“Look, if I’m in the way-” Lyla said, anxiously getto her feet.
“You stay right where you are,” Flamen said. “I want to talk about the Ginsberg for a moment. Lionel, do you know anything about Mogshack’s methods, or have you always taken his reputation on trust like that Lar of yours?”
Prior flushed beet-red. “Matthew, if you’re going to descend to cheap cracks like that-!”
“Lionel, I want to know. I saw Celia this afternoon and she’s being turned into a vegetable. Have you any idea what they do to people in there?”
“Yes, of course I do. I checked up very thoroughly, and so should you have, apparently. Mogshack treats his patients in accordance with the most advanced modtherapeutic techniques. For each patient he draws up a specially computed personality profile, and then the computers design a normative curve towards which the aberrant behavior is gently directed by various methsuch as-well, I’m a layman in this area, naturally, but I guess they use drugs and.” He made an all-embracing gesture. “Anyway, they try to help the pabecome self-reliant again.”
“It sounds more as though they sew a straitjacket and trim the poor devils to fit,” Lyla said, and clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh! Sorry-I didn’t mean to butt in.”
Flamen gave her a musing look. “Yes, the more I think about it the more I think you’re right. Lionel, how soon can I get Celia out?”
“At the end of the month, of course, when the concomes up for renewal. Unless you have a quarter-million tealeaves to throw away like it says in the penclause.”
“But is there anything to stop me having her case independently comped?”
“Right now there’s practically nothing you can’t have comped,” Prior said, and Flamen realized belatedly that he was almost bursting to pass on his news.
“Out with it!” he rapped. “I’ll vouch for Miss Clay.”
“Well. Oh, okay. How does free Federal computer time suit you?” He leaned back grinning plumply at the expression on Flamen’s face.
“Are you serious?”
“Sure. There are strings, but I’ll tell you about them later. The deal’s worth it, though.”
“Christ, it’s bound to be! How much?”
“Whatever we need to fix the sabotage problem. Plus. No limit.”
“In that case,” Flamen said with enormous satisfaction, “the sabotage isn’t the only thing I’m going to fix. There’s also a certain little red wagon.”
“And this thing her mackero talked about,” Ariadne said. “An echo-trap.” She shivered. “He seemed to mean that the mind could get stuck on one subject over and over, like a loop of tape. Jim, you did make sense out of what she said, didn’t you?”
“So did you, without choosing to admit the fact. It wasn’t only seeing her get up when she shouldn’t have been able to move which jolted you off base. It started earlier, when she warned you that you can’t take the ‘come’ out of ‘comet.’ That’s a classically exact diagnosis of your trouble. You’re a highly-sexed woman, and you can’t abolish that fact simply by trying to fly a cometary orbit and spending most of your life a long way from the sun.”
“Sun!” Ariadne gave a harsh laugh. “I’d hate to have you as the light of my life!”
Unperturbed, Reedeth continued, “Sun S-U-N-son S-O-N-a second-order pun: you’re trying to deny a strong maternal instinct which is going to cause trouble unless you-”
“Oh, this is a puerile parlor-game!”
“Sorry.” He looked at her steadily. “Are you quesa computer analysis of your own file?”
“You had the gall to pry into my personal file?”
“Of course not. But as soon as she’d finished prophesyI asked my desketary for the closest match to each of the sections of her oracle, and it named you right away. The others-No, come to think of it, you should be able to spot at least one of the other two. I’d always been told that pythonesses talked in riddles, but I guessed two of her subjects before the computers conthem.”
“I’d better sit down,” Ariadne muttered, and moved to a chair. Swallowing hard, she resumed, “Well, I supone of them was Celia Prior Flamen?”
“Naturally. Mother Superior-Prioress.”
“But there’s nothing remarkable about that. Flamen’s a public figure, and though I don’t suppose he exactly advertises his wife’s presence here it can’t have been hard to learn of it.”