Authors: Eugene Burdick
The Ninth Wave (7 page)
"No."
"You may begin."
Mike pressed the red card in the left-hand window. The light did not
go on. The machine whirred, two new cards, orange and yellow, dropped
down into the windows. Mike pressed the yellow card. The light did not
go on. The mechanism whirred again and the cards were changed.
Mike hesitated. Something was wrong. He pressed the right-hand card
again. A penny dropped down the funnel, rolled slowly on the table and
slowly spun to the surface between his hands. Mike looked down at the
penny. The mechanism whirred. He pressed the right-hand card which was
black. Again a penny came down the funnel and the light briefly glowed
on top of the box.
Forget the cards, he told himself. They're not important. What is important
is the mechanism. Forget the cards.
Then, quite intuitively, he was playing the two people in white coats.
They must have set the mechanism to work in a certain pattern. The
thing to do was to find the pattern. Hell with the cards, Mike thought.
Play the people.
Mike pressed the right-hand window two more times and the light did not
glow. Then three times it did glow and the pennies rolled down the funnel
Then three times he failed.
That's it, he thought. The pattern is once right, once left; then twice
right and twice left, then three times right and three times left and
so on.
He pressed the right-hand window four times running and each time he won
a penny. Then he switched to the left-hand window and pressed it four
times and each time a penny rolled on the table. Then the right-hand
window five times. Then the left-hand window five times. The pennies
jingled on the table, grew in a heap between his hands. Once a penny
rolled out on the floor, but Mike did not notice it. Also he did not
notice the color of the cards and he did not look up to see if the
light went on. He only watched the funnel to see the little lump that
the pennies made when they were ejected onto the slippery metal slide.
He pressed the right-hand window six times, but the fifth and sixth time
the penny did not drop down. Mike hesitated. Something had changed. He
switched to the left-hand window. It paid twice and then twice it did
not. The mechanism had switched to four times on each side. Instantly
Mike had it. The mechanism was set to alternate from side to side until it
reached five times on each side and then it went down again; four, three,
two, one. When it reached one he guessed that it would start up again.
Mike played that pattern and he was correct. Each time the penny jumped
onto the funnel, slid down onto the table and rolled to a halt between
his fingers. Mike chuckled and played the pattern and each time he pressed
the windows he felt he was defeating the two people standing behind him.
For twenty minutes he played without an error. Dr. Urich spoke to
Dr. Sutliff. Mike did not listen, but he could tell they were arguing. The
stack of pennies grew in front of Mike. The light glowed regularly on
top of the black box. Dr. Urich's voice grew slightly shrill.
Dr. Sutliff coughed. He had moved directly behind Mike. Mike looked over
his shoulder.
"That will be enough for today, Mr. Freesmith," Dr. Sutliff said.
"I thought you wanted me for two hours," Mike said.
"For our purposes that will be enough today. Tomorrow we will want you
again. The apparatus will be the same, but the circumstances will be
different."
Mike pushed back his chair and started to stuff the pennies in his
pocket. Once he looked up, and Dr. Urich was watching him closely,
antagonism in her eyes. She smiled over the antagonism. The pennies filled
one pocket and half of another. Mike walked lopsided out of the room.
When he was outside the door he paused. He looked at the rats with the
thin red wounds in their heads. Through the thin plywood wall he heard
Dr. Urich talk.
"He does not play the colors at all," she said. Her voice was full of
complaint. "It was exactly as if the colors he did not notice."
"He figured out the pattern we set in the mechanism," Dr. Sutliff said.
"But he is the only one. All else choose by the colors. This will the
figures badly skew. How do we explain?"
"We'll alter the mechanism tomorrow and then see how he does,"
Dr. Sutliff said.
"Why would he not do as the others?" Dr. Urich said. "It was plain that
he should choose by colors."
"It's a stress situation. The pennies are positive motivation to take
the pattern rather than respond by colors. It's just funny that he is
the only one that concentrated on the pattern."
