BEYOND BEDLAM
by Wyman Gain
THE OPENING afternoon class for Mary Walden's ego-shift
was almost over, and Mary was practically certain the teacher
would not call on her to recite her assignment, when Carl
Blair got it into his mind to try to pass her a dirty note.
Mary knew it would be a screamingly funny Ego-Shifting
Room limerick and was about to reach for the note when
Mrs. Harris's voice crackled through the room.
"Carl Blair! I believe you have an important message.
Surely you will want the whole class to hear it. Come forward,
please."
As he made his way before the class, the boy's blush-cov-
ered freckles reappeared against his growing pallor. Halting-
ly and in an agonized monotone, he recited from the note:
"There was a young hyper named Phil,
Who kept a third head for a thrill.
Said he. It's all right,
I enjoy my plight.
I shift my third out when it's chill."'
The class didn't dare laugh. Their eyes burned down at
their laps in shame. Mary managed to throw Carl Blair a
compassionate glance as he returned to his seat, but she in-
stantly regretted ever having been kind to him.
"Mary Walden, you seemed uncommonly interested in read-
ing something just now. Perhaps you wouldn't mind reading
your assignment to the class"
There it was, and just when the class was almost over.
Mary could have scratched Carl Blair. She clutched her paper
grimly and strode to the front.
"Today's assignment in Pharmacy History is, 'Schizophrenia
since the Ancient Pre-pharmacy days.' " Mary took enough
breath to get into the first paragraph.
"Schizophrenia is where two or more personalities live m
the same brain. The ancients of the 20th Century actually
looked upon schizophrenia as a disease! Everyone felt it was
very shameful to have a schizophrenic person in the family,
and, since children lived right with the same parents who had
borne them, it was very bad. If you were a schizophrenic
child in the 20th Century, you would be locked up behind
bars and people would call you"
Mary blushed and stumbled over the daring word"crazy".
"The ancients locked up strong ego groups right along with
weak ones. Today we would lock up those ancient people."
The class agreed silently.
"But there were more and more schizophrenics to lock up.
By 1950 the prisons and hospitals were so full of schizophren-
ic people that the ancients did not have room left to lock
up any more. They were beginning to see that soon everyone
would be schizophrenic.
"Of course, in the 20th Century, the schizophrenic people
were almost as helpless and 'crazy' as the ancient Modern
men. Naturally they did not fight wars and lead the silly life
of the Moderns, but without proper drugs they couldn't con-
trol their Ego-shiftability. The personalities in a brain would
always be fighting each other. One personality would cut the
body or hurt it or make it filthy, so that when the other
personality took over the body, it would have to suffer. No,
the schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were almost
as 'crazy' as the ancient Moderns.
"But then the drugs were invented one by one and the
schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were freed of their
troubles. With the drugs the personalities of each body were
able to live side by side in harmony at last. It turned out that
many schizophrenic people, called overendow6d personalities,
simply had so many talents and viewpoints that it took two
or more personalities to handle everything.
"The drugs worked so well that the ancients had to let
millions of schizophrenic people out from behind the bars of
'crazy' houses. That was the Great Emancipation of the
1990s. From then on, schizophrenic people had trouble only
when they criminally didn't take their drugs. Usually, there
are two egos in a schizophrenic personthe hyperalter, or
prime ego, and the hypoalter, the alternate ego. There often
were more than two, but the Medicorps makes us take our
drugs so that won't happen to us.
"At last someone realized that if everyone took the new
drugs, the great wars would stop. At the World Congress of
1997, laws were passed to make everyone take the drugs.
There were many fights over this because some people want-
ed to stay Modern and fight wars. The Medicorps was or-
ganized and told to kill anyone who wouldn't take their
drugs as prescribed. Now the laws are enforced and every-
body takes the drugs and the hyperalter and hypoalter are
each allowed to have the body for an ego-shift of five
days...."
Mary Walden faltered. She looked up at the faces of her
classmates, started to turn to Mrs. Harris and felt the sickness
growing in her head. Six great waves of crescendo silence
washed through her. The silence swept away everything but
the terror, which stood in her frail body like a shrieking rock.
Mary heard Mrs. Harris hurry to the shining dispensary
along one wall of the classroom and return to stand before
her with a swab of antiseptic and a disposable syringe.
Mrs. Harris helped her to a chair. A few minutes after the
expert injection, Mary's mind struggled back from its core of
silence.
"Mary, dear, I'm sorry. I haven't been watching you closely
enough."
"Oh, Mrs. Harris..." Mary's chin trembled. "I hope it
never happens again."
"Now, child, we all have to go through these things when
we're young. You're just a little slower than the others in
acclimatizing to the drugs. You'll be fourteen soon and the
medicop assures me you'll be over this sort of thing just as
the others are."
Mrs. Harris dismissed the class and when they had all
filed from the room, she turned to Mary.
"I think, dear, we should visit the clinic together, don't
you?"
"Yps, Mrs. Harris." Mary was not frightened now. She was
just ashamed to be such a difficult child and so slow to ac-
climatize to the drugs.
As she and the teacher walked down the long corridor to
the clinic, Mary made up her mind to tell the medicop what
she thought was wrong. It was not herself. It was her hypoal-
ter, that nasty little Susan Shorrs. Sometimes, when Susan had
the body, the things Susan was doing and thinking came to
Mary like what the ancients had called dreams, and Mary
had never liked this secondary ego whom she could never
really know. Whatever was wrong, it was Susan's doing. The
filthy creature never took care of her hair, it was always so
messy when Susan shifted the body to her.
Mrs. Harris waited while Mary went into the clinic.
Mary was glad to find Captain Thiel, the nice medicop, on
duty. But she was silent while the X-rays were being taken,
and, of course, while he got the blood samples, she concen-