I rose up from the couch. "Well, I certainly thank you for your therapy," I said. "And I can understand how busy you must be, but do you mind if I ask you for your professional opinion?" "About what?" said Crobe. I got out some puffsticks-I had taken to smoking them since I had seen that all the reporters did at the Ink Club. I offered one to Crobe and was about to light it for him when he ate it. I didn't know they were comestible. I lit my own. "Doctor Crobe," I said, "you may very well have been illegally incarcerated here." "I've said so all the time," he replied. "These barbarians do not appreciate professional technology." "Do you know the man who put you here?" "I certainly do. I saw him issue the order. I would have run away at once the way I am supposed to, but they restrained me." "So you know that it was Jettero Heller." He flinched a little, looked around. We were still alone. He nodded. "What is your professional opinion of that man?" Crobe sat back. He rubbed his overlong nose. He stroked his overlong chin. Finally, he said, "You can appreciate that I have made a considerable study of Jettero Heller. Our doctor-patient relationship goes back many years. He disregarded my earliest advices to him and so, you understand, I cannot be held responsible for his mental state. Had I been permitted to give him true professional help-his physiomental composition was entirely wrong for Mission Earth-none of this ever would have happened." He sighed and then he tapped the top of his radio. "I have, of course, followed his subsequent career, but anything I have heard of him only confirms my first spontaneous analysis." He shook his head sadly. Then he got busy fortifying himself with a long gurgle of white mule, after which he sat and stared out into space. "What was that analysis?" I prompted. Crobe recalled himself. "Of what?" he said. "Jettero Heller," I prompted, eagerly. "Oh, him. Well, I can tell you but you must remind me to explain if I go in too deep for a layman to follow. It is a very difficult case, not well covered in some points by the textbooks. "To begin with, he likes height. This is very grave, for it is a deviation from normal alto-phobia. I know, therefore, that he suffers from alto-libido" I stared. "Yes, very grave," said Crobe. "But that is far from all. He likes to go very fast. This is a condition of velocitus-libido. "The next symptom is no less strange. Everyone knows that people are just riffraff, yet-and I witnessed this myself in the early days when he was my patient-he is pleasant to people. This shows that he has urbanus-populi-libido. Very bad. "He also erects a facade of pretending to be fair to others-an utter sham, but it takes many people in, since it is, in fact, a fixation. An utterly craven insistence on justice for others. This detects that he has justitious-Iibido. "Now his record-although it is very confidential, he is no longer my patient and I can disclose it to you– shows that he is very athletic. He runs and jumps and exercises and engages in sports. This reveals deep-seated lascivus-libido-roughly translated from professional language, a love of sports. Damning. "Libido means a desire, craving or love of something. But in Heller's case, it is a deviation since it is NOT confined to sex. As the word libido is used constantly by Freud to describe the gravest mental conditions, you can begin to see where this is leading us with Heller. "Now, were it to stop there, possibly we could classify the man only as extremely neurotic. But unfortunately, it doesn't. A resume of his career discloses that he persists until he gets a job done. This puts us in very dangerous waters. According to the best texts, it means," and he paused and frowned, "that he is achiever-oriented! "Nor is this all: unlike the normal person, he does not get confused or dispersed easily. According to the most exacting psychology authorities, this is equally bad. He is GOAL-ORIENTED!" Crobe sat back and sadly looked at the floor. "Actually, I hate to tell you the last and worst thing, it is so very awful." "Oh, you must," I said. "Well, it is pretty technical," said Crobe. "While it is just standard Earth psychology, it may exceed your grasp. Now let me define the word schizo for you: it means split or divided like two of something. Do you follow that?" I said that I did. "Very well," continued Crobe, "then you must realize that schizophrenia is a very dreadful psychosis. A schizophrenic is an insane person, as any psychologist or psychiatrist on Earth will tell you. "And so, to return to the case we are examining, you are aware that he once called himself Jettero Heller." "That's right," I said. "But NOW," said Crobe, with a meaningful look, "he calls himself the Duke of Manco! TWO NAMES! TWO IDENTITIES! SCHIZOPHRENIA!" He sat back and shook his head. "So we are forced, then, to conclude that the man in question is totally, utterly and completely insane! "HE should be the one in here. Not I!" He sat for some time, lost in thought. Then he said, "But I should not be spending my valuable time discussing this with a layman. It is a matter only understood, in its awful enormity, by fully trained Earth professionals. You must excuse me now. I have to get busy making more white mule." He started to get out of his chair.
I stopped him from rising. "Wait!" I said. "My business is not done." I pointed at the bars which divided the room. It was very dark in the other half and I had not been able to see clearly. There was a swivel glowplate at the top of the couch. I tipped it up so it would shine through the bars into the gloom. A shadowy shape was sitting there, a sort of small mountain on the floor. The chin lifted and the light struck into yellow eyes.
