by Jeff Sutton
"Has anyone?"
"Not that's absolutely verifiable." Maxon cocked his head
with a quick birdlike movement. "If a man could move a physical object through mental power alone, could he move it into one of the higher dimensions?"
"Psychokinesis? Perhaps, if such a higher dimension exists."
"Isn't that what you're trying to prove?"
"At a mathematical level, yes, but I have no verification that an analogous physical state exists. Or perhaps I should say physical states. I'm convinced that we see our universe as three-dimensional solely because of the limitations of our sensory equipment." Kane smiled. "Fortunately those limitations don't apply to our reasoning power."
"And they call me a quack," Maxon observed. "Perhaps I should start a cult."
"You'd do very well, Gordie. That's one advantage that you have that I don't. Almost everyone has heard of extra sensory perception, but how many have ever thought of multidimensional space?"
"You're not publicity oriented, Bert."
Kane studied him. "Why Androki's penchant for mathematicians and physicists? If he were a telepath or a down-through, or psychic in any way, wouldn't he more likely be drawn to psychologists?"
"Perhaps he's afraid of revealing himself."
"Why mathematicians and physicists?" he persisted.
"It could be because he's conversant in their fields."
"What has a billionaire to do with multidimensional space?" Kane demanded. "That's the part I don't get. It doesn't make sense."
"Do you have a monopoly on the subject?"
"No, but it requires long years of study, not to mention aptitude. It doesn't come easy."
Maxon's face sobered. "I have to reach Androki, talk with him."
"You have me curious," Kane admitted. "The experience should prove interesting. Where does he live?"
"Oddly enough, almost next door. He has a swank place near Beverly Hills. Off Sunset, I believe."
"Perhaps you can get to him, Gordie. You might try."
"Do you believe it possible?" Maxon's face grew wistful. "I'm afraid to hope."
Later, reflecting on the conversation, Kane's bafflement grew. He wasn't surprised that Maxon should consider Androki a downthrough, although he was a bit startled that Maxon might be right. But he was completely baffled by the financier's apparent grasp of the complex mathematics of multidimensional space.
Could the fellow be that knowledgeable? Cantrup of Chicago, Freyhoff of Germany, Vosin of Russia, Bernardi of Italy, Tanaki of Japan and, of course, himself—the leading authorities in the subject were few; any depth of knowledge in the field was largely restricted to them.
Where had Androki been schooled? By whom? Not by any of the top men, for the names of students sufficiently gifted to work under any of them were passed from one to another in the silent understanding that these were the inheritors of their work; such a gifted student was a rarity to be prized. But the name Androki was alien; it stirred no spark in Kane's memory. A downthrough! That was more unbelievable yet.
Bertram Kane never quite knew how he felt about Anita Weber. Was it because he subconsciously compared her to Margaret? Margaret. Their marriage of eleven years had been idyllic, marred only by their disappointment at remaining childless. Margaret! Margaret! Fate in the form of an incurable disease had swept her away within weeks. Then he was alone, he was alone.
In his grief, he had closed out the world, closed out everyone but Maxon; he couldn't close out Maxon. The psychologist had been his pillar of strength, his link with reality. In time, he had subdued his grief, but he had never forgotten Margaret. Several years later, it was Maxon who had brought him together with Anita.
"Good therapy," Maxon had told him, "but don't take too much of the cure."
He had never quite understood the psychologist's meaning. But Anita Weber had proved good therapy. An assistant professor of art, she was beautiful, talented, witty; she was a divorcee. He liked her immensely, yet occasionally sensed a hardness in her that perturbed him. Or was it only because she was so different from Margaret?
Occasionally he considered marriage. When he did, he sensed a deep stillness inside him. He had never mentioned the subject to her. Still young at thirty-seven, he had an assured future of no mean proportions, if for no other reason than that he already was eminent in his specialty. But he still had to make the final breakthrough. Until he did, he had no wish to undertake the responsibilities of another marriage. Was that dodging the issue? He didn't believe so. He liked Anita, but that was all. Neither had she shown any serious inclinations. To the contrary, their dates had been extremely casual.
"Hi, Anita. How about dinner?" -
"How about the beach for hamburgers?" 9,
Their dates had been of that kind. Nothing heavy. Yet now and then, when they returned late and he stopped by at her apartment for a cup of coffee, he'd caught a glance or veiled allusion that suggested something more. At times he felt quite uneasy with her. He was mulling such thoughts when he picked her up on a Friday night for dinner at Malibu Beach.
As he followed the winding road beyond Santa Monica, she suddenly remarked, "You're quiet tonight."
"Thinking," he answered abashedly.
"You have to learn to relax and play."
"I'm always conscious of time."
"That's not exactly flattering," she chided.
"I don't mean it that way," he protested. "You read too much into my words."
"At times I wonder."
"But there is so little time," he answered soberly. "Don't you feel that way with your work?"
"Art is relaxing," she countered. "It's beauty and creativity. But I don't allow it to occupy every moment of my mind."
"Don't you believe mathematics can be relaxing?"
"I don't," she returned positively. "And when I see your tired face, I know it's not. You drive yourself too fast, Bert. How long can you keep it up?"
