There was more than a pustule of truth in what he said. Even legitimate science has at times become discomfited by the forays of irrationality and made to recant its earlier, inflexible certitude. The theory of relativity by Einstein (another mop-head) violated all proper laws of logic. Was Chatterton’s seemingly absurd premise—that harmonics have a physical effect on a solid body, with no apparent exchange of force or energy between them—any more bizarre than Einstein’s?

Yes, it was—the product of crude, thalamic thinking, sloppy, quasi-scientific experiments with gongs, clappers, fipple flutes. Unless…

“How far have you gotten in your research?”

“We’re on the verge of victory. The key’s in the lock. With a little money from Abdul, we can turn it. The door will swing open, like the gates of heaven, to reveal…”

“Have Gorelik or Grady or any of you succeeded in moving physical objects by the manipulation of sound waves?”

“You first,” he said. “What have you come up with?”

I could have told him in one word: nothing. Or I could have recounted that strange isolate, that perceptible stutter-step I thought I saw when my domino moved maybe a wink before the onslaught of my solo. More likely not, so I shook my head and said nothing.

“What would you say, young man,” and he eyed me gravely, “if I told you that I have observed a metal jackstone tremble when the air around it was charged with the notes of Gorelik’s flute? That I have seen a cube of beech-wood, not large I admit but large enough to swear by, startle like a fawn to the ring of two thin cymbals?”

“But under what conditions? I mean, when the wind blows around here, not only a block of wood but the whole house shakes. I can’t see…”

“Then you are the victim of your own selective blindness.” He put on the face of one who detects a skunk. “It’s as if you wear defective glasses that make all that is relevant invisible. Well,” sadly he shook his fungoid head, “I cannot change that. I cannot give you vision, any more than I can give you brains. And I cannot give you a lobotomy.”

“Let’s just say I lack the faith of St. Paul—I can’t believe in the evidence of things not seen. I can’t believe in witchcraft, or comic-strip magic.”

“The study of any science begins with a comic-strip vision of the universe. I don’t suppose you know anything about acoustics?” he said.

“I know that sound, like heat, is a vibrational phenomenon. It can strip the rust off lead pipes.”

He nodded. “It can break up the blockage of fatty tissue in arteries.”

“The boom of a cannon, bouncing off a mountain, can cause an avalanche.”

“A human voice can shatter crystal.”