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PLACEBO

The object appeared in the middle of Main Way, about fifty feet from the statue of Vachel Lindsay, and at least a hundred from anything else. It was much too big and complicated to have been hidden anywhere, and it hadn't any wheels, tracks, wings, or other visible means of movement.

Corrigan, looking the object over, decided that it could not have come from any logical place in the world. Not being prejudiced, he then thought a little about the illogical places, and the places that weren't in the world. Corrigan decided that it must be another attempt at time travel, and he clucked his tongue sympathetically.

Well, someone had to break the news. Corrigan arose from the grass and walked toward the object.

There was a young man sitting in the object, on a sort of high saddle. He looked a little wild-eyed, and he seemed to be talking to himself, as he pulled and twisted at the rows of controls in front of him. Corrigan, looking up at him, decided that he couldn't be very healthy, and that the stiff gray garments he wore must be extremely uncomfortable.

"Greetings, traveler," Corrigan called.

"You're speaking Anglish!" the young man exclaimed. "Good! Maybe I can get some help here. What year is this?"

"1955, by most systems."

The young man turned a little paler.

"I've just left 1955," he said unhappily. "Four times, in fact. Four different 1955's. And each one's a bit worse. Now the machine won't work."

"Your theory's wrong," Corrigan said calmly. "Hasn't it occurred to you yet that time travel might be impossible?"

The young man made a choked sound. He began to climb down from his perch, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously on Corrigan as he did so. He saw Corrigan as a small brown man, dressed in loose blue trousers, barefooted, and with a puff of white hair that seemed never to have been properly cut. The lawns and grassy roads, the bright and impermanent-looking buildings, and Corrigan himself, all added up to one thing in the young man's mind.

"You're wrong," Corrigan said. "I'm not a lunatic, and this isn't an asylum. We don't have them."

The young man, on the ground now, stared at Corrigan in evident horror.

"Mind reading?"

"More or less," Corrigan said. "It saves time. For instance, you're Darwin Lenner, and you'd like very much to get back to wherever you started from. In fact, you have to, or something unpleasant might happen to you, by your standards."

"I'd be absent without permission," Lenner admitted. "I ... I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Only when absolutely necessary," Corrigan smiled. "I'm a philosopher by trade, myself, not a mind reader. My name's Philip Corrigan, and I'd be very glad to help you on your way ... but I think it might be a little difficult. We aren't really a very mechanically-minded people here."

Corrigan had been thinking swiftly. He had also been carrying on a conversation which Lenner could not possibly hear, with a man who was several miles away.

Corrigan had always enjoyed conducting guided tours, and he was enjoying this one especially well. He had a slightly wicked taste for complicated teasing, and Lenner was a perfect object. He had evidently come from one of the more unpleasant probabilities, a world full of complex rules and harshly restrictive; everything that he saw bothered him. The handsome girls, wearing unstrategically placed flowers and very little else; the flocks of children, as plentiful as pigeons and apparently as free of supervision; the almost total absence of anybody actually performing useful work ... all of it contributed to Lenner's increasing nervousness.

The guided tour went in a wide circle, and Lenner and Corrigan wound up sitting in a tavern facing on Main Way. Lenner ignored the green drink before him and peered unhappily out the big window toward his machine.

"He'll be here," Corrigan assured him. "Why hurry? Don't you like it here?"

Lenner's mouth hardened. He looked around him, and shook his head.

"No." He spoke almost apologetically, "I'm sorry ... well, look, old fellow, no hard feelings, I hope. But this world of yours is primitive. Degenerate, I'd say."

"Primitive?"

"Probability traveler, actually," Corrigan corrected.

"All right, probability. Why does he stay here? Why would a really intelligent man give up civilization?"

"Well, you know how it is. He's gone native, you might say. Life among the lotus eaters, and all that. Might happen to anybody, even yourself."

Lenner shuddered.

"It's all right, though." Corrigan continued. "He'll be here any minute, and I'm sure he'll be able to help. Knows all there is to know about these machines. In fact, here he comes now."

Burwell entered, and Corrigan could hardly suppress a small chuckle. Burwell had picked up Lenner's ideas about what a man of intelligence and authority ought to look like, and had gone to some trouble to look the part. He was wearing a uniform of some sort, spectacles, and an expression of extreme wisdom.

"I'm sure I can repair what's wrong," Burwell told Lenner. "Let's go and look at your machine."

Arriving, Burwell climbed over the mechanism with an air of bored ability, occasionally thumping at something, adjusting something else, or hitting a part with a tool until it rang. He muttered to himself as he worked, allowing the sound of his musings to drift in Lenner's direction.

"Umm ... badly twisted impeller ... the varish is more or less waffled ... let's see if ... ah, there we are."

He climbed down and solemnly shook hands with Lenner.

"Fine machine you've got there, my boy. It'll take you back to your own place quite easily now. There wasn't a thing wrong except the drift crotch. However, I wouldn't use it again if I were you. There's no real control on these things. A man could end up anywhere. And of course, you'd never find your way back here, without control."