Mike put his finger through the wire of the cage and pushed gently
against the rat standing on its hind legs. The rat's eyes bulged, its
fur bent away from his finger, but the rat's body moved like putty. Mike
pushed it to one side and the rat stayed in that position, bent at an
impossible angle, its tiny claws tucked under its chin. Mike turned
and hurried off down the corridor.
The next day when Mike reported for the experiment there were two more
subjects in the room. One was a girl named Connie Burton and the other
was a boy named Bill Evans. The girl was attractive and she was wearing
a cashmere sweater and Mike guessed she was doing the experiment for
some other reason than money. The boy was skinny and very embarrassed.
Dr. Urich gave the instructions again.
"Each of you has operated this apparatus before. Today the mechanism has
been altered so that a new pattern is operating. You will decide among
yourselves which window you will choose on each try. You may choose
the window on whatever basis you wish. But you must all agree on the
decision. If you are not agreed you can make no choice. None of you
may press the window until the other two have agreed to your choice.
You will share the pennies that you earn. Please make your discussion
audible, for what you say will be recorded on a wire recorder."
A paper in her hand rustled, she coughed and the room was quiet. Bill
Evans looked at her with agony.
"Do we start now?" Mike asked.
"You may start now," Dr. Urich said. She walked to the back of the room
and joined Dr. Sutliff.
The three students looked down at the windows. There was a pink card in
the left window and a blue card in the right window.
"Let's start with the pink card." Connie said.
"Why?" Mike asked.
"Well, we have to start somewhere. Also I noticed when I did the test
alone that pastel-colored cards turned on the light more often than
darker colors."
"What about you?" Mike asked Bill.
"I don't remember," Bill said. "I just picked the color I liked each
time. It's supposed to be a test in color perception so I tried to wipe
my mind clean and pick the color I liked best between the two cards."
"Who said it was' supposed to be a test in color perception?" Mike said.
"Nobody." Connie said. "But you can see that it is. That's why the cards
change. What else could be the point of having the cards change?"
Mike looked slowly from the boy to the girl.
"Look, isn't the point to illuminate the light, to make the pennies come
down the slide?" he asked.
"Sure, but we ought to do it the way they want us to do it," Bill
said. "They're trying to learn something about colors and we ought to
decide on the basis of the colors we like or something like that."
He looked over his shoulder. Dr. Sutliit and Dr. Urich were in a shadow
and he could not see their faces.
"He's right," Connie said. "We ought to do what they want. We really
should co-operate. It's an important experiment."
"The important thing is to illuminate the light as often as you can,"
Mike said. "That's all they've told us. Let's do that. O.K., you can
disregard the cards then. They're not important. What is important is
the mechanism inside the box. Every time it changes it makes one or the
other window the right choice."
"What about the cards?" Bill asked.
"Forget the damned cards," Mike said. "Use your head. Someone had to fix
the mechanism, put a pattern into it. If you discover that pattern you can
make the light go on every time and you'll get a penny every time. Right?"
He could see that it had never occurred to either of them before. The girl
saw it first and she started to smile, but almost at once she looked over
her shoulder at the rear of the room.
"What if there isn't any pattern in the mechanism?" she said. "What if
it's just a random choice?"
"That's probably what they think it is," Mike said. "But making things
random is hard. Whoever set the mechanism probably did it a certain
way just out of laziness. Or because he thought we would concentrate
on the colors of the cards. Do you agree that if there is a pattern in
the mechanism and we can find it out that is the quickest way to earn
the pennies?"
Faintly, like the sound of a machine heard through a thick wall, Dr. Urich
was talking urgently to Dr. Sutliff.
"Well, logically I think you're right," Connie said. "But I don't think
that's what they want us to do. The cards are there for a reason."
"Who cares what they want us to do?" Mike asked. "Let's do the best
thing. We could have pressed lhe window twenty times by now. We're just
wasting time. Look, I'll start to press the windows and find out the
pattern of the machine. If I don't find it in a few minutes we'll try
another method."
He leaned forward.
"Remember, Mr. Freesmith," Dr. Urich's voice said softly, "every one of
the subjects must agree to letting you proceed."
Mike looked first at Connie and then at Bill.
