He said, “Hello… Oh, Dr. Smithers, yes… Um-m-m… Yes.… Concerning whom?… Well, in point of fact, he’s with me right now… Yes… Yes, immediately.”
He cradled the phone and looked at Roger thoughtfully. “The Dean wants to see both of us.”
“What about, sir?”
“He didn’t say.” He got up and stepped to the door. “Are you coming, Toomey?”
“Yes, sir.” Roger rose slowly to his feet, cramming the toe of one foot carefully under Dr. Morton’s desk as he did so.
Dean Smithers was a lean man with a long, ascetic face. He had a mouthful of false teeth that fitted just badly enough to give his sibilants a peculiar half-whistle.
“Close the door, Miss Bryce,” he said, “and I’ll take no phone calls for a while. Sit down, gentlemen.”
He stared at them portentously and added, “I think I had better get right to the point. I don’t know exactly what Dr. Toomey is doing, but he must stop.”
Dr. Morton turned upon Roger in amazement. “What have you been doing?”
Roger shrugged dispiritedly. “Nothing that I can help.” He had underestimated student tongue-wagging after all.
“Oh, come, come.” The Dean registered impatience. “I’m sure I don’t know how much of the story to discount, but it seems you must have been engaging in parlor tricks; silly parlor tricks quite unsuited to the spirit and dignity of this institution.”
Dr. Morton said, “This is all beyond me.”
Hie Dean frowned. “It seems you haven’t heard, then. It is amazing to me how the faculty can remain in complete ignorance of matters that fairly saturate the student body. I had never realized it before. I myself heard of it by accident; by a very fortunate accident, in fact, since I was able to intercept a newspaper reporter who arrived this morning looking for someone he called ‘Dr. Toomey, the flying professor.’ ”
“What?” cried Dr. Morton.
Roger listened haggardly.
“That’s what the reporter said. I quote him. It seems one of our students had called the paper. I ordered the newspaper man out and had the student sent to my office. According to him. Dr. Toomey flew—I use the word, ‘flew,’ because that’s what the student insisted on calling it—down a flight of stairs and then back up again. He claimed there were a dozen witnesses.”
“I went down the stairs only,” muttered Roger.
Dean Smithers was tramping up and down along his carpet now. He had worked himself up into a feverish eloquence. “Now mind you, Toomey, I have nothing against amateur theatricals. In my stay in office I have consistently fought against stuffiness and false dignity. I have encouraged friendliness between ranks in the faculty and have not even objected to reasonable fraternization with students. So I have no objection to your putting on a show for the students in your own home.
“Surely you see what could happen to the college once an irresponsible press is done with us. Shall we have a flying-professor craze succeed the flying-saucer craze? If the reporters get in touch with you, Dr. Toomey, I will expect you to deny all such reports categorically,”
“I understand, Dean Smithers.”
“I trust that we shall escape this incident without lasting damage. I must ask you, with all the firmness at my command, never to repeat your… uh… performance. If you ever do, your resignation will be requested. Do you understand, Dr. Toomey?”
“Yes,” said Roger.
“In that case, good day, gentlemen.”
Dr. Morton steered Roger back into his office. This time, he shooed his secretary and closed the door behind her carefully.
“Good heavens, Toomey,” he whispered, “has this madness any connection with your letter on levitation?”
Roger’s nerves were beginning to twang. “Isn’t it obvious? I was referring to myself in those letters.”
“You can fly? I mean, levitate?”
“Either word you choose.”
“I never heard of such—Damn it, Toomey, did Miss Harroway ever see you levitate?”
“Once. It was an accid—”
“Of course. It’s obvious now. She was so hysterical it was hard to make out. She said you had jumped at her. It sounded as though she were accusing you of… of—” Dr. Morton looked embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t believe that. She was a good secretary, you understand, but obviously not one designed to attract the attention of a young man. I was actually relieved when she left. I thought she would be carrying a small revolver next, or accusing me—You… you levitated, eh?”
“Yes.”
