The Wonder Effect

by Frederik Pohl

  Master's call! He was wanted!

  Moray climbed from the plane under the frowning Andes and almost floated into the corridor of his Master's dwelling. The oppressive heat smote him in the face, but he was near laughing for joy when he opened the door and saw his Master sitting naked in the gloom.

  `You are slow, Moray,' said the Master, without inflection.

  Moray experienced a sudden chill. He had not expected this. Confusedly he had pictured a warm reconciliation, but there was no mistaking the tone of the Master's voice. Moray felt very tired and discouraged. 'Yes,' he said. 'You called me when I was out at the fields.'

  The Master did not frown, nor did he smile. Moray knew these moods of the cold, bleak intellect that gave him the greater part of his own intelligence and personality. Yet there was no greater tragedy in the world of his people than to be deserted – or, rather, to lose rapport with this intelligence. It was not insanity, and yet it was worse.

  `Moray,' said the Master, 'you are a most competent laboratory technician. And you have an ability for archaeology. You are assigned to a task which involves both these divisions. I wish you to investigate the researches of Carter Hawkes, time, about the Fifteenth Century Anno Cubriensis. Determine his conclusions and develop, on them, a complete solution to what he attempted to resolve.'

  `Yes,' said Moray dully. Normally he would have been elated at the thought that he had been chosen, and he consciously realized that it was his duty to be elated, but the chilly voice of his conscience told him that this was no affectionate assignment, but merely the use of a capable tool.

  `What is the purpose of this research?' he asked formally, his voice husky with fatigue and indulgence in the stimulant drug.

  `It is of great importance. The researches of Hawkes, as you know, were concerned with explosives. It was his barbarous intention to develop an explosive of such potency that one charge would be capable of destroying an enemy nation. Hawkes, of course, died before his ambition was realized, but we have historical evidence that he was on the right track.'

  `Chief among which,' interrupted Moray – deferentially –'is the manner of his death.'

  There was no approval in the Master's voice as he answered, `You know of the explosion in which he perished. Now, at this moment, the world is faced with a crisis more terrible than any ancient war could have been. It involves a shifting of the continental blocks of North America. The world now needs the Hawkes explosive, to provide the power for re-stabilizing the continent. All evidence has been assembled for your examination in the workroom. Speed is essential if catastrophe is to be averted.'

  Moray was appalled. The fate of a continent in his hands! `I shall do my best,' he said nervelessly, and walked from the room.

  Moray straightened his aching body and turned on the lights. He set the last of a string of symbols down on paper and leaned back to stare at them. The formula – complete!

  Moray was convinced that he had the right answer, through the lightning-like short cuts of reasoning, which humans called `canine intuition.' Moray might have felt pride in that ability –but, he realized, it was a mirage. The consecutivity of thought of the Masters – not Moray nor any of his people could really concentrate on a single line of reasoning for more than a few seconds. In the synthesis of thought Moray's people were superb. In its analysis ...

  A check-up on the formula was essential. Repeating the formula aloud, Moray's hands grasped half a dozen ingredients from the shelves of the lab, and precisely compounded them in the field of a micro-inspection device. Actually, Moray was dealing with units measured in single molecules, and yet his touch was as sure as though he were handling beakers-full.

  Finally titrated, the infinitesimal compound was set over a cherry-red electric grid to complete its chain of reactions and dry. Then it would explode, Moray realized – assuming he had the formula correct. But, with such a tiny quantity, what would be the difference?

  Perhaps – at utmost – the room would be wrecked. But there was no time to take the stuff to the firing-chambers that were suspended high over the crater of the extinct volcano on flexible steel masts, bent and supported to handle almost any shock.

  Moray swallowed two more pellets of the drug. He had to wait for its effect upon him, now, but he dared not take a larger dose.

  He strode from the room, putting the formula in his pocket.

  Wandering aimlessly through the building, he was suddenly assailed by the hot, wet aura of his Master. He paused, then nudged the door open a trifle and peered longingly within.

