The Medium (34 page)

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Authors: Noëlle Sickels

BOOK: The Medium
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“I don't know.”
Major Levy stood up and walked the length of the room twice. He seemed to be weighing the advisability of some course of action.
“Miss Schneider,” he said returning to the table but not sitting down. “I've been granted some discretionary leeway, and I'm going to take a chance on you. I'm going to be candid—up to a point—and I'm relying on you to hear me out without prejudice, and then to see and fulfill your duty to your country.”
Helen was taken aback. She hadn't known what to expect from this interview. She'd girded herself for insinuations, insults, threats, brow-beating, even some form of bribery. She hadn't counted on a plain request. She'd never imagined being taken into the major's confidence. Was this simply another, more sophisticated tactic in the cat-and-mouse game?
“Everything I'm about to tell you,” the major went on, “is not to go beyond this room.”
“But you said I'm a danger to the peace and safety of the United States,” she said.
The major looked at her with a mixture of amusement, annoyance,
and admiration in his eyes.
“I said
potentially
dangerous,” he replied.
“Yet here I am.”
“At the time of our last meeting, detaining you was a necessary precaution. In wartime, Miss Schneider, niceties must sometimes be dispensed with. I trust you won't hold it against us.”
“Niceties? Like liberty?”
“Don't be naive,” the major said, irritation winning out over decorum. “We were on the eve of the biggest, most important invasion of the war, for God's sake, and there you were, a girl with a multitude of German connections, spewing forth all kinds of details about beach landings and casualties and code names—”
“But you didn't believe me!”
The major exhaled audibly and sat down again.
“We couldn't take the risk that someone else might believe you,” he said. Then he tapped the folder with his index finger. “There was this, too. If your vision turned out to be even partially accurate, we wanted you available to discuss this.”
“Do you always lock up people you want to talk to?”
The major stared wearily into Helen's eyes. Let's not do this anymore, he seemed to be saying.
“Very soon,” the major said, “you will be free to go. Now can we dispense with this topic?”
“I guess so.”
“All right, then.”
He got up again and went to the door. A woman appeared in the hall, and Major Levy asked her to bring them coffee. When he came back into the room, he went to the window and stood staring out, his back to Helen. The view was hardly absorbing—just two buildings for staff housing outside the gate—but he remained steadily turned towards it. Five minutes later, there
was a rap on the door. Major Levy opened it, and the woman he'd spoken to entered with a tray on which sat two mugs, two napkins, a pot of coffee, a small pitcher of milk, and a plate of jelly doughnuts. After the woman left, Helen and the major each poured themselves some coffee. Helen took a doughnut and put it on her napkin. The major let the doughnuts be.
“The Army has begun an experimental program,” Levy said without preamble, “to explore the possible military uses of certain apparent mental abilities. The Russians have reported some success with a similar program.”
“Mental abilities?”
“Your visions,” the major answered, lifting his eyebrows just a tad.
“You don't think this program is worthwhile, do you?” Helen hazarded.
Levy shrugged. “Wiser heads than mine have decided this is worth a look-see.” He smiled conspiratorially. It was the first time his smile had held any genuineness. “Heads higher up, at any rate.”
“What kind of program is it?”
“We ask people like you to try to get information for us on target areas—through the air or the spirits or however it is you do it—plus, we look for soldiers who have traits that lead us to believe they could be trained to do this sort of thing, and we test them, too. Remote viewing, we call it.”
“What do you mean by target areas?”
“We ask you to concentrate on specific locales and to describe what you see—buildings, weather, anything. Some of the viewers make drawings. Some of them claim to hear sounds or even smell things from the target area. Me, I'd take aerial reconnaissance over this stuff any day, but we can't always get our planes in everywhere.”
“So it's a kind of spying.”
“You could say. We haven't used it in the field yet. We're still giving the viewers coordinates of places we know, so we can check their accuracy. But the Russians claim they've got men zeroing in on enemy targets already and that they're right on track.”
Helen took a bite of her doughnut and a swallow of coffee. She purposely stared at the wall to forestall the conversation's continuing. What would Iris think of this surprising development? Was this a proper use of Helen's capacity for visions? Choose, Iris had said. She probably wouldn't ever say more. But that was all right. Because, Helen suddenly thought, this is mine. My ability, my decision.
“What happens to this information?” she said, turning back to the major.
“Once we get to feel okay relying on its accuracy, then it'd figure into military planning—troop movements, air strikes, timing. Not everyone in the program is convinced yet it isn't all a bunch of malarkey, or at best, lucky guesses and coincidence. That's not much to build a plan on. Not enough to stake lives on.”
