"Yes, Miss Burton!" came the shrill scream.
"And we feel that it would be no more than fair to repay you in some small measure for the pleasure you have given us. First, a 'Thank You' song by Frances Heller—"
He hadn't expected this, and he repressed a groan. Mercifully, the first song was short. He grinned the thanks he didn't feel. To think that he could take this, while sober as a judge! What strength of character, what will-power!
Next, Miss Burton introduced another kid, who recited. And then, Miss Burton stood upright and recited herself.
That was the worst of all. He winced once, then bore up. You can get used even to torture, he told himself. An adult making a fool of herself is always more painful than a kid. And that affected elocutionist's voice gave him the horrors. But he thanked her too. His good deed for the day. Maybe Carol would have him now, he thought.
A voice shrilled, "Miss Burton?"
"Yes, dear?"
"Aren't you going to call on Carolyn to act?"
"Oh, yes, I was forgetting. Come up here, Carolyn, come up, Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr. George, are studying how to act. They act people and animals. Who knows? Some day they, too, may be in the movies, just as you are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that be nice, children?"
What the devil do you do in a case like that? You grin, of course—but what do you say, without handing over your soul to the devil? Agree how nice it would be to have those sly little brats with faces magnified on every screen all over the country? Like hell you do.
"Now, what are we going to act, children?"
"Please, Miss Burton," said Doris. "I don't know how to act. I can't even imitate a puppy. Really I can't, Miss Burton—"
"Come, come, mustn't be shy. Your friend says that you act very nicely indeed. Can't want to go on the stage and still be shy. Now, do you know any movie scenes? Shirley Temple used to be a good little actress, I remember. Can you do any scenes that she does?"
The silence was getting to be embarrassing. And Carol said he didn't amount to anything, he never did anything useful. Why, if thanks to his being here this afternoon, those kids lost the ambition to go on the stage, the whole human race would have cause to be grateful to him. To him, and to Miss Burton. She'd kill ambition in anybody.
Miss Burton had an idea. "I know what to do, children. If you can act animals—Mr. George has shown you what the hunter does; you show him what the lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris, you're going to be lions. You are waiting in your lairs, ready to pounce on the unwary hunter. Crouch now, behind that chair. Closer and closer he comes—you act it out, Mr. George, please, that's the way—ever closer, and now your muscles tighten for the spring, and you open your great, wide, red mouths in a great, great big roar—"
A deep and tremendous roar, as of thunder, crashed through the auditorium. A roar—and then, from the audience, an outburst of terrified screaming such as he had never heard. The bristles rose at the back of his neck, and his heart froze.
Facing him across the platform were two lions, tensed as if to leap. Where they had come from he didn't know, but there they were, eyes glaring, manes ruffled, more terrifying than any he had seen in Africa. There they were, with the threat of death and destruction in their fierce eyes, and here he was, terror and helplessness on his handsome, manly, and bloodless face, heart unfrozen now and pounding fiercely, knees melting, hands—
Hands clutching an elephant gun. The thought was like a director's command. With calm efficiency, with all the precision of an actor playing a scene rehearsed a thousand times, the gun leaped to his shoulder, and now its own roar thundered out a challenge to the roaring of the wild beasts, shouted at them in its own accents of barking thunder.
The shrill screaming continued long after the echoes of the gun's speech had died away. Across the platform from him were two great bodies, the bodies of lions, and yet curiously unlike the beasts in some ways, now that they were dead and dissolving as if corroded by some invisible acid.
Carol's hand was on his arm, Carol's thin and breathless voice shook as she said, "A drink—all the drinks you want."
"One will do. And you."
"And me. I guess you're kind of—kind of useful after all."
MARK CLIFTON
Mark Clifton (1906–1963) was an American science fiction writer, the co-winner of the first Hugo Award for best novel. He began publishing in May 1952 with the widely anthologized story "What Have I Done?".
