Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by James H. Schmitz

  Mrs. Folsom’s voice said shrilly, “Dr. Al—!”

  “Yes, Eleanor? What is it?”

  “Just now,” Mrs. Folsom said, her voice still holding the shrill note, “just a moment ago, on the plate over there, I’m certain . . . I’m almost certain I saw the ham sandwich!”

  She added breathlessly, “And that’s what I was going to say before, Dr. Al! Right after you told us to stop visualizing I thought I saw the sandwich on the plate! But it was only for a moment and I wasn’t sure. But now I’m sure, almost sure, that I saw it again on the plate on the table!”

  The old woman was pointing a trembling finger towards the table. Her cheeks showed spots of hectic red. In the rows behind her, the students looked at one another, shook their heads in resignation, some obviously suppressing amusement. Others looked annoyed. They were all familiar with Eleanor Folsom’s tendency to produce such little sensations during the meetings. If the evening didn’t promise to bring enough excitement, Eleanor always could be counted on to take a hand in events.

  Cavender felt less certain about it. This time, Mrs. Folsom sounded genuinely excited. And if she actually believed she’d seen something materialize, she might be fairly close to getting one of those little heart attacks she kept everyone informed about.

  Dr. Al could have had the same thought. He glanced back at the prop table, asked gravely, “You don’t see it there now, do you, Eleanor?”

  Mrs. Folsom shook her head. “No. No, of course not! It disappeared again. It was only there for a second. But I’m sure I saw it!”

  “Now this is very interesting,” Ormond said seriously. “Has anyone else observed anything at all unusual during the last few minutes?”

  There was a murmured chorus of dissent, but Cavender noticed that the expressions of amusement and annoyance had vanished. Dr. Al had changed the tune, and the students were listening intently. He turned back to Mrs. Folsom.

  “Let us consider the possibilities here, Eleanor,” he said. “For one thing, you should be congratulated in any case, because your experience shows that your visualization was clear and true throughout our exercise. If it hadn’t been, nothing like this could have occurred.

  “But precisely what was the experience? There we are, as of this moment, on uncertain ground. You saw something. That no one else saw the same thing might mean simply that no one else happened to be looking at the plate at those particular instances in time. I, for example, certainly gave it no further attention after the exercise was over. You may then have observed a genuine materialization!”

  Mrs. Folsom nodded vigorously. “Yes, I—”

  “But,” Ormond went on, “under the circumstances, the scientific attitude we maintain at this Institute demands that we leave the question open. For now. Because you might also, you understand, have projected—for yourself only—a vivid momentary impression of the image you had created during our exercise and were still holding in your mind.”

  Mrs. Folsom looked doubtful. The flush of excitement began to leave her face.

  “Why . . . well, yes, I suppose so,” she acknowledged unwillingly.

  “Of course,” Ormond said. “So tonight we shall leave it at that. The next time we engage in a similar exercise . . . well, who knows?” He gave her a reassuring smile. “I must say, Eleanor, that this is a very encouraging indication of the progress you have made!” He glanced over the group, gathering their attention, and raised the trident-like device he had taken from the table.

  “And now for our second experiment this evening—”

  Looking disappointed and somewhat confused, Eleanor Folsom settled back in her chair. Cavender also settled back, his gaze shifting sleepily to the remaining items on the prop table. He was frowning a little. It wasn’t his business, but if the old woman had started to hypnotize herself into having hallucinations, Dr. Al had better turn to a different type of meeting exercises. And that probably was exactly what Ormond would do; he seemed very much aware of danger signals. Cavender wondered vaguely what the red suitcase on the table contained.

  There was a blurry shimmer on the wooden plate beside the suitcase. Then something thickened there suddenly as if drawing itself together out of the air. Perrie Rochelle, sitting only ten feet back from the table, uttered a yelp—somewhere between surprise and alarm. Dexter Jones, beside her, abruptly pushed back his chair, made a loud, incoherent exclamation of some kind.

