The Collection (39 page)
He nodded his head, just like he had before, and darned if
he didn
'
t blur.
Blur
was the best word for it.
"
You blurred,
"
I said. I was
getting a slight headache.
"
I thought so,
"
he said.
"
But
I was using a mirror when I tried it alone, and I thought maybe it was my eyes.
That
'
s why I came over. You want to mix the drinks or shall I?
"
I looked over at the table, and there was all the stuff he'd
ordered. I swallowed a couple of times.
"It's real," Charlie said. He was breathing a
little hard, with suppressed excitement.
"
It works, Hank. It
works.
We
'
ll be rich! We can—
"
Charlie kept on talking, but I got up slowly and went over
to the table. The bottles and lemons and ice were really there. The bottles
gurgled when shaken and the ice was cold.
In a minute I was going to worry about how they got there.
Meanwhile and right now, I needed a drink. I got a couple of glasses out of the
medicine cabinet and the bottle opener out of the file cabinet, and I made two
drinks, about half gin.
Then I thought of something. I asked Charlie,
"
Does
Yehudi want a drink, too?"
Charlie grinned.
"
Two
'
ll be
enough,
"
he told me.
"
To start with, maybe,
"
I
said grimly. I handed him a drink—in a glass—and said,
"
To
Yehudi." I downed mine at a gulp and started mixing another.
Charlie said, "Me, too. Hey, wait a minute.
"
"
Under present circumstances,
"
I said,
"
a minute is a minute too long between drinks. In a
minute I shall wait a minute, but—Hey, why don
'
t we let Yehudi mix
'
em
for us?
"
"
Just what I was going to suggest. Look, I
want to try something. You put this headband on and tell him to. I want to
watch you.
"
"Me?"
"
You,
"
he said.
"
It
can
'
t do any harm, and I want to be sure it works for everybody and
not just for me. It may be that it's attuned merely to my brain. You try it.
"
"
Me?
"
I said.
"You,
"
he told me.
He
'
d taken it off and was holding it out to me,
with the little flat dry cell dangling from it at the end of the wire. I took
it and looked it over. It didn
'
t look dangerous. There couldn
'
t
possibly be enough juice in so tiny a battery to do any harm.
I put it on.
"
Mix us some drinks,
"
I
said, and looked over at the table, but nothing happened.
"You got to nod just as you finish," Charlie said.
"There's a little pendulum affair in the box over your forehead that works
the switch.
"
I said,
"
Mix us two gin bucks. In glasses,
please." And nodded. When my head came up again, there were the drinks,
mixed.
"
Blow me down,
"
I said. And bent over to
pick up my drink.
And there I was on the floor.
Charlie said, "Be careful, Hank., If you lean over
forward, that's the same as nodding. And don't nod or lean just as you say
something you don't mean as an order."
I sat up. "Fan me with a blowtorch," I said.
But I didn
'
t nod. In fact, I didn
'
t
move. When I realized what I
'
d said, I held my neck so rigid that it
hurt, and didn
'
t quite breathe for fear I'd swing that pendulum.
Very gingerly, so as not to tilt it, I reached up and took
off the headband and put it down on the floor.
Then I got up and felt myself all over. There were probably
bruises, but no broken bones. I picked up the drink and drank it. It was a good
drink, but I mixed the next one myself. With three-quarters gin.
With it in my hand, I circled around the headband, not coming
within a yard of it, and sat down on the bed.
"Charlie," I said, "you've got something
there. I don't know what it is, but what are we waiting for?"
"
Meaning?
"
said Charlie.
"
Meaning what any sensible man would mean.
If that darned thing brings anything we ask for, well, let
'
s make it
a party. Which would you rather have, Lili St. Cyr or Esther Williams? I'll
take the other."
He shook his head sadly. "There are limitations, Hank.
Maybe I'd better explain."
"Personally," I said, "I would prefer Lili to
an explanation, but go ahead. Let's start with Yehudi. The only two Yehudis I
know are Yehudi Menuhin, the violinist, and Yehudi, the little man who wasn't
there. Somehow I don't think Menuhin brought us that gin, so—"
"
He didn
'
t. For that matter,
neither did the little man who wasn
'
t there. I was kidding you,
Hank. There isn
'
t any little man who wasn't there."
"
Oh,
"
I said. I repeated it
slowly, or started to.
"
There—isn
'
t any—little—man—who—wasn
'
t—"
I gave up.
"
I think I begin to see," I said. "What
you mean is that there wasn't any little man who isn't here. But then, who's
Yehudi?"
"There isn't any Yehudi, Hank. But the name, the idea,
fitted so well that I called it that for short."
"And what do you call it for long?"
"The automatic autosuggestive subvibratory
superaccelerator."I drank the rest of my drink.
"
Lovely,
"
I said.
"
I
like the Yehudi principle better, though. But there
'
s just one
thing. Who brought us that drink-stuff? The gin and the soda and the so forth?
"
"
I did. And you mixed our second-last, as
well as our last drink. Now do you understand?
"
"
In a word,
"
I said,
"
not
exactly.
"
Charlie sighed.
