Beyond Bedlam

enforce your compliance with our diagnosis. . . .'

Mary's mind leaped to a page in one of her childhood

storybooks. It was an illustration of a little girl resting be-

neath a great tree that overhung a brook. There were friend-

ly little wild animals about. Mary could see the page clearly

and she thought about it very hard instead of crying.

'Aren't you interested any more, Mary?' Captain Thiel

was looking at her strangely.

The agitation in her voice was a surprise. 'I have to get

home. I have a lot of things to do.'

Outside, when Mrs. Harris seemed suddenly to realize that

something was wrong, and delicately probed to find out

whether her angry voice had been overheard, Mary said calm-

ly and as if it didn't matter, 'Was my father home when

you called him before?'

'Whyyes, Mary. But you mustn't pay any attention to

conversations like that, darling.'

You can't force him to like me, she thought to herself, and

she was angry with Mrs. Harris because now her father would

only dislike her more.

Neither her father nor her mother was home when Mary

walked into the evening-darkened apartment. It was the first

day of the family shift, and on that day, for many periods

now, they had not been home until late.

Mary walked through the empty rooms, turning on lights.

She passed up the electrically heated dinner her father had

set out for her. Presently she found herself at the storage-

room door. She opened it slowly.

After hesitating a while she went in and began an ex-

hausting search for the old storybook with the picture in it.

Finally she knew she could not find it. She stood in the

middle of the junk-filled room and begqn to cry.

The day which ended for Mary Walden in lonely weeping

should have been, for Conrad Manz, a pleasant rest day with

an hour of rocket racing in the middle of it. Instead, he awak-

ened with a shock to hear his wife actually talking while she

was asleep.

He stood over her bed and made certain that she was

asleep. It was as though her mind thought it was somewhere

else, doing something else. Vaguely he remembered that the

ancients did something called dreaming while they slept and

the thought made him shiver.

Clara Manz was saying, 'Oh, Bill, they'll catch us. We

can't pretend any more unless we have drugs. Haven't we

any drugs. Bill?'

Then she was silent and lay still. Her breathing was shal-

low and even in the dawn light her cheeks were deeply