Title: Fruits of the agathon
Author: Harness, Charles L.
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Fruits of the agathon" ***


                         FRUITS OF THE AGATHON

                    A novelet by CHARLES L. HARNESS

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Thrilling Wonder Stories December 1948.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


    AGATHON: (From Greek, _agathos_, good, and _thanatos_, death.)
    Employed briefly during the pre-Toring era. When the death of a
    citizen of interest to the Lodges was predicted by his biostat
    (q.v.), the Council arranged secretly for the demise to occur under
    the circumstances considered most beneficial to the world. After
    the personality factors of all principals concerned had been
    integrated and the death plan (or agathon) determined, it was
    carried out by the local preceptor.

    Immediately after the famed Follansbee case, however, agathon
    practice was suppressed and all biostats destroyed.--Encyclopedia
    of Freudianism, Naida's Rev. Vol. 1, p. 14, Budapest, 1983.

The little man, Blanchard, said with no trace of defiance or apology:
"My daughter Naida is a moron."

Behind the desk Toring, the Freudian, shifted slightly under the long
gray cape that covered his entire body, and turned his eyes from
Blanchard to the girl huddled in the wheel chair. She was perhaps
eighteen or twenty, dressed neatly in tweeds. Her face was averted,
and the Freudian could see only a pale-olive cheek, hidden partly by
slender fingers and dark brown hair.

He sighed and shook his head. "We cannot increase native intelligence.
But you didn't bring your daughter here for that, anyway.

"No, I didn't." Blanchard's voice was double-edged with both pleading
and threat. "Something has scared her, and the Lodge has got to assign
an analyst and straighten her out."

"So? What do you think frightened her?"

"I haven't the faintest notion. It dates from a couple of weeks ago,
when her older sister, Maillon, had an operation. Simple thing, nothing
to worry anyone. Naida visited Maillon's hospital room the evening
after the operation."

"They were alone?"

"So far as I know. I was to come by later and pick up Naida. Well, a
nurse called me from the hospital. Naida had been found lying in the
corridor--like this. She hasn't spoken since."

"Had she been in her sister's room?"

"We think so. Maillon couldn't say. She had been given a sedative in
the early afternoon and she was unconscious during the whole time. But
we found Naida's hat on a table in the room."

"Who else had been in there?"

"Again, we can't be sure, but Maillon's husband, Pickerel Follansbee,
might have been. He inquired minutely at the desk that afternoon as to
Maillon's condition, but he denies going up."

Toring's eyes widened imperceptibly. Blanchard had taken no pains to
conceal the hate in his voice.

"Now," continued the patron, "are you going to give me an analyst?"

The Freudian's face was troubled. He did not answer immediately.

"Toring," Blanchard said, "you are the preceptor of this Lodge. It is
within your power to do this small thing for me. I want my child back!"

Toring regarded him gravely. "I cannot assign an analyst for at least
four months."

       *       *       *       *       *

Blanchard, accustomed to the autocratic rule of two million employees
in both hemispheres, sat back thoughtfully in the green leather chair.
He had been prepared for a preliminary rebuff, an attempt to put his
daughter on a waiting list, and Toring's statement did not surprise
him. The ceiling fluors glinted from his bald head as he studied the
man who withheld the key to his happiness. The battle was hardly
joined. In a few minutes he would know his opponent's weak points, and
he would strike. At least, that always worked in the business world.

But these Freudians.... He was never sure of himself around them. They
all looked alike. There was some rumor that they underwent painful
plastic surgery and skeletal modifications on entering the Lodges, so
that they all reflected the same gray sympathetic anonymity. But, they
must get fed up, sometimes!

He pulled out a cigar, bit off the end, and lit up with more confidence
than he felt.

"Toring, my industrial holdings in the United States are assessed at
a little over eight billion dollars; abroad, at nearly two hundred
million. If you'll start on Naida immediately, I'll convey my total
American holdings to you and leave the country when you've finished
with her."

The Freudian was silent a long time. "I believe you would really do
it," he mused, appraising the magnate with something bordering on pity.
"Your offer disturbs me, but possibly not in the way you think. I have
no use for eight billion dollars. As a matter of fact I don't think any
money has passed through my hands for some years. Despite your personal
feelings, your daughter must take her turn."

Rather idly, Blanchard blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling fluor. In
moments of greatest stress he was always cool--and thinking.

"You are a celibate, of course, Toring. But you must have a family
you'd like to benefit. Parents? The senior Torings? Brothers and
sisters?"

"Theoretically, Mr. Blanchard, a Freudian has no family. I had a father
and two brothers living when I entered the Lodges, but now I have no
ties at all. My father knows only that his youngest son is a Freudian,
somewhere. He couldn't possibly recognize me if he saw me. Anyway they
are all independently wealthy. And incidentally 'Toring' is not a
family name, but a pseudonym."

"Perhaps my persistence is obnoxious to you," said Blanchard, somewhat
uncertainly. "However, here's another thought. Don't you have a few
hours during the day that you ordinarily devote to rest and relaxation?
Would it hurt you very much to give up a little of that precious time
to curing my daughter?"

The other smiled faintly. "How old do you think I am?"

"What's that got to do with it? Well--fifty?"

"I'm thirty-five. I haven't slept in ten years. Not since I was
assigned here from the Freudian University in Budapest. For
twenty-three hours a day I sit in on psycho-analytic case work. The
other hour I use for 'Follansbee sleep.' I have no leisure whatever."

For the first time Blanchard admitted the possibility of defeat. He
coughed to cover the lines of worry gathering in his face, and his
daughter jumped nervously and looked about the room with frightened
eyes. It suddenly occurred to Toring that she was beautiful.

"It's all right, dear," said her father reassuringly, pulling the robe
up over her lap. "I'm here."

He turned back to Toring, hesitant to demand the thing that was in his
mind, yet determined to leave nothing untried.

"As I understand Follansbee sleep, isn't that simply a process of blood
renewal, which takes about an hour?"

"That's right. Dr. John Follansbee--Pickerel's father,
incidentally--established years ago that sleep was merely a symptom of
boredom induced and accentuated by an excess of waste products, chiefly
lactic acid, in the blood stream. If we remove our lactic-acid-laden
blood and replace it with glycogen-charged blood, we kill fatigue, and
there remains only the psychological inducements to sleep--boredom,
habit, and the escape complex that plagues us all. A determined mind
can overcome these phantom obstacles."

"I see. You have, then, once a day a free hour--when you are changing
blood," insisted Blanchard.

"A free hour?"

"Free in the sense that you aren't occupied with patients."

       *       *       *       *       *

Slowly the Freudian shook his head, and folded up the gray cape
that covered him. Transparent plastic tubes led from needles in the
elbow-pits of both bare arms to glass cabinets on either side of his
chair. The large bottle in the righthand cabinet was nearly empty, that
in the other cabinet nearly full. The cape fell again.

Blanchard stared at him.

Toring smiled wryly. "This 'free' hour I devote to rush cases, such as
your daughter's, and determine whether the patient should be given
preferential treatment."

"Twenty-four hours a day, for ten years," murmured Blanchard.

A buzzer sounded on the desk. "Yes?" asked Toring.

"Budapest calling," intoned a woman's voice.

"All right. And, Registrar, can you give J.T. Blanchard's daughter
Naida an appointment in four months? Indeed? Then you've got to
postpone a start for somebody. No, keep that boy on the list--he's a
chronic suicide. Mrs. K.? No, she's a widow with two girls in school.
Senator D.? Simple schizo? Good! Shove him down a few months. He'll be
reelected anyway, and that's all his family is really worried about."

