Hystereo

Scarcely glancing to his right at the lake that lay calm in the hazy twilight, Woodard drove behind Nodus and company. Hi-fi indeed! Torturous device of a science-ridden culture--how had he let himself in for the evening ahead? Why had he permitted this trespass upon his privacy? But when, after some eight miles, the convertible ahead slowed and signalled for a left, he checked the impulse to keep going on around the lake and back to the hotel. Nodus would think him crazy. He would think it aloud in the dining room--ostensibly to the deferential genies, the man and woman who were vacationing with him; but he would think it in a voice that carried.

Woodard pulled up beside the other car in the fir-fringed clearing.

Nodus stood waiting with his two shadows. "Russ will take you to the studio," he said briskly. "The girl and I will be along in a minute." He chuckled, his eyes scanning Woodard's face. "No neighbors here to raise a fuss. No knocking--no kicks or squawks...."

Only from me, Woodard thought, following the leader to a two-car garage some distance from the cottage. Inside, Russ slid shut the door, then flipped a switch that lighted half a dozen table lamps of the beaded fringe variety. Woodard stared in amazement. Heavily carpeted with scatter rugs, the place was walled and ceilinged with fiber-board. On three walls, including the door side, were stuck triple rows of ornamental covers from long-playing records. Running the length of the fourth wall, left of the entrance, a counter rose waist-high, its side hung solid with more record covers. On the left end of this counter was an elaborate system of dialled boxes which Woodard summed up vaguely as player, amplifiers, filters, and so on; on the right, eight open wood boxes of records. On the center of that wall was a large clock with a sweep second hand. Directly beneath, an empty rack of record cover size, beside which a neatly printed sign read "NOW PLAYING".

"Quite amazing," Woodard remarked truthfully. "Well...." He dropped into the center of three chairs right-angling the dial boxes. "Might as well sit."

But Russ, who had been smiling dreamily, was suddenly agitated. He shook his head. He opened and shut his mouth like a fish. As Woodard felt his poise threatened, the door slid open. Nodus entered, preceding Miss--Miss--But her name hadn't ever been mentioned.

Seeing where Woodard sat, he frowned. "No, no," he said. "That won't do. You'll be better off...."

Woodard repeated, "I'm utterly amazed by all this."

Nodus' expression softened. "It's a garage, as you can see. Four hours at the start of the summer to convert it to a sound-room. Three and a half hours, at the end, to reconvert it. On the nose in both instances. Half-hour discrepancy there. We're working on that."

Woodard understood that "we" included the pair, whose life currents evidently flowed from the master's battery.

"Job's all broken down," said Nodus. "I do certain things, Russ does certain things. The girl"--She bridled as he jerked an elbow toward her.--"does her little chores."

The girl! Would she see fifty again? But Woodard felt himself wanting to placate, a sensation both new and unpleasant. "The details must be very interesting," he said weakly.

Nodus' face had gone stern again. "--won't do," he back-tracked curtly. "You'll be better off over there." He indicated a lone chair directly opposite the "NOW PLAYING" sign. "Acoustically speaking, the most effective location in the studio." Clinical and considered, his tone brooked no protest. Woodard stumbled embarrassedly to the chair. "You can see," Nodus stated, "if you look down, all the chalk marks where we've experimented with positions."

And Woodard did see: dozens of white marks on the rug around the chair legs, close together as if fractions of an inch were vital.

As Nodus moved to the dial boxes, Russ and the girl dropped like wraiths into chairs: she nearest Woodard, he in the middle, leaving the place by the apparatus for Nodus. Woodard thought: God, but he has this worked out! He's a tyrant, a baby-faced ogre. And these two goops are in bondage to him.

It came to him that Nodus was curiously untanned for a devotee of swimming.

"What do you weigh, Woodard?"

"Why----oh----one-sixty, I guess...."

Nodus nodded. "Near enough." He selected a record from the box nearest him. "People always like a few effects before the concert," he said. "Preliminaries." His expert hand pressed a switch and turned some dials. The room was filled with a rasping hum. Now Woodard saw what he hadn't noticed before: in the far corner, back of the counter, an unlighted cavernous area; and in its center, black-draped like an oracle of doom, the speaker system.

Russ and the girl looked dismayed even before Nodus snapped, "Oh-oh! Something's not right! Russ--go outside and check the grounding." He pulled Russ to him and whispered. Russ nodded and slipped quietly out.

I could still go, Woodard thought. The hell with any stories he'd spread. I'd.... But the girl was staring at him, serene and knowing as if she read thoughts.

The rasp ceased and the room went still. After a few minutes, Russ entered and took his seat by the girl.

Now Nodus assumed a pedagogical stance, a platform manner. "This," he said, holding the player arm poised above the whirling record, "is the Victoria Falls--Zambesi River--taken at 78 r.p.m., which I still consider the ideal speed. Perfect studio conditions not possible, of course, though the engineer was extremely cooperative." Nodus smiled benignly. "He tried to get rid of the insects. They almost got rid of him. You'll notice a treble hum in the foreground. Giant mosquitoes. Then I'll play it again, filtering out the falls--we can do that--and you'll hear the mosquitoes as if they were primary."