The Power

1
OLSON was cracking up.
He had seen it coming for a whole month now, Tanner thought. Every day Olson had grown more nervous until now the psychologist reminded him of a fine crystal goblet--ping him just right and he would fly into a thousand pieces.
The others had noticed it, too, which meant that he would have to do something about it sooner than he had thought. And no matter how he sliced it, getting rid of Olson was going to be a dirty job. And then again, it might be possible to do something for Olson, though he didn't know what.
He paused for a moment in the doorway of the Science building and dug the bowl of his pipe into his tobaccopouch, forcing the grains of tobacco in with a heavy thumb.
What the hell was eating Olson?
He zippered the pouch shut, then took a last breath of spring air and pushed through the glass doors. The Project laboratories were already filling up with the usual influx of Saturday-morning students, eager to pick up a spare dollar. They flocked in and signed waivers and then the graduate assistants assigned them to the different experiments.
He stopped by the cold room for a moment to watch a volunteer floating in icy water, thin, threadlike wires leading to thermocouples strapped to various parts of his body. They would fish the man out before any damage had been done, he reflected, but then human beings were pretty durable; they could always stand more than they thought they could.
He stared for a while in silence, then walked down the white-washed corridor to the Limits Experimentation lab where Commander Nordlund was supposed to meet him.
Olson.
A pudgy young man, his own age, who hid behind a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses. Brilliant, narrow-minded, and antisocial. The kind for whom a university was always a refuge, but not the kind you expected to flip his wig, either. Something had happened to Olson--but just exactly what?
He would have to do something about it and the other members of the committee would watch him closely to see how he handled it. If he fumbled it ... Well, Van Zandt had the hatchet out for him and would administer the coup de grâce with as much dispatch as possible; you probably wouldn't even see the blood. Tanner was chairman today, would he be flunky tomorrow?
In the Limits lab, Commander Arthur Nordlund was half sitting on a table, cigarette dangling from pale fingers, watching a pain experiment. Nordlund was waiting to talk to him about Olson, Tanner thought, and he couldn't blame the man for it--much as he might dislike Nordlund. There were eightpeople in the United States who knew the limits of human endurance better than anybody else on earth. The government couldn't afford to let any one of them slip his moorings and start to talk.
"How's the world going, Commander?"
Nordlund smiled faintly and managed to look annoyed at the same time. He was slender, the type that looked good in a uniform, with sharp, delicate features and a pencil-thin moustache. He was in his early thirties, not much older than Tanner.
But I can't talk to him, Tanner thought. He's the silk type of personality and I'm the tweed, and never the twain shall meet.
Nordlund pointed a well-manicured finger at the experiment going on in front of him. "What's the point, Professor?"
"We're measuring pain thresholds, seeing how much a man can take." He studied the young man strapped in the chair in front of him. He had been stripped down to his T shirt and pants, then a small, black circle painted on his forehead. A beam of intense, white light had been focused on the circle.
Tanner waved his hand and an assistant at a nearby control board inched a rheostat ahead another notch. The beam of light brightened and a fine halo of static electricity played over the figure in the chair. The man's hair abruptly stood out from his head in a sudden crackle of blue sparks and his face became greasy with sweat.
"Okay, cut it!" The whine of the generator died away and Tanner started to loosen the straps. "How do you feel?"
"I don't think I could have taken any more of that, Professor--it was really cutting me up!" The student wiped his face with his T shirt and turned to Nordlund. "Is the Navy really going to use the results of tests like this, sir?"
Tanner cut in before Nordlund could reply. "They're all necessary in survival research, Chuck." He clapped the boy on the shoulder. "Wash off the lampblack and you can beat it for the day."
After he had gone, Nordlund said, "Since you seem to know all the answers, Professor, mind telling me how that one worked?"
I rubbed him the wrong way. Again. I'm really an ace at getting along with the brass.
"It wasn't too difficult. The white light caused a pain reaction on the spot on his forehead. The static charge measured skin conductivity--it changes under pain conditions."
"How painful was it?"
"About as painful as it gets; almost as bad as the pain somebody has when they pass kidney stones."
