Beyond Bedlam Read online

  2831. The book was mostly Medicorps propaganda and al-

  most never gave a practical suggestion. If something went

  wrong, you called a medicop.

  Conrad hunted through the book for the section on sleep-

  ing compound. It was funny, too, about that name Bill. Con-

  rad went over all the men of their acquaintance with whom

  Clara had occasional affairs or with whom she was friendly

  and he couldn't remember a single Bill. In fact, the only

  man with that name whom he could think of was his own hy-

  peralter, Bill Walden. But that was naturally impossible.

  Maybe dreaming was always about imaginary people.

  SLEEPING COMPOUND: An official mixture of soporific and

  hypnotic alkaloids and synthetics. A critical drug; an essen-

  tial feature in every prescription. Slight deviations in fol-

  lowing prescription are unallowable because of the subtle

  manner in which behaviour may be altered over months or

  years. The first sleeping compound was announced by

  Thomas Marshall in 1986. The formula has been modified

  only twice since then.

  There followed a tightly packed description of the chemis-

  try and pharmacology of the various ingredients. Conrad

  skipped through this.

  The importance. of Sleeping Compound in the life of

  every individual and to society is best appreciated when we

  recall Marshall's words announcing its initial development:

  "It is during so-called normal sleep that the vicious un-

  conscious mind responsible for wars and other symptoms

  of unhappiness develops its resources and its hold on our

  conscious lives.

  "In this normal sleep the critical faculties of the cortex

  are paralysed. Meanwhile, the infantile unconscious mind

  expands misinterpreted experience into the toxic patterns

  of neurosis and psychosis. The conscious mind takes over

  at morning, unaware that these infantile motivations have

  been cleverly woven into its very structure.

  "Sleeping Compound will stop this. There is no uncon-

  scious activity after taking this harmless drug. We believe

  the Medicorps should at once initiate measures to acclima-

  tize every child to its use. In these children, as the

  years go by, infantile patterns unable to work during sleep

  will fight a losing battle during waking hours with con-

  scious patterns accumulating in the direction of adulthood."

  That was all there wasmostly the Medicorps patting its

  own back for saving humanity. But if you were in trouble

  and called a medicop, you'd risk getting into real trouble.

  Conrad became aware of Clara standing in the doorway.

  The flush of her disturbed emotions and the pallor of her

  fatigue mixed in ragged banners on her cheeks.

  Conrad waved the Family Pharmacy with a foolish gesture

  of embarrassment.

  "Young lady, have you been neglecting to take your sleep-

  ing compound?"

  Clara turned utterly pale. "I1 don't understand."

  "You were talking in your sleep."

  "Iwas?"

  She came forward so unsteadily that he helped her to a

  seat. She stared at him. He asked jovially, "Who is this 'Bill'

  you were so desperately involved with? Have you been having

  an affair I don't know about? Aren't my friends good enough

  for you?"

  The result of this banter was that she alarmingly began to

  cry, clutching her robe about her and dropping her blonde

  head on her knees and sobbing.

  Children cried before they were acclimatized to the drugs,

  but Conrad Manz had never in his life seen an adult cry.

  Though he had taken his morning drugs and certain disrupt-

  ing emotions were already impossible, nevertheless this sight

  was completely unnerving.

  In gasps between her sobs, Clara was saying, "Oh, I can't

  go back to taking them! But I can't keep this up! I just

  can't!"

  "Clara, darling, I don't know what to say or do. I think

  we ought to call the Medicorps."

  Intensely frightened, she rose and clung to him, begging,

  "Oh, no, Conrad, that isn't necessary! It isn't necessary at

  all. I've only neglected to take my sleeping compound and it

  won't happen again. All I need is a sleeping compound.

  Please get my pharmacase for me and it will be all right."

  She was so desperate to convince him that Conrad got the

  pharmacase and a glass of water for her only to appease the

  white face of fright.

  Within a few minutes of taking the sleeping compound, she

  was calm. As he put her back to bed, she laughed with a

  lazy indolence.

  "Oh, Conrad, you take it so seriously. I only needed a

  sleeping compound very badly and now I feel fine. I'll sleep

  all day. It's a rest day, isn't it? Now go race a rocket and

  stop worrying and thinking about calling the medicops."

  But Conrad did not go rocket racing as he had planned.

  Clara had been asleep only a few minutes when there was

  a call on the visiophone; they wanted him at the office. The

  city of Santa Fe would be completely out of balance within

  twelve shifts if revised plans were not put into operation im-

  mediately. They were to start during the next five days while

  he would be out of shift. In order to carry on the first day

  of their next shift, he and the other three traffic managers

  he worked with would have to come down today and famil-

  iarize themselves with the new operations.

  There was no getting out of it. His rest day was spoiled.

