Doctor Stockstill said, “The couch can be skipped.” He pressed the mike button and said, “Mr. Dangerfield, this is a—doctor, down below here in West Marin. I’m concerned with your condition. Naturally. Everyone down here is. I, urn, thought maybe I could help you.”
“Tell him the truth,” Hoppy said. “Tell him you’re an analyst.”
Cautiously, Stockstill said into the microphone, “Formerly I was an analyst, a psychiatrist. Of course, now I’m a G.P. Can you hear me?” He listened to the loudspeaker mounted in the corner but heard only static. “He’s not picking me up,” he said to Hoppy, feeling discouragement.
“It takes time to establish contact,” floppy said. “Try again.” He giggled. “So you think it’s just in his mind. Hypochondria. Are you so sure? Well, you might as well assume that because if it’s not, there is practically nothing you can do anyhow.”
Doctor Stockstill pressed the mike button and said, “Mr. Dangerfield, this is Stockstill, speaking from Marin County, California; I’m a doctor.” It seemed to him absolutely hopeless; why go on? But on the other hand—
“Tell him about Bluthgeld,” Hoppy said suddenly.
“Okay,” Stockstill said. “I will.”
“You can tell him my name,” floppy said. “Tell him I did it; listen, Doctor—this is how he’ll sound when he tells it.” The phocomelus assumed a peculiar expression and from his mouth, as before, issued the voice of Walt Dangerfield. “Well, friends, I have a bit of good, good news here … I think you’ll all enjoy this. Seems as if—“ The phocomelus broke off, because from the speaker came a faint sound.
“ … hello, Doctor. This is Walt Dangerfield.”
Doctor Stockstill said instantly into the microphone, “Good. Dangerfield, what I want to talk to you about is the pains you’ve been having. Now, do you have a paper bag up there in the satellite? We’re going to try a little carbon dioxide therapy, you and I. I want you to take the paper bag and blow into it. You keep blowing into it and inhaling from it, so that you’re finally inhaling pure carbon dioxide. Do you understand? It’s just a little idea, but it has a sound basis behind it. You see, too much oxygen triggers off certain diencephalic responses which set up a vicious cycle in the autonomic nervous system. One of the systems of a too-active autonomic nervous system is hyperperistalsis, and you may be suffering from that. Fundamentally, it’s an anxiety symptom.”
The phocomelus shook his head, turned and rolled away.
“I’m sorry … ” the voice from the speaker came faintly. “I don’t understand, Doctor. You say breathe into a paper bag? What about a polyethylene container? Couldn’t asphyxiation result?” The voice, querulous and unreasonable, stumbled uncertainly on, “Is there any way I can synthesize phenobarbital out of the constituents available to me up here? I’ll give you an inventory list and possibly—“ Static interrupted Dangerfield; when he next was audible he was talking about something else. Perhaps, Doctor Stockstill thought, the man’s faculties were wandering.
“Isolation in space,” Stockstill broke in, “breeds its own disruptive phenomena, similar to what once was termed ‘cabin fever.’ Specific to this is the feedback of free-floating anxiety so that it assumes a somatic consequence.” He felt, as he talked, that he was doing it all wrong; that he had failed already. The phocomelus had retired, too disgusted to listen—he was off somewhere else entirely, puttering. “Mr. Dangerfield,” Stockstill said, “what I want to do is interrupt this feedback and the carbon dioxide trick might do just that. Then when tension symptoms have eased, we can begin a form of psychotherapy; including recall of forgotten traumatic material.”
The disc jockey said drily, “My traumatic material isn’t forgotten, Doctor; I’m experiencing it right now. It’s all around me. It’s a form of claustrophobia and I have it very, very bad.”
“Claustrophobia,” Doctor Stockstill said, “is a phobia directly traceable to the diencephalon in that it’s a disturbance of the sense of spaciality. It’s connected with the panic reaction to the presence or the imagined presence of danger; it’s a repressed desire to flee.”
Dangerfield said, “Well, where can I flee to, Doctor? Let’s be realistic. What in Christ’s name can psychoanalysis do for me? I’m a sick man; I need an operation, not the crap you’re giving me.”
“Are you sure?” Stockstill asked, feeling ineffective and foolish. “Now, this will admittedly take time, but you and I have at least established basic contact; you know I’m down here trying to help you and I know that you’re listening.” You are listening, aren’t you? he asked silently. “So I think we’ve accomplished something already.”
