women and three men involved deeply before it began to
straighten itself out. My patient was a young boy. Ah ... he had
actually precipitated the situation, or was convinced that he had. All
basically nice people, by the way. All of them. But the kind of thing
they managed to get mixed up in--"

"I'm sure it was interesting," Malone said. "But--"

"Oh, they're all interesting," Marshall said. "But for sheer
complexity ... well, this is an unusual sort of case, the one I'm
thinking about now. I remember it began with a girl named Ned--"

"Dr. Marshall," Malone said desperately, "I'd like to hear about a
girl named Ned. I really would. It doesn't even sound probable."

"Ah?" Dr. Marshall said. "I'd like to tell you--"

"Unfortunately," Malone went on doggedly, "there is some business I've
got to talk over."

Dr. Marshall's disappointment was evident for less than a second.
"Yes, Sir Kenneth?" he said.

Malone took a deep breath. "It's about Her Majesty's mental state," he
said. "I understand that a lot of it is complicated, and I probably
wouldn't understand it. But can you give me as much as you think I can
digest?"

Marshall nodded slowly. "Ah ... you must understand that psychiatrists
differ," he said. "We appear to run in schools--like fish, which is
neither here nor there. But what I tell you might not be in accord
with a psychiatrist from another school, Sir Kenneth."

"O.K.," Malone said. "Shoot."

"An extremely interesting slang word, by the way," Marshall said.
"'Shoot.' Superficially an invitation to violence. I wonder--" A
glance from Malone was sufficient. "Getting back to the track,
however," he went on, "I should begin by saying that Her Majesty
appears to have suffered a shock of traumatic proportions early in
life. That might be the telepathic faculty itself coming to the
fore--or, rather, the realization that others did not share her
faculty. That she was, in fact, in communication with a world which
could never reach her on her own deepest and most important level." He
paused. "Are you following me so far?" he asked.

"Gamely," Malone admitted. "In other words, when she couldn't
communicate, she went into this traumatic shock."

"Nor exactly," Marshall said. "We must understand what communication
is. Basically, Sir Kenneth, we can understand it as a substitute for
sexual activity. That is, in its deepest sense. It is this attack on
the deepest levels of the psychic organism that results in