The Jagged Orbit Read Free Page B

towers distributed around its perimeter and linked by curtain walls as though some drawing of a fairy-tale castle from a children's book had been unsympathetically interpreted in modern concrete, it was a structural analog of that chance to "retire and regroup" which Mogshack advocated as a perfect antidote to almost any problem of personal adjustment. There were windows only on the low-built administrative wings; the towers themselves were featureless. The sight of them—so the argument ran—offered to a fearful newly-committed patient the promise of ultimate immunity from the intolerable challenges of the outer world.
    But the view from here always made Reedeth think of the medieval castles that were rendered obsolete by the advent of gunpowder. And in an age of pocket nukes ... ?
    He sighed, recalling the query posed in a mild voice by Xavier Conroy, under whom he had worked while preparing his doctorate thesis. The plans for the Ginsberg had just been published, together with a persuasive summary by Mogshack of the underlying principles.
    "So what provision has Dr. Mogshack made for the patients whose recovery is likely to be delayed by their inability to discern any way of getting out again?"
    It had taken him two years' work here to appreciate the full force of that criticism, and indeed only his unexpected recognition of Harry Madison's plight had brought it home to him. At the time, he had chuckled along with everyone else at Mogshack's curt and pointed reply.
    "I'm grateful to Dr. Conroy for yet another demonstration of his ability to jump his fences before he comes to them. Perhaps he would care to favor us with his company at the Ginsberg, when he will be accorded ample opportunity to figure out the solution to his problem—which, incidentally, I suspect to be one of many."
    Reedeth shook his head. "Retire and regroup!" he quoted aloud, glad of the chance to speak without mechanical eavesdropping. "If I'd known what limits that precept could be pushed to, I swear I'd have gone to work anywhere rather than here, where that abominable woman can bounce me up and down like a kid batting a ball because 'love is a dependent state' and how can a therapist at the mercy of his emotions help patients to regain their own rational detachment?"
    He scowled at the desketary, epitome of Mogshack's impersonal ideals, and suddenly noticed that although the red light was still on it had ceased flashing and now shone with a steady glow. Silently cursing, he realized that that meant he was about to be brought face to face with the very person whose predicament was preying on his mind even more persistently than was his own.

SIXTHE WHERE IT'S AT AND THE WHYFORE IT SHOULD BE THERE
     
    "It is not so much that the nature of mental disturbance has changed, as a layman might assume from the observable fact that nowadays a higher proportion of our population can expect to be temporarily committed to a mental hospital than—let us say—would ever have been committed to a tuberculosis hospital or a fever hospital in the days when mere organic diseases were the prime concern of a public health authority.
    "No, rather it is that the nature of normality is not now what our ancestors were accustomed to. Is that surprising? Surely one would not expect social problems to remain unchanged, static from generation to generation! A few get solved; many—indeed the majority—develop along with the society as a whole. I hardly need to cite examples here, for several are available in the news each day.
    "What is far too seldom stressed, however, is the positive aspect of this phenomenon. For the latest of uncountably many times, humanity as a species has presented its individual members with a challenge which— like a mathematical limit—can never be fulfilled but which can always be approached more closely. In former ages the challenges were philosophical, or religious: abjure desire; defy the world, the flesh and the devil; be ye perfect, even