Is That What People Do? (46 page)

Waverley looked intently at the thin, bright-eyed man. “This is Wild Talents, Incorporated,” he said. “We’re interested in any supernormal powers.”

“I knew that,” the man said, nodding vigorously. “That’s why I escaped. I know you’ll save me from them.” He glanced fearfully over his shoulder.

“We’ll see,” Waverley said diplomatically, settling back in his chair. His young organization seemed to hold an irresistible fascination for the lunatic fringe. As soon as he had announced his interest in psi functions and the like, an unending stream of psychotics and quacks had beaten a path to his door.

But Waverley didn’t bar even the obvious ones. Ridiculously enough, you sometimes found a genuine psi among the riffraff, a diamond in the rubbish. So—

“What do you do, Mr.—”

“Eskin, Sidney Eskin,” the man said. “I’m a scientist, sir.” He drew his ragged jacket together, assuming an absurd dignity. “I observe people, I watch them, and note down what they are doing, all in strict accordance with the best scientific methods and procedure.”

“I see,” Waverley said. “You say you escaped?”

“From the Blackstone Sanitarium, sir. Frightened by my investigations, secret enemies had me locked up. But I escaped, and have come to you for aid and sanctuary.”

Tentatively, Waverley classified the man as paranoidal. He wondered whether Eskin would become violent if he tried to call Blackstone.

“You say you observe people,” Waverley said mildly. “That doesn’t sound supernormal—”

“Let me show you,” the man said, with a sudden show of panic. He stared intently at Waverley. “Your secretary is in the reception room, seated at her desk. She is, at the moment, powdering her nose. She is doing it very delicately, applying the strokes with a circular motion. Now she is reaching forward, the powder box in her hand—ah! She has inadvertently spilled it against the typewriter. She says ‘Damn!’ under her breath. Now she—”

“Hold it,” Waverley said. He hurried over and opened the door to the reception room.

Doris Fleet, his secretary, was mopping up spilled powder. Some of it had dusted her black hair a creamy white, giving her the appearance of a kitten that had rolled in flour.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said.

“On the contrary,” Waverley said, “I’m grateful.” He didn’t bother to explain, but closed the door and hurried back to Eskin.

“You will protect me?” Eskin asked, leaning over the desk. “You won’t let them take me back?”

“Can you observe like that all the time?” Waverley asked.

“Of course!”

“Then don’t worry about a thing,” Waverley said calmly, but with a pulse of excitement rising within him. Lunatic or not, Eskin wasn’t going to waste his talents in any sanitarium. Not if Waverley had anything to do about it.

The intercom on his desk buzzed. He flipped the switch, and Doris Fleet said, “The reporters are here, Mr. Waverley.” “Hold them a moment,” Waverley said, smiling to himself at her “official” tone of voice. He ushered Eskin to a little room adjoining his office. “Stay here,” he told him. “Don’t make any noise, and don’t worry.”

He closed the door, locked it, and told Doris to let the reporters in.

There were seven of them, pads out, and Waverley thought he could detect a certain grudging respect in their faces. Wild Talents, Inc. wasn’t back-page filler anymore. Not since Billy Walker, Waverley’s star psi, had aided the flight of the
Venture
to Mars with a terrific telekinetic boost. Since then, Wild Talents had been front-page news.

Waverley had played it for all it was worth, holding back until he felt the maximum point of interest had been reached.

This was the point. Waverley waited until they were all quiet.

“Wild Talents, Incorporated, gentlemen,” he told them, “is an attempt to find the occasional person among the general population who has what we call psi powers.”

“What is a psi power?” a lanky reporter asked.

“It is difficult to define,” Waverley said, smiling with what he hoped was perfect candor. “Let me put it to you this way—”

“Sam!”
He heard Doris Fleet’s voice in his head as clearly as though she were standing beside him. Although she might not be the best of secretaries, Doris
was
a telepath. Her ability worked only about twenty percent of the time, but that twenty percent sometimes came in useful.

“Sam, two of the men in your office. They’re not reporters.”

“What are they?” he thought back.

“I don’t know,” Doris told him. “But I think they might mean trouble.”

“Can you get a line on what sort of trouble?”

