Reedeth shook his head. “Retire and regroup!” he quoted aloud, glad of the chance to speak without meeavesdropping. “If I’d known what limits that precept could be pushed to, I swear I’d have gone to work anywhere rather than here, where that abominable woman can bounce me up and down like a kid batting a ball because ‘love is a dependent state’ and how can a therapist at the mercy of his emotions help patients to regain their own rational detachment?”
He scowled at the desketary, epitome of Mogshack’s impersonal ideals, and suddenly noticed that although the red light was still on it had ceased flashing and now shone with a steady glow. Silently cursing, he realized that that meant he was about to be brought face to face with the very person whose predicament was preying on his mind even more persistently than was his own.
“It is not so much that the nature of mental disturhas changed, as a layman might assume from the observable fact that nowadays a higher proportion of our population can expect to be temporarily committed to a mental hospital than-let us say-would ever have been committed to a tuberculosis hospital or a fever hospital in the days when mere organic diseases were the prime concern of a public health authority.
“No, rather it is that the nature of normality is not now what our ancestors were accustomed to. Is that surSurely one would not expect social problems to remain unchanged, static from generation to generation! A few get solved; many-indeed the majority-develop along with the society as a whole. I hardly need to cite examples here, for several are available in the news each day.
“What is far too seldom stressed, however, is the posiaspect of this phenomenon. For the latest of unmany times, humanity as a species has preits individual members with a challenge which-like a mathematical limit-can never be fulfilled but which can always be approached more closely. In former ages the challenges were philosophical, or religious: abjure desire; defy the world, the flesh and the devil; be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect. and so on.
“But this time the command is psychological: be an individual!”
-Elias Mogshack, passim*
“What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don’t know of a quicker way to become unpoputhan to disagree.”
-Xavier Conroy
*Or, as some would put it, ad nauseam.
Kicking the door shut with her heel, tossing aside her yash, Lyla grimaced at the wad of envelopes she had collected.
“Practically all satches, same as usual. I do hate satumail! It clogs the comweb same as garbage does the drains, and I swear ninety percent of it goes straight into the drains without being read. Oh, this one isn’t satch. It’s from Lairs and Pen-eights Inc. Must be the reminder about old whoozis.” She jerked her head at the impassive Lar.
“Laireez and Penaiteez,” Dan corrected her. “You must get things like that right.” He hesitated. “It’s French, I guess,” he concluded lamely, holding out his hand for the letter.
Flicking through the rest, Lyla muttered, “Same old names-won’t they ever learn to take a hint?” She pantearing them across, but they were reinforced against that; they could only be torn along the line which would liberate the chemicals powering their inspeakers. Satch mailing campaigns were too exto let illiterates escape.
“Stick ’em in the used books pile,” Dan suggested. “The reagents sometimes last long enough to attack expaper.”
“Good idea.” Lyla complied, wedging the unopened envelopes into the sticky mound on the brass tray like so many pieces of toast in a rack. Obligingly two or three of them started to decay at once.
Meantime, Dan had ripped along the sealing strip of the one from Lares Penates Inc., and at once the room was full of a familiar high thin voice.
“You can’t afford to be without a cult tailored to your private needs in this age of the individual. Consult Lares Penates for the finest specialized-”
It took him that long to locate the power-capsule drivthe speaker and break it between finger and thumb. Promptly, he dropped the envelope with a yelp, shaking his hand.