The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

THE YELLOW PILL by Rog Phillips

“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,” that Scotsman said, “gang aft a-gley.” Which, in American, means: man or mouse, one can be just as crazy mixed-up as the other.

The late Robert Lindner, in his fascinating The Fifty-Minute Hour, wrote about a patient whose fantasy-world took the form of a space-travel story so credibly constructed that the psychiatrist himself kept drifting into near-acceptance of the reality of the alien planet. Now Mr. Phillips asks: How does the doctor know—for sure—who’s crazy?

Dr. Cedric Elton slipped into his office by the back entrance, shucked off his topcoat and hid it in the small, narrow-doored closet, then picked up the neatly piled patient cards his receptionist Helena Fitzroy had placed on the corner of his desk. There were only four, but there could have been a hundred if he accepted everyone who asked to be his patient, because his successes had more than once been spectacular and his reputation as a psychiatrist had become so great because of this that his name had become synonymous with psychiatry in the public mind.

His eyes flicked over the top card. He frowned, then went to the small square of one-way glass in the reception-room door and looked through it. There were four police officers and a man in a strait jacket.

The card said the man’s name was Gerald Bocek, and that he had shot and killed five people in a supermarket, and had killed one officer and wounded two others before being captured.

Except for the strait jacket, Gerald Bocek did not have the appearance of being dangerous. He was about twenty-five, with brown hair and blue eyes. There were faint wrinkles of habitual good nature about his eyes. Right now he was smiling, relaxed, and idly watching Helena, who was pretending to study various cards in her desk file but was obviously conscious of her audience.

Cedric returned to his desk and sat down. The card for Jerry Bocek said more about the killings. When captured, Bocek insisted that the people he had killed were not people at all, but blue-scaled Venusian lizards who had boarded his spaceship, and that he had only been defending himself.

Dr. Cedric Elton shook his head in disapproval. Fantasy fiction was all right in its place, but too many people took it seriously. Of course, it was not the fault of the fiction. The same type of person took other types of fantasy seriously in earlier days, burning women as witches, stoning men as devils—

Abruptly Cedric deflected the control on the intercom and spoke into it. “Send Gerald Bocek in, please,” he said.

A moment later the door to the reception room opened. Helena flashed Cedric a scared smile and got out of the way quickly. One police officer led the way, followed by Gerald Bocek, closely flanked by two officers with the fourth one in the rear, who carefully closed the door. It was impressive, Cedric decided. He nodded toward a chair in front of his desk and the police officers sat the strait-jacketed man in it, then hovered near by, ready for anything.

“You’re Jerry Bocek?” Cedric asked.

The strait-jacketed man nodded cheerfully.

“I’m Dr. Cedric Elton, a psychiatrist,” Cedric said. “Do you have any idea at all why you have been brought to me?”

“Brought to you?” Jerry echoed, chuckling. “Don’t kid me. You’re my old pal, Gar Castle. Brought to you? How could I get away from you in this stinking tub?”

“Stinking tub?” Cedric said.

“Spaceship,” Jerry said. “Look, Gar. Untie me, will you? This nonsense has gone far enough.”

“My name is Dr. Cedric Elton,” Cedric enunciated. “You are not on a spaceship. You were brought to my office by the four policemen standing in back of you, and—”

Jerry Bocek turned his head and studied each of the four policemen with frank curiosity. “What policemen?” he interrupted. “You mean these four gear lockers?” He turned his head back and looked pityingly at Dr. Elton. “You’d better get hold of yourself, Gar,” he said. “You’re imagining things.”

“My name is Dr. Cedric Elton,” Cedric said.

Gerald Bocek leaned forward and said with equal firmness, “Your name is Gar Castle. I refuse to call you Dr. Cedric Elton because your name is Gar Castle, and I’m going to keep on calling you Gar Castle because we have to have at least one peg of rationality in all this madness or you will be cut completely adrift in this dream world you’ve cooked up.”

Cedric’s eyebrows shot halfway up to his hairline.

“Funny,” he mused, smiling. “That’s exactly what I was just going to say to you!”

Cedric continued to smile. Jerry’s serious intenseness slowly faded. Finally an answering smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. When it became a grin, Cedric laughed, and Jerry began to laugh with him. The four police officers looked at one another uneasily.

