And now they learned one thing more. What the disappearance act meant.
“He went home,” said Clark softly, wonderingly. “He up and went home.”
The colonel nodded. “I’ve been waiting for a telepath,” he said. “And I guess I’m still waiting for one. But it looks as though I’ve finally got hold of a real live teleport.”
“He refuses to believe it,” said Swanson. He tapped the doctor’s scrawled notation on Jeremy Masters’ medical record. “He’s talked himself into thinking it was an hallucination, you notice?”
“Just wait till we tell him different,” said Clark.
“No,” said the colonel.
The other two looked at him, questioning. “You aren’t going to tell him?” asked Clark.
The colonel shook his head.
“Why not?”
“However he managed to do it,” explained the colonel, “he’s managed now to get rid of the knowledge. It won’t do any good to just go to him and tell him he really did teleport after all. He won’t believe it, to begin with. He’ll think it’s some sort of crazy psychological test. And even if he does believe it, so what? He obviously doesn’t have any control over the ability. He’s no good to us as a man who teleported once and can’t remember how.”
“So what do we do?” Clark asked.
The colonel closed the medical records folder. “We let nature take its course for a while,” he said. “With a nudge or two in the right direction from us.”
Jeremy had seen the doctor on Monday. He had three more days of distracted incompetence to live through, with the TI calling him a yardbird and a goof-up and a few less printable things, and then it was finally Thursday, and he went back on sick call again.
This time, the white-garbed medic took his name and went away and came back and said, “You sit over there.”
“Over there” was a small alcove containing three leather sofas. Four miserable looking basic trainees were already there. Jeremy joined them, and waited. There was no conversation at all among the five; they were all too full of their own frightened thoughts.
At eleven-thirty, another white-garbed medic came along. “Follow me,” he said, and walked off.
Jeremy and the other four followed him out a side door. There was a truck parked there and, at the medic’s brief order, they climbed up into the back. Planks were stretched benchlike across the interior. They sat down, braced themselves, and fifteen minutes later the truck jerked forward and drove out of the base.
They rode for two hours, and then they arrived at Robinson Air Force Base, on which there was a hospital. The truck bounced to a stop in front of the hospital, and the medic came around and said, “O.K., come on out.”
Jeremy and the other four clambered down from the truck.
The medic said, “Any of you guys hungry, go on to the chow hall with the driver here. If you ain’t hungry, come on with me. And if you go to the chow hall, you get right back here after you eat. I’ll be waiting inside by the desk.”
Jeremy wasn’t hungry. It was past lunchtime, but he wasn’t hungry. He was too nervous to be hungry.
Apparently, all the others felt the same way. The five of them trooped into the hospital behind the medic. Another medic took over at that point and led them down an endless series of halls to an alcove almost exactly like the one they’d left two hours ago back at the infirmary, and left them sitting there.
Half an hour later, an Airman First Class with a clipboard came over and called out a name. One of the five stood up and said, “That’s me, sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ ” said the Airman First Class absently. “Follow me.”
Jeremy was the second one called, twenty minutes later. He remembered not to call the Airman First Class “sir,” and he felt very small as he followed the man-with-clipboard down the green corridors past all the white rooms.
The psychiatrist looked like the doctor, except he had less hair. He sat on one side of the desk, and
Jeremy sat on the other, and he listened impassively as Jeremy described his hallucination. When Jeremy was finished, the psychiatrist said, “This wasn’t real?”
“No, sir,” said Jeremy. “I mean, how could it be? It must have been an hallucination.”
“Then what’s the problem?” the psychiatrist asked him. “If you believed it, if you really thought you’d gone home for a minute, then we’d have a problem on our hands. But if you already realize it was an hallucination, then I don’t see the difficulty.”
“I know it was an hallucination,” said Jeremy. “But I can’t forget it. It’s as though I really believed it. I just can’t get it out of my mind. It scares me.”
The psychiatrist studied his fingernails. “I’ll tell you frankly,” he said, not looking up, “I have the feeling you’re blowing this thing all out of proportion. I’m not saying you’re doing it consciously, I don’t know whether you are or not. But here’s what I think. I think you’re sorry you enlisted, and you wish you were home. I think you wish there were some way you could get out of the Air Force. So, to give you the benefit of the doubt, I think you’ve talked yourself into believing you had this hallucination, with some vague idea of getting a section eight.”
“No, sir,” started Jeremy, but the psychiatrist raised a hand for silence.
“I’ll tell you the rest of what I think,” he said. “I think there’s the possibility you’re making this whole thing up, that you’re consciously trying to wangle a section eight. That’s a possibility. But I also think it’s more likely that you yourself don’t exactly realize what you’re doing. But consider the hallucination itself. Home. You wanted to go home. You still want to go home.”
“No, sir,” said Jeremy. He was still frightened, but he was beginning to get a little angry, too. Seven weeks of basic training had dulled his self-respect, but hadn’t totally deactivated it. This bland witch doctor was calling him a liar and a sneak. “It isn’t like that at all, sir,” he said.
“It isn’t? Well, then, you tell me what it is like.”
“This thing — happened,” said Jeremy. “I don’t know what it was. It felt real, it felt as though I were really home. It only lasted a second, and then I was right back again. But it felt real, and then I got that letter from my mother, and I just can’t get rid of the idea that maybe it really did happen. I know it’s impossible — but it happened.”
The psychiatrist said, “Um-m-m.” He studied his fingernails again. At length, he said, “You don’t really want a section eight, boy. Or do you have the idea an asylum is better than the Air Force? It isn’t. You’re in your seventh week of basic training. You have four weeks to go. I realize basic training is rough, but it has to be, and things will calm down once you complete it. If you aren’t careful, right now you can put a black mark on your record that will stay there for the rest of your life.”
“Sir,” said Jeremy desperately, “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t concentrate on anything. I don’t know what to do. I want somebody to help me.”
“If I saw the problem—” started the psychiatrist. He shrugged and pursed his lips and studied his fingernails. At length, he said, “Do you know what sodium amytal is?”
“Yes, sir. A truth serum.”
“Not exactly, but that’s close enough. I’m thinking of giving you an injection of sodium amytal. There’s either more or less to this than you’re telling me. Now, if you want, you can stand up and walk out of here now and go on back to your outfit, and no questions asked. If you stay here, and under sodium amytal you tell me you’re faking, you’ll face court-martial action. Do you understand that?”