Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... by Randall Garrett (good summer reads TXT) 📗

warped personality that might have taken such a life.

"But the one thing that I am working for right now and will continue to work for is a real cure, if that's possible. A real, genuine, usable kind of psychotherapy; one which is at least on a par with the science of cake-baking when it comes to the percentages of successes and failures."

 

His Grace thought that over for a minute. Then he leaned back and looked at me through narrowed eyes. There was a half smile on his lips "Royall, old man, let's admit one thing, just between ourselves," His voice became very slow and very deliberate. "Both you and I know that this process, whatever it is, is not psychotherapy."

"Why do you say that?" I wasn't trying to deny anything; I just wanted to know the reasoning behind his conclusions.

"Because I know what psychotherapy can and can't do. And I know that psychotherapy can not do the sort of thing we've been discussing.

"It's as if you'd taken me out on a rifle range, to a target two thousand yards from the shooter and let me watch that marksman put fifty shots out of fifty into a six-inch bull's-eye. I might not know what the shooter is using, but I would know beyond any shadow of doubt that it was not an ordinary revolver. More, I would know that it could not be any possible improvement upon the revolver. It simply would have to be an instrument of an entirely different order.

"If, in 1945, any intelligent military man had been told that the Japanese city of Hiroshima had been totally destroyed by a bomber dropping a single bomb, he would be certain that the bomb was a new and different kind from any ever known before. He would know that, mind you, without necessarily knowing a great deal about chemistry.

"I don't need to know a devil of a lot about psychotherapy to know that the process you've been describing is as far beyond the limits of psychotherapy as the Hiroshima bomb was beyond the limits of chemistry. Ditto for hypnosis and/or Pavlov's 'conditioned reflex', by the way.

"Now, just to clear the air, what is it?"

"It has no official name yet," I told him. "To keep within the law, we have been calling it psychotherapy. If we called it something else, and admitted that it isn't psychotherapy, the courts couldn't turn the zanies over to us. But you're right—it is as impossible to produce the effect by psychotherapy as it is to produce an atomic explosion by a chemical reaction.

"I've got a hunch that, just as chemistry and nucleonics are both really branches of physics, so psychotherapy and Brownlee's process are branches of some higher, more inclusive science—but that doesn't have a name, either."

"That's as may be," the Duke said, "but I'm happy to know that you're not deluding yourself that it's any kind of psychotherapy."

"You know," I said, "I kind of like your word geas. Because that's exactly what it seems to be—a geas. A hex, an enchantment, if you wish.

"Did you know that Brownlee was an anthropologist before he turned to psychology? He has some very interesting stories to tell about hexes and so on."

"I'll have to hear them one day." His Grace took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "Cigarette?"

"No, thanks. I gave up smoking a few years back."

He puffed his alight. "This geas," he said, "reminds me of the fact that, before the medical profession came up with antibiotics that would destroy the microorganisms that cause gas gangrene, amputation was the only method of preventing the death of the patient. It was crippling, but necessary."

"No!" My voice must have been a little too sharp, because he raised one eyebrow. "The analogy," I went on in a quieter tone, "isn't good because it gives a distorted picture. Look, Your Grace, you know what's done to keep a captive wild duck from flying away?"

"One wing is clipped."

"Right. Certain of the feathers are trimmed, which throws the duck off balance every time he tries to fly. He's crippled, right? But if you clip the other wing, what happens? He's in balance again. He can't fly as well as he could before his wings were clipped—but he can fly!

"That's what Brownlee's geas does—restore the balance by clipping the other wing."

His Grace smiled. There was an odd sort of twinkle in his eyes. "Let me carry your analogy somewhat farther. If the one wing is too severely clipped, clipping the other won't help. Our duck wouldn't have enough lift to get off the ground, even if he's balanced.

"Now, a zany who was that badly crippled—?"

I grinned back at him. "Right. It would be so obvious that he would have been put away very quickly. He would not be just psychopathic, but completely psychotic—and demonstrably so."

"Then," the Duke said, still pursuing the same track, "the only way to 'cure' that kind would be to find a method to ... ah ... 'grow the feathers back', wouldn't it? And where does that put today's psychotherapy? Providing, of course, that the analogy follows."

"It does," I said. "The real cure that I want to find would do just that—'grow the feathers back'. And that's beyond the limits of psychotherapy, too. That's why Dr. Brownlee and his boys want to study every zany we bring in, whether he can be helped or not. They're looking for a cure, not a stopgap."

"Let me drag that analogy out just a tiny bit more," said His Grace. "Suppose there is a genetic defect in the duck which makes it impossible—absolutely impossible—to grow feathers on that wing. Will your cure work?"

I was very quiet for along time. At least, it seemed long. The question had occurred to me before, and I didn't even like to think about it. Now, I had to face it again for a short while.

"Frankly," I said as evenly as I could, "I doubt that anything could be done. But that's only an opinion. We don't know enough yet to make any such predictions. It is my hope that some day we'll find a method of restoring every human being to his or her full potential—but I'm not at all certain of what the source of that potential is.

"But when we do get our cure," I went on, "then our first move must be to abolish the geas. And I wish that day were coming tomorrow."

There seemed to be a sudden silence in the room. I hadn't realized that I'd been talking so loudly or so vehemently.

The Duke broke it by saying: "Look here, Royall; I'm going to stay on here until I've learned all about every phase of this thing. It may sound a bit conceited, but I'm going to try to learn in a few weeks everything you have learned in a year. So you'll have to teach me, if you will. And then I'd like to borrow one or two of your therapists, your hexperts, to teach the technique in England.

"Allowing people like that to kill and maim when it can be prevented is unthinkable in a civilized society. I've got to learn how to stop it in England. Will you teach me?"

"On one condition," I said.

"What's that?"

"That you teach me how to use a walking stick."

He laughed. "You're on!"

The officer stuck his head in the waiting room again. "Pardon me. Inspector Acrington? The District Attorney would like to see you."

"Surely."

After he had left, I sat there for a minute or two, just thinking. Then Brownlee came back from his conference with the D.A. and sat down beside me.

"I met your noble friend heading for the D.A.'s office," he said with a smile. "He said that any man who was as determined to find a better method in order to replace a merely workable method is a remarkable man and therefore worth studying under. I just told him I agreed with him."

"Thanks," I said. "Thanks a lot."

Because Brownlee knows why I'm looking for a cure to replace the stopgap. Brownlee knows why I gave up smoking three years ago, why I don't have any matches or lighters in the house, why I keep the ashtrays for guests only, and why, for that reason, I don't have many guests. Brownlee knows why there are only electric stoves in my apartment—never gas.

Brownlee knows why my son quivers and turns his head away from a match flame. Brownlee knows why he had to put the geas on Stevie.

And I even think Brownlee suspects that I concealed some of the evidence in the fire that killed Stevie's mother—my wife.

Yes, I'm looking for a cure. But until then, I'll be thankful for the stopgap.

End of Project Gutenberg's Nor Iron Bars a Cage...., by Gordon Randall Garrett