Gordon Dickson Time to Teleport (v1.0) (lit)

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Eli's life when the proper time arrived. Hassan was not the sort of man to be
wrong. Sliding up the elevator tube in the capsule, Eli ran his mind lightly
over the four who shared the station with him; not Howell, he thought, not
Ntoane, and never Tammy. His mind recoiled from the suggestion that Tammy
might be the one. That left Mel.
With sudden decision, Eli punched the stop button in the elevator and sent it
back down to the level of Mel's private working quarters.
When he walked into Mel's office, the tall, young man was there. He was
seated behind his desk, with a pile of papers. And he looked up rather
sharply, and laid the papers down as Eli came in.
"Busy?" said Eli. Mel shook his head.
Eli pressed the button that closed the door behind him.
"I thought maybe I better have a little private talk with you," said Eli.
"Sit down," said Mel, gesturing to a chair beside his desk. Eli limped over
to it and sat down, feeling the stab of his unhealed incisions in his middle
as he did so. He was aware of Mel watching him with combined curiosity and
wariness.
"I suppose you wonder about the fact I won't let you work on my mind," said
Eli without further preamble.
"I can't held but wonder," answered Mel. "The old fashioned fear of the
psychiatrist belongs back in the last century."
"Possibly," said Eli, non-committally. "Tell me, just what do you think you
would do for me? And just how would you go about doing it?"
Mel shrugged slightly.
"I'd explore first," he said,"to find out what possible psychological basis
there is for that limp of yours." He glanced at Eli's leg. "The reason you're
doing something like that to yourself may have deeper and more troublesome
roots than you expect."
"I know what the roots are, thank you," said Eli dryly. He met Mel's eye
squarely across the desk.
"Are you sure?" the young man said with a slight smile. "It's almost an
axiom, you know, in fact I could say itwasan axiom that no person can really
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know himself, or the reasons that cause him to act as he does. Any more than a
microscope can be used "
"To examine itself.I know," interrupted Eli brusquely. "That's not what I
mean. The fact of the matter is, I know of something connected with my limp,
which for purely practical reasons, I prefer to keep to myself."
"But you have no idea what harm you might be doing yourself." Mel leaned
forward earnestly across his desk toward Eli. "I still think that there is a
certain amount of actual fear of psychiatry at the basis of your refusal to
co-operate about this."
"You do, do you?" grunted Eli.
"I promise you," said Mel eagerly. "You will be running no danger. Whatever
it is you think you wish to hide, it will be safe with me, as it would be with
any other physician."
Eli continued to look him in the eye; and a slow smile grew on his lips. It
was a smile that was more than a trifle sardonic.
"Even if you discovered some relationship between Tammy andmyself ?" he said
dryly.
Mel flushed and straightened up abruptly in his chair. Then, with an effort
he sat back again.
"Eli," he said, "you have a certain amount of hostility toward me. To answer
you, frankly, yes I would just as soon not discover anything in your mind
connected with Tammy. On the other hand, Iama medical man.With a medical man's
ethics and sense of responsibility toward my patient."
"I see," replied Eli in a level tone of voice. "You still haven't told me
just how you would go about it."
"Hypnotherapy, to start off with," said Mel, looking levelly across the table
at him. "We would have to try and bring your conscious mind, of course,
whatever painful thing your unconscious is repressing."
"And can you be so sure," Eli said, "that there is something I am
repressing?" Mel shook his head with almost an air of annoyance.
"All human beings repress things," he said. "If these repressions cause no
trouble, there is no need to disturb them. If they do, then we have to go
after them."
"By hypnotherapy, and other techniques which put the patient completely at
the mercy of his doctor," said Eli.
"Yes. If that's the way you want to put it," said Mel.
"That's the way I want to put it," said Eli. "And that is exactly what I
wanted to get straight with you." He stood up from his chair. "I haven't lived
this long, in the world of politics and outside it, without knowing when to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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