Central Hospital. It was a very valuable psychiatric tool, but when the simple, portable versions quickly christened “joy machines” had become available around the mid century they had spread like a plague over the inhabited worlds. No one would ever know how many immature young minds had been ruined by them. “Brain burning” had been a disease of the sixties, until the epidemic had run its course, leaving behind it hundreds of emotional husks. Karl had been lucky to escape…. But, of course, he had not escaped. So this was the truth about his “breakdown,” and the explanation of his changed personality. Duncan began to feel a cold anger toward Calindy. He did not believe her protestation of innocence; she must have known better, even then. But part of his anger was not based on moral judgments. He blamed Calindy because she was alive, while Karl lay frozen in the Aden morgue, like some splendid marble statue defaced by time and carelessly restored. There he must wait until the legal complications involved in the disposal of an extraterrestrial corpse were unraveled. This was another duty that had fallen upon Duncan; he had done everything he believed necessary before saying farewell to the friend he had lost before his death.
“I think I see the picture,” continued Duncan, so harshly that Calindy looked at him with sudden surprise. “But tell me the rest-what happened then?”
“Karl used to send me long, crazy speeches sealed special delivery. He said he would never be able to love anyone else. I told him not to be foolish, but to forget me as quickly as he could, since we’d never be able to meet again. What else could I have said? I didn’t realize how
absolutely useless that ad265 vice was-like telling a man to stop breathing. I was ashamed to ask, and only discovered years later what a joy machine does to the brain.
“You see, Duncan, he was telling the literal truth when he said he could never love anyone else. When they reinforce the pleasure circuits, joy machines create a permanent, almost unbreakable pattern of desires. The psychologists call it electro-imprinting. I believe that there are techniques to modify it now, but there weren’t fifteen years ago, even on
Earth. And certainly not on Titan.
“After a while, I stopped answering; there was nothing I could say. But I still heard from Karl several times a year. He swore that sooner or later, he would get to Earth and see me again. I didn’t take him seriOusly.tg
Perhaps not, thought Duncan; but I am sure you weren’t wholly displeased.
It must have been flattering to have held in your hand the soul of someone as talented and beautiful as Karl-even if he had been enslaved accidentally, with the aid of a machine….
He saw very clearly now why all Karl’s later liaisons and marriages had exploded violently. They had been doomed to failure at the start. Always, the image of Calindy would have stood, an unattainable ideal, between Karl and happiness. How lonely he must have been! And how many misunderstandings might have been averted if the cause of his behavior had been realized in time.
Yet perhaps nothing could have been done, and in any case it was futile to dream about missed opportunities. Who was the old philosopher who had said:
“The human race will never know happiness, as long as the words “If only .” can still be spoken”?
“So it must have been a surprise, when he finally did turn up.”
“No. He’d dropped several hints-I’d been half expecting him for a year.
Then he called me from Port Van Allen, said he’d just arrived on a special flight, and would be seeing me as soon as he’d completed his gravity reconditioning.”
“It was a Terran Survey supply ship, going back empty-and fast. Even
so, it took him fifty days.” And it couldn’t have been a very comfortable trip, Duncan added to himself-fifty days inside one of those space trucks, with minimal life-support systems. What a contrast to Sirius! He felt sorry for the officers who had innocently succumbed to Karl’s persuasion, and hoped that the current Court of Inquiry would not damage their careers.
Calindy had recovered some of her poise. She stopped pacing around, and rejoined Duncan on the divan.
“I was not sure whether I really wanted to see him again, after all these years, but I knew how determined he was; it would have been useless trying to keep him away. So-I suppose you can say I took the line of least resistance.”
She managed a wry smile, then continued: “It didn’t work, of course, and I should have known it. Then we saw in a newscast that you’d just arrived on
Earth.”
“That must have been a shock to Karl. What did he say?”
“Not much; but I could see that he was upset and very surprised.”
“Surely he must have made some comment.”
“Only that if you contacted me, I was not to tell you that he was on Earth.
That was the first time I suspected something was wrong, and started to worry about the titanite he’d asked me to sell.”