"Until I reach the breakthrough."
"There's more to life than that."
"So Gordie keeps telling me." He smiled. "He seems to enjoy life."
"That's the way it should be," she asserted. "You have only one chance." She cast a sidelong glance at him.
"I know," he murmured softly.
As a cluster of neons came into view, he dropped his speed, pulling into a parking lot adjacent to a weather-beaten cafe.
Over cocktails she asked casually, "Did Gordie tell you the exciting news about John Androki, the financier? He's certain the man's a downthrough. Isn't that amazing?"
"If true, yes."
"If you can believe in multidimensional space, why not ESP?"
"They're not in the same league," he protested. "You can apply mathematics to multidimensional space, perhaps prove its existence, at least as an abstract quality. But what mathematics can you apply to ESP? And don't say statistics."
"But I will say it," she answered promptly. "You can weigh the evidence on the scale of probability.'* "If you have events that are weighable, yes."
"He believes he has."
"I'm not denying the possibility of ESP," he remonstrated. "I know very well that the mind is an almost totally un-plumbed sea. Telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis—they are all possible within the purview of the frame of reference within which we live. But not the downthrough." "Frame of reference?"
"Time," he explained. "The downthrough offers a new variable. It extrapolates the psychic phenomenon into a time that isn't yet, if I can put it that way."
"Is that more amazing than multidimensional space?"
"Perhaps not, I don't know. But the concept certainly is more elusive. Think of the paradoxes it breeds."
"Gordie doesn't believe so."
"But it's still a matter of belief… faith."
"Isn't multidimensional space?"
He smiled. "There are certain mathematical indicators."
"Can't there be psychic indicators?" she challenged. "Perhaps, I don't know."
''Gordie doesn't believe it's faith, not in Androki's case."
"Because Androki's guessed—if I may use the word—the future activities of certain stocks? Do we know how many wrong guesses he's made? What's the basis for Gordie's statistics?"
"He's reputedly become a billionaire within a year," she countered. "He couldn't have made many wrong guesses."
"He could have guessed wrong on the small ones, right on the large ones," he hazarded.
She raised her eyes. "You really don't believe that, do you?"
"No, I don't," he admitted. "I have the strange feeling that Gordie could be right."
"It's strange that no one else has deduced that."
"What do you mean?"
"With all that's been written about the man," she explained. "The wizard of the stock market, the magician of finance—the magazines are filled with stories about him. But I have yet to read any suggestion that he has psychic power. I'm dying to meet him."
"Why?"
Her eyes narrowed. "He commands tremendous power."
"Sure, a billion bucks' worth."
"It would be exciting to be able to do that—look into the future, know what's going to happen at any given time or place."
"Perhaps; I don't know." He considered it. "From what I hear, his talent is locked to the world of finance."
"If he has the talent, could you believe that it would be locked to one narrow channel? That would be absolutely incredible."
"You sound as if you believe he is a downthrough."
"I'm inclined that way," she admitted. "Of course I .always was fascinated by ESP. I certainly can't deny the possibility."
"Because you want to believe it?"
"Partially, I don't know." She wet her lips. "But if you could see tomorrow, isn't it logical that you would be able to see all of tomorrow, or at least everything that's within the viewer's sensory scope? Why should such a talent be locked to finance? That's not logical."
"Perhaps it's a matter of concentration." He eyed her curiously. "You've thought a lot about this, haven't you?"
"To some extent."
"Why?"
She raised her eyes, her face suddenly hard and inscrutable. "Because I want to meet John Androki," she said.
IV
Charles Dorrance's office was buried deep in the bowels Of a vast white marble building, the glaring architecture of which denied its purpose as the administrative and operational center for one of the world's largest and most secret intelligence agencies. Located in Langley, Virginia, the structure had been likened by wags to a pickle factory. But if the building itself was monumentally obvious, not so the invisible strands which, flung from it, ensnared the earth-Several of the more sensitive strands emanated directly from Dorrance's small office.
Slender, sharp of face, Charles Dorrance's small birdlike eyes rested on the lean figure of the agent sitting opposite him. "You'll be Philip Conrad on this trip," he said.
"Philip Conrad; I like that," the agent acknowledged. "Will I be working with anyone?"
"Greb, Laski and Hasselwaite will be available if you need them. Size up the situation when you get to the coast, let me know." Dorrance slid a fat dossier across the desk. "There's the sum total of what we know about John Androki."
"Looks like quite a bit."
"Not really, Phil." Dorrance grunted. "That name seems to fit you."
The agent smiled. "Anything's better than the one my parents hung on me."
"Most of the material is superficial," Dorrance explained. "None of it goes back very far—not quite two years."
"Oh?" Conrad waited.
"Before that there was no John Adroki—not under that name."
"No fingerprint records?"
"Nothing." Dorrance shook his head. "We combed this country village by village, city by city, county by county. Every state. We could find no birth record, no school records, no fingerprint records, no social security number, no issuance of a driver's license, no immigration record."
"I've heard odd stories about that boy," Conrad observed.
"He was just Mr. Nobody."
Conrad smiled faintly. "You can't call him that now."