  The Master was engaged in solitary clairvoyance, his head sagging down on his scrawny chest, veins and muscles visibly pulsing. Even in the utter darkness of his room, he was visible by a thin blue light that exuded from the points and projections of his body to flow about the entire skin.

  The Master was utterly unconscious of the presence of his servant. Though Moray was not a child or a fool, he stemmed directly from the beautiful, intelligent creatures that used to hunt and play with men, and he could not stand up to the fierce tide of intellect that flowed in that room. With a smothered sound he turned, about to leave.

  Then Moray heard a noise – quiet and almost restful at first, like a swarm of bees passing overhead. And then it rumbled into a mighty crash that made the elastic construction of the Master's house quiver as though stricken.

  Suddenly he realized – the Hawkes explosive! It had worked! He looked at his Master, to see the blue glare fade as though it were being reabsorbed into his body. As the last of it vanished, lights glowed on around the room, bringing it to its accustomed shadowy twilight. The Master's head lifted.

  `Moray,' he whispered tensely. Was that the explosive?'

  A thin little ripple of delight surged along Moray's spine. They could both be blown to splintered atoms in the explosion, and the continent they were trying to save along with them – he didn't care! His Master had spoken to him!

  He knew what he had to do. With a little growl that was meant to say, `Pardon!' he raced to the Master's side, picked him up and flung him over a shoulder – gently. They had to get out of the building, for it might yet topple on them.

  Moray tottered to the door, bent under the double burden; pushed it open and stepped into the corridor. The Master couldn't walk, so Moray had to walk for him. They made slow progress along the interminable hall, but finally they were in the open. Moray set his burden down, the gangling head swaying, and—Felt unutterably, incontrovertibly idiotic! For the air was still and placid; and the building stood firm as a rock; and the only mark of the Hawkes explosive was a gaping mouth of a pit where the laboratory had been. Idiot! Not to have remembered that the Hawkes would expend its force downward!

  Moray peered shamefacedly at his Master. Yet there was some consolation for him, because there was the skeleton of a smile on the Master's face. Clearly he had understood Moray's Motives, and ... perhaps Moray's life need not finally be blighted.

  For a long second they stood there looking into each other's eyes. Then the Master said, gently, 'Carry me to the plane.' Not stopping to ask why, Moray picked him up once more and strode buoyantly to the waiting ship. Letting the Master down gently at the plane's door, he helped him in, got in himself, and took his place at the controls.

  `Where shall we go?' he ask.

  The Master smiled that ghost of a smile again, but Moray could detect a faint apprehension in his expression, too. 'Up, Moray,' he whispered. 'Straight up. You see, Moray, these mountains are volcanic. And they're not quite extinct. We must go away now, up into the air.'

  Moray's reflexes were faster than an electron-stream as he whipped around to the knobs and levers that sent the little ship tearing up into the atmosphere. A mile and a half in the sky, he flipped the bar that caused the ship to hover, turned to regard the scene below.

  The Master had been right! The explosion had pinked the volcano, and the volcano was erupting in retaliation — a hot curl of lava-was snaking into the atmosphere n
ow, seemingly a pseudo-pod reaching to bring them down. But it was thrown up only a few hundred feet; then the lava flow stopped; cataclysmic thunderings were heard and vast boulders were hurled into the sky. It was lucky they'd got away, thought Moray as he watched the ground beneath quiver and shake; and luckier that no other person had been around, for the ship could carry but two.

  And as he stared, fascinated, at the turmoil below, he felt a light, soft touch on his arm. It was the Master! — the first time in all Moray's life when the Master had touched him to draw attention, Moray suddenly knew, and rejoiced — he had found his Master again!

  `Let us go on, Moray,' whispered the Master. 'We have found that the explosive will work. Our job, just now, is done.'

  And as Moray worked the controls that hurled the ship ahead, toward a new home for his Master and toward Birch for himself, he knew that the wings of the ship were of no value at all. Tear them off! he thought, and throw them away! His heart was light enough to bear a world!

