The Man Who Knew Everything

Fantastic – October 1954

(1954) *

Randall Garrett

Pst ! This is top secret. Don’t let it get around, but we’ve got the Russians right where we want them. They haven’t got a secret left to their name. We know every detail. You see, the Russians were pretty sure their inner circle was leakproof , that no one could penetrate their vaults. But they reckoned without—DR. H. WOLSTADT sat in a small, very secret lab oratory in Arlington, Vir ginia, and twisted the dials on an oscilloscope . A pale green line wriggled up and down on the screen, and Dr. Wolstadt watched it with an ticipation.

“If this works,” he mut tered softly, more to himself than to his assistant, “we will have a communication beam that will be better than radio.”

The green line wriggled and changed form. Slowly, as the physicist manipulated the controls, the green line stopped moving.

“There!” shouted Wol stadt, “that is the wave form we want!” He reached over toward a switch. “Check your meters, Magruder!”

The assistant carefully ad justed the recording instru ments of the huge machine that filled half the laboratory. “All right, Dr. Wo lstadt, we’re ready.”

“Good!” Wolstadt pressed the switch.

The assistant watched the meters and automatic graphs.

“I’m afraid it didn’t work, sir,” he said at last. “The in struments aren’t reacting as you expected.”

Wolstadt shrugged re signedly. “Neverth eless, I think we are on the right track. Come, my boy, we will try again.”

He shut off the machine.

The machine hadn’t done what the scientists had ex pected of it, but it had an other effect which was entire ly unknown to them. During the few seconds of operation, an invisible ray had been beamed out of the machine. At the speed of light, the ray went through the wall of the lab and into Dr. Wo lstadt’s study. Like an X-ray, it went through the books and refer ences on the physicist’s desk. In a straight line, it shot out of the laboratory, silent and invisible. A mile or so farther on, it struck the Pentagon Building and went through. Among othe r things, it went through a complete copy of the Encyclopedia Brittanica , Roget’s Thesaurus, the Ox ford Unabridged Dictionary, a twenty volume set of The History and Analysis of Mili tary Tactics, and a copy of Amazing Stories that some general had left on his desk.

Like a flashlight going through plateglass , the beam went through files, papers, memorandums, abstracts, re ports, desks, chairs, brick, stone, and concrete. Through the Pentagon and across the Potomac it went, throu gh building after building, un noticed and invisible.

Then, on the far side of Washington, D.C., several miles from the laboratory of Dr. Wolstadt, it struck the head of a human being.

Philip Merriwether was a nobody . He made thirty-five dollars a week at a very dull job and lived in a cheap room ing house that had been built around 1880 and not remod eled since. He was still wear ing a suit he had bought in 1947, and on his thin, five-foot-four frame, it looked even older. His education had stopped at the sixth grade, and he had almost flunked out of that. He had a mousy face, stringy hair, and a dull look in his eyes.

In other words, he was just about as nobody as a human being can get without being an absolute bum.

It wasn ‘t that Phil Merri wether was really stupid; he was simply afflicted with an incredibly bad memory. He could forget more in five min utes than he could learn in five years. Oh, he could re member commonplace things easily enough—his name, where he lived, things like that. He could read and write tolerably well, although his spelling was intolerable. He could add and subtract with fair ease, but, having forgot ten most of the multiplica tion table, he found “higher mathematics,” such as long division, almost impossible to do w ithout hours of laborious thinking.

In a way, his poor memory was economically useful. Phil loved to read mystery stories, and, having collected a total of fifty-seven paperback edi tions of the better detective novels, he found that there was no necessity of buying more, because he could re read the old ones. By the time he got around to them again, he had forgotten the plot and the identity of the murderer. Naturally, he never tried to solve any of them; he could never remember the clues.

In routine work, Phil Mer riwether was fairly efficient. If he did something every day, he could remember it overnight, and could do it again the next day. But his superiors soon found out that it was almost disastrous to give him a vacation, because he had a tendency to forget what he was supposed to do when he came back to work. That is, if he remembered to show up for work.