He turned to the patron. "I'm going to run you out now, Mr. Blanchard.
Stop by the desk down the hall and the registrar will give you an
appointment. Four months' delay won't make an awful lot of difference
in the long run, since the analysis may be a matter of years."

As he watched the industrialist push the wheel chair out, Toring
disconnected the needles from his arms, knotted his fists
experimentally a few times, stood up, and stretched vigorously. He
still felt tired.

He turned back to the video screen, took a deep breath, and pushed the
"Come in" button.

From beneath the bushy V of satanic eyebrows, Rachs' jet eyes seemed to
shower sparks at him. As usual, that immobile face was incandescent,
and Toring fancied he could almost hear the creaking of a carbon-arc
in the brain of his superior. The Hungarian's incredible energies
frightened, rather than soothed patrons, and for years he had worked
solely in the advancement of extra-sensory mechanics.

"Toring," he clipped, "I want you to kill a man."

The younger Freudian swallowed rapidly, and he was conscious of a dark
silence in the room.

"I take it that the Council has finally approved your agathon program?"
he asked the eyes.

"Two hours ago."

"Very well. Who is the man?"

"Dr. John Follansbee."

The analyst's knees went rotten. He leaned heavily over the desk.

"You realize, of course, that you're asking me to kill my father?"

"The subject was your father in pre-Freudian life. Now, you have no
family."

"Where are you calling from?" asked Toring through a dry throat.

"The 'stat room."

Toring repressed a shudder. He had been in the biostat rooms. He had
even seen his own 'stat, scratching away slowly at the unknown days
remaining to him. That scraping stylus had blended with a hundred
thousand others into a sinister fate-whisper. It must be terrible to
know when one was going to die.

Rachs' eyes disappeared abruptly and the scene shifted to a large
transparent plastic cabinet containing a complex potpourri of small
black spheres connected together intricately with insulated wiring. On
the front of the cabinet was a kymograph. The stylus was dead, unmoving.

Toring read the legend:

    No. 19,644. Follansbee, John, D.Sc., Director, Follansbee Research
    Institute, Washington, D. C., U.S.A. Jan. 10, 1902--2:10 a.m. E.S.T.
    Feb. 16, 1978.

The latter date had very recently been added in ink. February 16
was--tomorrow.

"The Lodges have delayed initiating agathon practice for years," said
Toring evenly. "Why start now, and why, my--why Dr. Follansbee?"

The black diamond eyes appeared again, and seared into him.

"Good questions. We start now because in the past ten years, out of
the two thousand two hundred and one deaths predicted by the biostats,
there were two thousand two hundred and one deaths. And in over
ninety-odd thousand operating 'stats, no deaths went unpredicted.
We had to wait until the absolute infallibility of the machine was
demonstrated."

"I'll warn my father. He can leave the country."

"You're being surprisingly emotional, Toring. Skip country? It would
be like leaving Bagdad for an appointment in Samarra. We tried that.
One thousand and ninety-eight subjects were forewarned. Some left town.
Some shut themselves up. Some did nothing. They all died at the minute
predicted. Accident, disease, old age, a few murders, and one suicide."

"Even so, I--I just can't accept the biostat as a reality. The Freudian
concept of mental health is based on free will, not on an inexorable
steel-clad fate mapped out by a soulless machine!"

"My boy, there's really no free-will-versus-predestination conflict.
You're forgetting all the groundwork of ultra-Freudianism begun at
Duke University before you were born. Listen! Early experimenters at
Duke, _before_ shuffling a deck of twenty-five cards, would attempt to
predict the post-shuffling sequence. They called it 'PDT--precognitive
down-through.' As you recall, some of the predictions were
extraordinarily successful."

       *       *       *       *       *

Toring nodded.

"Now follow carefully. The normal human mind, traveling in a
unidimensional time flow, knowing only 'before', 'now', and 'after',
would have to wait until 'after' the shuffling before it could know
the sequence. The metanormal mind, on the other hand, is not bound
in unidimensional time. It travels freely backward and forward at an
arbitrary rate. For that mind, time is bi-dimensional at the very
least. With the biostats, we've finally attained the same result--a
machine attuned to a human mind and capable of projecting the existence
or nonexistence of that mind about three days into the future."

"Isn't that predestination?" insisted Toring.

"Not at all. It's simply the prepublication of a brief chapter already
written by free will."

"I'm not convinced. Possibly the thing you want me to do precludes an
objective approach. But you still haven't answered my second question.
Why have you chosen Dr. Follansbee, my father, for the first agathon?"

The eyes sparkled. "A few months ago, just before the cyclotron blinded
him, Dr. Follansbee was on the verge of communicating across time with
other minds, including his own. You've got to stimulate him into a
forceful demonstration, catch him in the act, and find out how it's
done. The specialized tele-encephalographic analyzers you'll need to
focus on him have been shipped on the Trans-At jet, and they'll be in
Washington port any minute. You inherited the Follansbee mind, and
despite the limitations of your classical education, you would be
best able to grasp and apply the telekinetic principles involved. But
that's just the beginning. Extra-temporal communication--the ability to
impinge a thought pattern on a mind over time--is merely a specialized
form of psychokinesis."

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

The eyes snapped irritably. "Of course you do. It means you'll have
the power to suppress--or stimulate, telekinetically--any given neural
pattern in the mind of your patients. Telekinesis applied to another
mind is psychokinesis. You'll be able to cure a psychotic in an hour
instead of the months and months of daily sittings now required. Boy,
think! This will revolutionize Freudian technique. It will mean we can
give a normal, healthy mental life to the millions we have to turn away
every year."

The face in the screen suddenly relaxed and smiled--a benevolent
Mephistopheles.

"How about it?"

Toring, his hands behind his gray robes, was pacing the room slowly. He
stopped and looked with troubled eyes at the older man.

"You are absolutely positive the biostat never makes a mistake? That my
father would die tomorrow, no matter what I do?"

"The facts speak for themselves. It's a sure thing."

Toring's eyes were half shut in a profound reverie. "If I undertake
this thing, it will be because I hope to develop something that will
destroy it for all time.... Tell me, Rachs, have you tried the biostats
on twins?"

"Twins?" Rachs looked surprised. "Well, yes. At birth their minds give
the same encephalographic pattern. One biostat stays tuned to both
minds, even though they diverge greatly as they mature."

"So that if one twin died, the biostat wouldn't stop?"

"The stylus would jiggle a bit, but it would keep going."

"And you know that I have no twin?"

"Of course you don't. Blaine and Pickerel are both older than you. What
are you leading up to?"

"This: If I died, and my 'stat continued to run, you'd admit your
biostats were fallible, and stop the agathons?"

Rachs studied the analyst shrewdly. "I would. But whatever you have in
mind, it won't work. The 'stat has proved its precision. It's here to
stay."

"You've told me what I want to know," Toring continued gravely, "and
I accept the responsibility for the Follansbee agathon. At the same
time I warn you that murder in the name of humanity is a paradox that I
cannot appreciate, and I expect to discredit your system completely."

Rachs grinned balefully. "That's the spirit, you young devil's
advocate! If you die and your 'stat goes on running, I'll have the
council withdraw the program!"

Their eyes locked in spirited challenge.

Rachs looked down, first. "Now to business. You won't really strike the
death blow. Your brother Pickerel is itching to do that, but he hasn't
enough sense to do it cleanly. You'll have to help him. He tried to
kill your father in the cyclotron room, once before, but only blinded
him. Or didn't you know? This time it's got to go smoothly. Here's the
plan."

Incapable of further surprise, Toring listened, nodding from time to
time....

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. John Follansbee lay utterly relaxed for a moment after the concerto
died away. His couch was a mass of inflated cushions floating in a
small pool of water, warm and scented, in the Sleepless Wing of the
Lodge.

