Ten Tomorrows by Roger Elwood

Author:Roger Elwood [Elwood, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

The face of Kansas was black and orange-white with great dark gaps in it, a town nestled in each gap. The weather domes of various townships had shifted kilotons of snow outward, to deepen the drifts across the flat countryside. In the light of an early winter sunset, the snow-bound landscape was orange-white, stripped with the broad black shadows of a few cities-within-buildings like High Cliffs. It all seemed eerie and abstract, sliding west beneath the folded wings of our plane.

We slowed hard in midair. The wings unfolded, and we settled over downtown Topeka.

This was going to look odd on my expense account. All this way to see a girl who hadn’t spoken sense in three years. Probably it would be disallowed . . . yet she was as much a part of the case as her brother. Anyone planning to recapture Holden Chambers for reransom would want Charlotte too.

Menninger Institute was a pretty place. Besides the twelve stories of glass and mock-brick that formed the main building, there were at least a dozen outbuildings of varied ages and designs that ran from boxlike rectangles to free-form organics poured in foam plastic. They were all wide apart, separated by green lawns and trees and flower beds. A place of peace, a place with elbow room. Pairs and larger groups passed me on the curving walks: an aide and a patient, or an aide and several less-disturbed patients. The aides were obvious at a glance.

“When a patient is well enough to go outside for a walk, then he needs the greenery and the room,” Doctor Hartman told me. “It’s part of his therapy. Going outside is a giant step.”

“Do you get many agoraphobes?”

“No, that’s not what I was talking about. It’s the lock that counts. To anyone else that lock is a prison, but to many patients it comes to represent security. Someone else to make the decisions, to keep the world outside.”

Doctor Hartman was short and round and blond. A comfortable person, easygoing, patient, sure of himself. Just the man to trust with your destiny, assuming you were tired of running it yourself.

I asked, “Do you get many cures?”

“Certainly. As a matter of fact, we generally won’t take patients unless we feel we can cure them.”

“That must do wonders for the record.”

He was not offended. “It does even more for the patients. Knowing that we know they can be cured makes them feel the same way. And the incurably insane . . . can be damned depressing.” Momentarily he seemed to sag under an enormous weight. Then he was himself again. “They can affect the other patients. Fortunately there aren’t many incurables, these days.”

“Was Charlotte Chambers one of the curables?”

“We thought so. After all, it was only shock. There was no previous history of personality disturbances. Her blood psychochemicals were near enough normal. We tried everything in the records. Stroking. Fiddling with her chemistry. Psychotherapy didn’t get very far. Either she’s deaf, or she doesn’t listen—and she won’t talk. Sometimes I think she hears everything we say .

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