Page 139 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

The Quantum Reticulator

“Yes, I certainly do,” I replied firmly and calmly. “All we want is
an acknowledgement after the demonstration that you were
supported by a grant from the Psychometrics Research
Foundation—and two-thirds of the prize money in order to recoup
our investment, as it were, and enable us to sponsor others in future.
For that we will need a legal document, but it will be kept
confidential; our association with you need not be made public in
advance. We will leave it to you to contact the Randolph people: as I
said, a bit of reflection and research will convince you of their bona
fides and the value of obtaining their imprimatur.”
He stood up. Decision time. I looked up at him.
“Then I’ll do it.” He cackled. “I have nowhere to go but
everywhere else.”
That made little sense at the time, so I let it pass. I got up and
shook his hand. It was cold but the grip was strong.
“I’ll bring the agreement to you here tomorrow at ten o’clock in
the morning. That will give you time to go to the bank and set up an
account for the cash transfer.”
I left, thinking how circumstance had thrown the outcome my
way. Well, why not? I’d done my homework, and soon would reap
the rewards (a fat check from a Magnus front organization). In the
coming weeks, as I struggled to curb my poor spending habits, that
harvest shrank to a pile suitable for a very small granary. And again I
pondered the wisdom or cleverness of Al Magnus in choosing me to
carry out his giveaway program: did he accurately gauge my
spendthrift ways, counting on profligacy to keep me engaged for the
duration? Or were there other qualities in my makeup, revealed in his
crackpot system of personality analysis, which convinced him I would
stay the course and not give up in terror or disgust? All I could seize
upon with certainty was that I had little in common with my
unwitting targets: maybe he saw that, too, depending thereby upon
the unlikelihood of my identifying with any of them sufficiently to
blow the cover off the whole operation.
My own money in hand, I did enjoy myself for a while; I guess I’m
a grasshopper, not an ant. But before my balance went to zero I
learned the fate of Simeon Gibbons. Magnus’s researchers either
hadn’t been instructed to stop sending me material about a past
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