“Well!” Cedric finally gasped. “I guess that puts us on an even footing! You’re nuts to me and I’m nuts to you!”

“An equal footing is right!” Jerry shouted in high glee. Then he sobered. “Except,” he said gently, “I’m tied up.”

“In a strait jacket,” Cedric corrected.

“Ropes,” Jerry said firmly.

“You’re dangerous,” Cedric said. “You killed six people, one of them a police officer, and wounded two other officers.”

“I blasted five Venusian lizard pirates who boarded our ship,” Jerry said, “and melted the door off of one gear locker, and seared the paint on two others. You know as well as I do, Gar, how space madness causes you to personify everything. That’s why they drill into you that the minute you think there are more people on board the ship than there were at the beginning of the trip you’d better go to the medicine locker and take a yellow pill. They can’t hurt anything but a delusion.”

“If that is so,” Cedric said, “why are you in a strait jacket?”

“I’m tied up with ropes,” Jerry said patiently. “You tied me up. Remember?”

“And those four police officers behind you are gear lockers?” Cedric said. “OK, if one of those gear lockers comes around in front of you and taps you on the jaw with his fist, would you still believe it’s a gear locker?”

Cedric nodded to one of the officers, and the man came around in front of Gerald Bocek and, quite carefully, hit him hard enough to rock his head but not hurt him. Jerry’s eyes blinked with surprise, then he looked at Cedric and smiled. “Did you feel that?” Cedric said quietly.

“Feel what?” Jerry said. “Oh!” He laughed. “You imagined that one of the gear lockers—a police officer in your dream world—came around in front of me and hit me?” He shook his head in pity. “Don’t you understand, Gar, that it didn’t really happen? Untie me and I’ll prove it. Before your very eyes I’ll open the door on your Policeman and take out the pressure suit, or magnetic grapple, or whatever is in it. Or are you afraid to? You’ve surrounded yourself with all sorts of protective delusions. I’m tied with ropes, but you imagine it to be a strait jacket. You imagine yourself to be a psychiatrist named Dr. Cedric Elton, so that you can convince yourself that you’re sane and I’m crazy. Probably you imagine yourself a very famous psychiatrist that everyone would like to come to for treatment. World famous, no doubt. Probably you even think you have a beautiful receptionist. What is her name?”

“Helena Fitzroy,” Cedric said.

Jerry nodded. “It figures,” he said resignedly. “Helena Fitzroy is the expediter at Mars Port. You try to date her every time we land there, but she won’t date you.”

“Hit him again,” Cedric said to the officer. While Jerry’s head was still rocking from the blow, Cedric said, “Now! Is it my imagination that your head is still rocking from the blow?”

“What blow?” Jerry said, smiling. “I felt no blow.”

“Do you mean to say,” Cedric said incredulously, “that there is no corner of your mind, no slight residue of rationality, that tries to tell you your rationalizations aren’t reality?”

Jerry smiled ruefully. “I have to admit,” he said, “when you seem so absolutely certain you’re right and I’m nuts, it almost makes me doubt. Untie me, ‘Gar, and let’s try to work this thing out sensibly.” He grinned. “You know, Gar, one of us has to be nuttier than a fruit cake.”

“If I had the officers take off your strait jacket, what would you do?” Cedric asked. “Try to grab a gun and kill some more people?”

“That’s one of the things I’m worried about,” Jerry said. “If those pirates came back, with me tied up, you’re just space crazy enough to welcome them aboard. That’s why you must untie me. Our lives may depend on it, Gar.”

“Where would you get a gun?” Cedric asked.

“Where they’re always kept,” Jerry said. “In the gear lockers.”

Cedric looked at the four policemen, at their holstered revolvers. One of them grinned feebly at him.

“I’m afraid we can’t take your strait jacket off just yet,” Cedric said. “I’m going to have the officers take you back now. I’ll talk with you again tomorrow. Meanwhile I want you to think seriously about things. Try to get below this level of rationalization that walls you off from reality. Once you make a dent in it the whole delusion will vanish.” He looked up at the officers. “All right, take him away. Bring him back the same time tomorrow.”