"How about it?" Mike said. "Are we just going to sit here or are we going
to do something? They don't care what we do. They said we can do anything
we want." Bill was sweating in the dull yellow light, "Anything is better
than nothing. Is it all right for me to go ahead? Do you agree?"
Bill glanced once more over his shoulder and then his face dissolved in
confusion. He nodded agreement at Mike. Mike turned to Connie. She nodded.
Mike began to push the left-hand door. He pushed it twenty times in a
row. It only paid off six times, but at the end of that time he had found
the pattern. He pulled his chair closer and began to play his system.
Once he had to alter it when a slight change was made in the pattern.
Behind him he could hear Dr. Urich arguing with Dr. Sutliff.
Mike pushed one window after another, and every time a penny rolled
down the slide. The heap of pennies grew between his hands. At the end
of twenty minutes he pushed the heap of pennies aside and Connie and
Bill began to stack them. He did not take time to explain the pattern
which he was playing to them. They became bored and once he heard Connie
yawn. Bill stood rigidly beside him, stiffly stacking pennies into little
piles of ten.
At the end of the hour the table was almost covered with the little piles
of pennies. Dr. Urich and Dr. Sutliff came up from the back of the room
and thanked them. Dr. Sutliff put his open notebook down on the table.
"Thank you very much for your co-operation," Dr. Sutliff said. "It was
very good of you to give us your time. I think you will discover that
you have earned a good deal more than fifty cents for your hour's work."
He smiled thinly. "Your co-operation was very helpful."
Dr. Urich was standing to one side. She looked steadily at Mike and her
face was strained with anger. When Mike caught her eye she flushed and
looked down at her hands,
"Will you want us tomorrow?" Mike said.
"No. Not tomorrow," Dr. Urich cut in. "Not ever again, I think. We must
revise the experiment on the basis of today's results."
Mike edged over to the table and he glanced down at Dr. Sutliff's
notebook. On the top of the page was the title of the experiment:
"Color Apperception: The Latent Tendency to Overselect Dark Colon." There
was a notation of the scores that Connie and Bill had made on previous
attempts. Connie had guessed right forty-two per cent of the time. Bill
had guessed right thirty-eight per cent of the time. Mike glanced down
the page to a section of notes written in ink and bearing the date of
that day. He read it quickly:
The three subjects did not make the selection on
the basis of color preference, but seemed to make
what might be called a political selection. Subject
34 dominated the group and insisted that the choices
be made on a basis other than the color of the cards.
For this reason today's results are being discarded
as being atypical and aberrant. Subject 34 will
not be used again in the experiments.
Mike turned away. The pennies had been divided, and each of them received
205 pennies. Mike took his, put them in his pocket. He grinned at
Dr. Urich and walked out of the door. In the corridor he stopped for a
moment to look at the catatonic rats. The rat with its paws under its
chin was still slanted sideways. Mike gently, bent the rat forward until
it was on all fours. Then he pushed it over to the water spout at the
end of the cage. The rat's tongue shot out, licked at the water and Mike
left after it had consumed a half dozen drops.
Mike was almost at the foot of the stairs before Bill Evans caught up with
him. Bill was breathing hard, but his face was bright with excitement.
"I wanted to thank you," he said hurriedly, not looking at Mike's face. "I
hate both of them; Dr. Urich and Dr. Sutliff. I hate them and that damned
test. It made me nervous. I've been doing it for weeks. I always get about
the same number of pennies. Never over fifty an hour. They always acted
so damned superior. I'm glad we did it the way you wanted. Did you see
how mad Dr. Urich was? Serves her right. I'm glad. Really glad."
He jingled the pennies in his pocket and smiled quickly at Mike and then
looked away.
"Anyway thanks," Bill said. "I'm glad we did it. I got so I was hating
the two of them. I feel better now."
He turned quickly and trotted away. Mike never saw him again at Stanford.
Mike walked slowly across the Quad. Something is wrong with the two
professors, he thought. There was something important they were
missing. They were testing for something little, something screwy,
unimportant. And something big was involved.
He turned the experiment over in his mind, tried to find the correct
words. They slipped away from him, remained just at the edge of his
mind. He walked by the chapel, past the clumps of palm trees and around
the tall thin hulk of the Hoover Library.