  THE WORLD OF MYRION FLOWERS

  THE WORLD of Myrion Flowers, which was the world of the American Negro, was something like an idealized England and something like the real Renaissance. As it is in some versions of England, all the members of the upper class were at least friends of friends. Any Harlem businessman knew automatically who was the new top dog in the music department of Howard University a week after an upheaval of the faculty. And -as it was in the Florence of Cellini, there was room for versatile men. An American Negro could be a doctor-builder-educator-realist-politician. Myrion Flowers was. Boston-born in 1913 to a lawyer-realist-politician father and a glamorous show-biz mother, he worked hard, drew the lucky number and was permitted to enter the schools which led to an M.D. and a license to practice in the State of New York. Power vacuums occurred around him during the years that followed, and willy-nilly he filled them. A construction firm going to waste, needing a little capital and a little common sense-what could he do? He did it, and accepted its stock.

  The school board coming to him as a sound man to represent “Ah, your people”? He was a sound man. He served the board well. A trifling examination to pass for a real-estate license-trifling to him who had memorized a dozen textbooks in pathology, histology, anatomy and materia medica-why not? And if they would deem it such a favor if he spoke for the Fusion candidate, why should he not speak, and if they should later invite him to submit names to fill one dozen minor patronage jobs, why should he not give him the names of the needy persons he knew?

  Flowers was a cold, controlled man. He never married. In lieu of children he had proteges. These began as Negro kids from orphanages or hopelessly destitute families; he backed them through college and postgraduate schools as long as they worked to the limit of what he considered their abilities; at the first sign of a let-down he axed them. The mortality rate over the years was only about one nongraduate in four -Myrion Flowers was a better predictor of success than any college admissions committee. His successes numbered forty-two when one of them came to him with a brand-new Ph.D. in clinical psychology and made a request.

  The protege’s name was Ensal Brubacker. He took his place after dinner in the parlor of Dr. Flowers’s Brooklyn brownstone house along with many other suppliants. There was the old woman who wanted an extension of her mortgage and would get it; there was the overstocked appliance dealer who wanted to be bailed out and would not be; there was the mother whose boy had a habit and the husband whose wife was acting stranger and stranger every day; there was the landlord hounded by the building department; there was the cop who wanted a transfer; there was the candidate for the bar who wanted a powerful name as a reference; there was a store-front archbishop who wanted only to find out whether Dr. Flowers was right with God.

  Brubacker was admitted to the doctor’s study at 9:30. It was only the sixth time he had seen the man who had picked him from an orphanage and laid out some twenty thousand dollars for him since. He found him more withered, colder and quicker than ever.

  The doctor did not congratulate him. He ‘said, “You’ve got your degree, Brubacker. If you’ve come to me for advice, I’d suggest that you avoid the academic life, especially in the Negro schools. I know what you should do. You may get nowhere, but I would like to see you try one of the Four-A advertising and public, relations firms, with a view to becoming a motivational research man. It’s time one Negro was working in the higher levels of Madison Avenue, I believe.”

  Brubacker listened respectfully, and when it was time for him to reply he said: “Dr. Flowers, I’m very grateful of course for everything you’ve done. I sincerely wish I could- Dr. Flowers, I want to do research. I sent you my dissertation, but that’s only the beginning-“

  Myrion Flowers turned to the right filing card in his mind and said icily, “The Correlation of Toposcop-ic Displays, Beta-Wave Amplitudes and Perception of Musical Chord Progressions in 1,107 Unselected Adolescents. Very well. You now have your sandwich board with ‘P,’ ‘H’ and ‘D’ painted on it, fore and aft. I expect that you will now proceed to the job for which you have been trained.”

  “Yes, sir. I’d like to show you a-“

  “I do not,” said Dr. Flowers, “want you to be a beloved old George Washington Carver humbly bending over his reports and test tubes. Academic research is of no immediate importance.”

  “No, sir. I-“

  “The power centers of America,” said Dr. Flowers, “are government, where our friend Mr. Wilkins is ably operating, and the executive levels of the large corporations, where I am attempting to achieve what is necessary. I want you to be an executive in a large corporation, Brubacker. You have been trained for that purpose. It is now perhaps barely possible for you to obtain a foothold. It is inconceivable to me that you will not make the effort, neither for me or for your people.”

