Yes, my interviewer’s teacher had quite a large following, and now they were all at loose ends. If the Swami were willing, she could provide a large and ready-made audience for him. She would be glad to talk to him about it.
Annie hurriedly said that she would be glad to talk to him about it, too; that she could get up a large audience, too. So, even before it got started, I had my rival factions at work. I egged them both on, and promised that I’d get Army Intelligence to work with the local boys in blue to hold off making any raids.
Annie told me again what a kind man I was. My interviewer spoke up quickly and said how glad she was to find an opportunity for expressing how grateful she was for the privilege of working right in the same department with such an understanding, really intellectually developed adult. She eyed Annie sidelong, as if to gauge the effects of her attempts to set me up on a pedestal, out of Annie’s reach.
I hoped I wouldn’t start believing either one of them. I hoped I wasn’t as inaccurate in my estimates of people as was my interviewer. I wondered if she were really qualified for the job she held. Then I realized this was a contest between two women and I, a mere male, was simply being used as the pawn. Well, that worked both ways. In a fair bargain both sides receive satisfaction. I felt a little easier about my tactical maneuvers.
But the development of rivalry between factions of the audience gave me an additional idea. Perhaps that’s what the Swami really needed, a little rivalry. Perhaps he was being a little too hard to crack because he knew he was the only egg in the basket.
I called Old Stone Face and told him what I planned. He responded that it was up to me. He’d stepped in and got things under way for me, got things going, now it was my job to keep them going. It looked as if he were edging out from under—or maybe he really believed that.
Before I settled into the day’s regular routine, I wired General Sanfordwaithe, and told him that if he had any more prospects ready would he please ship me one at once, via air mail, special delivery.
* * * *
The recital hall, hired for the Swami’s Los Angeles debut, was large enough to accommodate all the family friends and relatives of any little Maribel who, having mastered “Daffodils In May,” for four fingers, was being given to the World. It had the usual small stage equipped with pull-back curtains to give a dramatic flourish, or to shut off from view the effects of any sudden nervous catastrophe brought about by stage fright.
I got there, purposely a little late, in hopes the house lights would already be dimmed and everything in progress; but about a hundred and fifty people were milling around outside on the walk and in the corridors. Both factions had really been busy.
Most of them were women, but, to my intense relief, there were a few men. Some of these were only husbands, but a few of the men wore a look which said they’d been far away for a long time. Somehow I got the impression that instead of looking into a crystal ball, they would be more inclined to look out of one.
It was a little disconcerting to realize that no one noticed me, or seemed to think I was any different from anybody else. I supposed I should be thankful that I wasn’t attracting any attention. I saw my interviewer amid a group of Older Girls. She winked at me roguishly, and patted her heavy handbag significantly. As per instructions, she was carrying a couple of the Auerbach cylinders.
I found myself staring in perplexity for a full minute at another woman, before I realized it was Annie. I had never seen her before, except dressed in factory blue jeans, man’s blue shirt, and a bandanna wrapped around her head. Her companion, probably another of the factory assemblers, nudged her and pointed, not too subtly, in my direction. Annie saw me then, and lit up with a big smile. She started toward me, hesitated when I frowned and shook my head, flushed with the thought that I didn’t want to speak to her in public; then got a flash of better sense than that. She, too, gave me a conspiratorial wink and patted her handbag.
My confederates were doing nicely.
Almost immediately thereafter a horse-faced, mustached old gal started rounding people up in a honey sweet, pear shaped voice; and herded them into the auditorium. I chose one of the wooden folding chairs in the back row.
A heavy jowled old gal came out in front of the closed curtains and gave a little introductory talk about how lucky we all were that the Swami had consented to visit with us. There was the usual warning to anyone who was not of the esoteric that we must not expect too much, that sometimes nothing at all happened, that true believers did not attend just to see effects. She reminded us kittenishly that the guides were capricious, and that we must all help by merging ourselves in the great flowing currents of absolute infinity.
She finally faltered, realized she was probably saying all the things the Swami would want to say—in the manner of people who introduce speakers everywhere—and with a girlish little flourish she waved at someone off stage.
The house lights dimmed. The curtains swirled up and back.
* * * *
The Swami was doing all right for himself. He was seated behind a small table in the center of the stage. A pale violet light diffused through a huge crystal ball on the table, and threw his dark features into sharp relief. It gave an astonishingly remote and inscrutable wisdom to his features. In the pale light, and at this distance, his turban looked quite clean.