"You may begin."
Mike pressed the red card in the left-hand window. The light did not
go on. The machine whirred, two new cards, orange and yellow, dropped
down into the windows. Mike pressed the yellow card. The light did not
go on. The mechanism whirred again and the cards were changed.
Mike hesitated. Something was wrong. He pressed the right-hand card
again. A penny dropped down the funnel, rolled slowly on the table and
slowly spun to the surface between his hands. Mike looked down at the
penny. The mechanism whirred. He pressed the right-hand card which was
black. Again a penny came down the funnel and the light briefly glowed
on top of the box.
Forget the cards, he told himself. They're not important. What is important
is the mechanism. Forget the cards.
Then, quite intuitively, he was playing the two people in white coats.
They must have set the mechanism to work in a certain pattern. The
thing to do was to find the pattern. Hell with the cards, Mike thought.
Play the people.
Mike pressed the right-hand window two more times and the light did not
glow. Then three times it did glow and the pennies rolled down the funnel
Then three times he failed.
That's it, he thought. The pattern is once right, once left; then twice
right and twice left, then three times right and three times left and
so on.
He pressed the right-hand window four times running and each time he won
a penny. Then he switched to the left-hand window and pressed it four
times and each time a penny rolled on the table. Then the right-hand
window five times. Then the left-hand window five times. The pennies
jingled on the table, grew in a heap between his hands. Once a penny
rolled out on the floor, but Mike did not notice it. Also he did not
notice the color of the cards and he did not look up to see if the
light went on. He only watched the funnel to see the little lump that
the pennies made when they were ejected onto the slippery metal slide.
He pressed the right-hand window six times, but the fifth and sixth time
the penny did not drop down. Mike hesitated. Something had changed. He
switched to the left-hand window. It paid twice and then twice it did
not. The mechanism had switched to four times on each side. Instantly
Mike had it. The mechanism was set to alternate from side to side until it
reached five times on each side and then it went down again; four, three,
two, one. When it reached one he guessed that it would start up again.
Mike played that pattern and he was correct. Each time the penny jumped
onto the funnel, slid down onto the table and rolled to a halt between
his fingers. Mike chuckled and played the pattern and each time he pressed
the windows he felt he was defeating the two people standing behind him.
For twenty minutes he played without an error. Dr. Urich spoke to
Dr. Sutliff. Mike did not listen, but he could tell they were arguing. The
stack of pennies grew in front of Mike. The light glowed regularly on
top of the black box. Dr. Urich's voice grew slightly shrill.
Dr. Sutliff coughed. He had moved directly behind Mike. Mike looked over
his shoulder.
"That will be enough for today, Mr. Freesmith," Dr. Sutliff said.
"I thought you wanted me for two hours," Mike said.
"For our purposes that will be enough today. Tomorrow we will want you
again. The apparatus will be the same, but the circumstances will be
different."
Mike pushed back his chair and started to stuff the pennies in his
pocket. Once he looked up, and Dr. Urich was watching him closely,
antagonism in her eyes. She smiled over the antagonism. The pennies filled
one pocket and half of another. Mike walked lopsided out of the room.
When he was outside the door he paused. He looked at the rats with the
thin red wounds in their heads. Through the thin plywood wall he heard
Dr. Urich talk.
"He does not play the colors at all," she said. Her voice was full of
complaint. "It was exactly as if the colors he did not notice."
"He figured out the pattern we set in the mechanism," Dr. Sutliff said.
"But he is the only one. All else choose by the colors. This will the
figures badly skew. How do we explain?"
"We'll alter the mechanism tomorrow and then see how he does,"
Dr. Sutliff said.
"Why would he not do as the others?" Dr. Urich said. "It was plain that
he should choose by colors."
"It's a stress situation. The pennies are positive motivation to take
the pattern rather than respond by colors. It's just funny that he is
the only one that concentrated on the pattern."
Mike put his finger through the wire of the cage and pushed gently
against the rat standing on its hind legs. The rat's eyes bulged, its
fur bent away from his finger, but the rat's body moved like putty. Mike
pushed it to one side and the rat stayed in that position, bent at an
impossible angle, its tiny claws tucked under its chin. Mike turned
and hurried off down the corridor.