“What about what the Russians say?”
“Could be they're exaggerating.”
“What about my Omaha Beach vision?”
“Could be you're the real McCoy.”
He stood up. He set his briefcase on the table and put the “Top Secret” folder into it.
“I'll be in the area a few days,” he said. “You think about it. Dr. Stannard knows how to reach me.”
He walked to the door. Helen stood up, too.
“Can I ask you one more thing, Major?”
“Shoot.”
“Did you ever really intend to lock up my family?”
“I intended you to feel the full might of the U.S. Army,” he
said soberly.
Helen tried hard not to show how much this remark unbalanced her.
“I wasn't kidding when I told you there were enough grounds,” he continued. “In hindsight, maybe I
should
have taken you all in. Your father's been kicking up a lot of dust. Got a lawyer to file a writ of habeas corpus. We had to send Captain Fitzpatrick to tell him to back off, that your release was imminent.”
“Is it?”
“We won't know which paperwork to process until you've decided about the remote viewing.”
“But you're going to release me either way?”
The major looked disappointed.
“Either way,” he said. “Still, you must remember, Miss Schneider,” he added, perking up, “the Army is a machine whose wheels grind slowly at times. ‘Imminent' doesn't give you a date to mark on your calendar, now does it?”
Major Levy had left a one-page description of the remote viewing project, and the day after her meeting with him, Helen went to the administration building to look it over. She had to sit in the warden's office to read it, with the warden present. Helen reviewed it several times before handing it back to Dr. Stannard.
The major had outlined only the testing and training phase of the project. Presumably, the details of exactly how the Army planned to use remote viewers were too classified for the warden of an internment camp to see, let alone a civilian who hadn't yet signed on to the project.
The brief document reiterated that Helen would be asked to concentrate on certain geographic coordinates and to verbally describe or make sketches of any mental impressions she received. She'd also be asked to work with a beacon, a person in another room who would be staring at a National Geographic photograph. Again, she'd record any impressions of the place in the photo. If her rate of accuracy on these tasks was adequate, she'd move on to the training phase, which entailed the same activities, except that a monitor would help her refine her impressions as she was receiving them, by asking her questions and by guiding her to center on particular aspects of a target.
After Helen left Dr. Stannard's office, she wandered over to the baseball field and stopped to watch some boys playing. They were running and shouting like boys anywhere, their enthusiasm
unhampered by either their confinement in a camp or the unforgiving Texas sun. But beyond noticing that, Helen wasn't really paying attention to the game. Her mind was still on the remote viewing project.
Describing the physical features of a place could be construed as benign or trifling, especially during training exercises, but, of course, if the program ever truly entered the arena of war, there would be consequences, and those consequences would be lethal. This made Helen very uneasy.
She told herself her qualms had to be overcome for a greater good. She reminded herself that decent people everywhere were having to do so. Lloyd had killed. Billy would have. Rosie was a helpmate to killing. What were scrap collecting and bond buying, really, but ways to fund killing? The posters encouraging such activities made no bones about it. To save American lives, they said in no uncertain words and pictures, German and Japanese lives must be taken. Many posters showed vicious-looking Nazi and Japanese soldiers brutally murdering women and children, or gloating over the bloodied bodies of handsome American infantrymen, sailors, and airmen. But giving the Army information that would be used to guide specific attacks was more direct, more soldier-like, than buying bonds or even working in a defense plant, and Helen was not sure she wanted to be a soldier. Major Levy had implied it was her duty to join the project. Why was duty so commonly presented as straightforward and simple, when it was often, in reality, a complicated affair?
Putting aside the spiky question of duty, Helen recognized that participating in the project could have personal benefits. For one thing, she'd earn a definite release date. But more important, the training might give her skills for controlling her visions. She might discover how to live a full, ordinary life and keep within it a limited but authentic space for her extraordinary sensibilities. She wished she'd been able to assure Billy
she had such control. Then she could've belonged to him and to herself. Or could she have? Maybe even well-managed psychic abilities would have been too much for him to countenance. What would she have done then? But, oh, why ask herself that now?
Helen moved off from the ball field and headed for the weaving room. Weaving always emptied her mind. That's what she needed now, a bit of empty-headedness.
On her way to the recreation building, she passed two women strolling arm-in-arm. They were speaking German. Helen caught the words
Feld
and
Frankreich,
and she knew they were discussing Normandy.
The success of D-Day had evoked tepid reactions among many of the internees at Seagoville, but Helen knew from her newspaper-reading that it had been a shot in the arm to the rest of the nation. Since then, however, the national mood of excited optimism had become muted. Fighting on the peninsula was dragging on. The push inland was going to take longer than expected.
