“That’s what Nagle keeps telling me! We went round and round over this yesterday, and all he’d do was smile and tell me to look in the Mirror.”
Montgomery didn’t know the answer to the argument of steam-engine time. Maybe a man couldn’t rise above his culture. He doubted, however, that he had to remain immersed to eye-level height in it forever. But he knew now, at least, what was holding Gunderson back! He wondered what the engineer would find when he searched the Mirror for the answer.
He went almost reluctantly to the appointment with his own Mirror. He felt he had reached a position of equilibrium which he hesitated to disturb. Admitting his own cowardice and inadequacies was more pleasant than what he might find next.
A world of nightmare swarmed up to meet him as soon as he donned the headpiece. He thought he was prepared for almost anything the Mirror could show, but this was something new.
He had found out how to control the speed, so to speak, of his approach to the image, and he held it down now, feeling his way slowly through the bewildering unknown. It was difficult to keep aware that this was the labyrinth of his own mind he was searching. He couldn’t believe that he had walked about daily for his thirty-five years with this nightmare and terror locked up inside him.
It seemed as if all the normal quality of his senses had been stripped away. He had no eyes to see, nor ears to hear, nor fingers with which to feel. But there was awareness of life, a sharp, ecstatic awareness that filled his whole being. It was intense, as if it alone occupied the whole world.
And then there was — death!
It had been approaching for long aeons, slowly dimming the ecstasy. But he screamed aloud when he finally recognized it for what it was. The gradual diminishment of life was like a fire going out in all the cells of his being, and the coursing liquids slowed and turned cold.
He fought back to awareness of his body, and knew he was dying — now. He felt it in his arms and legs. His heartbeat was slow and his breath came in gasps that had all but ceased. He couldn’t find light with his eyes any longer. There was only the great, empty shadow into which he was slowly drifting. This was death.
At first he could not discern the enemy. He had believed there was no life but his own. Now he was aware that there was life all about him. While his own was decreasing, this other was growing, drawing from him his own vital force of existence.
He reached out involuntarily to struggle against that enemy and felt it react. He felt the sick flood of its revulsion wash through him, poisoning, destroying. But an understanding came. He could make a bargain —
The enemy was supporting him — how, he didn’t know. But his demands had been too great. The enemy rebelled for its own safety and had begun first to withdraw its support, then actively attack him. He could offer to curb his demands, to lessen his requirements. Then they could both survive. He didn’t know if it would be accepted. He was at the mercy of the other. But he sent out his offer and his appeal —
Faintly, the fires seemed to rise in the distant cells of him. The liquids were renewed. His offer was acceptable. His life was restored to him again.
But not so high as before. Some of the ecstasy was gone, and the fear remained — the deadly fear that if he demanded his full portion he would be annihilated.
Where did such a nightmare arise? It had diminished, but he was still shaking in every muscle as he became aware of the panels of the Mirror. Perspiration soaked his clothes.
It was nothing that had ever happened to him. Of that he was certain. For some reason his imagination had been harboring this fantasy of death, controlling him with it. It had to be a symbol of something else, having no reality in itself.
Hesitantly, he glanced at his watch and then at the panels of the Mirror. It didn’t seem possible that he had spent half a day with it already. He ought to call it enough for now. Wolfe had cautioned him to not spend more time than this at a single sitting. But he had to get another look at that symbol of terror and find out its meaning. If it had one —
He went back again and again to look more closely each time, to feel more intimately the sense of death. Until at last he was able to look continually without cringing.
It was late evening when he took off the headpiece. A faint smile was on his lips as he closed the door of the room behind him.
He spent two hours more searching the stacks of the fairly ample library of the Institute. Then he returned to the hotel, and his smile was broader than ever as he entered the door. The psychiatrist, Dr. Spindem, was waiting for him in the lobby.
He arose and came forward, hand outstretched to greet Montgomery. His face was beaming professionally and his eyes scanned the major intently.
“I came as quickly as I could,” he said. “I told Colonel Dodge we couldn’t afford to endanger unnecessarily a man with your qualifications.”
Montgomery chuckled. “I can imagine what Dodge’s answer was!”
“What do you mean by that?” Spindem’s eyes sharpened their inspection.
“Nothing — particularly.”
“You mean you feel the colonel doesn’t appreciate you?” Spindem insisted.
“Something like that,” Montgomery agreed. “Would you like to come up to my room where we can talk?”
Spindem nodded. “Yes. I want to hear everything you’ve found out so far about this incredible, so-called Institute.”
The psychiatrist remained silent during the ride in the elevator and the walk to Montgomery’s room. But the major could feel the constant inspection of his eyes almost as if it were a physical probing. He guessed that he was already written pretty far down in Spindem’s little black book.
“Drink?” he offered as they sat down. “I haven’t anything here, but we can have something sent up.”
“No, thanks,” said Spindem. “I’d like to hear immediately everything you’ve experienced — particularly about this so-called Mirror.”
Montgomery began with his experiences of the first day, describing in detail the demonstration put on by Norcross.
“What do you suppose the purpose of that was?” said Spindem. “Is it a standard sort of show which is put on for all newcomers?”
“It’s no show. I thought it was faked up, too, when I first saw it. It isn’t. It’s genuine. The men who have gone through enough hours with the Mirror can actually do those things.”
“Some form of hypnosis, unquestionably,” said Spindem. “You’ll pardon my disagreement, but you understand, I’m sure, that my professional experience enables a more accurate interpretation of such mental phenomena.”
“Of course,” said Montgomery. He continued with Dr. Nagle’s analysis of the educational system as a homeostatic mechanism and his own verification of this function.
“A novel concept,” said Spindem, “and obviously very naïve, not taking into consideration at all the converse situation if there were no universal distribution of knowledge.”
Montgomery started to interrupt, but the psychiatrist continued. “I am most interested in your statements about your high-school mathematics teacher. You say you believe this Mr. Carling purposely and deliberately made geometry and algebra unpleasant to you so that you would not pursue them too far?”
“Paranoid, I believe you call an attitude like that, don’t you?” said Montgomery, his face expressionless. “A persecution complex —”
“Please —” Spindem’s face looked pained. “I am not here for the purpose of personal diagnosis, major. My only interest is in the effects of this Mirror.”
“I’m sorry,” said Montgomery. “Your question permits of no simple answer. Mr. Carling was utterly incapable of teaching mathematics in any way that would not make it completely repulsive. The subject held no fascination for him, and it was inconceivable that it should for anyone else.