“How do you do it?”
Roger shook his head. “That’s my problem. I don’t know.”
Dr. Morton allowed himself a smile. “Surely, you don’t repeal the law of gravity?”
“You know, I think I do. There must be antigravity involved somehow.”
Dr. Morton’s indignation at having a joke taken seriously was marked.
He said, “Look here, Toomey, this is nothing to laugh at.”
“Laugh at. Great Scott, Dr. Morton, do I look as though I were laughing?”
“Well—you need a rest. No question about it. A little rest and this nonsense of yours will pass. I’m sure of it.”
“It’s not nonsense.” Roger bowed his head a moment, then said, in a quieter tone, “I tell you what, Dr. Morton, would you like to go in to this with me? In some way this will open new horizons in physical science. I don’t know how it works; I just can’t conceive of any solution. The two of us together—”
Dr. Morton’s look of horror penetrated by that time.
Roger said, “I know it all sounds queer. But I’ll demonstrate for you. It’s perfectly legitimate. I wash it weren’t.”
“Now, now,” Dr. Morton sprang from his seat. “Don’t exert yourself. You need a rest badly. I don’t think you should wait till June. You go home right now. I’ll see that your salary comes through and I’ll look after your course. I used to give it myself once, you know.”
“Dr. Morton. This is important.”
“I know. I know.” Dr. Morton clapped Roger on the shoulder. “Still, my boy, you look under the weather. Speaking frankly, you look like hell. You need a long rest.”
“I can levitate.” Roger’s voice was climbing again. “You’re just trying to get rid of me because you don’t believe me. Do you think I’m lying? What would be my motive?”
“You’re exciting yourself needlessly, my boy. You let me make a phone call. I’ll have someone take you home.”
“I tell you I can levitate,” shouted Roger.
Dr. Morton turned red. “Look, Toomey, let’s not discuss it. I don’t care if you fly up in the air right this minute.”
“You mean seeing isn’t believing as far as you’re concerned?”
“Levitation? Of course not.” The department chairman was bellowing. “If I saw you fly, I’d see an optometrist or a psychiatrist. I’d sooner believe myself insane than that the laws of physics—”
He caught himself, harumphed loudly. “Well, as I said, let’s not discuss it. I’ll just make this phone call.”
“No need, sir. No need,” said Roger. “I’ll go. I’ll take my rest. Goodbye.”
He walked out rapidly, moving more quickly than at any time in days. Dr. Morton, on his feet, hands flat on his desk, looked at his departing back with relief.
James Sarle, M.D., was in the living room when Roger arrived home.
He was lighting his pipe as Roger stepped through the door, one large-knuckled hand enclosing the bowl. He shook out the match and his ruddy face crinkled into a smile.
“Hello, Roger. Resigning from the human race? Haven’t heard from you in over a month.”
His black eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, giving him a rather forbidding appearance that somehow helped him establish the proper atmosphere with his patients.
Roger turned to Jane, who sat buried in an armchair. As usual lately, she had a look of wan exhaustion on her face.
Roger
said to her, “Why did you bring him here?”
“Hold it! Hold it, man,” said Sarle. “Nobody brought me. I met Jane downtown this morning and invited myself here. I’m bigger than she is. She couldn’t keep me out.”
“Met her by coincidence, I suppose? Do you make appointments for all your coincidences?”
Sarle laughed, “Let’s put it this way. She told me a little about what’s been going on.”
Jane said, wearily, “I’m sorry if you disapprove, Roger, but it was the first chance I had to talk to someone who would understand.”
“What makes you think he understands? Tell me, Jim, do you believe her story?”
Sarle said, “It’s not an easy thing to believe. You’ll admit that. But I’m trying.”
“All right, suppose I flew. Suppose I levitated right now. What would you do?”
“Faint, maybe. Maybe I’d say, ‘Holy Pete.’ Maybe I’d bust out laughing. Why don’t you try, and then we’ll see?”
