The Voices of Heaven by Frederik Pohl Read Free Book Online

this matter.
    Well, look, it gives me concern, too. Trust me on that point. But most of the time it isn't too serious, as long as I get treatment. The important thing to understand is that my problem wasn't caused by a desire to have sexual intercourse with my mother, or because I was weaned off the bottle too early. My problem wasn't Freudian at all. It was metabolic.
    So I made sure, all the time I was on the Moon, that I went to see my doctor every time I thought I was behaving in even the least peculiar .way; and as a matter of fact I did right after leaving Alma that night.
     
    I hadn't made an appointment, so the doctor was busy with another patient. But she flashed me the have-a-seat sign, and I settled down to watch some news broadcasts while I waited. Wouldn't you know it? The first thing I saw was Garold Tscharka and his Santa Claus chaplain being triumphantly interviewed about the victory they had just apparently scored for Pava.
    It really wasn't an issue that interested me a lot. When the Budget Congress had first announced it was going to review the question of continuing to fund the colonies I thought it was sensible of them. Those worlds were no bargains, anyway. But obviously the two Millenarists didn't agree; they were glowing with success. "A victory?" the big preacher was saying—was braying, rather; he had a big, raspy voice when he was orating, and he was taking no trouble to keep the volume down. "Certainly it's a victory, but not just for our heroic pioneers in the Pava colony. The victory is for common sense and freedom!"
    "Just what have you accomplished?" the invisible interviewer asked, and it was Captain Tscharka who answered.
    "They're going to leave us our ships and fill our requisitions. That's all we need. Maybe a couple of hundred years from now, when Corsair is getting rickety, we'll have to take up the question again. But for now the colony is safe."
    Isn't that a killer? He had to be lying through his teeth, even then, but he made everybody believe him. That was the thing about Captain Garold Tscharka. He was wholly wrongheaded in almost every way I can think of—but, even now, I almost miss the man.
    When the doctor let me in she looked up from her screens and said, "You again." But she was smiling when she said it.
    I said, "Yes, me, Helge. I nearly blew my pod a couple of hours ago, so I thought you might want to take a look."
    "Hum," she said, leaning back and looking at me. That tone and posture meant Tell me all about it and don't leave out any details, so I did. Helge got up and walked around. Finally, she perched in silence on the edge of her desk, kicking her heel against it, until I finished. Then she said, "All this happened hours ago?"
    "Well, I would have come right in, Helge, but I had things to do." Like eat. Like Alma, but I didn't specify.
    She said, "Hum," again, but this time it didn't mean anything but Hold still because she was running her sensors over me.
    Helge's always both glad and sorry to see me. She likes me for the novelty, because I'm an interesting case, but she's also a little bit sorry when she sees me because she really can't treat me properly.
    The condition I suffered from was a medical anomaly. The specific ailment I suffered from was so rare that doctors had decided long ago that it didn't exist at all, and even the words used to describe it had been expunged from the medical vocabulary. In the old-fashioned term, I had a "psychosis" that closely resembled "schizophrenia" of the type once called "manic-depressive." It wasn't something they could vaccinate against at birth. It came from my genetic heritage; my mother and my father just happened to carry some very rare recessive genes, and I was the one-in-a-billion lucky lottery winner of the chance to express them.
    In itself that shouldn't have been much of a problem. Metabolic-based loopiness gets cured by changing the body's chemistry around, and that's generally easy to do. The quick and dirty