The Call-Girls Read Free

the Vocal Chords; an International Congress on the Technology of Artificial Limbs; a Symposium on the Responsibilities of Scientists in a Free Society; another on the Ethics of Science and the Concept of Democracy; a seminar on the Use of Solid Fuels in Rocket-Propulsion Systems; a Congressof the European Psychiatric Association on the Origins of Violence; a Symposium of the World Organization of Psychiatrists on the Roots of Aggression; the International Society for the Quantitative Study of Social Behaviour was to hold a Seminar on Self-Regulatory Mechanisms in Interpersonal Interrelationships; the Swiss Poetry Club was organizing a series of lectures on Archetypal Symbols in the Folklore of the Bernese Oberland; and there were going to be three Interdisciplinary Symposia with titles which contained the three words ‘Environment’, ‘Pollution’ and ‘Future’ in three different permutations.
    The young friar was also studying the leaflet. ‘One wonders,’ he remarked, ‘why the European Psychiatrists and the World Psychiatrists can’t get together when they are discussing the same subject.’
    â€˜Different schools,’ Burch replied gruffly. ‘Analytical orientation versus pharmacological orientation. They are at each other’s throats.’
    â€˜I remember now,’ Tony said eagerly. ‘I read how they keep excommunicating each other. What a pity.’
    â€˜The methods of the Church in dealing with heretics were more deplorable,’ snapped Burch.
    â€˜But more effective,’ said Tony, smiling through innocent blue eyes.
    â€˜That’s a cynical remark for a member of your Order.’
    â€˜But we are trained to be cynical,’ Tony said brightly. ‘Every Friday in the seminar we have to build a bonfire of our illusions.’
    Professor Burch pointedly reached into his briefcase and extracted therefrom the galley-proofs of the latest edition of his textbook on
The Quantitative Measurement of Behaviour in its Social and Genetic Aspects.
It was mandatory reading for graduate students; by the time it was published, much of it would be out of date, and he would have to start preparing the next revised edition – a frustrating and lucrative business.
    The bus had by now emerged from the romantic but somewhat sinister gorge through which it had battled its way; the mountains on both sides opened up, curving away intosofter slopes which irresistibly reminded poor Tony of female bosoms expanding from the cleavage. The sky, which further down had been overcast, changed into the intense, saturated blue found only at great heights. The rest of the world was drenched in varied tints of green: meadows, slopes, pine-woods, grass, moss and fern. There were no cornfields, no signs of cultivation, only the pastures and the woods, displaying their different ideas of greenness.
    â€˜I hate green.’ Dr Harriet Epsom, who occupied the seat in front of Burch, had rotated her sturdy neck and shoulders at an angle of a hundred and thirty-five degrees to address this remark diagonally to the young friar. Her shoulders were freckled, burnt, and peeling in strips – which, Tony thought, should not happen to an ethologist, accustomed to the tropical sun. ‘What colour do you like, then?’ he asked politely.
    â€˜Blue. Precisely the blue of your eyes.’
    â€˜I am sorry,’ Tony blurted out, blushing. Blushing was a terrible habit or rather, as he knew, a physiological reflex, which he could not get rid of, although he was fairly skilled in all sorts of mind-control experiments, from Yoga to auto-hypnosis.
    â€˜Rot. What’s there to be sorry about?’ snapped Harriet Epsom, or H.E. to her familiars. One of them, sitting next to her and thus in front of Tony, was a Kleinian child psychologist from Los Angeles, who wore her black hair short-cropped, and shaved the back of her neck. Tony could not keep his eyes away. He wondered