The last of his lactic-acid-laden blood was draining from his veins,
and the bottle above him, containing the glycogen-rich blood, was
almost empty. His pulse was accelerating. He flexed his biceps and
stretched, but gingerly, to avoid pulling the needles from his arteries.

The enchantment was fading. The frightful thing that he had been trying
to escape for weeks began again to gnaw hungrily at his brain. His
peaceful smile vanished quickly. He tugged at the guide rope lying
across his cushion-raft and pulled himself to the pool edge. Here he
yanked at the bell and soon heard the scrape of sandals on the marble
flagging.

He cocked a blind eye in that direction. "Toring?"

"Right, Dr. Follansbee."

The preceptor helped the patron over the pool edge. Dr. Follansbee
immediately tried to guide the conversation into painless territory.

"You thought you had me on that _leit-motiv_," he growled. "I've been
wondering how long it would take your composers to break down and try
a C-E-G triad in the lower bass. Repeated dissonance can result in
conditioned consonance, you know. Who wrote it--Maillon?"

Toring's gray features creased in a faint smile, "You never miss, do
you? Yes, your daughter-in-law wrote it last night."

Dr. Follansbee pulled on his trousers and blouse. "I thought so. What
did she name it?"

"'The Death of John Follansbee'," replied the preceptor evenly.

Follansbee hesitated a moment. "I can't hide a blessed thing from her,"
he muttered. "It's rumored, you know, that you mind readers have a
gadget capable of predicting death." It was a question rather than a
statement.

"I needn't comment on that, Dr. Follansbee," replied the preceptor
evasively. "Your own remarkable premonitions are ample raw material for
a Freudian musician. And Maillon is particularly acute at sensing your
moods. As a Freudian associate, it is her duty to help you understand
yourself."

"Don't preach to me of Freudian duties," rumbled Follansbee. "I laid
the cornerstone to this Lodge before either of you children were born.
My youngest son is a Freudian analyst--somewhere."

Toring paled, then laughed uneasily. "All right, I won't preach. And
I suppose you're not interested in what Rachs had to say about your
prescience of disaster?"

"He has a good idea once in a while. Shoot!"

"As you know, it takes a Freudian to recognize a non-Freudian
psychosis. Frequently a prescience of death is found on psycho-analysis
to be simply the subconscious wish for the death of an enemy, inverted
by a guilt complex into a sense of impending disaster for the wisher.
At first, we thought this possible in your case."

"I know lots of people I'd like to see dead," said Dr. Follansbee
cheerfully, as they reached the dining couch and picked up the chilled
beers.

Toring continued quietly. "Rachs believes that you are now in
subconscious communication with your own mind at the moment of death--a
unique interweaving of chronopathy and telekinesis. He thinks that you
might, under proper stimulation, touch other minds in the future in the
same way that you have touched your own."

Follansbee was not listening. "Even if it's true I'm going to die, I
don't like to think about it. Disturbs my work."

"Are you still working on Maillon's carcinoma?"

"Yes. Blaine, my eldest son, and I are spending twenty-three hours
a day on it." He shook his head sadly. "So far, we've got nowhere.
Perhaps we're even losing ground. About two weeks ago, just after the
operation, the growth went unexpectedly metastatic, and we know of at
least eight new colonies. Further surgery is out of the question. We'll
have to find a specific for carcinoma, like barium-Q for radiation
burns, or Maillon will die. And soon."

"Is your other son helping you?"

"Piggy? Oh, Piggy--or Pickerel, as his dead mother named him--keeps
busy." Follansbee cleared his throat apologetically. "Of course
his talents lie in a different direction. He handles some of the
administrative details of the floor polish section, but he could never
work up much interest in the technical phases of the work. Fine boy,
even so," he added staunchly. "Very anxious about his wife, though I'm
afraid they haven't got on very well since Maillon became a Freudian
associate and started composing for the non-sleepers. In some ways,
there's a big gap in their outlook on things."

Toring took a deep breath. "Maillon believes that your thoughts of
personal disaster are inextricably intertwined with her carcinoma."

Follansbee halted his glass in mid-air.

"Shall I go on?" asked the preceptor.

       *       *       *       *       *

Follansbee's throat was suddenly dry. He had told these people nothing.
Yet they knew--how much?

"Go on!" he rasped.

"Maillon says you think you are going to be murdered."

There was a crash of glass. Neither of the men moved. Rivulets of
bubbling beer trickled away from the patron's fallen goblet.

The excruciating probe began again. "She says that you know who will
kill you."

The scientist was panting heavily.

"Which son, Dr. Follansbee?"

Toring's cheeks were gray marble, but his nostrils were painfully
dilated over trembling lips. At this moment he felt he had lost forever
his right to the society of decent human beings, and he swore silently
that if he now failed to extract the secret of psychokinesis from his
father he would kill himself painfully. If he were successful, he would
die too, of course, but there would be no element of self-punishment
involved, and that death need not be painful.

"You must do nothing," stammered the patron. "The Freudians are not
policemen."

Toring helped Dr. Follansbee over the broken glass and walked to the
entrance with him.

"One last question, doctor," he said as they stood in the doorway. "Are
you afraid to die?" He awaited the answer with a strained expectancy
unusual in a Freudian.

Follansbee had recovered his poise. "How can I be afraid of something
I know nothing about? That would simply be a superstitious fear of the
unknown, not of death." He tapped his cane. "Good night, Toring. I have
to be at the lab at two-ten."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Your chess composition is like a chord of music," said Blaine
Follansbee, eyeing Maillon curiously from his blood-change armchair.

The woman he addressed lay in a high white hospital bed, her black
hair tumbling about her pillow in calculated confusion, one olive-hued
arm stretched languidly toward the chess board control box, the other
doubled under her pillow. Her cheek bones and nose were sharply defined
even under the soft radiance of her bed fluor.

Blaine grinned at her suddenly. "A pure multiple echo, really. Same
type of harmony you find in a tone poem. I, the experienced solver
of chess problems, look through the echoes and see the musician." He
removed the needles from his arms and rang the bell for an attendant.
"And now I've got to go."

The woman, who had been devouring his praise hungrily, pouted. "You're
a few minutes late already. If you'll stay a little while longer I'll
show you how to force a mate with two knights against the lone king."

"You're a liar. No, I'll have to run. We're taking u.v. slides of some
growth from your larynx, and I want to be there to tell Father what the
negatives show. From now on, every minute counts."

"Have you really found something?"

"We don't know. We've been working with a possible specific--a
derivative of rose oil that inhibits cytosis in vitro, but has no
effect in vivo. What we really need is some agent that could create the
rose oil derivative right in the blood stream, but of course that's
preposterous."

"You don't sound too hopeful. If I'm going to die anyway, why leave
early? Why sacrifice your one hour of rest just to squint futilely
through a microscope?" She twisted nervously at the coverlet.

The man's voice was suddenly tired. "How do I know whether you're
going to die? Ask your Freudian friends. It's rumored they can predict
death probabilities. All I can do is keep working."

The attendant entered and rolled the chair out.

Blaine picked up his hat. Maillon made a _moue_.

"Best o' luck on the magic bullet, Dr. Ehrlich. I'm writing the Nobel
Committee tonight."

The man and woman looked at each other briefly, without expression.

"Tomorrow night, same time," he muttered, and left.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Follansbee's braille watch chimed the hour, two o'clock in the
morning, as he stepped from the piazza of the Freudian Lodge and began
his short walk across the campus of the Follansbee Institute, toward
the Pathology Building.

Which son was going to kill him?

