He hoped desperately that neither Lyla nor Madison had seen through his carefully maintained mask.
And then there they were, at the door, being adConroy shaking hands with every appearance of affability; a mechanical routine of introduction had to be gone through, which gave a short respite from awareof depression-and while Reedeth was still trying to formulate his next remarks, Conroy had sat briskly down and taken charge.
“Well! From what I’ve been able to pick up by talking to Flamen on the way here, you’ve got some serious problems, Jim, and so have our two friends here. I’m particularly interested to meet you, Miss Clay, because one of my students asked about the pythoness phein class the other day and I gave them the subject as an assignment-which naturally meant I had to investigate it myself before correcting what they turned in. I hadn’t taken it very seriously before, but I have found that some remarkable authorities vouch for its authenticity. What’s your view, Jim?”
Reedeth stumbletongued. “Why. Why, I’ve been compelled to react the same way, I guess. I never took pythonesses seriously until Miss Clay put on a perforhere.”
“I heard about that from Flamen,” Conroy injected.
“Yes, of course: he recorded the show.” Reedeth swal”But it was having the automatics analyze the oracles she delivered which convinced me, not the peritself. I-”
Lyla sat up sharply. “You didn’t tell me you’d had my oracles comped!” she said in an accusing tone. “Christ, if I’d only known you were going to do that.! What did the automatics tell you?”
“Later, please, Miss Clay,” Reedeth said in a frigid tone. “Right now I have some business to clear up with Mr. Flamen, which shouldn’t have been necessary, and as soon as that’s straightened out I propose to go home. My arrangements for the weekend have been completely fouled up by what I can only call an absolute lack of consideration.”
“Jesus God,” Conroy said, before the bridling Flamen could respond to the accusation. “Jim, you sound so much like Mogshack I could believe you’ve been taking lessons. Hold it!” he added, raising a hand to forestall a snappish answer from the younger man. “I’ve been talkwith Flamen for the past hour or more and I agree he was entirely too casual about accepting responfor our knee friend here. But, on the other hand, you didn’t make it very clear to him just what he was committing himself to, did you? You were in such a hurry to move Madison along-”
“Hurry! Lord, he’s been stuck in here for months longer than necessary!”
“No excuse for not being thorough,” Conroy said, in precisely the tone Reedeth remembered from his student days. “There’s never an excuse for not being thorough, especially when nowadays you can have all the fiddling little routine details comped out automatically. That’s what computers are properly used for,” he parenthesized to Flamen. “You seem to think I don’t appreciate them, but believe me in their right place they’re indispensable. The trouble is that people simply don’t treat them the way they ought to. Now, Jim!” He leaned forward earn”Let me ask you a question that I hope you’ll answer honestly, and if you do you won’t be in such a hurry any longer to head for home.”
Reedeth sighed. “Very well, go ahead.”
“Are you happy working under Mogshack?”
There was a pause. Suddenly Reedeth gave a forced laugh. “All right, I won’t duck that one. No, I’m not-not any longer.”
“Why not?”
Another pause, longer. During it Reedeth’s eyes moved to Madison’s face and stayed there, fascinated.
“I guess,” he said at last, the words grinding out as though being dragged over gravel, “because I’m no longer convinced that the patients “discharged from here are properly cured.”
Flamen tensed visibly, and his expression shifted from irritable to excited.
“In what sense are they not properly cured?” Conroy said, with the inflection he might have used to ena student to reach the logical conclusion of some argument he had propounded in an essay.
“I don’t know!” Reedeth jumped to his feet and paced restlessly up and down the office. “It’s just that. Well, over the past few days we’ve had two cases that troume dreadfully, and it was Miss Clay’s oracles that tipped the balance in my mind.”