One night I was talking with them and looking at her picture, as always, when it occurred to me that time had passed and that Sugar Pie must have changed—they grow up fast at that age. I got a brilliant idea. "Unc, why don't you have Sugar Pie mail a new photograph to Rusty Rhodes? Then he could transmit it to Dusty and Dusty could draw you one as perfect as that one, only it would be up to date, show you what she looks like now, huh? How about it, Sugar Pie? Isn't that a good idea?"
"It isn't necessary."
I was looking at the picture and I nearly popped my fuses. For a moment it wasn't the same picture. Oh, it was the same merry little girl, but she was a little older, she was shy a front tooth, and her hair was different.
And she was alive. Not just a trukolor stereo, but alive. There's a difference. -
But when I blinked it was the same old picture.
I said hoarsely, "Unc, who said, 'It isn't necessary?' You? Or Sugar Pie?"
"Why, Sugar Pie did. I echoed,"
"Yes, Unc... but I didn't hear you; I heard her." Then I told him about the photograph.
He nodded. "Yes, that's the way she looks. She says to tell you that her tooth is coming in, however."
"Unc... there's no way to get around it. For a moment I crowded in on your private wave length." I was feeling shaky.
"I knew. So did Sugar Pie. But you didn't crowd in, son; a friend is always welcome."
I was still trying to soak it in. The implications were more mind-stretching, even, than when Pat and I found out we could do it. But I didn't know what they were yet. "Uh, Uric, do you suppose we could do it again? Sugar Pie?"
"We can try."
But it didn't work... unless I heard her voice as well as Unc's when she said, "Good night, Tommie." I wasn't sure.
After I got to bed I told Pat about it. He was interested after I convinced him that it really had happened. "This is worth digging into, old son. I'd better record it. Doc Mabel will want to kick it around."
("Uh, wait until I check with Uncle Alf.")
"Well, all right. I guess it is his baby... in more ways than one. Speaking of his baby, maybe I should go see her? With two of us at each end it might be easier to make it click again. Where does his niece live?"
("Uh, Johannesburg.")
"Mmm... that's a far stretch down the road, but I'm sure the LRF would send me there if Doc Mabel got interested."
("Probably. But let me talk to Unc.")
But Unc talked to Dr. Devereaux first. They called me in and Doc wanted to try it again at once. He was as near excited as I ever saw him get. I said, "I'm willing, but I doubt if we'll got anywhere; we didn't last night. I think that once was just a fluke."
"Fluke, spook. If it can be done once, it can be done again, We've got to be clever enough to set up the proper conditions." He looked at me. "Any objection to a light dose of hypnosis?"
"Me? Why, no, sir. But I don't hypnotize easily."
"So? According to your record, Dr. Arnault found it not impossible. Just pretend I'm she."
I almost laughed in his face. I look more like Cleopatra than he looks like pretty Dr. Arnault. But I agreed to go along with the gag.
"All either of you will need is a light trance to brush distractions aside and make you receptive."
I don't know what a "light trance" is supposed to feel like. I didn't feel anything and I wasn't asleep.
But I started hearing Sugar Pie again.
I think Dr. Devereaux's interest was purely scientific; any new fact about what makes people tick could rouse him out of his chronic torpor. Uncle Alf suggested that Doc was anxious also to set up a new telepathic circuit, just in case. There was a hint in what Unc said that he realized that he himself would not last forever.
But there was a hint of more than that. Uncle Alf let me know very delicately that, if it should come to it, it was good to know that somebody he trusted would be keeping an eye on his baby. He didn't quite say it, not that baldly, so I didn't have to answer, or I would have choked up. It was just understood—and it was the finest compliment I ever received. I wasn't sure I deserved it so I decided I would just have to manage to deserve it if I ever had to pay off.
I could "talk" to Uncle Alf now, of course, as well as to Sugar Pie. But I didn't, except when all three of us were talking together; telepathy is an imposition when it isn't necessary. I never called Sugar Pie by myself, either, save for a couple of test runs for Doc Devereaux's benefit to establish that I could reach her without Unc's help. That took drugs; Unc would wake up from an ordinary sleep if anyone shouted on that "wave length." But otherwise I left: her alone; I had no business crowding into a little girl's mind unless she was ready and expecting company.
It was shortly after that that Pat got married.
XI SLIPPAGE
My relations with Pat got steadily better all during that first boost, after Dr. Devereaux took me in hand. I found out, after I admitted that I despised and resented Pat, that I no longer did either one. I cured him of bothering me unnecessarily by bothering him unnecessarily—he could shut off an alarm clock but he couldn't shut off me. Then we worked out a live-and-let-live formula and got along better. Presently I found myself looking forward to whatever time we had set for checking with each other and I realized I liked him, not "again" but "at last," for I had never felt that warm toward him before.
But even while we were getting closer we were falling apart; "slippage" was catching up with us. As anyone can see from the relativity formulas, the relationship is not a straight-line one; it isn't even noticeable at the beginning but it builds up like the dickens at the other end of the scale.
At three-quarters the speed of light he complained that I was drawling, while it seemed to me that he was starting to jabber. At nine-tenths of the speed of light it was close to two for one, but we knew what was wrong now and I talked fast and he talked slow.
At 99% of c, it was seven to one and all we could do to make ourselves understood. Later that day we fell out of touch entirely.
Everybody else was having the same trouble. Sure, telepathy is instantaneous, at least the trillions of miles between us didn't cause any lag, not even like the hesitation you get in telephoning from Earth to Luna nor did the signal strength drop off. But brains are flesh and blood, and thinking takes time... and our time rates were out of gear. I was thinking so slowly (from Pat's viewpoint) that he could not slow down and stay with me; as for him, I knew from time to time that he was trying to reach me but it was just a squeal in the earphones so far as making sense was concerned.
Even Dusty Rhodes couldn't make it. His twin couldn't concentrate on a picture for the long hours necessary to let Dusty "see" it.
It was upsetting, to say the least, to all of us. Hearing voices is all right, but not when you can't tell what they are saying and can't shut them off. Maybe some of the odd cases in psychiatry weren't crazy at all; maybe the poor wretches were tuned in on a bad wave length.
Unc took it the worst at first and I sat with him all one evening while we both tried together. Then he suddenly regained his serenity; Sugar Pie was thinking about him; that he knew; so being, words weren't really necessary.