Barry N. Malzberg wrote in The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton that "Clifton was an innovator in the early 1950s and such an impressive innovator that his approach has become standard among science fiction writers. He used the common themes of science fiction -- alien invasion, expanding technology, revolution against political theocracy, and space colonization -- but unlike any writer before him, he imposed upon these standard themes the full range of sophisticated psychological insight."
Clifton's fame ebbed quickly, and he received the 2010 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award for unjust obscurity.
Sense From Thought Divide, by Mark Clifton
What is a "phony"? Someone who believes he can do X, when he can't, however sincerely he believes it? Or someone who can do X, believes he can't, and believes he is pretending he can?
"Remembrance and reflection, how allied;
What thin partitions sense from thought divide."
Pope
When I opened the door to my secretary's office, I could see her looking up from her desk at the Swami's face with an expression of fascinated skepticism. The Swami's back was toward me, and on it hung flowing folds of a black cloak. His turban was white, except where it had rubbed against the back of his neck.
"A tall, dark, and handsome man will soon come into your life," he was intoning in that sepulchral voice men habitually use in their dealings with the absolute.
Sara's green eyes focused beyond him, on me, and began to twinkle.
"And there he is right now," she commented dryly. "Mr. Kennedy, Personnel Director for Computer Research."
The Swami whirled around, his heavy robe following the movement in a practiced swirl. His liquid black eyes looked me over shrewdly, and he bowed toward me as he vaguely touched his chest, lips and forehead. I expected him to murmur, "Effendi," or "Bwana Sahib," or something, but he must have felt silence was more impressive.
I acknowledged his greeting by pulling down one corner of my mouth. Then I looked at his companion.
The young lieutenant was standing very straight, very stiff, and a flush of pink was starting up from his collar and spreading around his clenched jaws to leave a semicircle of white in front of his red ears.
"Who are you?" I asked the lieutenant.
"Lieutenant Murphy," he answered shortly, and managed to open his teeth a bare quarter of an inch for the words to come out. "Pentagon!" His light gray eyes pierced me to see if I were impressed.
I wasn't.
"Division of Matériel and Supply," he continued in staccato, as if he were imitating a machine gun.
I waited. It was obvious he wasn't through yet. He hesitated, and I could see his Adam's apple travel up above the knot of his tie and back down again as he swallowed. The pink flush deepened suddenly into brilliant red and spread all over his face.
"Poltergeist Section," he said defiantly.
"What?" The exclamation was out before I could catch it.
He tried to glare at me, but his eyes were pleading instead.
"General Sanfordwaithe said you'd understand." He intended to make it matter of fact in a sturdy, confident voice, but there was the undertone of a wail. It was time I lent a hand before his forces were routed and left him shattered in hopeless defeat.
"You're West Point, aren't you?" I asked kindly.
It seemed to remind him of the old shoulder-to-shoulder tradition. He straightened still more. I hadn't believed it possible.
"Yes, sir!" He wanted to keep the gratitude out of his voice, but it was there. It did not escape my attentio
n that, for the first time, he had spoken the habitual term of respect to me.
"Well, what do you have here, Lieutenant Murphy?" I nodded toward the Swami who had been wavering between a proud, free stance and that of a drooping supplicant. The lieutenant, whose quality had been recognized, even by a civilian, was restored unto himself. He was again ready to do or die.
"According to my orders, sir," he said formally, "you have requested the Pentagon furnish you with one half dozen, six, male-type poltergeists. I am delivering the first of them to you, sir."
Sara's mouth, hanging wide open, reminded me to close my own.
So the Pentagon was calling me on my bluff. Well, maybe they did have something at that. I'd see.
* * * * *
"Float me over that ash tray there on the desk," I said casually to the Swami.
He looked at me as if I'd insulted him, and I could anticipate some reply to the effect that he was not applying for domestic service. But the humble supplicant rather than the proud and fierce hill man won. He started to pick up the ash tray from Sara's desk with his hand.
"No, no!" I exclaimed. "I didn't ask you to hand it to me. I want you to TK it over to me. What's the matter? Can't you even TK a simple ash tray?"
