Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  And that scares me because it just isn't true. I'm as human as anybody else. But somehow it seems that I'm the one who has to prove it. I wonder if I ever will. That's why Dr. Custer has to help me. Everything hangs on that. I'm to go up to Boston next week, for final studies and testing.

  If Dr. Custer can do something, what a difference that will make! Maybe then I could get out of this whole frightening mess, put it behind me and forget about it. With just the psi alone, I don't think I ever can.

  * * * * *

  Friday, 19 May. Today Lambertson broke down and told me what it was that Aarons had been proposing. It was worse than I thought it would be. The man had hit on the one thing I'd been afraid of for so long.

  "He wants you to work against normals," Lambertson said. "He's swallowed the latency hypothesis whole. He thinks that everybody must have a latent psi potential, and that all that is needed to drag it into the open is a powerful stimulus from someone with full-blown psi powers."

  "Well?" I said. "Do you think so?"

  "Who knows?" Lambertson slammed his pencil down on the desk angrily. "No, I don't think so, but what does that mean? Not a thing. It certainly doesn't mean I'm right. Nobody knows the answer, not me, nor Aarons, nor anybody. And Aarons wants to use you to find out."

  I nodded slowly. "I see. So I'm to be used as a sort of refined electrical stimulator," I said. "Well, I guess you know what you can tell Aarons."

  He was silent, and I couldn't read him. Then he looked up. "Amy, I'm not sure we can tell him that."

  I stared at him. "You mean you think he could force me?"

  "He says you're a public charge, that as long as you have to be supported and cared for, they have the right to use your faculties. He's right on the first point. You are a public charge. You have to be sheltered and protected. If you wandered so much as a mile outside these walls you'd never survive, and you know it."

  I sat stunned. "But Dr. Custer--"

  "Dr. Custer is trying to help. But he hasn't succeeded so far. If he can, then it will be a different story. But I can't stall much longer, Amy. Aarons has a powerful argument. You're psi-high. You're the first full-fledged, wide-open, free-wheeling psi-high that's ever appeared in human history. The first. Others in the past have shown potential, maybe, but nothing they could ever learn to control. You've got control, you're fully developed. You're here, and you're the only one there is."

  "So I happened to be unlucky," I snapped. "My genes got mixed up."

  "That's not true, and you know it," Lambertson said. "We know your chromosomes better than your face. They're the same as anyone else's. There's no gene difference, none at all. When you're gone, you'll be gone, and there's no reason to think that your children will have any more psi potential than Charlie Dakin has."

  Something was building up in me then that I couldn't control any longer. "You think I should go along with Aarons," I said dully.

  He hesitated. "I'm afraid you're going to have to, sooner or later. Aarons has some latents up in Boston. He's certain that they're latents. He's talked to the directors down here. He's convinced them that you could work with his people, draw them out. You could open the door to a whole new world for human beings."

  I lost my temper then. It wasn't just Aarons, or Lambertson, or Dakin, or any of the others. It was all of them, dozens of them, compounded year upon year upon year. "Now listen to me for a minute," I said. "Have any of you ever considered what I wanted in this thing? Ever? Have any of you given that one single thought, just once, one time when you were so sick of thinking great thoughts for humanity that you let another thought leak through? Have you ever thought about what kind of a shuffle I've had since all this started? Well, you'd better think about it. Right now."

  "Amy, you know I don't want to push you."

  "Listen to me, Lambertson. My folks got rid of me fast when they found out about me. Did you know that? They hated me because I scared them! It didn't hurt me too much, because I thought I knew why they hated me, I could understand it, and I went off to Bairdsley without even crying. They were going to come see me every week, but do you know how often they managed to make it? Not once after I was off their hands. And then at Bairdsley Aarons examined me and decided that I was a cripple. He didn't know anything about me then, but he thought psi was a defect. And that was as far as it went. I did what Aarons wanted me to do at Bairdsley. Never what I wanted, just what they wanted, years and years of what they wanted. And then you came along, and I came to the Study Center and did what you wanted."

