Come and Go Mad

by Fredric Brown

I

He had known it, somehow, when he had awakened that morning. I to knew it more surely now, staring out of the editorial room window into the early afternoon sunlight slanting down among the buildings to cast a pattern of light and shadow. He knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important was going to happen. Whether good or bad he did not know, but he darkly suspected. And with reason; there are few good things that may unexpectedly happen to a man, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways.

A voice said, “Hey, Mr. Vine,” and he turned away from the window, slowly. That in itself was strange for it was not his manner to move slowly; he was a small, volatile man, almost cat-like in the quickness of his reactions and his movements.

But this time something made him turn slowly from the window, almost as though he never again expected to see that chiaroscuro of an early afternoon.

He said, “Hi, Red.”

The freckled copy boy said, “His Nibs wants to see ya.”

“Now?”

“Naw. Atcher convenience. Sometime next week, maybe. If yer busy, give him an apperntment.” He put his fist against Red’s chin and shoved, and the copy boy staggerd back in assumed distress.

He got up out of his chair and went over to the water cooler. He pressed his thumb on the button and water gurgled into the paper cup.

Harry Wheeler sauntered over and said, “Hiya, Nappy. What’s up? Going on the carpet?”

He said, “Sure, for a raise.”

He drank and crumpled the cup, tossing it into the waste basket. He went over to the door marked Private and went through it.

Walter J. Candler, the managing editor, looked up from the work on his desk and said affably, “Sit down, Vine. Be with you in a moment,” and then looked down again.

He slid into the chair opposite Candler, worried a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lighted it. He studied the back of the sheet of paper of which the managing editor was reading the front. There wasn’t anything on the back of it.

The M. E. put the paper down and looked at him. ”

Vine, I’ve got a screwy one. You’re good on screwy ones.”

He grinned slowly at the M. E. He said, “If that’s a compliment, thanks.”

“It s a compliment, all right. You’ve done some pretty tough things for us. This one’s different. I’ve never yet asked a reporter to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. I wouldn’t do this, so I’m not asking you to.”

The M. E. picked up the paper he’d been reading and then put it down again without even looking at it. “Ever hear of Ellsworth Joyce Randolph?”

“Head of the asylum? Hell yes, I’ve met him. Casually.”

“How’d he impress you?”

He was aware that the managing editor was staring at him intently, that it wasn’t too casual a question. He parried. “What do you mean: In what way? You mean is he a good Joe, is he a good politician, has he got a good bedside manner for a psychiatrist, or what?”

“I mean, how sane do you think he is?”

He looked at Candler and Candler wasn’t kidding. Candler was strictly deadpan.

He began to laugh, and then he stopped laughing. He leaned forward across Candler’s desk. “Ellsworth Joyce Randolph,” he said. “You’re talking about Ellsworth Joyce Randolph?”

Candler nodded. “Dr. Randolph was in here this morning. He told a rather strange story. He didn’t want me to print it. He did want me to check on it, to send our best man to check on it. He said if we found it was true we could print it in hundred and twenty line type in red ink.” Candler grinned wryly. “We could, at that.”

He stumped out his cigarette and studied Candler’s face. “But the story itself is so screwy you’re not sure whether Dr. Randolph himself might be insane?”

“Exactly.”

“And what’s tough about the assignment?”

“The doc says a reporter could get the story only from the inside.”

“You mean, go in as a guard or something?” Candler said, “Something.”

“Oh.”

He got up out of the chair and walked over to the window, stood with his back to the managing editor, looking out. The sun had moved hardly at all. Yet the shadow pattern in the streets looked different, obscurely different. The shadow pattern inside himself was different, too. This, he knew, was what had been going to happen. He turned around. He said, “No, Hell no.”

Candler shrugged imperceptibly. “Don’t blame you. I haven’t even asked you to. I wouldn’t do it myself.”

He asked, “What does Ellsworth Joyce Randolph think is going on inside his nuthouse? It must be something pretty screwy if it made you wonder whether Randolph himself is sane.”

“I can’t tell you that, Vine. Promised him I wouldn’t, whether or not you took the assignment.”

“You mean—even if I took the job I still wouldn’t know what I was looking for?”

“That’s right. You’d be prejudiced. You wouldn’t be objective. You’d be looking for something, and you might think you found it whether it was there or not. Or you might be so prejudiced against finding it that you’d refuse to recognize it if it bit you in the leg.”

He strode from the window over to the desk and banged his fist down on it.

He said, “God damn it, Candler, why me? You know what happened to me three years ago.”

“Sure. Amnesia.”

“Sure, amnesia. Just like that. But I haven’t kept it any secret that I never got over that amnesia. I’m thirty years old—or am I? My memory goes back three years. Do you know what it feels like to have a blank wall in your memory only three years back?

“Oh sure, I know what’s on the other side of that wall. I know because everybody tells me. I know I started here as a copy boy ten years ago. I know where I was born and when and I know my parents are both dead. I know what they look like—because I’ve seen their pictures. I know I didn’t have a wife and kids, because everybody who knew me told me I didn’t. Get that part everybody who knew me, not everybody I knew. I didn’t know anybody.

“Sure, I’ve done all right since then. After I got out of the hospital—and I don’t even remember the accident that put me there—I did all right back here because I still knew how to write news stories, even though I had to learn everybody’s name all over again. I wasn’t any worse off than a new reporter starting cold on a paper in a strange city. And everybody was as helpful as hell.”

Candler raised a placating hand to stem the tide. He said, “Okay, Nappy. You said no, and that’s enough. I don’t see what all that’s got to do with this story, but all you had to do was say’ no. So forget about it.”

The tenseness hadn’t gone out of him. He said, “You don’t see what that’s got to do with the story? You ask—or, all right, you don’t ask, you suggest—that I get myself certified as a madman, go into an asylum as a patient.

When—how much confidence does anyone have in his own mind when he can’t remember going to school, can’t remember the first time he met any of the people he works with every day, can’t remember starting on the job he works at, can’t remember anything back of three years before?”

Abruptly he struck the desk again with his fist, and then looked foolish about it. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get wound up about it like that.”

Candler said, “Sit down.”

“The answer’s still no.”

“Sit down, anyway.”

He sat down and fumbled a cigarette out of his pocket, got it lighted.

Candler said, “I didn’t even mean to mention it, but I’ve got to now. Now that you talked that way. I didn’t know you felt like that about your amnesia. I thought that was water under the bridge.

“Listen, when Dr. Randolph asked me what reporter we had that could best cover it, I told him about you. What your background was. He remembered meeting you, too, incidentally. But he hadn’t known you’d had amnesia.”

“Is that why you suggested me?”

“Skip that till I make my point. He said that while you were there, he’d be glad to try one of the newer, milder forms of shock treatment on you, and that it might restore your lost memories. He said it would be worth trying.”

“He didn’t say it would work.”

“He said it might; that it wouldn’t do any harm.”

He stubbed out the cigarette from which he’d taken only three drags. He glared at Candler. He didn’t have to say what was in his mind; the managing editor could read it.

Candler said, “Calm down, boy. Remember I didn’t bring it up until you yourself started in on how much that memory-wall bothered you. I wasn’t saving it for ammunition. I mentioned it only out of fairness to you, after the way you talked.”

“Fairness!”

Candler shrugged. “You said no. I accepted it. Then you started raving at me and put me in a spot where I had to mention something I’d hardly thought of at the time. Forget it. How’s that graft story coming? Any new leads?”

“You going to put someone else on the asylum story?”

“No. You’re the logical one for it.”

“What is the story? It must be pretty woolly if it makes you wonder if Dr. Randolph is sane. Does he think his patients ought to trade places with his doctors, or what?”

He laughed. “Sure, you can’t tell me. That’s really beautiful double bait. Curiosity—and hope of knocking down that wall. So what’s the rest of it? If I say yes instead of no, how long will I be there, under what circumstances? What chance have I got of getting out again? How do I get in?”

Candler said slowly, “Vine, I’m not sure any more I want you to try it. Let’s skip the whole thing.”

“Let’s not. Not until you answer my questions, anyway.”

“All right. You’d go in anonymously, so there wouldn’t be any stigma attached if the story wouldn’t work out. If it does, you can tell the whole truth—including Dr. Randolph’s collusion in getting you in and out again. The cat will be out of the bag, then.

“You might get what you want in a few days—and you wouldn’t stay on it more than a couple of weeks in any case.”

“How many at the asylum would know who I was and what I was there for, besides Randolph?”

