The Link (12 page)

He is torn between his duty to the audience and his stunned reaction at the sight of his mother. He says a few words to the audience, then looks back toward his mother.

She is gone.

His expression blank, Houdini begins to perform.

“At the very moment Houdini saw his mother,” says Robert’s voice, “she was dying in New York.”

Robert starts as the telephone rings. It is Cathy inviting him to ESPA the next day. They have found a highly interesting “subject” in the form of a nightclub entertainer named Teddie Berger. Did Robert happen to see the item in the newspapers—it was on late night t-v news programs as well—about a clairvoyant vision during his act saving the lives of two children and their babysitter from a burning house many miles away?

“I think I did,” says Robert.

He hesitates a moment then apologizes for his “over-reaction” that afternoon; if he had her telephone number he would have called to say he was sorry.

Cathy counters with her own apology, she shouldn’t have been so “pushy”. It’s just that she feels so strongly about her work.

“I understand,” he says.

“Friends again?” she asks.

Robert smiles. “Of course.” He almost says more, then decides against it.

As he hangs up, Bart comes trudging into the office and puts his head on Robert’s lap, looking at him. He strokes the Lab with gentle fingers. “What’s the matter, Bartie?” he says. “Does it hurt?” He looks at the dog with a worried expression.

They are sitting in Peter’s office, waiting for the arrival of Teddie Berger; he is forty minutes late. (“Not a harbinger of things to come, I trust,” says Peter.) Briefly, they discuss the Margery sittings with Houdini.

If nothing else, says Peter, they had the valuable outcome of defining the need for stringent controls when testing psi phenomena. From the late 1920’s onward, laboratory experiments began to play an increasingly important role in psychic research.

“Strange man, Houdini.” Peter comments. “Even though they never proved he put that ruler in the cabinet, those sittings brought him into final disrepute with professional psychic researchers who were tired of his endless rantings that he was able to see through trickery when they were not, that psychics were cheats and liars, every one of them.” He looks “offended”. “Including the immortal Palladino no less.”

“Unforgivable,” says Cathy, straight-faced.

Teddie arrives now, with him CARLA HESSE, 19, a total contrast in appearance to the short, swarthy complexioned, almost perpetually scowling Berger; she is tall, blonde, light-complexioned and beautiful, a perfect Aryan type, a fact which, on the surface alone, tells a story and will, later, reveal even more.

Teddie is already sorry he agreed to the testing. He does not, he informs them, “cotton to the gobbledegook of mediumism.”

Peter tries to calm the glowering Berger. “It should reassure you—” he begins.

“Nothing reassures me,” Teddie states his dismal case. “On the contrary, everything dismays, dispirits and disgusts me.”

“It’s always good to have a philosophy of life,” says Robert, unable to hold his tongue.

Teddie darts a dour glance in his direction, then catches something in Robert which intrigues him; something more than Robert assumes.

The beginning steps of Teddie’s investigation almost end it prematurely: a general physical, lab examinations, neurological studies, audiometric and opthalamological tests, brain scans.

“What the hell are you doing?” Teddie growls. “Drafting me into the Army?”

“Routine,” says Peter.

“Well, it’s stupid,” Teddie fumes. “You want a demonstration of clairvoyance or the goddam three-minute mile?”

“Calm down,” says Carla airily.

“Baah!” snaps Teddie. He doesn’t like Stafford either. “Does he have to be here?” he sotto voces, loud enough for Stafford to hear.

Finally, the tests begin, Teddie in a comfortable reclining chair inside a room the walls of which are double metal separated by four inches of acoustic insulation. (“To prevent any possibility of your hearing—” Peter starts. “I
know
what possibilities you’re trying to prevent,” Teddie interrupts. “Let’s get
on
with it.”) The room has an inner and outer door both of which fasten with a refrigerator type locking mechanism.

Teddie lights a cigar. “You really have to do that?” Cathy asks.