The next day when Mike reported for the experiment there were two more
subjects in the room. One was a girl named Connie Burton and the other
was a boy named Bill Evans. The girl was attractive and she was wearing
a cashmere sweater and Mike guessed she was doing the experiment for
some other reason than money. The boy was skinny and very embarrassed.
Dr. Urich gave the instructions again.
"Each of you has operated this apparatus before. Today the mechanism has
been altered so that a new pattern is operating. You will decide among
yourselves which window you will choose on each try. You may choose
the window on whatever basis you wish. But you must all agree on the
decision. If you are not agreed you can make no choice. None of you
may press the window until the other two have agreed to your choice.
You will share the pennies that you earn. Please make your discussion
audible, for what you say will be recorded on a wire recorder."
A paper in her hand rustled, she coughed and the room was quiet. Bill
Evans looked at her with agony.
"Do we start now?" Mike asked.
"You may start now," Dr. Urich said. She walked to the back of the room
and joined Dr. Sutliff.
The three students looked down at the windows. There was a pink card in
the left window and a blue card in the right window.
"Let's start with the pink card." Connie said.
"Why?" Mike asked.
"Well, we have to start somewhere. Also I noticed when I did the test
alone that pastel-colored cards turned on the light more often than
darker colors."
"What about you?" Mike asked Bill.
"I don't remember," Bill said. "I just picked the color I liked each
time. It's supposed to be a test in color perception so I tried to wipe
my mind clean and pick the color I liked best between the two cards."
"Who said it was' supposed to be a test in color perception?" Mike said.
"Nobody." Connie said. "But you can see that it is. That's why the cards
change. What else could be the point of having the cards change?"
Mike looked slowly from the boy to the girl.
"Look, isn't the point to illuminate the light, to make the pennies come
down the slide?" he asked.
"Sure, but we ought to do it the way they want us to do it," Bill
said. "They're trying to learn something about colors and we ought to
decide on the basis of the colors we like or something like that."
He looked over his shoulder. Dr. Sutliit and Dr. Urich were in a shadow
and he could not see their faces.
"He's right," Connie said. "We ought to do what they want. We really
should co-operate. It's an important experiment."
"The important thing is to illuminate the light as often as you can,"
Mike said. "That's all they've told us. Let's do that. O.K., you can
disregard the cards then. They're not important. What is important is
the mechanism inside the box. Every time it changes it makes one or the
other window the right choice."
"What about the cards?" Bill asked.
"Forget the damned cards," Mike said. "Use your head. Someone had to fix
the mechanism, put a pattern into it. If you discover that pattern you can
make the light go on every time and you'll get a penny every time. Right?"
He could see that it had never occurred to either of them before. The girl
saw it first and she started to smile, but almost at once she looked over
her shoulder at the rear of the room.
"What if there isn't any pattern in the mechanism?" she said. "What if
it's just a random choice?"
"That's probably what they think it is," Mike said. "But making things
random is hard. Whoever set the mechanism probably did it a certain
way just out of laziness. Or because he thought we would concentrate
on the colors of the cards. Do you agree that if there is a pattern in
the mechanism and we can find it out that is the quickest way to earn
the pennies?"
Faintly, like the sound of a machine heard through a thick wall, Dr. Urich
was talking urgently to Dr. Sutliff.
"Well, logically I think you're right," Connie said. "But I don't think
that's what they want us to do. The cards are there for a reason."
"Who cares what they want us to do?" Mike asked. "Let's do the best
thing. We could have pressed lhe window twenty times by now. We're just
wasting time. Look, I'll start to press the windows and find out the
pattern of the machine. If I don't find it in a few minutes we'll try
another method."
He leaned forward.
"Remember, Mr. Freesmith," Dr. Urich's voice said softly, "every one of
the subjects must agree to letting you proceed."
Mike looked first at Connie and then at Bill.
"How about it?" Mike said. "Are we just going to sit here or are we going
to do something? They don't care what we do. They said we can do anything
we want." Bill was sweating in the dull yellow light, "Anything is better
than nothing. Is it all right for me to go ahead? Do you agree?"