"
A field is set up between
the temple-plates which accelerates several thousand times, the molecular vibration
and thereby the speed of organic matter—the brain, and thereby the body. The
command given just before the switch is thrown acts as an autosuggestion and
you carry out the order you
'
ve just given yourself. But so rapidly
that no one can see you move; just a momentary blur as you move off and come
back in practically the same instant. Is that clear?
"
"
Sure,
"
I told him.
"
Except
for one thing. Who
'
s Yehudi?
"
I went to the table and started mixing two more drinks.
Seven-eighths gin.
Charlie said patiently,
"
The action is so
rapid that it does not impress itself upon your memory. For some reason the
memory is not affected by the acceleration. The effect—both to the user and to
the observer—is of the spontaneous obedience of a command by ... well, by the
little man who wasn't there.
"
"Yehudi?
"
"Why not?"
'
Why not why not?
"
I asked.
"
Here,
have another drink. It
'
s a bit weak, but so am I. So you got this
gin, huh? Where?
"
"
Probably the nearest tavern.
I don
'
t remember.
"
"
Pay for it?
"
He pulled out his wallet and opened it.
"
I
think there
'
s a fin missing. I probably left it in the register. My
subconscious must be honest.
"
"
But what good is it?
"
I
demanded.
"
I don
'
t mean your subconscious, Charlie,
I mean the Yehudi principle. You could have just as easily bought that gin on
the way here. I could just as easily have mixed a drink and known I was doing
it. And if you
'
re
sure
it can
'
t go bring us Lili
St. Cyr and Esther Williams—
"
"
It can
'
t. Look, it can
'
t
do anything that you yourself can
'
t do. It isn't an it. It's you.
Get that through your head, Hank, and you'll understand."
"
But what good is it?
"
He sighed again.
"
The real purpose of it is
not
to run errands for gin and mix drinks. That was just a demonstration. The
real purpose—
"
"
Wait,
"
I said.
"
Speaking
of drinks, wait. It
'
s a long time since I had one."
I made the table, tacking only twice, and this time I didn
'
t
bother with the soda. I put a little lemon and an ice cube in each glass of
gin.
Charlie tasted his and made a wry face.
I tasted mine.
"
Sour," I said.
"
I
should have left out the lemon. And we better drink them quick before the ice
cubes start to melt or they
'
ll be weak.
"
"
The real purpose," said Charlie,
"
is—
"
'
Wait," I said.
"
You could
be wrong, you know. About the limitations. I
'
m going to put that
headband on and tell Yehudi to bring us Lill and—
"
"
Don
'
t be a sap, Hank. I made the
thing. I know how it works. You can
'
t get Lill St. Cyr or Esther
Williams or Brooklyn Bridge."
"
You
'
re positive?
"
"
Of course.
"
What a sap I was. I believed him. I mixed two more drinks,
using gin and two glasses this time, and then I sat down on the edge of the
bed, which was swaying gently from side to side.
"
All right,
"
I said.
"
I
can take it now. What is the real purpose of it?"
Charlie Swann blinked several times and seemed to be having
trouble bringing his eyes into focus on me. He asked,
"
The real
purpose of what?
"
I enunciated slowly and carefully.
"
Of the
automatonic autosuggestive subvibratory superaccelerator. Yehudi, to me.
"
"Oh, that," said Charlie.
"
That,
"
I said.
'
What
is its real purpose?
"
"
It
'
s like this. Suppose you got
something to do that you
'
ve got to do in a hurry. Or something that
you
'
ve got to do, and don
'
t want to do. You could—
"
"
Like writing a story?
"
I
asked.
"
Like writing a story,
"
he
said,
"
or painting a house, or washing a mess of dishes, or
shoveling the sidewalk, or . . . or doing anything else you've got to do but
don't want to do. Look, you put it on and tell yourself—
"
"
Yehudi,
"
I said.
"
Tell Yehudi to do it, and it
'
s
done. Sure, you do it, but you don't know that you do, so it doesn't hurt. And
it gets done quicker.
"
"
You blur,
"
I said.
He held up his glass and looked through it at the electric
light. It was empty. The glass, not the electric light. He said,
"
You
blur.
"
"Who?"
He didn
'
t answer. He seemed to be swinging, chair
and all, in an arc about a yard long. It made me dizzy to look at him, so I
closed my eyes, but that was worse so I opened them again.
I said, "A story?"
"Sure.
"
"
I got to write a story,
"
I
said,
"
but why should I? I mean, why not let Yehudi do
it?"
I went over and put on the headband. No extraneous remarks
this time, I told myself. Stick to the point.
"Write a story," I said.
I nodded. Nothing happened.
But then I remembered that, as far as I was supposed to
know, nothing was supposed to happen. I walked over to the typewriter desk and
looked.
There was a white sheet and a yellow sheet in the
typewriter, with a carbon between them. The page was about half filled with
typing and then down at the bottom were two words by themselves. I couldn
'
t
read them. I took my glasses off and still I couldn
'
t, so I put them
back on and put my face down within inches of the typewriter and concentrated.
The words were "The End."
I looked over alongside the typewriter and there was a neat,
but small pile of typed sheets, alternate white and yellow.
It was wonderful. I
'
d written a story. If my
subconscious mind had anything on the ball, it might be the best story I'd ever
written.
Too bad I wasn't quite in shape to read it. I'd have to see
an optometrist about new glasses. Or something.