“DO you make anything out of it?” the psychoanalyst Milton Bergstrom, asked.
John Zarwell shook his head. “Did I talk while I was under?”
“Oh, yes. You were supposed to. That way I follow pretty well what you’re reenacting.”
“How does it tie in with what I told you before?”
Bergstrom’s neat-boned, fair-skinned face betrayed no emotion other than an introspective stillness of his normally alert gaze. “I see no connection,” he decided, his words once again precise and meticulous. “We don’t have enough to go on. Do you feel able to try another comanalysis this afternoon yet?”
“I don’t see why not.” Zarwell [p137] opened the collar of his shirt. The day was hot, and the room had no air conditioning, still a rare luxury on St. Martin’s. The office window was open, but it let in no freshness, only the mildly rank odor that pervaded all the planet’s habitable area.
“Good.” Bergstrom rose. “The serum is quite harmless, John.” He maintained a professional diversionary chatter as he administered the drug. “A scopolamine derivative that’s been well tested.”
The floor beneath Zarwell’s feet assumed abruptly the near transfluent consistency of a damp sponge. It rose in a foot-high wave and rolled gently toward the far wall.
Bergstrom continued talking, with practiced urbanity. “When psychiatry was a less exact science,” his voice went on, seeming to come from a great distance, “a doctor had to spend weeks, sometimes months or years interviewing a patient. If he was skilled enough, he could sort the relevancies from the vast amount of chaff. We are able now, with the help of the serum, to confine our discourses to matters cogent to the patient’s trouble.”
The floor continued its transmutation, and Zarwell sank deep into viscous depths. “Lie back and relax. Don’t …”