The Ninth Wave

by Eugene Burdick

Mike pressed the red card in the left-hand window. The light did not go on. The machine whirred, two new cards, orange and yellow, dropped down into the windows. Mike pressed the yellow card. The light did not go on. The mechanism whirred again and the cards were changed.

  Mike hesitated. Something was wrong. He pressed the right-hand card again. A penny dropped down the funnel, rolled slowly on the table and slowly spun to the surface between his hands. Mike looked down at the penny. The mechanism whirred. He pressed the right-hand card which was black. Again a penny came down the funnel and the light briefly glowed on top of the box.

  Forget the cards, he told himself. They're not important. What is important is the mechanism. Forget the cards.

  Then, quite intuitively, he was playing the two people in white coats. They must have set the mechanism to work in a certain pattern. The thing to do was to find the pattern. Hell with the cards, Mike thought. Play the people.

  Mike pressed the right-hand window two more times and the light did not glow. Then three times it did glow and the pennies rolled down the funnel Then three times he failed.

  That's it, he thought. The pattern is once right, once left; then twice right and twice left, then three times right and three times left and so on.

  He pressed the right-hand window four times running and each time he won a penny. Then he switched to the left-hand window and pressed it four times and each time a penny rolled on the table. Then the right-hand window five times. Then the left-hand window five times. The pennies jingled on the table, grew in a heap between his hands. Once a penny rolled out on the floor, but Mike did not notice it. Also he did not notice the color of the cards and he did not look up to see if the light went on. He only watched the funnel to see the little lump that the pennies made when they were ejected onto the slippery metal slide.

  He pressed the right-hand window six times, but the fifth and sixth time the penny did not drop down. Mike hesitated. Something had changed. He switched to the left-hand window. It paid twice and then twice it did not. The mechanism had switched to four times on each side. Instantly Mike had it. The mechanism was set to alternate from side to side until it reached five times on each side and then it went down again; four, three, two, one. When it reached one he guessed that it would start up again.

  Mike played that pattern and he was correct. Each time the penny jumped onto the funnel, slid down onto the table and rolled to a halt between his fingers. Mike chuckled and played the pattern and each time he pressed the windows he felt he was defeating the two people standing behind him.

  For twenty minutes he played without an error. Dr. Urich spoke to Dr. Sutliff. Mike did not listen, but he could tell they were arguing. The stack of pennies grew in front of Mike. The light glowed regularly on top of the black box. Dr. Urich's voice grew slightly shrill.

  Dr. Sutliff coughed. He had moved directly behind Mike. Mike looked over his shoulder.

  "That will be enough for today, Mr. Freesmith," Dr. Sutliff said.

  "I thought you wanted me for two hours," Mike said.

  "For our purposes that will be enough today. Tomorrow we will want you again. The apparatus will be the same, but the circumstances will be different."

  Mike pushed back his chair and started to stuff the pennies in his pocket. Once he looked up, and Dr. Urich was watching him closely, antagonism in her eyes. She smiled over the antagonism. The pennies filled one pocket and half of another. Mike walked lopsided out of the room.

  When he was outside the door he paused. He looked at the rats with the thin red wounds in their heads. Through the thin plywood wall he heard Dr. Urich talk.

  "He does not play the colors at all," she said. Her voice was full of complaint. "It was exactly as if the colors he did not notice."

  "He figured out the pattern we set in the mechanism," Dr. Sutliff said.

  "But he is the only one. All else choose by the colors. This will the figures badly skew. How do we explain?"

  "We'll alter the mechanism tomorrow and then see how he does," Dr. Sutliff said.

  "Why would he not do as the others?" Dr. Urich said. "It was plain that he should choose by colors."

  "It's a stress situation. The pennies are positive motivation to take the pattern rather than respond by colors. It's just funny that he is the only one that concentrated on the pattern."

  Mike put his finger through the wire of the cage and pushed gently against the rat standing on its hind legs. The rat's eyes bulged, its fur bent away from his finger, but the rat's body moved like putty. Mike pushed it to one side and the rat stayed in that position, bent at an impossible angle, its tiny claws tucked under its chin. Mike turned and hurried off down the corridor.

  The next day when Mike reported for the experiment there were two more subjects in the room. One was a girl named Connie Burton and the other was a boy named Bill Evans. The girl was attractive and she was wearing a cashmere sweater and Mike guessed she was doing the experiment for some other reason than money. The boy was skinny and very embarrassed.

  Dr. Urich gave the instructions again.

  "Each of you has operated this apparatus before. Today the mechanism has been altered so that a new pattern is operating. You will decide among yourselves which window you will choose on each try. You may choose the window on whatever basis you wish. But you must all agree on the decision. If you are not agreed you can make no choice. None of you may press the window until the other two have agreed to your choice. You will share the pennies that you earn. Please make your discussion audible, for what you say will be recorded on a wire recorder."

  A paper in her hand rustled, she coughed and the room was quiet. Bill Evans looked at her with agony.

