Helen Walden started, but Conrad Manz shrugged his muscular shoulders.
"Oh, hospitalize the three-headed monster!"
Major Grey snapped his eyes directly past Colonel Hart and fastened
them on the Medicorps captain. "Your opinion, Captain?"
But Helen Walden was too quick. Before he could rap the table for
order, she had her thin words hanging in the echoing room. "Having been
Mr. Walden's wife for 15 years, my sentiments naturally incline me to
ask for hospitalization. That is why I may safely say, if Major Grey
will pardon me, that the logic of the drugs does not entirely fail us
in a situation like this."
Helen waited while all present got the idea that Major Grey had accused
them of being illogical. "Bill's aberration has led to our daughter's
illness. And think how quickly it contaminated Clara Manz! I cannot ask
that society any longer expose itself, even to the extent of keeping
Bill in the isolation of the hospital, for my purely sentimental
reasons.
"As for Major Grey's closing remarks, I cannot see how it is fair to
bring my husband to trial as a threat to society, if some future chance
is expected, in which a man of his behavior would benefit society.
Surely such a change could only be one that would ruin our present
world, or Bill would hardly fit it. I would not want to save Bill or
anyone else for such a future."
She did not have to say anything further. Both of the other Medicorps
officers were now fully roused to their duty. Colonel Hart, of course,
"humphed" at the opinions of a woman and cast his with Major Grey. But
the fate of Bill Walden was sealed.
Major Grey sat, weary and uneasy, as the creeping little doubts began.
In the end, he would be left with the one big stone-heavy doubt ...
could he have gone through with this if he had not been drugged, and
how would the logic of the trial look without drugs?
He became aware of the restiveness in the room. They were waiting for
him, now that the decision was irrevocable. Without the drugs, he
reflected, they might be feeling--what was the ancient word, _guilt_?
No, that was what the criminal felt. _Remorse?_ That would be what they
should be feeling. Major Grey wished Helen Walden could be forced to
witness the erasure. People did not realize what it was like.
What was it Bill had said? "You should see how foolish these
communication codes took when you are undrugged. This stupid
hide-and-seek of shifting...."
Well, wasn't that a charge to be _inspected_ seriously, if you were
taking it seriously enough to kill the man for it? As soon as this case
was completed, he would have to return to his city and blot himself out
so that his own hyperalter, Ralph Singer, a painter of bad pictures and
a useless fool, could waste five more days. To that man he lost half
his possible living days. What earthly good was Singer?
Major Grey roused himself and motioned the orderly to inject Conrad
Manz, so that Bill Walden would be forced back into shift.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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