“No one.” Candler leaned forward and held up four fingers of his left hand. He pointed to the first. “Four people would have to be in on it. You.” He pointed to one finger. “Me.” A second. “Dr. Randolph.” The third finger. “And one other reporter from here.”

“Not that I’d object, but why the other reporter?”

“Intermediary. In two ways. First, he’ll go with you to some psychiatrist; Randolph will recommend one you can fool comparatively easily. He’ll be your brother and request that you be examined and certified. You convince the psychiatrist you’re nuts and he’ll certify you. Of course it takes two doctors to put you away, but Randolph will be the second. Your alleged brother will want Randolph for the second one.”

“All this under an assumed name?”

“If you prefer. Of course there’s no real reason why it should be.”

“That’s the way I feel about it. Keep it out of the papers, of course. Tell everybody around here—except my—hey, in that case we couldn’t make up a brother. But Charlie Doerr, in Circulation, is my first cousin and my nearest living relative. He’d do, wouldn’t he?”

“Sure. And he’d have to be intermediary the rest of the way, then. Visit you at the asylum and bring back anything you have to send back.”

“And if, in a couple of weeks, I’ve found nothing, you’ll spring me?”

Candler nodded. “I’ll pass the word to Randolph; he’ll interview you and pronounce you cured, and you’re out. You come back here, and you’ve been on vacation. That’s all.”

“What kind of insanity should I pretend to have?”

He thought Candler squirmed a little in his chair. Candler said, “Well—wouldn’t this Nappy business be a natural? I mean, paranoia is a form of insanity which, Dr. Randolph told me, hasn’t any physical symptoms. It’s just a delusion supported by a systematic framework of rationalization. A paranoiac can be sane in every way except one.”

He watched Candler and there was a faint twisted grin on his lips. “You mean I should think I’m Napoleon?”

Candler gestured slightly. “Choose your own delusion. But—isn’t that one a natural? I mean, the boys around the office always kidding you and calling you Nappy. And—” He finished weakly, “—and everything.”

And then Candler looked at him squarely. “Want to do it?”

He stood up. “I think so. I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow morning after I’ve slept on it, but unofficially—yes. Is that good enough?”

Candler nodded.

He said, “I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off; I’m going to the library to read up on paranoia. Haven’t anything else to do anyway. And I’ll talk to Charlie Doerr this evening. Okay?”

“Fine. Thanks.”

He grinned at Candler. He leaned across the desk. He said, “I’ll let you in on a little secret, now that things have gone his far. Don’t tell anyone. I am Napoleon!”

It was a good exit line, so he went out.

II

He got his hat and coat and went outside, out of the air-conditioning and into the hot sunlight. Out of the quiet madhouse of a newspaper office after deadline, into the quieter madhouse of the streets on a sultry July afternoon.

He tilted his panama back on his head and ran his handkerchief across his forehead. Where was he going? Not to the library to bone up on paranoia; that had been a gag to get off for the rest of the afternoon. He’d read everything the library had on paranoia—and on allied subjects—over two years ago. He was an expert on it. He could fool any psychiatrist in the country into thinking that he was sane—or that he wasn’t.

He walked north to the park and sat down on one of the benches in the shade. He put his hat on the bench beside him and mopped his forehead again.

He stared out at the grass, bright green in the sunlight, at the pigeons with their silly-head-bobbing method of walking, at a red squirrel that came down one side of a tree, looked about him and scurried up the other side of the same tree.

And he thought back to the wall of amnesia of three years ago.

The wall that hadn’t been a wall at all. The phrase intrigued him: a wall at all. Pigeons on the grass, alas. A wall at all.

It wasn’t a wall at all; it was a shift, an abrupt change. A line had been drawn between two lives. Twenty-seven years of a life before the accident. Three years of a life since the accident.

They were not the same life.

But no one knew. Until this afternoon he had never even hinted the truth—if it was the truth—to anyone. He’d used it as an exit line in leaving Candler’s office, knowing Candler would take it as a gag. Even so, one had to be careful; use a gagline like that often, and people begin to wonder.

The fact that his extensive injuries from that accident had included a broken jaw was probably responsible for the fact that today he was free and not in an insane asylum. That broken jaw—it had been in a cast when he’d returned to consciousness forty-eight hours after his car had run head-on into a truck ten miles out of town—had prevented him from talking for three weeks.

And by the end of three weeks, despite the pain and the confusion that had filled them, he’d had a chance to think things over. He’d invented the wall. The amnesia, the convenient amnesia that was so much more believable than the truth as he knew it.

But was the truth as he knew it?

That was the haunting ghost that had ridden him for three years now, since the very hour when he had awakened to whiteness in a white room and a stranger, strangely dressed, had been sitting beside a bed the like of which had been in no field hospital he’d ever heard of or seen. A bed with an overhead framework. And when he looked from the stranger’s face down at his own body, he saw that one of his legs and both of his arms were in casts and that the cast of the leg stuck upward at the angle, a rope running over a pulley holding it so.

He’d tried to open his mouth to ask where he was, what had happened to him, and that was when he had discovered the cast on his jaw.

He’d stared at the stranger, hoping the latter would have sense enough to volunteer the information and the stranger had grinned at him and said, “Hi, George. Back with us, huh? You’ll be all right.”

And there was something strange about the language until he placed what it was. English. Was he in the hands of the English? And it was a language, too, which he knew little of, yet he understood the stranger perfectly. And why did the stranger call him George?

Maybe some of the doubt, some of the fierce bewilderment, showed in his eyes, for the stranger leaned closer to the bed. He said, “Maybe you’re still confused, George. You were in a pretty bad smashup. You ran that coupe of yours head-on into a gravel truck. That was two days ago, and you’re just coming out of it for the first time. You’re all right, but you’ll be in the hospital for a while, till all the bones you busted knit. Nothing seriously wrong with you.”

And then waves of pain had come and swept away the confusion, and he had closed his eyes.

Another voice in the room said, “We’re going to give you a hypo, Mr. Vine,” but he hadn’t dared open his eyes again. It was easier to fight the pain without seeing.

There had been the prick of a needle in his upper arm. And pretty soon there’d been nothingness.

When he came back again—twelve hours later, he learned afterwards—it had been to the same white room, the same strange bed, but this time there was a woman in the room, a woman in a strange white costume standing at the foot of the bed studying a paper that was fastened on a niece of board.

She had smiled at him when she saw that his eyes were open. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Vine. Hope you’re feeling better. I’ll tell Dr. Holt that you’re back with us.”

She went away and came back with a man who was also strangely dressed, in roughly the same fashion as had been the stranger who had called him George.

The doctor looked at him and chuckled. “Got a patient, for once, who can’t talk back to me. Or even write notes.” Then his face sobered. “Are you in pain, though? Blink once if you’re not, twice if you are.”

The pain wasn’t really very bad this time, and he blinked once. The doctor nodded with satisfaction. “That cousin of yours,” he said, “has kept calling up. He’ll be glad to know you’re going to be back in shape to—well, to listen if not to talk. Guess it won’t hurt you to see him a while this evening.”

The nurse rearranged his bedclothing and then, mercifully, both she and the doctor had gone, leaving him alone to straighten out his chaotic thoughts.

Straighten them out? That had been three years ago, and he hadn’t been able to straighten them out yet:

The startling fact that they’d spoken English and that he’d understood that barbaric tongue perfectly, despite his slight previous knowledge of it. How could an accident have made him suddenly fluent in a language which he had known but slightly?

The startling fact that they’d called him by a different name. “George” had been the name used by the man who’d been beside his bed last night. “Mr. Vine,” the nurse had called him. George Vine, an English name, surely.

But there was one thing a thousand times more startling than either of those: It was what last night’s stranger (Could he be the “cousin” of whom the doctor had spoken?) had told him about the accident. ” You ran that coupe of yours head-on into a gravel truck.”

The amazing thing, the contradictory thing, was that he knew what a coupe was and what a truck was. Not that he had any recollection of having driven either, of the accident itself, or of anything beyond that moment when he’d been sitting in the tent after Lodi—but—but how could a picture of a coupe, something driven by a gasoline engine, arise to his mind when such a concept had never been in his mind before.

There was that mad mingling of two worlds—the one sharp and clear and definite. The world he’d lived his twenty-seven years of life in, in the world into which he’d been born twenty-seven years ago, on August 15th, 1769, in Corsica. The world in which he’d gone to sleep—it seemed like last night—in his tent at Lodi, as General of the Army in Italy, after his first important victory in the field.

