The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny

out.”
    “Surely,” said the small doctor. “Come this way. Sorry to hear about it.”
    He led them through his living room, about which seven or eight people were variously situated.
    “Merry Christmas!”
    “Hi there, Charlie!”
    “Merry Christmas, Doc!”
    “How’s the brain-cleaning business?”
    Render raised one hand automatically, nodded in four different directions.
    “This is Charles Render. He’s in neuroparticipation,” Heydell explained to the rest, “and this is his son, Peter. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Need my lab.”
    They passed out of the room, moved two steps into a vestibule. Heydell opened the insulated door to his insulated laboratory. The laboratory had cost him considerable time and expense. It had required the consent of the local building authorities, it had had to subscribe to more than full hospital shielding standards, and it had required the agreement of the apartment management, which in turn had been predicated upon the written consent of all the other tenants. Some of the latter had required economic suasion, Render understood.
    They entered the laboratory, and Heydell set his apparatus in operation. He took the necessary pictures and ran them through the speed-dry, speed-develop process.
    “Good,” he announced, as he studied them. “No more damage, and the fracture is healing nicely.”
    Render smiled. He noticed that his hands had been shaking.
    Heydell slapped him on the shoulder.
    “So come on out and try our punch.”
    “Thanks, Heydell. I believe I will.” He always called him by his last name, since they were both Charlies.
    They shut down the equipment and left the lab.
    Back in the living room, Render shook a few hands and sat down on the sofa with Peter.
    He sipped his punch, and one of the men he had only just met, a Dr. Minton, began talking to him.
    “So you’re a Shaper, eh?”
    “That’s right.”
    “I’ve always wondered about that area. We had a bull-session going back at the hospital, just the other week…”
    “Oh?”
    “Our resident psychiatrist mentioned that neuropy treatments are no more nor less successful than ordinary therapeutic courses.”
    “I’d hardly consider him in a position to judge—especially if it’s Mike Mismire you’re talking about, and I think you are.
    Dr. Minton spread his hands, palms upward.
    “He said he’s been collecting figures.”
    “The change rendered the patient in a neuropy session is a qualitative one. I don’t know what he means by ‘successful.’ The results are successful if you eliminate the patient’s problem. There are various ways of doing it—as many as there are therapists—but neuropy is qualitatively superior to something like psychoanalysis because it produces measurable, organic changes. It operates directly upon the nervous system, beneath a patina of real and simulated afferent impulses. It induces desired states of self-awareness and adjusts the neurological foundation to support them. Psychoanalysis and allied areas are purely functional. The problem is less likely to recur if it is adjusted by neuropy.”
    “Then why don’t you use it to cure psychotics?”
    “It has been done, a couple times. But it is normally too risky an undertaking. Remember, ‘participation’ is the key word. Two nervous systems, two minds are involved. It can turn into a reverse-therapy session—anti-neuropy—if the pattern of aberrance is too strong for the operator to control. His state of self-awareness is then altered, his neurological underpinnings are readjusted. He becomes psychotic himself, suffering actual organic brain damage.”
    “It would seem that there’d be some way to cut down on that feedback,” said Minton.
    “Not yet,” Render explained, “there isn’t—not without sacrificing some of the operator’s effectiveness. They’re working on the problem right now in Vienna, but so far the answer seems far away.”
    “If you find one you can probably go into the more