"Look," I said, narrowing my eyes and steeling my voice, "just in case
something goes wrong, I'd like to leave a few words for posterity. I'd
like to state that I am proud to--"
"Stop blubbering, Freddy," Panda snapped, giving me a look that would
have carved a duck. "This isn't going to hurt."
She was right, Dr. MacCluett said. All they were going to do was use
a radio electroencephalograph on me. That radio electroencephalograph
was just a series of modified FM transmitters which they were going to
set up around me. Those transmitters would pick up my wave patterns and
transmit them over to that receiver in the corner. That receiver would
flash the pattern to that oscilloscope beside it. I would be as safe as
a baby in its mother's arms. Safer even. Those FM transmitters weren't
going to drop hot cigarette ashes on me. They weren't going to drip gin
in my eyes.
"Just lean back and relax," Dr. MacCluett finished.
I leaned back and tried to relax. Those FM transmitters, I had an
idea, were going to have their job cut out for them. That oscilloscope
was probably going to turn out to be the blankest oscilloscope in the
country.
* * * * *
The way it is, I'm more familiar with appearing on TV than on radio. I
felt lost without a camera pointing at me.
"You want me to suffer a little?" I asked uncertainly. "You want me to
lash my beard a few times?"
Dr. MacCluett gave me an unfriendly glance.
For a while I sat there and watched them out of the corners of my eyes.
Then I began to get restless again.
"You reading me all right, Dr. MacCluett?" I called.
He didn't bother to answer. Just went on staring at that oscilloscope.
"This is remarkable," I heard him mutter. "We must make a photographic
record of this. Thus must primitive man's waveform have appeared when
he was forced to battle the hairy mammoth."
I decided I ought to put the doctor straight on that point. I didn't
want to ruin the start of a new era with any misconceptions.
"Dr. MacCluett, I got to tell you something," I said. "I never battled
a hairy mammoth in all my life. Couple of years ago I wrestled a bear
in a carnival. But I never laid a finger on a hairy mammoth in all my
life."
He didn't bother to comment on that either. He just went on staring and
muttering.
I was beginning to build up a back pressure of curiosity. Finally it
got to be too much for me. "You mind if I step over and take a peek?" I
called out. I mean, those were my brain waves they were looking at. I
wanted to be sure they were cleaned up and cleared for transmission.
Panda spun around. "Freddy, don't you dare move!" she yipped. "How can
you possibly step over and look at your own brain waves?"
When I thought it over, it didn't seem logical. I guess it would be
like climbing a ladder to see the top of your head. I decided it wasn't
anything to start a war about.
I don't know what sort of rating I would have picked up on that first
show, but I must have impressed Dr. MacCluett. Anyway, he invited me to
come back again that next day.
During the following weeks I suppose I must have appeared at the
Foundation at least a dozen times. I was even beginning to draw a
small studio audience. Scientists from all over the country came around
to stare thoughtfully at me and to ask me probing questions. I don't
know, maybe they figured I must have sneaked down from Mars. Any day
now I expected the FBI to drop in and ask me where I'd hid my saucer.
On the nights I wasn't wrestling I got in the habit of going places
with Panda. She said she wanted to record the reactions of the unwary
human horde to my nauseating personality.
As long as I didn't have anything else to do, I didn't mind. But I
could tell Dr. MacCluett was beginning to resent these field trips.
Couple of times I caught him giving me a sort of measuring stare.
It reminded me of the way that bear in the carnival used to look at
me--like he wished he could get his muzzle off.
I mentioned this to Panda. "That Dr. MacCluett doesn't like my going
out with you so often," I told her. "I'm making him jealous."
She almost broke herself up with girlish glee over that. "Oh, brother!"
she shrieked. "How could anybody possibly get jealous of you, Freddy?"
She had a good point. It didn't sound reasonable. "All the same," I
insisted, "that Dr. MacCluett is getting jealous."
She told me to stop worrying about it. "I'll handle the good doctor,"
she said. It was like a kid with a toy blaster telling you he'd handle
that armored column.
The very next day the good doctor lowered the boom on me. Panda was
lecturing at some woman's club out in Pomona when it happened. I
hadn't planned on appearing at the Foundation that afternoon, but Dr.
MacCluett called up and asked me if I would stop in. He sounded so
genial I decided Panda must have informed him he now loved me like a
brother.
* * * * *
For once there were no visiting neurologists waiting in the lab. In
fact, there was nobody there but Dr. MacCluett.
"Freddy," he said, opening hostilities with a big false smile, "I have
one final experiment I would like to perform on you. I've been holding
it back to the last because it may be a bit rough."