And then there was this disturbing world into which he had awakened, this white world in which people spoke an English—now that he thought of it—which was different from the English he had heard spoken at Brienne, in Valence, at Toulon, and yet which he understood perfectly, which he knew instinctively that he could speak if his jaw were not in a cast. This world in which people called him George Vine, and in which, strangest of all, people used words that he did not know, could not conceivably know, and yet which brought pictures to his mind.

Coupe, truck. They were both forms of—the word came to his mind unbidden—automobiles. He concentrated on what an automobile was and how it worked, and the information was there. The cylinder block, the pistons driven by explosions of gasoline vapor, ignited by a spark of electricity from a generator.

Electricity. He opened his eyes and looked upward at the shaded light in the ceiling, and he knew, somehow, that it was an electric light, and in a general way he knew what electricity was.

The Italian Galvani—yes, he’d read of some experiments of Galvani, but they hadn’t encompassed anything practical such as a light like that. And staring at the shaded light, he visualized behind it water power running dynamos, miles of wire, motors running generators. He caught his breath at the concept that came to him out of his own mind, or part of his own mind.

The faint, fumbling experiments of Galvani with their weak currents and kicking frogs’ legs had scarcely fore-shadowed the unmysterious mystery of that light up in the ceiling; and that was the strangest thing yet; part of his mind found it mysterious and another part took it for granted and understood in a general sort of way how it all worked.

Let’s see, he thought, the electric light was invented by Thomas Alva Edison somewhere around—Ridiculous; he’d been going to say around 1900, and it was now only 1796!

And then the really horrible thing came to him and he tried—painfully, in vain—to sit up in bed. It had been 1900, his memory told him, and Edison had died in 1931. And a man named Napoleon Bonaparte had died a hundred and ten years before that, in 1821.

He’d nearly gone insane then.

And, sane or insane, only the fact that he could not speak had kept him out of a madhouse; it gave him time to think things out, time to realize that his only chance lay in pretending amnesia, in pretending that he remembered nothing of life prior to the accident. They don’t put you in a madhouse for amnesia. They tell you who you are, let you go back to what they tell you your former life was. They let you pick up the threads and weave them, while you try to remember.

Three years ago he’d done that. Now, tomorrow, he was going to a psychiatrist and say that he was—Napoleon!

III

The slant of the sun was greater. Overhead a big bird of a plane droned by and he looked up at it and began laughing, quietly to himself—not the laughter of madness. True laughter because it sprang from the conception of Napoleon Bonaparte riding in a plane like that and from the overwhelming incongruity of that idea.

It came to him then that he’d never ridden in a plane, that he remembered. Maybe George Vine had; at some time in the twenty-seven years of life George Vine had spent, he must have. But did that mean that he had ridden in one? That was a question that was part of the big question.

He got up and started to walk again. It was almost five o’clock; pretty soon Charlie Doerr would he leaving the paper and going home for dinner. Maybe he’d better phone Charlie and he sure he’d be home this evening.

He headed for the nearest bar and phoned; he got Charlie just in time. He said, “This is George. Going to be home this evening?”

“Sure, George. I was going to a poker game, but I called it off when I learned you’d be around.”

“When you learned—Oh, Candler talked to you?”

“Yeah. Say, I didn’t know you’d phone me or I’d have called Marge, but how about coming out for dinner? It’ll be all right with her; I’ll call her now if you can.”

He said, “Thanks, no, Charlie. Got a dinner date. And say, about that card game; you can go. I can get there about seven and we won’t have to talk all evening; an hour’ll be enough. You wouldn’t be leaving before eight anyway.”

Charlie said, “Don’t worry about it; I don’t much want to go anyway, and you haven’t been out for a while. So I’ll see you at seven, then.”

From the phone booth, he walked over to the bar and ordered a beer. He wondered why he’d turned down the invitation to dinner; probably because, subconsciously, he wanted another couple of hours by himself before he talked to anyone, even Charlie and Marge.

He sipped his beer slowly, because he wanted to make it last; he had to stay sober tonight, plenty sober. There was still time to change his mind; he’d left himself a loophole, however small. He could still go to Candler in the morning and say he’d decided not to do it.

Over the rim of his glass he stared at himself in the back-bar mirror. Small, sandy-haired, with freckles on his nose, stocky. The small and stocky part fitted all right; but the rest of it! Not the remotest resemblance.

He drank another beer slowly, and that made it half past five.

He wandered out again and walked, this time toward town. He walked past the Blade and looked up to the third floor and at the window he’d been working out of when Candler had sent for him. He wondered if he’d ever sit by that window again and look out across a sunlit afternoon.

Maybe. Maybe not.

He thought about Clare. Did he want to see her tonight?

Well, no, to be honest about it, he didn’t. But if he disappeared for two weeks or so without having even said good-bye to her, then he’d have to write her off his books; she wouldn’t like that.

He’d better.

He stopped in at a drug store and called her home. He said, “This is George, Clare. Listen, I’m being sent out of town tomorrow on an assignment; don’t know how long I’ll be gone. One of those things that might be a few days or a few weeks. But could I see you late this evening, to say so-long?”

“Why sure, George. What time?”

“It might be after nine, but not much after. That be okay? I’m seeing Charlie first, on business; may not be able to get away before nine.”

“Of course, George. Any time.”

He stopped in at a hamburger stand, although he wasn’t hungry, and managed to eat a sandwich and a piece of pie. That made it a quarter after six and, if he walked, he’d get to Charlie’s at just about the right time. So he walked.

Charlie met him at the door. With finger on his lips, he jerked his head backward toward the kitchen where Marge was wiping dishes. He whispered, “I didn’t tell Marge, George. It’d worry her.”

He wanted to ask Charlie why it would, or should, worry Marge, but he didn’t. Maybe he was a little afraid of the answer. It would have to mean that Marge was worrying about him already, and that was a bad sign. He thought he’d been carrying everything off pretty well for three years now.

Anyway, he couldn’t ask because Charlie was leading him into the living room and the kitchen was within easy earshot, and Charlie was saying, “Glad you decided you’d like a game of chess, George. Marge is going out tonight; movie she wants to sec down at the neighborhood show. I was going to that card game out of self-defense, but I didn’t want to.”

He got the chessboard and men out of the closet and started to set up a game on the coffee table.

Marge came in with a try bearing tall cold glasses of beer and put it down beside the chessboard. She said, “Hi, George. Hear you’re going away a couple of weeks.”

He nodded. “But I don’t know where. Candler—the managing editor—asked me if I’d be free for an out of town assignment and I said sure, and he said he’d tell me about it tomorrow.”

Charlie was holding out clenched hands, a pawn in each, and he touched Charlie’s left hand and got white. He moved pawn to king’s fourth and, when Charlie did the same, advanced his queen’s pawn.

Marge was fussing with her hat in front of the mirror. She said, “If you’re not here when I get back, George, so long and good luck.”

He said, “Thanks, Marge. ’Bye.”

He made a few more moves before Marge came over, ready to go, kissed Charlie goodbye and then kissed him lightly on the forehead. She said, “Take care of yourself, George.”

For a moment his eyes met her pale blue ones and he thought, she is worrying about me. It scared him a little.

After the door had closed behind her, he said, “Let’s not finish the game, Charlie. Let’s get to the brass tacks, because I’ve got to see Clare about nine. Dunno how long I’ll gone, so I can’t very well not say good-bye to her.”

Charlie looked up at him. “You and Clare serious, George?”

“I don’t know.”

Charlie picked up his beer and took a sip. Suddenly his voice was brisk and businesslike. He said, ” All right, let’s sit on the brass tacks. We’ve got an appointment for eleven o’clock tomorrow morning with a guy named Irving, Dr. J. E. Irving, in the Appleton Block. He’s a psychiartrist; Dr. Randolph recommended him.

“I called him up this afternoon after Candler had talked to me; Candler had already phoned Randolph. My story was this: I gave my right name. I’ve got a cousin who’s been acting queer lately and whom I wanted him to talk to. I didn’t give the cousin’s name. I didn’t tell him in what way you’d been acting queer; I ducked the question and said I’d rather have him judge for himself without prejudice. I said I’d talked you into talking to a psychiatrist and that the only one I knew of was Randolph; that I’d called Randolph who said he didn’t do much private practice and recommended Irving. I told him I was your nearest living relative.

“That leaves the way open to Randolph for the second name on the certificate. If you can talk Irving into thinking you’re really insane and he wants to sign you up, I can insist on having Randolph, whom I wanted in the first place. And this time, of course, Randolph will agree.”

