I couldn't tell by Henry's face whether I was with him or away from him.
He told me he wanted to think about it, and made a little motion with
his hand that I should leave the room.
I walked through the suite of executive offices and down a sound
rebuffing hallway. The throbbing clatter of manufacture of metallic
parts made a welcome sound as I went through the far doorway into the
factory. I saw a blueprint spread on a foreman's desk as I walked past.
Good old blueprint. So many millimeters from here to there, made of such
and such an alloy, a hole punched here with an allowance of
five-ten-thousandths plus or minus tolerance. Snug, secure, safe. I
wondered if psi could ever be blue-printed. Or suppose you put a hole
here, but when you looked away and then looked back it had moved, or
wasn't there at all?
[Illustration]
Quickly, I got myself into a conversation with a supervisor about the
rising rate of employee turnover in his department. That was something
also snug, secure, safe. All you had to do was figure out human beings.
* * * * *
I spent the rest of the morning on such pursuits, working with things I
understood.
On his first rounds of the afternoon, the interoffice messenger brought
me a memorandum from the general manager's office. I opened it with some
misgivings. I was not particularly reassured.
Mr. Grenoble felt he should work with me more closely on the antigrav
project. He understood, from his researches, that the most positive psi
effects were experienced during a seance with a medium. Would I kindly
arrange for the Swami to hold a seance that evening, after office hours,
so that he might analyze the man's methods and procedures to see how
they could fit smoothly into Company Operation. This was not to be
construed as interference in the workings of my department but in the
interests of pursuing the entire matter with diligence and dispatch--
The seance was to be held in my office.
I had had many peculiar conferences in this room--from union leaders
stripping off their coats, throwing them on the floor and stomping on
them; to uplifters who wanted to ban cosmetics on our women employees so
the male employees would not be tempted to think Questionable Thoughts.
I could not recall ever having held a seance before.
My desk had been moved out of the way, over into one corner of the large
room. A round table was brought over from the salesmen's report writing
room (used there more for surreptitious poker playing than for writing
reports) and placed in the middle of my office--on the grounds that it
had no sharp corners to gouge people in their middles if it got to
cavorting about recklessly. In an industrial plant one always has to
consider the matter of safety rules and accident insurance rates.
In the middle of the table there rested, with dark fluid gleaming
through clear plastic cases, six fresh cylinders which Auerbach had
prepared in his laboratory over in the plant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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