Was it Blaine, the tall, yellow-haired one, the diligent, industrious
one, the one who would logically succeed his father as director of the
Institute? Or was it Pickerel, "Piggy," the affable, entertaining one,
the dark, chubby one, the one who would lose most from his father's
death, and whom so many people strangely disliked?

He stopped in the middle of the path, surrounded by darkness and stars,
and pulled a small needle gun from his pocket.

There was a good way to stop either of his sons from becoming a
murderer. He would finish now what the cyclotron had failed to do when
it had blinded him six months back. He lifted the weapon to his temple.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cyclotron? Charged particles? Of course! New eyesight. The problem that
had occupied his mind for months, waking and blood-changing. It was
absurdly simple, when one knew the answer. Why had it taken him so long
to think of this? He mustn't let it be lost now. He would make notes
tomorrow.

But tomorrow he might be dead, and countless blind people would
be cheated. As he stood, sunk in thought, he remembered Toring's
suggestion that he might be able to pierce the future and touch other
minds.

For a moment the man stood immobile, his body stiffening, while his
mind spiraled through cold time and space, alert, searching. He found
her--Maillon. With sly, eager malice he beat out the opening chords of
the death concerto she had written for him. He sensed her incredulity,
and grinned. Then his lips pressed together tightly and he hammered
away at the details for the artificial eye.

The contact wandered, then faded, but he knew she had the essential
elements. She would understand. She would understand everything except
why he had called to her instead of Blaine or Piggy.

His somber intent likewise faded, and a few minutes later he unlocked
the door to the Pathology Building and let himself in. He had preceded
Blaine, evidently.

Or had he? Was there a noise on the stair?

With slow but sure step he walked over to the stair and began the
ascent toward the laboratory, which opened on the mezzanine balcony.
Halfway up he felt a breath of icy air. He stood very still. The now
familiar sense of immediate destruction, and a belief that he had
passed someone on the stair, struck him simultaneously. And he knew now
who would kill him.

"Piggy?" he whispered.

There was an audible click as the entrance door opened and closed.
Silence was complete in the building. The intruder had left.

Dr. Follansbee suddenly felt weak. For a moment he grasped the stair
railing, breathing heavily. But he must delay his sinister appointment
no longer. He walked rapidly up the remaining stairs, down the hall,
and opened the lab door. He flicked the fluors on, and then, as he was
reaching for the u.v. switch for the microscope condenser, he heard the
lower entrance door open again.

That must be Blaine. Yes, there were his steps on the stairs. He must
warn Blaine to stay away tonight. Tonight, he must work alone.

As he turned toward the door, he pressed the u.v. switch. A beam of
barely visible blue light shot across the microscope bench, past the
microscope condensing mirror, and into a quartz jar of americium
fulminate. But Dr. Follansbee never knew this, because immediately
afterward he was lying on the lobby floor, dead, with shards of glass
dropping musically around him.

The explosion echoes died away.

With a heavy hand Toring pushed the tele-encephalograph tapes to one
side and looked at the fat man behind the gun.

"It's all over. Why don't you shoot?"

"One of your nurses is in the hall. I'd prefer she didn't see me
leave." Pickerel Follansbee's red eyes studied the preceptor curiously.
"Did you think I could let you live after you gave me the fulminate?"

"I hadn't considered the question."

"What was your angle? Why were you so eager to help me?"

The Freudian sighed wearily. "Just an idea that didn't quite click. It
doesn't matter, now. How about you? Do you really believe Blanchard
will make the trustees appoint you the new director of Follansbee
Institute?"

"Why do you think I married his daughter?"

"Of course." Toring fingered the tele-encephalograph tapes
thoughtfully. "Tell me, Follansbee, have you seen Naida lately? Your
wife's sister?"

The other laughed harshly. "That stupid little mutt! I scared the devil
out of her two weeks ago. Haven't seen her since. She scares easy," he
added with a reminiscent grin.

Together they listened to the sound of the nurse's heels dying away
down the hall.

"Follansbee," murmured the analyst, "I've changed my mind about letting
you kill me. Though I've failed in a great thing I cannot indulge, just
yet, in the luxury of the grave. I've _got_ to make another try. I
simply _must_." He seemed to be talking to himself.

"Sorry, Shakespeare. Say your pr--"

He broke off, eyes bulging. Toring's ink-well was boiling furiously.

Pickerel laughed nervously. "Your tricks don't scare me!"

"I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just trying to show you something
interesting. Do you see these tapes? They recorded your father's
thoughts during the last few hours of his life. And they carry a
remarkable secret. Not quite so wonderful as I had hoped, but adequate
to persuade you to avoid me for a few days, while I study that secret
further."

       *       *       *       *       *

Pickerel leaned forward suspiciously.

"Yeah?"

"Your father was a chronopath. He had the ability to impress a thought
pattern on the mind of another, across time and space. This magnificent
gift is really just a specialized variety of telekinesis, the cruder
forms of which can be acquired by certain types of minds--my own, at
any rate."

"Hurry it up, bright boy."

"As for the ink-well, that was simply a matter of separating,
telekinetically, the faster water molecules from the slower and
concentrating them at the surface of the ink until their vapor pressure
per unit area reached about seven hundred and sixty millimeters of
mercury. It might astonish you to learn that billions of molecules
are controlled so easily. As a matter of fact, a generation ago, Dr.
Rhine of Duke University, using dice, proved that certainty of control
increased with the number of objects employed."

Pickerel pointed his needler carefully at Toring's left breast and
squeezed the trigger--hard.

"An analogous application, though in reverse," continued the analyst
mildly, "is in condensing the white-hot steam jet of a needler. The
heat from the americium capsule is preferentially dissipated within the
chamber and handle of the--"

In a spasm of pain the fat man flung the gun away and thrust his
fingers in his mouth.

"I'll get you yet!" he snarled.

The desk video buzzed. The Freudian looked up placidly. "Will you
excuse me?"

A strangled cry was still-born in the fat man's throat. He scooped up
his needler with his handkerchief and dashed from the room.

Toring sat folding and unfolding his pale hands.

The video jangled again. He pressed the "In" button.

Rachs' demoniacal eyebrows lifted questioningly over flashing black
eyes.

"The explosion went off as scheduled," said Toring without expression.

Rachs waved that aside impatiently. "Did you get anything from the
tapes?"

"Not much. Just simple telekinesis. I tried it on Pickerel a few
minutes ago."

"You worked on his cortex?"

"Not that. I could have penetrated his mind easily enough, but it would
have killed him. I'm ready for psychokinesis."

Rachs couldn't conceal his disappointment. "Perhaps your mind is still
too stiff--too clumsy. I thought that putting you through the emotional
wringer of killing your father would give you the necessary mental
elasticity. It may yet. Keep trying."

"I shall," replied Toring evenly.

A thrill of mingled delight and despair surged through Maillon as she
examined the dark glasses and the patches of surgical tape that hid the
man's face.

Blaine smiled grimly. "If you're thinking that blind men lead a life of
leisure and can visit pretty ladies by the hour, you're wrong. Right
after Father's funeral we started repairing the lab, and I've set the
staff back to work on that rose oil derivative."

"I'm glad, Blaine. You aren't happy unless you're working, and I want
you to be happy. What did the coroner say?"

"He thinks some americium fulminate got in the way of the u.v. beam.
Accidental death. Poor Father! He liked being alive. He got a great
kick out of thinking that everything he did was making life easier for
somebody, somewhere. Which leads to the next question. What's this
insane story about Father's communicating with you telepathically?" He
snorted. "Spirits?"

"Say what you like. It was he, and you know it. Only your father could
have caricatured my concerto with such malicious nonchalance, and you
know he'd been trying for months to restore his sight. But what did he
mean by 'snooperscope'?"