“You didn’t say a thing about what kind of insanity you suspected me of having?”

Charlie shook his head. He said, “So, anyway, neither of us goes to work at the Blade tomorrow. I’ll leave home the usual time so Marge won’t know anything, but I’ll meet you downtown—say, in the lobby of the Christina—at a quarter of eleven. And if you can convince Irving that you’re committable—if that’s the word—we’ll get Randolph right away and get the whole thing settled tomorrow.”

“And if I change my mind?”

“Then I’ll call the appointment off. That’s all. Look, isn’t that all there is to talk over? Let’s play this game of chess out; it’s only twenty after seven.”

He shook his head. “I’d rather talk. Charlie. One thing you forgot to cover, anyway. After tomorrow. How often you coming to see me to pick up bulletins for Candler?”

“Oh, sure, I forgot that. As often as visiting hours will permit—three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday afternoons. Tomorrow’s Friday, so if you get in, the first time I’ll he able to see you is Monday.”

“Okay. Say, Charlie, did Candler even hint to you at what the story is that I’m supposed to get in there?”

Charlie Doerr shook his head slowly. “Not a word. What is it? Or is it too secret for you to talk about?”

He stared at Charlie, wondering. And suddenly he felt that he couldn’t tell the truth; that he didn’t know either. It would make him look too silly. It hadn’t sounded so foolish when Candler had given the reason—a reason, anyway—for not telling him, but it would sound foolish now.

He said, “If he didn’t tell you, I guess I’d better not either, Charlie.” And since that didn’t sound too convincing, he added, “I promised Candler I wouldn’t.”

Both glasses of beer were empty by then, and Charlie took them into the kitchen for refilling.

He followed Charlie, somehow preferring the informality of the kitchen. He sat a-straddle on a kitchen chair, leaning his elbows on the back of it, and Charlie leaned against the refrigerator.

Candler said. “Prosit!” and they drank, and then Charlie asked, “Have you got your story ready for Doc Irving?”

He nodded. “Did Candler tell you what I’m to tell him?”

“You mean, that you’re Napoleon?” Charlie chuckled. Did that chuckle quite ring true? He looked at Charlie, and he knew that what he was thinking was completely incredible. Charlie was square and honest as they came. Charlie and Marge were his best friends; they’d been his best friends for three years that he knew of. Longer than that, a hell of a lot longer, according to Charlie. But beyond those three years—that was something else again.

He cleared his throat because the words were going to stick a little. But he had to ask, he had to be sure. “Charlie, I’m going to ask you a hell of a question. Is this business on the up and up?”

“Huh?”

“It’s a hell of a thing to ask. But—look, you and Candler don’t think I’m crazy, do you? You didn’t work this out between you to get me put away—or anyway examined—painlessly, without my knowing it was happening, till too late, did you?”

Charlie was staring at him. He said, “Jeez, George, you don’t think I’d do a thing like that, do you?”

“No, I don’t. But you could think it was for my own good, and you might on that basis. Look, Charlie, if it is that, if you think that, let me point out that this isn’t fair. I’m going up against a psychiatrist tomorrow to lie to him, to try to convince him that I have delusions. Not to be honest with him. And that would be unfair as hell, to me. You see that, don’t you, Charlie?”

Charlie’s face got a little white. He said slowly, “Before God, George, it’s nothing like that. All I know about this is what Candler and you have told me.”

“You think I’m sane, fully sane?”

Charlie licked his lips. He said, “You want it straight?”

“Yes.”

“I never doubted it, until this moment. Unless—well, amnesia is a form of mental aberration, I suppose, and you’ve never got over that, but that isn’t what you mean, is it?”

“No.”

“Then, until right now—George, that sounds like a persecution complex, if you really meant what you asked me. A conspiracy to get you to—Surely you can see how ridiculous it is. What possible reason would either Candler or I have to get you to lie yourself into being committed?”

He said, “I’m sorry, Charlie. It was just a screwy momentary notion. No, I don’t think that, of course.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Let’s finish that chess game, huh?”

“Fine. Wait till I give us a refill to take along.”

He played carelessly and managed to lose within fifteen minutes. He turned down Charlie’s offer of a chance for revenge and leaned back in his chair.

He said, “Charlie, ever hear of chessmen coming in red and black?”

“N-no. Either black and white, or red and white, any I’ve ever seen. Why?”

“Well—” He grinned. “I suppose I oughtn’t to tell you this after just making you wonder whether I’m really sane after all, but I’ve been having recurrent dreams recently. No crazier than ordinary dreams except that I’ve been dreaming the same things over and over. One of them is something about a game between the red and the black; I don’t even know whether it’s chess. You know how it is when you dream; things seem to make sense whether they do or not. In the dream, I don’t wonder whether the red-and-black business is chess or not; I know, I guess, or seem to know. But the knowledge doesn’t carry over. You know what I mean?”

“Sure. Go on.”

“Well, Charlie, I’ve been wondering if it just might have something to do with the other side of that wall of amnesia I’ve never been able to cross. This is the first time in my—well, not in my life, maybe, but in the three years I remember of it, that I’ve had recurrent dreams. I wonder if—if my memory may not be trying to get through.

“Did I ever have a set of red and black chessman, for instance? Or, in any school I went to, did they have intramural basketball or baseball between red teams and black teams, or—or anything like that?”

Charlie thought for a long moment before he shook his head. “No,” he said, “nothing like that. Of course there’s red and black in roulette—rouge et noir. And it’s the two colors in a deck of playing cards.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t tie in with cards or roulette. It’s not—not like that. It’s a game between the red and the black. They’re the players, somehow. Think hard, Charlie; not about where you might have run into that idea, but where I might have.”

He watched Charlie struggle and after a while he said, “Okay, don’t sprain your brain, Charlie. Try this one. The brightly shining.”

“The brightly shining what?”

“Just that phrase, the brightly shining. Does it mean anything to you, at all?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he said. “Forget it.”

IV

He was early and he walked past Clare’s house, as far as the corner and stood under the big elm there, smoking the rest of his cigarette, thinking bleakly.

There wasn’t anything to think about, really; all he had to do was say good-bye to her. Two easy syllables. And stall off her questions as to where he was going, exactly how long he’d be gone. Be quiet and casual and unemotional about it, just as though they didn’t mean anything in particular to each other.

It had to be that way. He’d known Clare Wilson a year and a half now, and he’d kept her dangling that long; it wasn’t fair. This had to be the end, for her sake. He had about as much business asking a woman to marry him as—as a madman who thinks he’s Napoleon!

He dropped his cigarette and ground it viciously into the walk with his heel, then went back to the house, up on the porch, and rang the bell.

Clare herself came to the door. The light from the hallway behind her made her hair a circlet of spun gold around her shadowed face.

He wanted to take her into his arms so badly that he clenched his fists with the effort it took to keep his arms down.

Stupidly, he said, “Hi, Clare. How’s everything?”

“I don’t know, George. How is everything? Aren’t you coming in?”

She’d stepped back from the doorway to let him past and the light was on her face now, sweetly grave. She knew something was up, he thought; her expression and the tone of her voice gave that away.

He didn’t want to go in. He said, “It’s such a beautiful night, Clare. Let’s take a stroll.”

“All right, George.” She came out onto the porch. “It is a fine night, such beautiful stars.” She turned and looked at him. “Is one of them yours?”

He started a little. Then he stepped forward and took her elbow, guiding her down the porch steps. He said lightly, “All of them are mine. Want to buy any?”

“You wouldn’t give me one? Just a teeny little dwarf star, maybe? Even one that I’d have to use a telescope to see?”

They were out on the sidewalk then, out of hearing of the house, and abruptly her voice changed, the playful note dropped from it, and she asked another question, “What’s wrong, George?”

He opened his mouth to say nothing was wrong, and then closed it again. There wasn’t any lie that he could tell her, and he couldn’t tell her the truth, either. Her asking of that question, in that way, should have made things easier; it made them more difficult.

She asked another, “You mean to say good-bye for—for good, don’t you George?”

He said, “Yes,” and his mouth was very dry. He didn’t know whether it came out as an articulate monosyllable or not, and he wetted his lips and tried again. He said, “Yes, I’m afraid so, Clare.”

“Why?”

He couldn’t make himself turn to look at her, he stared blindly ahead. He said, “I—I can’t tell you, Clare. But it’s the only thing I can do. It’s best for both of us.”

“Tell me one thing, George. Are you really going away? Or was that just an excuse?”

