Early the following evening, Conlon and Whittaker arrived at Gerold Massey's house, situated at the end of a leafy cul-de-sac on the north side of Georgetown. Although lofty, spacious, and solidly built, it was an untidy and in some ways inelegant heap of a house—a composition of after-thoughts, with walls and gables projecting in all directions, roofs meeting at strange angles, and a preposterous chateau-style turret adorning the upper part of one corner. The interior was a warren of interconnecting rooms and passages, with cubbyholes and stairways in unexpected places, old-fashioned sash windows, and lots of wood carving and paneling. The part of the cellars not dedicated to storing the junk that Massey had been accumulating through life contained a workshop-lab which he used mainly for developing psychological testing equipment and perfecting new magic props, while the floors above included, in addition to the usual living space, an overflowing library, a computer room, and accommodations for his regular flow of short-term guests, who varied from students temporarily out on the street to fellow magicians and visiting professors from abroad.
Contrary to widespread belief, including that prevalent among many scientists, scientific qualifications were largely irrelevant to assessing reliably the claims of alleged miracle-workers, mind readers, psychics, and the like. Scientists could be fooled by deliberate trickery or unconscious self-deception as easily as the average layman and, sometimes, more easily if competence and prestige earned in other fields were allowed to produce delusions of infallibility. The world of natural phenomena that was properly the object of the scientist's expertise could be baffling at times, but it never resorted to outright dishonesty and always yielded rational answers in the end. Theorems were provable; calculations, checkable; observations, repeatable; and assumptions, verifiable. Things in the natural world meant what they said. But that was seldom the case in the world of human affairs, where illogic operated freely and deception was the norm. To catch a thief one should set a thief; the adage tells; and to catch a conjuror, set a conjuror. If the skills of the physicist and the neurochemist were of little help in comprehending the deviousness of human irrationality and the art of the professional deceiver, those of the psychologist and the magician were; Gerold Massey happened to be both, and he was engaged regularly by government and private organizations as a consultant on and investigator of matters allegedly supernatural and paranormal.
That was how Massey and Walter Conlon had come to know each other. In 2015 a "psychic" had claimed to travel over vast distances through the "astral plane" and described the surface features of Uranus and Neptune in vivid detail. When French probes finally arrived and sent back pictures contradicting his accounts, his excuse had been that he had perhaps underestimated his powers and projected himself to planets in some entirely different star system! The year 2017 had seen another flap about bodies from a crashed alien spacecraft—this time hidden in a secret base in Nevada. A year later some officials in Washington were giving serious consideration to an offer from a California-based management recruiting firm to screen NASO flight-crew applicants on the basis of a crank numerology system involving computerized personal "psychometric aptitudinal configurator charts." And, inevitably, there was always someone pushing for NASO to involve itself in the perennial UFO controversy. In fact Massey supposed that Conlon wanted to talk about Senator Korning and the whatever-it-was Church of Oregon. But Massey was wrong. Conlon had involved him in some strange situations over the years and occasionally sent him off to some out-of-the-way places. But never anything like this. Conlon had never before wanted him to leave Earth itself, and travel with a NASO mission across interplanetary space.
"The idea is to expand the pilot base at Meridiani Sinus into a mixed, experimental community of about five hundred people to provide data on extraterrestrial living for future space-colony design," Conlon explained from a leather armchair standing before a grandfather clock built to look like an Egyptian sarcophagus. "One area that needs a lot more study is how such conditions will affect the behavior and emotions of sizeable groups of people, what kinds of stress are likely to be experienced, and so on, which means there'll be a number of psychologists going along. Officially you'd be filling one of those slots, with Vernon there to assist. Unofficially some of us in NASO want somebody knowledgeable to get the real story on this Zambendorf stunt . . . and maybe even blow the whole thing out of the water if the opportunity presents itself. It's gone too far, Gerry. We've got better things to do. If we don't put a stop to this nonsense now, the next thing will be astrologers being hired to fix launch dates."
Massey returned a puzzled frown from across the room, where he was sitting sprawled untidily across a couch with one foot propped on a piece of a partly dismantled trick-cabinet that he had been meaning to move for weeks. "You have to do something," he agreed. "But what I don't understand is why it's happening at all. What on earth possessed NASO to go along with this Zambendorf thing in the first place?"
