Suite Mentale | Page 5

time. Poor chap; he'd have been better off if he'd died twenty years ago." Then he paused and looked up. "But just who are you, Mr. Camberton? And what makes you think I would be particularly interested in Paul Wendell?"
"Mr. Wendell wants to tell you that he is very grateful to you for having saved his life, Senator. If it hadn't been for your orders, he would have been left to die."
The Senator felt strangely calm, although he knew he should feel shock. "That's ridiculous, sir! Mr. Wendell's brain was hopelessly damaged; he never recovered his sanity or control of his body. I know; I used to drop over to see him occasionally, until I finally realized that I was only making myself feel worse and doing him no good."
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"Yes, sir. And Mr. Wendell wants you to know how much he appreciated those visits."
* * * * *
The Senator grew red. "What the devil are you talking about? I just said that Wendell couldn't talk. How could he have said anything to you? What do you know about this?"
"I never said he spoke to me, Senator; he didn't. And as to what I know of this affair, evidently you don't remember my name. James Camberton."
The Senator frowned. "The name is familiar, but--" Then his eyes went wide. "Camberton! You were one of the eight men who--Why, you're the man who shot Wendell!"
Camberton pulled up an empty lawnchair and sat down. "That's right, Senator; but there's nothing to be afraid of. Would you like to hear about it?"
"I suppose I must." The old man's voice was so low that it was scarcely audible. "Tell me--were the other seven released, too? Have--have you all regained your sanity? Do you remember--" He stopped.
"Do we remember the extra-sensory perception formula? Yes, we do; all eight of us remember it well. It was based on faulty premises, and incomplete, of course; but in its own way it was workable enough. We have something much better now."
The old man shook his head slowly. "I failed, then. Such an idea is as fatal to society as we know it as a virus plague. I tried to keep you men quarantined, but I failed. After all those years of insanity, now the chess game begins; the poker game is over."
"It's worse than that," Camberton said, chuckling softly. "Or, actually, it's much better."
"I don't understand; explain it to me. I'm an old man, and I may not live to see my world collapse. I hope I don't."
Camberton said: "I'll try to explain in words, Senator. They're inadequate, but a fuller explanation will come later."
And he launched into the story of the two-decade search of Paul Wendell.
CODA--ANDANTINO
"Telepathy? Time travel?" After three hours of listening, the ex-President was still not sure he understood.
"Think of it this way," Camberton said. "Think of the mind at any given instant as being surrounded by a shield--a shield of privacy--a shield which you, yourself have erected, though unconsciously. It's a perfect insulator against telepathic prying by others. You feel you have to have it in order to retain your privacy--your sense of identity, even. But here's the kicker: even though no one else can get in, you can't get out!
"You can call this shield 'self-consciousness'--perhaps shame is a better word. Everyone has it, to some degree; no telepathic thought can break through it. Occasionally, some people will relax it for a fraction of a second, but the instant they receive something, the barrier goes up again."
"Then how is telepathy possible? How can you go through it?" The Senator looked puzzled as he thoughtfully tamped tobacco into his briar.
"You don't go through it; you go around it."
* * * * *
"Now wait a minute; that sounds like some of those fourth dimension stories I've read. I recall that when I was younger, I read a murder mystery--something about a morgue, I think. At any rate, the murder was committed inside a locked room; no one could possibly have gotten in or out. One of the characters suggested that the murderer traveled through the fourth dimension in order to get at the victim. He didn't go through the walls; he went around them." The Senator puffed a match flame into the bowl of his pipe, his eyes on the younger man. "Is that what you're driving at?"
"Exactly," agreed Camberton. "The fourth dimension. Time. You must go back in time to an instant when that wall did not exist. An infant has no shame, no modesty, no shield against the world. You must travel back down your own four-dimensional tube of memory in order to get outside it, and to do that, you have to know your own mind completely, and you must be sure you know it.
"For only if you know your own mind can you communicate