“It’s true. I’m going away; I don’t know for how long. But don’t ask me where, please. I can’t tell you that.”

“Maybe I can tell you, George. Do you mind if I do?”

He minded all right; he minded terribly. But how could he say so? He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t say yes, either.

They were beside the park now, the little neighborhood park that was only a block square and didn’t offer much in the way of privacy, but which did have benches. And he steered her—or she steered him; he didn’t know which—into the park and they sat down on a bench. There were other people in the park, but not too near till he hadn’t answered her question.

She sat very close to him on the bench. She said, “You’ve been worried about your mind, haven’t you George?”

“Well—yes, in a way, yes, I have.”

“And you’re going away has something to do with that, hasn’t it? You’re going somewhere for observation or treatment, or both?”

“Something like that. It’s not as simple as that, Clare, and I—I just can’t tell you about it.”

She put her hand on his hand, lying on his knee. She said, “I knew it was something like that, George. And I don’t ask you to tell me anything about it.

“Just—just don’t say what you meant to say. Say so-long instead of good-bye. Don’t even write me, if you don’t want to. But don’t he noble and call everything off here and now, for my sake. At least wait until you’ve been wherever you’re going. Will you?”

He gulped. She made it sound so simple when actually it was so complicated. Miserably he said, “All right, Clare. If you want it that way.”

Abruptly she stood up. “Let’s get back, George.” He stood beside her. “But it’s early.”

“I know, but sometimes—Well, there’s a psychological moment to end a date, George. I know that sounds silly, but after what we’ve said, wouldn’t it be—uh—anticlimactic—to—”

He laughed a little. He said, “I see what you mean.”

They walked back to her home in silence. He didn’t know whether it was happy or unhappy silence; he was too mixed up for that.

On the shadowed porch, in front of the door, she turned and faced him. “George,” she said. Silence.

“Oh, damn you, George; quit being so noble or whatever you’re being. Unless, of course, you don’t love me. Unless this is just an elaborate form of—of runaround you’re giving me. Is it?”

There were only two things he could do. One was run like hell. The other was what he did. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Hungrily.

When that was over, and it wasn’t over too quickly, he was breathing a little hard and not thinking too clearly, for he was saying what he hadn’t meant to say at all, “I love you, Clare. I love you; I love you.”

And she said, “I love you, too, dear. You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” And he said, “Yes. Yes.”

It was four miles or so from her home to his rooming house, but he walked, and the walk seemed to take only seconds.

He sat at the window of his room, with the light out, thinking, but the thoughts went in the same old circles they’d gone in for three years.

No new factor had been added except that now he was going to stick his neck out, way out, miles out. Maybe, just maybe, this thing was going to be settled one way or the other.

Out there, out his window, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them his star of destiny? If so, he was going to follow it, follow it even into the madhouse if it led there. Inside him was a deeply rooted conviction that this wasn’t accident, that it wasn’t coincidence that had led to his being asked to tell the truth under guise of falsehood.

His star of destiny.

Brightly shining? No, the phrase from his dreams did not refer to that; it was not an adjective phrase, but a noun. The brightly shining? What was the brightly shining?

And the red and the black? He’d thought of everything Charlie had suggested, and other things, too. Checkers, for instance. But it was not that.

The red and the black.

Well, whatever the answer was, he was running full-speed toward it now, not away from it.

After a while he went to bed, but it was a long time before he went to sleep.

V

Charlie Doerr came out of the inner office marked Private and put his hand out. He said, “Good luck, George. The doe’s ready to talk to you now.”

He shook Charlie’s hand and said, “You might as well run along. I’ll see you Monday, first visiting day.”

“I’ll wait here,” Charlie said. “I took the day off work anyway, remember? Besides, maybe you won’t have to go. He dropped Charlie’s hand, and stared into Charlie’s face. He said slowly, “What do you mean, Charlie—maybe I won’t have to go.”

“Why—” Charlie looked puzzled. “Why, maybe he’ll tell you you’re all right, or just suggest regular visits to see him until you’re straightened out, or—” Charlie finished weakly, “—or something.”

Unbelievingly, he stared at Charlie. He wanted to ask, am I crazy or are you, but that sounded crazy to ask under the circumstances. But he had to be sure, sure that Charlie just hadn’t let something slip from his mind; maybe he’d fallen into the role he was supposed to be playing when he talked to the doctor just now. He asked, “Charlie, don’t you remember that—” And even of that question the rest seemed insane for him to be asking, with Charlie staring blankly at him. The answer was in Charlie’s face; it didn’t have to be brought to Charlie’s lips.

Charlie said again, “I’ll wait, of course. Good luck, George.”

He looked into Charlie’s eyes and nodded, then turned and went through the door marked Private. He closed it behind him, meanwhile studying the man who had been sitting behind the desk and who had risen as he entered. A big man, broad shouldered, iron gray hair.

“Dr. Irving?”

“Yes, Mr. Vine. Will you be seated, please?”

He slid into the comfortable, padded armchair across the desk from the doctor.

“Mr. Vine,” said the doctor, “a first interview of this sort is always a bit difficult. For the patient, I mean. Until you know me better, it will be difficult for you to overcome a certain natural reticence in discussing yourself. Would you prefer to talk, to tell things your own way, or would you rather I asked questions?”

He thought that over. He’d had a story ready, but those few words with Charlie in the waiting room had changed everything.

He said, “Perhaps you’d better ask questions.”

“Very well.” There was a pencil in Dr. Irving’s hand and paper on the desk before him. Where and when were you born?”

He took a deep breath. “To the best of my knowledge, in Corsica on August 15th, 1769. I don’t actually remember being born, of course. I do remember things from my boyhood on Corsica, though. We stayed there until I was ten, and after that I was sent to school at Brienne.”

Instead of writing, the doctor was tapping the paper lightly with the tip of the pencil. He asked, “What month and year is this?”

“August, 1947. Yes, I know that should make me a hundred and seventy-some years old. You want to know how I account for that. I don’t. Nor do I account for the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.”

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t attempt to account for the paradoxes or the discrepancies. I recognize them as such. But according to my own memory, and aside from logic pro or con, I was Napoleon for twenty-seven years. I won’t recount what happened during that time; it’s all down in the history books.

“But in 1796, after the battle of Lodi, while I was in charge of the armies in Italy, I went to sleep. As far as I knew, just as anyone goes to sleep anywhere, any time. But I woke up—with no sense whatever of duration, by the way—in a hospital in town here, and I was informed that my name was George Vine, that the year was 1944, and that I was twenty-seven years old.

“The twenty-seven years old part checked, and that was all. Absolutely all. I have no recollections of any parts of George Vine’s life, prior to his—my—waking up in the hospital after the accident. I know quite a bit about his early life now, but only because I’ve been told.

“I know when and where he was born, where he went to school, and when he started work at the Blade. I know when he enlisted in the army and when he was discharged—late in 1943—because I developed a trick knee after a leg injury. Not in combat, incidentally, and there wasn’t any ‘psycho-neurotic’ on my—his—discharge.”

The doctor quit doodling with the pencil. He asked, “You’ve felt this way for three years—and kept it a secret?”

“Yes. I had time to think things over after the accident, and yes, I decided then to accept what they told me about my identity. They’d have locked me up, of course. Incidentally, I’ve tried to figure out an answer. I’ve studied Dunne’s theory of time—even Charles Fort!” He grinned suddenly. “Ever read about Casper Hauser?”

Dr. Irving nodded.

“Maybe he was playing smart the way I did. And I wonder how many other amnesiacs pretended they didn’t know what happened prior to a certain date—rather than admit they had memories at obvious variance with the facts.”

Dr. Irving said slowly, ”

Your cousin informs me that you were a bit—ah—‘hipped’ was his word—on the subject of Napoleon before your accident. How do you account for that?”

“I’ve told you I don’t account for any of it. But I can verify that fact, aside from what Charlie Doerr says about it. Apparently I—the George Vine I, if I was ever George Vine—was quite interested in Napoleon, had read about him, made a hero of him, and had talked about him quite a bit. Enough so that the fellows he worked with at the Blade had nicknamed him ‘Nappy.’ ”

“I notice you distinguish between yourself and George Vine. Are you or are you not he?”

“I have been for three years. Before that—I have no recollection of being George Vine. I don’t think I was. I think—as nearly as I think anything—that I, three years ago, woke up in George Vine’s body.”

