Pstalemate

by Lester Del Rey

  "No!"

  "All right." Lawson seemed to accept it as something to be expected. "Then keep your eyes off the pencil, Harry. Because something bright like the pencil moving back and forth, back and forth like this, is about the most hypnogenetic thing there can be. That's the way hypnotism works. You find your full attention centered on something like this pencil moving back and forth and the first thing you know, you can't look away. And it's easy to let your mind drift as it moves back and forth ... and you know what's happening, but you don't care. Of course, until you feel sleepy, you're completely safe... Safe to relax... The pencil will only make you feel a little sleepy... comfortably sleepy ... It's easy to be sleepy here where it's so safe ... so safe and sleepy ..."

  Harry knew he was being hypnotized. He never fully lost consciousness, but he relaxed further, feeling deliciously sleepy and safe. There was even a kind of familiar feeling about it. He heard Lawson's voice and answered casually. Then there was a lot more comfortable speech by Lawson about how he could see the right answers, and how the block in his mind was just something he'd grown out of, and how it couldn't help him, and how he could see that it was much easier to tell the whole truth. It was all very assuring and comfortable, and there was nothing to which he could object. A part of his mind even realized that his worry about posthypnotic commands was just silly, because Lawson was giving no such commands. He was fully aware of being hypnotized, but he rather liked it. Lawson, he decided lazily, was pretty darned good at this. He must have said it aloud, because Lawson was agreeing. Then, at a quiet suggestion that he was fully awake now, he found himself alert again, under the scrutiny of a puzzled Galloway and a smiling Lawson.

  The doctor put the pencil away. "A dirty trick, Harry. I set you up for it. But I warned you that I have no medical ethics. And I'm curious about how well you can do positively on a test now. How about it? Or would you rather get mad and pound me to a pulp?"

  Harry swore softly to himself. Then he laughed wryly. "All right, I walked into your trap. And I'm suddenly curious, too. So bring on your damned test."

  This time the test was more elaborate. Lawson gave Galloway a box and sent him into the bedroom to shuffle the cards, then seal them back in the box. When the closed box was returned, he handed pencil and paper to Harry with instructions to write whatever came to his mind and keep writing until he drew a blank. This was clairvoyance, not telepathy, and they'd check the results when they opened the box; until then, nobody would know the real order of the cards.

  Harry stared at the paper, trying to picture some simple symbol. Nothing came. Instead, he could think of only the two of spades. He frowned, then grinned and wrote that down. He'd write down any crazy ideas he had and see what it did to the test. Anyhow, that fitted his instructions. He lifted the pencil—and a diamond five was in his mind. This time he hesitated. But Lawson could very well have used a different sort of deck—a thicker one, perhaps, so that Harry might have noted the difference unconsciously. He wrote down a joker next, then went on more rapidly, not counting. When no more pictures came, he handed Lawson the paper.

  "Canasta deck?" he asked. Galloway's face changed color, but Lawson only nodded.

  "You could have guessed that from hearing some fault sound of the shuffle—a double deck is hard to handle," the doctor said. "Let's see what we find in the box before we give you credit."

  The first card was the deuce of spades, the next the five of diamonds, the third a joker. By the fifth card, Harry was sweating. By the tenth, his stomach was sick and cold. There were a hundred and eight cards in the box. And finally, on the paper before him, there were one hundred and eight check marks indicating correct answers.

  "What are the mathematical odds against that?" Lawson asked quietly.

  Harry's mind tried to figure it briefly. It was some astronomical sum—an unreal sum. More unreal than even the possibility of clairvoyance. More unreal than certain evil...

  "I want to go home," he heard himself cry, and it was the sound of a small and lost child. He was already on his feet, moving through the door and across to the stairway. His foot took a single step before Lawson could reach him and restrain him. "I want to go home."

  "All right, my boy, we'll take you home." Lawson's voice came from some incredibly great and alien distance. But it no longer mattered.

