Confidence Game, Jim Harmon [old books to read .TXT] 📗

a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do.

I looked up finally and saw a Martian in or about the doorway.

"Call me Andre," the Martian said. "A common name but foreign. It should serve as a point of reference."

I had always wondered how a thing like a Martian could talk. Sometimes I wondered if they really could.

"You won't need the gun," Andre said conversationally.

"I'll keep it, thanks. What do you want?"

"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of people disappeared from North America a few months ago."

"They always do," I told him.

"They ceased to exist—as human beings—shortly after they received a book from Doc," the Martian said.

Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.

"Use one of those sneaky Martian weapons again," I warned him, "and I'll kill the girl." Martians were supposed to be against the destruction of any life-form, I had read someplace. I doubted it, but it was worth a try.

"Kevin," Andre said, "why don't you take a bath?"

The Martian weapon staggered me again. I tried to say something. I tried to explain that I was so dirty that I could never get clean no matter how often I bathed. No words formed.

"But, Kevin," Andre said, "you aren't that dirty."

The blow shook the gun from my fingers. It almost fell into the thing on the floor, but at the last moment seemed to change direction and miss it.

I knew something. "I don't wash because I drink coffee."

"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?" he asked.

"Of course," I said, and added absurdly, "That's why I don't wash."

"You mean," Andre said slowly, ploddingly, "that if you bathed, you would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently."

I was knocked to my knees.

"Kevin," the Martian said, "drinking coffee represents a major vice only in Centurian humanoids, not Earth-norm human beings. Which are you?"

Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth.

"What is Doc's full name?"

I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said, "Doctor Kevin O'Malley, Senior."

From the bed, Doc said a word. "Son."

Then he disappeared.

I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in search of what.

"He didn't use that," Andre said.

So I was an Earthman, Doc's son. So my addiction to coffee was all in my mind. That didn't change anything. They say sex is all in your mind. I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I had now. That and the thing he left.

"The rest is simple," Andre said. "Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock in a certain ancient metaphysical order and started supplying members with certain books. Can you imagine the effect of the Book of Dyzan or the Book of Thoth or the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan or the Necronomican itself on human beings?"

"But they don't exist," I said wearily.

"Exactly, Kevin, exactly. They have never existed any more than your Victorian detective friend. But the unconscious racial mind has reached back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books, the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic, without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex, even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on the inhabited universe, but reason finally prevailed. He had reached a state of pure thought."

"The North American government has to have this secret, Kevin," the girl said. "You can't let it fall into the hands of the Martians."

Andre did not deny that he wanted it to fall into his hands.

I knew I could not let Doc's—Dad's—time travel thing fall into anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew.

Miss Casey did her duty and tried to stop me with a judo hold, but I don't think her heart was in it, because I reversed and broke it.

I kicked the thing to pieces and stomped on the pieces. Maybe you can't stop the progress of science, but I knew it might be millenniums before Doc's genes and creative environment were recreated and time travel was rediscovered. Maybe we would be ready for it then. I knew we weren't now.

Miss Casey leaned against my dirty chest and cried into it. I didn't mind her touching me.

"I'm glad," she said.

Andre flowed out of the doorway with a sigh. Of relief?

I would never know. I supposed I had destroyed it because I didn't want the human race to become a thing of pure reason without purpose, direction or love, but I would never know for sure. I thought I could kick the habit—perhaps with Miss Casey's help—but I wasn't really confident.

Maybe I had destroyed the time machine because a world without material needs would not grow and roast coffee.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Confidence Game, by Jim Harmon