  Cavender had started upright, heart hammering. The thing that had appeared on the wooden plate vanished again.

  But it had remained visible there for a two full seconds. And there was no question at all of what it had been.

  For several minutes, something resembling pandemonium swirled about the walls of the lecture room of the Institute of Insight. The red suitcase had concealed the wooden plate on the prop table from the eyes of most of the students sitting on the right side of the room, but a number of those who could see it felt they had caught a glimpse of something. Of just what they weren’t sure at first, or perhaps they preferred not to say.

  Perrie and Dexter, however, after getting over their first shock, had no such doubts. Perrie, voice vibrant with excitement, answered the questions flung at her from across the room, giving a detailed description of the ham sandwich which had appeared out of nowhere on the polished little table and stayed there for an incredible instant before it vanished. Dexter Jones, his usually impassive face glowing and animated, laughing, confirmed the description on every point.

  On the opposite side of the room, Eleanor Folsom, surrounded by her own group of questioners, was also having her hour of triumph, in the warmth of which a trace of bitterness that her first report of the phenomenon had been shrugged off by everyone—even, in a way, by Dr. Al—gradually dissolved.

  Dr. Al himself, Cavender thought, remained remarkably quiet at first, though in the excitement this wasn’t generally noticed. He might even have turned a little pale. However, before things began to slow down he had himself well in hand again. Calling the group to a semblance of order, he began smilingly to ask specific questions. The witnesses on the right side of the room seemed somewhat more certain now of what they had observed.

  Dr. Ormond looked over at Cavender.

  “And you, Wally?” he asked. “You were sitting rather far back, to be sure—”

  Cavender smiled and shrugged.

  “Sorry, Dr. Al. I just wasn’t looking in that direction at the moment. The first suggestion I had that anything unusual was going on was when Perrie let out that wild squawk.”

  There was general laughter. Perrie grinned and flushed.

  “Well, I’d have liked to hear your squawk,” she told Cavender, “if you’d seen a miracle happen right before your nose!”

  “Not a miracle, Perrie,” Ormond said gently. “We must remember that. We are working here with natural forces which produce natural phenomena. Insufficiently understood phenomena, perhaps, but never miraculous ones. Now, how closely did this materialization appear to conform to the subjective group image we had decided on for our exercise?”

  “Well, I could only see it, of course, Dr. Al. But as far as I saw it, it was exactly what we’d . . . no, wait!” Perrie frowned, wrinkling her nose. “There was something added!” She giggled. “At least, I don’t remember anyone saying we should imagine the sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin!”

  Across the room, a woman’s voice said breathlessly, “Oh! A green paper napkin, Perrie?”

  Perrie looked around, surprised. “Yes, it was, Mavis.”

  Mavis Greenfield hesitated, said with a nervous little laugh, “I suppose I did that. I added a green napkin after we started the exercise.” Her voice quavered for an instant. “I thought the image looked neater that way.” She looked appealingly at the students around her. “This is really incredible, isn’t it.”

  They gave her vague smiles. They were plainly still floating on a cloud of collective achievement—if they hadn’t created that sandwich, there could have been noth
ing to see!

  It seemed to Cavender that Dr. Ormond’s face showed a flicker of strain when he heard Mavis’ explanation. But he couldn’t be sure because the expression—if it had been there—was smoothed away at once. Ormond cleared his throat, said firmly and somewhat chidingly. “No, not incredible, Mavis! Although—”

  He turned on his smile. “My friends, I must admit that you have surprised me! Very pleasantly, of course. But what happened here is something I considered to be only a very remote possibility tonight. You are truly more advanced than I’d realized.

  “For note this. If even one of you had been lagging behind the others, if there had been any unevenness in the concentration each gave to the exercise tonight, this materialization simply could not have occurred! And that fact forces me now to a very important decision.”

  He went over to the prop table, took the suitcase from it. “Mavis,” he said gravely, “you may put away these other devices. We will have no further need for them in this group! Dexter, move the table to the center of the room for me, please.”