“Having done what for a hundred and seventy some years?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Incidentally, I don’t doubt that this is George Vine’s body, and with it I inherited his knowledge—except his personal memories. For example, I knew how to handle his job at the newspaper, although I didn’t remember any of the people I worked with there. I have his knowledge of English, for instance, and his ability to write. I knew how to operate a typewriter. My handwriting is the same as his.”

“If you think that you are not Vine, how do you account for that?”

He leaned forward. “I think part of me is George Vine, and part of me isn’t. I think some transference has happened which is outside the run of ordinary human experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s supernatural—nor that I’m insane. Does it?”

Dr. Irving didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “You kept this secret for three years, for understandable reasons. Now, presumably for other reasons, you decide to tell. What are the other reasons? What has happened to change your attitude?”

It was the question that had been bothering him.

He said slowly, “Because I don’t believe in coincidence. Because something in the situation itself has changed. Because I’m tired of pretending. Because I’m willing to risk imprisonment as a paranoic to find out the truth.”

“What in the situation has changed?”

“Yesterday it was suggested—by my employer—that I feign insanity for a practical reason. And the very kind of insanity which I have, if any: Surely, I will admit the possibility that I’m insane. But I can only operate on the theory that I’m not. You know that you’re Dr. Willard E. Irving; you can only operate on that theory—but how do you know you are? Maybe you’re insane, but you can only act as though you’re not.”

“You think your employer is part of a plot—ah—against you? You think there is a conspiracy to get you into a sanitarium?”

“I don’t know. Here’s what has happened since yesterday noon.” He took a deep breath. Then he plunged. He told Dr. Irving the whole story of his interview with Candler, what Candler had said about Dr. Randolph, about his talk with Charlie Doerr last night and about Charlie’s bewildering about-face in the waiting room.

“When he was through he said, “That’s all.” He looked at Dr. Irving’s expressionless face with more curiosity than concern, trying to read it. He added, quite casually, “You don’t believe me, of course. You think I’m insane.”

He met Irving’s eyes squarely. He said, “You have no choice—unless you would choose to believe I’m telling you an elaborate set of lies to convince you I’m insane. I mean, as a scientist and as a psychiatrist, you cannot even admit the possibility that the things I believe—know—are objectively true. Am I not right?”

“I fear that you are. So?”

“So go ahead and sign your commitment. I’m going to follow this thing through. Even to the detail of having Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph sign the second one.”

“You make no objection?”

“Would it do any good if I did?”

“On one point, yes, Mr. Vine. If a patient has a prejudice against—or a delusion concerning—one psychiatrist, it is best not to have him under that particular psychiatrist’s care. If you think Dr. Randolph is concerned in a plot against you, I would suggest that another one be named.”

He said softly, “Even if I choose Randolph?”

Dr. Irving waved a deprecating hand, “Of course, if both you and Mr. Doerr prefer—”

“We prefer.”

The iron gray head nodded gravely. “Of course you understand one thing; if Dr. Randolph and I decide you should go to the sanitarium, it will not be for custodial care. It will be for your recovery through treatment.”

He nodded.

Dr. Irving stood. “You’ll pardon me a moment? I’ll phone Dr. Randolph.”

He watched Dr. Irving go through a door to an inner room. He thought; there’s a phone on his desk right there; but he doesn’t want me to overhear the conversation.

He sat there very quietly until Irving came back and said, “Dr. Randolph is free. And I phoned for a cab to take us there. You’ll pardon me again? I’d like to speak to your cousin, Mr. Doerr.”

He sat there and didn’t watch the doctor leave in the opposite direction for the waiting room. He could have gone to the door and tried to catch words in the low-voiced conversation, but he didn’t. He just sat there until he heard the waiting room door open behind him and Charlie’s voice said, “Come on, George. The cab will be waiting downstairs by now.”

They went down in the elevator and the cab was there. Dr. Irving gave the address.

In the cab, about half way there, he said, “It’s a beautiful day,” and Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, it is.” The rest of the way he didn’t try it again and nobody said anything.

VI

He wore gray trousers and a gray shirt, open at the collar, and with no necktie that he might decide to hang himself with. No belt, either, for the same reason, although the trousers buttoned snugly enough around the waist that there was no danger of them falling off. Just as there was no danger of his falling out any of the windows; they were barred.

He was not in a cell, however; it was a large ward on the third floor. There were seven other men in the ward. His eyes ran over them. Two were playing checkers, sitting on the floor with the board on the floor between them. One sat in a chair, staring fixedly at nothing; two leaned against the bars of one of the open windows, looking out and talking casually and sanely. One read a magazine. One sat in a corner, playing smooth arpeggios on a piano that wasn’t there at all.

He stood leaning against the wall, watching the other seven. He’d been here two hours now; it seemed like two years.

The interview with Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph had gone smoothly; it had been practically a duplicate of his interview with Irving. And quite obviously, Dr. Randolph had never heard of him before.

He’d expected that, of course.

He felt very calm, now. For a while, he’d decided, he wasn’t going to think, wasn’t going to worry, wasn’t even going to feel.

He strolled over and stood watching the checker game. It was a sane checker game; the rules were being followed.

One of the men looked up and asked, “What’s your name?” It was a perfectly sane question; the only thing wrong with it was that the same man had asked the same question four times now within the two hours he’d been here.

He said, “George Vine.”

“Mine’s Bassington, Ray Bassington. Call me Ray. Are you insane?”

“No.”

“Some of us are and some of us aren’t. He is.” He looked at the man who was playing the imaginary piano. “Do you play checkers?”

“Not very well.”

“Good. We eat pretty soon now. Anything you want to know, just ask me.”

“How do you get out of here? Wait, I don’t mean that for a gag, or anything. Seriously, what’s the procedure?”

“You go in front of the board once a month. They ask you questions and decide if you go or stay. Sometimes they stick needles in you. What you down for?”

“Down for? What do you mean?”

“Feeble-minded, manic-depressive, dementia praecox, involutional melancholia—”

“Oh. Paranoia, I guess.”

“That’s bad. Then they stick needles in you.” A bell rang somewhere.

“That’s dinner,” said the other checker player. “Ever try to commit suicide? Or kill anyone?”

“No.”

“They’ll let you eat at an A table then, with knife and fork.”

The door of the ward was being opened. It opened outward and a guard stood outside and said, “All right.” They filed out, all except the man who was sitting in the chair staring into space.

“Know about him?” he asked Ray Bassington.

“He’ll miss a meal tonight. Manic-depressive, just going into the depressive stage. They let you miss one meal; if you’re not able to go to the next they take you and feed you. You a manic-depressive?”

“No.”

“You’re lucky. It’s hell when you’re on the downswing. Here, through this door.”

It was a big room. Tables and benches were crowded with men in gray shirts and gray trousers, like his. A guard grabbed his arm as he went through the doorway and said, “There. That seat.”

It was right beside the door. There was a tin plate, messy with food, and a spoon beside it. He asked, “Don’t I get a knife and fork? I was told—”

The guard gave him a shove toward the seat. “Observation period, seven days. Nobody gets silverware till their observation period’s over. Siddown.”

He sat down. No one at his table had silverware. All the others were eating, several of them noisily and messily. He kept his eyes on his own plate, unappetizing as that was. He toyed with his spoon and managed to eat a few pieces of potato out of the stew and one or two of the chunks of meat that were mostly lean.

The coffee was in a tin cup and he wondered why until he realized how breakable an ordinary cup would be and how lethal could be one of the heavy mugs cheap restaurants use.

The coffee was weak and cool; he couldn’t drink it. He sat back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was an empty plate and an empty cup in front of him and the man at his left was eating very rapidly. It was the man who’d been playing the non-existent piano.

He thought, if I’m here long enough, I’ll get hungry enough to eat that stuff. He didn’t like the thought of being there that long.

After a while a bell rang and they got up, one table at a time on signals he didn’t catch, and filed out. His group had come in last; it went out first.

Ray Bassington was behind him on the stairs. He said, “You’ll get used to it. What’d you say your name is?”

“George Vine.”

Bassington laughed. The door shut on them from the outside.

He saw it was dark outside. He went over to one of the windows and stared out through the bars. There was a single bright star that showed just above the top of the elm tree in the yard. His star? Well, he’d followed it here. A cloud drifted across it.

Someone was standing beside him. He turned his head and saw it was the man who’d been playing piano. He had a dark, foreign-looking face with intense black eyes; just then he was smiling, as though at a secret joke.

“You’re new here, aren’t you? Or just get put in this ward, which?”

“New. George Vine’s the name.”

“Baroni. Musician. Used to be, anyway. Now—let it go. Anything you want to know about the place?”

