THE MAN WHO JAPED

CHAPTER 8

Doctor malparto said: "Good morning, Mr. Coates. Please take off your coat and sit down. I want you to be comfortable."

And then he felt strange and ill, because the man facing him was not "Mr. Coates" but Allen Purcell. Hurriedly getting to his feet Malparto excused himself and went out into the corridor. He was shaking with excitement. Behind him, Purcell looked vaguely puzzled, a tall, good-looking, rather overly-serious man in his late twenties, wearing a heavy overcoat. Here he was, the man Malparto had been expecting. But he hadn't expected him so soon.

With his key he unlocked his file and brought out Purcell's dossier. He glanced over the contents as he returned to his office. The report was as cryptic as before. Here was his prized-gram, and the irriducible [sic] syndrome remained. Malparto sighed with delight.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Purcell," he said, closing the door after him. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

His patient frowned and said: "Let's keep it ‘Coates.' Or has that old wheeze about professional confidence gone by the boards?"

"Mr. Coates, then." Malparto reseated himself and put on his glasses. "Mr. Coates, I'll be frank. I've been expecting you. Your encephalogram came into my hands a week or so ago, and I had a Dickson report drawn on it. The profile is unique. I'm very much interested in you, and it's a matter of deep personal satisfaction to be permitted to handle your—" He coughed. "Problem." He had started to say case.

In the comfortable leather-covered chair, Mr. Coates shifted restlessly. He lit a cigarette, scowled, rubbed at the crease of his trousers. "I need help. It's one of the drawbacks of Morec that nobody gets help; they get cast out as defective."

Malparto nodded in agreement.

"Also," Mr. Coates said, "your sister came after me."

To Malparto this discouraging was. Not only had Gretchen meddled, but she had meddled wisely. Mr. Coates would have appeared eventually, but Gretchen had sawed the interval in half. He wondered what she got out of it.

"Didn't you know that?" Mr. Coates asked.

He decided to be honest. "No, I didn't. But it's of no consequence." He rattled through the report. "Mr. Coates, I'd like you to tell me in your own words what you feel your problem is."

"Job problems."

"In particular?"

Mr. Coates chewed his lip. "Director of T-M. It was offered to me this Monday."

"You're currently operating an independent Research Agency?" Malparto consulted his notes. "When do you have to decide?"

"By the day after tomorrow."

"Very interesting."

"Isn't it?" Mr. Coates said.

"That doesn't give you long. Do you feel you can decide?"

"No."

"Why not?"

His patient hesitated.

"Are you worried that a juvenile might be hiding in my closet?" Malparto smiled reassuringly. "This is the only spot in our blessed civilization where juveniles are forbidden."

"So I've heard."

"A fluke of history. It seems that Major Streiter's wife had a predilection for psychoanalysts. A Fifth Avenue Jungian cured her partially-paralyzed right arm. You know her type."

Mr. Coates nodded.

"So," Malparto said, "when the Committee Government was set up and the land was nationalized, we were permitted to keep our deeds. We—that is, the Psych Front left over from the war. Streiter was a canny person. Unusual ability. He saw the necessity—"

Mr. Coates said: "Sunday night somebody pulled a switch in my head. So I japed the statue of Major Streiter. That's why I can't accept the T-M directorship."

"Ah," Malparto said, and his eyes fastened on the -gram [sic] with its irreducible core. He had a sensation of hanging head downward over an ocean; his lungs seemed filled with dancing foam. Carefully he removed his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief.

Beyond his office window lay the city, flat except for the Morec spire set dead-center. The city radiated in concentric zones, careful lines and swirls that intersected in an orderly manner. Across the planet, Doctor Malparto thought. Like the hide of a vast mammal half-submerged in mud. Half-buried in the drying clay of a stern and puritanical morality.

"You were born here," he said. In his hands was the information, the history of his patient; he leafed through the pages.

"We all were," Mr. Coates said.

"You met your wife in the colonies. What were you doing on Bet-4?"

His patient said: "Supervising a packet. I was consultant to the old Wing-Miller Agency. I wanted a packet rooted in the experience of the agricultural colonists."

"You liked it there?"