LOMBAR HISST!
His hair was totally gray. His skin was so deeply wrinkled it seemed to have chasms. The face looked blank. "Oh, him," said Crobe. "I gave him ninety-some years of psychoanalysis, but for the last five or so, he refuses to talk. Actually, it is a psychiatric case and requires the expertise of a neurosurgeon. You see, the frontal lobe has become too involved with the parietal lobe of the brain, causing the inevitable biofeedback predicted by the magnificent Earth scientist Snorbert Weener in his work, Stybernetics, based on his constant association with pigs at the Massachusetts Institute of Wrectokgy. Believe me, it would cause Weener to absolutely squeal with rage and wiggle his tail if he knew his vital work was not being applied. Ah well, the mighty are often forgotten. "Now, it so happens that I am certified by no less august a body than the American Meddle Association-\ht group that is dedicated to making all the money for medical doctors possible, no matter how-to perform this simple operation. It is textbook, done constantly on Earth. In fact, it is mandatory! But these unenlightened barbarians here are denying me my tools. "Factually, I only need one tool. It is the standard one employed by all psychiatrists everywhere for this elementary and vital operation. It is called an ice pick and it isn't even expensive to buy: one can be purchased in any hardware store. "All the psychiatrist has to do-he must be qualified of course, but that's easy, one just hangs a piece of paper on the wall-is insert the ice pick up under the left eyelid, shove it all the way up and sweep it from left to right. Then one slides it up under the right eyelid and does the same. It severs the nerves of the prefrontal lobe quite effectively. And so simple. Why, one day, at Bellevue, I asked for a demonstration and the leading neurosurgeon there simply rushed out into the waiting room, said 'Watch!' and in a trice he had operated on over fifty people: they were impoverished black people, charity cases. Only a small percentage, no more than seventy, died on the spot. The remaining fifteen never gave anyone any trouble after that. Economical, too, they only lived a couple of years. Saves the state money! Earth psychiatry is nothing if not practical. They trained me well!" He got himself another shot of white mule and as he sipped it, deeply sighed, "Ah, well, there he sits, deprived utterly of real professional help." "Well, didn't the psychoanalysis make him sane?" I said. "Oh, that it did," said Crobe. "He just won't talk. He doesn't even say anything when they come in each day and lift him up to clean away the excrement and urine. Sane as can be. Just obstinate." I looked through the spaced vertical bars, but Hisst was just sitting there on the floor, yellow eyes glinting in the glowlight. He did look obstinate. I found I was drinking another shot of white mule. I felt a sudden surge of confidence. I was willing to wager anything that Lombar Hisst would talk. I was sure he was simply waiting for an investigative reporter to come in so that he could tell the real truth about his role in Mission Earth. I put down the canister, missing the table. I put out my hand to say good-bye but unfortunately knocked a jug of white mule over. It lay there gurgling but Crobe was examining my palm, muttering that it was significant there was no hair on it. "Thank you for your time, Doctor Crobe," I said. "I must be going now." "Pay the receptionist," said Crobe, "but if you (bleep) her, that will be extra. However, I do not advise it. It is not that most of these receptionists at Bellevue have syphilis, since they associate with psychologists, it is that you would be departing from my professional Earth psychiatric advice. You realize that Heller came to grief solely by not following my prescription and refusing to have his limbs shortened. So don't descend down his disastrous trail. You are clearly oral erotic, a textbook case of Freud, and your only chance of mental recovery lies in finding, as any Earth psychiatrist would verify, some good-looking boy and doing it constantly. Good day. Next patient, please!"
The guard seemed a little surprised to see me. He came forward and locked Crobe's door. "Well, you got out of that alive," he said. I gestured at the other door. "Open it!" I said. "You mean you're going into the same room with Inmate 69,000,000,202? It says here on the record that he used to be prone to violence. See, right here on the back of the card it says, 'Warning: he almost killed a cleaning steward once.'" I looked at the date. It was almost seventy years ago. "Since that time," I said grandly, "he has had decades of standard psychoanalysis" "What's that weird smell?" said the guard. "Oh, it's your breath. You didn't drink anything he gave you, did you? Maybe I should rush you over to the hospital and have your stomach pumped!" "Don't infer a Crown inspector doesn't know his business," I said haughtily. "Open the other door!" He shrugged, applied his opening plate and I walked in. I looked back and glared at the guard, for he was standing there with stungun ready. He shook his head, but leaving the door ajar, he walked off about thirty paces. I looked back into the room. It was quite dark. The fumes of the spilled jug were seeping through the slotted bars making the whole place reek. Crobe was just lolling over there, drinking from a canister, more white mule. Lombar Hisst was sitting very still. I had not realized what a very big man he was: even with his haunches on the floor, I saw the yellow eyes were level with my shoulder as I walked up to him. I stood in the path of his gaze. Suddenly he looked straight at me. In a perfectly normal voice, he said, "Could I have one of those puffsticks?" Accommodatingly, glad of the time it gave me to phrase my first questions, I reached into my pocket and got out a box. I extended it. He took one, still sitting there in quite a mannerly way. He put it in his mouth. "Could I have a light?" he said. I reached in my pocket again and found a firestick. I squeezed its shaft. It flamed. I extended it close to the end of Hisst's puffstick.
