“And ensure that she was in the audience? She only went to green this morning.”
“Yes, but-”
“I’m not arguing,” Reedeth cut in. “I’m just saying the oracle is a good capsule diagnosis. She resents her husdevotion to his career, doesn’t she?”
“Hmmm. Yes, I see: ‘Hamlet ignored her,’ meanher husband always in the center of the stage. It fits, I grant you that. How did the rest of it go-someabout envying Ophelia?”
“Precisely. Not to mention ‘and then there was nun’-religious recluse-type nun. ‘Get thee to a nunnery, go!’ She’s in retreat; we even have to call the cells retreats here, thanks to Mogshack’s mealy-mouthedness. So in essence what the pythoness said, and what the comseem to have confirmed, is that she should never have been brought here in the first place because shuther up enables her to feed on a diet of self-pity. Does that make you feel any happier about Flamen’s threat to take her away?”
“Well, obviously if the computers say she’d be better off outside. But how could sending her back to her husband help? It was his company she couldn’t stand in the first place.”
“So look for an alternative. I don’t know what she needs, but it’s bound to be something which can engage her most violent emotions. You can’t escape self-gentensions by withdrawing from external stress. In a case like hers you need the outside pressures as a source of distraction.”
“I’ll check it out,” Ariadne muttered. “But taking the word of a pythoness. What’s Mogshack going to say?”
“He’s going to mourn the loss” of a patient. He always does. But you’re not taking her word unsupported. He can hardly question the judgment of his beloved comAll Lyla Clay has done is direct our attention to places we hadn’t looked before. It was a terrific idea of yours, you know. Perhaps there ought to be staff pyin mental hospitals.”
She gave a wan smile. “Who was the third subject?” she said after a pause. “I can’t figure it out.”
“To be candid I don’t think I’d have guessed either. Though he was on my mind, because he’s always on my mind. Harry Madison.”
“What? I think you’d better play over the recording for me. I don’t see that at all.”
Reedeth instructed the desketary to comply, and when they had once more finished listening to the high clear voice of Lyla as it peaked towards an inexplicable cliof terror, Ariadne shook her head in bafflement
“Liar’s prize! A man who isn’t dead! What conceivable connection could that have with Harry?”
“I asked, and that’s what I was told.” Reedeth drew a deep breath. “The only conclusion I can come to is that-well, perhaps he’s told the computers more than he’s told us.”
“How do you mean?”
“Look, everyone knows Harry Madison has been fit for discharge for months, but he’s trapped in here by a legalistic snarl-up. He can’t be discharged in his guardian’s care as the law demands because the Army doesn’t want to know about him. I can’t discharge him in my own care because it’s not legal-my current license is for hospital practice only. And he’s the only knee in the place, which means he’s avoided by most of the other patients. It’s small wonder, isn’t it, that spending all day with his machines he’s taken to making them his con
“Literally?”
“The computers identified him instantly as the third subject. Obviously they know more about him than I do. They may even know more about him than he does himIt wouldn’t be the first time that had happened. And come to think of it.” His voice trailed away and he combed thoughtfully at his beard with hooked fin
“Yes?”
“I just remembered something!” Agitated, Reedeth tensed. “Look, while you were setting things up for the pythoness, I asked my desketary what Mogshack thought of Flamen turning up fully laden with recordequipment, and I got an answer which. Well, frankly at the time I thought it was kind of a wisecrack, and something else came up which distracted me, so I’ve only this moment thought of it again. Ariadne, have you ever known a machine to make a joke?”