Card Trick Page 6

you give one back. But if you have none to give, youdon't have to pay. You can't lose. Maybe you can win. All set?"

  "One minute," I demanded. "Shari, is this a fair test?"

  She shrugged. "Why not?"

  "Is it gambling?"

  She smiled faintly, her first sign of relaxation. "Hardly," shesaid.

  "Then you don't mind if I win?"

  She found a laugh this time. "You can _try_," she corrected me.

  "This could be our nest egg," I said.

  She blushed. "If that's a proposal," she said tartly. "The answeris 'no.'"

  "I'll talk to you later," I growled. "When I'm richer!"

  I looked at the back of the card on the desk. Wally was leaningback in his swivel chair and wasn't within four feet of thepasteboards. If there was any hanky-panky, I couldn't see how heplanned to work it.

  "Heart," I said.

  "Why don't you turn it over, Dr. King?" Wally suggested. "Removeany possible chance of manipulation." It was the two of heartsthat Shari turned over. I was a thousand dollars richer.

  I won the next. And the next. My stomach tightened up. Everythousand dollars drove another nail into my coffin--went thatmuch farther to prove I was a snake. Well, I wasn't!

  I missed the fourth one.

  "Cut that out!" Wally snapped at me. I jumped a foot. I _had_tried to miss it.

  With a sickening realization of doom, I called the next fourright.

  "Stop it!" Shari screeched, grabbing at the cards. "I'llshuffle!" she announced. She hid the pasteboards from me with herbody, and took care, in putting them before me on the desk, thatI didn't see the face of the bottom card.

  Her eyes were violet pools of hate and rage and she spoke to me:"_Now_ try it!"

  "Spade!" That made eight straight.

  Even Shari succumbed to the ghastly fascination of it. There hadbeen fifty thousand dollars in the stack of bills Wally had takenfrom his desk. Soon all fifty of the bills were stacked in frontof me. Except for the one time I had tried to, I had nevermissed.

  Lefty stuck his sharp chin at Shari. "I'd call that a fairlyconvincing string," he said. "Will you concede, Dr. King?"

  She gave him an awful mouthful of silence. A pitiless blacknessdescended over my spirit. I looked at the money in front of me.It had been like selling my soul to the Devil. There it was, allthat money. All I'd had to give up was any claim to being ahuman--I wasn't a Normal any more. I was a psi!

  Then Shari was talking, in short gasping bursts, half choking,half sobbing. "No wonder Tex is in a whirl," she said. "I've seensome good illusions, worked by the best light-fingered operatorsin the country, but nothing to compare with this! Just let me seeyou match this charade in _my_ laboratory! With _my_ apparatus!"She meant her playing cards.

  Wally was sweet and reasonable. "You dealt and shuffled most ofthe hands yourself," he reminded her. "I never touched the cards.How could I control them?" He grinned a little more sharply. "Andyou can't call it TK," he went on. "Did you feel the cards moveor twitch or resist you as you shuffled them? It has to be PC."

  She blew her top on that one. It's sickening to see someone youlove goaded past all endurance and break down into screams andwild gestures.

  "Aah!" she cried, shaking her head blindly. "Before I believethat Tex Robertson can feel things that I can't feel, I'll accept_any_ other explanation. What are those cards of yours? Small TVscreens? Is this more electronic hokum?"

  Wally quietly tore one of the cards in two. "Now I understand,"he said. "That's the real reason."

  I looked my surprise at him, and Shari quieted down just alittle. "Relax, Dr. King," he advised her. "The possession of psipowers isn't a mark of moral superiority. Part of the problem inthe Lodge is that psi powers are possessed as often by evil andstupid people as by the good and intelligent. Yes, I know thatyou think you _deserve_ precognition, Dr. King. But that ain'tthe way the ball bounces. You're a Normal, Dr. King, and that'sall you'll ever be."

  He got a face full of fingers for his trouble. Shari leaped toher feet and really slapped him in the kisser. She stormed out ofthere. I started to follow, but a tug at my earlobe signaled meto stop.

  * * * * *

  "Hold on a minute, Tex," Wally said sympathetically. "You're oneof us now."

