He walked over to the wall control and shut off the air-conditioning
in a hurry. He threw open a window and breathed great gulps of the
hot, humid air from the streets. In a small corner at the back of his
mind, he wondered why he was grateful for the air he had suffered
under only a few minutes before. But that, he reflected, was life. And
a very silly kind of life, too, he told himself without rancor.
In a few minutes he left the window, somewhat restored, and headed for
the shower. When it was running nicely and he was under it, he started
to sing. But his voice didn't sound as much like the voice of Lauritz
Melchior as it usually did, not even when he made a brave, if
foolhardy stab at the Melchior accent. Slowly, he began to realize
that he was bothered.
He climbed out of the shower and started drying himself. Up to now, he
thought, he had depended on Dr. Thomas O'Connor for edifying,
trustworthy and reasonably complete information about psionics and
_psi_ phenomena in general. He had looked on O'Connor as a sort of
living version of an extremely good edition of the _Britannica_,
always available for reference.
And now O'Connor had failed him. That, Malone thought, was hardly
fair. O'Connor had no business failing him--particularly when there
was no place else to go.
The scientist had been right, of course, Malone knew. There was no
other scientist who knew as much about psionics as O'Connor, and if
O'Connor said there were no books, then that was that: there were no
books.
He reached for a drawer in his dresser, opened it and pulled out some
underclothes, humming tunelessly under his breath as he dressed. If
there was no one to ask, he thought, and if there were no books--
He stopped with a sock in his hand, and stared at it in wonder.
O'Connor hadn't said there were no books. As a matter of fact, Malone
realized, he'd said exactly the opposite.
There were books. But they were "crackpot" books. O'Connor had never
read them. He had, he said, probably never even heard of many of them.
"Crackpot" was a fighting word to O'Connor. But to Malone it had all
the sweetness of flattery. After all, he'd found telepaths in insane
asylums, and teleports among the juvenile delinquents of New York.
"Crackpot" was a word that was rapidly ceasing to have any meaning at
all in Malone's mind.
He realized that he was still staring at the sock, which was black
with a gold clock. Hurriedly, he put it on, and finished dressing. He
reached for the phone and made a few fast calls, and then teleported
himself to his locked office in FBI Headquarters, on East Sixty-ninth
Street in New York. He let himself out, and strolled down the
corridor. The agent-in-charge looked up from his desk as Malone
passed, blinked, and said: "Hello, Malone. What's up now?"
"I'm going prowling," Malone said. "But there won't be any work for
you, as far as I can see."
"Oh?"
"Just relax," Malone said. "Breathe easy."
"I'll try to," the agent-in-charge said, a little sadly. "But every
time you show up, I think about that wave of red Cadillacs you
started. I'll never feel really secure again."
"Relax," Malone said. "Next time it won't be Cadillacs. But it might
be spirits, blowing on ear-trumpets. Or whatever it is they do."
"Spirits, Malone?" the agent-in-charge said.
"No, thanks," Malone said sternly. "I never drink on duty." He gave
the agent a cheery wave of his hand and went out to the street.
* * * * *
The Psychical Research Society had offices in the Ravell Building, a
large structure composed mostly of plate glass and anodized aluminum
that looked just a little like a bright blue, partially transparent
crackerbox that had been stood on end for purposes unknown. Having
walked all the way down to this box on Fifty-sixth Street, Malone had
recovered his former sensitivity range to temperature and felt
pathetically grateful for the coolish sea breeze that made New York
somewhat less of an unbearable Summer Festival than was normal.
The lobby of the building was glittering and polished, as if human
beings could not possibly exist in it. Malone took an elevator to the
sixth floor, stepped out into a small, equally polished hall, and
hurriedly looked off to his right. A small door stood there, with a
legend engraved in elegantly small letters. It said:
_The Psychical Research Society_
_Push_
Malone obeyed instructions. The door swung noiselessly open, and then
closed behind him.
He was in a large square-looking room which had a couch and chair set
at one corner, and a desk at the far end. Behind the desk was a brass
plate, on which was engraved:
_The Psychical Research Society_
_Main Offices_
To Malone's left was a hall that angled off into invisibility, and to
the left of the desk was another one, going straight back past doors
and two radiators until it ran into a right-angled turn and also
disappeared.
Malone took in the details of his surroundings almost automatically,
filing them in his memory just in case he ever needed to use them.
One detail, however, required more than automatic attention. Sitting
behind the desk, her head just below the brass plaque, was a redhead.
She was, Malone thought, positively beautiful. Of course, he could not
see the lower two-thirds of her body, but if they were half as
interesting as the upper third and the face and head, he was willing
to spend days, weeks or even months on their investigation. Some jobs,
he told himself, feeling a strong sense of duty, were definitely worth
taking time over.
She was turned slightly away from Malone, and had obviously not heard
him come in. Malone wondered how best to announce himself, and
regretfully gave up the idea of tiptoeing up to the girl, placing his
hands over her eyes, kissing the back of her neck and crying:
"Surprise!" It was elegant, he felt, but it just wasn't right.
He compromised at last on the old established method of
throat-clearing to attract her attention. He was sure he could take it
from there, to an eminently satisfying conclusion.
He tiptoed on the deep-pile rug right up to her desk.
And the expected happened.
He sneezed.
The sneeze was loud and long, and it echoed through the room and
throughout the corridors. It sounded to Malone like the blast of a
small bomb, or possibly a grenade. Startled himself by the volume of
sound he had managed to generate, he jumped back.
The girl had jumped, too--but her leap had been straight upward, about
an inch and a half. She came down on her chair and reached up a hand.
The hand wiped the back of her neck with a slow, lingering motion of
complete loathing. Then, equally slowly, she turned.
"That," she said in a low, sweet voice, "was a dirty trick."
"It was an accident," Malone said.
She regarded Malone darkly. "Do you always do that to strangers? Is it
some new sort of perversion?"
"I have never done such a thing before," Malone said sternly.
"Oh," the girl said. "An experimenter. Avid for new sensations.
Probably a jaded scion of a rich New York family." She paused. "Tell
me," she said. "Is it fun?"
Malone opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He shut it, thought for
a second and then tried again. He got as far as: "I--" before Nemesis
overtook him. The second sneeze was even louder and more powerful than
the first had been.
"It must be fun," the girl said acidly, producing a handkerchief from
somewhere and going to work on her face. "You just can't seem to wait
to do it again. Would it do any good to tell you that the fascination
with this form of greeting is not universal? Or don't you care?"