he had forgotten the beer again. he remembered that he had forgotten only as he opened the apartment door. a wave of smoke and onions and hamburger flowed past him into the dingy corridor and he stumbled on the garbage pail, plunked right in the doorway for him to lug along the passage to the chute. the bed was not made in one of their two rooms and newspapers littered the other. elsie was in the kitchen.
"fred! fred, did you remember my beer?"
he closed the door so that the neighbors would not hear the row to come, except through the walls.
"didja, fred?"
she stood akimbo in the kitchen doorway, a cigarette hanging from her lips, her dressing gown loose and spotted, her feet in old scuffs.
"i forgot," he mumbled. "i'll go now."
oh, no, he wouldn't. not until he had heard a full resumé of his lack of character, lack of enterprise, ambition, decency, thoughtfulness, manhood, semblance of virtue.
"i said i was going, elsie. i said i was going, didn't i?"
"well, my day! you remembered my name!"
it was true he rarely used her name or called her any husbandly term such as dear or darling instead, and rarely looked at her at all if he could avoid it inconspicuously. ten years of marriage—ten years of legal proximity, rather, for nothing in him was married to anything in her any more.
"i don't know why you married me," he said.
"makes you wonder, doesn't it? go on, get out."
he almost knocked the man over as he left the apartment. the man was standing there, about to ring the bell. well dressed, clean, expensive overcoat, polished shoes, black hat and a mild friendly face.
"mr. frederick williams?" the man asked.
"yes," said fred.
"you entered the sunday news competition for a free space ride?"
"yes. did i win it?"
"unfortunately, no," said the man.
"oh. well, excuse me, i've got to go and get something."
"i'll come with you. my name is howard sprinnell, mr. williams, and i've been examining the entries to that competition. frankly, we think you have considerable talent."
"mister," said fred over his shoulder as they went down the stairs, "if you're trying to sell me something—"
"i don't want a penny from you, mr. williams."
"then what—"
"we would merely appreciate a few hours of your time, at your convenience."
"a few hours?" fred said, distressed. by working double shift in the automation-parts supply house, he could just keep going, financially and physically. the question of mental fatigue was exclusively elsie's province and there he had a rough working technique for responding without really listening. his job called for no mental effort greater than reading a shipping list, and his home life certainly didn't. most of the time he had nothing in his mind at all; the days passed faster that way. but elsie and the job kept him tired. odd how just not listening wrung you out and drained you off.
"we are, of course, very glad to offer you compensation for your time, mr. williams," said the man.
elsie would just drink it away. he'd have to haul crates of bourbon instead of cans of beer, that's all.
"not interested," he said.
that was it. that was the way to keep a salesman stalled. just "not interested." keep saying it and nothing else. they all said they were not salesmen and weren't selling anything. every salesman he had ever met at the door said that. galactic encyclopedia, nuclear brush, your venus vacation, video subscriptions, even the federal numbers game, they all started out by offering you a special opportunity and were not selling you anything. the man was still talking.
"not interested," fred said.
"fred," said the man as they reached the bottom of the stairs, "i'm doing you a favor. i'm not supposed to tell you this, but either you come voluntarily or you'll come anyway. why not get paid for it?"
"not interested. and if anyone wants me, they can come and get me. i don't care. i just don't care."
he slouched off into the rain toward the supermarket.
as dr. howard sprinnell watched him go he took a small silver case from his top-coat pocket. he raised the case to his lips and said quietly: "sprinnell here. no. a clear case, but no. pick him up."
the squad car arrived silently on its jets as fred williams reached the door of the apartment house. he was carrying a pack of beer in each hand and was glad to see the man had gone. that's all you had to do—just keep saying "not interested" until they went away.
"o.k., bud."
the troopers took him on both sides, grasped his arms, and levered him round.
"hey!" fred protested. "the beer's for my wife. she's waiting for it. please, fellers, i'll never hear the end of it if she doesn't get her beer."
