ride with it. It will not be for long." He squeezed Bill's shoul-
der and was gone.
"The trick was learned early in our history, when this type
of total operation was more often necessary," the professor
continued. "It is really quite simple to extinguish one per-
sonality while leaving the other undisturbed. The other per-
sonality in the case before us has been drug-immobilized to
keep this one from shifting. At the last moment, this personal-
ity before us will be drug-stimulated to bring it to the highest
possible pitch of total activity. This produces utterly disor-
ganized activity, every involved neutron and synapse being
activated simultaneously by the drug. It is then a simple
matter for the mnemonic eraser to locate all permanently
echoing frequencies involved in this personality and suck
them into its receiver."
Bill was suddenly aware that a needle had been thrust
into his arm. Then it was as though all the terror, panic and
traumatic incidents of his whole life leaped into his mind. All
the pleasant experiences and feelings he had ever known
were there, too, but were transformed into terror.
A bell was ringing with regular strokes. Across the panel
of the mnemonic eraser, the tiny counting lights were alive
with movement.
There was in Bill a fright, a demand for survival so great
that it could not be felt.
It was actually from an island of complete calm that part of
him saw the medical students rising dismayed and white-
faced from their seats. It was apart from himself that his
body strained to lift some mountain and filled the operating
amphitheatre with shrieking echoes. And all the time the
thousand eyes of the mnemonic eraser flickered in swift pat-
terns, a silent measure of the cells and circuits of his mind.
Abruptly the tiny red counting lights went off, a red beam
glowed with a burr of warning. Someone said, "Now!" The
mind of Bill Walden flashed along a wire as electrical energy,
and, converted on the control panel into mechanical energy,
it spun a small ratchet counter.
"Please sit down," the professor said to the shaken stu-
dents. "The drug that has kept the other personality immo-
bilized is being counteracted by this next injection. Now that
the sickly personality has been dissipated, the healthy one can
be brought back rapidly.
"As you are aware, the synapse operates on the binary
'yes-no' choice system of an electronic calculator. All synapses
which were involved in the diseased personality have now
~been reduced to an atypical, uniform threshold. Thus they
can be re-educated in new patterns by the healthy personality
remaining. .. . There, you see the countenance of the healthy
personality appearing."
It was Conrad Manz who looked up at them with a wry
grin. He rotated his shoulders to loosen them. "How many
of you pushed old Bill Walden around? He left me with
some sore muscles. Well, I did that often enough to him. . . ."
Major Grey stood over him, face sick and white with the
horror of what he had seen. "According to law, Mr. Manz,
you and your wife are entitled to five rest days on your next
shift. When they are over, you will, of course, report for sus-
pended animation for what would have been your hyperal-
ter's shift."
Conrad Manz's grin shrank and vanished. "Would have
been? Bill isgone?"
"Yes."
"I never thought I'd miss him." Conrad looked as sick as
Major Grey felt. "It makes me feel1 don't know if I can
explain itsort of amputated. As though something's wrong
with me because everybody else has an alter and I don't.
Did the poor son of a strait-jacket suffer much?"
"I'm afraid he did."
Conrad Manz lay still for a moment with his eyes closed
and his mouth thin with pity and remorse. "What will happen
to Helen?"
"She'll be all right," Major Grey said. "There will be Bill's
insurance, naturally, and she won't have much trouble finding
another husband. That kind never seems to."
"Five rest days?" Conrad repeated. "Is that what you
said?" He sat up and swung his legs off the table, and he was
grinning again. "I'll get in a whole shift of )et-skiing! No,
waitI've got a date with the wife of a friend of mine out at
the rocket grounds. I'll take Clara out there; she'll like some
of the men."
Major Grey nodded abstractedly. "Good idea." He shook
hands with Conrad Manz, wished him fun on his rest shift,
and left.
Taking a helicopter hack to his city. Major Grey thought
of his own hyperalter, Ralph Singer. He'd often wished that
the silly fool could be erased. Now he wondered how it would
be to have only one personality, and, wondering, realized that
Conrad Manz had been rightit would be like imputation,
the shameful distinction of living in a schizophrenic society
with no alter.
No, Bill Walden had been wrong, completely wrong, both
about drugs and being split into two personalities. What one
made up in pleasure through not taking drugs was more than
lost in the suffering of conflict, frustration and hostility. And
having an alterany kind, even one as useless as Singer
meant, actually, not being alone.
Major Grey parked the helicopter and found a shifting star
tion. He took off his make-up, addressed and mailed his
clothes, and waited for .the shift to come.
It was a pretty wonderful society he lived in, he realized.
He wouldn't trade it for the kind Bill Walden had wanted.
Nobody in his right mind would.