It was only natural that he edged away from me, I suppose. I was grimy from working under the gas tank. This plus the discreditable ability I had shown in starting the stalled car reminded him that he was, after all, a Herr Doktor from a red university while I was, after all, a publisher’s employee with nebulous qualifications from some place called Cornell. The atmosphere was wrong for it, but sooner or later he had to be told.
“Professor, we’ve got to have a talk and get something straight before we find Miss Phoebe.”
He looked at the huge striped sign the city fathers of Scranton wisely erected to mark that awful downgrade into the city. WARNING! SEVEN-MILE DEATH TRAP AHEAD SHIFT INTO LOWER GEAR. $50 FINE. OBEY OR PAY!
“What is there to get straight?” he demanded. “She has partially mastered Functional Epistemology—even though Hopedale Press prefers to call it ‘Living on the Cosmic Expense Account.’ This has unleashed certain latent powers of hers. It is simply our task to complete her mastery of the ethical aspect of F.E. She will cease to dominate other minds as soon as she comprehends that her behavior is dys-functional and in contravention of the Principle of Permissive Evolution.” To him the matter was settled. He mused: “Really I should not have let you cut so drastically my exposition of Dyadic Imbalance; that must be the root of her difficulty. A brief inductive explanation—”
“Professor,” I said. “I thought I told you in the train that you’re a fake.”
He corrected me loftily. “You told me that you think I’m a fake, Mr. Morris. Naturally I was angered by your duplicity, but your opinion of me proves nothing. I ask you to look around you. Is this fakery?”
We were well into the city. Bewildered dogs yelped at our car. Windows were broken and goods were scattered on the sidewalks; here and there a house was burning brightly. Smashed and overturned cars dotted the streets, and zombies walked slowly around them. When Miss Phoebe hit a city the effects were something like a thousand-bomber raid.
“It’s not fakery,” I said, steeririg around a smiling man in a straw hat and overalls. “It isn’t Functional Epistemology either. It’s faith in Functional Epistemology. It could have been faith hi anything, but your book just happened to be what she settled on.”
“Are you daring,” he demanded, white to the lips, “to compare me with the faith healers?”
“Yes,” I said wearily. “They get their cures. So do lots of people. Let’s roll it up in a ball, professor. I think the best thing to do when we meet Miss Phoebe is for you to tell her you’re a fake. Destroy her faith in you and your system and I think she’ll turn back into a normal old lady again. Wait a minute! Don’t tell me you’re not a fake. I can prove you are. You say she’s partly mastered F.E. and gets her powers from that partial mastery. Well, presumably you’ve completely mastered F.E., since you invented it. So why can’t you do everything she’s done, and lots more? Why can’t you end this mess by levitating to La Plume, instead of taking the Lackawanna and a 1941 Ford? And, by God, why couldn’t you fix the Ford with a pass of the hands and F.E. instead of standing by while I worked?”
His voice was genuinely puzzled. “I thought I just explained, Norris. Though it never occurred to me before, I suppose I could do what you say, but I wouldn’t dream of it. As I said, it would be dys-functional and in com-
plete contravention of The Principle or Permissive—”
I said something very rude and added: “In short, you can but you won’t.”
“Naturally not! The Principle of Permissive—” He looked at me with slow awareness dawning in his eyes. “Morris! My editor. My proofreader. My by-the-pub-lisher-officially-assigned fidus Achates. Norris, haven’t you read my book?”
“No,” I said shortly. “I’ve been much too busy. You didn’t get on the cover of Time magazine by blind chance, you know.”
He was laughing helplessly. “How goes that song,” he finally asked me, his eyes damp, ” ‘God Bless America’?”