, that is not the case at all. It cannot be said that I _know_ everything that you know; rather we should say that I _remember_ you. In other words, that I maintain your existence by an act of memory. The two functions, knowledge and memory, are not identical, although, of course, the second cannot be considered to exist without the first. But before we become entangled in our own terms, I should perhaps remind you that when I employ the word "memory" I am only making use of a convenient approximation. Perhaps it would be helpful to say that my memory is comparable to the structure-memory of a living organism, although that, too, has certain semantic disadvantages. Were you about to make a remark, Doctor?"
"It still seems to me," Herman said stubbornly, "that if you remember me, structurally or otherwise, that includes everything I remember. If you"re going to tell me that you remember human knowledge, including Freudian theory and practice, but are unable to manipulate it, that seems to me to be contradicted by internal evidence in what you"ve already said. For example, it"s clear that in the field of epistemology--the knowledge of knowledge, you might say--you have the knowledge _and_ manipulate it."
"Ah," said Secundus, smiling shyly, "but, you see, that happens to be my line. Psychoa.n.a.lysis and psychotherapy, being specializations, are not. As I mentioned previously, persons of our order are theoretically not capable of psychic deterioration. That is why we come to you, Dr.
Raye. We are unable to help ourselves; we ask your help. We place ourselves unreservedly in your hands."
The question, "How was I chosen?" occurred to Herman, but he left it unasked. He knew that the answer was much likelier to be, "At random,"
than, "Because we wanted the most brilliant and talented psychoa.n.a.lyst on the planet."
"I gather that I"m not the first person you"ve tried," he said.
"Oh, you saw Dr. Buddolphson departing? Yes, it is true that in our ignorance of the subject we did not immediately turn to pract.i.tioners of your psychological orientation. In fact, if you will not be offended, I may say that you are practically our last hope. We have already had one eminent gentleman whose method was simply to talk over Mr. Primus"s problems with him and endeavor to help him reach an adjustment; he failed because Mr. Primus, so far as he is aware, has no problems except that he has lost his memory. Then we had another whose system, as he explained it to me, was simply to repeat, in a sympathetic manner, everything that the patient said to him; Mr.
Primus was not sufficiently prolix for this method to be of avail.
"Then there was another who wished to treat Mr. Primus by encouraging him to relive his past experiences: "taking him back along the time-track," as he called it; but--" Secundus looked mournful--"Mr.
Primus has actually _had_ no experiences in the usual sense of the term, though he very obligingly made up a number of them. Our ontogeny, Dr. Raye, is so simple that it can scarcely be said to exist at all. Each of us normally has only one function, the one I have already mentioned, and, until this occurrence, it has always been fulfilled successfully.
"We also had a man who proposed to reawaken Mr. Primus"s memory by electric shock, but Mr. Primus is quite impervious to currents of electricity and we were unable to hit upon an acceptable subst.i.tute.
In short, Dr. Raye, if you should prove unable to help us, we will have no one left to fall back upon except, possibly, the Yogi."
"They might do you more good, at that," Herman said, looking at Mr.
Primus. "Well, I"ll do what I can, though the function of a.n.a.lysis is to get the patient to accept reality, and this is the opposite. What can you tell me, to begin with, about Mr. Primus"s personality, the onset of the disturbance, and so on--and, in particular, what are you two? Who"s your boss? What"s it all for and how does it work?"
Secundus said, "I can give you very little a.s.sistance, I am afraid. I would characterize Primus as a very steady person, extremely accurate in his work, but not very imaginative. His memory loss occurred abruptly, as you yourself witnessed yesterday afternoon. As to your other questions--forgive me, Dr. Raye, but it is to your own advantage if I fail to answer them. I am, of course, the merest amateur in psychology, but I sincerely feel that your own psyche might be damaged if you were to learn the fragment of the truth which I could give you."
He paused. A sheaf of papers, which Herman had not noticed before, lay on a small table that he had not noticed, either. Secundus picked them up and handed them over.
"Here are testing materials," he said. "If you need anything else, you have only to call on me. But I trust you will find these complete."
He turned to go. "And one more thing, Dr. Raye," he said with an apologetic smile. "_Hurry_, if you possibly can."
Primus, looking rather like a sarcophagus ornament, lay limply supine on the ten-foot couch, arms at his sides, eyes closed. When Herman had first told him to relax, Primus had had to have the word carefully explained to him; from then on he had done it--or seemed to do it--perfectly.
In his preliminary tests, the Binet, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index and the Berneuter P.I., he had drawn almost a complete blank. Standard testing methods did not work on Mr. Primus, and the reason was obvious enough. Mr. Primus simply was not a human being.
This room, no doubt, was an illusion, and so was Mr. Primus"s anthropomorphic appearance....
Herman felt like a surgeon trying to operate blindfolded while wearing a catcher"s mitt on each hand. But he kept trying; he was getting results, though whether or not they meant anything, he was unable to guess.
On the Rorschach they had done a little better, at least in volume of response. "That looks like a cliff," Primus would say eagerly. "That looks like a--piece of sandstone. This part looks like two volcanoes and a cave." Of course, Herman realized, the poor old gentleman was only trying to please him. He had no more idea than a goldfish what a volcano or a rock looked like, but he wanted desperately to help.
Even so, it was possible to score the results. According to Herman"s interpretation, Primus was a case of arrested infantile s.e.xualism, with traces of conversion hysteria and a strong Oedipus complex.
Herman entered the protocol solemnly in his notes and kept going.
Next came free a.s.sociation, and, after that, recounting of dreams.
Feeling that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, Herman carefully explained to Primus what "sleep" and "dreams" were.
Primus had promised to do his best; he had been lying there now, without moving, for--how long? Startled, Herman looked at his watch.
It had stopped.
Scoring the Rorschach alone, Herman realized suddenly, should have taken him nearly a full day, even considering the fact that he hadn"t eaten anything, or taken time out to rest, or--Herman bewilderedly felt his jaw. There was only the slightest stubble. He didn"t feel hungry or tired, or cramped from sitting....
"Secundus!" he called.
A door opened in the wall to his right, and Secundus stepped through.
The door disappeared.
"Yes, Dr. Raye? Is anything wrong?"
"How long have I been here?"
Secundus" right-hand head looked embarra.s.sed. "Well, Doctor, without bringing in the difficult questions of absolute versus relative duration, and the definition of an arbitrary position--"
"Don"t stall. How long have I been here in my own subjective time?"
"Well, I was about to say, without being unnecessarily inclusive, the question is still very difficult. However, bearing in mind that the answer is only a rough approximation--about one hundred hours."
Herman rubbed his chin. "I don"t like your tampering with me," he said slowly. "You"ve speeded me up--is that it? And at the same time inhibited my fatigue reactions, and G.o.d knows what else, so that I didn"t even notice I"d been working longer than I normally could until just now?"
Secundus looked distressed. "I"m afraid I have made rather a botch of it, Dr. Raye. I should not have allowed you to notice at all, but it is growing increasingly difficult to restrain your fellow-creatures to their ordinary routines. My attention strayed, I am sorry to say." He glanced at the rec.u.mbent form of Primus. "My word! What is Mr. Primus doing, Dr. Raye?"
"Sleeping," Herman answered curtly.
"Remarkable! I hope he does not make a habit of it. Will he awaken soon, do you think, Doctor?"
"I have no idea," said Herman helplessly; but at that moment Primus stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up with his usual vague, kindly smile.