Roger stared at him. “You really want to see it?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“The ones that have seen it screamed or ran or froze with horror. Can you take it, Jim?”
“I think so.”
“O.K.” Roger slipped two feet upward and executed a slow tenfold entrechat. He remained in the air, toes pointed downward, legs together, arms gracefully outstretched in bitter parody.
“Better than Nijinski, eh, Jim?”
Sarle did none of the things he suggested he might do. Except for catching his pipe as it dropped, he did nothing at all.
Jane had closed her eyes. Tears squeezed quietly through the lids.
Sarle said, “Come down, Roger.”
Roger did so. He took a seat and said, “I wrote to physicists, men of reputation. I explained the situation in an impersonal way. I said I thought it ought to be investigated. Most of them ignored me. One of them wrote to old man Morton to ask if I were crooked or crazy.”
“Oh, Roger,” whispered Jane.
“You think that’s bad? The Dean called me into his office today. I’m to stop my parlor tricks, he says. It seems I had stumbled down the stairs and automatically levitated myself to safety. Morton says he wouldn’t believe I could fly if he saw me in action. Seeing isn’t believing in this case, he says, and orders me to take a rest. I’m not going back.”
“Roger,” said Jane, her eyes opening wide. “Are you serious?”
“I can’t go back. I’m sick of them. Scientists!”
“But what will you do?”
“I don’t know.” Roger buried his head in his hands. He said in a muffled voice, “You tell me, Jim. You’re the psychiatrist. Why won’t they believe me?”
“Perhaps it’s a matter of self-protection, Roger,” said Sarle, slowly. “People aren’t happy with anything they can’t understand. Even some centuries ago when many people did believe in the existence of extranatural abilities, like flying on broomsticks, for instance, it was almost always assumed that these powers originated with the forces of evil.
“People still think so. They may not believe literally in the devil, but they do think that what is strange is evil. They’ll fight against believing in levitation—or be scared to death if the fact is forced down their throats. That’s true, so let’s face it.”
Roger shook his head. “You’re talking about people, and I’m talking about scientists.”
“Scientists are people.”
“You know what I mean. I have here a phenomenon. It isn’t witchcraft. I haven’t dealt with the devil. Jim, there must be a natural explanation. We don’t know all there is to know about gravitation. We know hardly anything, really. Don’t you suppose it’s just barely conceivable that there is some biological method of nullifying gravity? Perhaps I am a mutation of some sort. I have a… well, call it a muscle… which can abolish gravity. At least it can abolish the effect of gravity on myself. Well, let’s investigate it. Why sit on our hands? If we have antigravity, imagine what it will mean to the human race.”
“Hold it, Rog,” said Sarle. “Think about the matter a while. Why are you so unhappy about it? According to Jane, you were almost mad with fear the first day it happened, before you had any way of knowing that science was going to ignore you and that your superiors would be unsympathetic.”
“That’s right,” murmured Jane.
Sarle said, “Now why should that be? Here you had a great, new, wonderful power; a sudden freedom from the deadly pull of gravity.”
Roger said, “Oh, don’t be a fool. It was—horrible. I couldn’t understand it. I still can’t.”
“Exactly, my boy. It was something you couldn’t understand and therefore something horrible. You’re a physical scientist. You know what makes the universe run. Or if you don’t know, you know someone else knows. Even if no one understands a certain point, you know that some day someone will know. The key word is know. It’s part of your life. Now you come face to face with a phenomenon which you consider to violate one of the basic laws of the universe. Scientists say: Two masses will attract one another according to a fixed mathematical rule. It is an inalienable property of matter and space. There are no exceptions. And now you’re an exception.”
Roger said, glumly, “And how.”
“You see, Roger,” Sarle went on, “for the first time in history, mankind really has what he considers unbreakable rules. I mean, unbreakable. In primitive cultures, a medicine man might use a spell to produce rain. If it didn’t work, it didn’t upset the validity of magic. It just meant that the shaman had neglected some part of his spell, or had broken a taboo, or offended a god. In modern theocratic cultures, the commandments of the Deity are unbreakable. Still if a man were to break the commandments and yet prosper, it would be no sign that that particular religion was invalid. The ways of Providence are admittedly mysterious and some invisible punishment awaits.