"I've been working on the assumption that he had in mind the old
infra-red snooperscope developed during the last war. You shine a
source of infra-red light--just a plain tungsten lamp with a thin ebony
filter--on the object, and pick up the reflected infra-red rays in a
tube something like the old orthicon used in television of the late
Forties. This incoming infra-red 'light' is focused through a glass
lens and forms an image on a convex screen of caesium-silver oxide.
The screen shoots off electrons where the infra-red rays strike it,
and these electrons are focused by an electrostatic electron lens on a
fluorescent screen, which gives the final visible image."

"But you're blind. How're you going to see that screen?"

"That's the pretty part of it. My visual pigments--rhodopsin
and iodopsin--were burnt out by the flash of the explosion. The
oculist-surgeon says they're in the light-bleached phase now and will
never again activate the rods and cones that in turn energize the
retinal nerve endings. But the nerve endings themselves are intact."

       *       *       *       *       *

Maillon gasped in sudden comprehension.

"Do you mean you're going to substitute your retina for the viewing
screen of the snooperscope?"

"In a way, yes. That isn't difficult. But adapting the other elements
of the snooperscope poses some problems. You have to remember that
an electron will pass through only a few inches of air, at most. A
fraction of an inch of the saline fluid of the eye would stop it cold.
So I'll have to drain the eye fluids and make vacuum chambers of my
eyes. For the casings of my new eyeballs, I'll precipitate a thin but
strong layer of silica gel, impregnated with platinum dust to conduct
electrons to the retinal nerve endings just beyond. When the shell
hardens, we drain the fluids, insert the electrostatic lens, and
devacuate the shell."

"You'll do _what_!"

"The glassy lens will have to come out, too, of course. Its focal
length is far too long to focus light in the short space I'll have
available. But a low-powered microscope objective ought to do nicely. I
can rack it forward for high magnification, and in conjunction with the
electron microscope, it ought to be pretty potent. I even thought about
plugging my retina up directly to the electron mike, but I couldn't
figure any way to beat that two hundred kv. potential that would be
pouring in. I'm going to have trouble enough with the five kv. I'll use
with the snooperscope eye."

Maillon sat in her bed, hunched in thought. "I suppose an infra-red
world is better than none."

"Ho! Don't underestimate me! I'm really reverting to something like the
old orthicon. I won't limit myself to the hundred thousand Angstrom
range of infra-red. I'll modify the caesium screen between the glass
objective and the electron lenses, and I'll have a spectrum extending
from the deep infra-red into the visible."

"When is your operation?"

"At seven P.M."

His lapel video buzzed; he held it to his ear for a moment. "All
right," he acknowledged.

"It's Father's secretary, or rather Piggy's now, I guess. The new
director wants me to report at once." He sensed Maillon's apprehensive
frown. "Don't worry. It can't take long. It must be after six in the
evening. Piggy won't stay late enough to miss supper. I'll have the new
eyes ready to blink by nine o'clock. Call your father and see if he
can break away from his mergers and swindles long enough to help us.
He's a first-class chemist, and we're going to need him. I'll meet you
both over at the old pathology lab. And don't worry about me. I've been
finding my way around here in the dark of night for years...."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Ah, come in, Blaine," called out his brother heartily. "I'm really
happy to see you."

Blaine hesitated a fraction of a second. Piggy's manner reminded him
of a huge hog about to pounce on a juicy red apple. He could not tell
whether Piggy was extending his hand or not, but he stepped forward
to take the chair which in days past had stood by their father's old
desk. The next minute he was picking himself up from the floor. As he
untangled his legs he reached back and fingered a length of sash-cord
tied between Piggy's desk and a nearby chair.

"What the devil!" he spluttered.

His brother beamed, without offering to assist.

"Just checking on your eyesight, Blaine," he said pontifically. "I
wanted to see for myself. As the director of this great organization I
have to make sure that we are not paying out the money budgeted to us
by our clients to persons physically unqualified to advance the work of
the Institute."

The blond man got to his feet silently.

"So just sit down, Blaine," continued Piggy generously, "and we'll go
over this quietly, like gentlemen. It's true, then--you're blind?"

"A shrewd observation," said Blaine with deceptive gentleness.

"Well, then, don't you see? You are no longer of any use to the
Institute. I'll have to let you go."

Blaine smiled. "You've waited a long time for this, haven't you? Very
well. Do I have a few days to put my work in order?"

"You'll have the usual thirty days, of course," offered Piggy.
"Provided you're willing to observe our new policy."

"What's that?"

"I've rearranged the backlog of work somewhat. We're going to give
our biggest clients priority from now on. The little fellows can go
elsewhere if they don't like it."

Blaine's smile changed subtly.

"Oh, I know what you're thinking," continued Piggy. "It wasn't Father's
way. Well, his ideas were naive, childish. From now on, we'll help big
industry exclusively. The little firms just can't pay the percentages
the big ones can. I know where the money is, and I'm going to get it."

"None of the preferred clients are going to give the new director a
bonus, are they?" asked Blaine innocently.

       *       *       *       *       *

Piggy was not embarrassed.

"I'm out for everything I can get. Father could have been one of the
wealthiest men in the country if he had played this game sensibly.
Instead, he turned his business over to a bunch of visionary trustees."

"He believed," clipped Blaine, "that was the only way he could preserve
his Institute as a benefit to all mankind, not just to a chosen few
massive corporations. Haven't you any respect for his last wishes?"

"None whatever. He was a prize fool ... sit back down, or I'll blast
you where you stand.... That's better. Yes, dear brother, things are
going to step lively around here from now on. The first thing you're
going to do is drop your silly cancer research. There's no money in
that. If you want to keep on drawing your salary during your last month
with the Institute, you can start your staff on a problem International
Insecticide sent us. You'll find it in your lab, right now. If I were
you, I'd go quietly. And remember, there's a nice bonus in it--for
me...."

Blanchard flung the lab door open, blinking. The foyer and mezzanine
corridor of the pathology building were dark, and he could see nothing.

"Hello there, J.T.!"

"Blaine, my boy! You can see!"

"Better than you! I can see in the dark!"

"Let him in, Father," Maillon said. "I want him to look at me."

Blaine laughed. "The female use for male eyes. All right, I'm looking
at you, and you're an upside-down sepia portrait!"

"What!"

"Everything I see is a sort of neutral brown. No color, but I expected
that because, after all, a bare nerve ending can't sense color. And
you're upside down--no mistake."

"Blaine, dear, are you _sure_ that local has completely worn off?"

Maillon's father laughed. "He's quite right. The laws of optics give
you and me inverted retinal images, which we pretend to turn right side
up again by innumerable conditioned reflexes formed during infancy.
Blaine has that same mass of reflexes, and now they've betrayed him by
turning upside down what doesn't need to be turned upside down. You can
cure that, Blaine, by wearing inverting spectacles, but it's clumsy. It
won't take long to retrain your motor system."

"I hope not. Well, let's test the new blinkers. We'll start with a
membrane of metastatic cells from your larynx, Maillon. Say"--he
sniffed the air curiously--"what's that funny odor?"

"In a vague way," offered the woman, "it reminds me of a perfume.
Haven't you been working here with rose oil derivatives?"

"Yes, but the bottles are always carefully stoppered, and there's never
been any odor before. Must be something in one of the other labs. So,
J.T., if you'll kindly prepare.... No, wait a minute."

He walked over to the reagent shelf, reached awkwardly for a quart
jar, uncorked it, and sniffed cautiously at the orifice. His nostrils
wrinkled in disgust.

"The odor can't be from Piggy's International Insecticide sample--it's
malodorous."

"Concentrated perfume is always malodorous," said Maillon.