Bill glanced once more over his shoulder and then his face dissolved in
confusion. He nodded agreement at Mike. Mike turned to Connie. She nodded.
Mike began to push the left-hand door. He pushed it twenty times in a
row. It only paid off six times, but at the end of that time he had found
the pattern. He pulled his chair closer and began to play his system.
Once he had to alter it when a slight change was made in the pattern.
Behind him he could hear Dr. Urich arguing with Dr. Sutliff.
Mike pushed one window after another, and every time a penny rolled
down the slide. The heap of pennies grew between his hands. At the end
of twenty minutes he pushed the heap of pennies aside and Connie and
Bill began to stack them. He did not take time to explain the pattern
which he was playing to them. They became bored and once he heard Connie
yawn. Bill stood rigidly beside him, stiffly stacking pennies into little
piles of ten.
At the end of the hour the table was almost covered with the little piles
of pennies. Dr. Urich and Dr. Sutliff came up from the back of the room
and thanked them. Dr. Sutliff put his open notebook down on the table.
"Thank you very much for your co-operation," Dr. Sutliff said. "It was
very good of you to give us your time. I think you will discover that
you have earned a good deal more than fifty cents for your hour's work."
He smiled thinly. "Your co-operation was very helpful."
Dr. Urich was standing to one side. She looked steadily at Mike and her
face was strained with anger. When Mike caught her eye she flushed and
looked down at her hands,
"Will you want us tomorrow?" Mike said.
"No. Not tomorrow," Dr. Urich cut in. "Not ever again, I think. We must
revise the experiment on the basis of today's results."
Mike edged over to the table and he glanced down at Dr. Sutliff's
notebook. On the top of the page was the title of the experiment:
"Color Apperception: The Latent Tendency to Overselect Dark Colon." There
was a notation of the scores that Connie and Bill had made on previous
attempts. Connie had guessed right forty-two per cent of the time. Bill
had guessed right thirty-eight per cent of the time. Mike glanced down
the page to a section of notes written in ink and bearing the date of
that day. He read it quickly:
The three subjects did not make the selection on
the basis of color preference, but seemed to make
what might be called a political selection. Subject
34 dominated the group and insisted that the choices
be made on a basis other than the color of the cards.
For this reason today's results are being discarded
as being atypical and aberrant. Subject 34 will
not be used again in the experiments.
Mike turned away. The pennies had been divided, and each of them received
205 pennies. Mike took his, put them in his pocket. He grinned at
Dr. Urich and walked out of the door. In the corridor he stopped for a
moment to look at the catatonic rats. The rat with its paws under its
chin was still slanted sideways. Mike gently, bent the rat forward until
it was on all fours. Then he pushed it over to the water spout at the
end of the cage. The rat's tongue shot out, licked at the water and Mike
left after it had consumed a half dozen drops.
Mike was almost at the foot of the stairs before Bill Evans caught up with
him. Bill was breathing hard, but his face was bright with excitement.
"I wanted to thank you," he said hurriedly, not looking at Mike's face. "I
hate both of them; Dr. Urich and Dr. Sutliff. I hate them and that damned
test. It made me nervous. I've been doing it for weeks. I always get about
the same number of pennies. Never over fifty an hour. They always acted
so damned superior. I'm glad we did it the way you wanted. Did you see
how mad Dr. Urich was? Serves her right. I'm glad. Really glad."
He jingled the pennies in his pocket and smiled quickly at Mike and then
looked away.
"Anyway thanks," Bill said. "I'm glad we did it. I got so I was hating
the two of them. I feel better now."
He turned quickly and trotted away. Mike never saw him again at Stanford.
Mike walked slowly across the Quad. Something is wrong with the two
professors, he thought. There was something important they were
missing. They were testing for something little, something screwy,
unimportant. And something big was involved.
He turned the experiment over in his mind, tried to find the correct
words. They slipped away from him, remained just at the edge of his
mind. He walked by the chapel, past the clumps of palm trees and around
the tall thin hulk of the Hoover Library.
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