In spite of all that, Phil was a nice sort of fellow. He was likable, in a dull sort of way, and got along with most of his fellow workers. He could n’t tell funny stories, of course, nor play a decent game of cards, but he was an excellent conversationalist be cause, no matter what was said to him, he could never think of an argument against it. He was a good listener be cause he hadn’t anything to sa y.

But his favorite pastime was walking. He liked to stroll around the nation’s capitol , taking in the sights, and just plain enjoying him self. He always walked the same route every night; if he didn’t, he was likely to get lost. Once, several years earli er, he had taken a wrong turn and ended up in unfamil iar territory. He had asked a passer-by how to reach his address, but had forgotten the instructions, and so had ended up hopelessly lost. He had finally been forced to take a taxi home, a luxury he cou ld ill afford. After that, he stuck to his routine.

It was on one of these eve ning strolls that a very pe culiar thing happened to Philip Merriwether. He was walking slowly along the side walk, carefully minding his own business, when, without warning, th ere was a strange, buzzy feeling in his head. It grew stronger; it felt like someone was playing a fire hose on his brain. His skull felt as though it were sudden ly being filled with a vast, overpowering torrent of words—hundreds of words; thousands of wo rds; millions upon millions of words!

Under the pressure of this verbal onslaught, Philip Mer riwether’s mind reeled. He pressed his palms to his tem ples and fainted dead away.

When he came to, there were several passers-by crowded around him. One of them was kneeling by his side, taking his pulse.

“Ha —Wha — what hap pened?” he asked, unoriginally enough.

“You fainted,” said the man who was taking his pulse. “Just lie still; it’s all right. I’m a physician.”

“Fainting,” said Phil, “is normally a mild fo rm of shock in which the blood vessels of the abdomen become distend ed and engorged with blood, thus reducing the blood pres sure and temporarily depriv ing the brain of its normal oxygen supply, which causes momentary loss of conscious ness .”

The doctor blinked. “What? Oh. Yes. That’s quite correct, sir. Do you have these attacks often.”

Phil’s mouth had remained open after his last word. After a minute, he gulped. “Did I say that?”

“What?” the doctor asked for a second time. “Do you feel all right?”

Phil Merriwether stood up hastily. “My head feels a little funny, but I think I’m all right.”

“If you want to go to a hospital—”

“No, no, thank you. I’m all right, really I am. I feel com pletely resuscitated, thanks to your therapeutic ministra tions.”

“Think nothing of it, sir. My duty, you know,” said the physician.

“The Oath of Hippoc rates,” said Phil, “makes it obligatory for the physician to alleviate suffering, illness, and infirmity, and induce sa lubrity in his fellow man in the most efficacious m anner at his command.”

“Uh, yes, of course,” said the doctor, looking baffled. “Well, good luck.” With that, .he picked up his black bag and walked rapidly off in the opposite direction. The other passers-by had already gone about their business.

Phil, mea nwhile, began walking towards his home, his head still feeling a little peculiar. What was the mat ter with him? What had hap pened? And where on Earth had he gotten all those big words?

Polysyllabic vocables , said a voice in his mind, although recognized by the erudite as not being necessarily indica five of scholarly attainments, are nevertheless profoundly impressive to the hoi polloi.

Phil nodded slowly to him self. Yeah, big words were impressive, all right. But where had he picked them all up?

“I’d be tter go home and take an aspirin,” he said aloud.

Aspirin, said the voice, is the acetic acidester of salicyl ic acid, a white, crystalline solid having the empirical formula-Holding his hands to his ears, Philip Merriwether ran home as fast as his spindly legs could propel him.

B. J. Holly, office manager for Starr & Sons, Inc., flip ped a switch on his desk in tercom. “Where is Merri wether?” he snapped. “That boy was supposed to have picked up these letters for filing half an hour ago. I can’t wait any l onger.”

