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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Suite Mentale, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Suite Mentale
+
+Author: Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+Illustrator: EMSH
+
+Release Date: September 25, 2007 [EBook #22763]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUITE MENTALE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    _Just about a year ago, two enthusiastic young men came to see me,
+    and during the course of the visit announced that they were starting
+    a campaign to make their living in science fiction--and also to
+    become "names" in the best science fiction magazines. They planned
+    to collaborate on some material, and write on their own as well,
+    intending to make the grade both ways._
+
+    _One of the pair was a well-known science fiction fan, who had
+    appeared once or twice in the "pro mags," as fans designate journals
+    like this one. The other was Randall Garrett, who had previously
+    sold a respectable number of stories to various magazines in the
+    science fiction and fantasy field._
+
+    _I shall not try to insult your intelligence by stating that I told
+    them I knew they could do it; on the contrary, I larded doubt with
+    sympathy. However, this story, and Robert A. Madle's "Inside Science
+    Fiction" will show how wrong I was!_
+
+
+
+
+SUITE MENTALE
+
+by Randall Garrett
+
+_Illustrated by EMSH_
+
+
+
+
+OVERTURE--ADAGIO MISTERIOSO
+
+The neurosurgeon peeled the thin surgical gloves from his hands as the
+nurse blotted the perspiration from his forehead for the last time after
+the long, grueling hours.
+
+"They're waiting outside for you, Doctor," she said quietly.
+
+The neurosurgeon nodded wordlessly. Behind him, three assistants were
+still finishing up the operation, attending to the little finishing
+touches that did not require the brilliant hand of the specialist. Such
+things as suturing up a scalp, and applying bandages.
+
+The nurse took the sterile mask--no longer sterile now--while the doctor
+washed and dried his hands.
+
+"Where are they?" he asked finally. "Out in the hall, I suppose?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+She nodded. "You'll probably have to push them out of the way to get out
+of Surgery."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Her prediction was almost perfect. The group of men in conservative
+business suits, wearing conservative ties, and holding conservative,
+soft, felt hats in their hands were standing just outside the door. Dr.
+Mallon glanced at the five of them, letting his eyes stop on the face of
+the tallest. "He may live," the doctor said briefly.
+
+"You don't sound very optimistic, Dr. Mallon," said the FBI man.
+
+Mallon shook his head. "Frankly, I'm not. He was shot laterally, just
+above the right temple, with what looks to me like a .357 magnum pistol
+slug. It's in there--" He gestured back toward the room he had just
+left. "--you can have it, if you want. It passed completely through the
+brain, lodging on the other side of the head, just inside the skull.
+What kept him alive, I'll never know, but I can guarantee that he might
+as well be dead; it was a rather nasty way to lobotomize a man, but it
+was effective, I can assure you."
+
+The Federal agent frowned puzzledly. "Lobotomized? Like those operations
+they do on psychotics?"
+
+"Similar," said Mallon. "But no psychotic was ever butchered up like
+this; and what I had to do to him to save his life didn't help
+anything."
+
+The men looked at each other, then the big one said: "I'm sure you did
+the best you could, Dr. Mallon."
+
+The neurosurgeon rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and
+looked steadily into the eyes of the big man.
+
+"You wanted him alive," he said slowly, "and I have a duty to save life.
+But frankly, I think we'll all eventually wish we had the common human
+decency to let Paul Wendell die. Excuse me, gentlemen; I don't feel
+well." He turned abruptly and strode off down the hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One of the men in the conservative suits said: "Louis Pasteur lived
+through most of his life with only half a brain and he never even knew
+it, Frank; maybe--"
+
+"Yeah. Maybe," said the big man. "But I don't know whether to hope he
+does or hope he doesn't." He used his right thumbnail to pick a bit of
+microscopic dust from beneath his left index finger, studying the
+operation without actually seeing it. "Meanwhile, we've got to decide
+what to do about the rest of those screwballs. Wendell was the only sane
+one, and therefore the most dangerous--but the rest of them aren't what
+you'd call safe, either."
+
+The others nodded in a chorus of silent agreement.
