The Best of Robert Bloch (28 page)

A sudden lance of lightning pierced the sky. Thunder crashed, and then Hanson was yelling again. "That lightning—it must have struck the plane—he's going to crash—"

"Come on!" Satterlee muttered, gunning the motor and turning off into the field. In the distance a siren wailed, and through the rain he could see the white bulk of an oncoming ambulance. And the plane spiraled down in a crazy spin. . . .

Wally Tibbets leaned back and pushed his chair away from the desk.

"So that's how it happened, eh?" he said.

Satterlee nodded soberly.

"That's how it happened. The poor guy was dead before they pulled him out of the wreckage. But they found the tanks and everything. And he had the papers on him—the whole story, plus copies of the formula he'd discovered. I persuaded Dean Hanson to turn the stuff over to me. He was in such a daze I guess he didn't think about objecting. So now we can back up everything we say with actual proof. I suppose we'll be feeding the wire services too."

Tibbets shook his head. "Nope," he said. "I'm going to answer all inquiries with a flat denial."

"But I have the facts right here in my pocket—"

"Keep 'em there. On second thought, burn 'em."

"The story—"

"There isn't going to be any story. It's all over now anyway. Didn't you notice a change in people after that storm came up? Wind must have blown the gas away, dissipated it or something. Anyway, everybody's back to normal. And most of them have already convinced themselves that nothing ever happened."

"But we
know
it did! What about all those story leads that came in this afternoon? You said they were burning up the wires."

"For one hour, yes. And ever since then they've been calling back with denials and retractions. Turns out the senator isn't resigning after all. The labor boy shot himself by accident. The police can't get anyone to sign their confessions. The advertisers are placing new copy again. Mark my words, by tomorrow morning the whole town will have forgotten what went on. They'll
will
themselves to forget, in order to protect their own sanity. Nobody can face the truth and live."

"That's a terrible way to think," Satterlee said. "Doctor Lowenquist was a great man. He knew that what he'd stumbled on accidentally could revolutionize everything. This flight over the city was just a trial run—he tells about it in his papers here. He had plans for doing it again on a larger scale. He wanted to take a plane up over Washington, fly over Moscow, all the capitals of the world. Because this truth serum could
change
the world. Don't you see that?"

"Of course I see it. But the world shouldn't be changed."

"Why not?" Satterlee squared his shoulders. "Look here, I've been thinking. Lowenquist is dead. But I have his formula. There's no reason why I couldn't carry on his work where he left off."

"You mean you'd make some more of that stuff, spray it around?"

Satterlee nodded. "There's nothing to stop me. I've saved my money these past years. I could hire planes and pilots. Don't you think they need a dose of truth throughout the world today?"

Wally Tibbets stood up. "You're forgetting one thing," he said. "Truth is a weapon. And weapons are dangerous."

"But it isn't as if I was dropping hydrogen bombs."

"No." Tibbets shook his head slowly. "This would be worse. Far worse. You saw what happened on a small scale, just here in town, today."

"Of course I saw. Criminals confessed. Crooks reformed or blew their brains out. People suddenly stopped lying to one another. Is that so bad?"

"About the criminals, no. But that's not all that happened. As you say, people stopped lying to one another.
Ordinary
people. And that could be a terrible thing."

"I don't see—"

"That's right. You don't see. You don't see what happens when the doctor tells his patient that he's dying of cancer, when the wife tells her husband he's not actually the father of their son. Everybody has secrets, or almost everybody. Sometimes it's better not to know the whole truth—about others or about yourself."

"But look at what goes on in the world today."

"I am looking. That's my job—to sit at this desk and watch the world go round. Sometimes it's a dizzy spin, but at least it keeps going. Because people keep going. And they need the lies to help them. If you get right down to it, maybe most of the things we live by are lies. The notion of abstract justice. The ideal of romantic love everlasting. The belief that right will triumph. Even our concept of democracy may be a lie.