He began to speak slowly and sonorously. A hush settled over the audience, and gradually I felt myself merging with the mass reaction of the rest. As I listened, I got the feeling that what he was saying was of tremendous importance, that somehow his words contained great and revealing wonders—or would contain them if I were only sufficiently advanced to comprehend their true meanings. The man was good, he knew his trade. All men search for truth at one level or another. I began to realize why such a proportionate few choose the cold and impersonal laboratory. Perhaps if there were a way to put science to music—
The Swami talked on for about twenty minutes, and then I noticed his voice had grown deeper and deeper in tone, and suddenly, without any apparent transition, we all knew it was not really the Swami’s voice we were hearing. And then he began to tell members of the audience little intimate things about themselves, things which only they should know.
He was good at this, too. He had mastered the trick of making universals sound like specifics. I could do the same thing. The patterns of people’s lives have multiple similarities. To a far greater extent than generally realized the same things happen to everyone. The idea was to take some of the lesser known ones and word them so they seemed to apply to one isolated individual.
For instance, I could tell a fellow about when he was a little boy there was a little girl in a red dress with blond pigtails who used to scrap with him and tattle things about him to her mother. If he were inclined to be credulous, this was second sight I had. But it is a universal. What average boy didn’t, at one time or another, know a little girl with blond pigtails? What blond little girl didn’t occasionally wear a red dress? What little girl didn’t tattle to her mother about the naughty things the boys were doing?
The Swami did that for a while. The audience was leaning forward in a rapture of ecstasy. First the organ tones of his voice soothed and softened. The phrases which should mean something if only you had the comprehension. The universals applied as specifics. He had his audience in the palm of his hand. He didn’t need his crystal ball to tell him that.
But he wanted it to be complete. Most of the responses had been from women. He gave them the generalities which didn’t sound like generalities. They confirmed with specifics. But most were women. He wanted the men, too. He began to concentrate on the men. He made it easy.
“I have a message,” he said. “From ... now let me get it right ... from R. S. It is for a man in this audience. Will the man who knew R. S. acknowledge?”
There was a silence. And that was such an easy one, too. I hadn’t planned to participate, but, on impulse, since none of the other men were cooperating,
I spoke up.
“Robert Smith!” I exclaimed. “Good old Bob!”
Several of the women sitting near me looked at me and beamed their approval. One of the husbands scowled at me.
“I can tell by your tone,” the Swami said, and apparently he hadn’t recognized my tone, “that you have forgiven him. That is the message. He wants you to know that he is happy. He is much wiser now. He knows now that he was wrong.”
One of the women reached over and patted me on the shoulder, giving me motherly encouragement.
But the Swami had no more messages for men. He was smart enough to know where to stop. He’d tried one of the simplest come-ons, and there had been too much of a pause. It had almost not come off.
I wondered who good old Bob Smith was? Surely, among the thousands of applicants I’d interviewed, there must have been a number of them. And, being applicants, of course some of them had been wrong.
The Swami’s tones, giving one message after another—faster and faster now, not waiting for acknowledgment or confirmation—began to sink into a whisper. His speech became ragged, heavy. The words became indistinguishable. About his head there began to float a pale, luminescent sphere. There was a subdued gasp from the audience and then complete stillness. As though, unbreathing, in the depths of a tomb, they watched the sphere. It bobbed about, over the Swami’s head and around him. At times it seemed as if about to float off stage, but it came back. It swirled out over the audience, but not too far, and never at such an angle that the long, flexible dull black wire supporting it would be silhouetted against the glowing crystal ball.
Then it happened. There was a gasp, a smothered scream. And over at one side of the auditorium a dark object began bobbing about in the air up near the ceiling. It swerved and swooped. The Swami’s luminescent sphere jerked to a sudden stop. The Swami sat with open mouth and stared at the dark object which he was not controlling.
The dark object was not confined to any dull black wire. It went where it willed. It went too high and brushed against the ceiling.
There was a sudden shower of coins to the floor. A compact hit the floor with a flat spat. A handkerchief floated down more slowly.
“My purse!” a woman gasped. I recognized my interviewer’s voice. Her purse contained two Auerbach cylinders, and they were having themselves a ball.
In alarm, I looked quickly at the stage, hoping the Swami wasn’t astute enough to catch on. But he was gone. The audience, watching the bobbing purse, hadn’t realized it as yet. And they were delayed in realizing it by a diversion from the other side of the auditorium.
“I can’t hold it down any longer, Mr. Kennedy!” a woman gasped out. “It’s taking me up into the air!”
“Hold on, Annie!” I shouted back. “I’m coming!”
* * * *
A chastened and subdued Swami sat in my office the following morning, and this time he was inclined to be cooperative. More, he was looking to me for guidance, understanding, and didn’t mind acknowledging my ascendancy. And, with the lieutenant left in the outer office, he didn’t have any face to preserve.
Later, last night, he’d learned the truth of what happened after he had run away in a panic. I’d left a call at the hotel for the lieutenant. When the lieutenant had got him calmed down and returned my call, I’d instructed the lieutenant to tell the Swami about the Auerbach cylinders; to tell the Swami he was not a fake after all.