  Something in Harry's mind seemed to contract to a small, tight tunnel and then go zooming outward. It landed against coldness that was hard and impenetrable and ricocheted back at him.

  Henry!

  And something else in his mind screamed and ran down another tunnel and away, gibbering through infinity and into the infinitesimal. He staggered, groping for Lawson helplessly, then collapsed on the stairs, throwing up with violent contractions of his stomach as he lost consciousness.

  III. SLANT

  Ted Galloway hadn't seen the dawn for a long time. Not since City College with that girl—what was her name?— the one that married the rich kid from Colgate. Back then he'd even written a couple of verses about dawn, rather pretty poems as he remembered. That was before he'd learned that poetry was no longer supposed to be pretty; the stuff had to have the right slant for the established circle of poets—the ones who made their money writing books about each other. He hadn't been their type, of course.

  He sighed tiredly and turned to glance back where young Bronson was sprawled on the rear seat. The kid still seemed to be asleep. Whatever the drug had been that Lawson used, it must have packed a wallop. Like the stuff the doctor had prescribed for Galloway's hangover. He still felt a little disconnected, but his stomach and head were all right now.

  Then his eyes went back to the sight of the bridge through the windshield of the Citroën. It looked different in the dawn. There was a soft transparency to colors and a blending of outlines that he had almost forgotten. "Corot," he muttered to himself.

  Lawson seemed not to have heard as he slowed the car to drop money into the toll basket. But he nodded as they began moving onto the lower level. There was little traffic, but the roads were still a mess; yet he was handling the unfamiliar car almost casually already.

  "You're right—it is like some of Corot's paintings," he agreed with none of the amused condescension most men in his income class would show to a two-bit columnist who talked about art. "Did you get your story, Ted?"

  Galloway grimaced unhappily. "Sure, if I want to use it. Fake doctor who advertises uses kook machines on menopausal women. Cynical, of course, the way most of my columns are supposed to be."

  "All right," Lawson told him. "Use my name, if you want. It won't hurt me. Most of my patients are already warned against me, but they flock in, anyhow."

  Galloway sighed. Once in a while he had a rush of ethics to the head. He couldn't ridicule a man he liked. Fake or not, Lawson seemed to be a right guy. After the boy flipped from the excitement of hitting that jackpot of results, Lawson had sat up all night with him; at least he'd been up soothing the kid's delirious babbling when Galloway awoke to go to the bathroom.

  Drat it, there was no way he could find a slant for any other story from the night, however. The Primates had turned out to be a lot more normal than that pompous Emmett had led Galloway to believe; they might be nuts, but they lacked the color he needed. And he couldn't slip any of that card test stuff past his editor without a thousand signed testimonials that it had happened. The old man's bag was astrology, not cards. There was no slant on that which he could see.

  "Just how do you figure the odds against a perfect run like that?" he asked.

  Lawson shrugged. "It doesn't matter—they're too big. Though in theory, there's as good a chance the first time as there is the gigillionth. But I sometimes think the mathematicians are on the wrong track, and that the so-called laws of chance are based on pure superstition. They don't seem to work consistently. What's a perfect hand for rubber bridge?"

  "Eh? Thirteen spades, I suppose."

  "You can do better. Ten of a suit to the ace, ki
ng, queen—and the other three aces. Put all the other honors in one opponent's hand. Assuming you're vulnerable, you get better than twenty-five hundred points for a grand slam in no trump, doubled and redoubled. It's no fun playing, since it's a laydown. But it's quite a hand, and the odds against it are pretty high. Yet I knew a lawyer named Charles Grimes who got it twice in one year."

  "You think that stunt with the cards was just wild coincidence, then?" Galloway asked.

  Lawson shrugged again as he turned the car south on West End Avenue. "I'd rather not think. I learned about mathematics and coincidence when I was young enough to believe in absolutes. I learned a lot about medical ethics at the same time, and it took several years of experience before I matured enough as a physician to have doubts. Then I did some things I'd once have crucified any other man for doing. Nothing is as sure as we'd like."

