Time for the Stars Read online

  Mr. Geeking answered, “I can’t debate the merits of such matters, Mr. Bartlett. I’m merely an employee.”

  “And I’m paying your salary, indirectly and unwillingly, but paying it nevertheless.”

  I wanted to get into the argument but I could feel Pat holding back. It did not matter; Mr. Geeking shrugged and said, “If so, I thank you. But all I came here for was to ask your twin boys to take a few tests and answer some questions. The tests are harmless and the results will be kept confidential.”

  “What are you trying to find out?”

  I think Mr. Geeking was telling the truth when he answered, “I don’t know. I’m merely a field agent; I’m not in charge of the project.”

  Pat cut in. “I don’t see why not, Dad. Do you have the tests in your briefcase, Mr. Geeking?”

  “Now, Patrick—”

  “It’s all right, Dad. Let’s see the tests, Mr. Geeking.”

  “Uh, that’s not what we had in mind. The Project has set up local offices in the TransLunar Building. The tests take about half a day.”

  “All the way downtown, huh, and a half day’s time…what do you pay?”

  “Eh? The subjects are asked to contribute their time in the interests of science.”

  Pat shook his head. “Sorry, Mr. Geeking. This is exam week…and my brother and I have part-time school jobs, too.”

  I kept quiet. Our exams were over, except Analysis of History, which is a snap course involving no math but statistics and pseudospatial calculus, and the school chem lab we worked in was closed for examinations. I was sure Dad did not know these things, or he would have butted in; Dad can shift from prejudice to being a Roman judge at the drop of a hint.

  Pat stood up, so I stood up. Mr. Geeking sat tight. “Arrangements can be made,” he said evenly.

  Pat stuck him as much as we made for a month of washing bottles in the lab, just for one afternoon’s work—then upped the ante when it was made clear that we would be obliged to take the tests together (as if we would have done it any other way!). Mr. Geeking paid without a quiver, in cash, in advance.

  CHAPTER II

  THE NATURAL LOGARITHM OF TWO

  I never in my life saw so many twins as were waiting on the fortieth floor of the TransLunar Building the following Wednesday afternoon. I don’t like to be around twins, they make me think I’m seeing double. Don’t tell me I’m inconsistent; I never saw the twins I am part of—I just saw Pat.

  Pat felt the same way; we had never been chummy with other twins. He looked around and whistled. “Tom, did you ever see such a mess of spare parts?”

  “Never.”

  “If I were in charge, I’d shoot half of them.” He hadn’t spoken loud enough to offend anyone; Pat and I used a prison-yard whisper that no one else could hear although we never had trouble understanding it. “Depressing, isn’t it?”

  Then he whistled softly and I looked where he was looking. Twins of course, but this was a case of when once is good, twice is better. They were red-headed sisters, younger than we were but not too young—sixteen, maybe—and cute as Persian kittens.

  Those sisters had the effect on us that a light has on a moth. Pat whispered, “Tom, we owe it to them to grant them a little of our time,” and headed toward them, with me in step. They were dressed in fake Scottish outfits, green plaid which made their hair flame like bonfires and to us they looked as pretty as a new fall of snow.

  And just as chilly. Pat got halfway through his opening speech when he trailed off and shut up; they were staring through him. I was blushing and the only thing that kept it from being a major embarrassing incident was a loudspeaker that commenced to bray:

  “Attention, please! You are requested to report to the door marked with your surname initial.” So we went to door A-to-D and the red-headed sisters headed toward the other end of the alphabet without ever having seen us at all. As we queued up Pat muttered, “Is there egg on my chin? Or have they taken a vow to be old maids?”

  “Probably both,” I answered. “Anyhow, I prefer blondes.” This was true, since Maudie was a blonde. Pat and I had been dating Maudie Kauric for about a year—going steady you could call it, though in my case it usually meant that I was stuck with Maudie’s chum Hedda Staley, whose notion of dazzling conversation was to ask me if I didn’t think Maudie was the cutest thing ever? Since this was true and unanswerable, our talk did not sparkle.