“No. They’re the ones in the dark suits. They’re thinking—” Her thought died out.

Telepathy is lightning-fast. The entire exchange had taken perhaps a second. Waverley spotted the two men, sitting a little apart from the rest, and taking no notes. He went on.

“A psi, gentlemen, is a person with some form of mental control or development, the true nature of which we can only guess at. Today, most psis are to be found in circuses and sideshows. They lead, for the most part, unhappy, neurotic lives. My organization is trying to find the work that their special talents equip them for. Next we hope to discover why and how it works, and what makes it so erratic. We want—”

He continued, laying it on thick. Public acceptance was a big factor in his work, a factor he had to have on his side. The public, stimulated by atomic power and enormously excited by the recent flights to the moon and Mars, was prepared to accept the idea of psi, if it could be made sufficiently understandable for them.

So he painted the picture in rosy colors, skipping over most of the stumbling blocks. He showed the psi, capable of dealing with his environment on a direct mental level; the psi, not a deviation or freak, but mankind fully realized.

He almost had tears in his eyes by the time he was through.

“To sum up,” he told them, “our hope is that, someday, everyone will be capable of psi powers.”

After a barrage of questions, the conference broke up. The two men in dark suits remained.

“Was there some further information you wanted?” Waverley asked politely. “I have some brochures—”

“Have you got a man named Eskin here?” one of the men asked.

“Why?” Waverley countered.

“Have you?”

“Why?”

“All right, we’ll play it that way,” one of the men sighed. They showed their credentials. “Eskin was confined in Blackstone Sanitarium. We have reason to believe he came here, and we want him back.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Waverley asked.

“Have you seen him?”

“Gentlemen, we’re getting nowhere. Suppose I had seen him—and mind you, I’m not admitting it—suppose I had a means of rehabilitating him, making a decent, worthy citizen out of him. Would you still insist on having him back?”

“You can’t rehabilitate Eskin,” one of the men told him. “He’s found a perfectly satisfactory adjustment. Unfortunately, it’s one that the public cannot countenance.”

“What is it?” Waverley asked.

“Have you seen him?”

“No, but if I do, I’ll get in touch with you,” Waverley said pleasantly.

“Mr. Waverley. This attitude—”

“Is he dangerous?” Waverley asked.

“Not especially. But—”

“Has he any supernormal powers?”

“Probably,” one of the men said unhappily. “But his method of using them—”

“Can’t say I’ve ever seen the chap,” Waverley said coolly.

The men glanced at each other. “All right,” one of them said. “If you’ll admit to having him, we’ll sign him over to your custody.”

“Now you’re talking,” Waverley said. The release was quickly signed, and Waverley ushered the two men out. As they reached the door, Waverley saw what he thought was a wink pass between them. He must have imagined it, he decided.

“Was I right?” Doris asked him.

“Perfectly,” Waverley said. “You’ve still got powder in your hair.”

Doris located a mirror in her cavernous shoulder bag, and started dusting.

“Forget it,” Waverley said, leaning over and kissing the tip of her nose. “Marry me tomorrow.”

Doris considered for a moment. “Hairdresser tomorrow.”

“Day after, then.”

“I’m swimming the English Channel that day. Would next week be all right—”

Waverley kissed her. “Next week is not only all right, it’s obligatory,” he said. “And I’m not fooling.”

“All right,” Doris said, a little breathlessly. “But is this
really
it, Sam?”

“It is,” Waverley said. Their wedding date had been postponed twice already. The first time, the problem of Billy Walker had come up. Walker hadn’t wanted to go on the
Venture
to Mars, and Waverley had stayed with him day and night, bolstering his courage.

The next time had been when Waverley found a wealthy backer for Wild Talents, Inc. It was ‘round-the-clock work at first, organizing, contacting companies that might be able to use a psi, finding psis. But this time.

He bent over her again, but Doris said, “How about that man in your office?”

“Oh yes,” Waverley said with mild regret. “I think he’s genuine. I’d better see what he’s doing.” He walked through his office to the anteroom.

The psi had found pencil and paper, and was busy scribbling. He looked up when Waverley and Doris walked in, and gave them a wild, triumphant grin.