"Is that the limit of how much a man can take?"
"Depends on the man. Football players can take more than poets, if you follow me."
Nordlund looked bored. "I could have told the government that myself."
"You mean you would have suspected it but you wouldn't have been sure. The government pays for proof." Tanner started for the door. "Ready?"
Nordlund didn't move. He flicked open a German cigarette lighter that lit on contact with the air. "Before we go in, don't you think we ought to discuss what you're going to do with Olson?"
"I was thinking of having a talk with him."
Nordlund shook his head. "Uh-uh. That won't wash, Professor, it's not enough. The man's in bad shape and I want to know what you're going to do about it and when."
He was going to hate to do it, Tanner thought slowly. Whatever was bothering Olson, firing him from the committee might be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Nordlund read his expression and a slight tinge of authority crept into his voice. "I appreciate your feelings for the individual in this case, Professor. But even though this isn't the hydrogen bomb project, it's still security work. The government can't afford to have a man go to pieces on work like this. It's like a line on board ship--when you see it's frayed and might snap, you replace it."
We must keep everything shipshape at all costs. To hell with Olson. And ten to one the bastard has never been on board ship. Aloud hesaid, "I'll tell him after the meeting. Maybe I can convince him he needs a rest, something like that."
Nordlund stood up. "Handle it any way you please. And while we're at it, what about his sister? She's never struck me as being a stable type, either."
Tanner turned on his heel. "It's a little late to shake up the whole committee, Commander."
"Suit yourself, Professor, I function only in an advisory capacity." His voice changed slightly and Tanner could almost feel the piano wires in it. "But if anything goes wrong, we'll know where the responsibility lies, won't we?"
They got to the seminar room just before the rest of the committee members arrived and Tanner settled back to study them as they filed in.
Patricia Olson--Petey, for short--his secretary and Olson's sister, was first. She might have been pretty but she wore no rouge or lipstick to dress up what she had. She wore her hair pulled back in a bun and plastic-framed glasses with perfectly round, enormous lenses that gave a tarsier-like expression to the slightly flat face behind them. A nose that could be called pert, a perpetual frown, and thick, unplucked eyebrows. Efficient. Calm. And very cold.
The next was Professor Owen Scott, whom campus mythology had built up as another Mr. Chips. A shell of a once-vigorous man, Tanner thought, with a wisp of tattletale gray hair hanging over a lined face. The chairman of Tanner's Anthropology Department but a little too old for chairmanship of the committee.
Marge Hanson of Biology came in giggling at some comment of the man behind her. Auburn haired, a larger and far prettier girl than Petey was, but like Petey, one who insisted on low-heeled shoes and sensible skirts. The type who played tennis and swam and danced all night and woke up early the next morning still thinking the world was a wonderful place to live in.
She caught his eye, said "Hi!" and winked. He caught himself smiling and winked solemnly back.
The wit who had made Marge laugh was Karl Grossman, Physics, a fat, untidy man who never tucked in his shirt securely enough. Then there was Eddy DeFalco, the third member of the Anthropology Department. Tanned, muscled, cocky, and confident.
The girls adore him, Tanner thought. The boyish type they go to bed with when they're off on a vacation and nobody knows them. But why blame Eddy just because he's lucky?
Professor Van Zandt, the head of the Psychology Department, was a thin, nervous man in his middle forties with ice-blue eyes that were unnaturally sharp. There was a little too much padding in his suit-coat shoulders and Tanner had a hunch that beneath the double-breasted coat there was the beginning of a slight paunch.
Beware the Ides of March, for Van will get me if I don't watch out ... .
Bringing up the rear was John Olson, Petey's older brother, nervously moistening his thick lips and hanging on every word that Van Zandt was saying. He looked jumpy and scared.
Why?
They were all different, Tanner thought. And they all had their faults. But it was a good committee. It was probably one of the brainiest that could be assembled at any university in the United States ... .
"If we're all here," Grossman grunted heavily, "why should we delay?"
Tanner nodded to Petey, who started to read the minutes of the last meeting. "Saturday, May twenty-second. The meeting of the Navy Committee for Human Research was called to order ..."