“Sure. How to get out of it.”

Baroni laughed, without particular amusement but not bitterly either. “First, convince them you’re all right again. Mind telling what’s wrong with you—or don’t you want to talk about it? Some of us mind, others don’t.”

He looked at Baroni, wondering which way he felt. Finally he said, “I guess I don’t mind. I think I’m Napoleon.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you Napoleon? If you aren’t, that’s one thing. Then maybe you’ll get out of here in six months or so. If you really are—that’s bad. You’ll probably die here.”

“Why? I mean, if I am, then I’m sane and—”

“Not the point. Point’s whether they think you’re sane or not. Way they figure, if you think you’re Napoleon you’re not sane. Q. E. D. You stay here.”

“Even if I tell them I’m convinced I’m George Vine?”

“They’ve worked with paranoia before. And that’s what they’ve got you down for, count on it. And any time a paranoiac gets tired of a place, he’ll try to lie his way out of it. They weren’t born yesterday. They know that.”

“In general, yes, but how—”

A sudden cold chill went down his spine. He didn’t have to finish the question. They stick needles in you—It hadn’t meant anything when Ray Bassington had said it.

The dark man nodded. “Truth serum,” he said. “When a paranoiac reaches the stage where he’s cured if he’s telling the truth, they make sure he’s telling it before they let him go.”

He thought what a beautiful trap it had been that he’d walked into. He’d probably die here, now.

He leaned his head against the cool iron bars and closed his eyes. He heard footsteps walking away from him and knew he was alone.

He opened his eyes and looked out into blackness; now the clouds had drifted across the moon, too. Clare, he thought; Clare.

A trap.

But—if there was a trap, there must be a trapper. He was sane or he was insane. If he was sane, he’d walked into a trap, and if there was a trap, there must be a trapper, or trappers.

If he was insane—

God, let it be that he was insane. That way everything made such sweetly simple sense, and someday he might be out of here, he might go back to working for the Blade, possibly even with a memory of all the years he’d worked there. Or that George Vine had worked there. That was the catch. He wasn’t George Vine. And there was another catch. He wasn’t insane. The cool iron of the bars against his forehead.

After a while he heard the door open and looked around. Two guards had come in. A wild hope, reasonless, surged up inside him. It didn’t last.

“Bedtime, you guys,” said one of the guards. He looked at the manic-depressive sitting motionless on the chair and said, “Nuts. Hey, Bassington, help me get this guy in.”

The other guard, a heavy-set man with hair close-cropped like a wrestler’s, came over to the window. “You. You’re the new one in here. Vine, ain’t it?” He nodded.

“Want trouble, or going to be good?” Fingers of the guard’s right hand clenched, the fist went back. ” Don’t want trouble. Got enough.”

The guard relaxed a little. “Okay, stick to that and you’ll get along. Vacant bunk’s in there.” He pointed. “One on the right. Make it up yourself in the morning. Stay in the bunk and mind your own business. If there’s any noise or trouble here in the ward, we come in and take care of it. Our own way. You wouldn’t like it.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded. He turned and went through the door of the cubicle to which the guard had pointed. There were two bunks in there; the manic-depressive who’d been on the chair was lying flat on his back on the other, staring blindly up at the ceiling through wide-open eyes. They’d pulled his slippers off, leaving him otherwise dressed.

He turned to his own bunk, knowing there was nothing on earth he could do for the other man, no way he could reach him through the impenetrable shell of blank misery which is the manic-depressive’s intermittent companion.

He turned down a gray sheet-blanket on his own bunk and found under it another gray sheet-blanket atop a hard but smooth pad. He slipped off his shirt and trousers and hung them on a hook on the wall at the foot of his bed. He looked around for a switch to turn off the light overhead and couldn’t find one. But, even as he looked, the light went out.

A single light still burned somewhere in the ward room outside, and by it he could see to take his shoes and socks off and get into the bunk.

He lay very quiet for a while, hearing only two sounds, both faint and seeming far away. Somewhere in another cubicle off the ward someone was singing quietly to himself, a wordless monody; somewhere else someone else was sobbing. In his own cubicle, he couldn’t hear even the sound of breathing from his room mate.

Then there was a shuffle of bare feet and someone in the open doorway said, “George Vine.”

He said, “Yes?”

“Shhh, not so loud. This is Bassington. Want to tell you about that guard; I should have warned you before. Don’t ever tangle with him.”

“I didn’t.”

“I heard; you were smart. He’ll slug you to pieces if you give him half a chance. He’s a sadist. A lot of guards are; that’s why they’re bughousers; that’s what they call themselves, bughousers. If they get fired one place for being too brutal they get on at another one. He’ll be in again—in the morning; I thought I’d warn you.”

The shadow in the doorway was gone.

He lay there in the dimness, the almost-darkness, feeling rather than thinking. Wondering. Did mad people ever know that they were mad? Could they tell? Was every one of them sure, as he was sure—?

That quiet, still thing lying in the bunk near his, inarticulately suffering, withdrawn from human reach into a profound misery beyond the understanding of the sane—

“Napoleon Bonaparte!”

A clear voice, but had it been within his mind, or from without? He sat up on the bunk. His eyes pierced the dimness, could discern no form, no shadow, in the doorway.

He said, “Yes?”

VII

Only then, sitting up on the hunk and having answered “Yes,” did he realize the name by which the voice had called him.

“Get up. Dress.”

He swung his legs out over the edge of the bunk, stood up. He reached for his shirt and was slipping his arms into it before he stopped and asked, “Why?”

“To learn the truth.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Do not speak aloud. I can hear you. I am within you and without. I have no name.”

“Then what are you?” He said it aloud, without thinking.

“An instrument of The Brightly Shining.”

He dropped the trousers he’d been holding. He sat down carefully on the edge of the bunk, leaned over and groped around for them.

His mind groped, too. Groped for he knew not what. Finally he found a question—the question. He didn’t ask it aloud this time; he thought it, concentrated on it as he straightened out his trousers and thrust his legs in them.

“Am I mad?”

The answer—No—came clear and sharp as a spoken word, but had it been spoken? Or was it a sound that was only in his mind?

He found his shoes and pulled them on his feet. As he fumbled the laces into some sort of knots, he thought, “Who—what—is The Brightly Shining?”

“The Brightly Shining is that which is Earth. It is the intelligence of our planet. It is one of three intelligences in the solar system, one of many in the universe. Earth is one; it is called The Brightly Shining.”

“I do not understand.” he thought.

“You will. Are you ready?”

He finished the second knot. He stood up. The voice said, “Come. Walk silently.”

It was as though he was being led through the almost-darkness, although he felt no physical touch upon him; he saw no physical presence beside him. But he walked confidently, although quietly on tiptoe, knowing he would not walk into anything nor stumble. Through the big room that was the ward, and then his outstretched hand touched the knob of a door.

He turned it gently and the door opened inward. Light blinded him. The voice said, “Wait,” and he stood immobile. He could hear sound—the rustle of paper, the turn of a page—outside the door, in the lighted corridor.

Then from across the hall came the sound of a shrill scream. A chair scraped and feet hit the floor of the corridor, walking away toward the sound of the scream. A door opened and closed.

The voice said, “Come,” and he pulled the door open the rest of the way and went outside, past the desk and the empty chair that had been just outside the door of the ward.

Another door, another corridor. The voice said, “Wait,” the voice said, “Come”; this time a guard slept. He tip-toed past. Down steps.

He thought the question, “Where am I going?”

“Mad,” said the voice.

“But you said I wasn’t—” He’d spoken aloud and the sound startled him almost more than had the answer to his last question. And in the silence that followed the words he’d spoken there came—from the bottom of the stairs and around the corner—the sound of a buzzing switchboard, and someone said, “Yes?… Okay, Doctor, I’ll be right up.” Footsteps and the closing of an elevator door.

He went down the remaining stairs and around the corner and he was in the front main hall. There was an empty desk with a switchboard beside it. He walked past it and to the front door. It was bolted and he threw the heavy bolt.

He went outside, into the night.

He walked quietly across cement, across gravel; then his shoes were on grass and he didn’t have to tiptoe any more. It was as dark now as the inside of an elephant; he felt the presence of trees nearby and leaves brushed his face occasionally, but he walked rapidly, confidently and his hand went forward just in time to touch a brick wall.

He reached up and he could touch the top of it; he pulled himself up and over it. There was broken glass on the flat top of the wall; he cut his clothes and his flesh badly, but he felt no pain, only the wetness of blood and the stickiness of blood.

