Read Online Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild by William Rabkin - Free Book Online
Authors: William Rabkin
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy, Media Tie-In, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, Detective and Mystery Stories, Murder, Psychics, Psychic Ability, Wilderness survival, Business intelligence
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after time. Around him, the three others waited, poised just like him, waiting for the computerized keyboard to finish its preprogrammed run. Then they’d all kick in.
Henry Spencer had never wanted to be a rock star. He’d never yearned to be onstage with a Stratocaster between his legs and thousands of fans screaming at his every move. He’d never learned to pick out the opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven” on the display model in the guitar store or stood in front of his mirror practicing the front-footed stance unique to rock gods and Jack Kirby superheroes.
In his teens, in fact, Henry was almost completely oblivious to music. While his high school buddies were rocking around the clock or shaking their money maker or getting their groove thang on, Henry was doing his homework or attending practice for whichever sport was in season. He was vaguely aware that there were such things as radios, and that they tended to blare out their noise wherever he happened to be, but none of it made any more impression on him than the sound of traffic in the distance.
It wasn’t that Henry disliked music. It was just that it was a distraction, and Henry never had time for anything that would take him away from his chosen path.
At least until that path reached its end.
Although Henry liked to think of himself as the same driven man he’d been before he retired, his mind and body were beginning to rebel against the decades of discipline. He told himself that it was important he continue to rise every morning at five seventeen, but his physical self knew there was no actual reason to wake before the sun, and his hand had started to hit the snooze before his training could stop it. When he set out for a quick six-mile jog, his legs began to suggest it might be nicer to stroll before they’d hit the halfway mark.
Henry was mature enough to expect the physical changes age was inevitably bringing, but the mental ones were a continual shock. And none was more shocking than what happened the day he was cruising the manager’s specials at the Food Giant looking for a discounted steak that was still hours away from its expiration.
He noticed the song playing over the sound system.
Except that he didn’t just notice it. He recognized it. Recognized that it was called “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” and that it concerned a young man who traveled across the country in an old car, without any destination in mind. Henry tried to tell himself that he must have noticed the song in his teens because its philosophy of aimless wandering annoyed him so much, but that didn’t explain why he had just caught himself humming the tune. And it didn’t explain why his foot was tapping under his shopping cart, or why he suddenly knew that the song’s singer would end up in Los Angeles only to feel that restless urge to hit the road again.
Even though the minutes were counting down until his manager’s special steak would expire, Henry stayed in the aisle until the song ended and the next one began. To his shock, he realized he knew this song, too. Even though the lyrics made no logical sense, Henry was now aware that he’d long felt great sympathy for a balloon seller named Levon whose only sin was the sincere desire to be a good man.
This was an astonishing discovery for Henry, and he prowled the aisles for an hour, filling his cart with enough groceries to keep him through Christmas as he allowed the sound system to ferry song after song from the depths of his subconscious to the front of his brain.
That shopping trip sent Henry on a six-month odyssey through the annals of pop history. He worked thoroughly and methodically, just as he had when he was investigating murders for the Santa Barbara Police Department. He started by Googling pop charts for the years he was in high school—years, his half hour of scientific research assured him, when pop music has its greatest impact on the human mind—and then plugged those titles into
Henry Spencer had never wanted to be a rock star. He’d never yearned to be onstage with a Stratocaster between his legs and thousands of fans screaming at his every move. He’d never learned to pick out the opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven” on the display model in the guitar store or stood in front of his mirror practicing the front-footed stance unique to rock gods and Jack Kirby superheroes.
In his teens, in fact, Henry was almost completely oblivious to music. While his high school buddies were rocking around the clock or shaking their money maker or getting their groove thang on, Henry was doing his homework or attending practice for whichever sport was in season. He was vaguely aware that there were such things as radios, and that they tended to blare out their noise wherever he happened to be, but none of it made any more impression on him than the sound of traffic in the distance.
It wasn’t that Henry disliked music. It was just that it was a distraction, and Henry never had time for anything that would take him away from his chosen path.
At least until that path reached its end.
Although Henry liked to think of himself as the same driven man he’d been before he retired, his mind and body were beginning to rebel against the decades of discipline. He told himself that it was important he continue to rise every morning at five seventeen, but his physical self knew there was no actual reason to wake before the sun, and his hand had started to hit the snooze before his training could stop it. When he set out for a quick six-mile jog, his legs began to suggest it might be nicer to stroll before they’d hit the halfway mark.
Henry was mature enough to expect the physical changes age was inevitably bringing, but the mental ones were a continual shock. And none was more shocking than what happened the day he was cruising the manager’s specials at the Food Giant looking for a discounted steak that was still hours away from its expiration.
He noticed the song playing over the sound system.
Except that he didn’t just notice it. He recognized it. Recognized that it was called “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” and that it concerned a young man who traveled across the country in an old car, without any destination in mind. Henry tried to tell himself that he must have noticed the song in his teens because its philosophy of aimless wandering annoyed him so much, but that didn’t explain why he had just caught himself humming the tune. And it didn’t explain why his foot was tapping under his shopping cart, or why he suddenly knew that the song’s singer would end up in Los Angeles only to feel that restless urge to hit the road again.
Even though the minutes were counting down until his manager’s special steak would expire, Henry stayed in the aisle until the song ended and the next one began. To his shock, he realized he knew this song, too. Even though the lyrics made no logical sense, Henry was now aware that he’d long felt great sympathy for a balloon seller named Levon whose only sin was the sincere desire to be a good man.
This was an astonishing discovery for Henry, and he prowled the aisles for an hour, filling his cart with enough groceries to keep him through Christmas as he allowed the sound system to ferry song after song from the depths of his subconscious to the front of his brain.
That shopping trip sent Henry on a six-month odyssey through the annals of pop history. He worked thoroughly and methodically, just as he had when he was investigating murders for the Santa Barbara Police Department. He started by Googling pop charts for the years he was in high school—years, his half hour of scientific research assured him, when pop music has its greatest impact on the human mind—and then plugged those titles into
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