  “Well, so do I,” Pat agreed, without saying which blonde—Maudie was the only subject on which we were reticent with each other. “But I have never had a closed mind.” He shrugged and added cheerfully, “Anyhow, there are other possibilities.”

  There certainly were, for of the hundreds of twins present maybe a third were near enough our age not to be out of the question and half of them, as near as I could tell without counting, were of the sex that turns a mere crowd into a social event. However, none came up to the high standards of the redheads, so I began looking over the crowd as a whole.

  The oldest pair I saw, two grown men, seemed to be not older than the early thirties and I saw one set of little girls about twelve—they had their mother in tow. But most of them were within a loud shout of twenty. I had concluded that “Genetics Investigations” was picking its samples by age groups when I found that we were at the head of the line and a clerk was saying, “Names, please?”

  For the next two hours we were passed from one data collector to another, being fingerprinted, giving blood samples, checking “yes” or “no” to hundreds of silly questions that can’t be answered “yes” or “no.” The physical examination was thorough and involved the usual carefully planned nonsense of keeping a person standing in bare feet on a cold floor in a room five degrees too chilly for naked human skin while prodding the victim and asking him rude personal questions.

  I was thoroughly bored and was not even amused when Pat whispered that we should strip the clothes off the doctor now and prod him in the belly and get the nurse to record how he liked it? My only pleasant thought was that Pat had stuck them plenty for their fun. Then they let us get dressed and ushered us into a room where a rather pretty woman sat behind a desk. She had a transparency viewer on her desk and was looking at two personality profiles superimposed on it. They almost matched and I tried to sneak a look to see where they did not. But I could not tell Pat’s from my own and anyhow I’m not a mathematical psychologist.

  She smiled and said, “Sit down, boys. I’m Doctor Arnault.” She held up the profiles and a bunch of punched cards and added, “Perfect mirror twins, even to dextrocardia. This should be interesting.”

  Pat tried to look at the papers. “What’s our I.Q. this time, Doctor?”

  “Never mind.” She put the papers down and covered them, then picked up a deck of cards. “Have you ever used these?”

  Of course we had, for they were the classic Rhine test cards, wiggles and stars and so forth. Every high school psychology class has a set and a high score almost always means that some bright boy has figure out a way to cold-deck the teacher. In fact Pat had worked out a simple way to cheat when our teacher, with a tired lack of anger, split us up and made us run tests only with other people—whereupon our scores dropped to the limits of standard error. So I was already certain that Pat and I weren’t ESP freaks and the Rhine cards were just another boring test.

  But I could feel Pat become attentive. “Keep your ears open, kid,” I heard him whisper, “and we’ll make this interesting.” Dr. Arnault did not hear him, of course.

  I wasn’t sure we ought to but I knew if he could manage to signal to me I would not be able to refrain from fudging the results. But I need not have worried; Dr. Arnault took Pat out and returned without him. She was hooked by microphone to the other test room but there was no chance to whisper through it; it was hot only when she switched it on.

  She started right in. “First test run in twenty seconds, Mabel,” she said into the mike and switched it off, then turned to me. “Look at the cards as I turn t
hem,” she said.

  “Don’t try, don’t strain. Just look at them.”

  So I looked at the cards. This went on with variations for maybe an hour. Sometimes I was supposed to be receiving, sometimes sending. As far as I was concerned nothing happened, for they never told us our scores.

  Finally Dr. Arnault looked at a score sheet and said, “Tom, I want to give you a mild injection. It won’t hurt you and it’ll wear off before you go home. Okay?”

  “What sort?” I said suspiciously.

  “Don’t fret; it is harmless. I don’t want to tell you or you might unconsciously show the reaction you expected.”

  “Uh, what does my brother say? Does he get one, too?”

  “Never mind, please. I’m asking you.”

  I still hesitated. Dad did not favor injections and such unless necessary; he had made a fuss over our taking part in the encephalitis program. “Are you an M.D.?” I asked.