+
+
+NOCTURNE--TEMPO DI VALSE
+
+"Now what the hell's the matter with me?" thought Paul Wendell. He could
+feel nothing. Absolutely nothing: No taste, no sight, no hearing, no
+anything. "Am I breathing?" He couldn't feel any breathing. Nor, for
+that matter, could he feel heat, nor cold, nor pain.
+
+"Am I dead? No. At least, I don't _feel_ dead. Who am I? What am I?" No
+answer. _Cogito, ergo sum._ What did that mean? There was something
+quite definitely wrong, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. Ideas
+seemed to come from nowhere; fragments of concepts that seemed to have
+no referents. What did that mean? What is a referent? A concept? He felt
+he knew intuitively what they meant, but what use they were he didn't
+know.
+
+There was something wrong, and he had to find out what it was. And he
+had to find out through the only method of investigation left open to
+him.
+
+So he thought about it.
+
+
+SONATA--ALLEGRO CON BRIO
+
+The President of the United States finished reading the sheaf of papers
+before him, laid them neatly to one side, and looked up at the big man
+seated across the desk from him.
+
+"Is this everything, Frank?" he asked.
+
+"That's everything, Mr. President; everything we know. We've got eight
+men locked up in St. Elizabeth's, all of them absolutely psychotic, and
+one human vegetable named Paul Wendell. We can't get anything out of
+them."
+
+The President leaned back in his chair. "I really can't quite understand
+it. Extra-sensory perception--why should it drive men insane? Wendell's
+papers don't say enough. He claims it can be mathematically worked
+out--that he _did_ work it out--but we don't have any proof of that."
+
+The man named Frank scowled. "Wasn't that demonstration of his proof
+enough?"
+
+A small, graying, intelligent-faced man who had been sitting silently,
+listening to the conversation, spoke at last. "Mr. President, I'm afraid
+I still don't completely understand the problem. If we could go over it,
+and get it straightened out--" He left the sentence hanging expectantly.
+
+"Certainly. This Paul Wendell is a--well, he called himself a psionic
+mathematician. Actually, he had quite a respectable reputation in the
+mathematical field. He did very important work in cybernetic theory, but
+he dropped it several years ago--said that the human mind couldn't be
+worked at from a mechanistic angle. He studied various branches of
+psychology, and eventually dropped them all. He built several of those
+queer psionic machines--gold detectors, and something he called a hexer.
+He's done a lot of different things, evidently."
+
+"Sounds like he was unable to make up his mind," said the small man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The President shook his head firmly. "Not at all. He did new, creative
+work in every one of the fields he touched. He was considered something
+of a mystic, but not a crackpot, or a screwball.
+
+"But, anyhow, the point is that he evidently found what he'd been
+looking for for years. He asked for an appointment with me; I okayed the
+request because of his reputation. He would only tell me that he'd
+stumbled across something that was vital to national defense and the
+future of mankind; but I felt that, in view of the work he had done, he
+was entitled to a hearing."
+
+"And he proved to you, beyond any doubt, that he had this power?" the
+small man asked.
+
+Frank shifted his big body uneasily in his chair. "He certainly did, Mr.
+Secretary."
+
+The President nodded. "I know it might not sound too impressive when
+heard second-hand, but Paul Wendell could tell me more of what was going
+on in the world than our Central Intelligence agents have been able to
+dig up in twenty years. And he claimed he could teach the trick to
+anyone.
+
+"I told him I'd think it over. Naturally, my first step was to make sure
+that he was followed twenty-four hours a day. A man with information
+like that simply could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands." The
+President scowled, as though angry with himself. "I'm sorry to say that
+I didn't realize the full potentialities of what he had said for several
+days--not until I got Frank's first report."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You could hardly be expected to, Mr. President," Frank said. "After
+all, something like that is pretty heady stuff."
+
+"I think I follow you," said the Secretary. "You found he was already
+teaching this trick to others."
+
+The President glanced at the FBI man. Frank said: "That's right; he was
+holding meetings--classes, I suppose you'd call them--twice a week.
+There were eight men who came regularly."
+
+"That's when I gave the order to have them all picked up. Can you
+imagine what would happen if _everybody_ could be taught to use this
+ability? Or even a small minority?"
+
+"They'd rule the world," said the Secretary softly.
+
+The President shrugged that off. "That's a small item, really. The point
+is that _nothing_ would be hidden from _anyone_.
