Blaine said furiously, “Dr. Fairless, I don’t think I have to stand for this sort of personal attack. Just because Semmelweiss has seniority and a couple of private patients one day a week, he thinks—”
“Gentlemen,” said Fairless mildly. “Please, let’s get on with the work. Mr. Fry has come to us for help, not to listen to us losing our tempers.”
“Sorry,” said Semmelweiss curtly. “All the same, I appeal from the arbitrary and mechanistic ruling of the chair.”
Fairless inclined his head. “All in favor of the ruling of the chair? Nine, I count. That leaves only you opposed, Dr. Semmelweiss. We’ll proceed with the psychodrama, if the recorder will read us the notes and comments of the last session.”
The recorder, a pudgy, low-ranking youngster named Sprogue, flipped back the pages of his notebook and read in a chanting voice, “Session of twenty-fourth May, subject, Morey Fry; in attendance, Doctors Fairless, Bileck, Semmelweiss, Carrado, Weber—”
Fairless interrupted kindly, “Just the last page, if you please, Dr. Sprogue.”
“Um—oh, yes. After a ten-minute recess for additional Rorschachs and an electro-encephalogram, the group convened and conducted rapid-fire word association. Results were tabulated and compared with standard deviation patterns, and it was determined that subject’s major traumas derived from, respectively—”
Morey found his attention waning. Therapy was good; everybody knew that, but every once in a while he found it a little dull. If it weren’t for therapy, though, there was no telling what might happen. Certainly, Morey told himself, he had been helped considerably —at least he hadn’t set fire to his house and shrieked at the fire-robots, hke Newell down the block when his eldest daughter divorced her husband and came back to live with him, bringing her ration quota along, of course. Morey hadn’t even been tempted to do anything as outrageously, frighteningly immoral as destroy things or waste them— well, he admitted to himself honestly, perhaps a little tempted, once in a great while. But never anything important enough to worry about; he was sound, perfectly sound.
He looked up, startled. All the doctors were staring at him. “Mr. Fry,” Fairless repeated, “will you take your place?”
“Certainly,” Morey said hastily. “Uh-where?”