"That's correct. He has the financial world in an uproar. The SEC is running in circles trying to keep up with his entanglements. The antitrust people are in a tizzy. As fast as they stop him on one front, he pops up on another, usually acting through an agent or newly founded company." Dorrance brushed his scalp, as if pushing back the hair that hadn't been there for years. "Now he's rocking our foreign policies…"
"In what way?"
"You might recall that the World Bank turned down Bolivia's request for a hundred million dollar loan, and that subsequently our government denied a similar request."
"Wasn't it because the Bolivian government wouldn't relate the request to a specific need? I seem to recall that it was."
"That was both a World Bank requirement and ours," Dorrance agreed. "Bolivia wasn't willing to earmark the funds."
"How does Androki fit into the picture?"
"He's just loaned Bolivia the entire hundred million dollars," Dorrance answered. "No strings attached. He deposited the money payable personally to Simon Savedra."
"A personal loan?" The agent whistled. "What's his motive?"
"That's what we're trying to discover." He drummed the desk thoughtfully. "Quite some time ago the Bolivian government expropriated the tin and petroleum industries, both of which are extremely important to this nation's welfare. As you might recall, Bolivia was our principal source of tin during World War Two, when the mines in Malaya and
Indonesia fell into Japanese hands."
"So if those countries go Communist…"
"The same situation could prevail again."
"Except that now Androki owns Bolivia, is that it?"
"It amounts to that, Phil. He's subsidizing the government in power to keep it in power, and it doesn't happen to be the government State would like to see at the helm." .
"The gentlemen at State will be perturbed," Conrad murmured.
"Are perturbed," Dorrance corrected. "But Bolivia is just one spot. He's kicking up trouble all through Central and South America, not to mention the rest of the globe. His operations are international."
"Against this government?"
"When it interferes with his financial interests, yes. He's the same with other governments or else uses them as tools. He's also using foreign governments to crush American business, soften it up so he can take over. It's a bald steal."
"All that in one year?" Conrad arched his eyes.
"He works fast." Dorrance rubbed his knuckles reflectively. "I'm equally bothered about his domestic activities."
"The antitrust violations?"
"To some extent, but I'm also trying to assess his moves. Some appear quite harmless, others not so harmless, but his motives are certainly veiled. So are his activities. Through the device of the conglomerate merger, he's becoming the octopus of American business, not to mention world trade. But more than that, he's welding together a power structure that's making many people uneasy."
"An industrial empire?"
"Industrial, economic, political." Dorrance smiled soberly. "It's the extent of that power that bothers me. I have the impression that it's like an iceberg: I can see only a small part of what really exists. He's striking out on a thousand fronts. Now he's gotten into the subsidy business—giving grants to big universities. He tosses them five and ten million at a crack."
"Isn't that a tax write-off?"
"I'm certain that's not his prime objective."
"Are the grants earmarked?"
"Mostly for libraries and scholarships. You can see how that endears him to the academic community."
"Perhaps he's trying to acquire culture by association," the agent suggested.
"It's more than that. He's after something." Dorrance frowned. "He was talking with David Cantrup, a Chicago University mathematician, during a shindig g
iven in Androki's honor following a rather substantial gift to that institution. One of our men taped it via a vest-pocket pickup. We had one of the Rand boys monitor it. He was quite intrigued by the conversation."
"Blondes?"
Dorrance shook his head unsmilingly. "They were discussing the mathematics of multidimensional space, something called the Bornji transformations. Our Rand authority said that Cantrup is one of only half a dozen men in the world who are really conversant in the field. He was quite impressed."
"By Cantrup?"
"Androki. Apparently he is almost as well-versed as Cantrup in the matter."
The agent leaned back, watching the other speculatively. Finally he asked, "Are you talking about the fourth dimension?"
"Something like that." Dorrance pursed his lips owlishly. "As I get it, they were discussing the transfer of physical bodies from the known to higher dimensions. Does that throw you? It did me."
"It throws me," Conrad admitted.
"It was pure speculation, of course, but speculation at an abstract level that but few people could comprehend. Again I'm quoting our visiting genius."
"Didn't that surprise Cantrup?"
"I should imagine, but you never can tell about those eggheads." Dorrance sniffed. "At any rate, Androki has quite an affinity with the academic community, especially with mathematicians and physicists. He goes for those birds. Is that bad? I don't know."
"Are you thinking of the secret government research carried on in our universities?"
Dorrance nodded. "That thought has occurred to me, and of course much of that work involves mathematics and physics. Yet I feel it's much more than that. His display of knowledge puzzles me."
"And he has no school record," Conrad murmured. .
"He has one," Dorrance returned sharply, "but where? You don't acquire that sort of knowledge from a correspondence school or library. Somewhere, in some university, there's a record of a damned brilliant student, but where or under what name we don't know. Give us that knowledge and we could trace his trail through the dark years, before he sprang into prominence."
"Do you believe he's a foreign agent?"
"Russian?" Dorrance shook his head slowly. "That was my first suspicion, but in this case it looks like a blank. Every check along that line, including good information from behind the Iron Curtain, has proved negative. Aside from that, if he were Russian he wouldn't be unidentified."