Free The Non-Statistical Man by Raymond F. Jones

Bascomb turned in full retreat. He rounded the comer and stopped in front of a cigar store window, watching the reflections in the glass to make sure he wasn’t followed by an angry, insulting policeman.
    When he was able to breathe easier, he faced the pedestrians again with the new awareness he possessed of his fellow men. Intuitively, he could correct the crude, statistical knowledge he’d been content with up to now. How ridiculous it was to be content merely with how many when it was possible to know which ones.
    He glanced up sharply to the man standing next to him. The stranger was looking absently at a box of high-priced cigars, but his face was drawn into a warp of indecision.
    “It won’t work,” Bascomb said quietly. It was almost impossible for him to keep from speaking. “The deal is rigged,” he said, “and they’re waiting for you to walk into the trap.”
    The man’s face paled and then grew scarlet with rage. “What do you know about it?” he demanded. “Who are you?” He advanced threateningly and Bascomb was sure he’d have laid hands on him if the sidewalk hadn’t been crowded.
    “I’m a friend,” said Bascomb in haste, backing again from this new encounter. “Take my word for it and don’t sign the contract.”
    Then he darted away with a speed that shocked his system. The stranger attempted a short pursuit, but gave it up as ridiculous in the heavy pedestrian traffic. His mind was made up, however; though he would not have admitted it, the fantastic warning had tipped the decision for him.
    Bascomb slowed as he found the steps of the Public Library, but he went up, two steps at a time. In the reading room, he settled by the window, keeping an eye open for signs of pursuit.
    He had done a foolish thing. He would not pull that kind of stunt again. At least he’d try not to—the sudden impact of this sure, certain knowing was difficult to resist.

7

    For almost two hours Charles Bascomb sat there, apparently just staring through the window. But his mind was burning with the fury of the effort to evaluate the change within himself. He saw all his past life as a dark, empty grayness—a feeble reliance on somebody else, who relied on somebody else— If a man was wrong in statistical Society he could always fall back on his group, his school, “that’s what they taught me”, his insurance company, “everybody knows that”, his firm—the bigger the cushion, the better.
    It seemed impossible that that life was only as far away as this very morning, when he’d left the house, and that vision had come within these few hours.
    It wasn’t that sudden, of course. Magruder’s pills and exercises had been working on him for days, now. Perhaps it took something like the encounter with Sprock to jar his intuitive faculty into action. At any rate, he would never be the same again. His life could never be the same.
    The most immediate thing he had to take care of was calling off Hap Joh n son’s newspaper campaign against the Professor. After that, there would be time enough to determine what his relationship with Magruder would be.
    But he already had an inkling of what would be necessary. '
    He found Hap in the Courier office looking unchanged from the time of his last visit. The reporter looked up, pleased as he saw Bascomb’s face. “Pretty good story to start off with, don’t you think?” he said. “The switchboard has taken seventy or eighty calls on it already. Most of them giving us kudos.
    “It was a good story,” Bascomb said, taking a seat by the worn desk. “It will have to stop, however.”
    “What—?”
    Bascomb nodded. “I have found out something I didn’t know before. Magruder is no fake; his stuff works.”
    “You said that before. The idea was to keep it from working.”
    “On me, I mean. I’ve found out how to use it in a different way than Magruder intended; it can be used constructively, not the way Magruder is doing.”
    Hap frowned in suspicion and