Conlon sighed and threw up his hands. "That was how it came down the line to me . . . there's been a lot of high-level politics between GSEC and NASO that I'm not in on. Anyhow, most of the funding's coming from GSEC. Defense takes first place for government money; social experiments on Mars don't even get on the list. With lawyers and accountants taking over the government, we've had to depend more on the private sector to keep a planetary program going at all. Naturally, that gives outfits like GSEC a say in the planning and policymaking."
"Maybe the best thing would be for you to opt out," Vernon Price said from an elaborately ornamented stool, his back to the church organ that Massey had picked up in a yard-sale six years previously while driving through Mississippi. He was in his late twenties, lithe, with dark, wavy hair and alert, bright brown eyes. "I mean, if the mission's being turned into a circus, the wisest thing might be to keep PEP out of it."
Conlon shook his head. "I hear what you're saying, Vernon, but we can't do that. The scientific opportunities are too valuable to miss. And besides that, the mission will involve the first operational use of the Orion, which we have to retain our interest in for the sake of planetary projects now on the drawing boards. If we dropped out, it would leave the Pentagon as the only government department with an interest in further development of the Orion. We can't afford to let that happen."
The European-American scientific base near the Martian equator at Meridiani Sinus had begun as a purely American attempt to rival the Soviet plan for establishing a permanently manned facility at Solis Lacus. However, the U.S. program had bogged down over problems with the development of the inertial fusion drive considered essential to supporting human life reliably over interplanetary distances. A crash program conducted cooperatively with the European NATO nations and Japan had eventually provided a prototype system that did work, and Meridiani Sinus had followed as a joint U.S.-European venture two years behind both the original American schedule and the Soviets; shortly afterward, the space agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were merged to form NASO. Intensified work from then on had made up for some of the lost time and produced a series of test designs for thermonuclear-propelled space-vehicles, culminating in the Orion—the first vessel built specifically for carrying heavy payloads and large numbers of passengers between planets. Completed in orbit in 2019, the Orion had been shuttling back and forth on trials between Earth and Moon for over half a year, six months to a year ahead of a similar project which the Japanese were pursuing independently. The Soviets, who were concentrating on large platforms in Earth orbit, had nothing to compare with either of the large interplanetary ships, so at least the US. had some compensation for the embarrassment incurred by its earlier fiasco.
Massey turned his head to look across at Whittaker, tall and tanned, with dark, crinkly hair just beginning to show gray at the temples, who was sitting in the armchair opposite Conlon. With the comfortable income that he commanded independent of his position at Global Communications Networking, he seemed to regard his job as much as an intellectual exercise and a challenge in problem-solving as anything else, and had always struck Massey as something of an enigma. "So how do you fit into this, Pat?" Massey asked. "Is this where you get your chance to give us some real news for a change?"
Whittaker's eyes twinkled briefly as he nodded. "It sounds as if it could be, doesn't it."
Things that were different were supposed to constitute news, Whittaker had often said. But miracle-workers, disaster-imminent scares, nonexistent Soviet superweapons, economic ruin always just around the corner, and all the other media-manufactured myths that kept millions glued to screens in order to sell products were no longer different. Therefore they weren't news. But turning a contrived sensation round and boomeranging it by reporting the intended deception straight for once—that could be very different.
"Well, if Pat did manage to pull something spectacular out of it, it might persuade other GSECs to stay out of NASO's business in future," Vernon remarked.
"That's what I want," Conlon said, nodding emphatically.
Whittaker spread his hands and made a face. "Well, I mean . . . using a NASO mission to try and legitimatize this kind of nonsense? Do you think the directors at GSEC believe in it?"
Massey shrugged. "How do I know? Nothing would surprise me these days, Pat. I hope you guys at GCN don't rely too much on them for advertising revenues though."
"Aw, what the hell?" Whittaker said. "Someone's got to do something to put a stop to this nonsense before it goes any further."
There wasn't a lot more to be said. Conlon looked from Vernon to Massey and asked simply, "Well?"
They looked at each other, but neither of them had pressing questions. "What do you think?" Massey asked at last. Vernon raised his eyebrows, hunched his shoulders, and opened his arms in a way that said there could be only one answer. Massey nodded slowly, tugged at his beard and thought to himself for a few moments longer, and then looked back at Conlon. "I guess we'll buy it, Walt. You've just got yourself a deal."
