Read The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert for Free Online

yawned, held his breath—anything to drive away the noise, now a chicken-haggle of talking, clinking, slithering of feet.
    He made himself a highball, splashed the drink at the back of his throat. The sounds inside his head turned off. Eric looked at the empty glass in his hand, shook his head.
    A new specific for insanity—alcohol! He smiled wryly. And every day I tell my patients that drinking is no solution. He tasted a bitter thought: Maybe I should have joined that therapy team, not stayed here trying to create a machine to cure the insane. If only they hadn’t laughed at me —
    He moved a fibreboard box to make room beside the sink, put down his glass. A notebook protruded from the box, sitting atop a mound of electronic parts. He picked up the notebook, stared at his own familiar block printing on the cover: Amanti Teleprobe—Test Book IX.
    They laughed at the old doctor, too, he thought. Laughed him right into an asylum. Maybe that’s where I’m headed—along with everyone else in the world.
    He opened the notebook, traced his finger along the diagram of his latest experimental circuit. The teleprobe in his basement laboratory still carried the wiring, partially dismantled.
    What was wrong with it?
    He closed the notebook, tossed it back into the box. His thoughts hunted through the theories stored in his mind, the knowledge saved from a thousand failures. Fatigue and despondency pulled at him. Yet, he knew that the things Freud, Jung, Adler and all the others had sought in dreams and mannerisms hovered just beyond his awareness in an electronic tracer circuit.
    He wandered back into his study-bedroom, crawled into the bed. He practiced yoga breathing until sleep washed over him. The singer, the train, the whistle did not return.
    *   *   *
    Morning lighted the bedroom. He awoke, trailing fragments of his nightmare into consciousness, aware that his appointment book was blank until ten o’clock. The bedside newstape offered a long selection of stories, most headed “Scramble Syndrome.” He punched code letters for eight items, flipped the machine to audio and listened to the news while dressing.
    Memory of his nightmare nagged at him. He wondered, “How many people awake in the night, asking themselves, ‘Is it my turn now?’”
    He selected a mauve cape, drew it over his white coveralls. Retrieving the notebook from the box in the kitchen, he stepped out into the chill spring morning. He turned up the temperature adjustment of his coveralls. The unitube whisked him to the Elliott Bay waterfront. He ate at a seafood restaurant, the teleprobe notebook open beside his plate. After breakfast, he found an empty bench outside facing the bay, sat down, opened the notebook. He found himself reluctant to study the diagrams, stared out at the bay.
    Mists curled from the gray water, obscuring the opposite shore. Somewhere in the drift a purse seiner sounded its hooter. Echoes bounced off the buildings behind him. Early workers hurried past, voices stilled: thin look of faces, hunted glances—the uniform of fear. Coldness from the bench seeped through his clothing. He shivered, drew a deep breath of the salt air. The breeze off the bay carried essence of seaweed, harmonic on the dominant bitter musk of a city’s effluvia. Seagulls haggled over a morsel in the tide rip. The papers on his lap fluttered. He held them down with one hand, watching the people.
    I’m procrastinating, he thought. It’s a luxury my profession can ill afford nowadays.
    A woman in a red fur cape approached, her sandals tapping a swift rhythm on the concrete. Her cape billowed behind in a puff of breeze.
    He looked up to her face framed in dark hair. Every muscle in his body locked. She was the woman of his nightmare down to the minutest detail! His eyes followed her. She saw him staring, looked away, walked past.
    Eric fumbled his papers together, closed the