“You make your conditions, sweetpea, I make mine,” crabs Teddie.

She represses a smile, somehow sensing that the contentious Berger is far more bark than bite.

With Cathy observing, Teddie sits with pad and pencil as, in another room, Peter slips a file card at random into an enormous unabridged dictionary. The dictionary is then opened to that page and the first item in the first column that can be drawn is selected. An ESPA artist sketches the item—in this case, a suspension bridge—Robert hangs it on the wall and, depressing an intercom switch, Peter tells Teddie to commence.

In less than ten seconds, Teddie’s voice is heard. “Well, let’s
go,”
he gripes. “I haven’t got all day.”

“You’ve already done the first one?” Peter inquires.

“Would I say let’s go if I
hadn’t
?” Teddie counters.

Peter shakes his head and, once more, sticks the file card into the dictionary.

Later; ten tests completed. They compare the sets of drawings and discover, to their astonishment, that nine out of ten are so close to the original that Teddie might have, also, sketched them from the dictionary.

“Which is exactly what I
did,”
he says as though the point is obvious. “You think I’m going to waste my time trying to read peoples’ minds? And that picture of a horse is
lousy
, it looks like a damn hippocampus.”

He’s right.

“You never had a psychic experience before that night in the club?” asks Peter.

“It’s what I said,” snaps Teddie. “You want an affidavit from some damn notary public?”

Another test—a steely-eyed Stafford on the lookout for fraud. (“Tell that blockhead I’m here to be tested, not to burglarize the furniture,” Teddie complains to Peter.) A box is fastened to the ceiling of the test room, a set of numbers printed inside, randomly selected that morning. They push a switch to turn on a bulb inside the box and Teddie blows out cigar smoke, gazing up at the box.

Nothing.

They wait. Has he come to the end of his gift already?

Suddenly, he glares at them. “The bulb isn’t working, damn it, how am I supposed to see the numbers?”

They stare at him, then lower the box and check.

He’s right again. The bulb has burned out.

“You’ve
never
shown any signs of ESP before?” Cathy asks, incredulous.

Teddie gives her a look. “
Darling
—” he grates.

“All right, I believe you,” she interrupts.

His smile is feral. “I’m
suffused
with gratitude,” he tells her.

Time for a distance perception test. Cathy and Robert, following the instructions on envelope number 78, go to the campus of Columbia University. This time Robert makes no effort to transmit visual signals.

It doesn’t matter. When they return to ESPA, it is to discover that Teddie might have been standing beside them. Sitting in the reclining chair, blowing smoke at Stafford to aggravate him while the Professor tried to operate his equipment, Teddie has described into the cassette recorder everything they looked at.

They are all delighted, Stafford non-committal.

Teddie is morose. Why do testers have to stay in the room with him? he demands. How does he know they aren’t giving him clues of some kind?

They try to reassure him but he isn’t buying. “Listen,” he says, “I could be getting it through body language for all I know. Hell, through some subliminal audio from a loudspeaker in the next room. You think I
trust
you people?”

He will not continue, he tells them, unless they leave him alone in the testing room.

Stafford is against it; “That would vitiate all minimal precautions,” he declares.

Peter outvotes him. “Just this once,” he says. “To reassure him.”

They leave Teddie alone in the room, a “guard” placed outside to make sure Teddie doesn’t leave. Robert and Cathy take to “the field” again, this time with envelope number 110 which leads them to Wall Street.

When they return, they all enter the testing room.

Teddie has vanished!

“Good God, the man has de-materialized,” says Peter, only half in jest.

“Don’t be a fool,” Teddie’s sepulchral voice comes drifting from behind a sofa. He crawls out, scowling. He’s been lying back there, eyes shut, hands over his ears, to make certain no one could give him a clue.

Nonetheless, his taped remarks (he took the microphone with him behind the sofa) are again incredible; he could be describing the Wall Street location from a travel guide: He does everything short of giving names.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” says Peter, awed.

