The psychiatrist remained silent during the ride in the elevator and the walk to Montgomery’s room. But the major could feel the constant inspection of his eyes almost as if it were a physical probing. He guessed that he was already written pretty far down in Spindem’s little black book.
“Drink?” he offered as they sat down. “I haven’t anything here, but we can have something sent up.”
“No, thanks,” said Spindem. “I’d like to hear immediately everything you’ve experienced — particularly about this so-called Mirror.”
Montgomery began with his experiences of the first day, describing in detail the demonstration put on by Norcross.
“What do you suppose the purpose of that was?” said Spindem. “Is it a standard sort of show which is put on for all newcomers?”
“It’s no show. I thought it was faked up, too, when I first saw it. It isn’t. It’s genuine. The men who have gone through enough hours with the Mirror can actually do those things.”
“Some form of hypnosis, unquestionably,” said Spindem. “You’ll pardon my disagreement, but you understand, I’m sure, that my professional experience enables a more accurate interpretation of such mental phenomena.”
“Of course,” said Montgomery. He continued with Dr. Nagle’s analysis of the educational system as a homeostatic mechanism and his own verification of this function.
“A novel concept,” said Spindem, “and obviously very naïve, not taking into consideration at all the converse situation if there were no universal distribution of knowledge.”
Montgomery started to interrupt, but the psychiatrist continued. “I am most interested in your statements about your high-school mathematics teacher. You say you believe this Mr. Carling purposely and deliberately made geometry and algebra unpleasant to you so that you would not pursue them too far?”