Nods.
‘So what about your ideas? Bud?’
Bud Aikin controlled his stutter remarkably well today, as he outlined his plan for crime prevention by use of the pendulum. He was becoming quite an authority on this psychic instrument, Tarr noticed. Too bad he still had such a hell of a time with that key word.
Aikin unfolded a map. ‘See, here I’ve been and located the three places where this “Ripper”, this murderer left his victims. The vibrations are very strong, even on a map. Using the p-p-p — swinging thing — I was able to locate them precisely.’
‘Fascinating!’ Tarr lit his pipe. ‘Of course sceptics will imagine you read about the locations in the paper…’
‘No, but wait. I can do it blindfold, with the map turned any way at all. As soon as the p-p-p — the pen-pen — the Galilean implement — gets over a psychic “hot spot”, it starts swinging violently. And, and that’s not all. I’ve found a fourth location. The place where the next body will be found. See, right here near the Student Union. So I mean when they find the body there, that pretty well clinches it, right? Maybe then crime prevention can take a leap forward, using the p — the isochronic vibrating part of a clock—’
Tarr exhaled a thick ball of smoke. ‘Lacks scope, if you don’t mind my frankness, Bud. And you don’t really need much of a grant for — but let’s hear what Byron has to say eh?’
Byron Dollsly grinned and slapped his heavy hand on the table. ‘Scope! Hah! Think you’ll find plenty of scope in my idea, George. See how this grabs you. As you know, I’ve been working on lines suggested by Teilhard de Chardin, Buckminster Fuller and others, namely a kind of engineering approach to consciousness. Well!’
He beamed at Tarr and Aikin in turn, while they sat awaiting further enlightenment. ‘Well, I’ve only had a major breakthrough, that’s all. As I see it, we have to begin with first principles. Biology!’
After a moment, Tarr took his pipe from his mouth. ‘Is that it? Biology?’
‘Is that it, he asks. Hah! Okay, let me spell it out for you. The divine Teilhard saw life as a radial force, and consciousness as a tangential force. Life, see, is like a gear-wheel growing larger, while consciousness is the gear actually turning — meshing!’
He grabbed a handful of his thick grey hair and more or less hauled himself to his feet by it. Then he marched to the blackboard. ‘So what’s the next step? Anybody?’
The other two looked at one another. ‘Mm, suppose you just tell us, Byron. Little short on time here…’
‘The screw. The SCREW!’
‘The, uh… the…’
‘Simple. The creative intellect is a worm-screw with a right-hand thread. Get it? Get it? See, it can never mesh with the destructive or left-handed intellect — never!’
‘Well I suppose not, mm—’
‘So what is God? Simple. He is the vector sum of the entire network of forces turning back upon themselves to produce ultimate consciousness! I mean isn’t He? Isn’t He just the infinite acceleration of the tangential? POW! POW!’ He smacked an enormous right-hand fist into an enormous left-hand palm. There was silence. There was always silence after one of Byron Dollsly’s little lectures, which always ended pow, pow…
‘Interesting, Byron, good line of thinking there… hard to see any practical research possibilities in it just now, but…’
As chairman, Tarr of course had the final deciding vote, which he cast for his own proposal (to study telepathy in birds). Dismissing his assistants, he prepared to write it up for the committee. That is, he sat cracking his knuckles, one by one, and staring out of the window.
From here in the Old Psychology Building, he had a limited view of the Malclass="underline" a few dirty white drifts, the stump of a snowman. How many seasons had he watched from this narrow window? How many barren Winters? How many hopes shattered like icicles — Tarr was beginning to like the simile — while his career remained frozen, stiff as the heart of poor little Frosty out there, who would never come to life and sing…
Tarr started on the left-hand knuckles. Beyond the snowman lay the façade of Economics, a dirty old building on whose pediment he could just make out three figures: Labour shouldering a giant gear-wheel, Capital dumping out her cornucopia, and Land applying his scythe to a sheaf of wheat or something.
His gaze returned to the central figure. Money, that’s what it took. A little money — a tenth of the cash they lavished on the Computer Science Department, say — and he could have parapsychology really on the move. Going places. They were doing it elsewhere: Professor Fether in Chicago was testing precognition in hippos; the Russians claimed a breakthrough on the ouija board to Lenin; the ghost labs of California were fast building a solid reputation. But here, a standstill, a frozen landscape. Nobody in the entire field had ever heard of the University of Minnetonka.
Nobody had ever heard of Dr George Tarr, either. Now and then his clipping service sent him by mistake some reference to ‘R. Targ’ or ‘C. Tart’. His own name never appeared.
Still, here was another chance, another crack at the old cornucopia… He cracked the last knuckle and reached for his dictating machine.
‘Title: Research into Psychically-Oriented Flock Flight. A project proposal. G. Tarr, B. Aikin, B. Dollsly.
‘Ahem. Observers have long obs — noted the uncanny agility of birds flying in formation. This agility has not yet been adequately explained. How is it that a flock of up to a thousand birds, manoeuvring in perfectly co-ordinated flight at high velocities, can avoid collisions? The psychic mechanism we propose may be tested as follows…’
A man in a red hunting cap and matching face was saying to the bartender, ‘Look, just because I never went to no university that don’t mean I’m drunk.’
‘Just take it easy, Jack.’
‘Plenny of things a university don’t teach you, am I right?’
‘All I said was, take it easy. Take it…’
In the back booth, Professor Rogers scratched at acne that hadn’t itched for fifteen years. ‘Up to you, of course. Just thought you might want to have all the facts. Before the meeting.’
Dr Jane Hannah’s face was impassive, the face of a Cheyenne brave which, during her early years in anthropology, she had been. ‘Facts, you say. I keep hearing opinions.’
‘Okay, sure, if you want my opinion, we should turn them down. With all these fraud rumours, I don’t see how Fong’s people can expect special treatment.’
She raised her martini, mumbled something over it, and took a sip. ‘Why not special treatment? Maybe what they have to give us is more precious than anything they could possibly have stolen. After all. true heroes can always break the rules. Think of Prometheus, stealing from the gods.’
‘Pro — but this is real life, real theft. Maybe millions of dollars, you can’t just shrug like that and—’
‘But NASA, like all fire-gods of the air, won’t miss a few million. We don’t want to get bogged down in petty tribal ethics now, the real question is, is Fong a true hero? Will his robot, his gift to mankind, be a blessing or a curse? If it is good, then we must help him, even as Spider Woman helped the War Twins on their journey to the lodge of their father, the Sun—’
‘Sure, sure, but I mean Fong is playing God himself, he’s like Baron Frankenstein over there, never listens to anybody, a law unto himself.’