"Hmm." After a couple of misses, Blaine managed to thrust a stirring
rod into the fluid. He drew it out, examined the clear syrup glistening
at the tip, and then handed the rod to Blanchard. "J.T., would you
mind fixing me a membrane of _that_ for the electron mike? I'd like to
see how much I can step up its magnification in conjunction with my
snooper eye, but I'm too awkward as yet to prepare a membrane myself.
And anyway, my eyes need a rest. The retinas are overheating and it's a
bit painful."

Half an hour later Blaine's brow corrugated slowly into a puzzled frown
as he adjusted the potential of his portable power pack.

"Definition quite satisfactory, but I don't recognize what I see. Too
small for algae and too big for protozoa. Seems to be some quadricelled
animal with very thick, resistant membranes. May account for its
hardihood in that turpentine base." He adjusted the focus slowly,
turn after turn. "Hah! Our microbe is breaking down the turpentine
into smaller things. Magnification is now tremendous--of the order
of X-ray crystallography. Shadows of individual molecules plainly
visible. Here's one that looks like a sawtooth. Get out your pencil,
J.T. Seven carbons on the chain, with a methyl on the second one and
probably ethylol on the sixth. The close binding between the second and
third carbons seems to indicate a double bond. Got that?"

"Sounds like geraniol," stated Blanchard, the cold blue light from the
fluors glinting from his balding head. "Anything else?"

Blaine laboriously described two others.

"Citronellol and stearoptene," declared Blanchard. "Let me smell that
bottle."

       *       *       *       *       *

He wrinkled his nose wryly, then with a pipette transferred a drop to
a liter beaker of water. This he stirred vigorously, while a beatific
smile stole over his face.

"Take a whiff," he invited his daughter.

"Well, find me dead in Saks Fifth Avenue! From bugs, rose oil!"

"Exactly!" agreed Blanchard. "Blaine, you've just made a billionaire
out of a poor little millionaire corporation. What they used to sell
for thirty-five a quart is now worth thirty-five an ounce, wholesale.
Why every woman in the country can buy a drop of this culture at the
dime store within a few months and grow her own rose perfume."

"You're wrong there, Father," laughed Maillon. "If it's going to be
that common, no self-respecting female will ever use it again. What do
you think, Blaine?"

"It's just barely possible," said Blaine slowly, "that if we injected
some of this culture into the blood stream, our new microbe would
contribute enough enzyme to these hay-wire cancer cells to put them
under hormone control once more. Then, of course, they'd gradually die.
I'd like to see what a few of these animals will do to a cancer colony.
Now, J.T., if you will kindly prepare a specimen from Maillon's
larynx."

       *       *       *       *       *

Blanchard strode nervously up and down behind his desk.

"Further discussion of this will get us nowhere," he said to his
son-in-law. "You're out as director and Blaine is in. The trustees met
again just fifteen minutes ago and it's all over now. I might add that
you would never have been elected director in the first place, despite
Maillon's insistence, if I had known that you planned on adopting
such a mercenary policy. The gap between you and the man who cured
my daughter is simply abysmal. I knew it all along, but since his
miraculous eye and cancer discoveries have been announced, even the
public videoscopes have been howling about it."

Pickerel Follansbee smiled mirthlessly and lounged deeper into the
plushy armchair.

"Speaking of videos, just two days ago Maillon asked you to have me
elected director, instead of Blaine. Did you wonder why?"

Blanchard stared at his son-in-law. "You brought the note from her
yourself, didn't you? I know you read it." He scooped open a desk
drawer, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and mumbled: "'Dad--you'd
do me a favor if you asked the other trustees to appoint Piggy to the
directorate until I'm either dead or cured.' She was dying, and I'd
have done anything for her--even make you director--though I must admit
I don't know why she asked that.

"But now Blaine has put her on the road to recovery. She's up, walking
around, takes Naida along in the wheel chair. So I can't see any reason
for keeping an incompetent wretch like you in that high office of trust
any longer. You can go back to your shoe polishes."

"Floor polishes," corrected Pickerel, touching his fingertips together
benignly. "Do you know why she gave you that note? No, of course
you don't. I made her write it." He leaned forward, eyes snapping
darkly, but still smiling. "I told her that I'd expose her love for my
brother, and his for her. I told her I'd smear it on every videoscope
in the country, if I weren't made director. She wrote that note
to save a lot of people, including you and Blaine, from--shall we
say--embarrassment?" He plopped back with confident assurance. "So you
see, for the honor of the august houses of Blanchard and Follansbee,
you may find it convenient to recall your stooges and take another
vote." He yawned luxuriously. "I've loads of time. The evening scandals
won't show for two hours."

"Maillon? And Blaine?" mused Blanchard. "Of course. I've been blind.
Written all over them." He sighed and dropped into his swivel chair.
"Piggy, I wish you were dead."

Pickerel nodded sympathetically.

"But that doesn't alter my decision. Blaine's still director, not you.
Furthermore, if you ever make my daughter unhappy again, I'll hunt you
to the ends of the earth and strangle you. Get out."

Piggy glared at the industrialist in brief, bitter hate. Then he got up
and strode angrily through the door....

By the light of his desk-fluor Blaine Follansbee watched the laboratory
door slowly open. He put his right hand under his desk, touching the
fluor switch, and turned his eyes away from the door. Since his new
retinas, unlike the old, were uniformly sensitive over the whole
hemisphere, he could see as well out of the "corner" of his eye as he
could along its optical axis--or better. And he wanted to give the
stealthy intruder a feeling of confidence and domination.

He watched, fearful but elated, as Pickerel's contorted, upside-down
face peeked in, first at him and then carefully about the lab.

The next question: Would Piggy shoot from the balcony, or come inside?

The fat man stepped silently within the door, continuing to study
Blaine closely, and appeared to listen. The campus was extraordinarily
quiet. Somewhere within the building a cricket was creaking. Blaine
wished fervently that Piggy would hurry. He had been using his eyes for
half an hour already, and they were overheating.

       *       *       *       *       *

Piggy's fat hand dived into his coat pocket and surfaced with a
needler. He drew careful aim at his brother's averted head.

Blaine turned slowly and listened to his own voice. "Before you kill
me, please answer one question."

The intruder hesitated.

"It's about Maillon's cancer," continued the scientist smoothly. "That
metastatic strain was an extremely virulent one developed in this very
building. Two weeks ago, by a strange coincidence, a jar containing
a sizable bit of that culture vanished. I'm not asking you _whether_
you grafted some of it into your wife's operational wound. I'm
asking--_why_?"

"You're just guessing," said Piggy between his teeth. "You can't prove
a thing!"

"I realize that," admitted Blaine. "But it was a reasonable assumption,
wasn't it? A request forced from his dying daughter to make you
director would have a lot of weight with Blanchard." His fingers began
to squeeze on the fluor switch. His eye-sockets were frantic with pain.
"But then we come to another difficulty. How did you know the office
of the director would fall vacant so soon? How could you be positive
Father was going to die, unless you had already planned to mur--"

He ducked and snapped the switch. From behind welled out the odor of
hot metal, and he knew the needler bolt had hit the filing cabinet. The
smoking steel plates filled the room with the glow of infra-red. He
turned off his power pack and rested his burning eyes a few seconds.

Finally, he peeked cautiously over the desk. Piggy was backed up
against the reagent shelf and was looking wildly in all directions. To
the human eye it was pitch dark. Blaine thought a moment, then smiled
grimly and hurled his desk dictionary at the lab door. Piggy fired
futilely at it as the portal slammed shut.

The fat man's cheeks were strangely transparent, and his facial hair
roots plainly visible, making him look as though he needed a shave.
There was something odd about the eyes, too. The whites were almost
dark. Either they were nearly transparent to infra-red, showing through
to the black retinas beyond, or else they reflected little of these
long invisible waves. But no time for conjectures!

