A sudden blurring and they were looking at Sally again. Only this time she was looking back—and smiling. As tears slid down her cheeks, the smile faded and she collapsed into unconsciousness.

IX

"You've done something," Webst said later at the office after Sally had been examined and returned to her bed, "something beneficial. Can't be sure just yet, but I can smell it! Did you see her smile at you? She's never smiled before. Never!"

Webst's enthusiasm whirled past Dalt without the slightest effect. He was tired, tired as he'd never been before. There was a vague feeling of dissociation, too; he'd visited the mind of another and had returned home to find himself subtly altered by the experience.

"Well, I certainly hope I didn't go through all that for nothing."

"I'm sure you didn't," said a voice behind him. He turned to see El walking across the room. "She's sleeping now," she said, sliding easily into a chair, "and without a hypnotic. You've gotten through to her, no question about it."

Webst leaned forward on his desk. "But just what is it you've done?" he asked intently. "What did you see in there?"

Dalt opened his mouth to protest, to put off all explanations and descriptions until tomorrow, but Pard cut him off.

("Tell them something. They're hungry for information.")

How can I describe all ... that? ("Try. Just skim the details.")

Dalt gave a halting summary of what they had seen and done, then:

"In conclusion, it's my contention that the girl's underlying lesion was not organic but conceptual. Her sense of reality was completely aberrant, but as to how this came to be, I do not know." He hesitated and El thought she saw him shudder ever so slightly. "For a moment I got the feeling that I was working against something ... something dark and very alien, just over the horizon. At one point I thought I actually touched it, or it reached for me, or—" He shook himself. "I don't know. Maybe it was part of her fantasy complex. Anyway, what matters is that she was a very sick girl and I think I've helped her."

"I take it, then," Webst said, "that we can assume that these acute, unremitting, chemonegative schizophrenics are actually only conceptually deranged. Okay, I'll buy that. But why are they deranged?"

Dalt remembered the dark thing he had sensed in Sally's mind and the word "imposed" rushed into his thoughts, but he pushed it away. "Can't help you there as yet. But let's get her back on her feet and worry about why it happened later on. Chemotherapy was no good because her enzyme chains are normal; and psychotherapy has been useless because, as far this patient was concerned, the psychotherapist didn't exist. Apparently, only a strong psionic thrust and subsequent reconstruction of the fantasy world is of any value. And by the way, her mind was extremely easy to enter. Perhaps in erecting an impenetrable barrier against reality, it left itself completely open to psionics."

El and Webst were virtually glowing with the exhilaration of discovery. "This is incredible!" Webst declared. "A whole new direction in psychotherapy! Mr. Dalt, I don't know how we can repay you!"

("Tell him what he can pay you.")

We can't take money for helping that poor girl!

("He's going to ask you to do it again ... and again. That was no sylvan picnic in there—it's risky business. I won't allow us to enter another mind unless we're compensated for it. Value given for value received, remember?")

That's crass.

("That's life. Something that costs nothing is usually worth the price.") That's trite.

("But true. Quote him a figure.")

Dalt thought for a moment, then said, "I'll require a fee for Sally ... and any others you want me to try." He named a sum.

"That sounds reasonable." Webst nodded. "I won't dicker with you."

El's face reflected amusement tinged with amazement. "You're full of surprises, aren't you?"

Webst smiled too. "He's welcome to every credit we can spare if he can bring those horrors patients around. We'll even try to get a bigger budget. I'll talk to Dr. Hyne and have you transferred to this department; meanwhile, there's an ethical question you should consider. You are in effect performing an experimental procedure on mentally incompetent patients who are incapable of giving their consent."

"What about their guardians?"

"These patients have no guardians, no identity. And a guardian would be irrelevant as far as the ethical question is concerned—that is up to you. In the physician role, you've got to decide whether an experimental procedure—or even an established procedure—will have a greater chance of benefiting the patient than doing harm to him, and whether the possible benefits are worth the risk. And the patient must come first; not humanity, not science, but the patient. Only you can decide."

"I made that decision before I invaded Sally," Dalt replied with a touch of acid. "The gains were mutual: I would learn something, she would, hopefully, receive therapeutic value. The risks, as far as I could foresee, would all be mine."

Webst considered this. "Mr. Dalt," he said finally, "I think you and I are going to get along just fine." He extended his hand and Dalt grasped it firmly.

El came to his side and hooked her arm around his. "Welcome to the department," she said with a half smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "This is quite a turnaround from the man who swore a few hours ago that he was taking the next shuttle out."

"I haven't forgotten that episode, believe me. I can't quite accept the code you Tolivians live by as yet, but I think I'd like to stick around and see if it works as well as you say it does."

The viewphone had beeped again while they were talking. Webst took the call, then suddenly headed for the door. "That was Big Blue—Sally just woke up and asked for a drink of water!" Nothing more needed to be said; El and Dalt immediately fell in behind him as he made his way to the carport.

The last sanguine rays of the sun slipping into the plaza found the ambulatory patients clustered in hushed, muttering knots. And all eyes suddenly became riveted on the car that held Webst, Dalt, and El as it pulled up beside Big Blue. An elderly woman broke away from a small group and came forward, squinting at the trio in the waning light.

"It's him!" she cried hoarsely as she reached the car. "He's got the silver patch of hair, the flamestone, and the golden hand that heals!" She clutched the back of Dalt's suit as he turned away. "Touch me with your healing hand!" she cried. "My mind is sick and only you can help me! Please! I'm not as sick as Sally was!"

"No, wait!" Dalt said, whirling and shrinking away. "It doesn't work that way!"

But the woman seemed not to hear him, repeating, "Heal me! Heal me!" And over her shoulder he could see the other patients in the plaza crowding forward.

Webst was suddenly at his side, his face close, his eyes shining in the fading darkness. "Go ahead," he whispered excitedly, "touch her. You don't have to do anything else, just reach out that left hand and lay it on her head."

Dalt hesitated; then, feeling foolish, pressed the heel of his palm against her forehead. The woman covered her face at his touch and scurried away, muttering, "Thank you, thank you," through her hands.

With that, it was as if a dam had burst. The patients were suddenly swirling all around him and Dalt found himself engulfed by a torrent of outstretched hands and cries of, "Heal me! Heal me! Heal me! Heal me!" He was pushed, pulled, his clothes and limbs were plucked at, and it was only with great difficulty that El and Webst managed to squeeze him through the press of supplicants and into the quiet of Big Blue.

"Now you know why he's at the top of his profession," El said softly, nodding her head toward Webst as she pressed a drink into Dalt's hand, a hand that even now, in the security of Big Blue, betrayed a slight but unmistakable tremor. The experience in the plaza had unnerved him—the hands, the voices, reaching and crying for him in the twilight, seeking relief from the psychological and physiological afflictions burdening them; the incident, though only moments past, was becoming increasingly surreal in retrospect.