“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.
He started leafing through a magazine, wondering who could use a poltergeist.
“Sam!” Doris Fleet was standing in the door, her hands on her hips. “Look at this.”
He walked over. Eskin had arrived, and was standing beside the reception desk, a foolish smile on his face. Doris handed Waverley a sheaf of papers.
Waverley read through them. They contained a complete account of everything he and Doris had done, from the moment he had walked into her apartment until he had left.
But complete wasn’t the word. The psi had explored their every move and action. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, Waverley saw now why Eskin had been locked up.
The man was a voyeur, a Peeping Tom. A supernormal Peeping Tom, who could watch people from miles away.
Like most couples on the verge of marriage, Waverley and Doris did considerable smooching, and didn’t consider themselves any the worse for it. But it was something else again to see that smooching written down, dissected, analyzed.
The psi had picked up a complete anatomical vocabulary somewhere, because he had described every step of their courtship procedure in the correct terms. Diagrams followed, then a physiological analysis. Then the psi had probed deeper, into hormone secretions, cellular structures, nerve and muscle reactions, and the like.
It was the most amazing bit of pornography-veiled-as-science that Waverley had ever seen.
“Come in here,” Waverley said. He brought Eskin into his office. Doris followed, her face a study in embarrassment.
“Now then. Just what do you mean by this?” Waverley asked. “Didn’t I save you from the asylum?”
“Yes, sir,” Eskin said. “And believe me, I’m very grateful.”
“Then I want your promise that there’ll be no more of this.”
“Oh, no?” the man said, horrified. “I can’t stop. I have my research to consider.”
In the next half hour Waverley discovered a lot of things. Eskin could observe all those he came in contact with, no matter where they were. However, all he was interested in was their sex lives. He rationalized this voyeurism by his certainty that he was serving science.