“Ah, my protector! Sir, I will demonstrate my scientific observations. Here is a complete account of all that transpired between A, you, and B, Miss Fleet.” He handed them a stack of papers.

Eskin had written a complete account of Waverley’s conversation with Doris, plus a faithful anatomical description of their kisses. He appended the physical data with a careful description of the emotions of both, before, during, and after each kiss.

Doris frowned. She had a love of personal privacy, and being observed by this ragged little man didn’t please her.

“Very interesting,” Waverley said, suppressing a smile for Doris’s sake. The man needed some guidance, he decided. But that could wait for tomorrow.

After finding Eskin a place to sleep, Waverley and Doris had dinner and discussed their marriage plans. Then they went to Doris’s apartment, where they disregarded television until one o’clock in the morning.

Next morning the first applicant was a sprucely dressed man in his middle thirties, who introduced himself as a lightning calculator. Waverley located a book of logarithms and put the man through his paces.

He was very good. Waverley took his name and address and promised to get in touch with him.

He was a little disappointed. Lightning calculators possessed the least wild of the wild talents. It was difficult to place them in really good jobs unless they had creative mathematical ability to go with their computing skill.

The morning shipment of magazines and newspapers arrived, and Waverley had a few minutes to browse through them. He subscribed to practically everything in hopes of finding little- known jobs that his psis might fill.

An elderly man with the purple-veined face of an alcoholic came in next. He was wearing a good suit, but with ragged, torn cuffs. His new shirt was impossibly filthy. His shoes, for some reason, were shined.

“I can turn water into wine,” the man said.

“Go right ahead,” Waverley told him. He went to the cooler and handed the man a cup of water.

The man looked at it, mumbled a few words, and, with his free hand, made a pass at the water. He registered astonishment when nothing happened. He looked sternly at the water, muttered his formula again, and again made a pass. Still nothing happened.

“You know how it is,” he said to Waverley. “We psis, our power just goes off and on. I’m usually good about forty percent of the time.”

“This is just an off day?” Waverley asked, with dangerous calm.

“That’s right,” the man said. “Look, if you could stake me for a few days, I’d get it again. I’m too sober now, but you should see me when I’m really—”

“You read about this in the papers, didn’t you?” Waverley asked.

“What? No, certainly not!”

“Get out of here,” Waverley said. It was amazing how many frauds his business attracted. People who thought he was dealing in some sort of pseudo-magic, people who thought he would be an easy mark for a sad story.

The next applicant was a short, stocky girl of eighteen or nineteen, plainly and unattractively dressed in a cheap print dress. She was obviously ill at ease.

Waverley pulled up a chair for her and gave her a cigarette, which she puffed nervously.

“My name’s Emma Cranick,” she told him, rubbing one perspiring hand against her thigh. “I—are you sure you won’t laugh at me?”

“Sure. Go on,” Waverley said, sorting a batch of papers on his desk. He knew the girl would feel better if he didn’t look at her.

“Well, I—this sounds ridiculous, but I can start fires. Just by wanting to.
lean!”
She glared at him defiantly.

A poltergeist, Waverley thought. Stone-throwing and fire-starting. She was the first one he had seen, although he had long been aware of the phenomenon. It seemed to center mostly in adolescent girls, for some unknown reason.

“Would you care to show me, Emma?” Waverley asked softly. The girl obliged by burning a hole in Waverley’s new rug. He poured a few cups of water over it, then had her burn a curtain as a check.

“That’s fine,” he told the girl, and watched her face brighten. She had been thrown off her uncle’s farm. She was “queer” if she started fires that way, and her uncle had no place for anyone who was “queer.”

She was rooming at the YWCA, and Waverley promised to get in touch with her.

“Don’t forget,” he said as she started out. “Yours is a valuable talent—a very valuable one. Don’t be frightened of it.”

This time her smile almost made her pretty.

A poltergeist, he thought, after she had gone. Now what in hell could he do with a poltergeist girl? Starting fire...A stoker, perhaps? No, that didn’t seem reasonable.

The trouble was, the wild talents were rarely reasonable. He had fibbed a bit to the reporters about that, but psis just weren’t tailor-made for the present world.