Wine of the Dreamers Read Free Page A

in the moment she denied him.
    Women who played for keeps were becoming so rare as to be refreshing.
    Until the all-pervading, all-important, capital J Job was done, Sharan Inly would remain Dr. Inly, Project Assistant in Charge of Psycho-Adjustment.
    “The General,” she said dolefully, “is going to be muy irritado .”
    “That is an understatement. Fat blue sparks are going to crackle off his fingertips.”
    She finished her glass, refilled it from the bottle. “How about that argument we’re going to have? Want to start now?”
    “You want to hear someone attack your profession, Dr. Inly?”
    “Sure. I’m a missionary. I’ll bring enlightenment to your poor layman mind.”
    “Here goes. Ever since Freud and Jung, you people have been honing certain basic weapons. I am a layman in psychiatry. However, I am a scientist. As a scientist, I am disturbed by your acceptance of the truth of yourbasic assumptions. Take the case of the critter we’ve got out in the car. I’ll use a little of your gobbledegook language. He’s been screened two ways. Loyalty and, in your province, stability. You hunted for all the garden-variety neuroses and couldn’t find any of any importance. Ergo, we’ve got a stable guy. No delusions of persecution, no manic-depressive tendencies, no control so excessive it smells of dementia praecox. Doesn’t miss his mother, save lady’s shoes or draw pornographic pictures. Your ink-blot tests, properly fitted into statistical distribution charts, show that Mr. X is a nice clean-living ambiverent, ideal technician material.”
    She frowned. “You quarrel with that?”
    “Not at all. But the neat little tests assume that this stability is a permanent state.”
    “They do not! The tests and the whole theory admit that in the face of unexpected strain, even the most stable, the most adjusted, can become psychoneurotic in one way or another. My goodness, that’s why I’m employed out there. It’s my job to detect the presence of any change in the face of strain and …”
    “Now you’re stating my point. I say that one of your basic assumptions is that there has to be an environmental change to create the strain which results in an alteration of this basic quotient of stability. I say that the assumption is too hasty. I say that there is something further to study. I think the shift from stability to instability can come in the twinkling of an eye and come without reference to any outside stimuli. Forget hereditary weaknesses. Forget the old business about escaping from a life that is unbearable. I say that you can take a perfectly adjusted guy, put him in a situation where his life is satisfying—and boom, he can go off like that. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Why? Why does it happen? It happened to Bill Kornal. One minute he was okay. The next minute it was as though something … quite alien took over his mind. So now we’ve got him out in the car and there’s four month’s work lost.”
    “Are we going to go back, Bard, to the old idea of being possessed by devils?”
    “Maybe we should. How about the news we listened to? What keeps perpetually messing up mankind? Jokers who go off their rocker when they’ve got every reason not to. No, you people are doing a good, but a limited job. Floating around somewhere is an X factor that you haven’t found yet. Until you do I’m looking at psychology and psychiatry with a limited and dubious acceptance, Sharan.”
    There was a whisper of sound. He searched the night sky until he saw, against the stars, the running lights of a jet transport, losing altitude for the Albuquerque landing, the six flame-tongues merged, by the altitude, into a thin orange line.
    The breeze stirred her hair. She said slowly, “I should rise up in mighty wrath and smite you hip and thigh, boss. But a still small voice within me says there might be something in what you say. However, if I admit you might be right, I’m also admitting the impossibility