"But we believe in them, most of us. And because we believe in these things we do our best to live by them. And little by little our belief helps to make these things come true. It's a slow process, and sometimes it looks pretty hopeless, but over the period of recorded history it works. Animals don't lie, you know. Only human beings know how to pretend, to make believe, to deceive themselves and others. But that's why they're human beings."

"Maybe so," Satterlee said. "Yet think of the opportunity I have. I could even stop the possibility of war."

"Perhaps. Once the military and political and economic leaders faced up to the truth about their ideas and policies, they might change temporarily."

"We could keep on spraying," Satterlee broke in eagerly. "There are other honest men—we could raise funds, make this a long-term project. And who knows? Perhaps after a few exposures the change would be permanent. Don't you understand? We can end war."

"I understand," Tibbets told him. "You could end war between nations. And start hundreds of millions of
individual
wars, waged in human minds and human hearts. There'd be a wave of insanity, a wave of suicides, a wave of murders. There'd be a breakup of the home, the family, all the institutions that hold our lives together. The whole social structure would collapse. No, your weapon is too dangerous."

"I realize it's a risk."

Tibbets put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I want you to forget this whole business," he said soberly. "Don't make any plans of your own about manufacturing this gas and spraying it over the Capitol or the Kremlin. Don't do it, for all our sakes."

Satterlee was silent, staring out into the night. Far in the distance a jet plane screamed.

"You're an honest man," Tibbets said. "One of the few. I admire you for it. I'm not going to try and force you to give up that formula, because it isn't necessary. I believe in you. All I want is for you to tell me now that you won't try to change things. Leave the world the way it is." He paused. "Will you give me your word of honor?"

Satterlee hesitated. He
was
an honest man, he realized, and so his answer was a long time coming.

Then, "I promise," Satterlee lied.

H
E MAY OR
may not have been human. It was hard to tell, because in a psychiatrist's office, you get all kinds.

But he
looked
human—that is to say he had two arms, two legs, one head, and a slightly worried expression—and there was no reason for the receptionist to turn him away.

Particularly since he was here to give free samples.

"I'm from the Ace Manufacturing Company," he told the girl. "An old established firm. You've heard of us?"

The receptionist, who dealt with an average of ten salesmen a day, nodded politely and proceeded to file her nails.

"As the name indicates, we used to be a specialty house," the salesman continued. "Manufactured all the aces used in decks of playing cards. But lately we've branched out into Pharmaceuticals."

"How nice for you," said the receptionist, wondering what he was talking about, but not very much.

"Not ordinary products, of course. We have the feeling that most pharmaceuticals are a drug on the market. So we've come up with something different. As our literature indicates, it's more along the lines of the lysergic acid derivatives. In addition to the usual tranquilizing effect, it alters the time-sense, both subjectively and objectively. Mind you, I said 'objectively.' I'm sure your employer will be interested in this aspect, which is, to say the least, highly revolutionary—"

"I doubt it. He's always voted Republican."

"But if I could just discuss the matter with him for a few moments—"

The girl shrugged and cocked her head towards the inner sanctum of Morton Placebo, M.D.

"Nobody rides that couch without a ticket," she told him. "The standard fee is $50 an hour, first-class, or $30, tourist. That's with three on the couch at the same time. He says it's group-therapy, and I say it's damned uncomfortable."

"But I'm not a patient," the stranger persisted. "I merely want to discuss my pharmaceuticals."

"You can't discuss your hemorrhoids without paying the fee," the receptionist drawled. "Doctor isn't in business for your health, you know."

The salesman sighed. "I'll just have to leave a few samples and some literature, I guess. Maybe he'll look it over and see me when I call back later. I'm sure he's going to be interested, because these little preparations will alter the entire concept and structure of psychotherapy."

"Then he won't be," the girl decided. "Dr. Placebo likes psychiatry just the way it is right now. Which is to say, at $50 an hour."

"But he will take the free samples?" the salesman persisted.

"Of course. He'll take anything that doesn't cost money. In fact, he told me it was the free-fantasy which attracted him to the profession in the first place."