The Swami had obviously spent a sleepless night. It is a terrible thing to have spent years perfecting the art of fakery, and then to realize you needn’t have faked at all. More terrible, he had swallowed some of his own medicine, and was overcome with fear of the forces which he had been commanding. All through the night he had shivered in fear of some instant and horrible retaliation. For him it was still a case of There Are Mysteries.
And it was of no comfort to his state of mind right now that the four cylinders we had finally captured last night were, at this moment, bobbing about in my office, swooping and swerving around in the upper part of the room, like bats trying to find some opening. I was giving him the full treatment! The first two cylinders, down on the floor, were pressing up against my closed door, like frightened little things trying to escape a room of horror.
The Swami’s face was twitching, and his long fingers kept twining themselves into King’s X symbols. But he was sitting it out. He was swallowing some of the hair of the dog that bit him. I had to give him A for that.
“I’ve been trying to build up a concept of the framework wherein psi seems to function,” I told him casually, just as if it were all a formularized laboratory procedure. “I had to pull last night’s stunt to prove something.”
He tore his eyes away from the cylinders which were over exploring one corner of the ceiling, and looked at me.
“Let’s go to electricity,” I said speculatively. “Not that we know psi and electricity have anything in common, other than some similar analogies, but we don’t know they don’t. Both of them may be just different manifestations of the same thing. We don’t really know why a magnetized core, turning inside a coil of copper wire, generates electricity.
“Oh we’ve got some phrases,” I acknowledged. “We’ve got a whole structure of phrases, and when you listen to them they sound as if they ought to mean something—like the phrases you were using last night. Everybody assumes they do mean something to the pundits. So, since it is human to want to be a pundit, we repeat these phrases over and over, and call them explanations. Yet we do know what happens, even if we do just theorize about why. We know how to wrap something around something and get electricity.
“Take the induction coil,” I said. “We feed a low-voltage current into one end, and we draw off a high-voltage current from the other. But anyone who wants, any time, can disprove the whole principle of the induction coil. All you have to do is wrap your core with a nonconductor, say nylon thread, and presto, nothing comes out. You see, it doesn’t work; and anybody who claims it does is a faker and a liar. That’s what happens when science tries to investigate psi by the standard methods.
“You surround a psi-gifted individual with nonbelievers, and probably nothing will come out of it. Surround him with true believers; and it all seems to act like an induction coil. Things happen. Yet even when things do happen, it is usually impossible to prove it.
“Take yourself, Swami. And this is significant. First we have the north point effect. Then those two little beggars trying to get out the door. Then the ones which are bobbing around up there. Without the cylinders there would have been no way to know that anything had happened at all.
“Now, about this psi framework. It isn’t something you can turn on and off, at will. We don’t know enough yet for that. Aside from some believers and those individuals who do seem to attract psi forces, we don’t know, yet, what to wrap around what. So, here’s what you’re to do: You’re to keep a supply of these cylinders near you at all times. If any psi effects happen, they’ll record it. Fair enough?
“Now,” I said with finality. “I have anticipated that you might refuse. But you’re not the only person who has psi ability. I’ve wired General Sanfordwaithe to send me another fellow; one who will coöperate.”
The Swami thought it over. Here he was with a suite in a good hotel; with an army lieutenant to look after his earthly needs; on the payroll of a respectable company; with a ready-made flock of believers; and no fear of the bunco squad. He had never had it so good. The side money, for private readings alone, should be substantial.
Further, and he watched me narrowly, I didn’t seem to be afraid of the cylinders. It was probably this which gave the clincher.
“I’ll cooperate,” he agreed meekly.
* * * *
For three days there was nothing. The Swami seemed cooperative enough. He called me a couple times a day and reported that the cylinders just lay around his room. I didn’t know what to tell him. I recommended he read biographies of famous mediums. I recommended fas
ting, and breathing, and contemplating self. He seemed dubious, but said he’d try it.
On the morning of the third day, Sara called me on the intercom and told me there was another Army lieutenant in her office, and another charac ... another gentleman. I opened my door and went out to Sara’s office to greet them. My first glimpse told me Sara had been right the first time. He was a character.
The new lieutenant was no more than the standard output from the same production line as Lieutenant Murphy, but the wizened little old man he had in tow was from a different and much rarer matrix. As fast as I had moved, I was none too soon. The character reached over and tilted up Sara’s chin as I was coming through the door.
“Now you’re a healthy young wench,” he said with a leer. “What are you doing tonight, baby?” The guy was at least eighty years old.
“Hey, you, pop!” I exclaimed in anger. “Be your age!”
He turned around and looked me up and down.
“I’m younger, that way, than you are, right now!” he snapped.
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