perfectly still, except for hiscalm breathing. The visitor gazed through his eyes in the onlypossible direction--up at the ceiling. He tried another command. "Lookat the doctor."
With that glance, the visitor told himself, he would flee the crazedmind and enter the doctor's. There he would learn what thepsychiatrist thought of his patient's strange soliloquy--whether hebelieved it, or any part of it.
He prayed that the doctor was evaluating it as the intricate raving ofdelusion.
* * * * *
Slowly, Mersey turned his head. Through his eyes, the visitor saw thefaded green carpet, the doctor's dull-black shoes, his socks, the legsof his trousers. Mersey's glance hovered there, around the doctor'sknees. The visitor forced it higher, past the belt around a tidywaist, along the buttons of the opened vest to the white collar, andfinally to the kindly eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses.
Again he had commanded this human being and had been obeyed. Thetraveler braced himself for the leap from the tortured mind to thesane one.
But his gaze continued to be that of Mersey.
The gray eyes of the doctor were on his patient. Intelligence andkindness were in those eyes, but the visitor could read nothing else.
He was caught, a prisoner in a demented mind. He felt panic. This mustbe the mind-screen he'd been warned about.
"Look down," the visitor commanded Mersey. "Shut your eyes. Don't lethim see me."
But Mersey continued to be held by the doctor's eyes. The visitorcowered back into the crazed mental tangle.
Gradually, then, his fear ebbed. There was more likelihood that Cloyddid not believe Mersey's words than that he did. The doctor treatedhundreds of patients and surely many of them had delusions as fancifulas this one might seem.
The traveler's alarm simmered down until he was capable ofappreciating the irony of the situation.
But at the same time, he thought with pain, "Is it our fate that ofall the millions of creatures on this world, we can establishcommunication only through the insane? And even then to have onlyimperfect control of the mind and, worse, to have it become atransmitter for our most secret thoughts?"
It was heartbreaking.
Dr. Cloyd broke the long silence. Pulling at his ear, he spoke calmlyand matter-of-factly:
"Let me see if I understand your problem, Mersey. You believe yourselfto be from another world, from which you have traveled, although notphysically. Your world is not a material one, as far as its peopleare concerned. Your civilization is a mental one, which has beenplaced in danger. You must resettle your people, but this cannot bedone here, on Earth, except in the minds of the mentally ill--and thatwould not be a satisfactory solution. Have I stated the casecorrectly?"
"Yes," Mersey's voice said over the traveler's mental protests."Except that it is not a 'case,' as you call it. I am not Mersey. Heis merely a vehicle for my thoughts. I am not here to be treated orcured, as the human being Mersey is. I'm here with a life-or-deathproblem affecting an entire race, and I would not be talking to youexcept that, at the moment, I'm trapped and confused."
* * * * *
The madman was doing it again, the traveler thoughthelplessly--spilling out his knowledge, betraying him and his kind.Was there no way to muffle him?
"I must admit that I'm confused myself," Dr. Cloyd said. "Humor me fora moment while I think out loud. Let me consider this in my ownframework, first, and then in yours, without labeling either oneabsolutely true or false.
"You see," the doctor went on, "this is a world of vitality. Myworld--Earth. Its people are strong. Their bodies are developed aswell as their minds. There are some who are not so strong, and somewhose minds have been injured. But for the most part, both the mindand the body are in balance. Each has its function, and they worktogether as a coordinated whole. My understanding of your world, onthe other hand, is that it's in a state of imbalance, where thephysical has deteriorated almost to extinction and the mind has beennurtured in a hothouse atmosphere. Where, you might say, the mind hasfed on the decay of the body."
"No," said Mersey, voicing the traveler's conviction. "You paint ahighly distorted picture of our world."
"I theorize, of course," Dr. Cloyd agreed. "But it's a valid theory,based on intimate knowledge of my own world and what you've told me ofyours."
"You make a basic error, I think," Mersey said, speaking for theunwilling visitor. "You assume that I have been able to make contactonly with this deranged mind. That is wrong. I have shared theexperiences of many of you--a man, a boy, a woman about to bear achild. Even a cat. And with each of these, my mind has been perfectlyattuned. I was able to share and enjoy their experiences, theirpleasures, to love with them and to fear, although they had noknowledge of my presence.
"Only since I came to this poor mind have I failed to achieve trueempathy. I have been shocked by his madness and I've tried to resistit, to help him overcome it. But I've failed and it apparently hasimprisoned me. Whereas I was able to leave the minds of the othersalmost at will, with poor Mersey I'm trapped. I can't transfer to you,for instance, as I could normally from another. If there's a way out,I haven't found it. Have you a theory for this?"
In spite of his distress at these revelations, the traveler wasintrigued, now that they had been voiced for him, and he was eager tohear Dr. Cloyd's interpretation of them.
The psychiatrist took a pipe out of his pocket, filled it, lighted itand puffed slowly on it until it was drawing well.
"Continuing to accept your postulate that you're not Mersey, but analien inhabiting his mind," the doctor said finally, "I can enlarge onmy theory without changing it in any basic way.
"Your world is not superior to ours, much as it may please you tobelieve that it is. Nature consists of a balance, and that balancemust hold true whether in Sioux City, or Mars, or in the fourthdimension, or in your world, wherever that may be. Your world is outof balance. Evidently it has been going out of balance for some time.
"Your salvation lies not in further evolution in your world--sinceyour way of evolving proved wrong, and may prove fatal--but in achange in course, back along the evolutionary path to a society whichdeveloped naturally, with the mind and the body in balance. Thatsociety is the one you have found here, in our world. You found itpleasant and attractive, you say, but that doesn't mean you're suitedto it.
"Nature's harsh rules may have operated to let you observe a way oflife here that you enjoy, but to exclude you otherwise--except from amind that is not well. In nature's balance, it could be that therefuge on this world most closely resembling your needs is in the mindof the psychotic. One conclusion could be that your race is mentallyill--by our standards, if not by yours--and that the type of personhere most closely approximating your way of life is one with adisordered mind."
* * * * *
Dr. Cloyd paused. Mersey had no immediate reply.
The traveler made use of the silence to consider this plausible, butfrightening theory. To accept the theory would be to accept a destinyof madness here on this world, although the doctor had been kindenough to draw a distinction between madness in one dimension and amere lack of natural balance in another.
Mersey again seized upon the traveler's mind and spoke its thoughts.But as he spoke, he voiced a conclusion which the traveler had not yetadmitted even to himself.
"Then the answer is inescapable," Mersey said, his tone flat andunemotional. "It is theoretically possible for all of our people tomigrate to this world and find refuge of a sort. But if we establishedourselves in the minds of your normal people, we'd be without will. Asmere observers, we'd become assimilated in time, and thus extinguishedas a separate race. That, of course, we could not permit. And if wesettled in the minds most suitable to receive us, we would be in theminds of those who by your standards are insane--whose destiny iscontrolled by the others. Here again we could permit no such fate.
"That alone would be enough to send me back to my people
to reportfailure. But there is something more--something I don't think you willbelieve, for all your ability to synthesize acceptance of anotherviewpoint."
"And what is that?"
"First I must ask a question. In speaking to me now, do you stillbelieve yourself to be addressing Mersey, your fellow human being, andhumoring him in a delusion? Or do you think you are speaking throughhim to me, the inhabitant of another world who has borrowed his mind?"
* * * * *
The doctor smiled and took time to relight his pipe.
"Let me answer you in this way," he said. "If I were convinced thatMersey was merely harboring a delusion that he was inhabited by analien being, I