Nordlund edged into the conversation. “If it’s on the level …”
“It isn’t,” Tanner said curtly.
“But if it was?”
One layman in the crowd and you spent the whole damned afternoon explaining the ABCs.
“If it was on the level it would mean the person who filled it out was a very unusual human being, perhaps a very superior one. But I hardly think we should take it seriously. And there are a lot of important things to cover today.”
Olson’s voice rose to a nervous squeak. “Maybe you don’t want to admit what it means, Tanner!”
They were all staring at Olson now. His face was damp and his eyes a little too wide. The eyes of a man scared half to death, Tanner thought clinically. Then he could feel the sweat start on his own brow. He had a hunch that Olson was going to blow his stack right in the committee room.
He tried to head him off, to get the frightened man to talk it out. “All right, John, just what do you think it means?”
“I think it means the human race is all washed up!”
Tanner glanced over at the Navy man and could see that Olson’s outburst was going over like a lead balloon with Nordlund; there was a look of shocked surprise on the other faces. A moment of embarrassed silence followed, then Petey, looking as if she were about to cry, said, “John, I think we better …”
Olson didn’t look at her. “Shut up, Pat.”
Nobody said anything. They were going to let him handle it, Tanner thought uneasily. It was his baby. He held up the questionnaire. “Who filled this one out?”
Another strained silence, one where a slight, uneasy movement in a chair or an embarrassed fumbling with papers sounded very loud.
“Don’t you think we ought to skip this?” Van Zandt said impatiently. “I don’t see how it’s getting us any place.”
Tanner flushed. He was trying to humor Olson and Van Zandt knew it but then, this was the academic jungle. Van had won his spurs a long time ago, but he still liked to keep in practice.
He dropped the questionnaire. “All right, we’ll forget it for now.” He nodded to Olson. “See me after the meeting, John, and we’ll talk about it then.”
“You’re scared!” Olson screamed in a hysterical voice. “You don’t want to believe it!”
Tanner could feel the hair prickle at the back of his neck. Take the survival tests and couple them with an inferiority complex and maybe you ended up with a superman fetish. Something half akin to religion—a willingness and desire to believe in something greater than yourself. But why was Olson so frightened about it?
Olson was trembling. “Well? What are you going to do about it?”
It was like watching an automobile accident. It repelled you but you couldn’t tear your eyes away. There was a sort of horrible fascination to this, too—the sight of a man going to pieces. He waited for Van Zandt to say something, to squelch his younger colleague with a few broadsides of logic. But Van said nothing and only stared at Olson with a curious, speculative look in his eyes. Nobody knew Olson better than Van Zandt, Tanner thought, but for reasons of his own, Van was letting John dig his own grave and wasn’t going to argue him out of it.
He was sweating. There was nothing left to do but go along with Olson. He turned to Marge. “Do you have a pin?”
She found one in her purse and handed it over. He stood a book on end on the table, embedding the head of the pin between the pages so the point projected out about an inch. Then he tore off a tiny fragment of newspaper, folded it into a small, umbrella shape, and placed it on the pin point.
“Maybe we can prove something this way, John. I’m assuming that our … superman … has mental powers such that he could make this paper revolve on the pin merely by concentrating on it. The paper is light, it’s delicately balanced, and it wouldn’t take much to move it. Okay?”
There was a round of snickers but Olson nodded and Tanner felt relieved. It was the only thing he could think of on the spur of the moment. A kid’s game.
“Anybody care to try?”
Marge said, “I’m willing if everybody else is.”
The others nodded and she stared intently at the pin. The paper hung there quietly, not stirring. After a minute she leaned back, holding her hands to her head. “All I’m doing is getting a headache.”
“Van?”
Van Zandt nodded and glared at the paper umbrella. If sheer will power could do it, Tanner thought, Van Zandt was his man. But the paper didn’t move. Van Zandt leered. “My superior talents apparently aren’t in evidence this morning.”
Olson himself and then DeFalco tried and failed. Nordlund stared intently at the pin and then looked bored when the paper didn’t even tremble. It was Professor Scott’s turn next.
