John Brunner - The Whole Man

“Except you,” said Clara.

“Yes,” Howson agreed, his eyes on her. “Except me. Or another telepathist… Jay, what are the resources of that gadget in the room where we were just now ?”

“Aside from the obvious limits imposed by the speed of response — and its small size, of course — pretty well inexhaustible. We’ve worked on it, on and off, for almost a year. At the moment it’s programmed for a particular item, but it can be controlled manually too.”

“I see. Right, let me think for a while, will you?” Howson leaned his elbow on a vacant shelf and closed his eyes, knowing that Jay and Charma would assume he was thinking for his own attention only. In fact…

Clara! Tell me something, will you? Why was it that you took such an interest in Rudi if you scarcely knew him?

Why — A sense of embarrassment and uncertainty. I guess I felt sorry for him…?

Be honest with me. It’s bigger than that, isn’t it? You find him attractive, don’t you?

Y-yes…

In fact, you’d like to know him a lot better. And the idea that you might wind up by falling in love with him has crossed your mind — hasn’t it?

You’re a peeping tom! But there was no real annoyance in the sentiment; clearly, she found the idea very acceptable.

Howson grinned like a Cheshire cat. He opened his eyes and glanced at Jay.

“Can you spare the time to do a little more work on that machine of yours?” he inquired, and on noting a momentary hesitation, hurried on, “Look, it’s going to get you out of your impasse with Rudi. I agree with you — he’s going places. Given the right opportunity, he could create what amounts to a new channel of artistic expression. It won’t happen overnight; it’ll take time and enough public interest to make resources available so that he can integrate sight, sound, smell, maybe even more complex imagery. What he needs right now, though, is chiefly hope. And I believe I know how we can give him that”

Rudi!

Howson felt the mind shrink a little and then remember. The healing was progressing well; Howson felt a stir of envy at the healthy normality of Rudi’s bodily functions. He could never have sustained an injury one-tenth as bad as the one the younger man was recovering from.

They had moved Rudi into a private, soundproof room, and now they were all here: Jay, Charma and Clara, with a nurse standing by. Howson renewed his approach gently.

Rudi, think of your music.

As though floodgates had opened, a wave of imagined sound poured into Rudi’s aching consciousness. Howson fought to channel and control it. When he had gained the minimal mastery he needed, he signalled to Clara.

The tank — which had taken four men to bring it into the room — lit. Clara, a strained look on her face, flashed the controls, and Howson suggested that Rudi open his eyes. He did so; he saw…

Jay and Charma, of course, could not hear the music that pulsed and raged in Rudi’s mind. But Howson could, and so could Clara, and that was what mattered.

They had spent the week experimenting, improving, and training; now the tank’s speed of response was phenomenal, and Jay had jury-rigged new, simpler controls to make the device as versatile and essentially as straightforward as a theremin. And Clara—

Howson had wondered sometimes in the course of the time they had spent together whether it was just that she was a ready subject, or that he was himself a remarkable instructor in telepathy, for she was reading Rudi’s fantastic mental projections, sifting them and extracting their essentials, and converting them to visual images, as fast as Rudi himself could think them.

Awed amazement was plain on Rudi’s face as he watched the tank. Jay and Charma, who could not hear the music to which Clara was responding, were almost as startled. And Howson felt purely overjoyed.

Mountains grey in the tank, distorted as if looked at from below, purple-blue and overpowering; mists gathered at their peaks, and an avalanche thundered into a valley surrounded by white sprays of snow, as a distant and melancholy horn theme dissolved in Rudi’s mind into a cataclysm of orchestral sounds and a hundred un-musical noises. The tank blurred; a wisp of smoke rose from a connexion leading to it, and Jay leapt forward with an exclamation.

It was over.

Hoping that the breakdown had not outweighed the pleasure Rudi had shown, Howson turned to the bed. His hope was fulfilled. Rudi was struggling to sit up, his face radiant.

Howson cut across his incoherent babble of thanks with a calming thought. “You don’t need to thank me,” he said with a twisted smile. “I can tell you’re pleased! You were stupid to think of giving up when success was in your grasp, weren’t you?”

“But it wasn’t!” Rudi protested. “If it hadn’t been for you—and Clara, of course… But — but damnation, this isn’t success, if I have to rely on you to help me.”

“Rely on me?” Howson was genuinely astonished. “Oh! I suppose you think I was projecting your imagery to Clara!” Succinctly he explained the actual situation. Relief grew plain on Rudi’s face, but soon faded as he turned to Clara.

“Clara, how do you feel about this ? You won’t want to act as an interpreter for me indefinitely, for goodness” sake!”

“I’d like to do it for a while,” she answered shyly. “But it won’t always have to be done this way. Gerry says that the work we two can do together will excite people enough to show them what you’re really after, and let you work with a full orchestra. And you can learn to use this thing yourself—Jay’s made it so simple it only took me a few hours to get the hang of it. And eventually…”

She appealed wordlessly to Howson, who obliged by projecting the future he envisaged for Rudi’s work directly into his mind.

There was a hall — vast, in darkness. At the far end lights glowed over music stands, and there was rustling and tuning up to be heard. Stillness was broken by the opening bars of Rudi’s composition. Darkness was interrupted by the creation in a huge counterpart of Jay’s yard-square tank of vivid, fluid, pictorial, corresponding images. The response in the audience could be felt, grew almost tangible, and in turn the brilliance of the imagery fed on the appreciation it evoked.

He finished, and found Rudi with his eyes closed and his hands clasped together on the coverlet. Howson got to his feet and beckoned his companions, and stealthily they crept from the room, leaving Rudi with the vision of his ambition fulfilled.

Later they sat in Jay and Charma’s apartment celebrating their success with wine. “You — you didn’t exaggerate at all, did you, Gerry?” Clara asked timidly when they had toasted him half a dozen times.

“Not much. Oh, slightly, perhaps — I mean, the sort of world-wide acclaim I promised him may take twenty years to come. But it damned well should come ; Rudi has a gift as outstanding in its way as yours and mine. I’m sorry, you two,” he added to Jay and Charma. “I didn’t mean to sound conceited.”

Jay shrugged. “I’ll not deny I’d like to have some special talent, as you two have — but hell, it must entail a lot of heartbreak, too. I think I’ll be a success in my own small way, and I doubt if I’ll have the frustrations Rudi or yourselves will undergo.”

“I’m glad you take it like that,” Howson said thoughtfully. “And — you know, I’ve been giving the matter a little consideration, and I believe I could open up a market for as many of your fluid mobiles as you care to build. They have a certain restful fascination about them… Suppose I recommended you to my director in chief and interested him in the idea of using them in place of the standard mobiles and tanks of tropical fish we use in the mental wards — especially for autistic children — you wouldn’t think that was demeaning to your art, would you?”