The roads and fields of Normandy were lined with high earthen banks topped by hedges. Hedgerows were excellent hiding places for the Nazis' dreaded 88-millimeter guns. Able to knock out tanks, aircraft, and buildings, versatile enough to mount on a tank or set up in a ravine or a village, the 88 was extremely powerful and accurate, even against fast-moving targets. It was by far the best and most feared gun of the war. When used against infantry, it fired fused shells that created bursts of piercing flak. Flak was a chilling new word in the language, taken from the German
Flugzengabwehrkanone.
Lloyd said a number of the vets at Valley Forge had been blinded by steel splinters from an 88.
Helen looked at the backs of the women walking on. Were they pleased that the campaign in Normandy was proving to be
hard? Helen was living in the midst of these people, but she didn't know any of them well. It was easy to pick out the dedicated Nazi sympathizers. They were explicit about their allegiance, singing party songs and marching to mark anything “important,” like Hitler's birthday or the departure of one of their own from the camp. In Helen's short time at Seagoville, more than a hundred of them had chosen to be repatriated to Germany and had left to meet a ship in New York. Marta had told her that active Nazi agitators were soon transferred to stricter camps. Escapees and repeated brawlers, for example, were sent to Camp Kenedy.
But what about the others? A swastika flag stood opposite the American flag on the stage in the auditorium, yet how many internees actually believed in Hitler and his doctrines, and how many were just trying to get through their internment with the least amount of trouble?
It occurred to Helen that if she found it difficult to ascertain where other people's feelings lay, then her own attitudes might present an equally mysterious face. She wouldn't have it. She had a German name and unknown German cousins who might right now be fighting and dying on the other side of those Normandy hedgerows, but she was an American, and this was a time that required the firm taking of sides. She felt squeamish about becoming a link in the death-dealing chain of war, but she didn't doubt for a moment the dire necessity of that war.
Maybe most of the Bundists at Seagoville weren't really dangerous. Walter had called them self-important blowhards. Maybe if they hadn't been locked up, they'd have done nothing more than follow the course of the war in the papers in the same way people followed their favorite football teams. When Germany lost, they'd probably quietly fade away. But Helen felt sure that if Germany won in Europe and later invaded the United States, these same passive Bundists would greet them
on the streets with flags and confetti and aid them however they could. She didn't want anyone to think for a moment she might be part of such a group, or even indifferent to them. She would become a remote viewer, she decided. She would do her part.
The combined bureaucracies of the Army and the INS delayed Helen's departure from Seagoville for several weeks. Knowing she would be leaving made being in the camp harder than it had been when her release was uncertain. She felt even more apart from the other internees. The camp was a warren of subgroups. The Germans were divided among German nationals, U.S. citizens, and South Americans, and then, across those lines, among dedicated Nazis, moderate Nazis, and neutrals. No one of Helen's acquaintance knew if or how the Japanese were aligned among themselves. In all this, Helen felt herself a population of one. She might find other like-minded souls if she stayed, but she wasn't staying, so she didn't try.
On July 21
st
, the camp was abuzz with the news that the day before, a group of Nazi officers and others had attempted to assassinate Hitler by placing a bomb underneath a table at a meeting. The Führer survived with only minor injuries. A wave of arrests and executions quickly followed. Some of the conspirators took their own lives rather than be captured.
“It is like the Führer says,” Marta had declared to Helen. “This only shows it is his destiny to lead and prosper.”
Marta was conveniently ignoring recent positive news out of Normandy. Despite the hedgerows and the daunting 88s, the Allies had finally broken out of Normandy. They were racing across France, meeting little resistance on their way to Paris.
Helen was buoyed by the news, but it didn't alter her resolve to train as a remote viewer. The GIs might be doing a bang-up
job in Europe, but there was still the war in the Pacific, with its massive naval battles and its ground fights inching along, island by bloody island.
A few days before she left Seagoville, Helen received a letter from Lloyd full of stories about Old Farms Hospital. He'd gone fishing and horseback riding. He was taking courses in business and insurance and Braille. He wished he could show her the beautiful rolling hills of Avon and the magnificent red sandstone buildings that the sighted staff had told him about.
“The place used to be a fancy school, and its architecture is famous,” he wrote, “but I bet you could tell me better than the Army dopes here how it all really looks—tell me in a way that I could see it, too.”
Helen didn't know if or when she might manage a trip to Connecticut to visit Lloyd, but the mere possibility made her believe, in a way she hadn't before, that she actually was going to be free again.

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