"In a way. It was like the frontier. I remember a whitewashed board farmhouse. That was her family's... her father's." He was quiet a moment. "He and I used to argue. He edited a small-town newspaper. All night—arguing and drinking coffee."

"Did—" Malparto consulted the dossier. "Did Janet participate?"

"Not much. She listened. I think she was afraid of her father. Maybe a little afraid of me."

"You were twenty-five?"

"Yes," Mr. Coates said. "Janet was twenty-two."

Malparto, reading the information, said: "Your own father was dead. Your mother was alive, still, was she not?"

"She died in 2111," Mr. Coates said. "Not much later."

Malparto put on his video and audio tape transports. "May I keep a record of what we say?"

His patient pondered. "You might as well. You've got me anyhow."

"In my power? Like a wizard? Hardly. I've got your problem; by telling me you've transferred it to me."

Mr. Coates seemed to relax. "Thanks," he said.

"Consciously," Malparto said, "you don't know why you japed the statue; the motive is buried down deep. In all probability the statue episode forms part of a larger event-stretching, perhaps, over years. We'll never be able to understand it alone; its meaning lies in the circumstances preceding it."

His patient grimaced. "You're the wizard."

"I wish you wouldn't think of me like that." He was offended by what he identified as a lay stereotype; the man-in-the-street had come to regard the Resort analysts with a mixture of awe and dread, as if the Resort were a sort of temple and the analysts priests. As if there was some religious mumbo-jumbo involved; whereas, of course, it was all strictly scientific, in the best psychoanalytic tradition.

"Remember, Mr. Coates," he said, "I can only help you if you wish to be helped."

"How much is this going to cost?"

"An examination will be made of your income. You'll be charged according to your ability to pay." It was characteristic of Morec training, this old Protestant frugality. Nothing must be wasted. A hard bargain must always be driven.

The Dutch Reformed Church, alive even in this troubled heretic... the power of that iron revolution that had crumbled the Age of Waste, put an end to "sin and corruption," and with it, leisure and peace of mind—the ability simply to sit down and take things easy. How must it have been? he wondered. In the days when idleness was permitted. The golden age, in a sense: but a curious mixture, too, an odd fusion of the liberty of the Renaissance plus the strictures of the Reformation. Both had been there; the two elements struggling in each individual. And, at last, final victory for the Dutch hellfire-preachers...

Mr. Coates said: "Let's see some of those drugs you people use. And those light and high-frequency gadgetry."

"In due time."

"Good Lord, I have to tell Mrs. Frost by Saturday!"

Malparto said: "Let's be realistic. No fundamental change can be worked in forty-eight hours. We ran out of miracles several centuries ago. This will be a long, ardous [sic] process with many setbacks."

Mr. Coates stirred fitfully.

"You tell me the japery is central," Malparto said. "So let's start there. What were you doing just prior to your entrance into the Park?"

"I visited a couple of friends."

Malparto caught something in his patient's voice, and he said: "Where? Here in Newer York?"

"In Hokkaido."

"Does anybody live there?" He was amazed.

"A few people. They don't live long."

"Have you ever been there before?"

"Now and then. I get ideas for packets."

"And before that. What were you doing?"

"I worked at the Agency most of the day. Then I got—bored."

"You went from the Agency directly to Hokkaido?"

His patient started to nod. And then he stopped, and a dark, intricate expression crossed his face. "No. I walked around for awhile. I fogot [sic] about that. I remember visiting—" He paused for a long time. "A commissary. To get some 3.2 beer. But why would I want beer? I don't particularly like beer."

"Did anything happen?"

Mr. Coates stared at him. "I can't remember."

Malparto made a notation.

"I left the Agency. And then a haze closes over the whole d--n thing. At least half an hour is cut out."

Rising to his feet Malparto pressed a key on his desk intercom. "Would you ask two therapists to step in here, please? And I'm not to be disturbed until further notice. Cancel my next appointment. When my sister comes in I'd like to see her. Yes, let her by. Thanks." He closed the key.

Mr. Coates, agitated, said: "What now?"

"Now you get your wish." Unlocking the supply closet he began wheeling out equipment. "The drugs and gadgetry. So we can dig down and find out what happened between the time you left the Agency and the time you reached Hokkaido."