  "Do we start now?" Mike asked.

  "You may start now," Dr. Urich said. She walked to the back of the room and joined Dr. Sutliff.

  The three students looked down at the windows. There was a pink card in the left window and a blue card in the right window.

  "Let's start with the pink card." Connie said.

  "Why?" Mike asked.

  "Well, we have to start somewhere. Also I noticed when I did the test alone that pastel-colored cards turned on the light more often than darker colors."

  "What about you?" Mike asked Bill.

  "I don't remember," Bill said. "I just picked the color I liked each time. It's supposed to be a test in color perception so I tried to wipe my mind clean and pick the color I liked best between the two cards."

  "Who said it was' supposed to be a test in color perception?" Mike said.

  "Nobody." Connie said. "But you can see that it is. That's why the cards change. What else could be the point of having the cards change?"

  Mike looked slowly from the boy to the girl.

  "Look, isn't the point to illuminate the light, to make the pennies come down the slide?" he asked.

  "Sure, but we ought to do it the way they want us to do it," Bill said. "They're trying to learn something about colors and we ought to decide on the basis of the colors we like or something like that."

  He looked over his shoulder. Dr. Sutliit and Dr. Urich were in a shadow and he could not see their faces.

  "He's right," Connie said. "We ought to do what they want. We really should co-operate. It's an important experiment."

  "The important thing is to illuminate the light as often as you can," Mike said. "That's all they've told us. Let's do that. O.K., you can disregard the cards then. They're not important. What is important is the mechanism inside the box. Every time it changes it makes one or the other window the right choice."

  "What about the cards?" Bill asked.

  "Forget the damned cards," Mike said. "Use your head. Someone had to fix the mechanism, put a pattern into it. If you discover that pattern you can make the light go on every time and you'll get a penny every time. Right?"

  He could see that it had never occurred to either of them before. The girl saw it first and she started to smile, but almost at once she looked over her shoulde
r at the rear of the room.

  "What if there isn't any pattern in the mechanism?" she said. "What if it's just a random choice?"

  "That's probably what they think it is," Mike said. "But making things random is hard. Whoever set the mechanism probably did it a certain way just out of laziness. Or because he thought we would concentrate on the colors of the cards. Do you agree that if there is a pattern in the mechanism and we can find it out that is the quickest way to earn the pennies?"

  Faintly, like the sound of a machine heard through a thick wall, Dr. Urich was talking urgently to Dr. Sutliff.

  "Well, logically I think you're right," Connie said. "But I don't think that's what they want us to do. The cards are there for a reason."

  "Who cares what they want us to do?" Mike asked. "Let's do the best thing. We could have pressed lhe window twenty times by now. We're just wasting time. Look, I'll start to press the windows and find out the pattern of the machine. If I don't find it in a few minutes we'll try another method."

  He leaned forward.

  "Remember, Mr. Freesmith," Dr. Urich's voice said softly, "every one of the subjects must agree to letting you proceed."

  Mike looked first at Connie and then at Bill.

  "How about it?" Mike said. "Are we just going to sit here or are we going to do something? They don't care what we do. They said we can do anything we want." Bill was sweating in the dull yellow light, "Anything is better than nothing. Is it all right for me to go ahead? Do you agree?"

  Bill glanced once more over his shoulder and then his face dissolved in confusion. He nodded agreement at Mike. Mike turned to Connie. She nodded.

  Mike began to push the left-hand door. He pushed it twenty times in a row. It only paid off six times, but at the end of that time he had found the pattern. He pulled his chair closer and began to play his system. Once he had to alter it when a slight change was made in the pattern.

  Behind him he could hear Dr. Urich arguing with Dr. Sutliff.

  Mike pushed one window after another, and every time a penny rolled down the slide. The heap of pennies grew between his hands. At the end of twenty minutes he pushed the heap of pennies aside and Connie and Bill began to stack them. He did not take time to explain the pattern which he was playing to them. They became bored and once he heard Connie yawn. Bill stood rigidly beside him, stiffly stacking pennies into little piles of ten.

  At the end of the hour the table was almost covered with the little piles of pennies. Dr. Urich and Dr. Sutliff came up from the back of the room and thanked them. Dr. Sutliff put his open notebook down on the table.

  "Thank you very much for your co-operation," Dr. Sutliff said. "It was very good of you to give us your time. I think you will discover that you have earned a good deal more than fifty cents for your hour's work." He smiled thinly. "Your co-operation was very helpful."

  Dr. Urich was standing to one side. She looked steadily at Mike and her face was strained with anger. When Mike caught her eye she flushed and looked down at her hands,

  "Will you want us tomorrow?" Mike said.

  "No. Not tomorrow," Dr. Urich cut in. "Not ever again, I think. We must revise the experiment on the basis of today's results."

