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which he had last seen them.
The back of his head began to evolve wild dreams in which he somehow got
into the lab, stole AndFriend and took off into space. Eventually he literally
began to dream such dreams, when sleeping. Meanwhile, he was working himself
physically to the bone, to pass the days and bring about sleep of any
kind-which had been harder and harder to come by, in the same measure as his
disinterest in food grew.
He could and did hide from his friends that it was not wine, women and song
he needed, but AndFriend and space. He was certain he had also hidden it
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successfully from Mollen, and from Mary-whom, in any case, he had not seen in
person since that first night in the lab. What concerned him more was whether
he was being successful in keeping the depth of his need hidden from the
physician to whom he had to report almost daily.
It was evidently part of the whole package of surveillance, control and so
forth set up around him, that his state of health he monitored and recorded on
what was effectively a twenty-four hour a day basis. The Medical Officer, also
a full colonel, who examined him three times a week or more, was probably the
one person to whom Jim talked at all openly.
Part of this was because there was no one else Jim felt safe talking to
about himself. The other part was that whatever the physician's actual
specialty was-and he had told Jim once, when the visits had first started, but
Jim had since forgotten. Jim gradually came to feel that there was something
about the other that hinted at a touch of the psychiatrist in him. Not that
Jim had any experience with psychiatrists; but there was a way the other man
had of listening to him that seemed different from the listening of other
doctors to whom Jim had gone.
He told himself he had an unduly suspicious mind. Nonetheless, he found
himself saying more than he had intended, so that he was surprised to hear the
words coming from his own mouth.
The procedures daring Jim's visits were ordinarily route. Unless there were
lab samples to be taken from him, it was merely a matter of Jim's being
scanned by a number of esoteric instruments, after which he sat down for a few
words with the physician before being turned loose once more.
"You're losing weight again," said the physician, checking through the
papers that were the hard copy of Jim's file and lay on the desk before him.
He was a tall, gangling man in his early fifties with a high forehead, a
straight nose and a surprisingly gentle, small smile that came at unexpected
moments.
"All right, Doc," said Jim. "I'll eat more."
The doctor glanced up at him from the papers.
"You could try exercising less," he said.
"And then what'd I do with my time?"
"There's always your job," said the doctor.
"What job?"
The doctor smiled his small smile.
"I don't know what to do with you," he said, sitting back with a sigh. "The
first person I've ever treated who tried to kill himself with good health.
But, you know, I'm serious about your cutting back on the physical activity."
"For God's sake, Doc," said Jim. "Don't ask me to do that. The only tirne I
can forget about things is when I'm running or swimming or sweating it out to
the point where I haven't got any energy left over to think with. I'll get
more food down me. I don't mind eating; it's just that it's kind of a chore
these days."
The doctor scribbled on a prescription pad, tore off the sheet he had
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written on and handed it to Jim.
"Take these, two a day, when you get up and when you go to bed," he said.
"They ought to increase your appetite."
Jim looked at the piece of paper in his hand, dubiously. He was not a
pill-taker by preference.
"It won't make me dopey, will it, Doc?" he asked. "I mean, it isn't some
sort of tranquilizer?"
"I guarantee it won't inake you dopey. let's just hope it makes you more
interested in food," said the physician. "Well, that's it, then. See you
Thursday."
"Right," said Jim, getting up.
He left.
At first it did seem that the pills gave him a little more appetite. At any
rate, he made a point of getting more food inside him whether his body craved
it or not, and his weight came back up a few pounds. But then he leveled off
and stayed where he was on the scale in the doctor's office each time he came
in. He suggested once to the doc-since the pills had given him no feeling from
taking them at all-that he was willing to up the dosage, if that would do any
good.
"I think not," said the physician. "You're taking about what you should of
that, right now."
So, he kept forcing the food. It was a problem, because he did not sleep
better. Sometime about this period, also, his hours of slumber began to be
occupied not so much by dreams of his stealing AndFriend and escaping into
space, as with nightmares in which the lab suddenly burnt down and people
would not let him go in and help keep the fire away from AndFriend-which
bothered him even though he knew an ordinary fire would not harm the ship. Or
he would dream that there had been a sudden earthquake that opened a fissure
right under Mary's lab. All that was needed was someone to go in and hook a
cable around AndFriend to keep her from being dropped into the lava-hot
interior of the earth, but they held him back from doing so because it was
"too dangerous."
Meanwhile, Mary's staff-he still had not seen her in person since that first
visit to the lab-began to call him in more and more fiequendy. They were on a
new kick now, as he entered the ninth month of his captivity on the Base. This
one had him still wearing his space suit while listening, over and over again,
to the voice recordings of himself, Mary and Raoul Penard when they had taken
his Wing out to meet La Chasse Gallerie in Laagi territory, and convoy her
home hete to the Base. When he had listened to it all the way through, they
would ask him questions about who had said what to who It was like being on
the witness stand in an endless court trial.
When they got him to the point where he knew the recordings by heart, they
switched to having him work with recordings in which one of the voices was
edited out, and he spoke the words of that speaker; and it finally ended with
him playing, over and over again, the part of Raoul.
They kept it up until, among his other dreams, he began to dream that he
actually was Raoul; or rather what was left of Raoul as a mind, locked in the
sliced and broken metal that was La Chasse Gallerie. Curiously, these dreams
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were not unpleasant. But finally his appetite gave up for good. He would get
to sleep, sleep for about two or three hours, dreaming nightmares, and then
wake. Only getting out under the night sky in his running gear and covering
four or five miles would rub out the memories of those dreams and let him get
to solid sleep for a few hours. He even tried the desperate measure of getting
drunk to make himself sleep, but that did not work either.
"Alcohol may help put you out," his doctor told him, 'but after a few hours,
it turns around and makes you wakeful again."
"I've got to do something. Can't you just give me a sleeping pill, Doc?"
"That's only a temporary solution and this is a continuing problem," said
the doctor. "Maybe that medication I gave you for your appetite is working
against you now, instead of for you. Let's try taking you off it."
So Jim went off the pills. The first night he slept marvelously, the next
night not so well. By the end of a week he was back with the dreams and the
starlit runs again. He could feel himself beginning to lose his grip; and he
found himself taking it out on the physician in a way he would never have
considered doing, a year previously.
"It's this goddamned bird-in-a-gilded-cage life they've got me living!" he
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