‘Cute,’ murmured Hip from deep in his chest.
‘And just for good measure,’ said Janie with some difficulty, ‘he handed you a post-hypnotic command which made it impossible for you to relate him either as Major Thompson, psychiatrist, or as the Pfc, to the device.
‘When I found out what he’d done I tried to make him help you. Just a little. He—he just laughed at me. I asked Baby what could be done. He said nothing. He said only that the command might be removed by a reverse abreaction.’
‘What in time is that?’
‘Moving backward, mentally, to the incident itself. Ab-reaction is the process of reliving, in detail, an event. But you were blocked from doing that because you’d have to start from the administration of the command; that’s where the incident started. And the only way would be to immobilize you completely, not tell you why, and unpeel all subsequent events one by one until you reached the command. It was a „from now on” command like all such. It couldn’t stop you when you were travelling in reverse.
‘And how was I ever going to find you and immobilize you without letting you know why?’
‘Holy smoke,’ Hip said boyishly. ‘This makes me feel kind of important. A guy like that taking all that trouble.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ she said acidly, then: ‘I’m sorry, Hip. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded… It was no trouble for him. He swatted you like a beetle. He gave you a push and forgot all about you.’
Hip grunted. ‘Thank you. ’
‘He did it again!’ she said furiously. ‘There you were, seven good youthful years shot, your good engineer’s mind gone, with nothing left but a starved, dirty frame and a numb obsession that you were incapable of understanding or relieving. Yet, by heaven, you had enough of—whatever it is that makes you what you are—to drag through those seven years picking up the pieces until you were right at his doorstep. When he saw you coming—it was an accident, he happened to be in town—he knew immediately who you were and what you were after. When you charged him he diverted you into that plate glass window with just a blink of those… rotten… poison… eyes of his…’