The Complete Short Stories

Exasperated, Larsen clenched his fists. He could almost hear the artery thudding in his temple. ‘I’m not jumpy! For God’s sake, Bayliss, I thought the advanced view was that psychiatrist and patient shared the illness together, forgot their own identities and took equal responsibility. You’re trying to evade—’

‘I am not,’ Bayliss cut in firmly. ‘I accept complete responsibility for you. That’s why I want you to stay here until you’ve come to terms with this thing.’

Larsen snorted. "Thing"! Now you’re trying to make it sound like something out of a horror film. All I had was a simple hallucination. And I’m not even completely convinced it was that.’ He pointed through the window. ‘Suddenly opening the garage door in that bright sunlight it might have been a shadow.’

‘You described it pretty exactly,’ Bayliss commented. ‘Colour of the hair, moustache, the clothes he wore.’

‘Back projection. The detail in dreams is authentic too.’ Larsen moved the chair out of the way and leaned forwards across the desk. ‘Another thing. I don’t feel you’re being entirely frank.’

Their eyes levelled. Bayliss studied Larsen carefully for a moment, noticing his widely dilated pupils.

‘Well?’ Larsen pressed.

Bayliss buttoned his jacket and walked across to the door. ‘I’ll call in tomorrow. Meanwhile try to unwind yourself a little. I’m not trying to alarm you, Larsen, but this problem may be rather more complicated than you imagine.’ He nodded, then slipped out before Larsen could reply.

Larsen stepped over to the window and through the blind watched the psychologist disappear into his chalet. Disturbed for a moment, the sunlight again settled itself heavily over everything. A few minutes later the sounds of one of the Bartok quartets whined fretfully across the apron.

Larsen went back to the desk and sat down, elbows thrust forward aggressively. Bayliss irritated him, with his neurotic music and inaccurate diagnoses. He felt tempted to climb straight into his car and drive back to the plant. Strictly speaking, though, the psychologist outranked Larsen, and probably had executive authority over him while he was at the chalet, particularly as the five days he had spent there were on the company’s time.

He gazed round the silent lounge, tracing the cool horizontal shadows that dappled the walls, listening to the low soothing hum of the airconditioner. His argument with Bayliss had refreshed him and he felt composed and confident. Yet residues of tension and uneasiness still existed, and he found it difficult to keep his eyes off the open doors to the bedroom and kitchen.

He had arrived at the chalet five days earlier, exhausted and overwrought, on the verge of a total nervous collapse. For three months he had been working without a break on programming the complex circuitry of a huge brain simulator which the company’s Advanced Designs Division were building for one of the major psychiatric foundations. This was a complete electronic replica of the central nervous system, each spinal level represented by a single computer, other computers holding memory banks in which sleep, tension, aggression and other psychic functions were coded and stored, building blocks that could be played into the CNS simulator to construct models of dissociation states and withdrawal syndromes — any psychic complex on demand.

The design teams working on the simulator had been watched vigilantly by Bayliss and his assistants, and the weekly tests had revealed the mounting load of fatigue that Larsen was carrying. Finally Bayliss had pulled him off the project and sent him out to the desert for two or three days’ recuperation.

Larsen had been glad to get away. For the first two days he had lounged aimlessly around the deserted chalets, pleasantly fuddled by the barbiturates Bayliss prescribed, gazing out across the white deck of the desert floor, going to bed by eight and sleeping until noon. Every morning the caretaker had driven in from the town near by to clean up and leave the groceries and menu slips, but Larsen never saw her. He was only too glad to be alone. Deliberately seeing no one, allowing the natural rhythms of his mind to reestablish themselves, he knew he would soon recover.

In fact, however, the first person he had seen had stepped up to him straight out of a nightmare.

Larsen still looked back on the encounter with a shudder.

After lunch on his third day at the chalet he had decided to drive out into the desert and examine an old quartz mine in one of the canyons. This was a two-hour trip and he had made up a thermos of iced martini. The garage was adjacent to the chalet, set back from the kitchen side entrance, and fitted with a roll steel door that lifted vertically and curved up under the roof.