Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  The Swami made a determined effort to recapture the spotlight.

  "I'm afraid I must have help to walk to the car," he whispered. "I am completely exhausted. Ah, this work takes so much out of me. Why do I go on with it? Why? Why? Why?"

  He drooped in his chair, then made a valiantly brave effort to rise under his own power when he felt the lieutenant's hands lifting him up. He was leaning heavily on the lieutenant as they went out the door.

  Sara looked at me dubiously.

  "Will there be anything else?" she asked. Her tone suggested that since nothing had been accomplished, perhaps we should get some work out before she left.

  "No, Sara," I answered. "Good night. See you in the morning."

  She nodded and went out the door.

  Apparently none of them had seen what I saw. I wondered if Auerbach had. He was a trained observer. He was standing beside the table looking down at the cylinders. He reached over and poked at one of them with his forefinger. He was pushing it back and forth. It gave him no resistance beyond normal inertia. He pushed it a little farther out of parallel with true North. It did not try to swing back.

  So he had seen it. When I'd laid the cylinders down on the table they were in random positions. During the seance there had been no jarring of the table, not even so much as a rap or quiver which could have been caused by the Swami's lifted knee. When we'd shifted the table, after the Swami had changed his chair, the cylinders hadn't been disturbed. When Old Stone Face had been staring at them during the seance--seance?, hah!--they were laying in inert, random positions.

  But when the lights came back on, and just before Henry had picked one up and tossed it back to scatter them, every cylinder had been laying in orderly parallel--and with one end pointing to true North!

  I stood there beside Auerbach, and we both poked at the cylinders some more. They gave us no resistance, nor showed that they had any ideas about it one way or the other.

  "It's like so many things," I said morosely. "If you do just happen to notice anything out of the ordinary at all, it doesn't seem to mean anything."

  "Maybe that's because you're judging it outside of its own framework," Auerbach answered. I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or speculative. "What I don't understand," he went on, "is that once the cylinders having been activated by whatever force there was in action--all right, call it psi--well, why didn't they retain it, the way the other cylinders retained the antigrav force?"

  I thought for a moment. Something about the conditional setup seemed to give me an idea.

  "You take a photographic plate," I reasoned. "Give it a weak exposure to light, then give it a strong blast of overexposure. The first exposure is going to be blanked out by the second. Old Stone Face was feeling pretty strongly toward the whole matter."

  Auerbach looked at me, unbelieving.

  "There isn't any rule about who can have psi talent," I argued. "I'm just wondering if I shouldn't wire General Sanfordwaithe and tell him to cut our order for poltergeists down to five."

  * * * * *

  I spent a glum, restless night. I knew, with certainty, that Old Stone Face was going to give me trouble. I didn't need any psi talent for that, it was an inevitable part of his pattern. He had made up his mind to take charge of this antigrav operation, and he wouldn't let one bogus seance stop him more than momentarily.

  If it weren't so close to direct interference with my department, I'd have been delighted to sit on the side lines and watch him try to command psi effects to happen. That would be like commanding some random copper wire and metallic cores to start generating electricity.

  For once I could have overlooked the interference with my department if I didn't know, from past experience, that I'd be blamed for the consequent failure. That's a cute little trick of top executives, generally. They get into something they don't understand, really louse it up, then, because it is your department, you are the one who failed. Ordinarily I liked my job, but if this sort of thing went too far--

  But more than saving my job, I had the feeling that if I were allowed to go along, carefully and experimentally, I just might discover a few of the laws about psi. There was the tantalizing feeling that I was on the verge of knowing at least something.

  The Pentagon people had been right. The Swami was an obvious phony of the baldest fakery, yet he had something. He had something, but how was I to get hold of it? Just what kind of turns with what around what did you make to generate a psi force? It took two thousand years for man to move from the concept that amber was a stone with a soul to the concept of static electricity. Was there any chance I could find some shortcuts in reducing the laws governing psi? The one bright spot of my morning was that Auerbach hadn't denied seeing the evidence of the cylinders pointing North.

  It turned out to be the only bright spot. I had no more than got to my office and sorted out the routine urgencies which had to be handled immediately from those which could be put off a little longer, when Sara announced the lieutenant and the Swami. So I put everything else off, and told her to send them right in.

  The Swami was in an incoherent rage. The lieutenant was contracting his eyebrows in a scowl and clenching his fists in frustration. In a voice, soaring into the falsetto, the Swami demanded that he be sent back to Brooklyn where he was appreciated. The lieutenant had orders to stay with the Swami, but he didn't have any orders about returning either to Brooklyn or the Pentagon. I managed, at last, to get the lieutenant seated in a straight chair, but the Swami couldn't stay still long enough. He stalked up and down the room, swirling his slightly odorous black cloak on the turns. Gradually the story came out.

  * * * * *

  Old Stone Face, a strong advocate of Do It Now, hadn't wasted any time. From his home he had called the Swami at his hotel and commanded him to report to the general manager's office at once. Apparently they both got there about the same time, and Henry had waded right in.

