“All right. But why do you wear it in the morning?”
“Is it morning already?” He stared vaguely about him, then went to the window and looked out.
That’s my uncle Otto Schlemmelmayer. I assured him it was morning and with an effort he deduced that he must have been walking the city streets all night.
He took a handful of fingers away from his forehead to say, “But I was so upset, Harry. At the banquet -”
The fingers waved about for a minute and then folded into a quart of fist that came down and pounded holes in my desk top. “But it’s the end. From now on 1 do things my own way.”
My uncle Otto had been saying that since the business of the “Schlemmelmayer Effect” first started up. Maybe that surprises you. Maybe you think it was the Schlemmelmayer Effect that made my uncle Otto famous. Well, it’s all how you look at it.
He discovered the Effect back in 1952 and the chances are that you know as much about it as I do. In a nutshell, he devised a germanium relay of such a nature as to respond to thoughtwaves, or anyway to the electromagnetic fields of the brain cells. He worked for years to build such a delay into a flute, so that it would play music under the pressure of nothing but thought. It was his love, his life, it was to revolutionize music. Everyone would be able to play; no skill necessary – only thought.
Then, five years ago, this young fellow at Consolidated Arms, Stephen Wheland, modified the Schlemmelmayer Effect and reversed it. He devised a field of supersonic waves that could activate the brain via a germanium relay, fry it, and kill a rat at twenty feet. Also, they found out later, men.
After that, Wheland got a bonus of ten thousand dollars and a promotion, while the major stockholders of Consolidated Arms proceeded to make millions when the government bought the patents and placed its orders.
My uncle Otto? He made the cover of Time.
After that, everyone who was close to him, say within a few miles, knew he had a grievance. Some thought it was the fact that he had received no money; others, that his great discovery had been made an instrument of war and killing.
Nuts! It was his flute! That was the real tack on the chair of his life. Poor Uncle Otto. He loved his flute. He carried it with him always, ready to demonstrate. It reposed in its special case on the back of his chair when he ate, and at the head of his bed when he slept. Sunday mornings in the university physics laboratories were made hideous by the sounds of my uncle Otto’s flute, under imperfect mental control, flatting its way through some tearful German folk song.
The trouble was that no manufacturer would touch it. As soon as its existence was unveiled, the musicians’ union threatened to silence every demiquaver in the land; the various entertainment industries called their lobbyists to attention and marked them off in brigades for instant action; and even old Pietro Faranini stuck his baton behind his ear and made fervent statements to the newspapers about the impending death of art.
Uncle Otto never recovered.
He was saying, “Yesterday were my final hopes. Consolidated informs me they will in my honor a banquet give. Who knows, I say to myself. Maybe they will my flute buy.” Under stress, my uncle Otto’s word order tends to shift from English to Germanic.
The picture intrigued me.
“What an idea,” I said. “A thousand giant flutes secreted in key spots in enemy territories blaring out singing commercials just flat enough to -”
“Quiet! Quiet!” My uncle Otto brought down the flat of his hand on my desk like n pistol shot, and the plastic calendar jumped in fright and fell down dead. “From you also mockery? Where is your respect?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Otto.”
“Then listen. I attended the banquet and they made speeches about the Schlemmelmayer Effect and how it harnessed the power of mind. Then when I thought they would announce they would my flute buy, they give me this!”
He took out what looked like a two-thousand-dollar gold piece and threw it at me. I ducked.
Had it hit the window, it would have gone through and brained a pedestrian, but it hit the wall. I picked it up. You could tell by the weight that it was only gold plated. On one side it said: “The Elias Hancroft Sudford Award” in big letters, and “to Dr. Otto Schlemmelmayer for his contributions to science” in small letters. On the other side was a profile, obviously not of my uncle Otto. In fact, it didn’t look like any breed of dog; more like a pig.
“That,” said my uncle Otto, “is Elias Bancroft Sudford, chairman of Consolidated Arms!”
He went on, “So when I saw that was all, I got up and very politely said: ’Gentlemen, dead drop!’ and walkedout.”
“Then you walked the streets all night.” I filled in for him, “and came here without even changing your clothes. You’re still in your tuxedo.”
My uncle Otto stretched out an arm and looked at its covering. “A tuxedo?” he said.
“A tuxedo!” I said.
His long, jowled checks turned blotchy red and he roared, “I come here on something of first-rate importance and you insist on about nothing but tuxedos talking. My own nephew!”
I let the fire burn out. My uncle Otto is the brilliant one in the family, so except for trying to keep him from falling into sewers and walking out of windows, we morons try not to bother him.
I said, “And what can I do for you, Uncle?”
I tried to make it sound businesslike; I tried to introduce the lawyer-client relationship.
He waited impressively and said, “I need money.”
He had come to the wrong place. I said, “Uncle, right now I don’t have -”
“Not from you,” he said.
I felt better.
He said, “There is a new Schlemmelmayer Effect; a better one. This one I do not in scientific journals publish. My big mouth shut I keep. It entirely my own is.” He was leading a phantom orchestra with his bony fist as he spoke.
“From this new Effect,” he went on, “I will make money and my own flute factory open.”
“Good,” I said, thinking of the factory and lying.
“But I don’t know how.”
“Bad,” I said. thinking of the factory and lying.
“The trouble is my mind is brilliant. I can conceive concepts beyond ordinary people. Only, Harry, I can’t conceive ways of making money. It’s a talent I do not have.”
“Bad,” I said, not lying at all.
“So I come to you as a lawyer.”
I sniggered a little deprecating snigger.
“I come to you,” he went on, “to make you help me with your crooked, lying, sneaking, dishonest lawyer’s brain.”
I filed the remark, mentally, under unexpected compliments and said, “I love you, too, Uncle Otto.”
He must have sensed the sarcasm because he turned purple with rage and yelled, “Don’t be touchy. Be like me, patient, understanding, and easygoing, lumphead. Who says anything about you as a man? As a man, you are an honest dunderkopf, but as a lawyer, you have to be a crook. Everyone knows that.”
I sighed. The Bar Association warned me there would be days like this.
“What’s your new Effect, Uncle Otto?” I asked.
He said, “I can reach back into Time and bring things out of the past.”
I acted quickly. With my left hand I snatched my watch out of the lower left vest pocket and consulted it with all the anxiety I could work up. With my right hand I reached for the telephone.
“Well, Uncle,” I said heartily, “I just remembered an extremely important appointment I’m already hours late for. Always glad to see you. And now, I’m afraid I must say good-bye. Yes, sir, seeing you has been a pleasure, a real pleasure. Well, good-bye. Yes, sir -”
I failed to lift the telephone out of its cradle. I was pulling up all right, but my uncle Otto’s hand was on mine and pushing down. It was no contest. Have I said my uncle Otto was once on the Heidelberg wrestling team in ’32?
He took hold of my elbow gently (for him) and I was standing. It was a great saving of muscular effort (for me).
“Let’s” he said, “to my laboratory go.”
He to his laboratory went. And since I had neither the knife nor the inclination to cut my left arm off at the shoulder, I to his laboratory went also…