  "That run of predictions was pretty absolute."

  "So it seemed. Call it coincidence, or find a better answer. But do you really think a man who could do a thing like that would let anyone test him? He wouldn't want it known, and he'd have better things to do with his ability than to play card tricks with me or with Rhine's group."

  It made sense, and Galloway was conscious of a sudden relief. Then he frowned to himself. He was already late with his column, and it had to be in by noon. Maybe, if he called up an actuary he knew and used last night against the statistics he'd get, he might cook up a story. It was at least some kind of slant. Most of his readers would enjoy seeing any expert put down.

  Anyhow, that business of things coming in threes was supposed to be superstition, but he'd seen it work much too often. And he'd once won a five-horse parlay the day after winning the daily double; it had paid for a year in Paris, trying to do a serious book. Nothing had come of that, but ...

  They were in the low Seventies now, and Lawson slid into an empty space before a solid old apartment building. "We're here," he announced.

  Bronson was still apparently asleep, but he stirred as Lawson opened the back door and spoke to him. His face remained expressionless, but he followed orders exactly. His eyes opened, and he climbed out, to walk beside the doctor like an automaton, into the building and then to an elevator.

  "He acts like a zombi," Galloway commented.

  Lawson's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "For the moment," he said, "he is a zombi. The drug I gave him was originally used for making what men called the walking dead, though I've purified it so that I can standardize the dose. It's harmless enough for a while, and it will give him time to recover. I've done a lot of research on odd drugs since—since I became what I am." He took the key from Bronson and opened the door to an apartment, then headed for the bedroom with the young man.

  Galloway stared around, whistling softly to himself as the place registered on his mind. The apartment was no bigger than his own dump, but there was no other similarity. This spelled money and casual, unostentatious taste. He could slave all his life without getting what the kid had without doing a stitch of work. Still, it was no sweat off his nose, though he'd have liked a couple of the paintings on the wall.

  "Bronson be all right alone?" he asked as Lawson finally came out.

  "He'll be all right until I can look in on him again." But there was a strain around the doctor's eyes as he looked back toward the door he'd closed. "There's more than just what happened with the cards, Ted—as I should have discovered before I tried that on him. From his babblings, I gather he's been—well, call it hagridden. If something isn't done about that now, he'll be in real trouble. Damn it, I'm a fool; only a fool uses hypnotism without knowing all the facts. Can I give you a lift somewhere?"

  Galloway blinked at the change of subject. "In what?"

  "In Harry's car. I'm borrowing it, since it's the best one I can find for the roads now. I've got to make a trip upstate to a private sanatorium, it seems. But I've got enough time to run you downtown."

  Galloway thanked him, but set off on foot for the Broadway bus, using the excuse that the cold air would clear his head. Somehow, he couldn't see himself asking Lawson to stop somewhere so he could get the Morning Telegraph before he reached the office.

  It was a good thing, as it turned out. There was a horse listed as Last Slant that was a twenty to one shot. Galloway had a hunch his luck was about to change.

  IV. HUNCH

  The telephone woke Harry, but it had already stopped ringing by the time he could recognize the sound for what it was. He opened his eyes slowly, to see daylight poking between the blinds of his bedroom. He felt tired, as if he'd been up all night working on some tough design, and there seemed to be a layer of cotton wool around his thoughts.

  Then it began to clear, and memory of the events before he'd passed out came creeping back, along with a faint certainty that Lawson and Galloway had driven him back and put him to bed. Funny, that parlor trick of Lawson's somehow stacking the deck had really hit him, though he knew several magicians who could probably duplicate it. He must have been drinking more than he realized. But he felt no hangover. In fact, he was beginning to feel surprisingly good, as if some dark pressure had suddenly lifted from his mind.

  The telephone began to ring again, and he reached for it. "Hello, Phil."

  Lawson's voice was carefully jovial and amused. "So you're finally awake, Harry. Know what day this is?"

  "Sure. Monday morning."