  He waited while his instructions were hastily carried out, then laid the suitcase on the table, drew up a chair and sat down. The buzz of excited conversation among the students hushed. They stared at him in anticipatory silence. It appeared that the evening’s surprises were not yet over—and they were ready for anything now!

  “There is a point,” Dr. Ormond began in a solemn voice, riveting their eager attention on him, “a point in the orderly advance towards Total Insight at which further progress becomes greatly simplified and accelerated, because the student has now developed the capability to augment his personal efforts by the use of certain instruments.”

  Cavender thoughtfully reached inside his coat, brought out a cigarette case, opened it and slowly put a cigarette to his lips. About to flick on a lighter, he saw Ruben Jeffries watching him with an expression of disapproval from across the aisle. Jeffries shook his head, indicated the NO SMOKING sign on the wall. Cavender nodded, smiling a rueful apology for his absent-mindedness, and returned the cigarette to its case. He shoved his hands into his trousers pockets, slouched back in the chair.

  “I have told you,” Ormond was saying, “that the contributions many of you so generously made to the Institute were needed for and being absorbed by vital research. Tonight I had intended to give you a first inkling of what that research was accomplishing.” He tapped the suitcase on the table before him. “In there is an instrument of the kind I have mentioned. The beneficial forces of the Cosmos are harnessed by it, flow through it. And I believe I can say that my efforts in recent months have produces the most effective such device ever seen . . .”

  “Dr. Al,” Mrs. Folsom interrupted firmly, “I think you should let them know how the instrument cured my heart condition.”

  Faces shifted toward her, then back to Dr. Al. The middle-aged majority of the students pricked their ears. For each of them, conscious of the years of increasingly uncertain health to come, Mrs. Folsom’s words contained a personal implication, one that hit home. But in spite of the vindication of her claim to have seen a materialized ham sandwich, they weren’t quite ready to trust her about this.

  Dr. Ormond’s face was grave.

  “Eleanor,” he said reprovingly, “that was letting the cat out of the bag, wasn’t it? I hadn’t intended to discuss that part of the matter just yet.”

  He hesitated, frowning, tapping the table top lightly with his knuckles. Mrs. Folsom looked unabashed. She had produced another sensation and knew it.

  “Since it was mentioned,” Ormond said with deliberation at last, “it would be unfair not to tell you, at least in brief, the facts to which Eleanor was alluding. Very well then—Eleanor has served during the past several weeks as the subject of certain experiments connected with this instrument. She reports that after her first use of it, her periodically recurring heart problem ceased to trouble her.”

  Mrs. Folsom smiled, nodded vigorously. “I have not,” she announced, “had one single touch of pain or dizziness in all this time!”

  “But one should, of course,” Dr. Ormond added objectively, “hesitate to use the word ‘cure’ under such circumstances.”

  In the front row someone asked, “Dr. Al, will the instrument heal . . . well, other physical conditions?”

  Ormond looked at the speaker with dignity. “John, the instrument does, and is supposed to do, one thing. Providing, as I’ve said, that the student working with it has attained a certain minimum level of Insight, it greatly accelerates his progress towards Total Insight. Very greatly!

  “Now, as I have implied before: as one approaches the goal of Total Insight, the ailments and diseases which commonly afflict humanity simply disappear. Unfortunately, I am not yet free to show you proof for this, although I have the proof and believe it will not be long before it can be revealed at least to the members of this group. For this reason, I have preferred not to say too much on the point . . . Yes, Reuben? You have a question?”

  “Two questions, Dr. Al,” Reuben Jeffries said. “First, is it your opinion that our group has now reached the minimum level of Insight that makes it possible to work with those instruments?”

  Ormond nodded emphatically. “Yes, it has. After tonight’s occurrence there is no further question about that.”

  “Then,” Jeffries said, “my second question is simply—when do we start?”

  There was laughter, a scattering of applause. Ormond smiled, said, “An excellent question, Reuben! The answer is that a number of you will start immediately.