"joe," said the trooper on fred's right, jerking his head in the direction of the door behind them.
a third trooper climbed out of the squad car, took the packs from fred's hands and walked into the apartment house. he climbed the stairs swiftly, wrinkling his nose at the stale thickness of the air, knocked on the apartment door and waited for elsie to open it.
"here's your beer," he said shortly.
"where's fred?"
"your husband is being detained in connection with a robbery at his office."
"fred! are you kidding? fred hasn't the sense or the guts! how long will he be gone?"
"two or three weeks."
"oh," said elsie, scratching herself disinterestedly. "well, thanks for the beer."
she shut the door and the trooper returned to the squad car. he looked at fred sympathetically but said nothing. the squad car took off, then turned on its sirens.
"what's this all about?" asked fred williams from the back seat.
"just excitement, bud. we live a dull life."
you think you do, you should live mine. i don't care anyway. if i ask them what i'm doing in this squad car, i'll get a silly answer.
"a guy called spinner or something send for you?"
"we don't get sent for, bud. where have you been, the middle ages?"
he had a point there. security troopers were under direct control of the president and came and went as they pleased. the satellite stations gave them general directives and the president directed the stations. fred williams grinned at the thought of spinner, or whatever his name was, calling the president to call a satellite station to call these cops to come and get him. he would have been shocked and frightened if anyone had told him this was almost exactly what had happened.
they shot into the garage of an ordinary federal police station, a large tiled vault smelling of hoses, soap and water. the troopers took him upstairs, along wax-polished corridors, through swinging doors and out of the muttered voices, footsteps, paper rattling and telephone tinkle of the station, into the smooth silence of a surgery. that fellow spinner was waiting in a white doctor's coat.
"they pick you up too?" fred williams said.
the security troopers hoisted him into a dentist's chair, saluted the other man and went away.
"you can leave any time you wish, fred. if you do, though, i'll have you brought back. i'm dr. howard sprinnell."
"funny, i thought your name was cloud spinner or something," fred confessed.
"that's very interesting." the doctor leaned forward across his desk. "what made you think that?"
"i just remembered it that way, that's all."
"ah. you have an unusual mind, fred. no, i mean it. and just to show you this is not fooling, i have a call here for you from the president."
"from jake?"
"from president jackson, yes."
dr. sprinnell pressed a green button on the video control on his desk. the wall panel lit and president jackson's familiar face looked at fred williams.
"mr. williams," said the president. "the nation has called you to an unusual task. on your complete cooperation and absolute discretion in not mentioning to anyone—to anyone at all—what you may now learn depend matters of the utmost consequence to us all. i wish you good luck and godspeed."
the panel went dark and the doctor switched off.
"that was jake himself," fred williams said. "talking to me."
like the many thousand million in the system, fred referred to the president familiarly as jake, but he never thought he would get to talk to him, or be talked to personally.
"what did he want to talk to me for?" fred asked, dazed.
"that's what i want to show you," said dr. sprinnell. "you understood what the president said about keeping this entirely confidential?"
"hell, no one would believe it if i said i'd been talking to the president, anyway."
"that's what we figure," said the doctor, smiling slightly. he picked up a pack of cards and flipped five of them onto the desk, a circle, a cross, two wavy lines, a rectangle and a star. "these are zener cards, fred. ever see them before?"
no, but they didn't look like much. this was cockeyed, the whole situation—having the president call him so that he and a quack could play cards.
"it will be clearer in a little while," dr. howard sprinnell said. "but first we must run this little check. please point to one of these cards every minute when i say 'now.'"
fred shifted himself in the high chair and pointed to one of the five cards obediently every minute. after twenty minutes, the doctor increased the rate. he noted every selection.
"last lap now, fred."
he was sick of this, but it was better than sitting in the apartment with elsie. fred pointed to a card for the last time.
"and now," the doctor said, standing up and feeding his notations into a machine in the corner of the room, "we have here the results."
he pulled a tape from the machine as it purred out, and showed it to fred. it was a score of some sort.