+
+"The way we play the Game of Life today is similar to playing poker. We
+keep a straight face and play the cards tight to our chest. But what
+would happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would cease
+to be a game of strategy, and become a game of pure chance.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We'd have to start playing Life another way. It would be like chess,
+where you can see the opponent's every move. But in all human history
+there has never been a social analogue for chess. That's why Paul
+Wendell and his group had to be stopped--for a while at least."
+
+"But what could you have done with them?" asked the Secretary. "Imprison
+them summarily? Have them shot? What _would_ you have done?"
+
+The President's face became graver than ever. "I had not yet made that
+decision. Thank Heaven, it has been taken out of my hands."
+
+"One of his own men shot him?"
+
+"That's right," said the big FBI man. "We went into his apartment an
+instant too late. We found eight madmen and a near-corpse. We're not
+sure what happened, and we're not sure we want to know. Anything that
+can drive eight reasonably stable men off the deep end in less than an
+hour is nothing to meddle around with."
+
+"I wonder what went wrong?" asked the Secretary of no one in particular.
+
+
+SCHERZO--PRESTO
+
+Paul Wendell, too, was wondering what went wrong.
+
+Slowly, over a period of immeasurable time, memory seeped back into him.
+Bits of memory, here and there, crept in from nowhere, sometimes to be
+lost again, sometimes to remain. Once he found himself mentally humming
+an odd, rather funeral tune:
+
+    _Now, though you'd have said that the head was dead,
+      For its owner dead was he,
+    It stood on its neck with a smile well-bred,
+      And bowed three times to me.
+    It was none of your impudent, off-hand nods...._
+
+Wendell stopped and wondered what the devil seemed so important about
+the song.
+
+Slowly, slowly, memory returned.
+
+When he suddenly realized, with crashing finality, where he was and what
+had happened to him, Paul Wendell went violently insane. Or he would
+have, if he could have become violent.
+
+
+MARCHE FUNEBRE--LENTO
+
+"Open your mouth, Paul," said the pretty nurse. The hulking mass of
+not-quite-human gazed at her with vacuous eyes and opened its mouth.
+Dexterously, she spooned a mouthful of baby food into it. "Now swallow
+it, Paul. That's it. Now another."
+
+"In pretty bad shape, isn't he?"
+
+Nurse Peters turned to look at the man who had walked up behind her. It
+was Dr. Benwick, the new interne.
+
+"He's worthless to himself and anyone else," she said. "It's a shame,
+too; he'd be rather nice looking if there were any personality behind
+that face." She shoveled another spoonful of mashed asparagus into the
+gaping mouth. "Now swallow it, Paul."
+
+"How long has he been here?" Benwick asked, eyeing the scars that showed
+through the dark hair on the patient's head.
+
+"Nearly six years," Miss Peters said.
+
+"Hmmh! But they outlawed lobotomies back in the sixties."
+
+"Open your mouth, Paul." Then, to Benwick: "This was an accident. Bullet
+in the head. You can see the scar on the other side of his head."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doctor moved around to look at the left temple. "Doesn't leave much
+of a human being, does it?"
+
+"It doesn't even leave much of an animal," Miss Peters said. "He's
+alive, but that's the best you can say for him. (Now swallow, Paul.
+That's it.) Even an ameba can find food for itself."
+
+"Yeah. Even a single cell is better off than he is. Chop out a man's
+forebrain and he's nothing. It's a case of the whole being _less_ than
+the sum of its parts."
+
+"I'm glad they outlawed the operation on mental patients," Miss Peters
+said, with a note of disgust in her voice.
+
+Dr. Benwick said: "It's worse than it looks. Do you know why the
+anti-lobotomists managed to get the bill passed?"
+
+"Let's drink some milk now, Paul. No, Doctor; I was only a little girl
+at that time."
+
+"It was a matter of electro-encephalographic records. They showed that
+there was electrical activity in the prefrontal lobes even after the
+nerves had been severed, which could mean a lot of things; but the A-L
+supporters said that it indicated that the forebrain was still capable
+of thinking."
+
+Miss Peters looked a little ill. "Why--that's _horrible_! I wish you'd
+never told me." She looked at the lump of vegetablized human sitting
+placidly at the table. "Do you suppose he's actually _thinking_,
+somewhere, deep inside?"