“Mr. Merriwether phoned in this morning, sir,” said the secretary’s voice. “He said he was a little ill, and he’d be late. He—oh! Just a moment, sir; he just came in.”

“Send him in here!” or dered B. J. Holly.

Mr. Holly frowned at Phil Merriwether as soon as the door opened. “Under the weather a bit, eh, Merri wether?”

Phil nodded. “Yes, sir. My head feels queer.”

Mr. Holly suppressed an impulse to remark that he wasn’t at all surprised. In his estimation, anyone with a head like Merriwether’s would feel odd all the time. But Mr. Holly, although somewhat tyrranical , and definitely a stuffed shirt, was not basically cruel, so he said nothing that vicious.

“A bit of a hangover, per haps?” he asked suspiciously.

Phil was picking up the papers for the file room. “No, sir,” he said absently. “A hangover is caused by the toxic effects of various iso meric forms of higher alco hols and other impurities normally present in alcoholic beverages, plus a depletion of vitam ins, especially B-one, in the system. I don’t drink.”

“I—uh—I see.” But Mr. Holly did not see. He was to tally baffled. He watched in astonishment as Phil Merri wether walked out the door of the office.

Merriwether, himself was slightly bemused. How had he done it? He knew perfectly well what he was saying; a full night of thinking had managed to bring to him the realization that something— he knew not what—had hap pened to his memory. It seem ed to him that there must be something he could do with it, but he didn’t quite know what.

The decision was practi cally forced upon him just before lunchtime. He was putting on his coat to go out for lunch when B. J. Holly stepped out of his office. The office manager was preparing to have lunch with an out-of-town bu yer, and as he stepped up to the visiting fireman, he said: “Well, as General Pershing said: ‘Lafayette, we are here !’” He chuckled at his own wit, paying no atten tion to Merriwether.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Phil, “but the general never said that; as a matter of fact, he said later that it was put into his mouth by a newspaperman. He said—”

B. J. glowered at him. An office boy, even if he is thirty-four years of age, ia not sup posed to contradict his supe rior.

“Look, son,” said B. J., “I happened to be there. I was only a private, but I happened to be standing right next to him.”

“That’s impossible, sir,” Phil said quietly. “According to Federal records, you were born on April second, nine teen-oh-four. You were only fourteen years old at the time. You have no military record with the United States Army.”

The out-of-town buyer sup pressed a snicker. B. J. Holly turned purple said: “I’ll see you after lunch.”

After lunch, Philip Merri wether lost the job he had held for five years.

At seven o’clock t hat night, he sat in a small bar, sipping disconsolately at a glass of Coca-Cola. Not knowing where he was going to get another job, he was trying to drown his thoughts in soda-water and television. The show on the screen was “You Can’t Lose,” a quiz show pro duced by the Boltman Auto mobile Corporation.

The quizmaster was grin ning sardonically at the hap less contestant. “You have arrived at the fifty thousand dollar question,” he said. “Since you chose geometry as your category, the question will be on t hat subject. Are you ready?”

The contestant nodded un happily.

“All right, here’s the ques tion: What is the value of pi to eight decimal places?”

Before the contestant could say a word, Phil muttered: “Three point one four one five nine two six five—plus.” He didn’t notice what the con testant said, but the quizmas ter shook his head in mock sorrow. “I’m sorry, sir, but the correct answer is: three point one four one five nine two six five. Better luck next time.”

The coarse, unshaven man standing next to Phil looked at him in awe. “Hey, buddy,” he said, “that’s the ninth time you’ve answered right. Why don’t you get on that program and make yourself some dough?”

Phil blinked at his Coke and thought it over. Then his face brightened. “Yeah,” he said, grinning, “why don’t I?”

It took him three weeks to get into the studio, and by that time, his severance pay was almost gone. He was nearly broke, and had no prospects of a job. He had to make good.

By pure chance, he was chosen as one of the fir st con testants. The quizmaster beamed at him pleasantly.