The paper hat tilted slightly.
There was a thick, frightened silence. The condescending attitude had vanished like a snap of the fingers and Tanner could feel the tenseness gather in the room. All eyes were riveted on the suddenly trembling old man. “
My God, I didn’t …
”
“Very simply explained,” Grossman said quickly. “A door slammed down the hall, though I doubt that any of you heard it in your concentration. I am sure that a slight draft would be enough to affect our little piece of paper.”
The old man looked enormously relieved and some of the tenseness drained away. Grossman tried it next, with no result.
Tanner shrugged. “Well, John?”
Olson was suddenly on his feet, leaning his knuckles on the table and glaring down the length of it. “He won’t admit it, he hasn’t got the guts! If he wouldn’t admit he had filled out the questionnaire, he wouldn’t show himself in a test like this!” His pudgy face was red. “He hasn’t got the nerve, Tanner, he’s hiding!”
What the hell do you do in a case like this?
Tanner thought. They were babying a neurotic but they had gone this far and it wouldn’t hurt to go a little further. He’d play along just once more.
I feel embarrassed for the poor guy. And it’s partly my fault; I should have done something about it a week ago.
“We’ll try it again, only this time all together.” Olson’s superman could still hide and yet reveal his powers—if he wanted to take on Olson’s dare. When nothing happened, maybe then John would be convinced. Except that you could never dissuade a neurotic when they wanted to believe in something … .
He nodded to the others.
On the street outside there were the faint sounds of automobile traffic and the muted vibrations of conversation. Some place far away tires screeched. Equally remote were the indignant complaints of a housewife, shortchanged at a sidewalk fruit stand. In the room itself, there were no sounds, not even the muffled sighs of breathing. And there was no motion, other than that of the small motes of dust floating in the bars of sunlight that streamed through the window.
And the tiny paper umbrella which trembled, tilted, and then spun madly.
TANNER
stirred restlessly under the sheets, then reached for the window shade and pulled it aside slightly so he could see out. It was a miserable night. Dark clouds were scudding across the face of the moon and in a few minutes they’d probably start to seep rain. A little at first, and then the deluge would pound the sidewalk and shred the trees and the wind would bring down all the dead branches.
The street lamps lined the walk like king-size candles and a mile away he could see the red glow that marked the winking neon of Chicago’s Howard Street. There was a bar down there that didn’t catch any of the student trade and didn’t go in for any of the shrieking jazz combos. It was there he usually took Marge when he was in a talkative mood. And where he wished he was now … .
The rising wind rattled the pane and whistled through the narrow space between window and frame. The cold air on his naked stomach made him shiver. Summer wasn’t here yet after all, he thought. Or had it been just the chill air? Maybe it was the idea that the moon and the dark clouds were looking down on someone else right then—somebody who was as superior to him as he was to a moronic bushman.
He thought back to what had happened that morning. The paper umbrella had spun like a dervish and they had sat there, frozen with fear and amazement. His own self-confidence had left him with all the speed of a small boy sliding down a banister and his stomach had felt as if he had been eating chopped ice for breakfast. For a brief moment his world had wobbled and teetered and almost collapsed.
Then Grossman had sworn in guttural German and had hit the book with his open palm, crushing the paper hat and pin down among the pages. Then they had left, babbling to each other and with no immediate plans on what to do next.
Well, to hell with it.
He fumbled on the bed table and found his pipe and lit it. The bowl glowed dimly in the dark and the smoke took some of the chill off his chest. He lay back on the pillow and stared out the thin space between the shade and the window frame, looking at the speeding clouds and the winking stars without actually seeing them.
Why did some people live through wars and others not? No survival factors were concerned when you were killed outright, of course. There was little that could be done to stop a bullet or an exploding shell. But a lot of men died from … call it fringe factors. Stupidity was one. Mental instability was another.
A superior type wouldn’t suffer from insanity, neurosis, or worry. It would be a type that could stand up under brainwashing. It would be physically strong and have quick reflexes. It wouldn’t go to pieces quite so easily.