  Apparently Henry, too, had spent a restless night. He accused the Swami of inefficiency, bungling, fraud, deliberate insubordination, and a few other assorted faults for having made a fool out of us all at the seance. He'd as much as commanded the Swami to cut out all this shilly-shallying and get down to the business of activating antigrav cylinders, or else. He hadn't been specific about what the "or else" would entail.

  It was up to me to pick up the pieces, if I could.

  "Now I'm sure he really didn't mean--" I began to pour oil on the troubled waters. "With your deep insight, Swami--The fate of great martyrs throughout the ages--" Gradually the ego-building phrases calmed him down. He grew willing to listen, if for no more than the anticipation of hearing more of them.

  He settled down into the crying chair at last, and I could see his valence shifting from outraged anger to a vast and noble forgiveness. This much was not difficult. To get him to coöperate, consciously and enthusiastically, well that might not be so easy.

  Each trade has its own special techniques. The analytical chemist has a series of routines he tries when he wishes to reduce an unknown compound to its constituents. To the chemically uneducated, this may appear to be a fumbling, hit or miss, kind of procedure. The personnel man, too, has his series of techniques. It may appear to be no more than random, pointless conversation.

  I first tried the routine process of reasoning. I didn't expect it to work; it seldom does, but it can't be eliminated until it has been tested.

  * * * * *

  "You must understand," I said slowly, soothingly, "that our intentions are constructive. We are simply trying to apply the scientific method to something which has, heretofore, been wrapped in mysticism."

  The shocked freezing of his facial muscles told me that reasoning had missed its mark. It told me more.

  "Science understands nothing, nothing at all!" he snapped, "Science tries to reduce everything to test tubes and formulae; but I am the instrument of a mystery which man can never know."

  "Well, now," I said reasonably. "Let us n
ot be inconsistent. You say this is something man was not meant to know; yet you, yourself, have devoted your life to gaining a greater comprehension of it."

  "I seek only to rise above my material self so that I might place myself in harmony with the flowing symphony of Absolute Truth," he lectured me sonorously. Oh well, his enrapturement with such terminology differed little from some of the sciences which tended to grow equally esoteric. And maybe it meant something. Who was I to say that mine ears alone heard all the music being played?

  It did mean one thing very specifically. There are two basic approaches to the meaning of life and the universe about us. Man can know: That is the approach of science, its whole meaning. There are mysteries which man was not meant to know: That is the other approach. There is no reconciling of the two on a reasoning basis. I represented the former. I wasn't sure the Swami was a true representative of the latter, but at least he had picked up the valence and the phrases.

  I made a mental note that reasoning was an unworkable technique with this compound. Henry, a past master at it, had already tried threats and abuse. That hadn't worked. I next tried one of the oldest forms in the teaching of man, a parable.

  I told him of my old Aunt Dimity, who was passionately fond of Rummy, but considered all other card games sinful.

  "Ah, how well she proves my point," the Swami countered. "There is an inner voice, a wisdom greater than the mortal mind to guide us--"

  "Well now," I asked reasonably, "why would the inner voice say that Rummy was O.K., but Casino wasn't?" But it was obvious he liked the point he had made better than he had liked the one I failed to make.

  So I tried the next technique. I tried an appeal for instruction. Often an opponent will come over to your side if you just confess, honestly, that he is a better man than you are, and you need his help. What was the road I must take to achieve the same understanding he had achieved? His eyes glittered at that, and a mercenary expression underlay the tone of his answer.

  "First there is fasting, and breathing, and contemplating self," he murmured mendaciously. "I would be unable to aid you until you gave me full ascendancy over you, so that I might guide your every thought--"

  I decided to try inspiration. In breaking down recalcitrant materials in the laboratory of my personnel office, sometimes one method worked, sometimes another.

  "Do you realize, Swami," I asked, "that the one great drawback throughout the ages to a full acceptance of psi is the lack of permanent evidence? It has always been evanescent, perishable. It always rests solely upon the word of witnesses. But if I could show you a film print, then you could not doubt the existence of photography, could you?"

  I opened my lower desk drawer and pulled out a couple of the Auerbach cylinders which we had used the night before. I laid them on top of the desk.

  "These cylinders," I said, "act like the photographic film. They will record, in permanent form, the psi effects you command. At last, for all mankind the doubt will be stilled; man will at once know the truth; and you will take your place among the immortals."

  I thought it was pretty good, and that, with his overweening ego, it would surely do the trick. But the Swami was staring at the cylinders first in fascination, then fear, then in horror. He jumped to his feet, without bothering to swirl his robe majestically, rushed over to the door, fumbled with the knob as if he were in a burning room, managed to get the door open, and rushed outside. The lieutenant gave me a puzzled look, and went after him.

  * * * * *

  I drew a deep breath, and exhaled it audibly. My testing procedures hadn't produced the results I'd expected, but the last one had revealed something else.

  The Swami believed himself to be a fraud!

  As long as he could razzle-dazzle with sonorous phrases, and depend upon credulous old women to turn them into accurate predictions of things to come, he was safe enough. But faced with something which would prove definitely--

  Well, what would he do now?

