path: root/74287-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74287 ***





                              Office Call

                         By Charles E. Fritch

            Odd characters come tapping at a psychiatrist's
             chamber door. But Dr. Rawlings just couldn't
                seem to unscramble the woman from Mars.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                   Fantastic Universe October 1954.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


    _Although Charles E. Fritch is a comparative newcomer to the
    science fiction fold he has the distinction of being so competent a
    craftsman that his veracity stands undisputed at every point. Who
    could doubt after reading this story the real existence of a Dr.
    Rawley, or deny a subconscious urge to at least date in a dream the
    charming Miss Austin?_


Dr. Rawlings sighed a long sigh born of frustration and impatience
and went wearily to the bookcase. Almost methodically he removed
a large gold-titled volume of Freud's _A General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis_ and withdrew the bottle from its hiding place. The
bottle was half filled with an amber fluid which jiggled pleasantly
as he held it in an unsteady hand, observing with a practiced eye how
gaily it sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight. Then from the cavity
he also extracted a small whiskey glass.

He took these tools to his desk, poured himself a stiff one, downed it,
flopped into his swivel chair and closed his eyes. _Chicken farms_, he
thought. He felt the fiery liquid seep through him, warming his insides
with its silent flame, bringing a pleasant glow of satisfaction to his
mind.

He closed his eyes tighter and regarded the darkened world with a
calmness that was somehow conducive to rational thought even in this
irrational world. To thought and to sleep, he realized suddenly, as he
found his head tilting.

He rose quickly, blinking off the effects of the liquor, and carefully
returned the utensils to their proper niche behind the volume of Freud
on the bookshelf. _Good old Freud_, he thought, _always knew he'd come
in handy one of these days_. Then he returned to his desk to consult
a small pad, and silently cursed the cruel fates that had given him
patients tumbling upon one another in a ridiculously mad haste to reach
the jumbled sanity of the normal world.

Why couldn't there have been a decent interval of time between them, so
he could take a shower, or have a game of golf, or maybe even hang on a
small one, or see a psychiatrist himself. Or maybe start that chicken
farm he'd been talking about for the past two years.

He jabbed a button, said into the intercom, "Miss Austin, will you
please send in the file on Mr. Charles T. Moore?"--and without waiting
for an answer snapped the machine off.

Fifteen seconds later the door opened and Miss Austin walked in, a
Manila folder in one lovely hand. As usual she was in an immaculately
white uniform. _White for purity?_ he wondered. It was a tight-fitting
garment that clung to every curve as though hanging on for dear life,
and on second thought he mentally erased the purity inscription on his
mind's slate.

Miss Austin had a beautiful walk, and beautiful legs to walk on. He
stared at them as she approached the desk. He always stared at them,
fascinated, and she always knew he did, and she smiled that enticingly
mad smile of hers that always made him want to give vent to an
emotional catharsis.

_God_, he thought, _how I'd love to psychoanalyze that woman! What a
beautiful ego she must have. What a gorgeous id._

Carefully she deposited the folder on his desk, leaning forward
strategically so her perfume could glide over him in intoxicating
currents.

"Will that be all, Doctor Rawlings?" she asked in her honey-liquid
tones.

"For now," he said, reaching for her hand and finding it. "But don't go
away."

She smiled again, and gently freeing her hand, swept from the room. She
looked even better from the back, if that were possible; after a few
seconds deliberation he decided it wasn't possible. But it was women
like Miss Austin that made him want a chicken farm, among other things.
Miss Austin and a little tract of land far out in the country would be
just perfect. In such a paradise he wouldn't even have to worry about
the pecking order of hens. In fact, he might even get engrossed in
raising things other than chickens.

Sighing again, he studied the folder before him, which did not take
very long. The patient was still quite young even though he had already
made a mark of sorts on the world. A theoretical mathematician,
apparently. Probably thought himself a square circle on an adding
machine. The psychiatrist browsed through the folder's contents again,
then jabbed the buzzer.

"You can send Mr. Moore in now," he said and snapped the intercom off
before Miss Austin could answer. The present moment was no time to be
distracted.

Dr. Rawlings held his head in his hands and stared morosely at the
desk. Then he picked up a pencil and began tapping it against an
inkwell. An incongruous thought surely, pencil and inkwell--what would
Freud say about that?

He decided in the same thought that he didn't give a particular damn
what Freud thought about inkwells. There were times in fact when he
didn't care what Freud thought about anything. There were times when
all we wanted to think about was a small chicken farm, with maybe a
gorgeous honey-blonde like Miss Austin to help sow a few seeds.

He looked out the window at the sky and the tops of buildings, and
recalled with bitterness the patient who had claimed that he could
fly, and who had tried to jump to the street forty floors below solely
to prove it. It would have made a nasty splash, he thought. _All the
king's horses and all the king's men_--Unless, of course, the patient
really _could_ fly....

He looked up, annoyed, and discovered that the door had not opened.
Furiously, he jabbed the buzzer again. "Isn't Mr. Moore here yet?"
he demanded, consulting his watch. "He was supposed to be here five
minutes ago."

"He's here, Doctor," the receptionist's silk-and-satin tones came.
"He's trying to get up enough courage to open the door."

"Oh," the psychiatrist said. He felt like adding something
unprofessional, but he controlled himself. With an effort he shut off
the intercom and just waited.

He looked up at the door and saw the knob turning slowly, ever so
slowly. He watched its glistening facets turn in the dim natural
lighting of the room, rotating as though in the slowest of slow motions.

He sighed and turned his attention to his desk top, where he discovered
he had abstractedly pencilled on the blotter a four letter word not
normally used in polite society. Hastily, annoyed with himself, he
grabbed the pencil and used its erasing head to rub off the offending
word.

When he looked up again, the door had opened the slightest crack.
_Damn_, he thought, _this job is going to drive me whacky yet_. He
recalled an episode of a few weeks earlier. He didn't want to, but
the thought came just the same. Some of his patients had delusions so
logical and systematized it was hard to prove to them that they were
wrong. Sometimes it was hard to prove to yourself they were not right
after all.

The woman from Mars, for example. She had actually believed that
she was from the fourth planet, was really a Martian stranded here
unaccountably. She had told a good straight story, but he had managed
to convince her that she was not from Mars. He had persuaded her that
she was an Earthling like everybody else, and that space travel of any
sort was utterly impossible anyway.

He had been about to prove that there was probably no such planet as
Mars when she'd decided not to come back. That was close to the time
the meteorite landed a few miles away, the one that had never been
found. After all, while not a usual occurrence, over-developed lungs
and six fingers on each hand didn't mean--

The door edged open slightly, and an eye peered fearfully into the
room. Then it swung wide, and the young man standing in the doorway let
out a blastfurnace sigh that could be heard in surrounding offices.

"Come in, Mr. Moore," the psychiatrist said, "come in, close the door,
sit down."

Mr. Moore did all these things with normal speed and in the proper
order, but he did have a tendency to sit on the edge of his chair, as
though he were sitting on a cliff and might topple over at any moment.
The psychiatrist doodled on his pad impatiently.

"Well now, just what seems to be the trouble?"

Mr. Moore wet his lips. His face was white. He said, "I'm a
mathematician. I work at the University."

"Oh," the other said, bringing to voice facts he'd read a few minutes
before. "You're _that_ Charles T. Moore, the one whose picture was in
the paper a short time ago. Something about mathematics, I remember."

Moore nodded.

"Einstein, wasn't it?" the psychiatrist mused. "Something I don't
understand, Einstein."

"It's not easy," Moore agreed. "That's what started my difficulty."

"Oh?"

"Yes, when I learned that any point is the beginning or the end of
the universe. Any point at all, the edge of this chair, the tip of my
finger--behind any door."

"That's Einstein?"

He shook his head. "Partly. Mostly, it's Moore."

The psychiatrist seemed puzzled. "More what?"

"I mean it's _me_, my theory, my calculations. I've proved
theoretically that any given spot can be a jumping off place for
another universe. Do you realize what that means?"

The psychiatrist was annoyed by the question, for he had no idea what
it meant. His one over-whelming, immediate desire was to start a
chicken farm.

"Just what does it mean?" he compromised.

"It means that if we can develop this commercially, space travel to the
farthest star will be as easy as walking across the street."

Dr. Rawlings' annoyance rose higher at this. Space travel again, after
only a few weeks ago he had convinced a woman from Mars that such
things were impossible. Oh, well.

"This is very interesting," he lied, "but--ah--just what is the nature
of your difficulty?"

"My ideas used to be _only_ theoretical," Moore told him. "But through
some quirk of fate I've advanced beyond that stage to a point where I'm
actually capable of crossing the barrier."

The psychiatrist nodded. "You mean you think you can actually do this?"

Moore shook his head emphatically. "I mean I _have_ done it," he
insisted. "Mind control."

"I see," the doctor said. On his pad he wrote 'hallucinations,'
although he was jumping the gun slightly on that. Still, he felt sure
of himself, and the pencil still had some eraser left on it. Under the
word he drew a crude and rather vulgar picture of a rooster chasing a
hen.

"That's why I came to you, Dr. Rawlings," Moore went on. "It's not that
I'm neurotic or anything. It's just that I can't control this power,
and I'd like to." He shuddered slightly. "_I'd better._"

"And you want me to help you," the psychiatrist said. "Which, of
course, I'll be only too happy to do. But first, do you have any
outward signs that you have--eh--crossed the barrier. That is, do
you--well, see things, for example."

"Yes, I do," Moore said, remembering, and the psychiatrist pencilled
two triumphant lines beneath the word 'hallucinations' on his deskpad.
"It began about two weeks after I first made my mathematical discovery.
I was lying awake in bed thinking of my theories and how, if ever they
could be applied directly to the physical world, doors would be opened
to any part of the universe. Just about then a knock came at the door."

The psychiatrist nodded. "What time was this?"

"About three in the morning," Moore said. "I got up, put on a robe and
went to answer it, wondering who it could be at that time. I opened the
door and there in the hall was a baby in a basket."

"A baby?" queried the psychiatrist. "In a basket? Are you sure?"

Moore nodded. "And I noticed something else unusual. Out there it was
Mars!"

"Out there? Out where?"

"Out in the hall. It wasn't the hall in my apartment building, it was
some other hall, and through a window I could see a red desert and
canals. There isn't a red desert where I live, or any desert at all.
There are no canals either. It was Mars."

"I see," the psychiatrist said, and he drew a thick ellipse around the
word on his pad. "Then what happened?"

"I was scared, but I couldn't leave a baby out there in the hall like
that. So I picked it up, basket and all, and took it into my room and
closed the door. And then--" He gulped and looked out the window at the
sky and the tops of buildings. "Here's where the part comes in that's
hard to believe."

"Yes? Go on," the psychiatrist prompted.

"The baby turned into a full-grown woman," Moore said.

Despite himself, the psychiatrist felt his eyebrows arch. Well, this
was certainly a new one. "You say the baby turned into a full-grown
woman. Er--ah--clothed?"

Moore reddened and stared at the floor. "No," he said. "I was scared.
And embarrassed. Here I am a bachelor, and there was a nude woman in my
apartment. How could I explain that to the landlady? Anyway, I threw
open the door again, but this time the hall was different. It was like
it was before--on Earth, I mean, instead of on Mars."

"Very interesting," the psychiatrist said, mentally picturing the
situation and temporarily forgetting chicken farms. He wondered how
Miss Austin would look _au naturel_. "Did you do anything? That is,
anything--ah--well, anything at all?"

