Fred Macklin interrupted, "Look, Dad, why are we bothering with all this
guff?"
"Because I have hopes that Mr. Cornell can be made to see our point, to
join, as it were, our side."
"Fat chance," I snapped.
"Please, I'm your elder and not at all inclined to waste my time. You
came here seeking information and you shall have it. You will not
believe it, but it will, I hope, fill in some blank spots after you have
had a chance to compare, sort, and use your own logic on the problem. As
a mechanical engineer, you are familiar with the line of reasoning that
we non-engineering people call Occam's Razor?"
"The law of least reaction," I said automatically.
"The what?" asked Mrs. Macklin.
Miss Macklin said, "I'll read it from Mr. Cornell's mind, mother. The
law of least reaction can be demonstrated by the following: If a bucket
of mixed wood-shavings and gasoline are heated, there is a calculable
probability that the gasoline will catch fire first because the gasoline
is easier--least reaction--to set on fire."
"Right," I said. "But how does this apply to me?"
Mr. Macklin took up the podium again: "For one thing, your assumption
regarding Catherine is correct. At the time of the accident she was
found to have Mekstrom's Disease in its earliest form. The Harrisons did
take her in to save her life. Now, dropping that side of the long story,
we must follow your troubles. The accident, to a certain group of
persons, was a fortunate one. It placed under their medical care a
man--you--in whose mind could be planted a certain mild curiosity about
a peculiar road sign and other evidences. The upshot of this was that
you took off on a tour of investigation."
That sounded logical, but there were a lot of questions that had open,
ragged ends flying loose.
Mr. Macklin went on: "Let's diverge for the moment. Mr. Cornell, what is
your reaction to Mekstrom's Disease at this point?"
That was easy. It was a curse to the human race, excepting that some
outfit knew how to cure it. Once cured, it made a physical superman of
the so-called victim. What stuck in my craw was the number of
unfortunate people who caught it and died painfully--or by their own
hand in horror--without the sign of aid or assistance.
He nodded when I'd gone about half-way through my conclusions and before
I got mentally violent about them.
"Mr. Cornell, you've expressed your own doom at certain hands. You feel
that the human race could benefit by exploitation of Mekstrom's
Disease."
"It could, if everybody helped out and worked together."
"Everybody?" he asked with a sly look. I yearned again for the ability
of a telepath, and I knew that the reason why I was running around loose
was because I was only an esper and therefore incapable of learning the
truth directly. I stood there like a totem pole and tried to think.
Eventually it occurred to me. Just as there are people who cannot stand
dictatorships, there are others who cannot abide democracy; in any
aggregation like the human race there will be the warped souls who feel
superior to the rest of humanity. They welcome dictatorships providing
they can be among the dictators and if they are not included, they fight
until the other dictatorship is deposed so that they can take over.
"True," said Mr. Macklin, "And yet, if they declared their intentions,
how long would they last?"
"Not very long. Not until they had enough power to make it stick," I
said.
"And above all, not until they have the power to grant this blessing to
those whose minds agree with theirs. So now, Mr. Cornell, I'll make a
statement that you can accept as a mere collection of words, to be used
in your arguments with yourself: We'll assume two groups, one working to
set up a hierarchy of Mekstroms in which the rest of the human race will
become hewers of wood and drawers of water. Contrasting that group is
another group who feels that no man or even a congress of men are
capable of picking and choosing the individual who is to be granted the
body of the physical superman. We cannot hope to watch the watchers, Mr.
Cornell, and we will not have on our conscience the weight of having to
select A over B as being more desirable. Enough of this! You'll have to
argue it out by yourself later."
"Later?" grunted Fred Macklin. "You're not going to--"
"I certainly am," said his father firmly. "Mr. Cornell may yet be the
agency whereby we succeed in winning out." He spoke to me again.
"Neither group dares to come into the open, Mr. Cornell. We cannot
accuse the other group of anything nefarious, any more than they dare to
accuse us. Their mode of attack is to coerce you into exposing us for a
group of undercover operators who are making supermen."
"Look," I asked him, "why not admit it? You've got nothing sinister in
mind."