The officers urged Jerry to his feet. Jerry looked down at Cedric, a gentle expression on his face. “I’ll try to do that, Gar,” he said. “And I hope you do the same thing. I’m much encouraged. Several times I detected genuine doubt in your eyes. And—” Two of the officers pushed him firmly toward the door. As they opened it Jerry turned his head and looked back. “Take one of those yellow pills in the medicine locker, Gar,” he pleaded. “It can’t hurt you.”

At a little before five-thirty Cedric tactfully eased his last patient all the way across the reception room and out, then locked the door and leaned his back against it.

“Today was rough,” he sighed.

Helena glanced up at him briefly, then continued typing. “I only have a little more on this last transcript,” she said.

A minute later she pulled the paper from the typewriter and placed it on the neat stack beside her.

“I’ll sort and file them in the morning,” she said. “It was rough, wasn’t it, Doctor? That Gerald Bocek is the most unusual patient you’ve had since I’ve worked for you. And poor Mr. Potts. A brilliant executive, making half a million a year, and he’s going to have to give it up. He seems so normal.”

“He is normal,” Cedric said. “People with above normal blood pressure often have very minor cerebral hemorrhages so small that the affected area is no larger than the head of a pin. All that happens is that they completely forget things that they knew. They can relearn them, but a man whose judgment must always be perfect can’t afford to take the chance. He’s already made one error in judgment that cost his company a million and a half. That’s why I consented to take him on as a— Gerald Bocek really upset me, Helena. I consent to take a five hundred thousand dollar a year executive as a patient.”

“He was frightening, wasn’t he?” Helena said. “I don’t mean so much because he’s a mass murderer as—”

“I know. I know,” Cedric said. “Let’s prove him wrong. Have dinner with me.”

“We agreed—”

“Let’s break the agreement this once.”

Helena shook her head firmly. “Especially not now,” she said. “Besides, it wouldn’t prove anything. He’s got you boxed in on that point. If I went to dinner with you, it would only show that a wish fulfillment entered your dream world.”

“Ouch,” Cedric said, wincing. “That’s a dirty word. I wonder how he knew about the yellow pills? I can’t get out of my mind the fact that if we had spaceships and if there were a type of space madness in which you began to personify objects, a yellow pill would be the right thing to stop that.”

“How?” Helena said.

“They almost triple the strength of nerve currents from end organs. What results is that reality practically shouts down any fantasy insertions. It’s quite startling. I took one three years ago when they first became available. You’d be surprised how little you actually see of what you look at, especially of people. You look at symbol inserts instead. I had to cancel my appointments for a week. I found I couldn’t work without my professionally built symbol inserts about people that enable me to see them—not as they really are—but as a complex of normal and abnormal symptoms.”

“I’d like to take one sometime,” Helena said.

“That’s a twist,” Cedric said, laughing. “One of the characters in a dream world takes a yellow pill and discovers it doesn’t exist at all except as a fantasy.”

“Why don’t we both take one?” Helena said.

“Uh uh,” Cedric said firmly. “I couldn’t do my work.”

“You’re afraid you might wake up on a spaceship?” Helena said, grinning.

“Maybe I am,” Cedric said. “Crazy, isn’t it? But there is one thing today that stands out as a serious flaw in my reality. It’s so glaring that I actually am afraid to ask you about it.”

“Are you serious?” Helena said.

“I am.” Cedric nodded. “How does it happen that the police brought Gerald Bocek here to my office instead of holding him in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital and having me go there to see him? How does it happen the D.A. didn’t get in touch with me beforehand and discuss the case with me?”

“I ... I don’t know!” Helena said. “I received no call. They just showed up, and I assumed they wouldn’t have without your knowing about it and telling them to. Mrs. Fortesque was your first patient and I called her at once and caught her just as she was leaving the house, and told her an emergency case had come up.” She looked at Cedric with round, startled eyes.

“Now we know how the patient must feel,” Cedric said, crossing the reception room to his office door. “Terrifying, isn’t it, to think that if I took a yellow pill all this might vanish—my years of college, my internship, my fame as the world’s best known psychiatrist, and you. Tell me, Helena, are you sure you aren’t an expediter at Mars Port?”

