He Who Shapes Read Free

well-constructed and powerfully executed, as weU
    as being precisely appropriate for the case at hand. But then, he
    was Render, the Shaperone of the two hundred or so special
    analysts whose own psychic makeup permitted them to enter
    into neurotic patterns without carrying away more than an
    esthetic gratification from the mimesis of aberrancea Sane
    Hatter. '
    Render stirred his recollections. He had been analyzed
    himself,   analyzed   and   passed   upon   as   a   granite-willed,
    ultrastable outsidertough enough to weather the basilisk gaze
    of a fixation, walk unscathed amidst the chimaerae of
    perversions, force dark Mother Medusa to close her eyes before
    the caducous of his art. His own analysis had not been difficult.
    Nine years before (it seemed much longer) he had suffered a
    willing injection of novocain into the most painful area of his
    spirit. It was after the auto wreck, after the death of Ruth, and
    of Miranda their daughter, that he had begun to feel detached.
    Perhaps he did not want to recover certain empathies; perhaps
    his own world was now based upon a certain rigidity of feeling.
    If this was true, he was wise enough in the ways of the mind to
    realize it, and perhaps he had decided that such a world had its
    own compensations.
    His son Peter was now ten years old. He was attending a
    school of quality, and he penned his father a letter every week.
    The letters were becoming progressively literate, showing signs
    of a precociousness of which Render could not but approve. He
    would take the boy with him to Europe in the summer.
    As for JillJill DeVille (what a luscious, ridiculous name!he
    loved her for it)she was growing, if anything, more interesting
    to him. (He wondered if this was an indication of early middle
    age.) He was vastly taken by her unmusical nasal voice, her
    sudden interest in architecture, her concern with the unremov-
    able mole on the right side of her otherwise well-designed nose.
    He should really call her immediately and go in search of a new
    restaurant. For some reason though, he did not feel like it.
    It had been several weeks since he had visited his club. The
    Partridge and Scalpel, and he felt a strong desire to eat from an
    oaken table, alone, in the split-level dining room with the three
    fireplaces, beneath the artificial torches and the boars' heads
    like gin ads. So he pushed his perforated membership card into
    the phone-slot on his desk and there were two buzzes behind
    the voice-screen.
    "Hello, Partridge and Scalpel," said the voice. "May I help
    you?"
    "Charles Render," he said. "I'd like a table in about half an
    hour."
    "How many will there be?"
    "Just me."
    "Very good, sif. Half an hour, then.That's 'Render'?
    R-e-n-d-e-rl"
    "Right."
    "Thank you."
    He broke the connection, rose from his desk. Outside, the
    day had vanished.
    The monoliths and the towers gave forth their own light
    now. A soft snow, like sugar, was sifting down through the
    shadows and transforming itself into beads on the windowpane.
    Render shrugged into his overcoat, turned off the lights,
    locked the inner office. There was a note on Mrs. Hedges'
    blotter.
    Miss DeVille called, it said.
    He crumpled the note and tossed it into the waste-chute. He
    would call her tomorrow and say he had been working until late
    on his lecture.
    He switched off the final light, clapped his hat onto his head,
    and passed through the outer door, locking it as he went. The
    drop took him to the sub-subcellar where his auto was parked.
    It was chilly in the sub-sub, and his footsteps seemed loud on
    the concrete as he passed among the parked vehicles. Beneath
    the glare of the naked lights, his S-7 Spinner was a sleek gray
    cocoon from which it seemed turbulent wings might at any
    moment emerge. The double row of antennae which fanned
    forward from the slope of its hood added to this feeling. Render
    thumbed open the door.
    He touched the ignition and there was the sound of a lone
    bee awakening in a