  And then I noticed that both cylinders were pointing toward the door. I watched them, at first, not quite sure; then I grew convinced by the change in their perspective with the angles of the desk. Almost as slowly as the minute hand of a watch, they were creeping across the desk toward the door. They, too, were trying to escape from the room.

  I nudged them with my fingers. They hustled along a little faster, as if appreciative of the help, even coming from me. I saw they were moving faster, as if they were learning as they tried it. I turned one of them around. Slowly it turned back and headed for the door again. I lifted one of them to the floor. It had no tendency to float, but it kept heading for the door. The other one fell off the desk while I was fooling with the first one. The jar didn't seem to bother it any. It, too, began to creep across the rug toward the door.

  I opened the door for them. Sara looked up. She saw the two cylinders come into view, moving under their own power.

  "Here we go again," she said, resignedly.

  The two cylinders pushed themselves over the door sill, got clear outside my office. Then they went inert. Both Sara and I tried nudging them, poking them. They just lay there; mission accomplished. I carried them back inside my office and lay them on the floor. Immediately both of them began to head for the door again.

  "Simple," Sara said dryly, "they just can't stand to be in the same room with you, that's all."

  "You're not just whistling, gal," I answered. "That's the whole point."

  "Have I said something clever?" she asked seriously.

  I took the cylinders back into my office and put them in a desk drawer. I watched the desk for a while, but it didn't change position. Apparently it was too heavy for the weak force activating the cylinders.

  I picked up the phone and called Old Stone Face. I told him about the cylinders.

  "There!" he exclaimed with satisfaction. "I knew all that fellow needed was a good old-fashioned talking to. Some day, my boy, you'll realize that you still have a lot to learn about handling men."

  "Yes, sir," I answered.

  * * * * *

  Sara asked me if I were ready to start seeing people, and I told her I wasn't, that I had some thinking to do. She quipped something about making the world wait, meaning that I should be occupying my time with personnel managing, and closed the door.

  At that, Old Stone Face had a point. If he hadn't got in and riled things up, maybe the Swami would not have been emotionally upset enough to generate the psi force which had activated these new cylinders.

  What was I saying? That psi was linked with emotional upheaval? Well, maybe. Not necessarily, but Rhine had proved that strength of desire had an effect upon the frequency index of telekinesis. Was there anything at all we knew about psi, so that we could start cataloguing, sketching in the beginnings of a pattern? Yes, of course there was.

  First, it existed. No one could dismiss the mountainous mass of evidence unless he just refused to think about the subject.

  Second, we could, in time, know what it was and how it worked. You'd have to give up the entire basis of scientific attitude if you didn't admit that.

  Third, it acted like a sense, rather than as something dependent upon the intellectual process of thought. You could, for example--I argued to my imaginary listener--command your nose to smell a rose, and by autosuggestion you might think you were succeeding; that is, until you really did smell a real rose, then you'd know that you'd failed to create it through a thought pattern. The sense would have to be separated from the process of thinking about the sense.

  So what was psi? But, at this point, did it matter much? Wasn't the main issue one of learning how to produce it, use it? How long did we work with electricity and get a lot of benefits from it before we formed some theories about what it was? And, for that matter, did we know what it was, even yet? "A flow of electrons" was a pretty meaningless phrase, when you stopped to think about it. I could say psi was a flow of positrons, and it would mean as much.

  I reached over and pi
cked up a cigarette. I started fumbling around in the center drawer of my desk for a matchbook. I didn't find any. Without thinking, I opened the drawer containing the two cylinders. They were pressing up against the side of the desk drawer, still trying to get out of the room. Single purposed little beasts, weren't they?

  I closed the drawer, and noticed that I was crushing out my cigarette in the ash tray, just as if I'd smoked it. It was the first overt indication I'd had that maybe my nerves weren't all they should be this morning.

  The sight of the cylinders brought up the fourth point. Experimental psychology was filled with examples of the known senses being unable to make correct evaluations when confronted with a totally new object, color, scent, taste, sound, impression. It was necessary to have a point of orientation before the new could be fitted into the old. What we really lacked in psi was the ability to orient its phenomena. The various psi gifted individuals tried to do this. If they believed in guides from beyond the veil, that's the way they expressed themselves. On the other hand, a Rhine card caller might not be able to give you a message from your dear departed Aunt Minnie if his life depended upon it--yet it could easily be the same force working in both instances. Consequently, a medium, such as the Swami, whose basic belief was There Are Mysteries, would be unable to function in a framework where the obvious intent was to unveil those mysteries!

  That brought up a couple more points. I felt pretty sure of them. I felt as if I were really getting somewhere. And I had a situation which was ideal for proving my points.

  I flipped the intercom key, and spoke to Sara.

  "Will you arrange with her foreman for Annie Malasek to come to my office right now?" I asked. Sara is flippant when things are going along all right, but she knows when to buckle down and do what she's asked. She gave me no personal reactions to this request.

  Yes, Annie Malasek would be a good one. If anybody in the plant believed There Are Mysteries, it would be Annie. Further, she was exaggeratedly loyal to me. She believed I was responsible for turning her little Jennie, the little girl who'd started all this poltergeist trouble, into a Good Little Girl. In this instance, I had no qualms about taking advantage of that loyalty.