Franklin Abel

“ Primus stepped into the room, crossed to the couch and lay down placidly. Secundus turned to go, then paused.
"As for your final question, Doctor—you might think of the Universe as a Pointillist painting, in which this planet is one infinitesimally small dot of color. The work is wholly imaginary, of course, since neither the canvas nor the pigment has what you would term an independent existence. Nevertheless, the artist takes it seriously. He would not care to find, so to speak, mustaches daubed on it."
Herman sat limply, staring after him as he moved to the door. Secundus turned once more. ”

“ Primus: "What are 'dreams?'" Herman: "Well, when a human being goes to bed, and sleeps...." "Bolster" was there, too, but not in the same sense. Herman: "To bolster its argument, the unconscious—what we call the id—frequently alters the person's likes and dislikes on what seem to be petty and commonplace subjects...." And "candle?" Herman: "I want you to understand that I don't know all about this subject myself, Mr. Primus. Nobody does; our knowledge is just a candle in the darkness...."
Herman gave up. He glanced at Secundus, who was watching him expectantly. ”

“ Some of them moved, Herman realized with a shock. Insects burrowing in the emptiness where the Earth should be?
In the morning, when he crawled out of the tent and went to the bottomless stream to wash, he noticed something he had missed the day before. The network of grasses gave springily under his feet—not like turf, but like stretched rubber. Herman conceived an instant dislike for walking, especially when he had to cross bare ground, because when that happened, he felt exactly what he saw: nothing whatever underfoot. ”

“ Herman considered that briefly, and left the question open. Three or four selected psychoanalyst jokes paraded through his mind, led by the classic, "You're fine, how am I?"
There was this much truth, he thought, in the popular belief that all analysts were a little cracked themselves: a good proportion of the people who get all the way through the man-killing course that makes an orthodox analyst—a course in which an M.D. degree is only a beginning—are impelled to do so in the first place by a consuming interest in their own neuroses. ”

“ Herman took a deep breath and said nothing.
"You may call me Secundus, if you like," resumed the Person, "and this gentleman Primus, since it is with him that you will have principally to deal. Now, our problem here is one of amnesia, and I will confess to you frankly that we ourselves are totally inadequate to cope with it. In theory, we are not subject to disorders of the mind, and that's what makes us so vulnerable now that it has happened. ”

“ Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, being specializations, are not. As I mentioned previously, persons of our order are theoretically not capable of psychic deterioration. That is why we come to you, Dr. Raye. We are unable to help ourselves; we ask your help. We place ourselves unreservedly in your hands."
The question, "How was I chosen?" occurred to Herman, but he left it unasked. He knew that the answer was much likelier to be, "At random," than, "Because we wanted the most brilliant and talented psychoanalyst on the planet." ”

“ Four hours. Only three minutes left now, in the normal world. I can't wait to get any deeper, Herman thought. It's got to be now or never.
"You must understand that these feelings of resentment and hatred are normal," he said, trying to keep the strain out of his voice, "but, at the same time, you have outgrown them—you can rise above them now. You are an individual in your own right, Primus. You have a job to do that only you can fill, and it's an important job. ”

“ The one with the four eyes rolled three of them horribly. "That's more like it," he said in nasal but recognizable English. "Let's start over. Are you Herman Raye, the skull doc?"
Herman produced a series of incoherent sounds.
"My brother expresses himself crudely," said Hairy in a rich, fruity baritone. "Please forgive him. He is a man of much heart."
"Uh?" said Herman.
"Truly," said Hairy. "And of much ears," he added with a glance at his companion. "But again, as to this affair—tell me true, are you Herman Raye, the analyst of minds?"
"Suppose I am?" Herman asked cautiously. ”

“ Primus by encouraging him to relive his past experiences: 'taking him back along the time-track,' as he called it; but—" Secundus looked mournful—"Mr. Primus has actually had no experiences in the usual sense of the term, though he very obligingly made up a number of them. Our ontogeny, Dr. Raye, is so simple that it can scarcely be said to exist at all. Each of us normally has only one function, the one I have already mentioned, and, until this occurrence, it has always been fulfilled successfully. ”

“ New York had been a city of stone—built on stone, built of stone, as cold as stone.
Uptown, the city looked half-built, but insanely occupied, a forest of orange-painted girders. In the Village the old brick houses were worse. No brick; no mortar ”

“ Things are exactly what they seem? Life is real? Life is earnest? Well, that depends.
n the day the Earth vanished, Herman Raye was earnestly fishing for trout, hip-deep in a mountain stream in upstate New York. ”

“ Aren't they pretty?"
"Very pretty," said Herman helplessly.
The petunias, roots as naked as if they had been scrubbed, were nesting in a bed of stars. Mrs. Richards' gloves and trowel were spotlessly clean.
n Fourth Avenue, below Fourteenth Street, Herman met two frightful little men.
He had expected the city to be better, but it was worse; it was a nightmare. The avenues between the buildings were bottomless troughs of darkness. The bedrock was gone; the concrete was gone; the asphalt was gone. ”