"in another room," dr. howard sprinnell explained, "we have a synchronized telepath trying to influence your selections of these cards. if you have psi qualities, fred, these results will show how high they are. if you have none, then your chances of picking the right card are one in five. that goes for picking the card ahead of the right one, or behind it, or two ahead and so on. in other words, if the cards had been selected here by a machine instead of you, we would expect twenty per cent of the answers to be right, by sheer chance—or statistical probability, to put it more accurately."
"so how did i do? am i a mind-reader? that would make me laugh."
the doctor glanced at the result tape he was holding.
"you have the results we want," he said. "otherwise i would not tell you this. you would be thanked, given a reward, made a fuss of by some civil servant of prominence and sent home in style."
he looked up at fred in the dentist's chair.
"do you remember that contest in the sunday news?"
fred williams remembered it. every week there had been a puzzle picture to identify. the contest had lasted nearly a year. he remembered particularly that each week there had been a cut of the room in which entries were to be judged, a large editorial office, just above the puzzle picture. just a room. he had wondered why they bothered to put it in.
"there was a picture of a room in the paper," said the doctor, "where each week, without any possibility of fraud or anyone seeing it except the judges, the solution to the puzzle was hung up on the wall in the middle of the picture shown in the paper. the puzzles themselves were meaningless. we wanted to see how many people wrote in the right solution just from seeing the picture of the empty room. the right solution, of course, was the one hanging in that room at that time, which no one could see, and which was selected an hour before publication of the paper each week by random selection in a dictionary."
"so what did i get, a consolation prize?" asked fred.
"in a way," the doctor smiled. "but not for coming near winning. the top twenty winners were highly gifted people we recruited into the psi faculties of duke, harvard, oxford, paris and elsewhere. they scored consistently throughout the year with a better than probability deviation."
"huh?"
"they got a lot more right than they could by chance alone. but your results were even more interesting to us. you got the same result here, just now, on the zener cards."
"i'm still in the running?"
"fred, quite seriously, you are the best candidate we've ever met. hence the special treatment. in the history of the system government, there have only been ten other people with results similar to yours."
"is that so? well, i suppose you know what you're doing, doc. but i never had a premonition in my life."
doctor howard sprinnell frowned. "i should hope not. almost everyone has some psi capacities, but we're not interested in minor phenomena. this is a government department, fred. here a thing has to work all the time, whenever it's needed, wherever it's needed. a faculty professor has off-days when he couldn't roll a die against chance. but you can't."
"look, doc. i think you've got the wrong man. i'm fred williams. frederick l. williams. are you sure—"
"look yourself," interrupted the doctor, leaning over to wave the tape under fred's nose. "chance would give you twenty per cent right—one out of five. look at your result."
fred took the tape and studied it. "you've read it wrong. this says several million per cent."
"it says zero per cent. nil. not one answer right, fred. the millions are the probabilities of that deviation ... oh, never mind. see the big black zero?"
"yes, doc."
"that is your result. it's statistically almost impossible, but you've done it. you did it with the puzzle in the competition. you did not get one single, solitary answer right. not one! even a machine gets one out of five right, fred. don't you see?"
no, he didn't, and it seemed to be just what elsie was always complaining about. he lacked this and lacked that. and now he couldn't even do what a machine did.
"okay, doc," fred said tiredly. "so i'm dumber than a machine. that figures."
"if you talk like that, you are," snapped doctor howard sprinnell. "you have the highest negative psi rating in the solar system. no clairvoyance, no telepathy, no induced hallucinations, no precognitions, no telekinesis, no psi-screens, no interference of any kind. when we send you out into—well, never mind, fred. the main point at present is that you are a very, very rare observer."
"that's fine," fred said. "look, doc, i feel beat."
"you're meant to. hell, man, i've been tiring you for two hours now. and what's more, i'll give you a little warning in advance. we aren't going to let you eat for three days either. you're going to be so tired that your body is going to loosen its grip. don't worry, you won't die. ten people have done this before you and they're all right. you'll meet them all soon. now just hold still."
dr. howard sprinnell slipped a hypo needle swiftly into fred's neck, withdrew it and dabbed with a piece of surgical wool.