“You understand the rules, don’t you?” he “asked . “All you have to do …”

He went on, but Phil didn’t hear him; he was too scared. When the first question pop ped up, he said: “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ll repeat the question,” the quizmaster said. “You have chosen the ‘General Category.’ That pays twice as much, but it means I can ask you any question I like. The first one was: ‘Who were the Essenes?’ “

Since the General Category questions paid off tw ice as much as the Restricted Cate gories, they were about four times as hard. But that didn’t bother Phil Merriwether in the least.

“The Essenes,” he said, “were an obscure Jewish sect which flourished during the time of Christ, from before 100 B.C. to ab out 70 A.D. They are believed to be in strumental in the composition of the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discov ered—”

“That’s enough,” the quiz master said. “You’ve given the right answer!” The or chestra sounded a chord. Ap plause followed.

“Se cond question: Listen carefully. Henry the Sev enth’s title was the same as the title of the last Tudor king of England; the last Tudor king had the same name. What was the name of the last Tudor ruler of England?” The quizmaster smirked hap pily; the ques tion was a trick one.

“Elizabeth the First was the last Tudor ruler,” said Phil. “The last Tudor king was Henry the Eighth.”

Naturally, the answer was right.

“Very good,” said the quiz zer. “Number three: what does pneumonaltramicroscop-icvolkanikoniosis m ean?”

Phil closed his eyes and listened to the little voice in side his head. He said: “It is an inflammation of the lungs caused by tiny particles of rock dust; it is commonly known as ‘silicosis’ or ‘min er’s consumption.’ “

The quizmaster looked al most shocked, but, good show man that he was, he managed to keep a bland expression on his face.

“That’s right!” he bel lowed.

Phil Merriwether grinned happily. He didn’t know how it had come about, but, some how, something had filled his head full of all kind s of amaz ing facts. It didn’t matter what the question was, all Phil had to do was think about it, and the answer was in his memory. He smiled, waiting for the next question.

“You’ve come to the $25, 000 question,” said the MC. “If you want to go on, you will have to be put in a soundproof booth so that you won’t be prompted by the au dience. If you want to come back next week—”

“I’ll take it now,” said Phil Merriwether.

So they put him in a soundproof booth. All he could hear was the an nouncer’s voice.

Phil smiled to himself. Twenty-five thousand dollars so far! It was fantastic! He’d never have to work again!

He answered the next ques tion easily. Fifty thousand dollars! Fantastic!

The announcer said: “What is the mathematical formula for the world’s mo st powerful weapon?”

Phil grinned. That was simple. “The formula is: i over b times a equals pi to the i times e over mu,” he said.

“Ohhh , I’m sorry, sir,” the announcer said sadly. “The basic formula for the manu facture of the atomic bomb is: E equals m times c squared. But you still have your fifty thousand dollars; congratulations and better luck next time.”

Phil Merriwether blinked. He could hardly believe it. He knew his answer was right. There must be a mistake. But no amount of argument did him any good. Within fifteen minutes, he was out on the street. The studio had prom ised that the check would be deposited to his account in the morning. Phil shrugged and went home.

At midnight, Philip Merri wether woke up suddenly to see the glare of a flashligh t being shone in his face.

“Are you Philip Merri wether?” growled a voice.

“Yes, I am. What’s the meaning of this?”

The lights in the room went on to reveal five men with drawn guns standing outside the door. As they came into the room, the man with the fl ashlight flicked it off. “Search the room,” he said to the others.

As they methodically began their search, Phil said: “What’s going on here? Who are you?”

“FBI,” snapped the man who was obviously the leader of the group. “Are you sure you’re Philip Merriw ether? We’ll be taking your finger prints shortly, so it won’t do you any good to lie.”

“Certainly I’m me!” Phil snapped, irritated. “What makes you think I’m not?”

“Never mind,” said the Federal agent.

The truth was that Merri wether no longer looked like the lackluster character he had been a few weeks before. His eyes had a sparkle to them, his body had more springiness. He looked more alive. He was no longer the colorless man he had been.

