[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine April 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What I wanted was a good night's sleep. What
I got was visitation rights with the most
exasperating pack of sleepwalkers in history.
A fried egg came floating up through the stone steps of the Medical
Center and broke on my shoe. According to my watch, it was time for
the breakfast I didn't have that morning, so I waited a moment for the
usual two rashers of bacon.
When they materialized, I hopped aside to avoid them and went back into
the building, where the elevator took me straight up to the psychiatric
floor, without asking.
"Your blood pressure, salts, minerals, vitamins, basal metabolism,
brain pattern, nervous reflexes and skin temperature control are within
accepted tolerances," it droned, opening the doors to let me off. "You
have no clinical organic disorders; you weigh a hundred and fifty-two
pounds, Earth, measure six feet one inch, and have a clear pallid
complexion and an egg on your shoe."
I walked down the corridor to Dr. Doogle Spacio-Psycho Please Enter
and went determinedly in.
"Name, please," said the blonde receptionist, tapping her nail eroder.
"Jones. Harry Jones."
"Mr. Harry K. Jones, the physicist?"
"Yes."
"Oh, no," she said, fiddling with the appointment list, "Mr. Harry K.
Jones has just had his morning appointment and left."
"I know," I said. "An important piece of clinical data has just turned
up. I have returned with an egg on my shoe."
"I think you'd better see the doctor."
I sat down to wait and took the little bottle of pills from my pocket.
"From the Galaxy to you, through Dr. Doogle, Spacio-Psycho," it said on
the label. "The last word in tranquilizers. Conservative Zen methods
only, appointments any hour, first consultation free, no obligation,
call personal transmitter DDK 51212-6790, Earth. Active ingredients
oxylatohydrobenzoic-phe-ophenophino, sugar, coloring to 100%."
* * * * *
The inner office door opened and Dr. Doogle smiled fatly at me from
behind his expensive desk.
"Do come in," he called, "and tell me all about it."
"It's happened again," I said, going into his office.
"Well, why not, if you feel that way? Nurse, bring me Mr. Hing-humph's
case history."
"Mr. Har-ry K. Jo-nes' film is in the transcriber, Doctor," said the
receptionist. "Mr. Jones, the physicist."
"Ah, yes, of course. Please sit down, Mr. Jones. Now what exactly is
the trouble? Hold nothing back, tell me all, reveal your intimate
thoughts."
"The main entrance just served me the breakfast that your diet
forbids," I said, sitting down.
"Plain case of wish fulfillment. Put it down to poltergeists, Mr.
Jones."
"And what exactly do you mean by that?"
"Well, now," Dr. Doogle said, drumming his fat fingers, "I don't think
we need to go into technicalities, Mr. Jones."
"Look," I said firmly. "I came to you to get a quiet night's sleep. No
more insomnia, you said, leave your problems in the laboratory, let not
the nucleii banish sleep, work hard, sleep hard, take tranquilizers
and enjoy the useful recuperation of the daily wear on body tissues,
deep dreamless sleep of the innocent."
He look at me suspiciously.
"It sounds like the sort of advice I might have given," he admitted.
"Well, at least I managed to keep my dreams in my head until I started
your treatment. I have an urgent problem to solve that vitally affects
national security. I can't have this sort of thing happening in the
middle of an experiment."
I pointed to the fried egg on my shoe and shook it off on the pile of
his green carpet.
"Yes. Well," he said, peering over the desk at it. "If you feel that
strongly, Mr. Jones, perhaps you'd better give up the diet and just
take the pills."
"I want to know how it happens," I said, and I settled firmly into the
consulting chair.
Dr. Doogle coughed professionally. "Of course, of course. You are an
intelligent man, Mr. Jones. One of our leading physical scientists.
Naturally you wish to know the precise mechanism of such phenomena.
Very commendable and entirely natural. Think no more about it."
"Dr. Doogle, do you know what you are doing?"
"Spacio-Psycho is still in its early stages, Mr. Jones. You are really
privileged to be a pioneer, you know. We have had some most interesting
results with that new tranquilizer. I hope you're not losing faith, Mr.
Jones?"
"I accept the orthodox philosophy of Spacio-Psycho, it is only the
basic philosophy of Ch'anna or Zen, and I had the routine scientific
education, naturally."
"Ah," said Dr. Doogle with rapture, "the substratum of the universe is
no-mind, and thus all material things are in constant unimpeded mutual
solution. Ji-ji-muge, the appleness of an apple is indistinguishable
from the cupness of a cup."
"And an egg on the shoe is the breakfast I didn't have," I said.
"Here," he said. "I think those pills are sending your sleeping
mind down beyond the purely personal level of your own emotions and
subconscious cerebrations. Take these, in a little water, half an hour
before going to bed."