The scientist quietly picked up a long mailing tube, held the end a few
feet to his brother's right side, and whispered.

"Piggy!"

Another blast.

Then on the left side.

"Piggy!"

A fourth crash announced the fall of the electron microscope. Piggy
blasted at that, too. Five.

Softly, Blaine put the tube aside and stood up.

"One more, eh, Piggy?" he laughed. "You've got to be sure, this time.
Do you know why you've got to be sure? Because there's a trick catch on
the door. We're locked in, and I've got the key." He was ordinarily a
poor liar, but he knew it would sound logical to his brother.

Piggy peered toward the desk and took a tentative step, needler
pointing generally at Blaine, who immediately tiptoed around to the
other side.

"Piggy, few people learn as much in the last minute of their lives as
you're about to learn. You ought to feel grateful. And where did you
get that horrible blouse? Won't your collar stay down without buttoning
it?"

His brother lurched back fearfully. "It's dark! You can't see me!"

"It's dark? Well, so it is. I keep forgetting. Why Piggy! You're
perspiring! Better wipe off a little of the sweat, before you drown.
Look in your lapel pocket--you'll find a white handkerchief with a dark
border. Use that. And look at the kid gloves! So you didn't want to
leave fingerprints!"

He laughed heartily, then jumped as a white-hot beam flashed by his
side.

"All right." His voice was suddenly cold, hard. "If you want to sit
down now and dictate a confession for the D.A., I'll unlock the door
and give you five minutes before I call the police."

"And if I don't?" whispered Pickerel hoarsely.

"I'll kill you." Blaine's big hands doubled unconsciously, and it
occurred to him that he was no longer bluffing.

He watched deep lines twisting up and down his brother's face. Piggy
was weighing chances, wondering how far he could get. Suddenly the
fat man flung his weapon at his brother, turned, and laughed mightily
at the lab door. It vanished in a shower of glass and plastic. The
thunderstruck scientist heard a shriek of horror and a dull, heavy
crash.

And then nothing.

Through the shattered panel he saw the wooden braces--now broken--that
had served as a temporary balcony rail for the past two days, and he
knew that Pickerel Follansbee now lay on the same cold bier so lately
occupied by their father.

Somewhere within the building a cricket chirped away in cheerful insect
solitude....

       *       *       *       *       *

Toring knew before he punched the "In" button that it would be Rachs.
The black eyes came into focus and gleamed at him with malevolent
interest. Dissecting scalpels preparing to lay bare a corpse.

"I called as soon as I learned about Pickerel and Blaine," declared the
older man. "How do you feel?"

"How am I supposed to feel?"

"Exhausted, confused. The conviction that you are indirectly
responsible for two deaths in your immediate family should have left
your mind as limp as a rag."

"You aren't far wrong, Rachs"--Toring leaned over the desk with almost
impersonal curiosity--"has my biostat stopped?"

The jet eyes blinked, then narrowed sharply. For a long moment each
man searched the soul of the other. Then Rachs rubbed his chin
thoughtfully and looked down.

"Your statement conceals tremendous implications, some of them rather
paradoxical. Presumably you contemplate suicide to atone for the
deaths of your father and brother. In your own foolish way, you regard
yourself as indirectly accountable. Then it occurs to you that if you
are going to die, your biostat must have predicted your death."

"For once, your famous insight has failed--"

"Don't interrupt." The older man frowned, warming to his theme. "You've
probably been thinking as follows: 'Free will gives me the choice of
living or dying. If I choose to live, my biostat still runs. It I
choose to die, the 'stat stopped three days ago. Which to do, live or
die? By selecting my future I select my past. By the exercise of free
will I establish determinism, and so deny free will.' Right?"

"I've considered all that, and more too," replied Toring quietly. "For
example, suppose that my father's biostat predicted not just his death,
but--his agathon. That would make me a co-murderer in the purest sense
of the word, wouldn't it? But all this speculation leads nowhere. Just
answer my question."

"But it does lead somewhere! With all that soul-searching and
brain-scratching, your mind now ought to be sufficiently elastic and
sensitive to attempt a general reorganization of a deranged cerebral
cortex--psychokinesis--the goal you've been working toward. That is,
telekinesis applied to individual neurons, and so on up to neural
patterns and lobal nets. What do you think?"

"An hour after Piggy died, I came to the same conclusion, and I'm
finally going to try psychokinesis. The subject is on her way over now.
And in this connection I'd like to know about my bio--"

"You can do it. Be sure to set up the tele-encephalograph on your mind.
Afterward, we'll want to know precisely what happened."

"My biostat?" reminded Toring patiently.

"Oh, that." Rachs looked faintly sheepish. "I must confess I've been
worried about it myself. The stylus jiggled rather erratically a
couple of days back, which would correspond to a little after midnight
tonight, your time. But it's still running."

"In that case"--the preceptor's voice carried an icy edge of
triumph--"your miserable agathon program is finished...."

Blanchard wheeled the girl into the study. The dark moon face hidden
behind the white hands was perhaps a little thinner, but Toring noticed
no other change.

"I'm not asking questions," said the magnate in a low voice. "I'm
simply very grateful, whatever your reasons for taking her out of turn."

The Freudian glanced absently at Blanchard. Considering the strange and
terrible thing that would happen soon to Naida he should feel pity for
the man. He felt nothing.

"Has the D.A. released Blaine Follansbee yet?" he asked.

"He's holding him for further evidence. There weren't any fingerprints
on the gun, and he wants to make sure Blaine didn't use it against
Piggy instead of vice versa. If we could prove that Piggy was
a dangerous character, then Blaine would have a good case of
self-defense. Blaine thinks Piggy killed his father, and tried to kill
Maillon. But we can't dig up a shred of evidence."

"I see. But don't be discouraged. I think Naida will soon be able
to tell us something very interesting about Piggy.... This is going
to require several hours. I don't expect to finish before midnight.
Perhaps you'd better wait in the other room. You can look through the
little window in the wall from time to time to see how we're doing."

Blanchard wiped his face with his handkerchief, nodded nervously, and
left the room.

The Freudian wheeled up the tele-encephalograph, tested the tape
mechanism, and tuned it to his cortex. Then he sat down in a chair
about ten feet in front of Naida and forced himself to relax. For the
next quarter-hour his mind must be a precision instrument, perfect,
invariant.

A tiny slip of telekinetic force, an incomplete understanding of a
group of association centers, and the child-woman would never leave her
coma. His battle against Rachs and the agathons would be lost. Blaine
would go to trial for manslaughter.

But he knew he would not fail.

       *       *       *       *       *

His approach was like the old mystery story in which the thief filed
his fingernails to the quick in order to determine a safe combination.
His own mind, abraded to the quick by doubt and worry, had finally
found the combination to another human intellect.

The girl breathed slowly, rhythmically, like a hibernating animal.

He held his breath for a moment, as his mind began to probe gently
at her pliant mental shell, easing through into the superior frontal
gyrus. "Inside" there was some disorganized and ineffective attempt
to bar him. He was reminded of a little animal burrowing ever deeper
into a bank of forest leaves. But he moved slowly onward, with infinite
patience, taking extreme pains not to frighten his sensitive quarry
into forever-protective madness. At snail's pace he groped up and down
the cortical corridors, cumulating, integrating, and understanding.

As he analyzed the chaotic wounds that Piggy had left, wonder grew
within him that his splendid father could have sired such a creature.
Yet, in view of what he himself intended to do to this mind a little
later, he doubted there was really so much difference in himself and
his dead brother.

