"And what," I asked, "will you do with the psychons?"
"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even _past_ the heart of the matter, and
return to Isaak here." He jammed a thumb toward the robot. "Here I will
create Roger Bacon's mechanical head. In the skull of this clumsy
creature will rest such intelligence as not even van Manderpootz--I
should say, as _only_ van Manderpootz--can conceive. It remains merely
to construct my idealizator."
"Your idealizator?"
"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as real as matter,
energy, time, or space? Have I not just demonstrated that one can be
transformed, through the cosmon, into any other? My idealizator is the
means of transforming psychons to quanta, just as, for instance, a
Crookes tube or X-ray tube transforms matter to electrons. I will make
your thoughts visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb
brain of yours, but in _ideal_ form. Do you see? The psychons of your
mind are the same as those from any other mind, just as all electrons
are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your psychons"--his voice
quavered--"are identical with those from the mind of--van Manderpootz!"
He paused, shaken.
"Actually?" I gasped.
"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore, my
idealizator shows your thought released from the impress of your
personality. It shows it--ideal!"
Well, I was late to the office again.
* * * * *
A week later I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on tour somewhere,
and I didn't dare take anyone else out because I'd tried it once before
and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing to do, I finally dropped
around to the professor's quarter, found him missing, and eventually
located him in his laboratory at the Physics Building. He was puttering
around the table that had once held that damned subjunctivisor of his,
but now it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires,
and as its most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched with a
grating of delicately scratched lines.
"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.