The officer ran his hand back through his whitening hair, but he looked
at Bill without wavering. "You will be erased."
Bill began to shake his head. "There is something wrong," he said.
"Bill...." the major began.
"There is something wrong," Bill repeated hopelessly. "Why must we be
split so there is always something missing in each of us? Why must we
be stupefied with drugs that keep us from knowing what we should feel?
I was trying to live a better life. I did not want to hurt anyone."
"But you _did_ hurt others," Major Grey said bluntly. "You would do so
again if allowed to function in your own way in this society. Yet it
would be insufferable to you to be hospitalized. You would be shut off
forever from searching for another Clara Manz. And--there is no one
else for you, is there?"
Bill looked up, his eyes cringing as though they stared at death. "No
one else?" he asked vacantly. "No one?"
The two orderlies lifted him up by his arms, almost carrying him into
the operating room. His feet dragged helplessly. He made no resistance
as they lifted him onto the operating table and strapped him down.
Beside him was the great panel of the mnemonic eraser with its thousand
unblinking eyes. The helmetlike prober cabled to this calculator was
fastened about his skull, and he could no longer see the professor who
was lecturing in the amphitheater above. But along his body he could
see the group of medical students. They were looking at him with great
interest, too young not to let the human drama interfere with their
technical education.
The professor, however, droned in a purely objective voice. "The
mnemonic eraser can selectively shunt from the brain any identifiable
category of memory, and erase the synaptic patterns associated with its
translation into action. Circulating memory is disregarded. The machine
only locates and shunts out those energies present as permanent memory.
These are there in part as permanently echoing frequencies in closed
cytoplasmic systems. These systems are in contact with the rest of the
nervous system only during the phenomenon of remembrance. Remembrance
occurs when, at all the synapses in a given network 'y,' the
permanently echoing frequencies are duplicated as transient circulating
frequencies.
"The objective in a total operation of the sort before us is to
distinguish all the stored permanent frequencies, typical of the
personality you wish to extinguish, from the frequencies typical of the
other personality present in the brain."
Major Grey's face, very tired, but still wearing a mask of adamant
reassurance, came into Bill's vision. "There will be a few moments of
drug-induced terror, Bill. That is necessary for the operation. I hope
knowing it beforehand will help you ride with it. It will not be for
long." He squeezed Bill's shoulder and was gone.
"The trick was learned early in our history, when this type of total
operation was more often necessary," the professor continued. "It is
really quite simple to extinguish one personality while leaving the
other undisturbed. The other personality in the case before us has
been drug-immobilized to keep this one from shifting. At the last
moment, this personality before us will be drug-stimulated to bring
it to the highest possible pitch of total activity. This produces
utterly disorganized activity, every involved neuron and synapse being
activated simultaneously by the drug. It is then a simple matter for
the mnemonic eraser to locate all permanently echoing frequencies
involved in this personality and suck them into its receiver."
Bill was suddenly aware that a needle had been thrust into his arm.
Then it was as though all the terror, panic and traumatic incidents of
his whole life leaped into his mind. All the pleasant experiences and
feelings he had ever known were there, too, but were transformed into
terror.
A bell was ringing with regular strokes. Across the panel of the
mnemonic eraser, the tiny counting lights were alive with movement.
There was in Bill a fright, a demand for survival so great that it
could not be felt.
It was actually from an island of complete calm that part of him saw
the medical students rising dismayed and white-faced from their seats.
It was apart from himself that his body strained to lift some mountain
and filled the operating amphitheater with shrieking echoes. And all
the time the thousand eyes of the mnemonic eraser flickered in swift
patterns, a silent measure of the cells and circuits of his mind.
Abruptly the tiny red counting lights went off, a red beam glowed with
a burr of warning. Someone said, "Now!" The mind of Bill Walden flashed
along a wire as electrical energy and, converted on the control panel
into mechanical energy, it spun a small ratchet counter.
"Please sit down," the professor said to the shaken students. "The drug
that has kept the other personality immobilized is being counteracted
by this next injection. Now that the sickly personality has been
dissipated, the healthy one can be brought back rapidly.
"As you are aware, the synapse operates on the binary 'yes-no' choice
system of an electronic calculator. All synapses which were involved in
the diseased personality have now been reduced to an atypical, uniform
threshold. Thus they can be re-educated in new patterns by the healthy
personality remaining.... There, you see the countenance of the healthy
personality appearing."
* * * * *
It was Conrad Manz who looked up at them with a wry grin. He rotated
his shoulders to loosen them. "How many of you pushed old Bill Walden
around? He left me with some sore muscles. Well, I did that often
enough to him...."
Major Grey stood over him, face sick and white with the horror of
what he had seen. "According to law, Mr. Manz, you and your wife are
entitled to five rest days on your next shift. When they are over, you
will, of course, report for suspended animation for what would have
been your hyperalter's shift."
Conrad Manz's grin shrank and vanished. "_Would_ have been? Bill
is--gone?"
"Yes."
"I never thought I'd miss him." Conrad looked as sick as Major Grey
felt. "It makes me feel--I don't know if I can explain it--sort of
_amputated_. As though something's wrong with me because everybody else
has an alter and I don't. Did the poor son of a straitjacket suffer
much?"
"I'm afraid he did."
Conrad Manz lay still for a moment with his eyes closed and his mouth
thin with pity and remorse. "What will happen to Helen?"
"She'll be all right," Major Grey said. "There will be Bill's
insurance, naturally, and she won't have much trouble finding another
husband. That kind never seems to."
"Five rest days?" Conrad repeated. "Is that what you said?" He sat up
and swung his legs off the table, and he was grinning again. "I'll get
in a whole shift of jet-skiing! No, wait--I've got a date with the wife
of a friend of mine out at the rocket grounds. I'll take Clara out
there; she'll like some of the men."
Major Grey nodded abstractedly. "Good idea." He shook hands with
Conrad Manz, wished him fun on his rest shift, and left.
Taking a helicopter back to his city, Major Grey thought of his own
hyperalter, Ralph Singer. He'd often wished that the silly fool
could be erased. Now he wondered how it would be to have only one
personality, and, wondering, realized that Conrad Manz had been
right--it _would_ be like amputation, the shameful distinction of
living in a schizophrenic society with no alter.
No, Bill Walden had been wrong, completely wrong, both about drugs
and being split into two personalities. What one made up in pleasure
through not taking drugs was more than lost in the suffering of
conflict, frustration and hostility. And having an alter--any kind,
even one as useless as Singer--meant, actually, _not being alone_.
Major Grey parked the helicopter and found a shifting station. He took
off his makeup, addressed and mailed his clothes, and waited for the
shift to come.
It was a pretty wonderful society he lived in, he realized. He wouldn't
trade it for the kind Bill Walden had wanted. Nobody in his right mind
would.