The Big Fix
She was not halluscening. She was watching me. And when I made contact
with her, she radiated a sort of overall aura of amusement-emotion,
covered up her conscious deliberation, and blocked any probing by
directing me mentally, "Make it two, Wally."
I built her one, handed it to her, and then said, "Folks these days sure
have forgotten how to use doorbells."
"If you don't want people coming in, Wally, you should restrict your
mindwarden a little. It's set to admit anybody who does not approach the
door with vigorous intent to commit grave physical harm. When the thing
radiates 'Come in and relax' is a girl supposed to stand outside
twiggling on the doorbell?"
I dropped the subject thinking that maybe I shouldn't have brought it up
in the first place. It's one that can't be answered by logic, whereas a
firm emotional statement of like or dislike stops all counter-argument
and I'd made the mistake of questioning my own judgment.
So I eyed her and said, "Tomboy, you did not come here to indulge in
small talk."
"No," she admitted. "I'm here to keep track of you, Wally."
"Oh?"
"Our great and good friend wants me to make notes on how clever you are
at arranging things."
"You mean Barcelona sent you."
"That's about it."
I looked at her askance. "And how long are you going to stay?"
She smiled. "Until Flying Heels, Moonbeam, and Lady Grace come across
the finish line One, Two, and Three at Churchill Downs on Derby Day."
I grinned at her. "Considering that trio of turtles, Tomboy, it may be
for years and it may be forever."
She held up her glass in a sort of a toast. "Or," she said, "'Til death
do us part!"
A little bitterly I said, "One might think that Barcelona doesn't trust
me."
She replied, "It isn't a matter of trust. Barcelona holds you among his
very closest friends. He is well aware of the fact that you would do
anything for him, that you prize his friendship so highly yourself that
you would go to the most desperate lengths to keep it firm and true. Yet
he realizes that the simple desire he has recently expressed does place
you in a delicate mental attitude. You are likely to feel that he
shouldn't have expressed this desire since you feel obligated to fulfill
it. He feels that maybe this obligation to maintain friendship at all
costs may cause resentment. Since Barcelona does not want you to resent
him, he sent me to be your companion in the hope that I might get some
forewarning should your friendship for him begin to weaken."
* * * * *
Just why in this day and age she didn't just come out and say--or
think--flatly that she was there to keep me in line, I don't know. But
there she was, talking all around the main point and delivering the
information by long-winded inference.
Even so, without her Pittsburgh stogie, Tomboy Taylor was a mighty
attractive dish, and I knew that she could also be a bright and
interesting conversationalist if she wanted to be. Under other
circumstances I might have enjoyed the company, but it was no pleasure
to know that every grain of her one hundred and fourteen pounds
avoirdupois was Barcelona's Personal Property. At that moment I realized
that I was not too much concerned with what Barcelona's reaction might
be. Instead, I was wishing that things were different so that any
activity between us would be for our own personal gain and pleasure
rather than the order of or the fight against one Joseph Barcelona.
There was one consolation. Tomboy Taylor had not come equipped with a
box of Pittsburgh stogies with which to make my appreciation of beauty
throw up its lunch.
She said, sweetly, "The better to ensnare you, my dear."
But as she spoke, for just a moment her thick woolly mind shield thinned
out enough for me to catch a strange, puzzled grasp for understanding.
As if for the first time she had been shown how admiration for physical
attractiveness could be both honest and good. That my repugnant attitude
over her Pittsburgh stogies was not so much based upon the spoiling of
beauty by the addition of ugliness, but the fact that the act itself
cheapened her in my eyes.
Then she caught me peeking and clamped down a mind screen that made the
old so-called "Iron Curtain" resemble a rusty sieve.
"I'm the one that's supposed to keep track of you, you remember," she
said, once more covering up and leaping mentally to the attack.
"I'll remember," I said. "But will you tell me something?"
"Maybe," she said in a veiled attitude.
"Is your boy friend really interested in cleaning up, or is he
interested in watching me squirm out of a trap he set for me?"
"In the first place," she said, "I may have been seen in Barcelona's
presence but please remember that my association with Mr. Joseph
Barcelona has always been strictly on a financial plane. This eliminates
the inference contained under the phrase 'Boy Friend.' Check?"
"O.K., Tomboy, if that's the--"
"That's not only the way I want it," she said, "but that's the way it
always has been and always will be. Second, I have been getting tired of
this nickname 'Tomboy'. If we're going to be racked this close together,
you'll grate on my nerves less if you use my right name. It's just plain
'Nora' but I'd like to hear it once in a while."
I nodded soberly. I held out a hand but she put her empty highball glass
in it instead of her own little paw. I shrugged and mixed and when I
returned and handed it to her I said, "I'll make you a deal. I'll call
you 'Nora' just so long as you maintain the manners and attitude of a
female, feminine, lady-type woman. I'll treat you like a woman, but
you've got to earn it. Is that a deal?"
She looked at me, her expression shy and as defenseless as a
bruiser-type caught reading sentimental poetry. I perceived that I had
again touched a sensitive spot by demanding that she be more than
physically spectacular. Her defenses went down and I saw that she really
did not know the answer to my question. I did. It had to do with
something that only the achievement of a God-like state--or extreme old
age--would change.
This time it was not so much the answer to why little boys walk high
fences in front of little girls. It had much more to do with the result
of what happens between little boys when the little girl hides her
baseball bat and straightens the seams of her stockings when one certain
little boy comes into sight. Joseph Barcelona did not admire my ability.
He had, therefore, caused me to back myself into a corner where I'd be
taken down a peg, shown-up as a second-rater--with the little girl as a
witness.
And why had Barcelona been so brash as to send the little girl into my
company in order for her to witness my downfall?
Let me tell you about Joe Barcelona.
* * * * *
Normally honest citizens often complain that Barcelona is living high
off'n the hawg instead of slugging it out in residence at Stateville,
Joliet, Illinois.
With their straight-line approach to simple logic, these citizens argue
that the advent of telepathy should have rendered the falsehood
impossible, and that perception should enable anybody with half a talent
to uncover hidden evidence. Then since Mr. Joseph Barcelona is
obviously not languishing in jail, it is patent that the police are not
making full use of their talented extrasensory operators, nor the
evidence thus collected.
And then after having argued thus, our upstanding citizen will fire off
a fast thought to his wife and ask her to invite the neighbors over that
evening for a game of bridge.
None of these simple-type of logicians seem to be aware of the rules for
bridge or poker that were in force prior to extrasensory training
courses. Since no one recognized psionics, the rules did not take
telepathy, perception, manipulation, into any consideration whatsoever.
Psionics hadn't done away with anything including the old shell game.
All psionics had done was to make the game of chance into a game of
skill, and made the game of skill into a game of talent that required
better control and longer training in order to gain full proficiency.
In Barcelona's case, he had achieved his own apparent immunity by
surrounding himself with a number of hirelings who drew a handsome
salary for sitting around thinking noisy thoughts. Noisy thoughts,
jarring thoughts, stunts like the concentration-interrupter of playing
the first twenty notes of Brahms' Lullaby in perfect pitch and timing
and then playing the twenty-first note in staccato and a half-tone flat.
Making mental contact with Barcelona was approximately the analogue of
eavesdropping upon the intimate cooing of a lover sweet-talking his lady
in the middle of a sawmill working on an order three days late under a
high priority and a penalty clause for delayed delivery.
People who wonder how Barcelona can think for himself with all of that
terrific mental racket going on do not know that Barcelona is one of
those very rare birds who can really concentrate to the whole exclusion
of any distraction short of a vigorous threat to his physical
well-being.
And so his trick of sending Nora Taylor served a threefold purpose. It
indicated his contempt for me. It removed Nora from his zone of
interference so that she could really witness firsthand my mental
squirmings as I watched my own comeuppance bearing down on me. It also
gave him double the telepathic contact with me and my counter-plans--if
any.
In the latter, you see, Barcelona's way of collecting outside
information was to order a temporary cease-fire of the mental noise
barrage and then he'd sally forth like a one-man mental commando raid to
make a fast grab for what he wanted. Since the best of telepaths cannot
read a man's opinion of prunes when he's thinking of peanuts, it is
necessary for someone to be thinking of the subject he wants when he
makes his raid. Having two in the know and interested doubled his chance
for success.
There was also the possibility that Barcelona might consider his
deliberate "Leak" to Gimpy Gordon ineffective. Most sensible folks are
disinclined to treat Gimpy's delusions of grandeur seriously despite the
truth of the cliche that states that a one-to-one correspondence does
indeed exist between the perception of smoke and the existence of
pyrotic activity. Nora Taylor would add some certification to the rumor.
One thing simply had to be: There must be no mistake about placing
information in Lieutenant Delancey's hands so as to create the other jaw
of the pincers that I was going to be forced to close upon myself.
* * * * *
I tried a gentle poke in the general direction of Barcelona and found
that the mental noise was too much to stand. I withdrew just a bit and
closed down the opening until the racket was no more than a mental
rumor, and I waited. I hunched that Barcelona would be curious to know
how his contact-girl was making out, and might be holding a cease-fire
early in this phase of the operation. I was right.
The noise diminished with the suddenness of turning off a mental switch,
and as it stopped I went in and practically popped Barcelona on the
noodle with:
"How-de-do, Joseph."
He recoiled at the unexpected thrust, but came back with: "Wally Wilson!
Got a minute?"
I looked at the calendar, counted off the days to Derby Day in my mind
and told him that I had that long--at the very least and probably much,
much longer.
"Thinks you!"
"Methinks," I replied.
"Wally boy," he returned, "you aren't playing this very smart."
"Suppose you tell me how you'd be playing it," I bounced back at him.
"Tell you how I have erred?"
He went vague on me. "If I were of a suspicious nature, I would begin to