Pity Him Afterwards

At last he heard voices, and knew he had been right. At long last, to succeed, at long last to win through, at long last to be given peace eternal! He moved toward the sounds of the voices, crawling low against the ground, not wanting to give himself away, not wanting the enemy to know how close he had come already, how much closer he would be before long.

Chax.

The structure loomed ahead of him, cleverly camouflaged. He inched toward it, his streaming face streaked with mud and sweat, his hands and forearms muddy from the crawling, his bare feet brown with mud, the too-small trousers caked with mud.

Chax.

He reached the corner of the structure, edged around it, closer, seeing a window ahead, and inching toward it.

Chax.

And stopped beneath the window, and raised his head, and gazed in upon them there.

Chax.

And saw it was Daniels/Chax, who he had known to be Chax, from the beginning.

Chax.

And moved farther, to the doorway, and straightened, the club gripped in his hand.

Chax.

And entered, speaking his name.

Chax.

And Chax fell away from him, frightened.

Chax.

The fear in his eyes.

Chax.

The fear in the eyes of the woman.

Chax.

And the club was raised.

Chax.

And framed in the window stood Sondgard/Chax, a pistol in his hand.

The madman’s head moved, back and forth, and he growled and mumbled in his throat, not knowing which was the head and which only the limb, which to kill to destroy the other.

And Sondgard/Chax in the window said, “I have only one thing to do right. I have to do just this one thing right. And this is it.”

And the pistol spat oblivion.

Dr. Raymond Peterby said, “Thank you,” and hung up the telephone. His fingertips came together to form a little tent, and he gazed out from the warm small lighted space around his desk, toward the darkness of the darkest corner of the room.

It was night, now. Beyond the draped window, the night was dark, except for the garish brilliance of the spotlights around the maximum-security building. But in here, in this office, there was only the soft light from the desk lamp gleaming on the dark polished wood of the desk top, and soft darkness in all the corners.

We have so far to go, thought Dr. Peterby sadly. So much education to do. How little they understand our work, what we are trying to do here. How little they try to help us.

Outside, it is still the Middle Ages, so far as mental science is concerned. The layman looks on the mentally ill and sees only danger and viciousness. He does not see the potential locked up inside that sick mind. He does not see the possibilities for unlocking that potential, healing that sick mind, restoring yet another healthy citizen to the world.

The layman sees only danger, and his only thought is to kill.

They didn’t have to kill Robert Ellington. The man had great potential, a brilliant mind, great talents. To waste such a man, to throw him away like rubbish, to sacrifice him to general ignorance, was a crime. Shot down by some ignorant brute, and of the two, the slayer and the slain, which had the greater potential for society?

Dr. Peterby noticed the tent he had made of his fingertips, but for once he didn’t promptly pull his hands apart. For once, he didn’t care. For once, he was happy to admit that yes he would like to crawl away from the world and hide. Away from any world that so mistreated as valuable a one of its creatures as Robert Ellington.

Dr. Peterby was very sad.