He leered at her mockingly as he slowly closed the door, cutting off his view of her.

Cedric put his coat away and went directly to the small square of one-way glass in the reception-room door. Gerald Bocek, still in strait jacket, was there, and so were the same four police officers.

Cedric went to his desk and, without sitting down, deflected the control on the intercom.

“Helena,” he said, “before you send in Gerald Bocek get me the D.A. on the phone.”

He glanced over the four patient cards while waiting. Once he rubbed his eyes gently. He had had a restless night.

When the phone rang he reached for it. “Hello? Dave?” he said. “About this patient, Gerald Bocek—•”

“I was going to call you today,” the District Attorney’s voice sounded. “I called you yesterday morning at ten, but no one answered, and I haven’t had time since. Our police psychiatrist, Walters, says you might be able to snap Bocek out of it in a couple of days—at least long enough so that we can get some sensible answers out of him. Down underneath his delusion of killing lizard pirates from Venus, there has to be some reason for that mass killing, and the press is after us on this.”

“But why bring him to my office?” Cedric said. “It’s OK, of course, but . . . that is ... I didn’t think you could! Take a patient out of the ward at City Hospital and transport him around town.”

“I thought that would be less of an imposition on you,” the D.A. said: “I’m in a hurry on it.”

“Oh,” Cedric said. “Well, OK, Dave. He’s out in the waiting room. I’ll do my best to snap him back to reality for you.”

He hung up slowly, frowning. “Less of an imposition!” His whispered words floated into his ears as he snapped into the intercom, “Send Gerald Bocek in, please.”

The door from the reception room opened, and once again the procession of patient and police officers entered.

“Well, well, good morning, Gar,” Jerry said. “Did you sleep well? I could hear you talking to yourself most of the night.”

“I am Dr. Cedric Elton,” Cedric said firmly.

“Oh, yes,” Jerry said. “I promised to try to see things your way, didn’t I? I’ll try to co-operate with you, Dr. Elton.” Jerry turned to the four officers. “Let’s see now, these gear lockers are policemen, aren’t they? How do you do, officers.” He bowed to them, then looked around him. “And,” he said, “this is your office, Dr. Elton. A very impressive office. That thing you’re sitting behind is not the chart table but your desk, I gather.” He studied the desk intently. “All metal, with a gray finish, isn’t it?”

“All wood,” Cedric said. “Walnut.”

“Yes, of course,” Jerry murmured. “How stupid of me. I really want to get into your reality, Gar ... I mean Dr. Elton. Or get you into mine. I’m the one who’s at a disadvantage, though. Tied up, I can’t get into the medicine locker and take a yellow pill like you can. Did you take one yet?”

“Not yet,” Cedric said.

“Uh, why don’t you describe your office to me, Dr. Elton?” Jerry said. “Let’s make a game of it. Describe parts of things and then let me see if I can fill in the rest. Start with your desk. It’s genuine walnut? An executive style desk. Go on from there.”

“All right,” Cedric said. “Over here to my right is the intercom, made of gray plastic. And directly in front of me is the telephone.”

“Stop,” Jerry said, “Let me see if I can tell you your telephone number.” He leaned over the desk and looked at the teleph6ne, trying to keep his balance in spite of his arms being encased in the strait jacket. “Hm-m-m,” he said, frowning. “Is the number Mulberry five dash nine oh three seven?”

“No,” Cedric said. “It’s Cedar sev—”

“Stop!” Jerry said. “Let me say it. It’s Cedar seven dash four three nine nine.”

“So you did read it and were just having your fun,” Cedric snorted.

“If you say so,” Jerry said.

“What other explanation can you have for the fact that it is my number, if you’re unable to actually see reality?” Cedric said.

“You’re absolutely right, Dr. Elton,” Jerry said. “I think I understand the tricks my mind is playing on me now. I read the number on your phone, but it didn’t enter my conscious awareness. Instead, it cloaked itself with the pattern of my delusion, so that consciously I pretended to look at a phone that I couldn’t see, and I thought, ‘His phone number will obviously be one he’s familiar with. The most probable is the home phone of Helena Fitzroy in Mars Port, so I gave you that, but it wasn’t it. When you said Cedar I knew right away it was your own apartment phone number.”