  Conrad resented it all the more because Santa Fe was clear

  out on the edge of their traffic district and could have been

  revised out of the Mexican offices just as well. But those

  boys down there rested all five days of their shift.

  Conrad looked in on Clara before he left and found her

  asleep in the total suspension of proper drug level. The

  unpleasant memory of her behaviour made him squirm, but

  now that the episode was over, it no longer worried him.

  It was typical of him that, things having been set straight

  in the proper manner, he did not think of her again until

  late in the afternoon.

  As early as 1950, the pioneer communications engineer

  Norbert Wiener had pointed out that there might be a close

  parallel between disassociation of personalities and the dis-

  ruption of a communication system. Wiener referred back

  specifically to the first clear description, by Morton Prince,

  of multiple personalities existing together in the same human

  body. Prince had described only individual cases and his ob-

  servations were not altogether acceptable in Wiener's time.

  Nevertheless, in the schizophrenic society of the 29th Cen-

  tury, a major managerial problem was that of balancing the

  communicating and non-communicating populations in a

  city.

  As far as Conrad and the other traffic men present at the

  conference were concerned, Santa Fe was a resort and retire-

  ment area of 100,000 human bodies, alive and consuming

  more than they produced every day of the y
ear. Whatever

  the representatives of the Medicorps and Communications

  Board worked out, it would mean only slight changes in the

  types of foodstuffs, entertainment and so forth moving into

  Santa Fe, and Conrad could have grasped the entire traffic

  change in ten minutes after the real problem had been set-

  tled. But, as usual, he and the other traffic men had to sit

  through two hours while small wheels from the Medicorps

  and Communications acted big about rebalancing a city.

  For them, Conrad had to admit, Santa Fe was a great deal

  more complex than 100,000 consuming, moderately produc-

  ing human bodies. It was 200,000 human personalities, two

  to each body. Conrad wondered sometimes what they would

  have done if the three and four personality cases so common

  back in the 20th and 21st Centuries had been allowed to

  reproduce. The 200,000 personalities in Santa Fe were diffi-

  cult enough.

  Like all cities, Santa Fe operated in five shifts. A, B, C,

  D, and E.

  Just as it was supposed to be for Conrad in his city, today

  was rest day for the 20,000 hypoalters on D-shift in Santa

  Fe. Tonight at around 6.00 P.M. they would all go to shifting

  rooms and be replaced by their hyperalters, who had differ-

  ent tastes in food and pleasure and took different drugs.

  Tomorrow would be rest day for the hypoalters on E-shift

  and in the evening they would turn things over to their hyper-

  alters.

  The next day it would be rest for the A-shift hyperalters

  and three days after that the D-shift hyperalters, including

  Bill Walden, would rest till evening, when Conrad and the D-

  shift hypoalters everywhere would again have their five-day

  use of their bodies.

  Right now the trouble with Santa Fe's retired population,

  which worked only for its own maintenance, was that too

  many elderly people on the D-shift and E-shift had been

  dying off. This point was brought out by a dapper young

  department head from Communications.

  Conrad groaned when, as he knew would happen, a Medi-

  corps officer promptly set out on an exhaustive demonstra-

  tion that Medicorps predictions of deaths for Santa Fe had

  indicated clearly that Communications should have been

  moving people from D-shift and E-shift into the area.

  Actually, it appeared that someone from Communications

  had blundered and had overloaded the quota of people on

  A-shift and B-shift moving to Santa Fe. Thus on one rest day

  there weren't enough people working to keep things going,

  and later in the week there were so many available workers

  that they were clogging the city.

  None of this was heated exchange or in any way emotional.

  It was just interminably, exhaustively logical and boring. Con-

  rad fidgeted through two hours of it, seeing his chance for a

  rocket race dissolving. When at last the problem of balanced

  shift-populations for Santa Fe was worked out, it took him and

  the other traffic men only a few minutes to apply their

  tables and reschedule traffic to co-ordinate with the popula-

  tion changes.

  Disgusted, Conrad walked over to the Tennis Club and had

  lunch.

  There were still two hours of his rest day left when

  Conrad Manz realized that Bill Walden was again forcing an

  early shift. Conrad was in the middle of a volley-tennis game

  and he didn't like having the shift forced so soon. People

  generally shifted at their appointed regular hour every five

  days, and a hyperalter was not supposed to use his power to

  force shift. It was such an unthinkable thing nowadays that

  there was occasional talk of abolishing the terms hyperalter

  and hypoalter because they were somewhat disparaging to

  the hypoalter, and really designated only the antisocial power

  of the hyperalter to force the shift.