  Mike edged over to the table and he glanced down at Dr. Sutliff's notebook. On the top of the page was the title of the experiment: "Color Apperception: The Latent Tendency to Overselect Dark Colon." There was a notation of the scores that Connie and Bill had made on previous attempts. Connie had guessed right forty-two per cent of the time. Bill had guessed right thirty-eight per cent of the time. Mike glanced down the page to a section of notes written in ink and bearing the date of that day. He read it quickly:

  The three subjects did not make the selection on the basis of color preference, but seemed to make what might be called a political selection. Subject 34 dominated the group and insisted that the choices be made on a basis other than the color of the cards. For this reason today's results are being discarded as being atypical and aberrant. Subject 34 will not be used again in the experiments.

  Mike turned away. The pennies had been divided, and each of them received 205 pennies. Mike took his, put them in his pocket. He grinned at Dr. Urich and walked out of the door. In the corridor he stopped for a moment to look at the catatonic rats. The rat with its paws under its chin was still slanted sideways. Mike gently, bent the rat forward until it was on all fours. Then he pushed it over to the water spout at the end of the cage. The rat's tongue shot out, licked at the water and Mike left after it had consumed a half dozen drops.

  Mike was almost at the foot of the stairs before Bill Evans caught up with him. Bill was breathing hard, but his face was bright with excitement.

  "I wanted to thank you," he said hurriedly, not looking at Mike's face. "I hate both of them; Dr. Urich and Dr. Sutliff. I hate them and that damned test. It made me nervous. I've been doing it for weeks. I always get about the same number of pennies. Never over fifty an hour. They always acted so damned superior. I'm glad we did it the way you wanted. Did you see how mad Dr. Urich was? Serves her right. I'm glad. Really glad."

  He jingled the pennies in his pocket and smiled quickly at Mike and then looked away.

  "Anyway thanks," Bill said. "I'm glad we did it. I got so I was hating the two of them. I feel better now."

  He turned quickly and trotted away. Mike never saw him again at Stanford.

  Mike walked slowly across the Quad. Something is wrong with the two professors, he thought. There was something important they were missing. They were testing for something little, something screwy, unimportant. And something big was involved.

  He turned the experiment over in his mind, tried to find the correct words. They slipped away from him, remained just at the edge of his mind. He walked by the chapel, past the clumps of palm trees and around the tall thin hulk of the Hoover Library.

  Then it came to him. He stopped. A girl drove by on a bicycle and he was only aware of the spinning wheels, the clank of the chain, the flash of her plaid skirt.

  The important part of the afternoon's experiment was this, Mike ,thought, and the words went like a written sentence across his mind: one person can make a decision faster than a group.

  That's it, he thought. That's Freesmith's First Principle of Human Behavior: One person can make a decision faster than a group. That's exactly, perfectly, precisely, absolutely it.

  He walked on toward Encina Hall. He was almost there when he thought of Bill Evans and another principle crossed his mind. Freesmith's Second Principle of Human Behavior: The weak person wants to be delivered from the superior person.

  Delivered to what? he asked, as if the principle had been stated by another person.

  It doesn't matter, he said. Deliverance is enough.

  CHAPTER 5

  Close to Vest

  The first quarter Hank did not go to three of his classes. He stayed in his room and read anatomy, physiology and biology. Two nights before an examination he would read over Mike's notes on the course. Then Mike would ask him questions on the course. The night before examinations they did not sleep at all. They went over the notes endlessly.

  in the morning they would leave Encina and walk out for breakfast. Dawn turned the hills across the Bay a soft suede texture. The big sandstone buildings around the Quad had a queer ugly unity and often there was the salt smell of fog in the air. They walked through the lonely world like men about to make a conquest. Their eyes glittered from too much coffee and too little sleep. When, finally, they picked up their bluebooks and sat down to answer the questions it seemed incredibly easy and simple.

  At the end of the first quarter, they received their grades. Mike put the cards on the table in their room and studied them.

  "Not good enough, Hank," he said. "My grades are good enough to get a scholarship next year. I've got three A's and one B. You've got two A's and two B's. You'll have to do a little better. Right now you're on the borderline."

  "I'm happy," Hank said. He was
reading his Gray's and had it open to a diagram of the delicate, intertwined, complex muscles of the ankle. "I'll get three A's next quarter and I'll be qualified for a scholarship. Don't worry about me."

  "The old cigar box is getting low," Mike said. He walked to his bureau drawer and took out a battered White Owl box. He opened it and took out a stack of wrinkled bills and poured a mound of coins onto the table. He counted it rapidly. "Two hundred and sixty-seven bucks left. That's all." He scooped the money back into the box and threw the box in the drawer.

  "We can get through the winter quarter, but we'll be broke by spring quarter," Mike said. "It's the incidentals that run up. Laundry, haircuts, books."

  Hank looked up from his book.

  "I eat too much,," Hank said apologetically. He kept his finger on a plate in the book. It was squarely over the long thick purple sweep of the aorta through a skeletonized neck and down into a yellow muscle-streaked chest. "I'll cut down."