The Right Time, John Berryman [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

made me tell it."

"Good thing I did," I growled. "You're as nutty as a fruitcake. Maragon won't die. I've got it on good authority."

"I'm right!" she insisted.

I took it to Maragon the next morning. The city was shrouded in a low layer of cloud, and his glassed-in penthouse office was gloomy with the morning. He motioned me to sit down. I dragged one of his Bank of England chairs through the ankle-deep pile of his rug and set it down next to his big desk.

"I have a progress report on Pheola, Pete," I told him.

"That skinny one you brought back from Nevada, Lefty?"

I nodded. "She's not quite so skinny, thanks to my expense account," I said. "And she's ready to qualify."

"Not on PC," he said, hot at once.

"That remains to be seen, Pete. The lab has been tracking her predictions for better than two weeks now, and in a couple more weeks Norty will give us some stix on her scope, range and accuracy."

He glowered at me, his bushy brows down about his eyes. "I thought I told you to concentrate on her healing," he said.

"I have," I told him. "But I saw no harm in seeing what she is like with precognition," I said.

"Flat on her face, that's what she's like," he said testily. "One of these days I'll have to convince you that what I say around here goes, do you hear?"

"One of these days," I said. "But not when you're being a sour old goat. You're just sore at her because she said you'd have a heart attack."

"Nonsense!" he bristled.

"I've had Evaleen Riley doing a little PC work on you, too," I confessed, and saw his face get dark with anger. "Now hold your tongue, you old goat. I'm trying to help you," I cut in, to keep him from bellowing at me. "Evaleen is worried, too. But she's a little more cheerful than Pheola. She doesn't think you'll die."

"Well," he growled. "That's nice. I won't write my will."

"Stop acting like an old goat, you old goat," I snapped at him. "I'll give you a prediction of my own: You'll be sick enough to die, but we'll find a way to do something about it."

"Well, now you're a PC!" he huffed. I like to think I have a little, now and then. It's ever so short in range, and highly erratic, but I have had my flashes.

"Just one thing," I said to him. "As a surgeon who has done a lot of heart work, I want you in the heart clinic on the day these witches say you're going to be sick. It will certainly make a lot of us feel better, and the worst that can happen is that you can tell both those witches they don't know the right time."

I didn't get to first base. "Now I'll tell you something, Wally Bupp!" he said loudly. "I was fool enough to pay attention to what that witch of yours said, and I've had a complete checkup. The heart people can't find a thing the matter with my heart. The devil you say! I won't go near your hospital. Now get out of here and don't give me another word about the PC powers of that fraud."

I let a week go by after that, not quite able to figure out what I should do. One night, after a dinner that Pheola had cooked for me as part of her transparent scheme to convince me she was God's own gift to Lefty Bupp, I raised a question with her.

"You are still sure," I said, loading the dishwasher, "about Pete Maragon?"

"Yes," she said. "He'll have a heart attack."

"All right. Exactly when?"

"The nineteenth. Thursday," she said.

"We've got to pin point this thing," I said as we went back to her living room. "Do you think you are ready to do some serious diagnosis?"

"Of the Grand Master?" she asked me.

"Sure. I can get you into his office without too much trouble. What I want you to do is feel around inside his heart. The sawbones from the clinic can't find anything out of line, and I think you can. Can you PC that?"

She smiled at me. "Of course," she said. "You'll take me there in the morning."

I did, of course.

Maragon gave us an appointment when I assured him that I wanted to show him some aspects of Pheola's healing powers and that PC wasn't going to enter into the discussion. His spooky clairvoyant let us in with a knowing smile and we found the old goat pouring over some papers in front of him on the big slab of walnut.

He was really quite nice to Pheola. "Well, well, young woman," he said, "Lefty tells me that you are coming along."

"I hope so, Mr. Maragon," she said.

"Well, Lefty," he said, after he had shown us both into the handsome chairs he had drawn up in front of his desk, "you were going to have Pheola give me some kind of a demonstration."

"Sure," I said. "First off I want you to know that she can qualify as a TK. Her healing powers are a subtle form of that. But as proof, she'll give a demonstration with weights."

I drew the carrying case from my pocket and laid four pith balls on his desk, as well as a ten-gram standard TK weight.

"Ten grams?" he said, interested.

"Maybe," I grinned. "We haven't tried this outside our own company. Pretty big emotional quotient here, you know."

He shook his head. "It has to be reproducible, Lefty," he said, but in a kindly tone. "Let me see it, Pheola."

She was really pretty good, and the pith balls behaved quite well. The first time around, the ten-gram weight stopped her cold, but by laying it on my palm, she got a good grip and thereafter was able to make it perform.

"Very nicely done," the old goat grumbled. He hadn't expected anything of the kind. But I was only half through with him.

"Now," I said. "The more important part of the demonstration. Do you object to a little minor pain?"

"I certainly do," he growled, bringing his bushy brows down.

"Well, the only way you can tell that Pheola is able to employ her TK within you is to give you a little sensation. It will only be some twinges," I said.

