Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
HAM SANDWICH
It gets difficult to handle the
problem of a man who has a real talent
that you need badly—and he cannot
use it if he knows it's honest!
by JAMES H. SCHMITZ
ILLUSTRATED BY LEO SUMMERS
There was no one standing or sitting around the tastefully furnishedentry hall of the Institute of Insight when Wallace Cavender walkedinto it. He was almost half an hour late for the regular Sunday nightmeeting of advanced students; and even Mavis Greenfield, Dr. Ormond'ssecretary, who always stayed for a while at her desk in the hall tosign in the stragglers, had disappeared. However, she had left theattendance book lying open on the desk with a pen placed invitinglybeside it.
Wallace Cavender dutifully entered his name in the book. The distantdeep voice of Dr. Aloys Ormond was dimly audible, coming from thedirection of the lecture room, and Cavender followed its faintreverberations down a narrow corridor until he reached a closed door.He eased the door open and slipped unobtrusively into the back of thelecture room.
As usual, most of the thirty-odd advanced students present had seatedthemselves on the right side of the room where they were somewhatcloser to the speaker. Cavender started towards the almost vacant rowsof chairs on the left, smiling apologetically at Dr. Ormond who, asthe door opened, had glanced up without interrupting his talk. Threeother faces turned towards Cavender from across the room. ReubenJeffries, a heavyset man with a thin fringe of black hair circling anotherwise bald scalp, nodded soberly and looked away again. MavisGreenfield, a few rows further up, produced a smile and a reproachfullittle headshake; during the coffee break she would carefully explainto Cavender once more that students too tardy to take in Dr. Al'sintroductory lecture missed the most valuable part of these meetings.
From old Mrs. Folsom, in the front row on the right, Cavender'sbelated arrival drew a more definite rebuke. She stared at him forhalf a dozen seconds with a coldly severe frown, mouth puckered indisapproval, before returning her attention to Dr. Ormond.
Cavender sat down in the first chair he came to and let himself gocomfortably limp. He was dead-tired, had even hesitated over coming tothe Institute of Insight tonight. But it wouldn't do to skip themeeting. A number of his fellow students, notably Mrs. Folsom, alreadyregarded him as a black sheep; and if enough of them complained to Dr.Ormond that Cavender's laxness threatened to retard the overalladvance of the group towards the goal of Total Insight, Ormond mightdecide to exclude him from further study. At a guess, Cavender thoughtcynically, it would have happened by now if the confidential reportthe Institute had obtained on his financial status had been lessimpressive. A healthy bank balance wasn't an absolute requirement formembership, but it helped ... it helped! All but a handful of theadvanced students were in the upper income brackets.
Cavender let his gaze shift unobtrusively about the group while somealmost automatic part of his mind began to pick up the thread of Dr.Al's discourse. After a dozen or so sentences, he realized that theevening's theme was the relationship between subjective and