Tanner waited until she had finished reading the minutes, then made a show of fumbling with his pipe, wondering briefly how many of them knew it was Young Man with Prop.
"During the last year," he started easily, "we've been doing primarily survival research--why some men live and some men die under different stresses and environments. Under battle conditions, certain men are smarter, more efficient, and morecapable than others. Having determined the qualities necessary for survival, we've been trying to figure out how the successful ones, the ones who do survive, get that way, what factors play a part."
He champed a little harder on his pipe and squinted through the smoke. "Hunting for people with these characteristics has been a little like hunting for a needle in a haystack, so John Olson suggested a questionnaire--where you can cover a lot of people quickly at a small cost. Those who showed promise on the questionnaire could be given more exhaustive physical tests later. As you recall, the questionnaire we drew up covered an individual's past medical history, psychological outlook, family background, and heredity--all the items we had agreed were important, and many of which can hardly be tested in a physical sense anyway." He smiled cautiously. "We all agreed to take the test ourselves last week--sort of as a dry run. None of us signed our names, for which I'm sorry. John's compiled the results and I must admit there were some pretty fantastic answers on one of them."
DeFalco looked curious. "Like what?"
Tanner held up one of the questionnaires. "The person who filled it out, if we take it at face value, has never been sick, never had any serious personal problems, never worried, and has an IQ close to the limits of measurability. His parents came from two distinct racial stocks and for what it might be worth, his father was a water dowser and his mother a faith healer."
There was a ripple of laughter around the table and even Professor Scott was grinning. Tanner put the questionnaire aside. It had been good for a chuckle at least.
"If there are no more suggestions, I'll have Petey send the form to the printers, then ..."
"Professor Tanner!"
He glanced down at the end of the table. Olson's pudgy face was covered with a light sheen of sweat that glistened in the sunlight coming through the windows.
"Do you think that questionnaire was on the level?"
Tanner felt annoyed. If Olson had had doubts about it, why hadn't he asked him about it in private, rather than bring it up now?
"You mean, did I fill it out as a gag? No, I didn't--but obviously somebody did."
Olson wet his lips again. "Are you so sure of that?"
There was an uneasy silence, then Professor Scott snorted, "Rubbish!"
Olson didn't give ground. "Maybe there's something to it. I think we ought to ... look into it."
Nordlund edged into the conversation. "If it's on the level ..."
"It isn't," Tanner said curtly.
"But if it was?"
One layman in the crowd and you spent the whole damned afternoon explaining the ABCs.
"If it was on the level it would mean the person who filled it out was a very unusual human being, perhaps a very superior one. But I hardly think we should take it seriously. And there are a lot of important things to cover today."
Olson's voice rose to a nervous squeak. "Maybe you don't want to admit what it means, Tanner!"
They were all staring at Olson now. His face was damp and his eyes a little too wide. The eyes of a man scared half to death, Tanner thought clinically. Then he could feel the sweat start on his own brow. He had a hunch that Olson was going to blow his stack right in the committee room.
He tried to head him off, to get the frightened man to talk it out. "All right, John, just what do you think it means?"
"I think it means the human race is all washed up!"
Tanner glanced over at the Navy man and could see that Olson's outburst was going over like a lead balloon with Nordlund; there was a look of shocked surprise on the other faces. A moment of embarrassed silence followed, then Petey, looking as if she were about to cry, said, "John, I think we better ..."
Olson didn't look at her. "Shut up, Pat."
Nobody said anything. They were going to let him handleit, Tanner thought uneasily. It was his baby. He held up the questionnaire. "Who filled this one out?"
Another strained silence, one where a slight, uneasy movement in a chair or an embarrassed fumbling with papers sounded very loud.
"Don't you think we ought to skip this?" Van Zandt said impatiently. "I don't see how it's getting us any place."
Tanner flushed. He was trying to humor Olson and Van Zandt knew it but then, this was the academic jungle. Van had won his spurs a long time ago, but he still liked to keep in practice.
He dropped the questionnaire. "All right, we'll forget it for now." He nodded to Olson. "See me after the meeting, John, and we'll talk about it then."
"You're scared!" Olson screamed in a hysterical voice. "You don't want to believe it!"