  I had to go after her. "I love her," I said hopelessly. "I can'tsee her hurt and upset like that. I've got to--"

  But he was shaking his head. "You haven't got a chance," Wallysaid. "She'll never forgive you for having precognition. _That's_why she made the study of psi her life-work. She's wanted PC forherself, and was sure she was pure enough of heart to deserve tohave the power. Well, she doesn't have it, and she'll hate youfor having what she thinks she deserves. Forget her."

  Talk about your cup brimming over! Well, if I had to get used tobeing cut off from the human race, perhaps Shari was the place tostart. That's what happens to superhumans!

  There was one desperate hope. "This wasn't hallucination?" Itried.

  "No, Tex," he said calmly. "This was on the level. Just for fun,"he went on. "Can you do it when there isn't any money riding onit?"

  Reluctantly I came back to his desk and looked down at the backof the top card. "Heart," I said dully. I hit ten in a row forhim. The spade was on top four times, the heart six times.

  "And was that on the level?" I asked.

  He scowled at me and chewed his thin lips. "Yeah," he said.

  "That settles it," I said, sagging back into my seat. "I'm asnake. A rotten PC!"

  "Don't you believe it!" Wally growled, lunging out of his chair.He started to pace back and forth across the office, his chinstuck way out ahead of him as he prowled. "I don't know what youare, Tex," he declared. "But you're no PC!"

  "I'm a Normal after all!" I gasped, feeling a surge of blessedrelief.

  He swiped at the air with a hand. "Don't be silly!" he snapped."You've got a psi power so incredible that--" He whirled on mewhile I died for good.

  "You explain it," he insisted. "After your lovely Dr. King flewout of here, I shuffled the cards ten times under the desk, andyou hit ten in a row, right?"

  "Right." Dismally.

  "I cheated on the shuffle," he told me. "I used TK to make surethat I put the two of spades on top all ten times."

  "No," I insisted. "Six times the heart was on top. You turnedthem over yourself."

  "That's just it," he whispered, leaning toward me. "_I put thatspade on top every time!_ I _did_! But when I turned it over,more than half the time it was a heart. What did you do?"

  "You mean I'm a hallucinator?" I asked. "Look, this is gettingridiculous! I was kidding myself, too?"

  "Nonsense. It was real." His face jerked in surprise. "Youcouldn't!" he gasped, as the idea hit him. "But you did!" hereminded himself. "Wait till Maragon hears this!"

  And then he told me. It couldn't be, I knew. But it _was_. Heproved it to me--or I proved it to us.

  At some stage you have to get excited about it, if it's no morethan a grisly fascination. At that, it was dawn before we couldstop our intoxicated talk. Maragon had been yanked out of bedagain, and when he heard the news, woke up a darned sight fasterthan the night before. Pheola of the race-horse legs joined us,and several other psis as well. Before it was over the GrandMaster had put on a ridiculous piece of regalia and mumbled meinto probationary membership in the Lodge. There was nothingcreepy about the ritual--only about the way I felt.

  I guess, if we hadn't gotten hungry, we'd be there yet. Wally hadone last little wrinkle for me as I started down the corridor forthe elevator.

  "Pheola," he called.

  "Yes, darlin' Billy," she said, coming to his side.

  "How's Tex going to make out with that overeducated iceberg he'shot after?" he asked her. I flinched at the thought of Shari--Iwas getting used to considering her a memory.

  Pheola looked into the corner for a moment. "Oh, yum!" she said,smiling and showing the braces on her teeth. She kissed me. Ithink I was about as startled a
s Wally was. "Just so you let herbe the only Cassandra," she said. "And you call that an iceberg?"She looked at me curiously. "You'd better start eating red meat,Tex," she told me, and would say no more.

  * * * * *

  I had a heck of a time getting Shari on the 'phone. An hourbefore lunch she caved in and accepted my call.

  She looked pale and shaken, even in the black and white of thescreen. "Please," she said. "I've had all I can stand. You stayedthere all night, didn't you?"

  "I'm not a PC, Shari," I said.

  Nothing else would have caught her ear.

  "Not?"

  "Proved it before I left," I said. "I can prove it to you, too."

  "Ridiculous. You can't prove a negative."