I asked him how rough did he mean. I said, "I'm wrestling down at the
pier tonight, and I can't go on that card with a broken leg. I go on
that card with a broken leg and those kindly old ladies will part my
head right down the middle."
"This experiment will involve no hazard to limb," he assured me,
his smile turning somewhat bleak. "And it may prove to be of great
scientific importance."
Well, I thought, as long as it was for Science, I ought to do it.
After all, Science has done a lot for me. If it wasn't for Science I'd
probably be crouched in a cold cave, gnawing on a raw buffalo. I wanted
Science to know I was grateful.
Since my last visit to the Foundation, I noticed the doctor had added
another piece of equipment. It was set up beside the contour chair. It
looked like one of those analyzers they use in garages to check motor
performance. There was a long metal barrel sticking out from it. That
barrel pointed directly at my head when I sat down in the chair.
"Dr. MacCluett," I said, "if you've got this gun loaded, maybe you
better not aim it at my head. I am liable to dull that bullet."
"This instrument is not a gun," he grunted, making a micrometer
adjustment. He sighted down the barrel and added, "It's a symbiotic
waveshape modifier."
The doctor hadn't been kidding when he said that experiment was going
to be rough. One moment I was sitting there, big-wheeling civilization
on to the dawn of a new era. The next moment a squadron of jet bombers
started roaring through my skull.
Dr. MacCluett was waving a bottle of spirits of ammonia under my nose
when I finally opened my eyes.
"You all right, Freddy?" he asked in a quavering voice.
I staggered to my feet. I had a headache that would have dropped an
elephant in its tracks. A team of rough maulers couldn't have done a
better job on me with claw holds.
"I'm fine," I groaned, matching him quaver for quaver. "The only reason
I look this way is merely because I am dying."
By dint of much heaving and tugging he managed to haul me out to my car
and boost me into it.
He appeared as nervous as a neophyte murderer trying to get his first
corpse under cover.
"Drive carefully, Freddy," he said, stepping back. He pulled out a
white handkerchief and waved it gently. "Look both ways when you cross
Wilshire. Please watch out for dangerous pedestrians."
Leo was waiting for me in my dressing room that evening. He gave
me an anxious scrutiny. "You feel all right, Freddy?" he inquired
solicitously. "You want I should get you an aspirin? You want I should
hold a cold cloth on your head?"
I had to look twice to be sure this was Leo talking to me. Any other
time I could be lying flat on my face. I could be bleeding out of all
my arteries and Leo would probably try to boot me to my feet. "Freddy,"
he would probably say, "what are you, a hypochondriac?" But here he
was, clucking over me like a hen over a newborn egg.
The rest of the evening was strictly a nightmare out of 3-D by
Technicolor. I walked down the aisle and there wasn't a single,
solitary boo in the place. So help me! There was only this soft,
pulsing sigh. Like a steel guitar stuck on Blue Hawaii.
* * * * *
The pulsing sigh faded to a breathless hush when I climbed through the
ropes. Then, suddenly, this kid redhead in shorts and store curves
leaped to her feet.
"Oh, you great big beautiful doll, you!" she yipped, waving her popcorn
at me.
From then on things got real pitiful. I was supposed to be wrestling a
guy named Arnie Kapowsky. Arnie never wrestled any way but hero-style,
and the crowd broke his heart that night.
What happened was each time I started to massage Arnie's eyeballs with
my thumbs, the crowd whooped with delight. And each time Arnie worked
into a hold such as would be perfectly permissible on any dance floor
in the country, those kindly old ladies scrambled through the ropes and
whanged him with their canes.
Arnie finally terminated this loathsome exhibition by lying down and
covering his head with his arms. Either that crowd had to cheer fair or
Arnie wasn't going to play.
I don't want to linger any longer on that match. It is something better
forgotten by one and all. It is a black and infamous blot, buried now
in the pages of wrestling history. Let us leave it there.
Leo waited until we were back in the dressing room before blowing his
top. "Freddy," he screeched, "what disgusting thing have you done? Have
you rescued some blonde who was going down in the briny deep for the
ninth time?"
I told Leo no. "I try to save a blonde from drowning," I said, "and
she'll scream high-C for a shark to come and protect her."
"Then have you pulled some tiny toddler out from under the wheels of a
careening and malignant truck?" Leo screeched.
I told Leo no. "I try to pull some kid out from under a truck," I said,
"and he's liable to bite off my right arm all the way up to my left
ear."
"Then how come that crowd was cheering on your side?" Leo howled. "Why
were they drooling with affection for you?"