“I’m lining up something on the Gottschalks at pretoo,” Flamen said. He heard something close to timidity in his tone. Granting that Conroy was old enough to be his father, it was still ridiculous to find himself reacting in this fashion. Against all odds, he was runa five-slots-weekly show on the Holocosmic netwhereas in his own field Conroy had failed so signally he was reduced to teaching, not even in his native country.
“Ah-hah? That won’t work,” Conroy said, replacing his glass for a fresh beer. “And that’s another reason I deMogshack, by the way. I never knew him to try and wean a patient away from dependence on guns. Yet he has two, three thousand a year of the population of New York State through his hands. By this time, if he’d done his job properly, he’d have created a glut of second-hand weaponry and cooled the temperature in this city past the flashpoint.”
“Two or three thousand out of how many many milFlamen snapped.
“Out of how many who are unstable enough to lose their marbles and start shooting at random into the street?” Conroy countered. “You don’t start riots, I don’t start riots, the politically educated leaders of the X Padon’t start riots. Paranoids start riots and other people are tipped over the edge by contagious hysteria. Your typical insurrectionary sniper isn’t a revolutionary or a fanatic-he’s someone who’s so devoid of empathy he can treat the human beings below his window as moving targets conveniently offered for his skill. And by clever exploitation of the public’s insecurity the Gotthave managed to put over a gang of lies equatgunmanship with masculine potency, which do even more damage than Mogshack’s pernicious dogmas. Damn it, man: anyone who can treat another human being as an object for target practice is stuck even further back in the infantile stage than somebody who’s frightened to move on from the masturbation phase and go to bed with a girl! Do you own a gun?”
“Ah.” Flamen gulped at Jus own drink. “Yes, naBut I don’t belong to any gun clubs or anything. I have a riot-defense system around the house with mines and electrified fences, and if the need arises I just switch them on. The rest is automatic.”
“Fair,” Conroy said in a clinical tone.
“How do you mean, fair?”
“The sane response is to site your home where your neighbors aren’t going to come calling with guns.”
“So name somewhere!” Flamen gibed. “Don’t the Gottbuy time on Pan-Can too?”
“Yes, damn it,” Conroy admitted with a sigh. “What’s more I caught one of them actually on our campus durthe spring semester. Got rid of him, luckily, but only because the killing I told you about-the student who knifed his boyfriend-was fresh enough in the dean’s mind to make him vulnerable to my arguments. At that one of my colleagues said all the students ought to be armed to teach them responsibility in the use of weapons. Hah! I wonder how long he’d last in front of an armed class-the kids hate him!”
For the first time since their arrival in the bar, there was a pause longer than a few seconds. Flamen exit to gather his scattered thoughts, and said even”Coming back to business, Professor, may I take it you’ll cooperate with me even if you disagree with the packling principle in the abstract? Of course, this will only be the start of a long and difficult process; later there may have to be a lawsuit, perhaps a State inquiry, but for the sake of my wife I’m prepared to.”
Once more his words trailed away as he found Conroy gazing steadily at him.
“Mr. Flamen,” the psychologist said at length, “I’ve told you why I detest Mogshack as a person and why I think his influence on the field of mental health is downdangerous. Accordingly I’ll be very happy to help you torpedo him. But I will not swallow the line you just fed me. I don’t believe you’re motivated by altruism and love for your wife. I believe you’re going after Mogbecause the targets that most demand your attenlike the Gottschalks, are out of reach. Gottschalks are like ghouls; they live off the carrion of our mutual distrust and bribe us with symbols that equate hatred with manhood. So-No, please don’t interrupt! I’d rather think of you as a frustrated man who would far sooner expose some disgusting truth about the Gottthan about a man who is, after all, one teacher among many and probably wouldn’t be so highly reif it weren’t for the post he occupies. You-“