“But that’s not it, Chris,” Hunt managed to get in at last. “I don’t think that what we’re looking for has got anything to do with fantasies in people’s heads. I think it’s something very real.”
Oblivious, Danchekker sailed on. “And the social disruption that we see shows precisely the kind of effects that one would expect from a powerful narcotic. In the course of its development, the brain has evolved a chemical reward system which motivates the organism by producing sensations of pleasure that become associated through learning with beneficial, survival-oriented behavior patterns. What makes narcotics so pernicious is their ability to short-circuit the process by triggering the reward mechanism directly, without anything beneficial having to be done at all. And in the case of a narcotic such as the one we have here, where the effects are-” He stopped and jerked his head back to look at Hunt abruptly. “What was that? What did you say?”
“Yes, headworlding and the Thurien interstellar welfare program are what have made the Jevlenese defenseless against the plague. But those things aren’t the virus,” Hunt said. “There is a source, and it’s a very strange one-as strange as anything that might be extracted from the most psychotic subconscious. But I don’t think it’s a product of anything like that. I think that the source exists somewhere tangible-that it’s real.”
Danchekker blinked. “But that’s what I’ve just said, isn’t it?”
“Not quite. You s-”
“You tried telling me it was JEVEX, and I disagreed. Now I’m accepting that it was.” Danchekker’s color deepened a shade. “Dammit, Vic, ever since we met you’ve been telling me that I should be more flexible. Now I’ve conceded to reverse my view on something which, quite frankly, still strikes me as more than a little farfetched, and you’re saying it’s not good enough. Well, what in God’s name do you want?”
Hunt remained unruffled. “You’re accepting JEVEX as the cause that detached them from reality,” he said. “But I’m saying it only dissolved the glue. What pulled them away was a particular kind of Jevlenese who weren’t out of touch with reality-or maybe whose reality was very peculiar.”
“Aren’t we splitting rather fine hairs?” Danchekker objected.
“I don’t think so,” Shilohin commented, looking at Hunt curiously.
Danchekker snorted. “Very well. Supposing we accept this contention of yours for the time being. What are your grounds for proposing it?”
Now that he had Danchekker’s attention, Hunt unfolded himself from the wall and perched on the arm of one of the chairs of the conference area that formed one side of the office.
“First, we need to distinguish between two kinds of Jevlenese,” he said. “On the one hand there’s the ordinary, common or garden-variety, who waves banners in the parades, gets his philosophy from the Dear Aunt Mary column, and probably thinks that Jevlen is carried on the back of a giant turtle.” Hunt nodded in Danchekker’s direction. “That’s the kind you’re talking about, Chris. And yes, I agree, given something like JEVEX, they could get so addictively immersed that they wouldn’t know whether they were in it or out of it. They’re the ones I’d call genuinely crazy; and I’d say they make up most of the population. That’s why we’ve got such a mess outside.”
“Which was more or less our conclusion, also,” Shilohin threw in. “Our rationale in shutting JEVEX down was that it would compel them to face reality.”
Hunt nodded. “I know. But it hasn’t worked the way you hoped, has it? And I think I know why. You assumed, as Chris did, that it was something inherent in the actual exposure to JEVEX that was sending them off the rails. But all JEVEX did was condition them to be highly suggestible-to any influence, inside JEVEX, or out of it. And that damage had already been done over many years; switching JEVEX off wasn’t going to undo it.”
Shilohin sat back in her chair as the gist of what Hunt was getting at became clearer. “You mean the influence that’s unhinging them is still out there,” she checked.
“The ayatollahs,” Hunt replied simply. “You didn’t switch them off.”
“But they’re just as much Jevlenese, too,” Danchekker protested. “Merely coining a word for the extreme cases doesn’t endow them with any qualitative difference that matters.” He showed his teeth again and thrust out his jaw challengingly. “And besides, you’re simply moving the question to another place, not answering it. If you’re postulating them as the cause, then what, may I ask, deranged them? What caused the cause?”
“That’s where the difference lies,” Hunt said. “They’re not simply an extreme case of what’s wrong with the Jevlenese in general. Their problem isn’t the same. They’re defensive and disoriented by something they’ve experienced, and it drives some of them over the edge, yes. But they’re not exhibiting the same uncritical gullibility that you see in the typical Jevlenese-in fact, some of them have managed to retain an amazingly strong grip on themselves. Their difficulty isn’t in telling what’s real from what isn’t; it’s with knowing how to interpret what they accept as real.”
“Are you saying that their ability to interpret their perceptions has been disrupted somehow?” Shilohin asked.
Hunt shook his head. “Not exactly. The ability is still there, but it’s confused. It’s as if what it’s being asked to interpret is suddenly unfamiliar.”
Shilohin looked puzzled. “That sounds like the inverse of a paradigm shift. The paradigm stays the same, but reality no longer fits it.”
“Not a bad way to put it,” Hunt agreed.
“Is this the business of being ‘possessed’ that they talk about?”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
“You mean they suddenly perceive a different reality? Their conceptual framework stays intact, but what they’re experiencing doesn’t relate to it anymore?”
“More than that,” Hunt said. “If different individuals tried to fit different models, I’d agree with Chris-it would be because something had affected them subjectively. But that isn’t the case. Their conceptual paradigms are all essentially the same”-Hunt glanced at Danchekker-“which suggests that we’re dealing with something objective, Chris, something real.”
Danchekker stared at Hunt with a pained expression for a few seconds; he turned his head toward Shilohin as if for support, then back to Hunt again. “You’re being logically absurd. Either these are externally induced psychotic delusions, or they are not. If they are, then their nature will vary from individual to individual. Any similarity that you see is a fabrication of your own prejudices, Vic, not a property of the world outside. If they are not delusions, then reality must have changed in an identical way for one group of people, but at the same time stayed the same for the rest of us. How could that be? The idea is preposterous.”
“Unless they transferred, somehow, from an alternative, shared paradigm that was equally valid,” Hunt pointed out.
“And where is this alternative reality supposed to be? In the fourth dimension?” Danchekker scoffed. “You’ve been talking to too many Jevlenese.”
“I don’t know where, for Christ’s sake! Maybe that’s what we should be looking for. All I’m saying is the facts point that way. You’re saying that the facts can’t exist because they don’t point the way you think they should.”
“What facts?” Danchekker retorted. “All I’ve heard is pure conjecture-and rather fanciful at that, if I may say so. When you urged being more open-minded, you didn’t say anything about trips to fairyland.”
“Why don’t you try talking to a few ayatollahs?” Hunt suggested.
“I have. It achieves nothing. They’re quite impermeable to logic or reason,” Danchekker replied.
“We have tried getting some of them to cooperate,” Shilohin put in. “But acute insecurity and suspicion of everybody is one characteristic that they do seem to share. They’ve reacted to every experimental environment that we’ve tried to set up as hostile and threatening.”