"After all the exposure out there to the Swami," I said, "if you're
still with us on this crass, materialistic plane, will you bring your
book?"
"My astral self has been hovering over you, guarding you, every minute,"
Sara answered dreamily.
"Can it take shorthand?" I asked dryly.
"Maybe I'd better come in," she replied.
When she came through the door the lieutenant gave her one appreciative
glance, then returned to his aloof pedestal of indifference. Obviously
his pattern was to stand in majestic splendor and allow the girls to
fawn somewhere down near his shoes. These lads with a glamour boy
complex almost always gravitate toward some occupation which will
require them to wear a uniform. Sara catalogued him as quickly as I did,
and seemed unimpressed. But you never can tell about a woman; the
smartest of them will fall for the most transparent poses.
"General Sanfordwaithe, dear sir," I began as she sat down at one corner
of my desk and flipped open her book. "It takes more than a towel
wrapped around the head and some mutterings about infinity to get
poltergeist effects. So I am returning your phony Swami to you with my
compliments--"
"Beg your pardon, sir," the lieutenant interrupted, and there was a
certain note of suppressed triumph in his voice. "In case you rejected
our applicant for the poltergeist job you have in mind, I was to hand
you this." He undid a lovingly polished button of his tunic, slipped his
hand beneath the cloth and pulled forth a long, sealed envelope.
I took it from him and noted the three sealing-wax imprints on the flap.
From being carried so close to his heart for so long, the envelope was
slightly less crisp than when he had received it. I slipped my letter
opener in under the side flap, and gently extracted the letter without,
in anyway, disturbing the wax seals which were to have guaranteed its
privacy. There wasn't any point in my doing it, of course, except to
demonstrate to the lieutenant that I considered the whole deal as a
silly piece of cloak and dagger stuff.
After the general formalities, the letter was brief: "Dear Mr. Kennedy:
We already know the Swami is a phony, but our people have been convinced
that in spite of this there are some unaccountable effects. We have
advised your general manager, Mr. Henry Grenoble, that we are in the act
of carrying out our part of the agreement, namely, to provide you with
six male-type poltergeists, and to both you and him we are respectfully
suggesting that you get on with the business of putting the antigravity
units into immediate production."
I folded the letter and tucked it into one side of my desk pad. I looked
at Sara.
"Never mind the letter to General Sanfordwaithe," I said. "He has
successfully cut off my retreat in that direction." I looked over at the
lieutenant. "All right," I said resignedly, "I'll apologize to the
Swami, and make a try at using him."
I picked up the letter again and pretended to be reading it. But this
was just a stall, because I had suddenly been struck by the thought that
my extreme haste in scoring off the Swami and trying to get rid of him
was because I didn't want to get involved again with poltergeists. Not
any, of any nature.
The best way on earth to avoid having to explain psi effects and come to
terms with them is simply to deny them, convince oneself that they don't
exist. I sighed deeply. It looked as if I would be denied that little
human privilege of closing my eyes to the obvious.
* * * * *
Old Stone Face, our general manager, claimed to follow the philosophy of
building men, not machines. To an extent he did. His favorite phrase
was, "Don't ask me how. I hired you to tell me." He hired a man to do a
job, and I will say for him, he left that man alone as long as the job
got done. But when a man flubbed a job, and kept on flubbing it, then
Mr. Henry Grenoble stepped in and carried out his own job--general
managing.
He had given me the assignment of putting antigrav units into
production. He had given me access to all the money I would need for the
purpose. He had given me sufficient time, months of it. And, in spite of
all this cooeperation, he still saw no production lines which spewed out
antigrav units at some such rate as seventeen and five twelfths per
second.
Apparently he got his communication from the Pentagon about the time I
got mine. Apparently it contained some implication that Computer
Research, under his management, was not pursuing the cause of
manufacturing antigrav units with diligence and dispatch. Apparently he
did not like this.
I had no more than apologized to the Swami, and received his martyred
forgiveness, and arranged for a hotel suite for him and the lieutenant,
when Old Stone Face sent for me. He began to manage with diligence and
dispatch.
"Now you look here, Kennedy," he said forcefully, and his use of my last
name, rather than my first, was a warning, "I've given you every chance.
When you and Auerbach came up with that antigrav unit last fall, I
didn't ask a lot of fool questions. I figured you knew what you were
doing. But the whole winter has passed, and here it is spring, and you
haven't done anything that I can see. I didn't say anything when you
told General Sanfordwaithe that you'd have to have poltergeists to carry
on the work, but I looked it up. First I thought you'd flipped your lid,
then I thought you were sending us all on a wild goose chase so we'd
leave you alone, then I didn't know what to think."