There were a thousand other survival factors. Good digestive systems, like most endomorphs were gifted with. A person who got more mileage out of his food, could get along on less, if he had to—a strong survival factor if food was hard to get. Resistance to disease and cancer would be another survival factor. And an ability to get along with people.
He bolstered his pillow and slid up on it, half sitting up in bed.
There were other survival factors, other talents that were hard to find in people and even harder to study. The whole vast field of abilities that most scientists didn’t even care to talk about—or admit exist. There were people who knew what was going to happen a few moments before it actually did or what somebody was going to say a few seconds before he said it.
It had even happened to him once. It was during a raffle at church. He was on his feet and walking to the stage a full five seconds before Father Culligan, looking astonished and somewhat pained, called out his name. It had been embarrassing and not too easy to explain away. A lot of people still thought it was a put-up job.
And then there was the ability to move small objects through the power of the mind alone. He had seen it done that morning. At least
something
had whirled the tiny paper umbrella.
But there was still one thing that bothered him.
He had known everybody in that seminar room, well enough to call by the first name and to know the skeletons in the family closet. And he couldn’t quite see any of them as being …
The better human being.
Next year’s model.
The man to whom the world belonged.
He yawned and tapped his pipe on the window sill. A breeze caught the curtains and brought out the goose flesh again. And then it occurred to him.
My God, what a scientific study! The Man of Tomorrow—Today!
He sat bolt upright. It
could
be the most wonderful thing that had happened to the human race since the first ape had descended from the trees. A human being with suddenly increased capabilities that could be fed back genetically to improve the race as a whole. A man who could be studied and analyzed and the results applied to human behavior problems, a man who could take the human race by the hand and lead it upward. If he wanted to.
But why wouldn’t he?
Olson.
Olson had been positive the man would hide. Olson had been insistent on some kind of a test. And Olson had been scared to death, scared enough to stand up against group disapproval, which had probably never happened before.
He suddenly regretted that he had never got to know Olson very well, that he had never gone out of his way to be friends with the man. Olson was the type who desperately needed friends and companionship, who needed to lean on other people. All in all, the faculty at the university had been cold to Olson—himself along with the others.
He looked at his watch. It wasn’t too late in the evening. In fact, eleven o’clock Saturday night was ridiculously early.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked to the phone, the cold air in the room sending chills over his naked body.
The familiar buzzing and then Susan Van Zandt’s voice.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Sue. John there?”
“Bill? No, he isn’t in. Do you want me to have him call you?”
He hesitated. Olson must have gone out, though he had gotten the impression that John was just as tired as he was and had made no plans for the evening. Maybe a movie or something …
“Forget it, Sue. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Olson not being home meant nothing at all, he decided, except that Saturday night, despite the weather, was too good a night to waste by sleeping.
He sat down on the phone table and dialed Marge’s number.
“Waiting long?” Tanner asked.
“Long enough to order for both of us, and have two men try to pick me up. And I’m sure that the waitress thinks that anybody who orders Scotch-on-the-rocks and a glass of beer at the same time is a little odd.”
He slid into the booth beside her. “You should have ordered two Scotches. Then the waitress would have considered you a common drunk and perfectly normal.”
She made a face. “I like you better when you’re not trying to be clever.”
He drained half his beer and looked at Marge over the top of the glass. She wore her auburn hair in an Italian cut that went very well with her light coat of tan. She didn’t fuss over clothes but she knew how to wear them. A plaid skirt and a light green sweater and a thin, choker necklace. A wisp of perfume and the faint odor of sweetly scented soap.
She was the pretty teacher, the type every freshman falls in love with.
“Stop it! You’re looking at me as if I were a butterfly on a pin!”
“Not a really beautiful butterfly, Marge—but definitely a pretty one.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You can think up a better line than that, Bill. Besides, you could have said
that
over the phone.”
He finished the beer. “I know. But that’s not what I want to talk about.”
“As if I didn’t know. And all the time I thought you wanted me to come down here just so you could say sweet things!”