He wanted to argue about it, and I dragged the conversation out until I felt a little tug on my ear. Pheola had completed her scan of Maragon's heart.

"Oof!" he said as she hit him lightly in the diaphragm. Then she made his hands jump, first one and then the other. None of it felt real good, I could see, from the flinching and lip biting that was going on across the desk.

"That's enough!" he exclaimed as she went to work on his throat. His hand flew up to massage his larynx. "Quite convincing, young woman. But what is it good for?"

I laughed at him. "What are most Psi powers good for?" I asked him. "All that we require for membership is that a person be able to display them under standardized conditions."

"Yes," he agreed. "Yes, I guess that's so. Well, I gather you'll be ready to go into your act at the next Chapter Meeting, then?"

Pheola nodded. "I hope so," she said.

"I do, too," the old goat agreed, getting in the last word. "It would be nice if you could figure out what to do with your ability to snap my nerve-strings!"

We were silent in the ride down the elevator to our apartments. I took the chance that Pete wasn't having us peeped, and spoke as soon as we were in my study.

"What did you find out, Pheola?" I asked her.

"I could feel something, Lefty," she said. "When you had the heart model over at the hospital, you showed me the coronary artery, you remember?"

"Yes."

"There are two little bumps in his artery, one about three times as large as the other."

"Bumps?" I said, frowning. "I'm not sure I know what that means, Pheola."

"Well, remember how I told you that your own arteries were nice and clear?"

I nodded.

"His coronary artery isn't like that. It's sort of caked and crusty. And I think some of that coating has broken away in a couple spots, and they are like scabs on the sores, only they aren't hard."

This was as close to a classic description of coronary clotting as I figured I would get in nontechnical terms. What her words mean to me was that Maragon's coronary artery, as in many men his age, was somewhat choked with deposits of cholesterol. In a couple places the deposit had broken away, exposing the raw surface of the artery. But instead of scar tissue forming to heal the open spot, clotting had taken place. And if either of those clots broke loose, and plugged one of the minor arteries in the heart, we'd see a coronary attack as that part of the muscle was starved for blood and died.

The information was useless, in a medical sense. There is no surgery for the condition. There was, however, something untried that could possibly be done.

"Where is it going to happen?" I asked her. "The heart attack?"

"In the hospital," she said.

"And what will I have you do?"

She frowned for a moment. "You want me to cure it," she said. "I'm not sure I understand how."

"I do," I said. "That's enough. From here on I just want to work a two-horse parlay. The old goat can't help but be convinced by the demonstration you are going to give him. The thing that I want is for him to agree that your PC powers exist at the same time. We'll whipsaw him good."

In the morning, after the first surgery was over, I went downstairs to the heart clinic. Doc Swartz was in his office. He's the best heart man at Memorial, and I figured that Maragon would have gone to him.

"What's up, Lefty?" he asked as I came in to his office and shut the door against some of the smells of the hospital. "How is your scalpel work coming?"

"I'll be doing my own cutting any day now," I said. "I came on another errand."

"So?"

"Did you give Maragon's heart a checkup in the last couple of weeks?" I asked.

"None of your business," he smiled. "You know I can't talk about my patients."

"This is Lodge business, Doc," I protested. "I know you aren't a Psi, and thus aren't subject to our discipline, but I think it's time we exchanged some information."

"Exchanged?"

I nodded. "You know—or do you know—that I've been working with a girl, giving her some training."

"No," he said. "I don't hear much about the Lodge. You folks are pretty tight-mouthed around Normals."

"Sure," I said, not wanting to appear uncomfortable about it. Doc was all right—he never showed any resentment that he didn't have Psi powers. Quite sensibly, he was satisfied with his own normal skills. "Well, this girl is a very delicate telekinetic," I told him. "She is the one who brought my right arm back to life. She's good."

"She must be," he agreed. "I know that stumped every neurologist over here."

"Right," I said, "She has been exploring the insides of Maragon's heart."

"What!"

"Sense of perception—light TK touch—anything you want to call it. I can get her to demonstrate, if you insist. But you can take my word for it. She can feel her way around inside your body the way you can feel your way around the outside."

"And what is her diagnosis?" he said, irritated now. He was the heart expert.

I told him about the clots, and he nodded as he got the picture. "A classic description," he agreed. "But what can we do about it? Clots like that are next to impossible to break down. If they flake away in too big a chunk, they can kill."

"I know," I agreed. "But there is more to the story. Pheola is a precog as well. She says that one of the clots will break loose on the nineteenth, and that Maragon will have an attack. I want to make sure he is over here, in a hospital bed, with you on hand, when it happens."

"You Psi's!" he said. "Do I have to take this seriously, that this woman can tell the future?"

"Yes, you do," I said. "One of our other PC's confirms it."

"That just doubles the creepiness," he said. "How can I manage it, even if it's true?"

"Tell the old goat that more detailed examination of his EKG makes you want him in for observation. Even Maragon listens to doctors. Tell him whatever it takes to get him to bed that morning. You might even bring him in the night before."

Doc Swartz shrugged. "I guess I'll have to play your game," he decided.