“It isn’t necessary.”
I was looking at the picture and I nearly popped my fuses. For a moment it wasn’t the same picture. Oh, it was the same merry little girl, but she was a little older, she was shy a front tooth, and her hair was different.
And she was alive. Not just a trukolor stereo, but alive. There’s a difference.
But when I blinked it was the same old picture.
I said hoarsely, “Unc, who said, ‘It isn’t necessary?’ You? Or Sugar Pie?”
“Why, Sugar Pie did. I echoed,”
“Yes, Unc … but I didn’t hear you; I heard her.” Then I told him about the photograph.
He nodded. “Yes, that’s the way she looks. She says to tell you that her tooth is coming in, however.”
“Unc… there’s no way to get around it. For a moment I crowded in on your private wave length.” I was feeling shaky.
“I knew. So did Sugar Pie. But you didn’t crowd in, son; a friend is always welcome.”
I was still trying to soak it in. The implications were more mind-stretching, even, than when Pat and I found out we could do it. But I didn’t know what they were yet. “Uh, Uric, do you suppose we could do it again? Sugar Pie?”
“We can try.”
But it didn’t work… unless I heard her voice as well as Unc’s when she said, “Good night, Tommie.” I wasn’t sure.
After I got to bed I told Pat about it. He was interested after I convinced him that it really had happened. “This is worth digging into, old son. I’d better record it. Doc Mabel will want to kick it around.”
(“Uh, wait until I check with Uncle Alf.”)
“Well, all right. I guess it is his baby … in more ways than one. Speaking of his baby, maybe I should go see her? With two of us at each end it might be easier to make it click again. Where does his niece live?”
(“Uh, Johannesburg.”)
“Mmm … that’s a far stretch down the road, but I’m sure the LRF would send me there if Doc Mabel got interested.”
(“Probably. But let me talk to Unc.”)
But Unc talked to Dr. Devereaux first. They called me in and Doc wanted to try it again at once. He was as near excited as I ever saw him get. I said, “I’m willing, but I doubt if we’ll got anywhere; we didn’t last night. I think that once was just a fluke.”
“Fluke, spook. If it can be done once, it can be done again, We’ve got to be clever enough to set up the proper conditions.” He looked at me. “Any objection to a light dose of hypnosis?”
“Me? Why, no, sir. But I don’t hypnotize easily.”
“So? According to your record, Dr. Arnault found it not impossible. Just pretend I’m she.”
I almost laughed in his face. I look more like Cleopatra than he looks like pretty Dr. Arnault. But I agreed to go along with the gag.
“All either of you will need is a light trance to brush distractions aside and make you receptive.”
I don’t know what a “light trance” is supposed to feel like. I didn’t feel anything and I wasn’t asleep.
But I started hearing Sugar Pie again.
I think Dr. Devereaux’s interest was purely scientific; any new fact about what makes people tick could rouse him out of his chronic torpor. Uncle Alf suggested that Doc was anxious also to set up a new telepathic circuit, just in case. There was a hint in what Unc said that he realized that he himself would not last forever.
But there was a hint of more than that. Uncle Alf let me know very delicately that, if it should come to it, it was good to know that somebody he trusted would be keeping an eye on his baby. He didn’t quite say it, not that baldly, so I didn’t have to answer, or I would have choked up. It was just understood-and it was the finest compliment I ever received. I wasn’t sure I deserved it so I decided I would just have to manage to deserve it if I ever had to pay off.