Tanner could feel the hair prickle at the back of his neck. Take the survival tests and couple them with an inferiority complex and maybe you ended up with a superman fetish. Something half akin to religion--a willingness and desire to believe in something greater than yourself. But why was Olson so frightened about it?
Olson was trembling. "Well? What are you going to do about it?"
It was like watching an automobile accident. It repelled you but you couldn't tear your eyes away. There was a sort of horrible fascination to this, too--the sight of a man going to pieces. He waited for Van Zandt to say something, to squelch his younger colleague with a few broadsides of logic. But Van said nothing and only stared at Olson with a curious, speculative look in his eyes. Nobody knew Olson better than Van Zandt, Tanner thought, but for reasons of his own, Van was letting John dig his own grave and wasn't going to argue him out of it.
He was sweating. There was nothing left to do but go along with Olson. He turned to Marge. "Do you have a pin?"
She found one in her purse and handed it over. He stood abook on end on the table, embedding the head of the pin between the pages so the point projected out about an inch. Then he tore off a tiny fragment of newspaper, folded it into a small, umbrella shape, and placed it on the pin point.
"Maybe we can prove something this way, John. I'm assuming that our ... superman ... has mental powers such that he could make this paper revolve on the pin merely by concentrating on it. The paper is light, it's delicately balanced, and it wouldn't take much to move it. Okay?"
There was a round of snickers but Olson nodded and Tanner felt relieved. It was the only thing he could think of on the spur of the moment. A kid's game.
"Anybody care to try?"
Marge said, "I'm willing if everybody else is."
The others nodded and she stared intently at the pin. The paper hung there quietly, not stirring. After a minute she leaned back, holding her hands to her head. "All I'm doing is getting a headache."
"Van?"
Van Zandt nodded and glared at the paper umbrella. If sheer will power could do it, Tanner thought, Van Zandt was his man. But the paper didn't move. Van Zandt leered. "My superior talents apparently aren't in evidence this morning."
Olson himself and then DeFalco tried and failed. Nordlund stared intently at the pin and then looked bored when the paper didn't even tremble. It was Professor Scott's turn next.
The paper hat tilted slightly.
There was a thick, frightened silence. The condescending attitude had vanished like a snap of the fingers and Tanner could feel the tenseness gather in the room. All eyes were riveted on the suddenly trembling old man. "My God, I didn't ..."
"Very simply explained," Grossman said quickly. "A door slammed down the hall, though I doubt that any of you heard it in your concentration. I am sure that a slight draft would be enough to affect our little piece of paper."
The old man looked enormously relieved and some of the tenseness drained away. Grossman tried it next, with no result.
Tanner shrugged. "Well, John?"
Olson was suddenly on his feet, leaning his knuckles on the table and glaring down the length of it. "He won't admit it, he hasn't got the guts! If he wouldn't admit he had filled out the questionnaire, he wouldn't show himself in a test like this!" His pudgy face was red. "He hasn't got the nerve, Tanner, he's hiding!"
What the hell do you do in a case like this? Tanner thought. They were babying a neurotic but they had gone this far and it wouldn't hurt to go a little further. He'd play along just once more. I feel embarrassed for the poor guy. And it's partly my fault; I should have done something about it a week ago.
"We'll try it again, only this time all together." Olson's superman could still hide and yet reveal his powers--if he wanted to take on Olson's dare. When nothing happened, maybe then John would be convinced. Except that you could never dissuade a neurotic when they wanted to believe in something ... .
He nodded to the others.
On the street outside there were the faint sounds of automobile traffic and the muted vibrations of conversation. Some place far away tires screeched. Equally remote were the indignant complaints of a housewife, shortchanged at a sidewalk fruit stand. In the room itself, there were no sounds, not even the muffled sighs of breathing. And there was no motion, other than that of the small motes of dust floating in the bars of sunlight that streamed through the window.
And the tiny paper umbrella which trembled, tilted, and then spun madly.
Copyright © 1956 by Frank M. Robinson. Renewed © 1984 by Frank M. Robinson. Revised version copyright © 1999 Frank M. Robinson.