The lieutenant's eyes were getting bigger and bigger.
"Didn't your Poltergeist Section test this guy's aptitudes for telekinesis before you brought him from Washington all the way out here to Los Angeles?" I snapped at him.
* * * * *
The lieutenant's lips thinned to a bloodless line. Apparently I, a civilian, was criticizing the judgment of the Army.
"I am certain he must have qualified adequately," he said stiffly, and this time left off the "sir."
"Well, I don't know," I answered doubtfully. "If he hasn't even enough telekinetic ability to float me an ash tray across the room--"
The Swami recovered himself first. He put the tips of his long fingers together in the shape of a sway-backed steeple, and rolled his eyes upward.
"I am an instrument of infinite wisdom," he intoned. "Not a parlor magician."
"You mean that with all your infinite wisdom you can't do it," I accused flatly.
"The vibrations are not favorable--" he rolled the words sonorously.
"All right," I agreed. "We'll go somewhere else, where they're better!"
"The vibrations throughout all this crass, materialistic Western world--" he intoned.
"All right," I interrupted, "we'll go to India, then. Sara, call up and book tickets to Calcutta on the first possible plane!" Sara's mouth had been gradually closing, but it unhinged again.
"Perhaps not even India," the Swami murmured, hastily. "Perhaps Tibet."
"Now you know we can't get admission into Tibet while the Communists control it," I argued seriously. "But how about Nepal? That's a fair compromise. The Maharajadhiraja's friendly now. I'll settle for Nepal."
The Swami couldn't keep the triumphant glitter out of his eyes. The sudden worry that I really would take him to India to see if he could TK an ash tray subsided. He had me.
"I'm afraid it would have to be Tibet," he said positively. "Nowhere else in all this troubled world are the vibrations--"
"Oh go on back to Flatbush!" I interrupted disgustedly. "You know as well as I that you've never been outside New York before in your life. Your accent's as phony as the pear-shaped tones of a Midwestern garden club president. Can't even TK a simple ash tray!"
I turned to the amazed lieutenant.
"Will you come into my office?" I asked him.
He looked over at the Swami, in doubt.
"He can wait out here," I said. "He won't run away. There isn't any subway, and he wouldn't know what to do. Anyway, if he did get lost, your Army Intelligence could find him. Give G-2 something to work on. Right through this door, lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," he said meekly, and preceded me into my office.
I closed the door behind us and waved him over to the crying chair. He folded at the knees and hips, as if he were hinged only there, as if there were no hinges at all in the ramrod of his back. He sat up straight, on the edge of his chair, ready to spring into instant charge of battle. I went around back to my desk and sat down.
"Now, lieutenant," I said soothingly, "tell me all about it."
* * * * *
I could have sworn his square chin quivered at the note of sympathy in my voice. I wondered, irrelevantly, if the lads at West Point all slept with their faces confined in wooden frames to get that characteristically rectangular look.
"You knew I was from West Point," he said, and his voice held a note of awe. "And you knew, right away, that Swami was a phony from Flatbush."
"Come now," I said with a shrug. "Nothing to get mystical about. Patterns. Just patterns. Every environment leaves the stamp of its matrix on the individual shaped in it. It's a personnel man's trade to recognize the make of a person, just as you would recognize the make of a rifle."
"Yes, sir. I see, sir," he answered. But of course he didn't. And there wasn't much use to make him try. Most people cling too desperately to the ego-saving formula: Man cannot know man.
"Look, lieutenant," I said, with an idea that we'd better get down to business. "Have you been checked out on what this is all about?"
"Well, sir," he answered, as if he were answering a question in class, "I was cleared for top security, and told that a few months ago you and your Dr. Auerbach, here at Computer Research, discovered a way to create antigravity. I was told you claimed you had to have a poltergeist in the process. You told General Sanfordwaithe that you needed six of them, males. That's about all, sir. So the Poltergeist Division discovered the Swami, and I was assigned to bring him out here to you."