“Nothing unusual in the room, sir,” s aid one of the men who had been searching.

“Okay,” said the leader to Merriwether, “put on your clothes. You’re coming with us.”

“You can’t arrest me!” Phil said. “I haven’t done anything. What is the charge?”

“Espionage,” said the FBI man without blinking an eye lid.

They put him in a big, powerful Cadillac and drove him through the streets of Washington to an office build ing near the Capitol. Most of the city was asleep, but this building was ablaze with light. The FBI men parked the car and led Phil int o the building. They were greeted by a reception committee the like of which Phil had never seen before.

Two generals, including the Chief of Staff, a couple of admirals, an Air Force gen eral, and a half dozen impor tant-looking civilians, one of whom Phi l recognized as the Secretary of Defense him self!

They sat Phil down in a chair without a word, and just looked at him for a few sec onds; then the Secretary of Defense said: “What do you know about the Q-beam?”

“The Q-beam,” Phil told him, “is a top-secr et weapon. It is a ray which is capable of paralyzing without killing, and can operate over a dis tance of several hundred miles. The basic formula is—”

“Never mind what it is!” snapped the Chief of Staff. “The whole United States heard you give it out ove r the air this evening!”

“What else do you know about our defenses?” the Sec retary asked.

Phil told them. He knew how big the atomic stockpiles were, where the bombs were, and how they were to be used. He knew everything about the ICBM rocket pro gram and where the launch ing sites were. He knew where every ship in the Navy was and what sort of arma ment it carried. He told them where the secret airbases were hidden and how many bombers were at each.

As he continued, the offi cials became more and more nervous. They fidgeted as each new piece of information was disclosed, and the flow of in formation seemed endless.

At last the Secretary of De fense said: “That’s enough!” His face was white. He turned to the others. “Gentle men, I think we can say w ith out doubt that we have captured the most cunning, clever, and dangerous spy in the world. The question is: What shall we do with him?”

“How did you get this in formation?” one of the gen erals asked.

“I don’t know,” Phil said truthfully. “It just came to me.”

“He won’t talk,” said an admiral.

“Who do you work for?” asked another.

“I used to work for Starr & Son, but they fired me three weeks ago.”

“I mean, what country?”

“I don’t work for any body!”

The Secretary of Defense looked up at the FBI man.

“I want everything on this man—everything! He has to be investigated as no other man has ever been. If pos sible, we want to know what this man has been doing every second of his life ever since he was born!”

The FBI man nodded. “I’ll have to check with the Chief, of course, but I’m sure we can put every man in the Bureau on this job.”

The Secretary nodded. “A few kidnap cases and things like that will have to wait, but that’s nothing compared to this.”

The FBI man left, and the other men began grilling Phil Merriwether again. It went on for hours.

Phil Merriwether sat in the deepest, most secluded cell of the United States Govern ment’s greatest security pris on. He sat and thought, his brain working more furiously than it had ever worked be fore. He was tir ed and hag gard from loss of sleep, and worn out from hours of ques tioning. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The entire top brass of the government was in a stew over what they should do with Philip Merri wether. The FBI could get no evidence on him; ther e was nothing to prove he was a spy. And even if there had been , the case could never be brought to court. Phil knew too much.

“Good heavens,” he moan ed, “how did I ever get into a fix like this?”

“You’re a blabbermouth,” he answered himself. “If you hadn ‘t told them all that stuff, you’d never have been in this jam!”

But how did he know all the information about the U.S. Government’s most top secret plans? It must have had something to do with that fainting spell. How did that explain it?

“Well,” he said to himself, “you’ve got a lot of informa tion—use it!”

So he sat on the edge of the hard bunk, his mind search ing for some clue as to what had happened to him.

He was still sitting like that when the Secretary of Defense and the President of the United St ates walked into the cell some hours later. He had thought about all the data he had on every subject from anthropology to zoology. It had something to do with neurology and radia tion physics, he was sure, but what?

And then, quite suddenly, the pieces cl icked together.

