The Thanatos Syndrome

Comeaux, then to me.
    Bob Comeaux waves him off, speaks quickly to both of us.
    In a word, Bob simply wants shut of me. He assures Max the ”incident” was not of my doing, is still willing to take me on at Fedville at consultant’s salary plus Ford grant money, is willing for me to do what I’m doing, or throw in with Max in Mandeville—whatever I want to do—but mainly move, move out from here, from him. Let’s go. He’s at the open door. “Come on, Tom, I’m signing you out, okay?”
    But Max is scratching his head, one eye screwed up, trying to make head or tail of it. “Well. He sure doesn’t belong here.” Sighing, he’s pushing himself up from the cot. He can’t quite get hold of it.
    Bob Comeaux, relieved, relaxes in the doorway and, gazing out at the prison plantation, shakes his head elegiacally. “God,” he says softly, “would you listen to those darkies!”
    We listen.
    Nobody knows the trouble I seen, Nobody knows but Jesus
    â€œWell, Tom?” He holds out hand-with-hat to me. Let’s go.
    I do not rise from my student desk.
    Max gives me his quizzical eye. “Well?”
    â€œThere’re a couple of things,” I tell Max.
    â€œWhat’s that?” asks Bob quickly, as if, what with the singing, he couldn’t hear.
    â€œI think there’re a couple of things that need to be settled before we go any further.”
    â€œRight,” says Max, still feeling unsettled.
    â€œBy all means,” says Bob, putting his hat on.
    â€œWell?” says Max, giving me his curious eye.
    â€œI think it would be a good idea to discontinue the Blue Boy pilot immediately, today.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” asks Bob Comeaux, cupping an ear.
    I repeat it.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Bob asks me. “What does he mean?” he asks Max.
    â€œWhat do you mean, Tom?” Max asks me.
    â€œI mean turn off the sodium shunt at the Ratliff intake and dismantle it, today.”
    Max’s worries are back, worries now about me weighing him down. He sinks to the cot.
    â€œTom,” he says, screwing up an eye, “I was aware you knew about the sodium pilot. We’ve never discussed it, for obvious reasons—since it was Grade Four classified. But since you do—to tell you the truth, I’ve never been too happy with it—I prefer individual therapy, as you well know—to this sort of mass shotgun prophylaxis. But how can you argue with success? I mean, the numbers from NIH are damned impressive, Tom. I mean, it may not do much for our egos if they can reduce street crime, drug abuse, suicides, and suchlike by a simple sodium ion—but what are you going to do? We weren’t too happy with lithium either. But zero recidivism at Angola. How do you argue with success? If it ain’t broke—” He trails off.
    â€œSo I thought at first, but you don’t know, Max,” I tell him.
    â€œI don’t know what?” he says absently, distracted. He’s worried, I know, less about Blue Boy than about me.
    â€œMax, NIH doesn’t even know about Blue Boy, the heavy-sodium pilot program. They never heard of it. The FDA never heard of it. ACMUI never heard of it. Dr. Lipscomb even spoke to Jesse Land, the director whom she knows. He says it could only be what he calls an instance of ‘aberrant local initiative’— that is, some ambitious regional NIH people using their discretionary funding to run a pilot which might otherwise not be funded and then present them with a fait accompli which they can’t turn down. It’s been done before—and sometimes with good cause—to get around bureaucratic hassle—until the election next month.”
    â€œWait.” Max has risen again, this time with both hands out, palms up. “Hold it. Are you telling me that Dr. Comeaux here and Dr. Van Dorn cooked up this sodium additive without even telling—”
    â€œJust as Dr. Fred McKay did with an equally simple ion, fluoridating water,” says Bob Comeaux from the doorway, facing us now, arms folded, eyes level and minatory. “If he’d waited for D.C. bureaucracy, children’s teeth would still be rotting out. And as both you doctors know, every kook and Kluxer in the country accused him of everything from mind control to Communist conspiracy.”
    Silence. Max sighs. “Well—” He is speaking to