Murder -- Fiction; Psychiatrists -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Space stations -- Fiction
"I think we have a bear by the tail," she said. "We seem to peel off
layers of Jim Britten's mind, and each time there's something different
underneath. Every time he tells his story there is something new and
contradictory in it. And there is no clue as to whether he is getting
nearer or farther from the truth."
Wolf swivelled his chair around and stared out of the window onto the
hospital lawn. "We thought that the deep therapy method was something
perfect. Something that would make a patient tell the absolute truth as
he saw it. But our patient is making hash out of it."
He lifted his coffee cup and tasted the black liquid tentatively.
"Follow it through. The first story he gave us was conscious. He said
he couldn't remember exactly what happened to him. Okay. This could
be a fabrication. The next story he gave under therapy conditions. He
said that he killed Glover in a fit of rage because of an argument.
Okay again. We could have accepted that at face value, and he would
have gotten away with it, except that we got curious about a couple of
things. We wondered how the paranoid tinge got into his thoughts, and
we wondered exactly what it was that he and Glover were on the verge
of discovering. So we tried again. Now we find that he deliberately
plotted to kill Glover, and the paranoid symptoms are now so intense
that he gives us a completely phony story about making millions of
dollars out of the discovery, when everybody knows that you can't
patent anything for personal profit when you invent it in a government
laboratory."
Alma Heller lifted her hand, making a one with her forefinger. "So,
our friend Jim Britten is doing two things--both of which we did not
believe him capable of doing. First, he is lying and inventing stories
under deep therapy. Second, he is withholding information. For notice
that he is still avoiding specific mention of the result which his
experiment was aiming at."
Her voice became flat, precise, and probing.
"Now, could our young physicist, Jim Britten, do this thing? No. Not
unless he is an unsuspected superman type. Or--unless he has had
special training and conditioning for resistance against deep therapy.
How does a young physics student obtain such training? And where?"
She looked across the desk at Morris Wolf, who chewed savagely on his
pipe bit.
"If I had any sense," he growled, "I'd call up the AEC and throw Jim
Britten right back in their faces. If they give me a problem to solve
they should at least tell me how hot they think it is. And my viscera
are beginning to tell me that this is going to be a very, very warm
baby. Maybe I should holler for help. I have a wife and two kids at
home. I don't want to get hurt."
"Who you kidding?" Alma wanted to know. "You wouldn't let a juicy
problem like this escape you just when you have it clutched about
the middle. Besides, our two undercover friends from the FBI will be
keeping their eyes on things. Let them earn their pay."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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