"Well then, Lieutenant Murphy, you go back to the Pentagon and tell General Sanfordwaithe that--" I could see by the look on his face that my message would probably not get through verbatim. "Never mind, I'll write it," I amended disgustedly. "And you can carry the message." Lesser echelons do not relish the task of repeating uncomplimentary words verbatim to a superior. Not usually.
I punched Sara's button on my intercom.
"After all the exposure out there to the Swami," I said, "if you're still with us on this crass, materialistic plane, will you bring your book?"
"My astral self has been hovering over you, guarding you, every minute," Sara answered dreamily.
"Can it take shorthand?" I asked dryly.
"Maybe I'd better come in," she replied.
When she came through the door the lieutenant gave her one appreciative glance, then returned to his aloof pedestal of indifference. Obviously his pattern was to stand in majestic splendor and allow the girls to fawn somewhere down near his shoes. These lads with a glamour boy complex almost always gravitate toward some occupation which will require them to wear a uniform. Sara catalogued him as quickly as I did, and seemed unimpressed. But you never can tell about a woman; the smartest of them will fall for the most transparent poses.
"General Sanfordwaithe, dear sir," I began as she sat down at one corner of my desk and flipped open her book. "It takes more than a towel wrapped around the head and some mutterings about infinity to get poltergeist effects. So I am returning your phony Swami to you with my compliments--"
"Beg your pardon, sir," the lieutenant interrupted, and there was a certain note of suppressed triumph in his voice. "In case you rejected our applicant for the poltergeist job you have in mind, I was to hand you this." He undid a lovingly polished button of his tunic, slipped his hand beneath the cloth and pulled forth a long, sealed envelope.
I took it from him and noted the three sealing-wax imprints on the flap. From being carried so close to his heart for so long, the envelope was slightly less crisp than when he had received it. I slipped my letter opener in under the side flap, and gently extracted the letter without, in anyway, disturbing the wax seals which were to have guaranteed its privacy. There wasn't any point in my doing it, of course, except to demonst
rate to the lieutenant that I considered the whole deal as a silly piece of cloak and dagger stuff.
After the general formalities, the letter was brief: "Dear Mr. Kennedy: We already know the Swami is a phony, but our people have been convinced that in spite of this there are some unaccountable effects. We have advised your general manager, Mr. Henry Grenoble, that we are in the act of carrying out our part of the agreement, namely, to provide you with six male-type poltergeists, and to both you and him we are respectfully suggesting that you get on with the business of putting the antigravity units into immediate production."
I folded the letter and tucked it into one side of my desk pad. I looked at Sara.
"Never mind the letter to General Sanfordwaithe," I said. "He has successfully cut off my retreat in that direction." I looked over at the lieutenant. "All right," I said resignedly, "I'll apologize to the Swami, and make a try at using him."
I picked up the letter again and pretended to be reading it. But this was just a stall, because I had suddenly been struck by the thought that my extreme haste in scoring off the Swami and trying to get rid of him was because I didn't want to get involved again with poltergeists. Not any, of any nature.
The best way on earth to avoid having to explain psi effects and come to terms with them is simply to deny them, convince oneself that they don't exist. I sighed deeply. It looked as if I would be denied that little human privilege of closing my eyes to the obvious.
* * * * *
Old Stone Face, our general manager, claimed to follow the philosophy of building men, not machines. To an extent he did. His favorite phrase was, "Don't ask me how. I hired you to tell me." He hired a man to do a job, and I will say for him, he left that man alone as long as the job got done. But when a man flubbed a job, and kept on flubbing it, then Mr. Henry Grenoble stepped in and carried out his own job--general managing.
He had given me the assignment of putting antigrav units into production. He had given me access to all the money I would need for the purpose. He had given me sufficient time, months of it. And, in spite of all this coöperation, he still saw no production lines which spewed out antigrav units at some such rate as seventeen and five twelfths per second.
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