He walked along a lighted road, he walked along dark and empty streets, he walked down a darker alley. He opened the back gate of a yard and walked to the back door of a house. He opened the door and went in. There was a lighted room at the front of the house; he could see the rectangle of light at the end of a corridor. He went along the corridor and into the lighted room.

Someone who had been seated at a desk stood up. Someone, a man, whose face he knew but whom he could not—

“Yes,” said the man, smiling, “you know me, but you do not know me. Your mind is under partial control and your ability to recognize me is blocked out. Other than that and your analgesia—you are covered with blood from the glass on the wall, but you don’t feel any pain—your mind is normal and you are sane.”

“What’s it all about?” he asked. “Why was I brought here?,”

“Because you are sane. I’m sorry about that, because you can’t be. It is not so much that you retained memory of your previous life, after you’d been moved. That happens. It is that you somehow know something of what you shouldn’t—something of The Brightly Shining, and of the Game between the red and the black. For that reason—”

“For that reason, what?” he asked.

The man he knew and did not know smiled gently. “For that reason you must know the rest, so that you will know nothing at all. For everything will add to nothing. The truth will drive you mad.”

“That I do not believe.”

“Of course you don’t. If the truth were conceivable to you, it would not drive you mad. But you cannot remotely conceive the truth.”

A powerful anger surged up within him. He stared at the familiar face that he knew and did not know, and he stared down at himself; at the torn and bloody gray uniform, at his torn and bloody hands. The hands hooked like claws with the desire to kill—someone, the someone, whoever it was, who stood before him.

He asked, “What arc you?”

“I am an instrument of The Brightly Shining.”

“The same which led me here, or another?”

“One is all, all is one. Within the whole and its parts, there is no difference. One instrument is another and the red is the black and the black is the white and there is no difference. The Brightly Shining is the soul of Earth. I use soul as the nearest word in your vocabulary.”

Hatred was almost a bright light. It was almost something that he could lean into, lean his weight against.

He asked, “What is The Brightly Shining?” He made the words a curse in his mouth.

“Knowing will make you mad. You want to know?”

“Yes.” He made a curse out of that simple, sibilant syllable.

The lights were dimming. Or was it his eyes? The room was becoming dimmer, and at the same time receding. It was becoming a tiny cube of dim light, seen from afar and outside, from somewhere in the distant dark, ever receding, turning into a pinpoint of light, and within that point of light ever the hated. Thing, the man—or was it a man?—standing beside the desk.

Into darkness, into space, up and apart from the earth—a dim sphere in the night, a receding sphere outlined against the spangled blackness of eternal space, occulting the stars, a disk of black.

It stopped receding, and time stopped. It was as though the clock of the universe stood still. Beside him, out of the void, spoke the voice of the instrument of The Shining One.

“Behold,” it said. “The Being of Earth.”

He beheld. Not as though an outward change was occurring, but an inward one, as though his senses were being changed to enable him to perceive something hitherto unseeable.

The ball that was Earth began to glow. Brightly to shine.

“You see the intelligence that rules Earth,” said the voice. “The sum of the black and the white and the red, that are one, divided only as the lobes of a brain are divided, the trinity that is one.”

The glowing ball and the stars behind it faded, and the darkness became deeper darkness and then there was dim light, growing brighter, and he was back in the room with the man standing at the desk.

“You saw,” said the man whom he hated. “But you do not understand. You ask, what you have seen, what is The Brightly Shining? It is a group intelligence, the true intelligence of Earth, one intelligence among three in the Solar system, one among many in the universe.

“What, then, is man? Men are pawns, in games of—to you—unbelievable complexity, between the red and the black, the white and the black, for amusement. Played by one part of an organism against another part, to while away an instant of eternity. There are vaster games, played between galaxies. Not with man.

“Man is a parasite peculiar to Earth, which tolerates his presence for a little while. He exists nowhere else in the cosmos, and he does not exist here for long. A little while, a few chessboard wars, which he thinks he fights himself—You begin to understand.”

The man at the desk smiled.

“You want to know of yourself. Nothing is less important. A move was made, before Lodi. The opportunity was there for a move of the red; a stronger, more ruthless personality was needed; it was a turning point in history—which means in the game. Do you understand now? A pinch-hitter was put in to become Emperor.”

He managed two words. “And then?”

“The Brightly Shining does not kill. You had to be put somewhere, some time. Long later a man named George Vine was killed in an accident; his body was still usable. George Vine had not been insane, but he had had a Napoleonic complex. The transference was amusing.”

“No doubt.” Again it was impossible to reach the man at the desk. The hatred itself was a wall between them. “Then George Vine is dead?”

“Yes. And you, because you knew a little too much, must go mad so that you will know nothing. Knowing the truth will drive you mad.”

“No!”

The instrument smiled.

VIII

The room, the cube of light, dimmed; it seemed to tilt. Still standing, he was going over backward, his position becoming horizontal instead of vertical.

His weight was on his back and under him was the soft-hard smoothness of his bunk, the roughness of a gray sheet blanket. And he could move; he sat up.

He had been dreaming? Had he really been outside the asylum? He held up his hands, touched one to the other, and they were wet with something sticky. So was the front of his shirt and the thighs and knees of his trousers.

And his shoes were on.

The blood was there from climbing the wall. And now the analgesia was leaving, and pain was beginning to come into his hands, his chest, his stomach and his legs. Sharp biting pain.

He said aloud. “I am not mad. I am not mad.” Was he screaming it?

A voice said, “No. Not yet.” Was it the voice that had been here in the room before? Or was it the voice of the man who had stood in the lighted room? Or had both been the same voice?

It said, “Ask, ‘What is man?’ ”

Mechanically, he asked it.

“Man is a blind alley in evolution, who came too late too compete, who has always been controlled and played with by The Brightly Shining, which was old and wise before man walked erect.

“Man is a parasite upon a planet populated before he came, populated by a Being that is one and many, a billion cells but a single mind, a single intelligence, a single will—as is true of every other populated planet in the universe.

“Man is a joke, a clown, a parasite. He is nothing; he will be less.”

“Come and go mad.”

He was getting out of bed again; he was walking. Through the doorway of the cubicle, along the ward. To the door that led to the corridor; a thin crack of light showed under it. But this time his hand did not reach out for the knob. Instead he stood there facing the closed door, and it began to glow; slowly it became light and visible.

As though from somewhere an invisible spotlight played upon it, the door became a visible rectangle in the surrounding blackness; as brightly visible as the crack under it.

The voice said, “You see before you a cell of your ruler, a cell unintelligent in itself, yet a tiny part of a unit which is intelligent, one of a million units which make up the intelligence which rules the earth—and you. And which earth-wide intelligence is one of a million intelligences which rule the universe.”

“The door? I don’t—”

The voice spoke no more; it had withdrawn, but somehow inside his mind was the echo of silent laughter.

He leaned closer and saw what he was meant to see. An ant was crawling up the door.

His eyes followed it, and numbing horror crawled apace, up his spine. A hundred things that had been told and shown him suddenly fitted into a pattern, a pattern of sheer horror. The black, the white, the red; the black ants, the white ants, the red ants; the players with men, separate lobes of a single group brain, the intelligence that was one. Man an accident, a parasite, a pawn; a million planets in the universe inhabited each by an insect race that was a single intelligence for the planet—and all the intelligences together were the single cosmic intelligence that was—God!

The one-syllable word wouldn’t come.

He went mad, instead.

He beat upon the now-dark door with his bloody hands, with his knees, his face, with himself, although already he had forgotten why, had forgotten what he wanted to crush.

He was raving mad—dementia praecox, not paranoia—when they released his body by putting it into a strait jacket, released it from frenzy to quietude.

He was quietly mad—paranoia, not dementia praecox—when they released him as sane eleven months later.

Paranoia, you see, is a peculiar affliction; it has no physical symptoms, it is merely the presence of a fixed delusion. A series of metrazol shocks had cleared up the dementia praecox and left only the fixed delusion that he was George Vine, a reporter.

The asylum authorities thought he was, too, so the delusion was not recognized as such and they released him and gave him a certificate to prove he was sane.

He married Clare; he still works at the Blade—for a man named Candler. He still plays chess with his cousin, Charlie Doerr. He still sees—for periodic checkups—both Dr. Irving and Dr. Randolph.

Which of them smiles inwardly? What good would it do you to know? Yes it was, is, one of those four.

It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Nothing matters!

Content

Come and Go Mad
by Fredric Brown

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII