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The Stars My Destination ( Tiger! Tiger! ) :: Bester Alfred
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«You still brooding about TychoSands, Fritz? I'm not. Am I lousing your wing with radiation?»
«I've had everything shielded.»
«Ready for the dirty work?»
«I wish I knew what you were after.»
«Information.»
«And you have to turn my therapy department into an inquisition to get it?»
«That was the idea.»
«Why not use ordinary drugs?»
«Tried them already. No good. He's not an ordinary man.»
«You know this is illegal.»
«I know. Changed your mind? Want to back out? I can duplicate your equipment for a quarter of a million.»
«No, Saul. We'll always owe you favors.»
«Then let's go. Nightmare Theater first.»
They trundled the tank down a corridor and into a hundred feet square padded room. It was one of therapy's by-passed experiments. Nightmare Theater had been an early attempt to shock schizophrenics back into the objective world by rendering the phantasy world into which they were withdrawing uninhabitable. But the shattering and laceration of patients' emotions had proved to be too cruel and dubious a treatment.
For Dagenham's sake, the head of Psychiatry had dusted off the 3D visual projectors and reconnected all sensory projectors. They decanted Foyle from his tank, gave him a reviving shot and left him in the middle of the floor. They removed the tank, turned off the lights and entered the concealed control booth. There, they turned on the projectors.
Every child in the world imagines that its phantasy world is unique to itself. Psychiatry knows that the joys and terrors of private phantasies are a common heritage shared by all mankind. Fears, guilts, terrors, and shames could be interchanged, from one man to the next, and none would notice the difference. The therapy department at Combined Hospital had recorded thousands of emotional tapes and boiled them down to one all-inclusive allterrifying performance in Nightmare Theater.
Foyle awoke, panting and sweating, and never knew that he had awakened. He was in the clutch of the serpent-haired bloody-eyed Eumenides. He was pursued, entrapped, precipitated from heights, burned, flayed, bowstringed, vermin-covered, devoured. He screamed. He ran. The radar Hobble-Field in the Theater clogged his steps and turned them into the ghastly slow motion of dream-running. And through the cacophony of grinding, shrieking, moaning, pursuing that assailed his ears, muttered the thread of a persistent voice.
«Where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad'?»
«'Vorga,' « Foyle croaked.
«You still brooding about TychoSands, Fritz? I'm not. Am I lousing your wing with radiation?»
«I've had everything shielded.»
«Ready for the dirty work?»
«I wish I knew what you were after.»
«Information.»
«And you have to turn my therapy department into an inquisition to get it?»
«That was the idea.»
«Why not use ordinary drugs?»
«Tried them already. No good. He's not an ordinary man.»
«You know this is illegal.»
«I know. Changed your mind? Want to back out? I can duplicate your equipment for a quarter of a million.»
«No, Saul. We'll always owe you favors.»
«Then let's go. Nightmare Theater first.»
They trundled the tank down a corridor and into a hundred feet square padded room. It was one of therapy's by-passed experiments. Nightmare Theater had been an early attempt to shock schizophrenics back into the objective world by rendering the phantasy world into which they were withdrawing uninhabitable. But the shattering and laceration of patients' emotions had proved to be too cruel and dubious a treatment.
For Dagenham's sake, the head of Psychiatry had dusted off the 3D visual projectors and reconnected all sensory projectors. They decanted Foyle from his tank, gave him a reviving shot and left him in the middle of the floor. They removed the tank, turned off the lights and entered the concealed control booth. There, they turned on the projectors.
Every child in the world imagines that its phantasy world is unique to itself. Psychiatry knows that the joys and terrors of private phantasies are a common heritage shared by all mankind. Fears, guilts, terrors, and shames could be interchanged, from one man to the next, and none would notice the difference. The therapy department at Combined Hospital had recorded thousands of emotional tapes and boiled them down to one all-inclusive allterrifying performance in Nightmare Theater.
Foyle awoke, panting and sweating, and never knew that he had awakened. He was in the clutch of the serpent-haired bloody-eyed Eumenides. He was pursued, entrapped, precipitated from heights, burned, flayed, bowstringed, vermin-covered, devoured. He screamed. He ran. The radar Hobble-Field in the Theater clogged his steps and turned them into the ghastly slow motion of dream-running. And through the cacophony of grinding, shrieking, moaning, pursuing that assailed his ears, muttered the thread of a persistent voice.
«Where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad' where is 'Nomad'?»
«'Vorga,' « Foyle croaked.