‘Yes, ‘Pembroke said.
‘So you have no doubts I will be able to cure him.'
‘On the contrary,' Pembroke said. ‘You won't be able to help him; that's exactly why we want you there. If he obtains chemical therapy he'll recover his mental balance. And it's extremely important to us that he remains ill. So you can see, doctor, we need the continued professional existence of a quack, a practising psychoanalyst.'
Carefully Pembroke relit his cigar, which had gone out.
‘So your primary instructions are: turn down no new patients. You understand? However insane -- or rather, however evidently sane.' He smiled; the doctor's discomfort amused him.
2
Lights burned late in the great communal apartment building The Abraham Lincoln, as this was All Souls night: the residents, all six hundred of them, were required by their charter to attend, down in the subsurface community hall.
They filed in, men, women and children; at the door Vince Strikerock, businesslike and cool, a good, solid bureaucratic official, operated their new identification reader, checking each of them in turn to be sure that no one from outside, from another communal apartment building, got in. The residents submitted good-naturedly and it all went very fast.
‘Hey Vince, how much'd it set us back?' asked old Joe Purd, oldest resident in the building; he had moved in with his wife the day the building, in May of 1992, had been built.
His wife was dead now and the children had grown up, married and moved on, but Joe remained.
‘Plenty,' Vince said quietly, ‘But it's error-proof. It isn't merely subjective.' Up to now, in his permanent job as sergeant of arms, he had admitted people merely by his ability to recognize them. But that way, he had let in a pair of goons from Robin Hill Manor and they had disrupted the entire meeting with their questions and comments. It would not happen again: Vince Strikerock had vowed that, to himself and to his fellow apartment dwellers. And he meant it. Passing out copies of the agenda, Mrs Wells smiled fixedly and chanted, ‘Item 3 A, Appropriation for Roof Repairs, has been moved to 4 A. Please make a note of that.'