  “No, my degree is in science. Why?”

  “Then how do you know it’s harmless?”

  She bit her lip, then answered, “I’ll send for a doctor of medicine, if you prefer.”

  “Uh, no, I guess that won’t be necessary.” I was remembering something that Dad had said about the sleeping sickness shots and I added, “Does the Long Range Foundation carry liability insurance for this?”

  “What? Why, I think so. Yes, I’m sure they do.” She looked at me and added, “Tom, how does a boy your age get to be so suspicions?”

  “Huh? Why ask me? You’re the psychologist, ma’am. Anyhow,” I added, “if you had sat on as many tacks as I have, you’d be suspicions too.”

  “Mmm…never mind. I’ve been studying for years and I still don’t know what the younger generation is coming to. Well, are you going to take the injection?”

  “Uh, I’ll take it—since the LRF carries insurance. Just write out what it is you are giving me and sign it.”

  She got two bright pink spots in her cheeks. But she took out stationery, wrote on it, folded it into an envelope and sealed it. “Put it in your pocket,” she said briskly. “Don’t look at it until the experiments are over. Now bare your left forearm.”

  As she gave me the shot she said sweetly, “This is going to sting a little… I hope.” It did.

  She turned out all the lights except the light in the transparency viewer. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry if I seemed vexed. I want you to relax and be comfortable.” She came over and did something to the chair I was in; it opened out gently until I was practically lying in a hammock. “Relax and don’t fight it. If you find yourself getting sleepy, that is to be expected.” She sat down and all I could see was her face, illuminated by the viewer. She was awfully pretty, I decided, even though she was too old for it to matter…at least thirty, maybe older. And she was nice, too. She spoke for a few minutes in her gentle voice but I don’t remember exactly what she said.

  I must have gone to sleep, for next it was pitch dark and Pat was right there by me, although I hadn’t noticed the light go out nor the door being opened. I started to speak when I heard him whisper:

  “Tom, did you ever see such nonsensical rigamarole?”

  I whispered back, “Reminds me of the time we were initiated into the Congo Cannibals.”

  “Keep your voice down; they’ll catch on.”

  “You’re the one who is talking too loud: Anyhow, who cares? Let’s give ’em the Cannibal war whoop and scare ’em out of their shoes.”

  “Later, later. Right now my girl friend Mabel wants me to give you a string of numbers. So we’ll let them have their fun first. After all, they’re paying for it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Point six nine three one.”

  “That’s the natural logarithm of two.”

  “What did you think it was? Mabel’s telephone number? Shut up and listen. Just repeat the numbers back. Three point one four one five nine…”

  It went on quite a while. Some were familiar numbers like the first two; the rest may have been random or even Mabel’s phone number, for all of me. I got bored and was beginning to think about sticking in a war whoop on my own when Dr. Arnault said quietly, “End of test run. Both of you please keep quiet and relax for a few minutes. Mabel, I’ll meet you in the data comparison room.” I heard her go out, so I dropped the war whoop notion and relaxed. Repeating all those numbers in the dark had made me dopey anyhow—and as Uncle Steve says, when you get a chance to rest, do so; you may not get another chance soon.

  Presently I heard the door open again, then I was blinking at bright lights. Dr. Arnault said, “That’s all today, Tom…and thank you very much. We want to see you and your brother at the same time tomorrow.”

  I blinked again and looked around. “Where’s Pat? What does he say?”

  “You’ll find him in the outer lobby. He told me that you could come tomorrow. You can, can’t you?”

  “Uh, I suppose so, if it’s all right with him.” I was feeling sheepish about the trick we had pulled, so I added, “Dr. Arnault? I’m sorry I annoyed you.”

  She patted my hand and smiled. “That’s all right, You were right to be cautious and you were a good subject. You should see the wild ones we sometimes draw. See you tomorrow.”

  Pat was waiting in the big room where we had seen the redheads. He fell into step and we headed for the drop. “I raised the fee for tomorrow,” he whispered smugly.