Cedric sat perfectly still. Mulberry 5-9037 was actually Helena’s apartment phone number. He hadn’t recognized it until Gerald Bocek told him.

“Now you’re beginning to understand,” Cedric said after a moment. “Once you realize that your mind has walled off your consciousness from reality, and is substituting a rationalized pattern of symbology in its place, it shouldn’t be long until you break through. Once you manage to see one thing as it really is, the rest of the delusion will disappear.”

“I understand now,” Jerry said gravely. “Let’s have some more of it. Maybe I’ll catch on.”

They spent an hour at it. Toward the end Jerry was able to finish the descriptions of things with very little error.

“You are definitely beginning to get through,” Cedric said with enthusiasm.

Jerry hesitated. “I suppose so,” he said. “I must. But on the conscious level I have the idea—a rationalization, of course—that I am beginning to catch on to the pattern of your imagination so that when you give me one or two key elements I can fill in the rest. But I’m going to try, really try—Dr. Elton.”

“Fine,” Cedric said heartily. “I’ll see you tomorrow, same time. We should make the breakthrough then.”

When the four officers had taken Gerald Bocek away, Cedric went into the outer office.

“Cancel the rest of my appointments,” he said.

“But why?” Helena protested.

“Because I’m upset!” Cedric said. “How did a madman whom I never knew until yesterday know your phone number?”

“He could have looked it up in the phone book.”

“Locked in a room in the psychiatric ward at City Hospital?” Cedric said. “How did he know your name yesterday?”

“Why,” Helena said, “all he had to do was read it on my desk here.”

Cedric looked down at the brass name plate.

“Yes,” he grunted. “Of course. I’d forgotten about that, I’m so accustomed to it being there that I never see it.”

He turned abruptly and went back into his office,

He sat down at his desk, then got up and went into the sterile whiteness of his compact laboratory. Ignoring the impressive battery of electronic instruments he went to the medicine cabinet. Inside, on the top shelf, was the glass stoppered bottle he wanted. Inside it were a hundred vivid yellow pills. He shook out one and put the bottle away, then went back into his office. He sat down, placing the yellow pill in the center of the white note pad.

There was a brief knock on the door to the reception room and the door opened. Helena came in.

“I’ve canceled all your other appointments for today,” she said. “Why don’t you go out to the golf course? A change will do you—” She saw the yellow pill in the center of the white note pad and stopped.

“Why do you look so frightened?” Cedric said, “Is it because, if I take this little yellow pill, you’ll cease to exist?”

“Don’t joke,” Helena said.

“I’m not joking,” Cedric said. “Out there, when you mentioned about your brass name plate on your desk, when I looked down it was blurred for just a second, then became sharply distinct and solid. And into my head popped the memory that the first thing I do when I have to get a new receptionist is get a brass name plate for her, and when she quits I make her a present of it.”

“But that’s the truth,” Helena said. “You told me all about it when I started working for you. You also told me that while you still had your reason about you I was to solemnly promise that I would never accept an invitation from you for dinner or anything else, because business could not mix with pleasure. Do you remember that?”

“I remember,” Cedric said. “A nice pat rationalization in any man’s reality to make the rejection be my own before you could have time to reject me yourself. Preserving the ego is the first principle of madness.”

“But it isn’t!” Helena said. “Oh, darling, I’m here! This is real! I don’t care if you fire me or not. I’ve loved you forever, and you mustn’t let that mass murderer get you down. I actually think he isn’t insane at all, but has just figured out a way to seem insane so he won’t have to pay for his crime.”

“You think so?” Cedric said, interested. “It’s a possibility. But he would have to be as good a psychiatrist as I am— You see? Delusions of grandeur.”

“Sure,” Helena said, laughing thinly. “Napoleon was obviously insane because he thought he was Napoleon.”

“Perhaps,” Cedric said. “But you must admit that if you are real, my taking this yellow pill isn’t going to change that, but only confirm the fact.”

“And make it impossible for you to do your work for a week,” Helena said.

“A small price to pay for sanity,” Cedric said. “No, I’m going to take it.”