  Bill Walden had been cheating two to four hours on Con-

  rad every shift for several periods back. Conrad could have

  reported it to the Medicorps, but be himself
  constant misdemeanour about which Bill had not yet com-

  plained. Unlike the sedentary Walden, Conrad Manz enjoyed

  exercise. He overindulged in violent sports and put off sleep,

  letting Bill Walden make up the fatigue on his shift. That

  was undoubtedly why the poor old sucker had started cheat-

  ing a few hours on Conrad's rest day.

  Conrad laughed to himself, remembering the time Bill Wal-

  den had registered a long list of sports which he wished Con-

  rad to be restrained fromrocket racing, deepsea exploration,

  jet-skiing. It had only given Conrad some ideas he hadn't

  had before. The Medicorps had refused to enforce the list on

  the basis that danger and violent exercise were a necessary

  outlet for Conrad's constitution. Then poor old Bill had writ-

  ten Conrad a note threatening to sue him for any injury

  resulting from such sports. As if he had a chance against the

  Medicorps ruling!

  Conrad knew it was no use trying to finish the volley-tennis

  game. He lost interest and couldn't concentrate on what he

  was doing when Bill started forcing the shift. Conrad shot the

  ball back at his opponent in a blistering curve impossible to

  intercept.

  "So long," he yelled at the man. "I've got some things to

  do before my shift ends."

  He lounged into the locker rooms and showered, put his

  clothes and belongings, including his pharmacase, in a ship-

  ping carton, addressed them to his own home and dropped

  them in the mail chute.

  He stepped with languid nakedness across, the hall, pressed

  his identifying wristband to a lock-free and dialled his cloth-

  ing sizes.

  In this way he procured a neatly wrapped, clean shifting

  costume from the slot. He put it on without bothering to re-

  turn to his shower room.

  He shouted a loud good-bye to no one in particular among

  the several men and women in the baths and stepped out

  on to the street.

  Conrad felt too good even to be sorry that his shift was

  over. After all, nothing happened except you came to, five

  days later, on your next shift. The important thing was the

  rest day. He had always said the last days of the shift should

  be a work day; then you would be glad it was over. He

  guessed the idea was to rest the body before another person-

  ality took over. Well, poor old Bill Walden never got a rested

  body. He probably slept off the first twelve hours.

  Walking unhurriedly through the street crowds, Conrad en-

  tered a public shifting station and found an empty room. As

  he started to open the door, a girl came out of the adjoining

  booth and Conrad hastily averted his glance. She was still

  rearranging her hair. There were so many rude people nowa-

  days who didn't seem to care at all about the etiquette of

  shifting, womOn particularly. They were always redoing their

  hair or make-up where a person couldn't help seeing them.

  Conrad pressed his identifyi
ng wristband to the lock and

  entered the booth he had picked. The act automatically sent

  the time and his shift number to Medicorps Headquarters.

  Once inside the shifting room, Conrad went to the lava-

  tory and turned on the tap of make-up solvent. In spite of

  losing two hours of his rest day, he decided to be decent to

  old Bill, though he was half tempted to leave his make-up

  on. It was a pretty foul joke, of course, especially on a hu-

  mourless fellow like poor Walden.

  Conrad creamed his face thoroughly and then washed in

  water and used the automatic dryer. He looked at his strong

  lined face features in the mirror. They displayed a less dis-

  tinct expression of his own personality with the make-up

  gone.

  He turned away from the mirror and it was only then that

  he remembered he hadn't spoken to his wife before shifting.

  Well, he couldn't decently call up and let her see him with-

  out make-up.

  He stepped across to the visiophone and set the machine to

  deliver his spoken message in type: "Hello, Clara. Sorry I

  forgot to call you before. Bill Walden is forcing me to shift

  early again. I hope you're not still upset about that business

  this morning. Be a good girl and smile at me on the next

  shift. I love you. Conrad."

  For a moment, when the shift came, the body of Conrad

  Manz stood moronically uninhabited. Then, rapidly, out of

  the gyri of its brain, the personality of Bill Walden emerged,

  replacing the slackly powerful attitude of Conrad by the

  slightly prim preciseness of Bill's bearing.

  The face, just now relaxed with readiness for action, was

  abruptly pulled into an intellectual mask of tension by habit-

  ual patterns of conflict in the muscles. There were also acute

  momentary signs of clash between the vegetative nervous ac-

  tivity characteristic of Bill Walden and the internal homeostas-

  is Conrad Manz had left behind him. The face paled as

  hypersensitive vascular beds closed under new vegetative

  volleys.

  Bill Walden grasped sight and sound, and the sharp odour

  of make-up solvent stung his nostrils. He was conscious of

  only one clamouring, terrifying thought: They -will catch

  us. It cannot go on much longer -without Helen guessing

  about Clara. She is already angry about Clara delaying

  the shift, and if she learns from Mary that I am cheating

  on Conrad's shift . . . Any time now, perhaps this time, when