+
+"Oh, I doubt it," Benwick said hastily. "There's probably no real
+self-awareness, none at all. There couldn't be."
+
+"I suppose not," Miss Peters said, "but it's not pleasant to think of."
+
+"That's why they outlawed it," said Benwick.
+
+
+RONDO--ANDANTE MA NON POCO
+
+Insanity is a retreat from reality, an escape within the mind from the
+reality outside the mind. But what if there is no detectable reality
+outside the mind? What is there to escape from? Suicide--death in any
+form--is an escape from life. But if death does not come, and can not be
+self-inflicted, what then?
+
+And when the pressure of nothingness becomes too great to bear, it
+becomes necessary to escape; a man under great enough pressure will take
+the easy way out. But if there is no easy way? Why, then a man must take
+the hard way.
+
+For Paul Wendell, there was no escape from his dark, senseless Gehenna
+by way of death, and even insanity offered no retreat; insanity in
+itself is senseless, and senselessness was what he was trying to flee.
+The only insanity possible was the psychosis of regression, a fleeing
+into the past, into the crystallized, unchanging world of memory.
+
+So Paul Wendell explored his past, every year, every hour, every second
+of it, searching to recall and savor every bit of sensation he had ever
+experienced. He tasted and smelled and touched and heard and analyzed
+each of them minutely. He searched through his own subjective thought
+processes, analyzing, checking and correlating them.
+
+_Know thyself._ Time and time again, Wendell retreated from his own
+memories in confusion, or shame, or fear. But there was no retreat from
+himself, and eventually he had to go back and look again.
+
+He had plenty of time--all the time in the world. How can subjective
+time be measured when there is no objective reality?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eventually, there came the time when there was nothing left to look at;
+nothing left to see; nothing to check and remember; nothing that he had
+not gone over in every detail. Again, boredom began to creep in. It was
+not the boredom of nothingness, but the boredom of the familiar.
+Imagination? What could he imagine, except combinations and permutations
+of his own memories? He didn't know--perhaps there might be more to it
+than that.
+
+So he exercised his imagination. With a wealth of material to draw upon,
+he would build himself worlds where he could move around, walk, talk,
+and make love, eat, drink and feel the caress of sunshine and wind.
+
+It was while he was engaged in this project that he touched another
+mind. He touched it, fused for a blinding second, and bounced away. He
+ran gibbering up and down the corridors of his own memory, mentally
+reeling from the shock of--_identification_!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Who was he? Paul Wendell? Yes, he knew with incontrovertible certainty
+that he was Paul Wendell. But he also knew, with almost equal certainty,
+that he was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was living--had
+lived--in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But he knew nothing
+of the Captain other than the certainty of identity; nothing else of
+that blinding mind-touch remained.
+
+Again he scoured his memory--Paul Wendell's memory--checking and
+rechecking the area just before that semi-fatal bullet had crashed
+through his brain.
+
+And finally, at long last, he knew with certainty where his calculations
+had gone astray. He knew positively why eight men had gone insane.
+
+Then he went again in search of other minds, and this time he knew he
+would not bounce.
+
+
+QUASI UNA FANTASIA POCO ANDANTE PIANISSIMO
+
+An old man sat quietly in his lawnchair, puffing contentedly on an
+expensive briar pipe and making corrections with a fountain pen on a
+thick sheaf of typewritten manuscript. Around him stretched an expanse
+of green lawn, dotted here and there with squat cycads that looked like
+overgrown pineapples; in the distance, screening the big house from the
+road, stood a row of stately palms, their fronds stirring lightly in the
+faint, warm California breeze.
+
+The old man raised his head as a car pulled into the curving driveway.
+The warm hum of the turboelectric engine stopped, and a man climbed out
+of the vehicle. He walked with easy strides across the grass to where
+the elderly gentleman sat. He was lithe, of indeterminate age, but with
+a look of great determination. There was something in his face that made
+the old man vaguely uneasy--not with fear but with a sense of deep
+respect.
+
+"What can I do for you, sir?"
+
+"I have some news for you, Mr. President," the younger one said.
+
+The old man smiled wryly. "I haven't been President for fourteen years.