  "Well, in a manner of speaking. What I can do is show you how thecard trick was worked."

  I had her hooked. "You mean it? It really _was_ a trick afterall?" she said, slumping.

  "It sure wasn't PC," I said. "Let me show you."

  "At the lab," Shari said. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

  A couple graduate students were there, fooling around with Rhinecards when we arrived, and Shari chased them out withoutceremony. She locked the door behind them. We were to haveprivacy. She didn't bother with her lab coat this time.

  "Show me," she insisted.

  "The apparatus, Shari," I grinned. She gave me a deck of cards,and pulled out the two of hearts and two of spades.

  "We'll do it face-up," I said. "So you can see how it's done!"

  I laid the two cards side by side on her blotter, face up. "Nowput a finger on each one." I directed. "And watch them like ahawk. What card is under your right forefinger?"

  "Heart," Shari said.

  "Wrong," I told her. "Spade."

  They could have heard that shriek clear to Keokuk. Good thing wewere in a sound-proof laboratory.

  I got her calmed down after a while. "It didn't happen!" sheinsisted, clutching at her temples.

  "If you won't holler," I said. "I'll do it again. Remember, it'sjust a phenomenon, like osmosis."

  "It is _not_!" she gasped.

  But I did it for her. Ten times in a row. The cards changed underher fingers without moving.

  "So it's not PC," I said.

  "Oh, Tex, but what _is_ it?"

  "You agree it's real?"

  Shari nodded. "It's real. You can do it, whatever it is. What_is_ it?"

  "TK," I told her. "Telekinesis."

  "Nonsense," she said. "Are you trying to make me believe Iwouldn't have felt the cards move if you'd snapped them out fromunder my fingers? I was pressing hard on them every time."

  "I didn't move the cards," I explained.

  "But you said it was telekinesis!"

  "Sure. I just moved the molecules of pigment in the printing inkand reassembled them in the opposite cards. You didn't expect tofeel molecular movement, did you?"

  "No. Then it really happened?" I nodded. "What an incrediblepower!" she said. A glow of satisfaction spread over me. "Can youreally test this molecular hypothesis?" she asked.

  * * * * *

  I told her of the hours of demonstrations I had made during thenight. "The perception on scanning part of it goes on at somesubconscious level, Shari," I said. "But we had evidence that itcan be made completely conscious."

  She shuddered and hugged her arms to herself. "I hate to say thisto you," she said. "But you're a freak."

  I took a deep breath and smiled. "Unique is the way the GrandMaster puts it," I said, pleased with myself. "He says it hasterrific possibilities." And then it hit me, that deliciousthought that I was among the elect, that I always had been.

  "What possibilities?" Shari demanded, recoiling from me. "Doingcard tricks?"

  "To name a few," I said. "They feel sure I can operate directlyon the molecular chain in genes. This means we can alter heredityto suit ourselves. Next, why not rearrange the DNA molecule in acancer? If you can change the genes in one cell, you can changethem in another. Knock out the ability of cancerous cells toreproduce their own kind and the cancer disappears. A silly one:Maragon says I can be a one-man catalytic cracking station. Pipea liquid through a tube within my TK range and I can make anequilibrium reaction run uphill as the stuff flows past me. Howabout a one-step operation to produce those rare drugs that nowtake forty-nine separate reactions?"

  "This does have a significance for science," she admitted. "Thegenetic part is right down your alley. And it's not PC, is it?"

  "Strictly TK," I told her. "You're the only PC in the family."

  "Family?" She turned pink as I went around the desk after her. "Itold you the answer was 'no.'"

  "I have inside information," I said, pulling her to me. "One ofthe PC's up at the chapter house said this was what wouldhappen."

  She didn't fight my kiss more than a couple seconds. Then it wasa pure case of self-preservation for me. This girl was a tiger.Looks can be awfully deceiving. But she broke away from me.

  "Tex!" she gasped. "Stop, honey! Suppose somebody walks in."

  "A PC like you never gets _that_ kind of surprise," I liedvaliantly.

  "Am I?" she whispered. "Am I really a PC?"

  "That's why you locked the door," I said. "Remember?"

  THE END