"It would seem that there'd be some way to cut down on that feedback," said Minton.
"Not yet," Render explained, "there isn't—not without sacrificing some of the operator's effectiveness. They're working on the problem right now in Vienna, but so far the answer seems far away."
"If you find one you can probably go into the more significant areas of mental distress," said Minton.
Render drank his punch. He did not like the stress that the man had laid upon the word 'significant.'
"In the meantime," said Render, after a moment, "we treat what we can treat in the best way we know, and neuropy is certainly the best means known."
"There are those who say that you don't really cure neuroses, but cater to them—that you satisfy patients by giving them little worlds all their own to be neurotic in— vacations from reality, places where they're second in command to God."
"That is not the case," said Render. "The things which oc-
cur in those little worlds are not necessarily things which please them. They are not near to command at all; the Shaper—or, as you say, God—is. It is a learning experience. You learn by pleasure and you learn by pain. Generally, in these cases, it is more painful than it is pleasurable." He lit a cigarette, accepted another cup of punch.
"So I do not consider the criticism a valid one," he finished.
"... And it is quite expensive," said Minton.
Render shrugged.
"Did you ever price an Omnichannel Neural Transmission and Receiver outfit?"
"No."
"Do it sometime," said Render.
He listened to a Christmas carol, put out his cigarette, and stood.
"Thanks a lot, Heydell," he said. "I've got to be going now."
"What's the hurry?" asked Heydell. "Stay awhile."
"Like to," said Render, "but there are people upstairs I have to get back to."
"Oh? Many?"
"A couple."
"Bring them down. I was about to set up a buffet, and there's more than enough. I'll feed them and ply them with drinks."
"Well—" said Render.
"Fine!" said Heydell. "Why not just call them from here?"
So he did.
"Peter's ankle is all right," he said.
"Great. Now what about my coat?" asked Jill.
"Forget it for now. I'll take care of it later."
"I tried some lukewarm water, but it's still pinkish..."
"Put it back in the box, and don't fool around with it any more! I said I'd take care of it."
"Okay, okay. We'll be down in a minute. Bennie brought a gift for Peter, and something for you. She's on her way to her sister's place, but she says she's in no hurry."
"Capital. Drag her down. She knows Heydell." "Fine." She broke the connection.
Christmas Eve.
....he opposite of New Year's:
It is the personal time, rather than the social time; it is the time of focusing upon self and family, rather than society. It is a time of many things: A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. It is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted .. .
They ate from the buffet. Most of them drank the warm Ronrico and cinnamon and cloves and fruit cocktail and ginger-flavored punch. They talked of plastasac lungs and blood screens and diagnosis by computer, and of the worth-lessness of penicillin. Peter sat with his hands folded in his lap: listening, watching. His crutches lay at his feet. Music flooded the room.
Jill sas listening, also.
When Render talked everyone listened. Bennie smiled, took another diink. Playboy doctor or not, when Render talked it was with the voice of a disc jockey and the logic of the Jesuits. Her boss was known. Who knew Minton? Who knew Heydell? Other doctors, that's all. Shapers were big-time, and she was his secretary-receptionist. Everybody knew of the Shapers. There was nothing controversial about being a heart specialist or a bone man, an anesthesiologist or an internal medicine buff. Her boss was her measure of glory. The other girls always asked her about him, about his magic machine... "Electronic Svengalis," that's what Time had called them, and Render had gotten three paia-graphs, two more than any of the others—excepting Baitel-metz, of course.
The music changed to light classical, to ballet. Bennie felt a year's end nostalgia and she wanted to dance again, as she had once long ago. The season and the company, compounded with the music and the punch and the decoia-tions, made her foot tap, slowly, and turned her mind to
memories of a spotlight and a stage filled with color and movement and herself. She listened to the talk.
"... If you can transmit them and receive them, then you can record them, can't you?" Minton was asking.
"Yes," said Render.
"That's what I thought. Why don't they write more about that angle of the thing?"
"Another five or ten years—perhaps less—and they will. Right now though, the use of playback is restricted to qualified personnel."
"Why?"
"Well"—Render paused to light another cigarette—"to be completely frank, it is to keep the whole area under control until we know more about it. The thing could be exploited commercially—and perhaps with disastrous results —if it were left wide open."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I could take a fairly stable person and in his mind construct any sort of dream that you could name, and many that you could not—dreams ranging from violence and sex to sadism and perversion—dreams with a plot, like a total-participation story, or dreams which border upon insanity itself: wish-fulfillment dreams on any subject, cast in any manner. I could even pick a visual arts style, from expressionism to surrealism, if you'd like. A dream of violence in a cubist setting? Like that? Great! You could even be the horse of Guernica. I could set it up. I could record the whole thing and play it back to you, or anyone else, any number of times."
"God!"
"Yes, God. I could make you God, too, if you'd like that —and I could make the Creation last you a full seven days. I control the time-sense, the internal clock, and I can stretch actual minutes into subjective hours."
"Sooner or later this thing will happen, won't it?"
"Yes."
"What will the results be?"
"No one really knows."
"Boss," asked Bennie softly, "could you bring a memory to life again? Could you resurrect something from out of the past and make it live over again in a person's mind, and make it just as though the whole thing was real, all over again?"
Render bit his lip, stared at her strangely.
"Yes," he said, after a long pause, "but it wouldn't really be a good thing to do. It would encourage living in the past, which is now a nonexistent time. It would be a detriment to mental health. It would encourage regression, reversion, would become another means of neurotic escape into the past."
The Nutcracker Suite finished, the sounds of Swan Lake filled the room.
"Still," she said, "I should like so to be the swan again . .."
She rose slowly and executed a few clumsy steps—a hefty, tipsy swan in a russet dress.
She flushed then and sat down quickly. Then she laughed and everyone joined her.