  Brubacker looked at him in misery, and at last put his face into his hands. His shoulders shook.

  Dr. Flowers said scornfully: “I take it you are declining to make that effort. Good-bye, Brubacker. I do not want to see you again.”

  The young man stumbled from the room, carrying a large pigskin valise which he had not been permitted to open.

  As he had expected to overwhelm his benefactor with what he had accomplished he had made no plans for this situation. He could think only of returning to the university he had just left where, perhaps, before his little money ran out, he might obtain a grant. There was not really much hope of that. He had filed no proposals and sought no advice.

  It did not help his mood when the overnight coach to Chicago was filling up in Grand Central. He was among the first and took a window seat. Thereafter the empty place beside him was spotted gladly by luggage-burdened matrons, Ivy-League-clad youngsters, harrumphing paper-box salesmen-gladly spotted- and then uncomfortably skimmed past when they discovered that to occupy it they would have to sit next to the gorilla-rapist-illiterate-tapdancer-mugger-men-ace who happened to be Dr. Ensal Brubacker.

  But he was spared loneliness at the very last. The fellow who did drop delightedly into the seat beside him as the train began to move was One of His Own Kind. That is, he was unwashed, unlettered, a quarter drunk on liquor that had never known a tax stamp, and agonizingly high-spirited. He spoke such pure Harlem jive that Brubacker could not understand one word in twenty.

  But politeness and a terror of appearing superior forced Brubacker to accept, at 125th Street, a choking swallow from the flat half-pint bottle his seamate carried. And both of these things, plus an unsupportable sense of something lost, caused him to accept his seatmate’s later offer of more paralyzing pleasures. In ten months Brubacker was dead, in Lexington, Kentucky, of pneumonia incurred while kicking the heroin habit, leaving behind him a badly puzzled staff doctor. “They’ll say everything in withdrawal,” he confided to his wife, “but I wonder how this one ever heard the word ‘cryptesthesia.’”

  It was about a month after that that Myrion Flowers received the package containing Brubacker’s effects. T
here had been no one else to send them to.

  He was shaken, that controlled man. He had seen many folk-gods of his people go the same route, but they were fighters, entertainers or revivalists; he had not expected it of a young, brilliant university graduate. For that reason he did not immediately throw the junk away, but mused over it for some minutes. His next visitor found him with a silvery-coppery sort of helmet in his hands.

  Flowers’s next visitor was a former Corporation Counsel to the City of New York. By attending Dr. Powell’s church and having Dr. Flowers take care of his health he kept a well-placed foot in both the principal political camps of the city. He no longer much needed political support, but Flowers had pulled him through one coronary and he was too old to change doctors. “What have you got there, Myrion?” he asked.

  Flowers looked up and said precisely, “If I can believe the notes of the man who made it, it is a receiver and amplifier for beta-wave oscillations.”

  The Corporation Counsel groaned, “God preserve me from the medical mind. What’s that in English?” But he was surprised to see the expression of wondering awe that came onto Flowers’s withered face.

  “It reads thoughts,” Flowers whispered.

  The Corporation Counsel at once clutched his chest, but found no pain. He complained testily, “You’re joking.”

  “I don’t think I am, Wilmot. The man who constructed this device had all the appropriate dignities -summa cum laude, Dean’s List, interviewed by mail by nearly thirty prospective employers. Before they found out the color of his skin, of course. No,” he said reflectively, “I don’t think I’m joking, but there’s one way to find out.”

  He lifted the helmet toward his head. The Corporation counsel cried out, “Damn you, Myrion, don’t do that!”

  Flowers paused. “Are you afraid I’ll read your mind and learn your secrets?”

  “At my time of life? When you’re my doctor? No, Myrion, but you ought to know I have a bad heart. I don’t want you electrocuted in front of my eyes. Besides, what the devil does a Negro want with a machine that will tell him what people are thinking? Isn’t guessing bad enough for you?”