  It hurt him, and I knew it. I guess that was what I wanted, to hurt him and to hurt everybody. He was shaking his head, staring at me. "Amy, be fair. I've tried, you know how hard I've tried."

  "Tried what? To train me? Yes, but why? To give me better use of my psi faculties? Yes, but why? Did you do it for me? Is that really why you did it? Or was that just another phoney front, like all the rest of them, in order to use me, to make me a little more valuable to have around?"

  He slapped my face so hard it jolted me. I could feel the awful pain and hurt in his mind as he stared at me, and I sensed the stinging in his palm that matched the burning in my cheek. And then something fell away in his mind, and I saw something I had never seen before.

  He loved me, that man. Incredible, isn't it? He loved me. Me, who couldn't call him anything but Lambertson, who couldn't imagine calling him Michael, to say nothing of Mike--just Lambertson, who did this, or Lambertson who thought that.

  But he could never tell me. He had decided that. I was too helpless. I needed him too much. I needed love, but not the kind of love Lambertson wanted to give, so that kind of love had to be hidden, concealed, suppressed. I needed the deepest imaginable understanding, but it had to be utterly unselfish understanding, anything else would be taking advantage of me, so a barrier had to be built--a barrier that I should never penetrate and that he should never be tempted to break down.

  Lambertson had done that. For me. It was all there, suddenly, so overwhelming it made me gasp from the impact. I wanted to throw my arms around him; instead I sat down in the chair, shaking my head helplessly. I hated myself then. I had hated myself before, but never like this.

  "If I could only go somewhere," I said. "Someplace where nobody knew me, where I could just live by myself for a while, and shut the doors, and shut out the thoughts, and pretend for a while, just pretend that I'm perfectly normal."

  "I wish you could," Lambertson said. "But you can't. You know that. Not unless Custer can really help."

  We sat there for a while. Then I said, "Let Aarons come down. Let him bring anybody he wants with him. I'll do what he wants. Until I see Custer."

  That hurt, too, but it was different. It hurt both of us together, not separately any more. And somehow it didn't hurt so much that way.

  * * * * *

  Monday, 22 May. Aarons drove down from Boston this morning with a girl named Mary Bolton, and we went to work.

  I think I'm beginning to understand how a dog can tell when someone wants to kick him and doesn't quite dare. I could feel the back of my neck prickle when that man walked into the conference room. I was hoping he might have changed since the last time I saw him. He hadn't, but I had. I wasn't afraid of him any more, just awfully tired of him after he'd been here about ten minutes.

  But that girl! I wonder what sort of story he'd told her? She couldn't have been more than sixteen, and she was terrorized. At first I thought it was Aarons she was afraid of, but that wasn't so. It was me.

  It took us all morning just to get around that. The poor girl could hardly make herself talk. She was shaking all over when they arrived. We took a walk around the grounds, alone, and I read her bit by bit--a feeler here, a planted suggestion there, just getting her used to the idea and trying to reassure her. After a while she was smiling. She thought the lagoon was lovely, and by the time we got back to the main building she was laughing, talking about herself, beginning to relax.

  Then I gave her a f
ull blast, quickly, only a moment or two. Don't be afraid--I hate him, yes, but I won't hurt you for anything. Let me come in, don't fight me. We've got to work as a team.

  It shook her. She turned white and almost passed out for a moment. Then she nodded, slowly. "I see," she said. "It feels as if it's way inside, deep inside."

  "That's right. It won't hurt. I promise."

  She nodded again. "Let's go back, now. I think I'm ready to try."

  We went to work.

  I was as blind as she was, at first. There was nothing there, at first, not even a flicker of brightness. Then, probing deeper, something responded, only a hint, a suggestion of something powerful, deep and hidden--but where? What was her strength? Where was she weak? I couldn't tell.

  We started on dice, crude, of course, but as good a tool as any. Dice are no good for measuring anything, but that was why I was there. I was the measuring instrument. The dice were only reactors. Sensitive enough, two balsam cubes, tossed from a box with only gravity to work against. I showed her first, picked up her mind as the dice popped out, led her through it. Take one at a time, the red one first. Work on it, see? Now we try both. Once more--watch it! All right, now.