+Most people call me 'Senator' or just plain 'Mister'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The younger man smiled back. "Very well, Senator. My name is Camberton,
+James Camberton. I brought some information that may possibly relieve
+your mind--or, again, it may not."
+
+"You sound ominous, Mr. Camberton. I hope you'll remember that I've been
+retired from the political field for nearly five years. What is this
+shattering news?"
+
+"Paul Wendell's body was buried yesterday."
+
+The Senator looked blank for a second, then recognition came into his
+face. "Wendell, eh? After all this time. Poor chap; he'd have been
+better off if he'd died twenty years ago." Then he paused and looked up.
+"But just who are you, Mr. Camberton? And what makes you think I would
+be particularly interested in Paul Wendell?"
+
+"Mr. Wendell wants to tell you that he is very grateful to you for
+having saved his life, Senator. If it hadn't been for your orders, he
+would have been left to die."
+
+The Senator felt strangely calm, although he knew he should feel shock.
+"That's ridiculous, sir! Mr. Wendell's brain was hopelessly damaged; he
+never recovered his sanity or control of his body. I know; I used to
+drop over to see him occasionally, until I finally realized that I was
+only making myself feel worse and doing him no good."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Yes, sir. And Mr. Wendell wants you to know how much he appreciated
+those visits."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Senator grew red. "What the devil are you talking about? I just said
+that Wendell couldn't talk. How could he have said anything to you? What
+do you know about this?"
+
+"I never said he _spoke_ to me, Senator; he didn't. And as to what I
+know of this affair, evidently you don't remember my name. James
+Camberton."
+
+The Senator frowned. "The name is familiar, but--" Then his eyes went
+wide. "Camberton! You were one of the eight men who--Why, _you're the
+man who shot Wendell_!"
+
+Camberton pulled up an empty lawnchair and sat down. "That's right,
+Senator; but there's nothing to be afraid of. Would you like to hear
+about it?"
+
+"I suppose I must." The old man's voice was so low that it was scarcely
+audible. "Tell me--were the other seven released, too? Have--have you
+all regained your sanity? Do you remember--" He stopped.
+
+"Do we remember the extra-sensory perception formula? Yes, we do; all
+eight of us remember it well. It was based on faulty premises, and
+incomplete, of course; but in its own way it was workable enough. We
+have something much better now."
+
+The old man shook his head slowly. "I failed, then. Such an idea is as
+fatal to society as we know it as a virus plague. I tried to keep you
+men quarantined, but I failed. After all those years of insanity, now
+the chess game begins; the poker game is over."
+
+"It's worse than that," Camberton said, chuckling softly. "Or, actually,
+it's much better."
+
+"I don't understand; explain it to me. I'm an old man, and I may not
+live to see my world collapse. I hope I don't."
+
+Camberton said: "I'll try to explain in words, Senator. They're
+inadequate, but a fuller explanation will come later."
+
+And he launched into the story of the two-decade search of Paul Wendell.
+
+
+CODA--ANDANTINO
+
+"Telepathy? Time travel?" After three hours of listening, the
+ex-President was still not sure he understood.
+
+"Think of it this way," Camberton said. "Think of the mind at any given
+instant as being surrounded by a shield--a shield of privacy--a shield
+which you, yourself have erected, though unconsciously. It's a perfect
+insulator against telepathic prying by others. You feel you _have_ to
+have it in order to retain your privacy--your sense of identity, even.
+But here's the kicker: even though no one else can get in, _you_ can't
+get out!
+
+"You can call this shield 'self-consciousness'--perhaps _shame_ is a
+better word. Everyone has it, to some degree; no telepathic thought can
+break through it. Occasionally, some people will relax it for a fraction
+of a second, but the instant they receive something, the barrier goes up
+again."
+
+"Then how is telepathy possible? How can you go through it?" The Senator
+looked puzzled as he thoughtfully tamped tobacco into his briar.
+
+"You don't go _through_ it; you go _around_ it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now wait a minute; that sounds like some of those fourth dimension
+stories I've read. I recall that when I was younger, I read a murder
+mystery--something about a morgue, I think. At any rate, the murder was
+committed inside a locked room; no one could possibly have gotten in or
+out. One of the characters suggested that the murderer traveled through
+the fourth dimension in order to get at the victim. He didn't go through
+the walls; he went around them." The Senator puffed a match flame into
+the bowl of his pipe, his eyes on the younger man. "Is that what you're
+driving at?"