Conlon looked pleased. "Good. The Orion's scheduled for liftout from Earth orbit three months from now. I'll have NASO's confirmation of the offer, including remuneration, wired through within forty-eight hours. We'll have the other details and specifics worked out for you both in about a week. There'll be a training and familiarization course at the NASO Personnel Development Center in North Carolina for all the non-NASO people going on the mission, so leave the last three weeks or so clear when you make your arrangements for leave of absence from the university, et cetera."
Whittaker sat up in his chair, rubbed his hands together, and picked up his empty wineglass from the side table next to him. "I think this calls for a refill," he said. "Same again for everyone?"
"I'll get them," Massey said.
Whittaker watched as Massey collected the glasses and took them over to the open liquor cabinet. "Did you see Zambendorf on the Ed Jackson Show last night?"
"Uh-huh," Massey grunted over his shoulder.
"Quite a performance," Whittaker said.
"Oh, Zambendorf's a good showman—let's not make any mistake about that," Massey answered. "And if he'd only be content to come up with a straight act, he'd make a first-rate stage magician. But I can't go along with this business about claiming to be genuine. A lot of people are taken in by it and spend too much of their time and money looking for fairyland when they could be getting something worthwhile out of life. It's a tragic squandering of human potential and talent."
"The thing with the color and the number was pretty straightforward, I thought," Whittaker said.
"Simple probability matches, weren't they?" Condon said, looking at Vernon. Vernon nodded. Whittaker looked at him inquiringly.
"With an audience that size, enough people would think of yellow to make the demonstration look impressive—or any other color you care to name, come to that," Vernon explained. "Zambendorf didn't have to be thinking of anything. The audience only assumed he was because he said he was."
"How about the number?" Whittaker asked. "That couldn't have worked the same way, surely. Thirty-something . . . thirty-seven, wasn't it? I'd have thought the odds would be much worse there."
"So would most people," Vernon said. "But think back to what Zambendorf said—a number below fifty with both digits odd but different. If you work it out, there aren't really that many possibilities. And do you remember him giving fifteen and eleven as examples? That narrows it down further because for some reason hardly anyone will pick them after they've been mentioned. Of the numbers that are left, about thirty-five percent of a crowd will go for thirty-seven every time. No one knows why. It's just a predictable behavior pattern among people. Psychologists call it a `population stereotype.' And it also happens to be a fact that around twenty-three percent will choose thirty-five. So all that business about changing his mind at the last moment was baloney to widen his total catch to over half. And it worked—it looked as if every hand in the place were up."
"Mmm . . . interesting," Whittaker said.
"Do you remember Zambendorf telling the woman about her daughter's being about to get married to a navigation officer, in the navy, on submarines?" Massey asked, turning away from the cabinet and coming back with two refilled glasses.
"Yes," Whittaker said. "That was impressive. Now how could he have known all that?"
"He didn't," Massey replied simply. Whittaker looked puzzled. Massey handed the drinks to Whittaker and Conlon, then returned to the cabinet to pour his own and Vernon's. "Your memory's playing tricks, Pat. We've got a recording of the whole show that I'll replay if you like. Zambendorf only said Alice's daughter was about to get married to a sailor. He never said navy, he never said submarines, and he never mentioned navigation. Alice did—but people don't remember it that way. In fact Zambendorf guessed that the guy was in engineering, which was reasonable but wrong as it happened, and Alice corrected him. But not only that—she turned the miss into a semihit by manufacturing an excuse for him. Did you notice? I'd bet that practically everyone who saw it has forgotten that failure; but if he'd guessed right, they'd all have remembered. People see and remember what they want to see and remember. The Zambendorfs in the world get a lot of mileage out of that fact."
Vernon nodded. "So the only information he actually originated himself was that the daughter was marrying a sailor."
"So how could be have known even that much?" Whittaker asked.
Massey shrugged. "There are all kinds of ways he might have done it. For instance, anyone hanging around the box office before the show could have overheard plenty of that kind of talk."
Whittaker looked astonished. "What, seriously? You're kidding! I mean, it's too—too simple. A child could have thought of that."