SUDDENLY HE SEIZED MY WRIST!
The power was bone-crunching! With his other hand he grabbed the shaft of the falling firestick. With a roar quite like a lepertige he surged to his feet! He threw me with a twist, as though I were a doll, straight against the far wall! I had not hit before he grabbed a cover from the bed. He touched the flaming shaft to it and it burst into flame! He swished the blanket as though it were a whip and rushed up to the bars! He screamed as he flogged fire through the bars, "I'm sending you to HELL, you hear? I'm sending you straight down to HELL NINE, DIRECT!" He was hitting the bars with the flaming blanket! Gouts of fire were flying off and spraying into Crobe's room. "You and your psychoanalysis!" shrieked Hisst. "I've waited decades just for this!" Crobe had sprung up, clutching a jug of white mule to his bony breast. He added his screeches to the din. "Keep those blasted angels on your own side of the bars!" A gout of fire was racing now across Crobe's floor, eating puddles of spilled white mule, spouting tongues of blue. "No, no!" screamed Crobe. "You're getting angels all over me!" Lombar still lashed the bars with fire. I found my legs and sprinted for the door. The guard was racing up. As I exited, I hit him. The stungun flew into a snowbank. In a tangle of arms and legs, the guard and I went pinwheeling down the path away from the hut. Lombar raced out. He was wrapping the flaming blanket around him. Spurts of blue fire were following him out of the door. Suddenly there was an awful roar! The jugs of white mule had blown up! The whole roof of the hut blew wide in a geyser of red and blue. And there went Crobe sailing skyward! Just as the roar of the explosion died, I heard Crobe's voice. In tones of exultation the doctor cried, "Look, I'm flying! I'm flying! I WAS AN ANGEL AFTER ALL!" Abruptly, high in the air, carrying his white mule bomb, Crobe exploded with a tremendous BANG! Lombar Hisst, wrapped in the burning blanket, was racing toward the far point of the cliff. He reached the edge. He was still running. He tried to spring up in the air. He was bellowing, "I'M GOD! I'M THE REAL GOD! MOVE OVER, YOU (BLEEPARD), SO I CAN RULE THE UNIVERSE!" He went plunging, a blazing fireball, two thousand feet down toward the water, a spectacular arc. He struck a piece of floating ice in a final gout of bursting flame! He slid off to be crushed in the thundering surf against the cliff, a charred and roasted nothing, ground to pieces in the cold, green sea. Crobe and Lombar Hisst were very, very dead.
I promised Neht I'd hush the matter up. I did not tell him I would not put it in this book. I am an investiptive reporter. I have learned fast at my trade. Lying to get access is a key technique of that profession-with cheating here and there and a dash of misrepresentation. For what are lies to the riffraff when I can bring the truth to you, dear reader? You should be grateful to me for becoming so adept at my chosen profession. Bob Hoodward, I assure you, could not have practiced better. And so I sailed off southward with Shafter at the controls. I was going to make one last visit to Hightee Heller: I had to check something very vital to these revelations. With a stopover at a northern hostel so I could recover from a mysterious headache and spots before my eyes, and where I could also dress the next morning in something more suitable than singed snow clothes, we came at last to the landing target of Hightee Heller's home in Pausch Hills. I did not wait for any attendant to appear. I knew the place now and so just walked in. I saw a butler shortly, a very big man, sitting in a hall polishing silver. I said, "Inform Hightee that Monte Pennwell is here to talk with her." He went off and so I wandered. I was looking for, perhaps, a correspondence room where she would have her letters: just a few moments alone with her personal files might be very rewarding. The door to the art salon was open. I saw another door to a room beyond it: that might be the correspondence room. An investigative reporter must not even heed the meaning of privacy. I glanced over my shoulder. No one was watching me. I began to cross the art salon. Here was where Hightee Heller kept many of her gifts. People sent them to her from all over, even today. It was a sort of museum but I wasn't interested in that. I was just passing a table in the middle of the vast room when my eye chanced to catch the writing on a card. I stopped right there! Somebody had taken the interplanetary shipping wrappers off. The card said: