Prisoner of Fire (4 page)

The disaster occurred because he had been too sure of himself, too confident in the treatment schedule he had devised for an eighteen-year-old girl named Susan Stride, who had murdered her father.

Susan was not criminally insane. She was just a girl who had endured too much stress and had finally exploded in a fit of uncontrollable violence under extreme provocation. Or so it seemed.

Her case history appeared to be a classic pattern of rejection. Her mother had died when she was fifteen. She was an only child; and thereafter she tried to keep
house for her father, doing all the things that her mother would have done, and doing them as efficiently as possible. Her father ran a prosperous art gallery; and their standard of living was good. After his wife’s death, though he was content to let Susan run the household, he took a succession of mistresses, bringing each home for a while, until he tired of her and sent her packing. The ritual was monotonously invariable. Susan was expected to be pleasant to each woman and treat her as a potential stepmother. When the time came for departure, Susan’s father always contrived to be curiously absent, leaving an adolescent girl to deal with mature rejected women, to help them dry their tears, to help them pack their belongings, and to help them leave the flat with as much dignity as possible.

One evening, Susan’s father came home drunk. Blind drunk. At least, that was the way Susan told it in session, under hypnosis and under truth drug. Ergo, that was the way it was.

His mind being befuddled, he apparently thought that Susan was his latest conquest and that she was making difficulties. His only method of resolving difficulties with women was to take them to bed. He tried to make love to Susan. He was a strong man, and he was suffering from too much alcohol and too many delusions. Susan broke a gin bottle over his head without much effect. At least, that was the way she told it. And the telling was very convincing.

He knocked her half silly and dragged her to the bedroom. According to Susan. There, while he was struggling with his clothes, she found another gin bottle and smashed that also over his head. Then she went berserk and sawed through his throat with a fragment of glass.

Such
was the story that could not be broken down by drugs, by hypnosis or by analysis.

Dr. Badel came to the conclusion that there really was not a great deal of complexity in Susan’s case. He had found no signs of schizophrenia. She was a highly inhibited girl; and it was perfectly natural that she should be withdrawn, remote, listless, depressed after such a traumatic experience. She needed chiefly to unburden herself, to shed the load of guilt, to come to terms with the extreme provocation that had temporarily unbalanced her.

The trouble was that Susan would not respond or co-operate unless she were drugged or hypnotised. But she needed to be in full possession of her faculties to go through the integration process. A simple but crude solution might have been found in lobotomy, a temporary solution in electroplexy. But Dr. Badel did not want to use such extreme measures. The girl was young; if she could be coaxed through the crisis, she might look forward to a long and creative life.

He hit upon the oldest trick in the book to get her to respond. The rest of the staff were instructed to be deliberately hostile to Susan, to make life difficult for her, to quarrel with her, to deprive her of luxuries, to interrupt her sleep, even to tamper with her food. Only Badel would be sympathetic, ever ready to deal with real or imagined grievances. Thus he would gain her confidence.

When the time was ripe, a careful little drama was staged. One of the attractive women psychologists, who had been instructed to be especially hostile, was to be discovered by Badel physically ill-treating Susan. There would then be a scene where he would shout at the woman, dismiss her from the case and eject her bodily from Susan’s room. The negative parallels that Dr. Badel
sought to establish were obvious. This was what Susan would have liked her father to do to the women who invaded Susan’s world.

The drama went off perfectly. It worked like a charm. In the cause of science, Dr. Badel’s pretty colleague allowed her face to be slapped as, struggling and protesting, she was thrust from Susan’s room.

Dr. Badel promised that the hated woman would never return. After that incident, Susan began to respond, slowly. At first, during her daily sessions with Badel, she would only answer questions—chiefly yes or no answers. Later, she began to volunteer information. Eventually, she learned to talk freely about her childhood, her relations with her mother, even the traumatic sequence that led to the killing of her father.

The daily sessions of analysis took place in Dr. Badel’s office. The dialogue was discreetly taped. Afterwards he reviewed each session and summarised his findings. After two weeks he confidently predicted that Susan would soon be able to take up a normal existence once more. He thought that she might find some kind of fulfilment, and expiation, working in a hospital.

One day, Susan asked if the analysis session could take place in her own room. Dr. Badel saw no reason why this should not be so. But when he came to Susan’s room, he was amazed to discover that she was wearing only a shortie nightdress.

While he was registering the implications, she wedged a chair back under the door handle. Then she advanced upon him, flung her arms round his neck and said: “I love you. I love you. Please make love to me. Please. Please! I’m a woman, you know. I can give you great pleasure.”

As she kissed him on the lips, he suddenly realised that he had been totally wrong. He was too late.

“Susan
, I think you are a marvellous girl, but—”

“But I’m not good enough for screwing?” she demanded imperiously, standing back. The transformation from girl into tigress was too fast for Dr. Badel’s reactions.

“Do you like me?” she demanded in an unnatural voice.

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. Do you love me?” Her eyes were wild.

“Yes, but not in the way you think.”

“I said no buts.” Her voice had hardened. “If you like me, if you love me, do with me what you do with all those other bloody women!”

He didn’t even have time to voice an answer. She saw the answer in his eyes.

And she reached for the water carafe by the bed. Then she hit him with it again and again. Because she was young, and because she was demented, her movements were too fast for him.

She had hit him several times before the thick glass broke. He fell to his knees, protesting feebly, not knowing what he was saying, because the heavy carafe crashed down again and again. And Susan was screaming.

Somebody heard the noise, and eventually the door was battered down. They found Susan Stride sitting on the chest of Dr. Roland Badel, senior psychologist. She had a thick, jagged piece of glass in her hand. She had already cut one side of his face to pieces, and she was busy sawing through his throat.

Susan, having then retreated into catatonia, was sent to an asylum for the incurably insane.

While he lay in hospital, recovering from injuries that by all known laws ought to have resulted in death
, Dr. Roland Badel knew that he had stopped playing God for ever.

He should have realised that Susan Stride had killed her father not because he assaulted her but because he rejected her. He should have been able to diagnose schizophrenia. He should have prescribed depth sedation at least while he thought it all out. He should have been
competent.

So now here he was, having himself withdrawn from society, living the life of a recluse in an isolated country cottage with the knowledge that a great part of his life had been wasted.

Personality-reshaping programmes! He could not even reshape his own personality enough to enable him to make social contacts, to move in the world of people.

He kept chickens, grew his own vegetables, cooked for himself. He did not have tri-di or even a V-phone. Sometimes he read novels—nineteenth-century novels: Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, the Brontës. Sometimes he listened to music: Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt. He drank a great deal and went for long walks in the woods. He tried to abolish the twentieth century, along with the recollections of a failed psychologist. Some nights, he woke up screaming.

One morning, after a bad night, he got up early and went out to feed the chickens. It was a damp morning with mist on the hills and a fine drizzle drifting down to earth.

In the chicken run, he found a girl lying on her face, filthy, wet, unconscious. In one of her hands were the crushed remains of two eggs. A hungry chicken was pecking at one of her ears, and had caused blood to come.

The girl was wearing a dark blue vest and dark blue
trousers. She was pitifully thin. The drizzle had left a fine lacing of jewels in her hair. Surprised and shaken, Roland Badel turned her over and looked at her face. For a few terrible moments, he had to stop himself from shouting and running. She seemed to look just like Susan Stride. Then, when he had calmed down, he saw that she was quite different. About the same age, but different.

Under the mud her face was dreadfully pale, but she was still breathing. He managed to lift her up and carry her into the cottage. He put her on a battered settee, found a blanket and laid it over her, and lighted a wood fire. Then he poured himself a very large whisky, drank it and poured another.

Then he sat on a chair, staring at her, trying to think what to do.

V
ANESSA OPENED HER
eyes. She
had not the strength to lift herself up, but she could move her head a little. It took her some time to focus. She saw a fire, a bright, comfortable wood fire, and gazed at it gratefully for a few moments. Her mind began to work, but slowly, as if it were half frozen. She realised she was in a room.

Presently, she noticed a man sitting on a chair, staring at her. He had a glass in his hand. She tried to probe his mind; but she was too weak; and, anyway, there was a fog all over his thoughts. Vaguely she wondered what he was drinking. Then she wondered how long he had been drinking.

There were whisperings in her head. Weak, exhausted whisperings. She recognised the pattern. Poor Dugal. They must be working him very hard at Random Hill. He was their best now, and they were driving him into the ground.

‘Vanessa,’ came the tired whispering, ‘dear Vanessa, where are you? I’m so tired, but Dr. Lindemann keeps asking me to send… Vanessa, just say you are alive, just for me. I won’t tell… I won’t…’

She felt a great surge of pity. Dr. Lindemann’s supply of chocolate bars was caught up in the law of diminishing returns. She wondered if she, too, had the strength to send. She gathered herself to try.

‘Dugal, I’m all right,’ she flashed weakly. ‘Don’t try
to trace. Just pretend—unless they have a monitor. I don’t want to come back. Love and kisses. Out.’

‘You will come back,’ whispered a new pattern, strange and uneven, wavering in strength. ‘You will come back, Vanessa. We shall find you.’

Who was that? It might have been Meriona. More likely it was Thomas, a thirteen-year-old, whose powers varied enormously. Vanessa remembered that one of the scientists had said Thomas ought to be good, when he had emotionally settled down after puberty.

Instantly she closed her mind, and tried a music block. But the man in the chair was speaking to her, and she had to listen to what he was saying. She was too weak to set up a block and, at the same time, find out what was going on.

“What is your name?” asked the man thickly. “Where have you come from? What the hell were you doing in my chicken run? What’s wrong with you?”

She looked at him for a moment or two and said nothing, being unable to think of anything to say.

“Talk, girl!” he shouted. “Tell! I’ve had a bellyful of adolescent females.” He poured himself another drink with trembling hands. “I have to decide whether to get the police or the psychiatric squad. So tell it for real.”

Tears trickled down Vanessa’s cheeks. It looked as if her luck had run out. She tried to think.

“Have you got any music?” she asked.

“Have I got any what?”

“Music. I need it in my head. I know it sounds stupid, but please play some music, and then I can talk.” She knew she could not maintain her own blocks much longer. Music would help.

He shrugged. “You’re nuts.” He laughed. “So am I. So are we all. Yes, I have some taped music. What is your poison?”

“The 1812?” she
asked hopefully. The sheer volume would help to disorientate any probes.

He seemed to understand. “I have it. You want all, or just the bangs?”

“The bangs. Repeated if possible.”

“Can do.”

He got up unsteadily from his chair and went to the music player that nestled compactly in a corner of the room. Vanessa could not see what he was dialling; but in a few seconds the thunderous sequences of the 1812 crashed through the room. He turned down the volume slightly.

“Now, acid head, the answers.”

She had had a little time to think. “My name is Elizabeth Winter. I have run away from an orphanage. I was trying to steal food when I fainted, I suppose…” She looked at him appealingly. “Must you bring the police? I’ll go away and promise not to give you any more trouble.”

He gave a dreadful laugh and thrust the side of his face close to hers. She saw the scar tissue, the patches of pink flesh, the unnatural wrinkles, angry, livid.

“My name is Genghis Khan, and I eat girls who tell lies. Now, the truth, girl. You are in no position to play clever.”

The 1812 rose to crescendos of cannon, trumpets and tympani. Vanessa gazed at the man’s face, terrified. His eyes were wild. He might be a maniac. She wondered if she could try telergetic hypnosis. No, not like this. Not in this condition, and not with a subject filled with anger and whisky. But, also, she dared not tell him the truth.

“Well, girl?” His voice cut through the noisy music like a knife.

Weakly
, with the tears coursing down her face, Vanessa tried again, knowing that it wouldn’t work.

“I have told you the truth. I ran away.”