Tolerantly enough, I put off my departure and said, “Go ahead,” for I hoped that I could learn just how irrational he actually was. And certainly my curiosity was more than aroused. This was my first encounter with schizophrenia in a human. We’d induced similar symptoms in rats through the use of disorientation conditioning, but this was something else.

So while I tried to look sympathetic and personally involved, I kept track of Ram-Ram’s reactions at the same time. He acted feverish as he started speaking, gesticulating quickly, urgently, his small brown eyes not leaving my face for what seemed like an eternity. He wouldn’t let me look away, and kept punctuating his sentences with excited exclamations of “You see? You see?”

So I was forced to say, “Yes, yes,” and sit there while he stared at me with the greatest intentness—a most uncomfortable spot to be in, I might add—and a very curious situation indeed.

“These people here, in their way, are quite sane,” he said. “A fact that I’ve often suspected about such patients. They are not—I repeat, not—insane. You see?”

“Yes, of course,” I answered, not wanting to upset him further.

“But beyond that, listen. This is important. Queen Alice hears voices. They speak to her at various times, delivering what seems to be the most astonishing information. Once I heard them, too, though not as clearly as she does, and I’m not really certain that they were the same voices. I believe this information to be a kind of garbled divine dialogue. Do you follow me?”

His eyes still hadn’t left my face. I tried to hide my almost overwhelming dejection that a fine mind could deteriorate so in such a brief time. Lacking practical experience or not, I knew enough to recognize the classic symptoms of his disease.

“You see? You see?” he said impatiently. His normal clothes and appearance contrasted so sharply with the wildness of his manner that I was ready to leap from my chair in consternation when he reached out and grabbed my arm forcibly. “Have you begun your out-of-body experiments yet?” he asked, in a hoarse whisper.

“No.”

“Well, you must. At once. It’s vital.” This time he shouted.

“Yes. I will. Tonight,” I said, as soothingly as possible, but having no intention, of course, of doing any such thing.

“He doesn’t believe in my voices at all,” Queen Alice said suddenly. I spun around to look at her, having forgotten her presence entirely. She stood up, frowning, staring at me with the uncompromising clarity that children and the mad both sometimes assume.