is anyone’s to possess. I will show you … At this moment I am sending the
impression of a color out into your minds—all of you—a common color. Open your
minds . . . Can you see it?” He looked up at the camera that was live at that
moment. “Distance is no barrier. You people watching from your homes, you can
join us in this. Focus on the concept of color. Exclude everything else from
your thoughts. What do you see?” He turned his head from side to side, waited,
and then exclaimed, “Yellow! It was yellow! How many of you got it?” At once a
quarter or more of the people in the audience raised their hands.
“Now a number!” Zambendorf told them. His face was radiating excitement. “A
number between one and fifty, with its digits both odd but different, such as
fifteen … but eleven wouldn’t do because both its digits are the same. Yes?
Now . . . think! Feel it!” He closed his eyes, brought his fists up to his
temples, held the pose for perhaps five seconds, then looked around once more
and announced, “Thirty-seven!” About a third of the hands went up this time,
which from the chorus of “ooh”s and “ah”s was enough to impress significantly
more people than before. “Possibly I confused some of you there,” Zambendorf
said. “I was going to try for thirty-five, but at the last moment I changed my
mind and decided on—” He stopped as over half the remaining hands went up to add
to the others, but it looked as if every hand in the house was waving eagerly.
“Oh, some of you did get that, apparently. I should try to be more precise.”
But nobody seemed to care very much about his having been sloppy as the
conviction strengthened itself in more and more of those present that what they
were taking part in was an extremely unusual and immensely significant event.
Suddenly all of life’s problems and frustrations could be resolved effortlessly
by the simple formula of wishing them away. Anyone could comprehend the secret;
anyone could command the power. The inescapable became more palatable; the
unattainable became trivial. There was no need to feel alone or defenseless. The
Master would guide them. They belonged.
“Who is Alice?” Zambendorf demanded. Several Alices responded. “From a city far
to the west . . . on the coast,” he specified. One of the Alices was from Los
Angeles. Zambendorf saw a wedding imminent, involving somebody in her immediate
family—her daughter. Alice confirmed that her daughter was due to be married the
following month. “You’ve been thinking about her a lot,” Zambendorf said.
“That’s why you came through so easily. Her name’s Nancy, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . . Yes, it is.” Gasps of astonishment.
“I see the ocean. Is her fiance a sailor?”
“In the navy … on submarines.”
“Involved with engineering?”
“No, navigation . . . but yes, I guess that does involve a lot of engineering
these days.”
“Exactly. Thank you.” Loud applause.
Zambendorf went on to supply details of a successful business deal closed that
morning by a clothing salesman from Brooklyn, to divine after some hesitation
the phone number and occupation of a redheaded young woman from Boston, and to
supply correctly the score of a football game in which two boys in the second
row had played the previous Tuesday. “You can do it too!” he insisted in a voice
that boomed to the rear of the house without aid of a microphone. “I’ll show
you.”
He advanced to the edge of the stage and stared straight ahead while behind him
Jackson wrote numbers on a flip-chart. “Concentrate on the first one,”
Zambendorf told everybody. “All together. Now try and send it … Think it …
That’s better … A three! I see three. Now the next . . .”He got seven right
out of eight. “You see!” he shouted exultantly. “You’re good—very good. Let’s
try something more difficult.”
He picked up the black velvet bag provided by prior arrangement and had Jackson
and a couple of people near the front verify that it was opaque and without
holes. Then he turned his back and allowed Jackson to secure the bag over his