Free Night Lamp by Jack Vance Page A

at him a moment with eyebrows raised, the cheerful smile slowly fading. “Indeed!” He considered. “I see that I have mistaken my man. Sorry; I’ll try to make the adjustment. Tell me about the voice. Do you hear it often?”
    “At first, not often—once a month, and then it barely seemed worth noticing. During the last year I’ve heard it several times a week, and now it is disturbing. It seems to come from inside my head and I can’t get away from it.”
    Dr. Fiorio grunted softly. “This voice—is it male or female?”
    “It is male. What frightens me most is that sometimes it sounds like my own voice.”
    “Hm. That is possibly significant.”
    “I don’t think so,” said Jaro. “I decided that it was not my voice.” He went on to describe the voice as best he could. “In the end I had to tell someone, and now I’m here.”
    “You have given me a great deal to think about,” said Dr. Fiorio. “This is something I’ve never encountered before.”
    Jaro asked anxiously: “What causes the voice?”
    Dr. Fiorio shook his head. “I don’t know. I could guess that your previous therapy had welded some unnatural loops together, which finally started to pick up energy. If so, the upshot may well be wrong. We’ll know more after we examine you. Our first task is to isolate the source of the voice. We will begin at once.” Dr. Fiorio rose to his feet. “This way, if you please, into the laboratory. I want you to meet my colleagues, Dr. Windle and Dr. Gissing. We will work together on your case.”
    Three hours later Dr. Fiorio and Jaro returned to the waiting room. Althea looked from one to the other. Jaro was composed, if a trifle ruffled. Dr. Fiorio seemed to have sagged and had put aside the ebullient mannerisms which earlier had enlivened his conversation. He told Althea, “We’ve made a start, using mild hypnosis and fact enhancers, but we have learned nothing significant. That’s about all I can tell you, except that it will be best if Jaro takes up temporary residence in one of our garden suites, where he will be conveniently situated for therapy.”
    Althea protested. “All very well, but he will be separated from his family and friends! We will want to discuss his therapy with him, and offer our counsel, if it seems to be needed. If Jaro stays here, this will be impossible!”
    “Exactly so,” said Dr. Fiorio. “That is why I suggested it.”
    Althea reluctantly conceded to the arrangements. “But don’t worry,” she told Jaro. “You will not be abandoned! I’ll drop by every day, and keep you company for as long as I can!”
    Dr. Fiorio cleared his throat and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “It will be better for all of us if you restrict your visits to a reasonable minimum: let us say an hour every third day.”
    “But Doctor Fiorio!” cried Althea. “That is hardly reasonable! Jaro needs my support and I want to know every detail of his therapy!”
    Dr. Fiorio spoke rather testily. “We prefer to issue no regular progress reports. If there have been no changes, which is usual, we are forced to invent a set of cheerful platitudes. This is tiresome. When we have something consequential to announce, you will know at once.”
    “It is difficult to live in a vacuum of information,” Althea complained. “Especially when one is anxious.”
    Dr. Fiorio relented. “We’ll try to keep you abreast of what we are doing. Today, for instance, we put Jaro under hypnosis, hoping to stimulate the voice, without success. We then started to prepare schematic analogs of Jaro’s brain, which will allow us to trace synaptic routes. We have the most modern autoflexes and information processors; still it’s a slow delicate job, and there are always surprises.”
    Althea hesitated, then asked: “Do you think that you can set things right?”
    Dr. Fiorio stared sadly at Althea as if in wounded pride. “My dear lady, of course! That is the basis of our comporture!” Althea had taken her