"Oh!" Mitzie shouted, crashed the palm of her hand against Phil's left
cheek, ran out the door and slammed it behind her. Phil stood there a
few seconds. Then he turned off the radio and wiped the tears out of
his left eye.
"Why you no chase?" Dytie inquired pleasantly. "Don worry, Phil, she
come back. She really love you all more. She proud you such virile man,
have many girls."
"Please," Phil groaned, lifting his hand. "That was good-bye forever."
"Forever is never. She come back," Dytie said.
And just then there was a timid knock at the door. Phil opened it,
wondering whether he should slap Mitzie right away or wait. Dr. Anton
Romadka pointed significantly at Phil's neck with a stun-gun and walked
in.
The small psychoanalyst looked nattily professional in the
old-fashioned business suit, white shirt and necktie affected by some
doctors. There was even a vest buttoned over his little paunch. His
left cheek was as smooth as his gleaming bald head; evidently he'd
covered the scratches with skin film. His expression radiated fatherly
good will and reasonableness, though he kept the stun-gun pointed
straight at Phil and every now and then his gaze flickered to Dytie.
"Phil," he began, "I shall not deny the statement my daughter just
made about me, for if you will only consider carefully, it will
make us allies and comrades. Who could know as well as you, Phil,
how hideously psychotic American civilization has become? You've
personally experienced what it can do to the brain, the body, the
sense organs. And who could appreciate as well as you, Phil, the
sanity of the Workers' Republics, where under the first firm rule of
Marxist fact and absolute science, all psychosis is impossible--because
all irrationalisms, all illusion (including the mad vaporings of a
gangrened capitalism and its pseudo-science) are inconceivable."
Phil found himself goggling his eyes and vaguely nodding. He shook
himself. Romadka's cheery voice was remarkably hypnotic.
"Of course, I should have realized all this last night, Phil, and
appealed to your reason," said Romadka as he kept the stun-gun
trained on Phil's neck with geometric precision. "But I was hurried
and emotionally upset--even our agents are not wholly immune to the
American infection when living with it--and I made several mistakes.
Among other things I did not take my unfortunate daughter into account
early enough, though I am certainly glad she came to warn you, since it
enabled me to locate you. Which in turn will enable you, Phil, and your
charming companion, to enjoy the bracing sanity of the Soviets."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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