With firm, unhurried care he methodically reactivated the shock
centers, with their accompanying horror memories, but simultaneously
placed the thalamus under partial paralysis, so that no stimuli from
images of Piggy would be transmitted to the adrenals. According to
the James-Lange theory of emotions, if Naida's ductless glands were
inactive, her brain would view such memories objectively and feel no
fear.

She stirred uncomfortably, as in a troubled dream, but finally she lay
limply against the back of the wheel chair, eyes shut, hands in her
lap, breathing slowly.

With grim satisfaction the Freudian arose, switched off the
tele-encephalograph, and returned to his desk. The tapes in the machine
held the secret of psychokinesis--the one good fruit of the Follansbee
agathon. How Rachs would rave! He could almost see those two eyes
flaming now.

And now for his own coup.

He would use a specialized form of psychokinesis that he believed would
not be rediscovered for generations. Rachs really had no conception of
the horizon of the Follansbee mind.

The agathon system was breathing its last.

He punched his call box. "Registrar? Toring. Please cancel all further
sittings that you have listed for me."

"You mean, all for today?"

"All for today. And tomorrow. And next week. And forever."

He disconnected the box and looked at his watch. Eight P.M.
Three hours to blood-change. But he'd change now. He would need every
ounce of energy he could command.

He opened the cabinets on either side of his chair, thrust the sterile
needles deftly into his arms, and started the little motor that
activated the vacuum and pressure apparatus. From his desk drawer he
took an airblast syringe and measured a shot of stimulant, something he
hadn't touched since the last day of his University exams.

A superb glow infused him as he turned again to Naida. With easy
confidence he refocused his mind on hers.

Blanchard, standing second in line before the little window, felt
the discomfort and apprehension of a neophyte attending a potent
pagan rite. He glared at his wrist-watch impatiently--it was nearly
midnight--and tapped the nurse ahead of him on the shoulder.

"What're they doing now?" he whispered.

"No change," she whispered back. "Oh, you're the father, aren't you?
You may have my place now if you want it."

His head bobbed gratefully, and the woman pushed her way to the rear,
where she was taken in tow by a bevy of other curious nurses.

Blanchard snubbed his blunt nose against the plastic pane.

His daughter was standing before her wheel chair, her right foot half
a step in front, her arms partly outstretched, palms forward, reaching
for something invisible.

The hair on his arms and neck stiffened for a moment as he studied her
radiant face. The eyes were wide open, but Blanchard could have sworn
they saw nothing. The full lower lip, red without rouge, was parted
from the upper in an unspoken question. As he watched, the lips moved
slowly.

The man she faced was carved from gray obsidian, and from beneath his
weary stone eyelids two chatoyant jewels transfixed her. Rivulets of
sweat had gradually furrowed that adamantine cheek during the hours
that Blanchard had watched, and the gray robes draping the statue
glistened with perspiration, which, coupled with the systolic surging
of the chest, gave a curious illusion of a real human being.

The industrialist shook his head dizzily. The line between the real
and the unreal was becoming too thin for comfort. Then, to his
indescribable relief, the statue stood up, snapping the blood-change
tubes like threads. Naida took another step forward, lips again parted,
eyes still dissolved in wide wonder.

       *       *       *       *       *

Blanchard turned and waved a hand in silent frenzy, demanding quiet.
The hall became still.

"Is it a dream?" Naida asked the gray man.

Could that be Naida's voice? thought Blanchard. It sounded
like--Toring's.

He strained his ears to the panel. The silence was growing longer.
Finally he heard the tired voice of the analyst.

"You know it is not."

Naida put her hand to her brow and straightened slowly.

"Yes, I know."

The Freudian nodded in grim approval. "The first thing you must do
is talk to Blan--... your father. Tell him about seeing Piggy plant
that metastatic carcinoma specimen in Maillon's incision, and what he
threatened to do to you when he caught you watching him."

"I shall."

Toring smiled. Napoleon after Austerlitz, or MacArthur aboard the
_Missouri_.

"Let's call him in now. You know where to meet me afterward. For the
present, be careful; later, merciful...."

Chin cupped in palms, Toring leaned over the balustrade of the high
bridge. Beneath him the moonlit rapids of the Potomac frothed their way
into the broader channel downstream, toward a distant freedom in the
sea. A cold wind whipped about his sweat-soaked robes, and he trembled
uneasily.

From somewhere overhead a light flashed at him, and then a jet sedan
struck the roadway of the bridge and careened into the opposite
balustrade. Naida leaped out and ran toward him on her toes, like
a little girl. She pulled up before him, lips characteristically
half-parted, dark eyes clothed in moon-shadow but clutching at his.
Her chest was rising and falling rapidly in her white blouse and tweed
jacket.

"I hurried as much as I could," she panted. "They released Blaine."

"Good. There's nothing to detain either of us. You'd better return."

Gently, the girl put her hand on his sleeve and looked up at the
Freudian.

"Are you really going to--"

"You should know."

She looked down the river, apparently lost in thought. Her fingers
tightened on his sleeve.

"Yes, I should know," she mused. "After all--"

"Yes, after all. With immaterial differences, your mind is--my own.
I reproduced on your cerebral cortex my every neuron, every synapse,
every neural path. For the present, the mental entity that inhabits the
skull of Naida Blanchard is actually myself, but it is superimposed
upon the original child-mind.

"So there are now two minds attuned to my biostat. One mind dies,
but the other lives and continues to activate the 'stat." He laughed
sardonically. "Poor Rachs!"

She looked up earnestly. Her hand slid slowly up his sleeve, over
his shoulder, and to his cheek. "But I differ from you more than you
think. Even during the past hour I have changed. I know now that I
am--Naida--and that you--are you."

       *       *       *       *       *

The analyst's eyes narrowed in sudden concern.

"Since I am not narcissistic," he muttered, "I should have realized
the change in you by your attempted caress. Already your sex has begun
to assimilate and re-work my--your--mind along feminine lines. Perhaps
I shouldn't have waited to learn about Blaine. I can only hope you
haven't changed so much that you've lost contact with the biostat."

"I think it's too late! Don't jump!"

His eyes flicked across her face in brief, startled appraisal. "The
identity with my own mind has become uncomfortably tenuous. And yet,
my biostat still runs. Which means--"

"That you won't jump!" whispered the woman tensely, pressing her palm
to his cheek.

"--that I _will_ jump, and that you face a full, useful life as
yourself, probably in the Lodges. And remember, even if your body ages,
your mind need never die. But we waste time. Return to your jet and
don't look back."

In one fleeting moment he looked through her, through the bridge that
separated him from death, through the river, the earth, and the stars
beyond. Then he took her hand quickly, kissed the warm palm, and
dropped it.

"That's for Naida--the first immortal."

    (_Confidential to all Preceptors_)

    _Psychokinesis is but a few days old and as yet not susceptible to
    a comprehensive evaluation. However, preliminary case reports
    indicate that Toring's new technique, as revealed by the T-E tapes,
    has advanced psychiatry by many centuries._

    _It is tragic irony that this gigantic Freudian could have healed,
    at the time of his passing, any suicidal psychosis on earth save
    one--his own._

    _Also ironical is the failure of his biostat to predict his own
    death. The machine, after an incomprehensible quaver of the
    kymograph, continued to run even after the fact of his suicide had
    been fed to its integrator webs._

    _This one divergence in the ninety thousand confirmed biostat
    histories proves that ultra-temporal mechanics cannot escape
    Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Since we can never be absolutely
    sure that a given agathon is not actually a murder, the agathon
    program will be discontinued immediately and the biostats
    destroyed._

    _Man, it seems, is not yet God._

                                                      _For the Council,
                                                                Rachs._



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Fruits of the agathon" ***


Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.