When the Chief Executive walked into his cell, Phil beamed happily. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. President.”

The President frowned. “I must admit, Mr. Merriwether, that it is a pleasure to meet you, too. I admire such abili ties as yours, although I also wi t h you had never been born. It seems you know more about our national defense than I do.”

“It’s amazing,” said the Secretary. “According to the FBI, this fiendishly clever man has been masquerading as an ordinary blockhead for more than thirty years. No one suspected his true genius. The only thing we can’t fig ure out is why he shot off his mouth over television.”

Phil said: “Mr. Secretary, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t realize it was so secret. I’m sorry. But I think I can show you how I got all this information.”

The President looked blank. “Show us? You mean you’re willing to betray your espionage system?”

“I don’t have any spy sys tem,” Phil said. “Will you give me a pencil and a piece of paper?”

The Secretary handed him a notebook and a ball-point pen, and Phil began to write. “According to File X-99761, in the War Department’s Ul tra Top Secret Section, a Dr. Heinrich Wolstadt is work ing on a secret communica tion device. I’m putting some formulas on this paper. As k Dr. Wolstadt what effect this particular wave form would have on the human brain.” The Secretary of Defense and the President looked at each other.

“I guess we might as well,” the President said.

It was several hours later that Dr. Wolstadt was rushed in to Phil’s cell. He was so excited that his German ac cent became much heavier than usual.

“Is this the chentleman ? Ach! It’s amazing! How did it happen? You were stand ing right in the path of the ray, nein?”

“I think so, Dr. Wolstadt. Didn’t you suspect what ef fect the beam might have had?”

“Never!” said the physicist. “Not until I saw your mathe matics. It’s unbelievable to think this could happen!”

“For Heaven’s sake!” said the President. “What hap pened?”

Wolstadt turned around to face t he Chief Executive.

“It’s very simple. The derivation of the Q-beam that I have been working on got out of control for a second. It went through all my files, and all the files in the Penta gon, and Heaven only knows what else. It picked up all that inform ation and put it in Mr. Merriwether’s mind!”

“Amazing!” said the Pres ident.

“Fantastic!” said the Sec retary of Defense.

“Will it work with any body?” the President asked.

Dr. Wolstadt shook his head. “No. This is a most un usual case. Mr. Merriwether, according to the FBI reports, had a terrible memory before the accident happened. He is actually a very intelligent man, but he always forgot things, and that made him look stupid.

“But, fortunately, it meant that his memory wa s almost a total blank. Therefore, the ray could implant all this data on his memory.

“It’s like recording some thing on an L-P disc. If it al ready has music on it, the re corder just ruins the disc. But if it’s blank, the recorder puts music on it. You s ee?”

“Then if it had hit anyone but me—” Phil began.

“—it would probably have driven them insane,” said Dr. Wolstadt.

“That still leaves us the problem of what to do with Mr. Merriwether,” said the President.

“I think I have an idea,” Phil said. “Want to h ear it?”

Some months later, two men arrived by air in the city of Moscow. One of them went directly to the American Embassy. In his brief case was a small, very compact machine.

The Ambassador shook his hand warmly. “The President told me to give you the r un of the place, Dr. Wolstadt. What are you going to do.”

“I’m sorry,” said Wol stadt, “but I cannot tell even you. All I require is a room in the Embassy which faces the Kremlin.”

“That can be arranged. But where is your companion? I understood there were to be two of you.”

“He is, shall we say, taking a stroll around Moscow.”

“But he can’t do that!” the Ambassador said. “The Presi dent said he was the most valuable man on Earth! He might get arrested.”

“That is the chance we have to take. Now if you’ll sh ow me to that room, I’ll go about my business.”

Some distance away, on the opposite side of the Kremlin from the American Embassy, Philip Merriwether, the most valuable spy that ever exist ed, waited patiently for the ray that would be generated inside the Embassy to strike his head. In a few seconds, he would know even more than he already did.

He smiled happily. This was the life!

The End