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 an umbilical cord of words—a cord of dependency which will be snapped only when the moment of psychic rebirth arrives.

"The orthodox analyst becomes a father-image. I extend that; I become the mother-image as well. And the womb serves. It has served others amongst my patients; it will serve you."

And it did.

Since that time I've heard it argued, by reputable psychotherapists, that the gaudy little room which Dr. Wagram set up as an artificial womb is a ridiculous concept, a charlatan conceit.

But it worked, for me.

It saved my life. It gave me a life, in place of the one I'd lost when memory melted away there in the desert.

There came a time when I could talk again, when I could reason again. And when I could feel emotion.

I never did manage to recover a knowledge of what had gone before. The past was not recaptured and I learned to accept Thomas Wolfe's bitter dictum—you can't go home again. But there were clues.

Wagram may have been an unorthodox practitioner, but he didn't scorn the use of orthodox methodology when the situation indicated its employment. I took batteries of the usual tests, and Wagram probed with depth techniques, free association and all the rest. There were clues in my reactions—indications of learned responses.

Somewhere in my past I'd acquired the equivalent of a college education, plus a variety of motor and manual skills which reflected practical experience. Perhaps I'd been in the Merchant Marine for a while (though again a search of the records gave no confirmation). I'd lived in a colder climate for a time; I was familiar with the operation of a typewriter; I'd enjoyed sports. But all these things were haphazard inferences at best, and they afforded little reassurance.

I couldn't stay in the womb forever. And I couldn't stay at Wagram's clinic forever. The time was coming when I must go back into the world—a world I never knew, and that didn't know me.

I had no family, no friends, no ties of any sort. And I had no money, either. The cash had gone; mainly to the doctors and the officials, and only a surprisingly small sum to Wagram, who refused to even entertain the notion of future THE SCREAMING PEOPLE