He waited. There was only silence.
“Hello, Dangerfield?” he said into the microphone.
Silence.
From behind him the phocomelus said, “He’s either cut himself off or the satellite’s too far, now. Do you think you’re helping him?”
“I don’t know,” Stockstill said. “But I know it’s worth trying.”
“If you had started a year ago—“
“But nobody knew.” We took Dangerfield for granted, like the sun, Stockstill realized. And now, as Hoppy says, it’s a little late.
“Better luck tomorrow afternoon,” Hoppy said, with a faint—almost sneering—smile. And yet Stockstill felt in it a deep sadness. Was Hoppy sorry for him, for his futile efforts? Or for the man in the satellite passing above them? It was difficult to tell.
“I’ll keep trying,” Stockstill said.
There was a knock at the door.
floppy said, “That will be the official delegation.” A broad, pleased smile appeared on his pinched features; his face seemed to swell, to fill with warmth. “Excuse me.” He wheeled his ‘mobile to the door, extended a manual extensor, and flung the door open.
There stood Orion Stroud, Andrew Gill, Cas Stone, Bonny Keller and Mrs. Tallman, all looking nervous and ill-at-ease. “Harrington,” Stroud said, “we. have something for you, a little gift.”
“Fine,” Hoppy said, grinning back at Stockstill. “See?” he said to the doctor. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s their appreciation.” To the delegation he said, “Come on in; I’ve been waiting.” He held the door wide and they passed on inside his house.
“What have you been doing?” Bonny asked Doctor Stockstill, seeing him standing by the transmitter and microphone.
Stockstill said, “Trying to reach Dangerfield.”
“Therapy?” she said.
“Yes.” He nodded.
“No luck, though.”
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Stockstill said.
Orion Stroud, his presentation momentarily forgotten, said to Doctor Stockstill, “That’s right; you used to be a psychiatrist.”
Impatiently, Hoppy said, “Well, what did you bring me?” He peered past Stroud, at Gill; he made out the sight of the container of cigarettes and the case of brandy. “Are those mine?”
“Yes,” Gill said. “In appreciation.”
The container and the case were lifted from his hands; he blinked as they sailed toward the phoce and came to rest on the floor directly in front of the ‘mobile. Avidly, Hoppy plucked them open with his extensors.
“Uh,” Stroud said, disconcerted, “we have a statement to make. Is it okay to do so now, Hoppy?” He eyed the phocomelus with apprehension.
“Anything else?” Hoppy demanded, the boxes open, now. “What else did you bring me to pay me back?”
To herself as she watched the scene Bonny thought, I had no idea he was so childish. Just a little child … we should have brought much more and it should have been wrapped gaily, with ribbons and cards, with as much color as possible. He must not be disappointed, she realized. Our lives depend on it, on his being—placated.
“Isn’t there more?” Hoppy was saying peevishly.
“Not yet,” Stroud said. “But there will be.” He shot a swift, flickering glance at the others in the delegation. “Your real presents, Hoppy, have to be prepared with care. This is just a beginning.”
“I see,” the phocomelus said. But he did not sound convinced.
“Honest,” Stroud said. “It’s the truth, floppy.”
“I don’t smoke,” Hoppy said, surveying the cigarettes; he picked up a handful and crushed them, letting the bits drop. “It causes cancer.”
“Well,” Gill began, “there’re two sides to that. Now—“
The phocomelus sniggered. “I think that’s all you’re going to give me,” he said.
“No, there will certainly be more,” Stroud said.
The room was silent, except for the static coming from the speaker.
Off in the corner an object, a transmitter tube, rose and sailed through the air, burst loudly against the wall, sprinkling them all with fragments of broken glass.
“’More,’” Hoppy mimicked, in Stroud’s deep, portentous voice. “’There will certainly be more.’”
XV
For thirty-six hours Walt Dangerfield had lain on his bunk in a state of semi-consciousness, knowing now that it was not an ulcer; it was cardiac arrest which he was experiencing, and it was probably going to kill him in a very short time. In spite of what Stockstill, the analyst, had said.
The transmitter of the satellite had continued to broadcast a tape of light concert music over and over again; the sound of soothing strings filled his ears in a travesty of unavailing comfort. He did not even have the strength to get up and make his way to the controls to shut it off.