  She sat frozen in the chair. She was trying; the sweat stood out on her forehead. Aarons sat tense, smoking, his fingers twitching as he watched the red and green cubes bounce on the white backdrop. Lambertson watched too, but his eyes were on the girl, not on the cubes.

  It was hard work. Bit by bit she began to grab; whatever I had felt in her mind seemed to leap up. I probed her, amplifying it, trying to draw it out. It was like wading through knee-deep mud--sticky, sluggish, resisting. I could feel her excitement growing, and bit by bit I released my grip, easing her out, baiting her.

  "All right," I said. "That's enough."

  She turned to me, wide-eyed. "I--I did it."

  Aarons was on his feet, breathing heavily. "It worked?"

  "It worked. Not very well, but it's there. All she needs is time, and help, and patience."

  "But it worked! Lambertson! Do you know what that means? It means I was right! It means others can have it, just like she has it!" He rubbed his hands together. "We can arrange a full-time lab for it, and work on three or four latents simultaneously. It's a wide-open door, Michael! Can't you see what it means?"

  Lambertson nodded, and gave me a long look. "Yes, I think I do."

  "I'll start arrangements tomorrow."

  "Not tomorrow. You'll have to wait until next week."

  "Why?"

  "Because Amy would prefer to wait, that's why."

  Aarons looked at him, and then at me, peevishly. Finally he shrugged. "If you insist."

  "We'll talk about it next week," I said. I was so tired I could hardly look up at him. I stood up, and smiled at my girl. Poor kid, I thought. So excited and eager about it now. And not one idea in the world of what she was walking into.

  Certainly Aarons would never be able to tell her.

  * * * * *

  Later, when they were gone, Lambertson and I walked down toward the lagoon. It was a lovely cool evening; the ducks were down at the water's edge. Every year there was a mother duck herding a line of ducklings down the shore and into the water. They never seemed to go where she wanted them to, and she would fuss and chatter, waddling back time and again to prod the reluctant ones out into the pool.

  We stood by the water's edge in silence for a long time. Then Lambertson kissed me. It was the first time he had ever done that.

  "We could go away," I whispered in his ear. "We could run out on Aarons and the Study Center and everyone, just go away somewhere."

  He shook his head slowly. "Amy, don't."

  "We could! I'll see Dr. Custer, and he'll tell me he can help, I know he will. I won't need the Study Center any more, or any other place, or anybody but you."

  He didn't answer, and I knew there wasn't anything he could answer. Not then.

  * * * * *

  Friday, 26 May. Yesterday we went to Boston to see Dr. Custer, and now it looks as if it's all over. Now even I can't pretend that there's anything more to be done.

  Next week Aarons will come down, and I'll go to work with him just the way he has it planned. He thinks we have three years of work ahead of us before anything can be published, before he can really be sure we have brought a latent into full use of his psi potential. Maybe so, I don't know. Maybe in three years I'll find some way to make myself care one way or the other. But I'll do it, anyway, because there's nothing else to do.

  There was no anatomical defect--Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too deep ever to change it.

  What you no longer use, you lose, was what he said, apologizing because he couldn't explain it any better. It's like a price tag, perhaps. Long ago, before I knew anything at all, the psi was so strong it started compensating, bringing in more and more from other minds--such a wealth of rich, clear, interpreted visual and auditory impressions that there was never any need for my own. And because of that, certain hookups never got hooked up. That's only a theory, of course, but there isn't any other way to explain it.

  But am I wrong to hate it? More than anything else in the world I want to see Lambertson, see him smile and light his pipe, hear him laugh. I want to know what color really is, what music really sounds like unfiltered through somebody else's ears.

  I want to see a sunset, just once. Just once I want to see that mother duck take her ducklings down to the water. But I never will. Instead, I see and hear things nobody else can, and the fact that I am stone blind and stone deaf shouldn't make any difference. After all, I've always been that way.

