Part 8 (1/2)

”Sure,” I said.

Pheola was in better spirits by dinner time, and didn't exactly pick at her food. At any rate, she was ready to talk when we finally got back to my apartment.

”Did you understand what I said to Norty about the sine waves, Pheola?” I asked her.

She shook her head. Her education had not proceeded to calculus, and her trig was too far behind her for quick recollection of what sine waves were.

I drew some sketches of overlapping sine waves for her to explain what I thought was going on. ”You are making predictions on this one path, and actual events are on another path, do you see?” I said. ”When the two paths cross, the events that you predict and actual events are the same, and at those times you're right.”

”I know,” she said. ”I thought about it all afternoon. I didn't want to say it to Norty, but when I was giving him all those numbers, there came times when it was a little fuzzy, and I wasn't so sure.”

”And what did you do?”

”I guessed--because it would clear up right after that, and I'd be sure again.”

”Can you explain the fuzziness?” I prodded.

She shrugged. ”It's like a fork in the road,” she said, holding her two index fingers next to each other. ”And there are _two_ pictures for a while.”

You may not have noticed it, but your index finger is not straight. It curves in toward your middle finger so that you can hold all the tips together if you want to. And when Pheola laid her two index fingers together, they curved away from each other at their tips. I got a flash and went immediately to my phone.

”h.e.l.lo,” I said to the O-operator cartoon. ”Get Norty Baskins. If he's asleep, wake him.”

Norty was quite upset about being awakened.

”I have a suggestion for your machine,” I said to him. ”Try it in three dimensions. Instead of sine waves, visualize it as two coil springs that are all snarled up in each other. Each has a different pitch, perhaps different diameter. But at certain points the coils touch each other, and at those times she is right.”

”In the morning?” he said weakly, rubbing his eyes.

”Nonsense,” I said. ”We'll meet you down there.”

The trick in getting decent answers out of computers is to ask them sensible questions. It took us nearly until dawn to get the question right. And then we got a very sweet answer. There were two helices all right, as an explanation of how Pheola could be right and then wrong.

I had my own idea about what the helices signified, but that was unimportant beside the fact that we were now able to predict at what times in the future the helices would coincide. It was at the time of their intersection that Pheola would be right in her predictions.

We did a little extrapolation. ”Well,” I said to her, ”it's nice to know that you're going to be wrong tomorrow and the next day. Maragon isn't going to die.”

”I'm sorry ... oh, I don't mean that!” she apologized. ”But I did so want to be right, and now I know I'm just what he said, a fake!”

”Not all of the time,” I reminded her. ”But this gives me confidence in what I want you to do at the hospital today.”

We grabbed a little shut-eye. Fatigue cuts into TK powers as much as it cuts into any other human ability, and I wanted Pheola to be at her best. But around lunch-time we dropped over to see Doc Swartz, and I explained to him what I thought Pheola could do for Maragon.

”I doubt that clot has had time to get any better,” he said. ”If Pheola examines him now and finds it as big as ever, and still soft and flexible, I think we should entertain your idea.”

Pheola made a trip up to Maragon's room, and returned. ”Just the same,” she said. ”He looks so tired.”

”He's not so bad, better than he looks,” Swartz said stoutly. ”And you can still feel the clot?”