"This Boding Itch"
The Evening's Events
6:05 PM — 8:20 PM · 135 Minutes
Comedians joke about itching palms—specifically the left palm being itchier than the right.
"I didn't know that anybody except me had itching palms today," one hundred million husbands and wives say simultaneously.
The phenomenon is named the "Itchy Palm Syndrome." Professor Arpad Arutinov (weasel-faced, always passing through) appears briefly.
"See page 982, paragraph 2—of the book. There is only one."
Fritz hands Vera The Back Door of History by Arutinov. Page 982, ¶2: rampant pruritus has always announced mutational advances—color vision, speech, consciousness.
The next will be a double appearance: a road map of the future in the palms, and a correlating third eye on the head.
"If only they don't call it the 'Itchy Palm Syndrome.' I can stand anything except that."
A small wave of suicides—the Syndrome "driving people bugs."
WHEW introduced: Worldwide Health Enforcement Wardens.
"Good health and good attitude compulsory for everyone!"
They eat Happy Ox Hodgepodge—"one of the Great Dishes of the Western World." Vera reads from Palmistry for Plain People by Moses Mantes.
Seven mounts, seven nodes, but only six major lines. The seventh—the Line of the Future—hasn't erupted yet.
Monkeys and apes exhibit the Syndrome. Dolphins show "strange unlocalized unease."
WHEW begins the Deep-Bite Acid Treatment. Early complaints of holes burned through hands—"adjusted for."
About thirty "natural leaders" assemble in Fritz's rooms. They discuss telekinesis—controlling detached body parts.
"If extremes come to the extreme, we could—" Fritz hesitates. "Lop them off."
WHEW has developed tracking dogs to hunt and destroy severed limbs.
"Don't hack them off, folks. They aren't that itchy."
"Let's cut our losses in half." Each lops off only the left hand—the more informative one. Handless wrists packed in dry ice.
The severed hands romp on tables, climb draperies, then crawl outside to stone ledges thirty stories high.
Vera giggles despite her packed stump. "I thought it would stop half the itching—and it did for a moment. But now I have a new itch, right on the top of my head."
The severed hands, under telekinetic control, climb the outer walls to ledges three floors above.
Dolphins worldwide are "contemplating their navels and grinning those wide dolphin grins." They've become arrogant and uncooperative with experiments.
"The dolphins can read the future and humans can't," Claire O'Hare says. "That's where they have it—in the navel."
"Never mind, in three or four minutes we'll be able to read the future too."
99.7% of the world's palms treated. WHEW crews now "mopping up" the uncooperative 0.3% marked for "special handling."
The "Itchy Pate Syndrome" is officially acknowledged.
Crewmen burst into Fritz's rooms. "Thirty of you folks, and each has his left hand freshly lopped off. How are we going to treat hands that aren't here?"
They acid-treat the group's right hands, burning out the Lines of the Future just as they're being born.
Eustace brings nine fierce dogs. They throw themselves through the windows—then fall thirty stories trying to follow scent straight up.
The WHEW crewmen follow them out. "Specialists, but their specializations have crowded out their common sense."
The phone rings. Tapping: "All clear here. We're three floors above. We sure did snooker those dogs and fellows, didn't we? Did you ever see dogs trying to follow a trail straight up when they're falling straight down? They can't get any traction."
The hands return, "frolicking over them like so many pet squirrels."
Zoo monkeys and apes look at their left palms and laugh. They scratch their heads "with a sort of delight."
"They seem to know something that we don't."
Deep-Bite Acid adapted for the Itchy Pate Syndrome. Secondary motto: "Out by the roots. Leave not a trace."
The thirty look at their returned left hands ("Oh, roll over, now flatten out a bit, perfect, perfect!") and laugh with new joy.
They eat more Happy Ox Hodgepodge—"the best 'third-eye' food in the world."
WHEW has developed hunting leopards that will "savagely and instinctively zero in on severed human heads and find them and devour them."
"Don't look for easy outs, folks. WHEW will cure your pate itch in WHEW's own way."
"The ledges are too narrow for our heads," Claire rails. "They'd roll off. And even if they didn't, they couldn't climb up the walls."
"It's going to be a race, and I always loved a race," Vera crows. "I feel myself getting smarter by the second. If only a WHEW crew doesn't get here for three or four minutes—"
A WHEW crew bursts in at that instant.
Elephants are "looking into the ends of their trunks and cooing with delight." They scratch their heads on tree boles "with obvious pleasure."
Buford Cracksworthy panics and lops off his own head. "Oh boy oh boy oh boy!" the severed head moans. No telekinetic control.
A leopard smashes it, chews it up, swallows it. "It sounded as if the beast was chewing a head of cabbage."
The crewmen apply the Deep-Bite Acid to the group's heads, eating those third eyes down to their roots before they are fully awake.
"The Pruritus-meters are running and they say that your heads do itch."
"Won't you WHEW gentlemen all have some Happy Ox Hodgepodge?" Vera asks. The chief fills a big platter.
"What a race, right down to the wire," Vera chortles. "I'm getting so smart I'm about to bust."
She reads the Line of the Future: a great burgeoning in the group futurity line, an absolute incandescence. But her personal line blurs.
"Ouch! Say, that deep-bite acid does have a bite to it! Oh, it's darker in here than it was. And I forget what I was trying to do."