“So will we all in time,” Teddie responds.

Time for Stafford’s observations, everyone increasingly bored, especially Carla.

“We proceed on the supposition that only one force can provide an explanation for the so-called paranormal,” Stafford tells them, “that is, electromagnetic forces acting on the constituents of the human system. Accordingly, we must search for an electromagnetic signal of measurable strength emitted by a so-called psychic at the time that he or she (“I’m a
he,”
Teddie breaks in.) is ostensibly causing a particular effect.”

Carla yawns and mumbles something to Teddie. He scowls.

“If so-called clairvoyant viewing does, indeed, occur, (“What the hell have I been doing here, dancing a tango?” Teddie growls) it is assumed to be some sort of energy wave being utilized to create a picture of the distant scene.”

Carla gets “sick”. “We have to go,” says Teddie. “It’s been a thrill, believe me.” Will he come back? inquires Peter. “Maybe, maybe not,” says Teddie.

Surprisingly, he turns to point at Robert. “Use him,” he says offhandedly. “He can do it.”

Robert tries to laugh it off but a nerve has been struck and Cathy sees it, Peter less so.

Teddie and Carla depart and, trying to be nice about it, Cathy asks Robert if he won’t consent to trying his hand at distance perception.

Realizing that he’s pretty well cornered, and not wanting to create another unpleasant confrontation with Cathy, he agrees, quickly adding, however, that Teddie’s psychic gift obviously deserted him when he identified Robert as being able to “do” distance perception.

Politely but firmly, he draws the line at an extensive physical and psychological profile. That really isn’t why he’s at ESPA, he tells them. If they want to conduct an “informal” test on him, he’ll go along with it. No more though.

Hearing this, Stafford backs out. “We’re losing every minimal protection now,” he frets.

This time Peter and another ESPA tester go into the field, Cathy remaining with Robert in the testing room. She reassures him that she doesn’t want to be “pushy” again but—she hesitates—well, is there something about the idea of being psychic that upsets Robert? That, certainly, is the message he’s giving.

“Please,” she says, “if it’s none of my business, tell me so.”

He doesn’t answer at first, then says that he’ll go so far as to tell her that “certain members” of his family had “unfortunate” experiences with ESP and he is “gun-shy” on the subject.

“Not, I
assure
you,” he adds, “that I’ve shown any signs of it myself; I haven’t. It’s just that the subject is… well, uncomfortable for me.”

She says she understands. That’s obviously why he doesn’t choose to commit himself on any aspect of the subject, she observes.

“Of course,” he admits. That’s why he chooses to maintain a strictly balanced objectivity on psi.

“Why do you suppose Berger said what he did then?” Cathy asks.

Robert chuckles. “To get out of here,” he says.

The time arrives for the test to proceed and Robert closes his eyes. “Just relax—I’m
so
glad you don’t smoke a cigar—and tell me what you see,” Cathy tells him.

What he begins to see is an outdoor plaza, various shops around its perimeter. He doesn’t see it clearly but in flashes, partially distorted. There are flowers and ceramic pots, fountains, paths, overhead trellises intertwined with leafless vines. He sees what appears to be a pole with arrows sticking through it. Hanging from one arrow is piece of paper reading WEAVING STUDIO.

“Do you see anything?” Cathy asks. “Anything at all?”

Robert takes a deep breath. “A building, I think,” he says. “Brick. Old. Some where… near the waterfront maybe.”

“Near the waterfront,” she says with interest.

“Yes, I think so,” he responds. Looking at the plaza as he speaks. “I hear horns, I think.”

“Do you see anything else?”

Abruptly, unexpectedly, the plaza vanishes and he sees the Arizona desert, the ruins of a temple on a hill above. The vision is so sudden and so vivid that he twitches, opening his eyes.

“What is it?” she asks, concerned by his expression.

He swallows, forces a smile. “Nothing, I…” He shrugs and manages a soft laugh. “I told you he was wrong.”