"Well, thanks..." Lenner said doubtfully. He glanced around. "It's a shame there's no way we could regularly communicate between our worlds. There's a lot we could do for this one."

"I'm sure of that," Burwell said, hastily looking away. "But it isn't worth the danger and difficulty of reaching us. For myself, it doesn't matter any more." He assumed a nobly tragic expression. "But you are young; you've got your life ahead of you; your State and your society need you. I'm glad to help you on your way."

Lenner mounted the machine, and Burwell beamed a thought at Corrigan.

Corrigan and Burwell shoved. Lenner and his machine faded and were gone, leaving only a flattened place on the grass.

"Brrr," Burwell said. "Am I glad that worked! If he'd stayed another week or so we would have had our first lunatic of the century."

"Or worse," Corrigan said, stirring the grass with his toes. "Did you get what he was thinking about when he talked about his world and ours getting into touch, and civilizing us?"

"I got it, all right." Burwell said. "The fellow's mind was a swamp. A real primitive. And just like any other primitive, all he needed was a placebo from a witch doctor. Me, in my savage regalia. Just let me get this thing with the glass in it off my nose, and these button things opened up a bit, and we can get on with that chess game. I hope the next traveler picks somewhere else to land, though--I've never felt so silly in my life!"

The vital principle, in the human body, can so far resist the influences of a variety of poisons, slowly introduced into it, that their effects shall be unobserved, till, under the operation of an exciting or disturbing cause, their accumulated force breaks out, in the form of some fearful or incurable disease. The poison, which comes from vegetable decompositions, on extensive marshes and the borders of lakes, after being received into the body, remains apparently harmless, in some instances, a whole year, before it kindles up a wasting intermittent, or a destructive bilious remittent fever.

Facts of this nature show, that pernicious influences may be exerted upon the secret springs of life, while we are wholly unconscious of their operation. Such is the effect of the habitual use of tobacco and other narcotics, and of all stimulants which, like them, make an impression upon the whole nervous system, without affording the materials of supply or nutrition.

It is an alleged fact, that, previously to the age of forty years, a larger mortality exists in Spanish America than in Europe. The very general habit of smoking tobacco, existing among children and youth as well as adults, it has been supposed, and not without reason, might explain this great mortality. Like ardent spirits, tobacco must be peculiarly pernicious in childhood, when all the nervous energy is required to aid in accomplishing the full and perfect developement of the different organs of the body, and in ushering in the period of manhood. I once knew a boy, eight years of age, whose father had taught him the free use of the tobacco cud, four years before. He was a pale, thin, sickly child, and often vomited up his dinner.

To individuals of sedentary habits and literary pursuits, tobacco is peculiarly injurious, inasmuch as these classes of persons are, in a measure, deprived of the partially counteracting influence of air and exercise. I have prescribed for scores of young men, pursuing either college or professional studies, who had been more or less injured by the habitual use of this plant.

In the practice of smoking there is no small danger. It tends to produce a huskiness of the mouth, which calls for some liquid. Water is too insipid, as the nerves of taste are in a half-palsied state, from the influence of the tobacco smoke; hence, in order to be tasted, an article of a pungent or stimulating character is resorted to, and hence the kindred habits of smoking and drinking. A writer in one of the American periodicals, speaking of the effect of tobacco, in his own case, says, that smoking and chewing "produced a continual thirst for stimulating drinks; and this tormenting thirst led me into the habit of drinking ale, porter, brandy, and other kinds of spirit, even to the extent, at times, of partial intoxication." The same writer adds, that "after he had subdued his appetite for tobacco, he lost all desire for stimulating drinks." The snufftaker necessarily swallows a part of it, especially when asleep, by which means its enfeebling effects must be increased.

The opinion that tobacco is necessary to promote digestion is altogether erroneous. If it be capable of soothing the uneasiness of the nerves of the stomach, occurring after a meal, that very uneasiness has been caused by some error of diet or regimen, and may be removed by other means. If tobacco facilitate digestion, how comes it, that, after laying aside the habitual use of it, most individuals experience an increase of appetite and of digestive energy, and an accumulation of flesh?

It is sometimes urged, that men occasionally live to an advanced age, who are habitual consumers of this article; true, and so do some men who habitually drink rum, and who occasionally get drunk; and does it thence follow that rum is harmless or promotes long life? All, that either fact proves, is, that the poisonous influence is longer or more effectually resisted, by some constitutions than by others. The man, who can live long under the use of tobacco and rum, can live longer without them.

The opinion, that the use of tobacco preserves the teeth, is supported neither by physiology nor observation. Constantly applied to the interior of the mouth, whether in the form of cud or of smoke, this narcotic must tend to enfeeble the gums, and the membrane covering the necks and roots of the teeth, and, in this way, must rather accelerate than retard their decay. We accordingly find, that tobacco consumers are not favored with better teeth than others; and, on the average, they exhibit these organs in a less perfect state of preservation. Sailors make a free use of tobacco and they have bad teeth.

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