“You aren’t!” Helena said, reaching for it.

Cedric picked it up an instant before she could get it. As she tried to get it away from him, he evaded her and put it in his mouth. A loud gulp showed he had swallowed it.

He sat back and looked up at Helena curiously.

“Tell me, Helena,” he said gently. “Did you know all the time that you were only a creature of my imagination? The reason I want to know is—”

He closed his eyes and clutched his head in his hands.

“God!” he groaned “I feel like I’m dying! I didn’t feel like this the other time I took one.” Suddenly his mind steadied, and his thoughts cleared. He opened his eyes.

On the chart table in front of him the bottle of yellow pills lay on its side, pills scattered all over the table. On the other side of the control room lay Jerry Bocek, his back propped against one of the four gear lockers, sound asleep, with so many ropes wrapped around him that it would probably be impossible for him to stand up.

Against the far wall were three other gear lockers, two of them with their paint badly scorched, the third with its door half melted off.

And in various positions about the control room were the half-charred bodies of five blue-scaled Venusian lizards.

A dull ache rose in Gar’s chest. Helena Fitzroy was gone. Gone, when she had just confessed she loved him.

Unbidden, a memory came into Gar’s mind. Dr. Cedric Elton was the psychiatrist who had examined him when he got his pilot’s license for third-class freighters—

“God!” Gar groaned again. And suddenly he was sick. He made a dash for the washroom, and after a while he felt better.

When he straightened up from the wash basin he looked at his reflection in the mirror for a long time, clinging to his hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. He must have been out of his head for two or three days.

The first time. Awful! Somehow, he had never quite believed in space madness.

Suddenly he remembered Jerry. Poor Jerry!

Gar lurched from the washroom back into the control room. Jerry was awake. He looked up at Gar, forcing a smile to his lips. “Hello, Dr. Elton,” Jerry said.

Gar stopped as though shot.

“It’s happened, Dr. Elton, just as you said it would,” Jerry said, his smile widening.

“Forget that,” Gar growled. “I took a yellow pill I’m back to normal again.”

Jerry’s smile vanished abruptly. “I know what I did now,” he said. “It’s terrible. I killed six people. But I’m sane now. I’m willing to take what’s coming to me.”

“Forget that!” Gar snarled. “You don’t have to humor me now. Just a minute and I’ll untie you.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” Jerry said. “It will sure be a relief to get out of this strait jacket.”

Gar knelt beside Jerry and untied the knots in the ropes and unwound them from around Jerry’s chest and legs.

“You’ll be all right in a minute,” Gar said, massaging Jerry’s limp arms. The physical and nervous strain of sitting there immobilized had been rugged.

Slowly he worked circulation back into Jerry, then helped him to his feet.

“You don’t need to worry, Dr. Elton,” Jerry said. “I don’t know why I killed those people, but I know I would never do such a thing again. I must have been insane.”

“Can you stand now?” Gar said, letting go of Jerry.

Jerry took a few steps back and forth, unsteadily at first, then with better co-ordination. His resemblance to a robot decreased with exercise.

Gar was beginning to feel sick again. He fought it.

“You OK now, Jerry boy?” he asked worriedly.

“I’m fine now, Dr. Elton,” Jerry said. “And thanks for everything you’ve done for me.”

Abruptly Jerry turned and went over to the air-lock door and opened it.

“Good-by now, Dr. Elton,” he said.

“Wait!” Gar screamed, leaping toward Jerry.

But Jerry had stepped into the air lock and closed the door. Gar tried to open it, but already Jerry had turned on the pump that would evacuate the air from the lock.

Screaming Jerry’s name senselessly in horror, Gar watched through the small square of thick glass in the door as Jerry’s chest quickly expanded, then collapsed as a mixture of phlegm and blood dribbled from his nostrils and lips, and his eyes enlarged and glazed over, then one of them ripped open and collapsed, its fluid draining down his cheek.

He watched as Jerry glanced toward the side of the air lock and smiled, then spun the wheel that opened the air lock to the vacuum of space, and stepped out.

And when Gar finally stopped screaming and sank to the deck, sobbing, his knuckles were broken and bloody from pounding on bare metal.