"I didn't know what to do," Moore said. "She looked about as surprised
as I was, but not nearly as embarrassed. I closed the door again and
tried to figure out what to do."

Despite himself, the psychiatrist was interested. "And did you?"

"I had to do something. She didn't know where she was, who she was,
or how she'd gotten here. I told her that I thought she came from the
planet Mars, and that there was evidently some sort of time stress in
the field I'd constructed accidentally since she appeared to be only a
child a few minutes before, and that it was my fault, and I'd try to
help her.

"I tried to bring back Mars," he went on, "but I found I couldn't.
In fact, I discovered that these things were evidently accidental,
depending upon a frame of mind or something. Anyway, I slept on the
couch that night, went out the next day and bought her some clothes at
a store in town."

"Was she--er--constructed like Earth women," the psychiatrist asked,
at a sudden thought.

Moore blushed. "Yes," he said, "very definitely like Earth women.
Except for one thing--she had six fingers on each hand."

The psychiatrist had been toying with the pencil. At that revelation he
froze briefly. Then he tried to laugh it off mentally. No, it couldn't
be.

"Weeks passed, and she didn't appear to be able to get adjusted," Moore
said. "That's when I suggested she go to you."

Dr. Rawlings dropped the pencil completely. "The woman from Mars," he
exclaimed. "_You_ sent her here?"

Moore nodded soberly. "Yes, and I'd like to get her back. I'm in love
with her."

"I haven't got her." He began to wish he did.

"I know. She was picked up in a rocket ship. Everyone else around here
thinks it was a meteorite, but she told me before she left that they'd
traced her by brainwaves or something, and would pick her up."

"And just what do you expect me to do?" the psychiatrist wanted to
know. He picked up the pencil and made black lines over the 'h' in
'hallucinations.'

"I want you to help me discover what frame of mind must be cultivated
to recreate Mars. I've got a hunch it's a subconscious problem. I've
been accidentally creating all sorts of alien worlds behind doors when
I least expect them. That's why I hesitated outside your office, to
make certain when I opened the door the office would really be here.

"Why, only last week I opened a door to the men's rest room at the
University and found myself staring down into the Great Nebula in
Andromeda. If I'd stepped through...." He shuddered. "I don't know if
going through would change me, but if I ever see Mars again--"

"Well, I think we can help you there," the psychiatrist told him.
"Suppose you come around Wednesday, at two o'clock. That satisfactory?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Moore rose, smiling. "Fine," he said. "And thanks a lot, doctor. You'll
never know how much this means to me."

"Quite all right, quite all right. See you Wednesday."

Moore went to the door, opened it, went through to the outer office.

Well, thank goodness that was over. The psychiatrist breathed a sigh of
relief. One of these days that chicken farm was going to be a reality.
If this kept up....

He pressed a button on the intercom. "When's the next patient, Miss
Austin?"

"Not until tomorrow, Dr. Rawlings," she cooed. "You have plenty of time
for Mr. Moore yet."

"Plenty of time for--What are you talking about? He went through that
door about a minute ago."

The receptionist was silent for a minute, then she said, "He couldn't
have. No one's come out of your office. I've been here all the time."

The psychiatrist flicked off the intercom. For a moment he stared out
the window at the sky and the building tops. Then he went to the door,
knelt, and saw a small amount of red sand, just a few grains that might
have been kicked under the door by someone in a hurry.

He returned to Freud on the shelf, located the bottle and the glass,
and poured himself a stiff one without waiting to transport the
equipment to the desk. Then he went to the desk, and flipped on the
intercom again.

"Miss Austin, do you like chicken farms?" he said.

"I love them, doctor," the honey voice answered. "But--"

"Never mind," he told her. "Just come in here. I've got a question to
ask you."

He poured himself another drink.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 74287 ***