The Infinite Moment by John Wyndham Read Free Book Online Page B

and thought better of it.
    "I expect you'd be more comfortable on the couch," she suggested.
    I regarded the coucha genuine Georgian piece, I thoughtdoubtfully.
    "Will it stand it?" I wondered.
    "Oh, I think so," she said, but not too certainly.
    The retinue deposited me there carefully, and stood by with anxious expressions. When it was clear that though it creaked, it was probably going to hold, the old lady shooed them away, and rang a little silver bell. A diminutive figure, a perfect parlourmaid threefootten in height, entered.
    "The brown sherry, please, Mildred," instructed the old lady. "You'll take sherry, my dear?" she added to me.
    "Yesyes, thank you," I said faintly. After a pause I added: "You will excuse me, MrserMiss?"
    "Oh, I should have introduced myself. My name is Laura not Miss, or Mrs, just Laura. You, I know, are OrchisMother Orchis."
    "So they tell me." I owned, distastefully.
    We studied one another. For the first time since the hal lucination had set in I saw sympathy, even pity, in someone else's eyes. I looked round the room again, noticing the perfection of details.
    "This is--I'm not mad, am I?" I asked.
    She shook her head slowly, but before she could reply the miniature parlourmaid returned, bearing a cutglass decanter and glasses on a silver tray. As she poured out a glass for each of us I saw the old lady glance from her to me and back again, as though comparing us. There was a curious uninterpretable expression on her face. I made an effort.
    "Shouldn't it be Madeira?" I suggested.
    She looked surprised, and then smiled, and nodded appreciatively.
    "I think you have accomplished the purpose of this visit in one sentence," she said.
    The parlourmaid left, and we raised our glasses. The old lady sipped at hers and then placed it on an occasional table beside her.
    "Nevertheless," she went on, "we had better go into it a little more. Did they tell you why they have sent you to me, my dear?"
    "No," I shook my head.
    "It is because I am a historian," she informed me. "Access to history is a privilege. It is not granted to many of us nowadaysand then somewhat reluctantly. Fortunately, a feeling that no branches of knowledge should be allowed" to perish entirely still existsthough some of them are pursued at the cost of a certain political suspicion." She smiled deprecatingly, and then went on. "So when confirmation is required it is necessary to appeal to a specialist. Did they give you any report on their diagnosis?"
    I shook my head again.
    "I thought not. So like the profession, isn't it? Well, I'll tell you what they told me on the telephone from the Mothers" Home, and we shall have a better idea of what we are about. I was informed that you have been interviewed by several doctors whom you have interested, puzzledand I suspect, distressedvery much, poor things. None of them has more than a minimum smattering of history, you see. Well, briefly, two of them are of the opinion that you are suffering from delusions of a schizophrenic nature: and three are inclined to think you are a genuine case of transferred personality. It is an extremely rare condition. There are not more than three reliably documented cases, and one that is more debatable, they tell me; but of those confirmed two are associated with the drug chuinjuatin, and the third with a drug of very similar properties.
    "Now, the majority of three found your answers coherent for the most part, and felt that they were authentically circumstantial. That is to say that nothing you told them conflicted directly with what they know, but, since they know so little outside their professional field, they found a great deal of the rest both hard to believe and impossible to check. Therefore, I, with my better means of checking, have been asked for my opinion."
    She paused, and looked me thoughtfully over.
    "I rather think," she added, "that this is going to be one of the most curiously interesting things that has happened to me in my quite long