  "Make it Wednesday morning. You've been sedated for the past forty-eight hours. But you looked pretty good when I dropped by last night, so I figured you'd be in shape today. How do you feel?"

  "Good." He began apologizing for all the trouble he'd made, but the doctor cut him off.

  "My own fault, darn it. I should have spotted that touch of fever you had before I pulled that fool hypnotism stunt on you. I warned you I wasn't much of a real physician anymore. You were in no condition to have silly tricks worked on you. Anyhow, I borrowed your car, so I'm probably in your debt." Lawson's voice suddenly sobered and grew more professional. "You should be all right now, Harry, but take it easy. Eat a good breakfast—and take a lot of salt with it—and then stay home and loaf around today. There shouldn't be any trouble, but if you feel the slightest touch of dizziness, give me a call. I'll be here all day in the office. I left the number, though you could find it in your book, you know. Okay?"

  Harry thanked him again and prepared to follow his advice about breakfast. The kitchen showed evidence of someone having used it. Lawson must have fixed food for him while he was under drugs, but the dishes had been washed and put away more or less correctly. Harry started the coffee and then went in search of a deck of cards, shuffling them while his eggs poached. Then he sat down with paper and pencil to make a list while he ate.

  Getting any feeling for the cards seemed difficult this time, and he had to count to be sure he had fifty-two listed. When he checked against the deck, he found three correct answers. That seemed a little higher than pure chance, but not wildly so. Certainly there was no proof of precognition involved. He sighed softly and put the cards away, finally convinced that Lawson had pulled a good bit of amateur magic on him.

  The mail and papers were waiting, and he saw that it really was Wednesday. Nothing seemed very important, though there was a galley of Galloway's next column in one envelope. He glanced at it and found it reasonably accurate in the little that dealt with him; it seemed that Galloway had been taken in by Lawson, too—which was probably what the doctor had intended. The rest of the column was typical of a layman's attempt to debunk probability theory and not very well done. He tossed the mail aside and decided it was a good day to find out why his tape recorder had suddenly developed an unpleasant amount of distortion.

  The phone interrupted him again, just as he was delicately maneuvering a tension spring back onto its peg. His hand jerked, and the spring vanished somewhere into the works. He swore softly and went to pick up the phone.

  "Hi, Nettie. How's Florida?"

  There was a sharp ga
sp from the phone. "How'd you know? How did you know where I've been? Even my hus-band didn't guess. Harry, if you've been putting a spy on me—"

  That, he admitted to himself, was an excellent question. While he fumbled his way to some kind of answer, he suddenly remembered that he'd also known the other call was from Lawson before he'd heard the doctor's voice.

  In the end, she seemed to forget it, largely because she was so full of her recent decision to get a divorce that nothing else mattered. He listened with appropriate responses while she went on and on. He finally got free by offering to defrost a couple of steaks that evening if she wanted to come up to talk.

  But as he went back to the tape recorder, he was still mulling over her question. Drat it, guessing Lawson's call could be explained; the doctor would logically have wanted to find how he felt. But Nettie was another matter. If he'd known she'd left town, he might have guessed that she would visit her mother; but if he had guessed that, why should he have expected her to call him this morning? Unless there was something about her breathing that he could recognize over the phone...

  He was careful the next time to wait before using the caller's name. But it was only Fred Emmett on the phone, with nothing important concerning his meeting with Sid Greenwald; rather than pass along information, the man was intent on pumping him for details on what the new compression ratios would mean to racing.

  Dinner with Nettie proved to be a minor mistake; with a somewhat estranged but highly solvent husband, she'd been addlepated but enjoyable company. Now, having opted for freedom, there was something a little too calculating in the way she surveyed him and his apartment. But his adolescent horror of being bored by people had long since been moderated by experience. He let her chatter on until midnight before getting rid of her. Then he shoved the dishes into the dishwasher, made a few quick tests on the reassembled recorder, and decided to turn in. Tomorrow would be when the trouble started ...