Sense from Thought Divide | Page 2

me. I want you to TK it over to me. What's the matter? Can't you even TK a simple ash tray?"
The lieutenant's eyes were getting bigger and bigger.
"Didn't your Poltergeist Section test this guy's aptitudes for telekinesis before you brought him from Washington all the way out here to Los Angeles?" I snapped at him.
* * * * *
The lieutenant's lips thinned to a bloodless line. Apparently I, a civilian, was criticizing the judgment of the Army.
"I am certain he must have qualified adequately," he said stiffly, and this time left off the "sir."
"Well, I don't know," I answered doubtfully. "If he hasn't even enough telekinetic ability to float me an ash tray across the room--"
The Swami recovered himself first. He put the tips of his long fingers together in the shape of a sway-backed steeple, and rolled his eyes upward.
"I am an instrument of infinite wisdom," he intoned. "Not a parlor magician."
"You mean that with all your infinite wisdom you can't do it," I accused flatly.
"The vibrations are not favorable--" he rolled the words sonorously.
"All right," I agreed. "We'll go somewhere else, where they're better!"
"The vibrations throughout all this crass, materialistic Western world--" he intoned.
"All right," I interrupted, "we'll go to India, then. Sara, call up and book tickets to Calcutta on the first possible plane!" Sara's mouth had been gradually closing, but it unhinged again.
"Perhaps not even India," the Swami murmured, hastily. "Perhaps Tibet."
"Now you know we can't get admission into Tibet while the Communists control it," I argued seriously. "But how about Nepal? That's a fair compromise. The Maharajadhiraja's friendly now. I'll settle for Nepal."
The Swami couldn't keep the triumphant glitter out of his eyes. The sudden worry that I really would take him to India to see if he could TK an ash tray subsided. He had me.
"I'm afraid it would have to be Tibet," he said positively. "Nowhere else in all this troubled world are the vibrations--"
"Oh go on back to Flatbush!" I interrupted disgustedly. "You know as well as I that you've never been outside New York before in your life. Your accent's as phony as the pear-shaped tones of a Midwestern garden club president. Can't even TK a simple ash tray!"
I turned to the amazed lieutenant.
"Will you come into my office?" I asked him.
He looked over at the Swami, in doubt.
"He can wait out here," I said. "He won't run away. There isn't any subway, and he wouldn't know what to do. Anyway, if he did get lost, your Army Intelligence could find him. Give G-2 something to work on. Right through this door, lieutenant."
"Yes, sir," he said meekly, and preceded me into my office.
I closed the door behind us and waved him over to the crying chair. He folded at the knees and hips, as if he were hinged only there, as if there were no hinges at all in the ramrod of his back. He sat up straight, on the edge of his chair, ready to spring into instant charge of battle. I went around back to my desk and sat down.
"Now, lieutenant," I said soothingly, "tell me all about it."
* * * * *
I could have sworn his square chin quivered at the note of sympathy in my voice. I wondered, irrelevantly, if the lads at West Point all slept with their faces confined in wooden frames to get that characteristically rectangular look.
"You knew I was from West Point," he said, and his voice held a note of awe. "And you knew, right away, that Swami was a phony from Flatbush."
"Come now," I said with a shrug. "Nothing to get mystical about. Patterns. Just patterns. Every environment leaves the stamp of its matrix on the individual shaped in it. It's a personnel man's trade to recognize the make of a person, just as you would recognize the make of a rifle."
"Yes, sir. I see, sir," he answered. But of course he didn't. And there wasn't much use to make him try. Most people cling too desperately to the ego-saving formula: Man cannot know man.
"Look, lieutenant," I said, with an idea that we'd better get down to business. "Have you been checked out on what this is all about?"
"Well, sir," he answered, as if he were answering a question in class, "I was cleared for top security, and told that a few months ago you and your Dr. Auerbach, here at Computer Research, discovered a way to create antigravity. I was told you claimed you had to have a poltergeist in the process. You told General Sanfordwaithe that you needed six of them, males. That's about all, sir. So the Poltergeist Division discovered the Swami, and I was assigned to bring him out here to you."
"Well then, Lieutenant Murphy, you go back to the Pentagon and tell General Sanfordwaithe that--" I