  “A limited quantity of the instruments—fifteen, I believe—are available now on the premises, stored in my office. Within a few weeks I will have enough on hand to supply as many of you as wish to speed up their progress by this method. Since the group’s contributions paid my research expenses, I cannot in justice ask more from you individually now than the actual cost in material and labor for each instrument. The figure . . . I have it somewhere . . . oh, yes!” Ormond pulled a notebook from his pocket, consulted it, looked up and said, mildly, “Twelve hundred dollars will be adequate, I think.”

  Cavender’s lips twitched sardonically. Three or four of the group might have flinched inwardly at the price tag, but on the whole they were simply too well heeled to give such a detail another thought. Checkbooks were coming hurriedly into sight all around the lecture room. Reuben Jeffries, unfolding his, announced, “Dr. Al, I’m taking one of the fifteen.”

  Half the students turned indignantly to stare at him. “Now wait a minute, Reuben!” someone said. “That isn’t fair! It’s obvious there aren’t enough to go around.”

  Jeffries smiled at him. “That’s why I spoke up, Warren!” He appealed to Ormond. “How about it, Dr. Al?”

  Ormond observed judiciously, “It seems fair enough to me. Eleanor, of course, is retaining the instrument with which she has been working. As for the rest of you—first come, first served, you know! If others would like to have Mavis put down their names . . .”

  There was a brief hubbub as this suggestion was acted on. Mavis, Dexter Jones and Perrie Rochelle then went to the office to get the instruments, while Dr. Ormond consoled the students who had found themselves left out. It would be merely a matter of days before the new instruments began to come in . . . and yes, they could leave their checks in advance. When he suggested tactfully that financial arrangements could be made if necessary, the less affluent also brightened up.

  Fifteen identical red alligator-hide suitcases appeared and were lined up beside Ormond’s table. He announced that a preliminary demonstration with the instrument would be made as soon as those on hand had been distributed. Mavis Greenfield, standing beside him, began to read off the names she had taken down.

  Reuben Jeffries was the fifth to come up to the table, hand Ormond his check and receive a suitcase from the secretary. Then Cavender got unhurriedly to his feet.

  “Dr. Ormond,” he said, loudly enough to center the attention of ever
yone in the room on him, “may I have the floor for a moment?”

  Ormond appeared surprised, then startled. His glance went up to Reuben Jeffries, still standing stolidly beside him, and his face slowly whitened.

  “Why . . . well, yes, Wally.” His voice seemed unsteady. “What’s on your mind?”

  Cavender faced the right side of the room and the questioning faces turned towards him.

  “My name, as you know,” he told the advanced students, “is Wallace Cavender. What you haven’t known so far is that I am a police detective, rank of lieutenant, currently attached to the police force of this city and in temporary charge of its bunco squad.”

  He shifted his gaze towards the front of the room. Ormond’s eyes met his for a moment, then dropped.

  “Dr. Ormond,” Cavender said, “you’re under arrest. The immediate charge, let’s say, is practicing medicine without a license. Don’t worry about whether we can make it stick or not. We’ll have three or four others worked up by the time we get you downtown.”

  For a moment, there was a shocked, frozen stillness in the lecture room. Dr. Ormond’s hand began to move out quietly towards the checks lying on the table before him. Reuben Jeffries’ big hand got there first.

  “I’ll take care of these for now, Dr. Al,” Jeffries said with a friendly smile. “The lieutenant thinks he wants them.”

  Not much more than thirty minutes later, Cavender unlocked the door to Dr. Ormond’s private office, went inside, leaving the door open behind him, and sat down at Ormond’s desk. He rubbed his aching eyes, yawned, lit a cigarette, looked about in vain for an ashtray, finally emptied a small dish of paper clips on the desk and placed the dish conveniently close to him.

  There had been an indignant uproar about Dr. Al’s arrest for a while, but it ended abruptly when uniformed policemen appeared in the two exit doors and the sobering thought struck the students that any publicity given the matter could make them look personally ridiculous and do damage to their business and social standing.