"Easily," Massey agreed. "But most adults wouldn't. Believe me, Pat, that one's been worked for years. The simpler the answer, the less obvious it is to most people. They always look for the most complicated explanations imaginable." Massey handed a glass to Vernon and began moving past Whittaker to return to the couch.
"Was the wallet planted?" Conlon asked. "Martha says it had to be, but I'm not so sure. Somehow I don't think Ed Jackson would have gone out of his way to lie so brazenly."
Massey was about to reply when his arm knocked against the side table beside Whittaker, causing a drop of wine to spill from the glass that Massey was carrying. "Oh, I'm sorry, Pat! Here, I'll take care of it," he exclaimed, setting down the glass and dabbing lightly at the collar of Whittaker's jacket. "Only a spot—it won't show." Then Massey picked up his drink again, sat down on the couch, and looked over at Conlon. "Sorry, Walt. What were you saying?"
"I said I wasn't convinced the wallet was planted."
"Oh yes, I think I agree with you," Massey said. "The Mexican guy looked genuine enough to me. That part didn't come across as an act at all."
Whittaker looked from Massey to Vernon, who was grinning oddly, and back at Massey: "So . . . how did be know it was a wallet, and how did he know who owned it?" he asked.
"You really want to know?" Massey asked lightly.
"Well, sure." Whittaker. looked puzzled. "What's so funny? Am I missing the obvious or something? If I am, all I can say is that a hell of a lot of other people must have missed it too."
There was silence for a few seconds. Then Vernon said, "Remember, we're pretty sure that Zambendorf had a confederate or two around the place. The information he came up with was all the kind of stuff you'd expect to find inside a wallet, plus he knew what the owner of the wallet looked like. Now think about that."
Whittaker thought hard for a while, then looked over at Conlon. Conlon shrugged. Whittaker looked back at Massey, shook his head, and showed his empty palms. "Okay, I give in. How'd he know?"
Massey laughed, produced Whittaker's wallet from his armpit, and tossed it back to him. "That tell you enough? And there wasn't anything on your jacket, by the way, so don't worry about it."
"You're kidding!" Whittaker protested. "You mean somebody stole it and then turned it in?"
"See what I mean, Pat—too simple to think of, isn't it?"
"And the things the people showed while he had the bag over his head?"
Massey brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his eyebrow, rubbed the tip of his nose with a thumb, drew a finger lightly from left to right along his upper lip, and then pinched the lobe of his right ear. "A confederate giving coded signals from somewhere in the front rows . . . probably an Armenian character called Abaquaan, who's always close by Zambendorf somewhere, but you never see him."
"And the metal bar?"
"Standard magician's equipment. If you saw it done at a school variety show without all the hype, you'd applaud politely and say it was a clever trick. In fact that's one aspect of some research that Vernon and I are into at the moment. It's amazing—if people have made their minds up that what they're seeing is genuine paranormal power in action, they'll stick to their conviction even after they've agreed that any good stage magician can produce exactly the same effect. No amount of appealing to reason will change them. In fact—"
At that moment the organ behind Vernon blasted out a series of rising and falling notes, and a hollow, synthetic computer voice announced, "Visitor at the portals."
Massey glanced at the sarcophagus clock. "That'll be the cab. Drink up. We can have a couple more at the bar before we sit down to eat."
They left the house five minutes later and stopped for a moment below the porch to pick out the pinpoint of Mars in the evening sky. "It makes you think," Conlon said absently. "Sometime back in the eighteen hundreds, they thought it was miraculous when the first clipper ship made it from Boston round the Horn to San Francisco in under a hundred days. And here we are a century and a half later, going to Mars and back in the same time."
"Limits to Growth," Vernon murmured.
"Huh?" Whittaker said.
"Oh, it's the title of some dumb book I read from the seventies," Vernon replied.
"I see no limits," Cordon said, scanning the stars. "Where do I look?"
"In people's minds," Massey answered.
A thoughtful look came over Vernon's face as he followed Conlon's gaze upward. "I guess there have to be other intelligences out there somewhere," he mused. "Do you think they have kooks too, or is it a uniquely human thing?"
Massey snorted as they resumed walking toward the waiting cab. "Nothing out there could be dumber than some people," he said.