"Think of all the millions of people who have not had schooling beyond
the preparatory grades," he said. "People of latent psi ability instead
of trained practice, or those poor souls who have no psi ability worth
mentioning. Do you know the history of the Rhine Institute, Mr.
Cornell?"
"Only vaguely."
"In the early days of Rhine's work at Duke University, there were many
scoffers. The scoffers and detractors, naturally enough, were those
people who had the least amount of psi ability. Admitting that at the
time all psi ability was latent, they still had less of it. But after
Rhine's death, his associates managed to prove his theories and
eventually worked out a system of training that would develop the psi
ability. Then, Mr. Cornell, those who are blessed with a high ability in
telepathy or perception--the common term of esper is a misnomer, you
know, because there's nothing extra-sensory about perception--found
themselves being suspected and hated by those who had not this delicate
sense. It took forty of fifty years before common public acceptance got
around to looking at telepathy and perception in the same light as they
saw a musician with a trained ear or an artist with a trained eye. Psi
is a talent that everybody has to some degree, and today this is
accepted with very little angry jealousy.
"But now," he went on thoughtfully, "consider what would happen if we
made a public announcement that we could cure Mekstrom's Disease by
making a physical superman out of the poor victim. Our main enemy would
then stand up righteously and howl that we are concealing the secret; he
would be believed. We would be tracked down and persecuted, eventually
wiped out, while he sat behind his position and went on picking and
choosing victims whose attitude parallel his own."
"And who is the character?" I demanded. I knew. But I wanted him to say
it aloud.
He shook his head. "I'll not say it," he said. "Because I will not
accuse him aloud, any more than he dares to tell you flatly that we are
an underground organization that must be rooted out. He knows about our
highways and our way stations and our cure, because he uses the same
cure. He can hide behind his position so long as he makes no direct
accusation. You know the law, Mr. Cornell."
Yes, I knew the law. So long as the accuser came into court with a
completely clean mind, he was safe. But Scholar Phelps could hardly make
the accusation, nor could he supply the tiniest smidgin of direct
evidence to me. For in my accusation I'd implicate him as an
accessory-accuser and then he would be called upon to supply not only
evidence but a clear, clean, and open mind. In shorter words, the old
stunt of pointing loudly to someone else as a dodge for covering up your
own crime was a lost art in this present-day world of telepathic
competence. The law, of course, insisted that no man could be convicted
for what he was thinking, but only upon direct evidence of action. But a
crooked-thinking witness found himself in deep trouble anyway, even
though crooked thinking was in itself no crime.
"Now for one more time," said Mr. Macklin. "Consider a medical person
who cannot qualify because he is a telepath and not a perceptive. His
very soul was devoted to being a scholar of medicine like his father and
his grandfather, but his telepath ability does not allow him to be the
full scholar. A doctor he can be. But he can never achieve the final
training, again the ultimate degree. Such a man overcompensates and
becomes the frustrate; a ripe disciple for the superman theory."
"Dr. Thorndyke!" I blurted.
His face was as blank, as noncommittal as a bronze bust; I could neither
detect affirmation nor negation in it. He was playing it flat; I'd never
get any evidence from him, either.
"So now, Mr. Cornell, I have given you food for thought. I've made no
direct statements; nothing that you could point to. I've defended myself
as any man will do, but only by protestations of innocence. Therefore I
suggest that you take your artillery and vacate the premises."
I remembered the Bonanza .375 that was hanging in my hand. Shamefacedly
I slipped it back in my hip pocket. "But look, sir--"
"Please leave, Mr. Cornell. Any more I cannot say without laying us wide
open for trouble. I am sorry for you, it is no joy being a pawn. But I
hope that your pawn-ship will work for our side, and I hope that you
will come through it safely. Now, please leave us quietly."
I shrugged. I left. And as I was leaving, Miss Macklin touched my arm
and said in a soft voice: "I hope you find your Catherine, Steve. And I
hope that someday you'll be able to join her."
I nodded dumbly. It was not until I was all the way back to my car that
I remembered that her last statement was something similar to wishing me
a case of measles so that I'd be afterward immune from them.