He didn’t feel much like banter. “I’ve been thinking about this morning.”
Her smile fled and she was suddenly the university intellectual again. “Is there anything left to say? I’m about talked out.”
He started ticking them off on his fingers. “One, why did our friend fill out the questionnaire accurately in the first place?”
“We discussed that this afternoon and decided that, inferior beings that we are, it would be impossible to guess his motives. Cat and mouse, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Two, is he some sort of mutation or just a human being operating at a hundred per cent efficiency?”
She cocked her head. “As one of your students might say, you’re not getting through, Professor.”
“I mean, a human being might be capable of more than we would think. Take Kuda Bux …”
“Kuda who?”
“B-u-x. He’s a Hindu who was born in Kashmir about fifty-five years ago. Used to give demonstrations and for all I know, he still does. I once read a report in the
British Medical Journal
of a demonstration where he walked on fire. The temperature was eight-hundred degrees Fahrenheit and Bux was in the heat for four and a half seconds. He got through it all right but when a medical student tried to duplicate it, his feet were blistered so badly they bled.”
Marge started to interrupt and Tanner put a finger on her lips. “That’s not all. He used to ride a motorcycle around town when he was blindfolded. He could also read books that way. And he could read them by holding his hand in front of the printed page; apparently he had trained some of the cells of his skin to act as sight receptors. Maybe it’s not impossible—the eyes and the skin both develop from the same embryonic ectoderm.”
“Were these authenticated?”
“Yes.”
She shivered. “I don’t know if I like that any better than your mutation.”
Tanner looked down at the table and ran his fingers through the damp ring the beer mug had left. “Third, and most important, what do you think our friend’s attitude will be towards the human race? That may be more important than our attitude towards him, you know.”
“I don’t know. I suspect the all-father attitude. He probably feels all the love, care and affection towards human beings that we feel towards dogs.”
“Meaning that those of us who have the same adoring attitude towards him that our pets have for us are the ones who will get along?”
“That’s right. And I’m ready to build a little shrine in my living room just as soon as I know what to put in it. And what kind of incense to burn.” She finished her drink, the first time that Tanner could remember seeing her gulp one. “Maybe we’re doing him an injustice—we don’t even know what he wants.” She toyed with her glass. “What do you think about it?”
“I’m not quite sure. I think I feel more like I did when I was a kid and played Power for the first time.”
“Power?”
“It’s a kid’s game. A player and his confederate leave the room for a moment and the group that stays behind picks out an object. When they come back, the confederate is let in on it and asks his partner, ‘Is it the piano? Is it the lamp?’ and so on. He doesn’t look at his partner and his voice doesn’t vary but when he mentions the object the group has chosen, his partner says, ‘Yes, it’s the sofa’—or whatever it happens to be. If any other player can guess how they did it, he says, ‘I’ve got the Power!’”
“What’s the trick?”
“It’s simple, actually. Just before the real thing, the confederate asks his partner if it’s any object that happens to be colored black. This is the tip-off that the next item he calls is it. But until you catch on to it, they’ve really got you going.” He hesitated. “You get to believing that it’s true, that the kid can really read minds. You resent it and you’re envious as all hell that somebody has the Power and you don’t. I felt a little that way this morning, along with being frightened as all get-out.”
He paused. “This evening I started to think what a terrific piece of scientific research he would be.”
Marge’s voice turned sarcastic. “I know how you could finance it. Maybe you could get our friend to give testimonials. You know: ‘The Better Man eats Oat Flakes,’ or, ‘The Man of Tomorrow drives a Super-Six Sedan.’ Do you have any idea how you could make him hold still for your research?”
He went back to finger painting on the damp table. “You consider him a menace, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Not necessarily. Why should he be? What would he want?”
“The usual things. Power, money, love.”
He shook his head. “Those are human desires. They wouldn’t necessarily apply to him, you know.”
“They wouldn’t necessarily
not
apply, either. You’re looking at him as being superior in every department. I think you’re mistaken. I think he’s limited.”