Ham Sandwich Read online

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  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  HAM SANDWICH

  It gets difficult to handle the problem of a man who has a real talent that you need badly--and he cannot use it if he knows it's honest!

  by JAMES H. SCHMITZ

  ILLUSTRATED BY LEO SUMMERS

  * * * * *

  There was no one standing or sitting around the tastefully furnishedentry hall of the Institute of Insight when Wallace Cavender walkedinto it. He was almost half an hour late for the regular Sunday nightmeeting of advanced students; and even Mavis Greenfield, Dr. Ormond'ssecretary, who always stayed for a while at her desk in the hall tosign in the stragglers, had disappeared. However, she had left theattendance book lying open on the desk with a pen placed invitinglybeside it.

  Wallace Cavender dutifully entered his name in the book. The distantdeep voice of Dr. Aloys Ormond was dimly audible, coming from thedirection of the lecture room, and Cavender followed its faintreverberations down a narrow corridor until he reached a closed door.He eased the door open and slipped unobtrusively into the back of thelecture room.

  As usual, most of the thirty-odd advanced students present had seatedthemselves on the right side of the room where they were somewhatcloser to the speaker. Cavender started towards the almost vacant rowsof chairs on the left, smiling apologetically at Dr. Ormond who, asthe door opened, had glanced up without interrupting his talk. Threeother faces turned towards Cavender from across the room. ReubenJeffries, a heavyset man with a thin fringe of black hair circling anotherwise bald scalp, nodded soberly and looked away again. MavisGreenfield, a few rows further up, produced a smile and a reproachfullittle headshake; during the coffee break she would carefully explainto Cavender once more that students too tardy to take in Dr. Al'sintroductory lecture missed the most valuable part of these meetings.

  From old Mrs. Folsom, in the front row on the right, Cavender'sbelated arrival drew a more definite rebuke. She stared at him forhalf a dozen seconds with a coldly severe frown, mouth puckered indisapproval, before returning her attention to Dr. Ormond.

  Cavender sat down in the first chair he came to and let himself gocomfortably limp. He was dead-tired, had even hesitated over coming tothe Institute of Insight tonight. But it wouldn't do to skip themeeting. A number of his fellow students, notably Mrs. Folsom, alreadyregarded him as a black sheep; and if enough of them complained to Dr.Ormond that Cavender's laxness threatened to retard the overalladvance of the group towards the goal of Total Insight, Ormond mightdecide to exclude him from further study. At a guess, Cavender thoughtcynically, it would have happened by now if the confidential reportthe Institute had obtained on his financial status had been lessimpressive. A healthy bank balance wasn't an absolute requirement formembership, but it helped ... it helped! All but a handful of theadvanced students were in the upper income brackets.

  Cavender let his gaze shift unobtrusively about the group while somealmost automatic part of his mind began to pick up the thread of Dr.Al's discourse. After a dozen or so sentences, he realized that theevening's theme was the relationship between subjective and objectivereality, as understood in the light of Total Insight. It was awell-worn subject; Dr. Al repeated himself a great deal. Most of theaudience nevertheless was following his words with intent interest,many taking notes and frowning in concentration. As Mavis Greenfieldliked to express it, quoting the doctor himself, the idea you didn'tpick up when it was first presented might come clear to you the fifthor sixth time around. Cavender suspected, however, that as far as hewas concerned much of the theory of Total Insight was doomed to remainforever obscure.

  He settled his attention on the only two students on this side of theroom with him. Dexter Jones and Perrie Rochelle were sitting side byside in front-row chairs--the same chairs they usually occupied duringthese meetings. They were exceptions to the general run of the groupin a number of ways. Younger, for one thing; Dexter was twenty-nineand Perrie twenty-three while the group averaged out at aroundforty-five which happened to be Cavender's age. Neither was blessedwith worldly riches; in fact, it was questionable whether the Rochellegirl, who described herself as a commercial artist, even had a bankaccount. Dexter Jones, a grade-school teacher, did have one but wasable to keep it barely high enough to cover his rent and car paymentchecks. Their value to the Institute was of a different kind. Bothpossessed esoteric mental talents, rather modest ones, to be sure, butstill very interesting, so that on occasion they could stateaccurately what was contained in a sealed envelope, or give arecognizable description of the photograph of a loved one hidden inanother student's wallet. This provided the group with encouragingevidence that such abilities were, indeed, no fable and somewherealong the difficult road to Total Insight might be attained by all.

  In addition, Perrie and Dexter were volunteers for what Dr. AloysOrmond referred to cryptically as "very advanced experimentation." Thegroup at large had not been told the exact nature of theseexperiments, but the implication was that they were mental exercisesof such power that Dr. Al did not wish other advanced students to trythem, until the brave pioneer work being done by Perrie and Dexter wasconcluded and he had evaluated the results....

  * * * * *

  "Headaches, Dr. Al," said Perrie Rochelle. "Sometimes quite badheadaches--" She hesitated. She was a thin, pale girl with untidyarranged brown hair who vacillated between periods of vivaciousalertness and activity and somewhat shorter periods of blank-facedwithdrawal. "And then," she went on, "there are times during the daywhen I get to feeling sort of confused and not quite sure whether I'masleep or awake ... you know?"

  Dr. Ormond nodded, gazing at her reflectively from the little lecternon which he leaned. His composed smile indicated that he was not inthe least surprised or disturbed by her report on the results of theweek's experiments--that they were, in fact, precisely the results hehad expected. "I'll speak to you about it later, Perrie," he told hergently. "Dexter ... what experiences have you had?"

  Dexter Jones cleared his throat. He was a serious young man whoappeared at meetings conservatively and neatly dressed and shaved tothe quick, and rarely spoke unless spoken to.

  "Well, nothing very dramatic, Dr. Al," he said diffidently. "I didhave a few nightmares during the week. But I'm not sure there's anyconnection between them and, uh, what you were having us do."

  Dr. Ormond stroked his chin and regarded Dexter with benevolence. "Aconnection seems quite possible, Dexter. Let's assume it exists. Whatcan you tell us about those nightmares?"

  Dexter said he was afraid he couldn't actually tell them anything. Bythe time he was fully awake he'd had only a very vague impression ofwhat the nightmares were about, and the only part he could rememberclearly now was that they had been quite alarming.

  Old Mrs. Folsom, who was more than a little jealous of the specialattention enjoyed by Dexter and Perrie, broke in eagerly at that pointto tell about a nightmare _she'd_ had during the week and which _she_could remember fully; and Cavender's attention drifted away from thetalk. Mrs. Folsom was an old bore at best, but a very wealthy oldbore, which was why Dr. Ormond usually let her ramble on a whilebefore steering the conversation back to the business of the meeting.But Cavender didn't have to pretend to listen.

  From his vantage point behind most of the group, he let his gaze andthoughts
wander from one to the other of them again. For the majorityof the advanced students, he reflected, the Institute of Insightwasn't really too healthy a place. But it offered compensations.Middle-aged or past it on the average, financially secure, vaguelydisappointed in life, they'd found in Dr. Al a friendly and eloquentguide to lead them into the fascinating worlds of their own minds. AndDr. Al was good at it. He had borrowed as heavily from yoga andwestern mysticism as from various orthodox and unorthodoxpsychological disciplines, and composed his own system, almost his owncosmology. His exercises would have made conservative psychiatristsshudder, but he was clever enough to avoid getting his flock into tooserious mental difficulties. If some of them suffered a bit now andthen, it made the quest of Total Insight and the thought that theywere progressing towards that goal more real and convincing. Andmeeting after meeting Dr. Al came up