+
+"Exactly," agreed Camberton. "The fourth dimension. Time. You must go
+back in time to an instant when that wall did not exist. An infant has
+no shame, no modesty, no shield against the world. You must travel back
+down your own four-dimensional tube of memory in order to get outside
+it, and to do that, you have to know your own mind completely, and you
+must be _sure_ you know it.
+
+"For only if you know your own mind can you communicate with another
+mind. Because, at the 'instant' of contact, you _become_ that person;
+you must enter his own memory at the beginning and go _up_ the
+hyper-tube. You will have all his memories, his hopes, his fears, his
+_sense of identity_. Unless you know--beyond any trace of doubt--who
+_you_ are, the result is insanity."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Senator puffed his pipe for a moment, then shook his head. "It
+sounds like Oriental mysticism to me. If you can travel in time, you'd
+be able to change the past."
+
+"Not at all," Camberton said; "that's like saying that if you read a
+book, the author's words will change.
+
+"Time isn't like that. Look, suppose you had a long trough filled with
+supercooled water. At one end, you drop in a piece of ice. Immediately
+the water begins to freeze; the crystallization front moves toward the
+other end of the trough. Behind that front, there is ice--frozen,
+immovable, unchangeable. Ahead of it there is water--fluid, mobile,
+changeable.
+
+"The instant we call 'the present' is like that crystallization front.
+The past is unchangeable; the future is flexible. But they both exist."
+
+"I see--at least, I think I do. And you can do all this?"
+
+"Not yet," said Camberton; "not completely. My mind isn't as strong as
+Wendell's, nor as capable. I'm not the--shall we say--the superman he
+is; perhaps I never will be. But I'm learning--I'm learning. After all,
+it took Paul twenty years to do the trick under the most favorable
+circumstances imaginable."
+
+"I see." The Senator smoked his pipe in silence for a long time.
+Camberton lit a cigaret and said nothing. After a time, the Senator took
+the briar from his mouth and began to tap the bowl gently on the heel of
+his palm. "Mr. Camberton, why do you tell me all this? I still have
+influence with the Senate; the present President is a protege of mine.
+It wouldn't be too difficult to get you men--ah--put away again. I have
+no desire to see our society ruined, our world destroyed. Why do you
+tell me?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Camberton smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid you might find it a little
+difficult to put us away again, sir; but that's not the point. You see,
+we need you. We have no desire to destroy our present culture until we
+have designed a better one to replace it.
+
+"You are one of the greatest living statesmen, Senator; you have a
+wealth of knowledge and ability that can never be replaced; knowledge
+and ability that will help us to design a culture and a civilization
+that will be as far above this one as this one is above the wolf pack.
+We want you to come in with us, help us; we want you to be one of us."
+
+"I? I'm an old man, Mr. Camberton. I will be dead before this
+civilization falls; how can I help build a new one? And how could I, at
+my age, be expected to learn this technique?"
+
+"Paul Wendell says you can. He says you have one of the strongest minds
+now existing."
+
+The Senator put his pipe in his jacket pocket. "You know, Camberton, you
+keep referring to Wendell in the present tense. I thought you said he
+was dead."
+
+Again Camberton gave him the odd smile. "I didn't say that, Senator; I
+said they buried his body. That's quite a different thing. You see,
+before the poor, useless hulk that held his blasted brain died, Paul
+gave the eight of us his memories; he gave us _himself_. The mind is not
+the brain, Senator; we don't know what it _is_ yet, but we do know what
+it _isn't_. Paul's poor, damaged brain is dead, but his memories, his
+thought processes, the very essence of all that was Paul Wendell is
+still very much with us.
+
+"Do you begin to see now why we want you to come in with us? There are
+nine of us now, but we need the tenth--you. Will you come?"
+
+"I--I'll have to think it over," the old statesman said in a voice that
+had a faint quaver. "I'll have to think it over."
+
+But they both knew what his answer would be.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+This etext was produced from _Future Science Fiction_ No. 30, 1956.
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors
+have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Suite Mentale, by Gordon Randall Garrett
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUITE MENTALE ***
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