But there is something else,” Prilicla continued, disregarding the interruption. “I can only describe it as a background pleasure sensation coupled with that same urge toward dissolution which I detected a short time ago in its parent. But I am puzzled to account for this sudden change.~~
Conway’s mind was on his three tiny patients, and the predatory form the SRTT was beginning to take. He said impatiently, “Probably because recent events have affected its sanity also, the pleasure trace being due possibly to a liking for the water-”
Abruptly he stopped, his mind racing too fast for words or even ordered logical thought. Rather it was a feverish jumble of facts, experiences and wild guesswork which boiled chaotically through his brain, then incredibly became still and cool and very, very clear as.. the answer.
And yet none of the tremendous intellects in the observation ward could have found it, Conway was sure, because they were not present with an empathic assistant when a young SRTT close to insanity through fear and grief had been immersed suddenly in the tepid, yellow depths of the AUGL tank…
When an intelligent, mature and mentally complex being encounters unpleasant and hurtful facts of sufficient numbers and severity the result is a retreat from reality. First a striving to return to the simple, unworrisome days of childhood and then, when that period turns out to be not nearly so carefree and uncomplicated as remembered, the ultimate retreat into the womb and the motionless, mindless condition of the catatonic. But to a mature SRTT the fetal position of catatonia could not be simple to attain, because its reproductive system was such that instead of the unborn offspring being in a state of warm, mindless comfort, it found itself part of its parent’s mature adult body and called upon to share in the decisions and adjustments its parent had to make. Because the SRTT body, every single cell of it, was the mind and any sort of separation was impossible to a life-form whose every cell was interchangeable.
How divide a glass of water without pouring some off into another container?
The diseased intellect would be forced to retreat again and again, only to find that it had become involved in endless changes and adaptations in its efforts to return to this nonexistent womb. It would go back-far, far back-until it eventually did find the mindless state which it craved and its mind, which was inseparable from its body, became the warm water teeming with unicellular life from which it had originally evolved.
Now Conway knew the reason for the slow, melting dissolution of the terminal case upstairs. More, he thought he saw a way of solving the whole horrible mess. If he could only bank on the fact that, as was the case with most other species, a complex, mature mind tended to go insane faster than an undeveloped and youthful one…
He was only vaguely aware of going to the intercom again and calling O’Mara, and of Murchison and Prilicla drawing closer to him as he talked. Then he was waiting for what seemed like hours for the Chief Psychologist to absorb the information and react. Finally:
“An ingenious theory, Doctor,” said O’Mara warmly. “More than that-I would say that that is exactly what has happened here, and no theorizing about it. The only pity is the understanding what has happened does nothing to aid the patient-”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Conway broke in eagerly, “and the way I see it the runaway is the most urgent problem now-if it isn’t caught and pacified soon there are going to be serious casualties among the Staff and patients, in my section anyway, if nowhere else. Unfortunately, for technical reasons, your idea of calming it by means of a sound tape in its own language is not very successful up to now…
“That’s putting it kindly,” said O’Mara dryly.
But,” went on Conway, “if this idea was modified so that the runaway was spoken to, reassured, by its parent upstairs. If we first cured the elder SRTT-”
“Cured the elder! What the blazes do you think we’ve been trying to do this past three weeks?” O’Mara demanded angrily. Then as the realization came that Conway was not trying to be funny or willfully stupid, that he sounded in deadly earnest, he said flatly, “Keep talking, Doctor.”