“You must understand,” I said slowly, soothingly, “that our intentions are constructive. We are simply trying to apply the scientific method to something which has, heretofore, been wrapped in mysticism.”
The shocked freezing of his facial muscles told me that reasoning had missed its mark. It told me more.
“Science understands nothing, nothing at all!” he snapped, “Science tries to reduce everything to test tubes and formulae; but I am the instrument of a mystery which man can never know.”
“Well, now,” I said reasonably. “Let us not be inconsistent. You say this is something man was not meant to know; yet you, yourself, have devoted your life to gaining a greater comprehension of it.”
“I seek only to rise above my material self so that I might place myself in harmony with the flowing symphony of Absolute Truth,” he lectured me sonorously. Oh well, his enrapturement with such terminology differed little from some of the sciences which tended to grow equally esoteric. And maybe it meant something. Who was I to say that mine ears alone heard all the music being played?
It did mean one thing very specifically. There are two basic approaches to the meaning of life and the universe about us. Man can know: That is the approach of science, its whole meaning. There are mysteries which man was not meant to know: That is the other approach. There is no reconciling of the two on a reasoning basis. I represented the former. I wasn’t sure the Swami was a true representative of the latter, but at least he had picked up the valence and the phrases.
I made a mental note that reasoning was an unworkable technique with this compound. Henry, a past master at it, had already tried threats and abuse. That hadn’t worked. I next tried one of the oldest forms in the teaching of man, a parable.
I told him of my old Aunt Dimity, who was passionately fond of Rummy, but considered all other card games sinful.
“Ah, how well she proves my point,” the Swami countered. “There is an inner voice, a wisdom greater than the mortal mind to guide us—”
“Well now,” I asked reasonably, “why would the inner voice say that Rummy was O.K., but Casino wasn’t?” But it was obvious he liked the point he had made better than he had liked the one I failed to make.
So I tried the next technique. I tried an appeal for instruction. Often an opponent will come over to your side if you just confess, honestly, that he is a better man than you are, and you need his help. What was the road I must take to achieve the same understanding he had achieved? His eyes glittered at that, and a mercenary expression underlay the tone of his answer.
“First there is fasting, and breathing, and contemplating self,” he murmured mendaciously. “I would be unable to aid you until you gave me full ascendancy over you, so that I might guide your every thought—”
I decided to try inspiration. In breaking down recalcitrant materials in the laboratory of my personnel office, sometimes one method worked, sometimes another.
“Do you realize, Swami,” I asked, “that the one great drawback throughout the ages to a full acceptance of psi is the lack of permanent evidence? It has always been evanescent, perishable. It always rests solely upon the word of witnesses. But if I could show you a film print, then you could not doubt the existence of photography, could you?”
I opened my lower desk drawer and pulled out a couple of the Auerbach cylinders which we had used the night before. I laid them on top of the desk.
“These cylinders,” I said, “act like the photographic film. They will record, in permanent form, the psi effects you command. At last, for all mankind the doubt will be stilled; man will at once know the truth; and you will take your place among the immortals.”
I thought it was pretty good, and that, with his overweening ego, it would surely do the trick. But the Swami was staring at the cylinders first in fascination, then fear, then in horror. He jumped to his feet, without bothering to swirl his robe majestically, rushed over to the door, fumbled with the knob as if he were in a burning room, managed to get the door open, and rushed outside. The lieutenant gave me a puzzled look, and went after him.
I drew a deep breath, and exhaled it audibly. My testing procedures hadn’t produced the results I’d expected, but the last one had revealed something else.
The Swami believed himself to be a fraud!
As long as he could razzle-dazzle with sonorous phrases, and depend upon credulous old women to turn them into accurate predictions of things to come, he was safe enough. But faced with something which would prove definitely—
Well, what would he do now?
And then I noticed that both cylinders were pointing toward the door. I watched them, at first, not quite sure; then I grew convinced by the change in their perspective with the angles of the desk. Almost as slowly as the minute hand of a watch, they were creeping across the desk toward the door. They, too, were trying to escape from the room.
I nudged them with my fingers. They hustled along a little faster, as if appreciative of the help, even coming from me. I saw they were moving faster, as if they were learning as they tried it. I turned one of them around. Slowly it turned back and headed for the door again. I lifted one of them to the floor. It had no tendency to float, but it kept heading for the door. The other one fell off the desk while I was fooling with the first one. The jar didn’t seem to bother it any. It, too, began to creep across the rug toward the door.
I opened the door for them. Sara looked up. She saw the two cylinders come into view, moving under their own power.
“Here we go again,” she said, resignedly.
The two cylinders pushed themselves over the door sill, got clear outside my office. Then they went inert. Both Sara and I tried nudging them, poking them. They just lay there; mission accomplished. I carried them back inside my office and lay them on the floor. Immediately both of them began to head for the door again.
“Simple,” Sara said dryly, “they just can’t stand to be in the same room with you, that’s all.”
“You’re not just whistling, gal,” I answered. “That’s the whole point.”
“Have I said something clever?” she asked seriously.
I took the cylinders back into my office and put them in a desk drawer. I watched the desk for a while, but it didn’t change position. Apparently it was too heavy for the weak force activating the cylinders.
I picked up the phone and called Old Stone Face. I told him about the cylinders.
“There!” he exclaimed with satisfaction. “I knew all that fellow needed was a good old-fashioned talking to. Some day, my boy, you’ll realize that you still have a lot to learn about handling men.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
Sara asked me if I were ready to start seeing people, and I told her I wasn’t, that I had some thinking to do. She quipped something about making the world wait, meaning that I should be occupying my time with personnel managing, and closed the door.
At that, Old Stone Face had a point. If he hadn’t got in and riled things up, maybe the Swami would not have been emotionally upset enough to generate the psi force which had activated these new cylinders.
What was I saying? That psi was linked with emotional upheaval? Well, maybe. Not necessarily, but Rhine had proved that strength of desire had an effect upon the frequency index of telekinesis. Was there anything at all we knew about psi, so that we could start cataloguing, sketching in the beginnings of a pattern? Yes, of course there was.
First, it existed. No one could dismiss the mountainous mass of evidence unless he just refused to think about the subject.