"off you go, fred."
he was breaking into pieces, but he didn't care. he slept and woke and slept and woke in the chair in old cloud spinner's office and now he was coming apart and he just did not care. fred williams had had several years of simple apathy. it came naturally to him. his body rested, tired and inert, lacking in vigor from lack of food, and his mind separated slowly from it, like a man standing up in a pool of pygmies. his heart, hands, liver, stomach, viscera had their pygmy minds all bundled in with his, and now falling away in separation as he rose from them.
his mind rose away from his body in the chair altogether. he viewed his body with unconcern, and the chair in which it sat, and the room, and through the walls the surrounding offices, and the rooms of the federal police station, where the security trooper named joe who had taken the beer sat picking his teeth and gabbing with a pair of young federal cops, and the roof of the block in which the station stood.
his mind went up like a balloon, rising swiftly into the atmosphere, and the city shrank away under him like a toy plan, a kid's aid to better civics, home town box vi, no solar credits necessary. he shifted automatically away from the main airport, but a moment later he went clean through an airliner cockpit, cabins with passengers, exhaust, and out exactly where he was before. his mind followed the airliner involuntarily, until he asked himself why, and immediately continued rising into the sky, looking down at the ground and the great spherical horizon.
his mind rose into cloud and examined minutely a water molecule floating from a piece of dust as big as a rock. his sense of proportion sent him shooting out of the top of the cloud suddenly, like a startled fish. the ground became a globe gradually, and as the clouds below became little wisps over the light blue haze of the earth, his feeling of liberation increased and he rose faster. he went through layer after layer of radiation sparking fitfully around him, and fiercer belts. and then the dust thinned out like scattered transparent ball bearings, and his mind approached the satellite stations riding over the earth. he was tempted to go through one, but it seemed unimportant and he rose out.
the moon was swinging down away from him, a vast pitted ball bigger to his mind than the earth now. he put on more speed, so that his mind flashed away from the sun. then as he paused an odd thing happened. one moment he was up there, alone above the small earth and its smaller moon, and the next instant his mind had flashed right into the center of the sun, deep in the inferno of its core, where violence and variegated light surrounded him. and then he was out again, and his mind zoomed off as if he were sitting in the front seat of a low-slung car with the landmarks coming at a rush toward him and away to the side. the galaxy fell away behind his mind in this fashion and the great nebula of andromeda passed by.
his mind roamed for a while among the other galactic clusters and the spiral galaxies. he found his mind could appear at any point he wished, without the long rush through space. he could transfer instantaneously from place to place, and he hopped in this way at random from crab to lagoon and in to polaris and out to the great spiral of ursa major, and onward to the open centers of the universe.
in deeper space, where endless banks of galaxies roller-coasted away from each other, he felt a change of quality come over his mind. it turned within itself where all the vivid stars became mere floating lights on the surface of a bubble outside. here, within his mind, was deeper space and yet another liberation. his mind hung like a grape about to empty into a vat, which in this larger sense was truly himself. insofar as he, fred williams, was a mind, it was only a skin around the greater liquid, in which indeed he perceived all things held in common.
he was about to throw off the skin and mingle in this condition where he and the magellanic clouds and joe the security trooper's toothpick had a single existence, when he was back in the chair in the office.
his body settled over him again. he felt compressed and imprisoned and robbed. his head turned as if it were on antiquated pulleys and his arms and shoulders were strung together awkwardly.
"it's bad to be back, isn't it? you'll never get used to that. but that was one hell of a dive."
fred williams looked at the other people in the office. there were ten of them and dr. howard sprinnell. three were women, and all except the doctor had large eyes.
that was what you noticed about them, their enormous gentle eyes and their slightly thin faces. the doctor held a mirror up for him to see his own face, and it was much the same.
"they thought we had lost you there for a while," said the doctor. "all divers do that on their first trip out—but you, i'm told, almost joined the lord."
"is that what this is?"
