Sense from Thought Divide | Page 8

tentative
appearance and were, understandably, completely intimidated by Old
Stone Face. We sat for another five minutes.
"Harrumph!" Henry cleared his throat again, this time louder and more
commanding.
"That is all," the Swami said in a faint, exhausted voice. "I have
returned to you on your material plane."
* * * * *
The handholding broke up in the way bits of metal, suddenly charged
positive and negative, would fly apart. I leaned back again and snapped
on the white lights. We all sat there a few seconds, blinking in what
seemed a sudden glare.
The Swami sat with his chin dropped down to his chest. Then he raised
stricken, liquid eyes.
"Oh, now I remember where I am," he said. "What happened? I never
know."

Old Stone Face threw him a look of withering scorn. He picked up one
of the cylinders and hefted it in the palm of his hand. It did not fly
upward to bang against the ceiling. It weighed about what it ought to
weigh. He tossed the cylinder contemptuously, back into the pile,
scattering them over the table. He pushed back his chair, got to his feet,
and stalked out of the room without looking at any of us.
The Swami made a determined effort to recapture the spotlight.
"I'm afraid I must have help to walk to the car," he whispered. "I am
completely exhausted. Ah, this work takes so much out of me. Why do
I go on with it? Why? Why? Why?"
He drooped in his chair, then made a valiantly brave effort to rise under
his own power when he felt the lieutenant's hands lifting him up. He
was leaning heavily on the lieutenant as they went out the door.
Sara looked at me dubiously.
"Will there be anything else?" she asked. Her tone suggested that since
nothing had been accomplished, perhaps we should get some work out
before she left.
"No, Sara," I answered. "Good night. See you in the morning."
She nodded and went out the door.
Apparently none of them had seen what I saw. I wondered if Auerbach
had. He was a trained observer. He was standing beside the table
looking down at the cylinders. He reached over and poked at one of
them with his forefinger. He was pushing it back and forth. It gave him
no resistance beyond normal inertia. He pushed it a little farther out of
parallel with true North. It did not try to swing back.
So he had seen it. When I'd laid the cylinders down on the table they
were in random positions. During the seance there had been no jarring
of the table, not even so much as a rap or quiver which could have been
caused by the Swami's lifted knee. When we'd shifted the table, after

the Swami had changed his chair, the cylinders hadn't been disturbed.
When Old Stone Face had been staring at them during the
seance--seance?, hah!--they were laying in inert, random positions.
But when the lights came back on, and just before Henry had picked
one up and tossed it back to scatter them, every cylinder had been
laying in orderly parallel--and with one end pointing to true North!
I stood there beside Auerbach, and we both poked at the cylinders some
more. They gave us no resistance, nor showed that they had any ideas
about it one way or the other.
"It's like so many things," I said morosely. "If you do just happen to
notice anything out of the ordinary at all, it doesn't seem to mean
anything."
"Maybe that's because you're judging it outside of its own framework,"
Auerbach answered. I couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic or
speculative. "What I don't understand," he went on, "is that once the
cylinders having been activated by whatever force there was in
action--all right, call it psi--well, why didn't they retain it, the way the
other cylinders retained the antigrav force?"
I thought for a moment. Something about the conditional setup seemed
to give me an idea.
"You take a photographic plate," I reasoned. "Give it a weak exposure
to light, then give it a strong blast of overexposure. The first exposure
is going to be blanked out by the second. Old Stone Face was feeling
pretty strongly toward the whole matter."
Auerbach looked at me, unbelieving.
"There isn't any rule about who can have psi talent," I argued. "I'm just
wondering if I shouldn't wire General Sanfordwaithe and tell him to cut
our order for poltergeists down to five."
* * * * *

I spent a glum, restless night. I knew, with certainty, that Old Stone
Face was going to give me trouble. I didn't need any psi talent for that,
it was an inevitable part of his pattern. He