"What—?" "There was—more than once—?" "Yes, of course. There were experiments. I was de-conditioned and then conditioned again four times. Each time, they'd send me out for a few weeks' service, see how I reacted. This is my fifth round. I've gotten to where I hate the very thought of being pushed back down to pattern level. It's flat, all of it—flat and grey and ugly—" I stopped short, rigid. Only now Celeste clutched at me, shaking. "Mark, Mark! Don't you see—?" My hands began to tremble. Then my shoulders. Then my whole body. And Celeste: "Mark, there's a thing they call—displacement. A way people have of switching headaches. Maybe a man hates his wife. But he's always been taught that he should love her, and the teaching runs so deep he can't hit her. "Then, by accident, he runs into some other trouble—a little thing, maybe; someone's poor work, or a joke, or bad manners. "Do you know what he does then, Mark? Can you guess?" I said thickly, "Nothing. Not if he's been properly conditioned." "That's right, Mark. Nothing. Not if he's been properly conditioned. He can't even hate his wife in the first place. That's one of the reasons compulsory conditioning came in. "But back before that, he did something: He struck out; he over-reacted; he kicked the dog instead of his wife." I didn't say anything. I was shaking too hard. Celeste said softly, "Could that be you in that picture, Mark? Could you be hating one thing and striking another?" Spasmodically, I drew up my knees and hugged my arms round them—burying my face, squeezing my eyes tight shut in a vain, desperate effort to blot out the room, and Celeste, and the things she said. Only they wouldn't blot out, because they were inside of me, too, churning and roiling and spinning round in my brain. I had a queer, detached feeling, as if I were two rather than one, and one of those two was a great, yawning, black pit, and the other hung on the brink, ready to cast himself in. That was how close I came to madness in that moment. Then,
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