  “You did? Pat, do you think we should do this? I mean, fun is fun, but if they ever twig that we are faking, they’ll be sore. They might even make us pay back what they’ve already paid us.”

  “How can they? We’ve been paid to show up and take tests. We’ve done that. It’s up to them to rig tests that can’t be beaten. I could, if I were doing it.”

  “Pat, you’re dishonest and crooked, both.” I thought about Dr. Arnault…she was a nice lady. “I think I’ll stay home tomorrow.”

  I said this just as Pat stepped off the drop. He was ten feet below me all the way down and had forty stories in which to consider his answer. As I landed beside him he answered by changing the subject. “They gave you a hypodermic?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you think to make them sign an admission of liability, or did you goof?”

  “Well, sort of.” I felt in my pocket for the envelope; I’d forgotten about it. “I made Dr. Arnault write down what she was giving us.”

  Pat reached for the envelope. “My apologies, maestro. With my brains and your luck we’ve got them where we want them.” He started to open the envelope. “I bet it was neopentothal—or one of the barbiturates.”

  I snatched it back. “That’s mine.”

  “Well, open it,” he answered, “and don’t obstruct traffic. I want to see what dream drug they gave us.”

  We had come out into the pedestrian level and his advice did have merit. Before opening it I led us across the change strips onto the fast-west strip and stepped behind a wind break. As I unfolded the paper Pat read over my shoulder:

  “‘Long Range Fumbling, and so forth—injections given to subjects 7L435 & -6 T.P. Bartlett & P.H. Bartlett (iden-twins)—each one-tenth c.c. distilled water raised to normal salinity,’ signed ‘Doris Arnault, Sc.D., for the Foundation.’ Tom, we’ve been hoaxed!”

  I stared at it, trying to fit what I had experienced with what the paper said. Pat added hopefully, “Or is this the hoax? Were we injected with something else and they didn’t want to admit it?”

  “No,” I said slowly. I was sure Dr. Arnault wouldn’t write down “water” and actually give us one of the sleeping drugs—she wasn’t that sort of person. “Pat, we weren’t drugged…we were hypnotized.”

  He shook his head. “Impossible. Granting that I could be hypnotized, you couldn’t be. Nothing there to hypnotize. And I wasn’t hypnotized, comrade. No spinning lights, no passes with the hands—why, my girl Mabel didn’t even stare in my eyes. She just gave me the shot and told
me to take it easy and let it take effect.”

  “Don’t be juvenile, Pat. Spinning lights and such is for suckers. I don’t care whether you call it hypnotism or salesmanship. They gave us hypos and suggested that we would be sleepy—so we fell asleep.”

  “So I was sleepy! Anyhow that wasn’t quite what Mabel did. She told me not to go to sleep, or if I did, to wake up when she called me. Then when they brought you in, she—”

  “Wait a minute. You mean when they moved you back into the room I was in—”

  “No, I don’t mean anything of the sort. After they brought you in, Mabel gave me this list of numbers and I read them to you and—”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Pat, you’re mixed up. How could you read them in pitch darkness? She must have read them to you. I mean—” I stopped, for I was getting mixed up myself. Well, she could have read to him from another room. “Were you wearing headphones?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? Anyhow, it wasn’t pitch dark, not after they brought you in. She held up the numbers on a board that was rigged with a light of its own, enough to let me see the numbers and her hands.”

  “Pat, I wish you wouldn’t keep repeating nonsense. Hypnotized or not, I was never so dopey that I couldn’t notice anything that happened. I was never moved anywhere; they probably wheeled you in without disturbing you. And the room we were in was pitch dark, not a glimmer.”

  Pat did not answer right away, which wasn’t like him. At last he said, “Tom, are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure!”

  He sighed. “I hate to say this, because I know what you will say. But what are you supposed to do when none of your theories fits?”

  “Huh? Is this a quiz? You throw ’em away and try a new one. Basic methodology, freshman year.”

  “Okay, just slip this on for size, don’t mind the pattern: Tom, my boy, brace yourself—we’re mind readers.”