He called down to them, but they didn't hear him.
Time for that later, he thought. He sat on the bed, feeling dazed and relieved. He dropped the needle to the floor, certain he wouldn't need to use it again.
It was incredible, but he thought he knew where he had been.
The final image of his face in the mirror had given him the last clue.
He had been inside his own mind. The M-A 19 was merely a hallucinogenic after all. A powerful one, evidently, if it could give him the illusion of rope-marks on his wrists, bites on his neck and the rest.
He had escaped into a dream world.
Then he wondered-but why? What good had it done? He got up and went towards the mirror again.
Then he heard the voice. Martha's voice.
SEWARD! SEWARD! Seward, listen to me!
No, he thought desperately. No, it can't be starting again.
There's no need for it.
He ran into the laboratory, closing the door behind him, locking it. He stood there, trembling, waiting for the withdrawal symptoms. They didn't come.
Instead he saw the walls of the laboratory, the silent computers and meters and dials, begin to blur. A light flashed on above his head. The dead banks of instruments suddenly came alive. He sat down in a big chrome, padded chair which had originally been used for the treating of test-subjects.
His gaze was caught by a whirling stroboscope that had appeared from nowhere. Coloured images began to form in front of his eyes. He struggled to get up but he couldn't.
YOU 121 YOU 122 YOU 123 Then the first letter changed to a V.
YOU 127 SEWARD!
His eyelids fell heavily over his eyes.
'Professor Seward.' It was Martha's voice. It spoke to someone else. ' We may be lucky, Tom. Turn down the volume.'
He opened his eyes.
'Martha.'
The woman smiled. She was dressed in a white coat and was leaning over the chair. She looked very tired.' I'm not - Martha -Professor Seward. I'm Doctor Kalin. Remember?'
'Doctor Kalin, of course.'
His body felt weaker than it had ever felt before. He leaned back in the big chair and sighed. Now he was remembering.
It had been his decision to make the experiment. It had seemed to be the only way of speeding up work on the development of the tranquilomats. He knew that the secret of a workable machine was imbedded in the deepest level of his unconscious mind. But, however much he tried-hypnosis, symbolassociation, word-association - he couldn't get at it.
There was only one way he could think of-a dangerous experiment for him-an experiment which might not work at all. He would be given a deep-conditioning, made to believe that he had brought disaster to the world and must remedy it bydevising a tranquilomat. Things were pretty critical in the world outside, but they weren't as bad as they had conditioned him to believe. Work on the tranquilomats was falling behindbut there had been no widespread disaster, yet.
It was bound to come unless they could devise some means of mass-cure for. the thousands of neurotics and victims of insanity. An antidote for the results of mass-tension.
So, simply, they conditioned him to think his efforts had destroyed civilization. He must devise a working tranquilomat.
They had turned the problem from an intellectual one into a personal one.
The conditioning had apparently worked.
He looked around the laboratory at his assistants. They were all alive, healthy, a bit tired, a bit strained, but they looked relieved.
'How long have I been under?' he asked.
'About fourteen hours. That's twelve hours since the experiment went wrong.'
'Went wrong?'
'Why, yes,' said Doctor Kalin in surprise. 'Nothing was happening. We tried to bring you. round-we tried every darned machine and drug in the place-nothing worked. We expected catatonia. At least we've managed to save you. We'll just have to go on using the ordinary methods of research, I suppose.'
Her voice was tired, disappointed.
Seward frowned. But he had got the results. He knew exactly how to construct a working tranquilomat. He thought back.
'Of course,' he said. ' I was only conditioned to believe that the world was in ruins and I had done it. There was nothing about - about - the other world.'
'What other world?' Macpherson, his Chief Assistant asked the question.
Seward told them. He told them about the Man Without A Navel, the fortress, the corridors, the tortures, the landscapes seen from Farlowe's car, the park, the maze, the Vampire, Magdalen… He told them how, in what he now called Condition A, he had believed himself hooked on a drug called M-A 19.
'But we don't have a drag called M-A 19,' said Doctor Kalin.
'I know that now. But I didn't know that and it didn't matter.
I would have found something to have made the journey into the other world-a world existing only in my skull. Call it Condition B, if you like - or Condition X, maybe. The unknown.
I found a fairly logical means of making myself believe I was entering another world. That was M-A 19. By inventing symbolic characters who were trying to stop me, I made myself work harder. Unconsciously I knew that Condition A was going wrong - so I escaped into Condition B in order to put right the damage. By acting out the drama I was able to clear my mind of its confusion. I had, as I suspected, the secret of the tranquilomat somewhere down there all the time. Condition A failed to release that secret - Condition B succeeded, I can build you a workable tranquilomat, don't worry.'
'Well,' Macpherson grinned. ' I've been told to use my imagination in the past - but you really used yours!'
'That was the idea, wasn't it? We'd decided it was no good just using drugs to keep us going. We decided to use our drugs and hallucinomats directly, to condition me to believe that what we feared will happen, had happened.'
'I'm glad we didn't manage to bring you back to normality, in that case,' Doctor Kalin smiled. ' You've had a series of classic - if more complicated than usual - nightmares. The Man Without A Navel, as you call him, and his "allies" symbolized the elements in you that were holding you back from the truth diverting you. By "defeating" the Man, you defeated those elements.'
'It was a hell of a way to get results,' Seward grinned.' But I got them. It was probably the only way. Now we can produce as many tranquilomats as we need. The problem's over. I'vein all modesty - ' he grinned,' saved the world before it needed saving. It's just as well.'
'What about your "helpers", though,' said Doctor Kalin helping him from the chair. He glanced into her intelligent, mature face. He had always liked her.
'Maybe,' he smiled, as he walked towards the bench where the experimental tranquilomats were kid out,' maybe there was quite a bit of wish-fulfilment mixed up in it as well.'
'It's funny how you didn't realize that it wasn't real, isn't it?' said Macpherson behind him.
'Why is it funny?' he turned to look at Macpherson's long, worn face. ' Who knows what's real, Macpherson. This world? That world? Any other world? I don't feel so adamant about this one, do you?'
'Well… ' Macpherson said doubtfully. 'I mean, you're a trained psychiatrist as well as everything else. You'd think you'd recognize your own symbolic characters?'
'I suppose it's possible.' Macpherson had missed his point.
'All the same,' he added. ' I wouldn't mind going back there some day. I'd quite enjoy the exploration. And I liked some of the people. Even though they were probably wish-fulfilment figures. Farlowe - father - it's possible.' He glanced up as his eye fell on a meter. It consisted of a series of code-letters and three digits. YOU 128 it said now. There was Farlowe's number-plate. His mind had turned the V into a Y. He'd probably discover plenty of other symbols around, which he'd turned into something else in the other world. He still couldn't think of it as a dream world. It had seemed so real. For him, it was still real.