She reached out her hand and the representative of the Ace Manufacturing Company placed a little packet of three tablets on her palm.

"The literature is inside," he said. "Please ask the Doctor to study it carefully before he experiments with the dosage. I'll stop by again next week."

"Don't you want to leave your card?" asked the girl, politely.

"Of course. Here you are."

He handed it to her, turned on his heel, and made his exit.

The receptionist studied the card curiously.

It was the Ace of Spades.

Normally, Dr. Morton Placebo wouldn't have paid much attention to a salesman's sample; largerly because the very idea of paying was anathema to him.

But, as psychiatrists are so fond of saying—and, quite frequently, demonstrating—the norm is an abstraction.

And Dr. Placebo was always interested in anything which came to him without charge. Perhaps his receptionist hadn't been far wrong when she'd analyzed his reasons for entering a psychiatric career. All psychotherapists have their quirks.

According to his eminent disciple and official biographer, Ernest Jones, the great Sigmund Freud believed in occultism, telepathy, and the magic of numbers. The esteemed Otto Rank developed a manic-depressive psychosis; Wilhelm Reich's rationality was impugned on occasion; Sandor Ferenczi suffered from unbalance due to organic brain-damage.

Compared to these gentlemen, Dr. Placebo's problem was a minor one; he was a frustrated experimenter. Both his frustration and his stinginess had their origin in his childhood, within the confines of the familial constellation.

In plain English, his father was stingier than he was, and when the young Morton Placebo evinced an interest in laboratory experimentation, the old man refused to put up the money for a chemistry set. Once, during his high school years, the young man managed to acquire two guinea-pigs, which promptly disappeared. He was unable to solve the mystery—any more than he could account for the fact that his father, who always carried peanut-butter sandwiches in his lunch-pail, went to work during the following week with meat sandwiches.

But now, at fifty, Morton Placebo, M.D., was fulfilled. He had his own laboratory at last, in the form of his psychiatric practice, and no end of wonderful guinea-pigs. Best of all, the guinea-pigs paid large sums of money for the privilege of lending themselves to his experiments. Outside of his receptionist's salary, and the $25 he spent having the couch re-sprung after a fat woman patient had successfully re-enacted a birth-fantasy, Dr. Placebo had no overhead at all. With the steady stream of salesmen and their free samples, there was no end to the types of experimentation he could indulge in.

He'd use pills which produced euphoria, pills which produced depression, pills which caused a simulation of schizophrenia, pills which had remarkable side-effects, pills which tranquilized, pills which stimulated; pills which resulted in such fascinating manifestations as satyriasis, virilescence and the sudden eruption of motor reflexes in the
abductor minimi digit
. He kept copious notes on the reactions afforded by LSD,
peyotl
extracts, cantharadin, yohimbine and reserpine derivatives. Whenever he found himself with a patient on his hands (or couch) who did not respond to orthodox (or reformed) therapy, Dr. Placebo—purely in the interest of science, of course—reached into his drawer and hauled out a handful of free pills.

Thus it was that he was grateful when he received the samples from the Ace Manufacturing Company.

"The literature's on the inside," his girl told him. He nodded thoughtfully and stared at the glassine packet with its three yellow pills.

"Time Capsules,"
he read, aloud.

"Alters the time-sense, both subjectively and objectively," the receptionist said, parroting what she remembered from the salesman's pitch.

"Subjectively," snapped Dr. Placebo. "Can't alter it objectively. Time is money, you know."

"But he said—"

"Never mind, I'll read the literature." Dr. Placebo dismissed her and thoughtfully opened the packet. A small wadded-up piece of paper fluttered out onto the desk. He picked it up, unfolded it, and stared at the message.

There was more to it, much more, but Dr. Placebo didn't bother attempting to translate. Apparently this literature was written in the same foreign tongue used by general medical practitioners when they scrawl their prescriptions. He'd better wait and get an explanation from his friendly neighborhood drug-store.