  Maybe next week I'll ask Aarons what he thinks about it. It should be interesting to hear what he says.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE COFFIN CURE

  by Alan E. Nourse

  When the discovery was announced, it was Dr. Chauncey Patrick Coffin who announced it. He had, of course, arranged with uncanny skill to take most of the credit for himself. If it turned out to be greater than he had hoped, so much the better. His presentation was scheduled for the last night of the American College of Clinical Practitioners' annual meeting, and Coffin had fully intended it to be a bombshell.

  It was. Its explosion exceeded even Dr. Coffin's wilder expectations, which took quite a bit of doing. In the end he had waded through more newspaper reporters than medical doctors as he left the hall that night. It was a heady evening for Chauncey Patrick Coffin, M.D.

  Certain others were not so delighted with Coffin's bombshell.

  "It's idiocy!" young Dr. Phillip Dawson wailed in the laboratory conference room the next morning. "Blind, screaming idiocy. You've gone out of your mind--that's all there is to it. Can't you see what you've done? Aside from selling your colleagues down the river, that is?" He clenched the reprint of Coffin's address in his hand and brandished it like a broadsword. "'Report on a Vaccine for the Treatment and Cure of the Common Cold,' by C. P. Coffin, et al. That's what it says--et al. My idea in the first place. Jake and I both pounding our heads on the wall for eight solid months--and now you sneak it into publication a full year before we have any business publishing a word about it."

  "Really, Phillip!" Dr. Chauncey Coffin ran a pudgy hand through his snowy hair. "How ungrateful! I thought for sure you'd be delighted. An excellent presentation, I must say--terse, succinct, unequivocal--" he raised his hand--"but generously unequivocal, you understand. You should have heard the ovation--they nearly went wild! And the look on Underwood's face! Worth waiting twenty years for."

  "And the reporters," snapped Phillip. "Don't forget the reporters." He whirled on the small dark man sitting quietly in the corner. "How about that, Jake? Did you see the morning papers? This thief not only steals our work, he splashes it all over the countryside in red ink."

  Dr. Jacob Miles cou
ghed apologetically. "What Phillip is so stormed up about is the prematurity of it all," he said to Coffin. "After all, we've hardly had an acceptable period of clinical trial."

  "Nonsense," said Coffin, glaring at Phillip. "Underwood and his men were ready to publish their discovery within another six weeks. Where would we be then? How much clinical testing do you want? Phillip, you had the worst cold of your life when you took the vaccine. Have you had any since?"

  "No, of course not," said Phillip peevishly.

  "Jacob, how about you? Any sniffles?"

  "Oh, no. No colds."

  "Well, what about those six hundred students from the University? Did I misread the reports on them?"

  "No--98 per cent cured of active symptoms within twenty-four hours. Not a single recurrence. The results were just short of miraculous." Jake hesitated. "Of course, it's only been a month...."

  "Month, year, century! Look at them! Six hundred of the world's most luxuriant colds, and now not even a sniffle." The chubby doctor sank down behind the desk, his ruddy face beaming. "Come, now, gentlemen, be reasonable. Think positively! There's work to be done, a great deal of work. They'll be wanting me in Washington, I imagine. Press conference in twenty minutes. Drug houses to consult with. How dare we stand in the path of Progress? We've won the greatest medical triumph of all times--the conquering of the Common Cold. We'll go down in history!"

  And he was perfectly right on one point, at least.

  They did go down in history.

  * * * * *

  The public response to the vaccine was little less than monumental. Of all the ailments that have tormented mankind through history none was ever more universal, more tenacious, more uniformly miserable than the common cold. It was a respecter of no barriers, boundaries, or classes; ambassadors and chambermaids snuffled and sneezed in drippy-nosed unanimity. The powers in the Kremlin sniffed and blew and wept genuine tears on drafty days, while senatorial debates on earth-shaking issues paused reverently upon the unplugging of a nose, the clearing of a rhinorrheic throat. Other illnesses brought disability, even death in their wake; the common cold merely brought torment to the millions as it implacably resisted the most superhuman of efforts to curb it.