“They get it,” Ariadne said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re here in the Ginsberg, a state-financed hospital with the most advanced facilities in the world.” She conto gloss her words with a suggestion of tolerant long-suffering.
“Yes, but suppose something happened to you like what happened to Lyla Clay, or even Harry Madison? Wouldn’t you rather turn for help to someone you’d personally chosen, an intimate friend, than risk getcaught up in the kind of vast impersonal bureaucracy I’ve spent all day battling with? That girl Clay isn’t sick except insofar as she’s had an experience no girl ought to undergo-no one ought to undergo, ever!-and because she’s three months under age in this state and had been arrested on suspicion of mental disI had to waste hours and hours in needless argu
“But you did get her out in the end,” Ariadne sighed.
“Yes, I did indeed. No thanks to your beloved Mogeither. When I appealed to him he slapped me down with the argument that nowadays even a susmental case mustn’t be let loose on the streets for fear of provoking a riot like last night’s. If that’s the case, then-then hell! You shouldn’t be allowed to apin public because you’re pretty enough to risk some knee trying to pick you up, with the danger of triggera riot when you slap his face for being a nuisance!” Aware that he was growing heated, Reedeth forced himself to adopt a calmer tone.
“If you meant that as a compliment,” Ariadne said, “you didn’t phrase it terribly well.”
“I’m not interested in compliments right now! In fact I’m not interested in very much at all except trying to figure out now how I can save people like Lyla Clay and Harry Madison from being shut away because they have something peculiar happen to them. That’s not what I chose my job for, guarding a prison full of people with original minds.”
“We’ve been over this before,” Ariadne said. “We alget hung up on the question of what’s original and what’s crazy.”
“So we do. I thought I was going somewhere else and I seem to have wound up in the same old groove.” Reedeth rubbed his forehead. “I guess I didn’t think out the consequences very clearly before I started talking, but what put me into this frame of mind was really very simple. I managed to get rid of Harry Madison as well as-”
“What? How?”
“Flamen agreed to act as his guardian. His company needs an electronicist, and when I suggested Madison he said yes. Hardly took any persuading.”
“And you just turned him loose-a kneeblank in New York on a martial law day?”
“There still are knees in New York, whether you like it or not, legally entitled to walk the streets! And Miss Clay seemed to take a liking to him when I introduced them and offered to see him through the-”
“You turned a knee out in a blank girl’s company, her in shock and him with a mental record as long as my arm?” Ariadne was almost out of her chair. “Christ, there’s likely to be another riot tonight! It’ll be a miracle if they get out of the rapitrans terminal alive!”
“I-”
“What kind of a cloud-cuckooland are you living in, Jim? All this gobbledegook about friends going out of fashion, all this phoney idealism about having someone to turn to in time of need.! I’d rather have honest enemies than a friend who could treat me like you just treated those poor people!”
“But-!”
“I know what’s wrong with you, Jim,” Ariadne said fiercely, leaning close to the camera in her office so that her head threatened to protrude from Reedeth’s screen. “It upsets you having people around that you’ve been made responsible for without being consulted, because they were like caught up in a riot or you found them here when you arrived. What you want isn’t to prepare them for a safe return to ordinary life-only to shuffle them off somewhere out of sight so you don’t have to take an interest in them any longer! When you hear that Madison has been gunned down on the street, or Lyla Clay was raped by a white gang because they saw her with a knee escort and decided a girl who kept that sort of company was fair game, are you going to go into shock? The hell you are!”