“Today, however, we have rules that really can’t be broken, and one of them is the existence of gravity. It works even though the man who invokes it has forgotten to mutter em-em-over-ahr-square.”
Roger managed a twisted smile. “You’re all wrong, Jim. The unbreakable rules have been broken over and over again. Radioactivity was impossible when it was discovered. Energy came out of nowhere; incredible quantities of it. It was as ridiculous as levitation.”
“Radioactivity was an objective phenomenon that could be communicated and duplicated. Uranium would fog photographic film for anyone. A Crookes tube could be built by anyone and would deliver an electron stream in identical fashion for all. You—”
“I’ve tried communicating—”
“I know. But can you tell me, for instance, how I might levitate.”“Of course not.”
“That limits others to observation only, without experimental duplication. It puts your levitation on the same plane with stellar evolution, something to theorize about but never experiment with.”
“Yet scientists are willing to devote their lives to astrophysics.”
“Scientists are people. They can’t reach the stars, so they make the best of it. But they can reach you and to be unable to touch your levitation would be infuriating.”
“Jim, they haven’t even tried. You talk as though I’ve been studied. Jim, they won’t even consider the problem.”
“They don’t have to. You levitation is part of a whole class of phenomena that won’t be considered. Telepathy, clairvoyance, prescience and a thousand other extranatural powers are practically never seriously investigated, even though reported with every appearance of reliability. Rhine’s experiments on E.S.P. have annoyed far more scientists than they have intrigued. So you see, they don’t have to study you to know they don’t want to study you. They know that in advance.”
“Is this funny to you, Jim? Scientists refuse to investigate facts; they turn their back on the truth. And you just sit there and grin and make droll statements.”
“No, Roger, I know it’s serious. And I have no glib explanations
for mankind, really. I’m giving you my thoughts. It’s what I think. But don’t you see? What I’m doing, really, is to try to look at things as they are. It’s what you must do. Forget your ideals, your theories, your notions as to what people ought to do. Consider what they are doing. Once a person is oriented to face facts rather than delusions, problems tend to disappear. At the very least, they fall into their true perspective and become soluble.”
Roger stirred restlessly. “Psychiatric gobbledygook! It’s like putting your fingers on a man’s temple and saying, ‘Have faith and you will be cured!’ If the poor sap isn’t cured, it’s because he didn’t drum up enough faith. The witch doctor can’t lose.”
“Maybe you’re right, but let’s see. What is your problem?”
“No catechism, please. You know my problem so let’s not horse around.”
“You levitate. Is that it?”
“Let’s say it is. It’ll do as a first approximation.”
“You’re not being serious, Roger, but actually you’re probably right. It’s only a first approximation. After all you’re tackling that problem. Jane tells me you’ve been experimenting.”
“Experimenting! Ye Gods, Jim, I’m not experimenting. I’m drifting. I need high-powered brains and equipment. I need a research team and I don’t have it.”
“Then what’s your problem? Second approximation.”
Roger said, “I see what you mean. My problem is to get a research team. But I’ve tried! Man, I’ve tried till I’m tired of trying.”
“How have you tried?”
“I’ve sent out letters. I’ve asked—Oh, stop it, Jim. I haven’t the heart to go through the patient-on-the-couch routine. You know what I’ve been doing.”
“I know that you’ve said to people, ‘I have a problem. Help me.’ Have you tried anything else?”
“Look, Jim. I’m dealing with mature scientists.”
“I know. So you reason that the straightforward request is sufficient. Again it’s theory against fact. I’ve told you the difficulties involved in your request. When you thumb a ride on a highway you’re making a straightforward request, but most cars pass you by just the same. The point is that the straightforward request has failed. Now what’s your problem? Third approximation!”
Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time Page 21
