“You have to get scary, don’t you? I’m fine! Nobody’s after me. You’re the one who keeps disappearing and, and, God, I don’t see you, days at a time, weeks, all I can do is call and call that fucking subway number, and maybe once in a while some wino answers—”
It astonished Hester that she would so easily go off on a tear, perversely showing him even more weakness; she’d planned to be as stoic about Peter’s leave-taking as he was. But once she got started, the flicker of concern in Peter’s eyes might have prompted genuine hysteria if he hadn’t held her so soothingly close.
“Just don’t get hurt,” she begged him. “And don’t stay gone so long this time.”
“Hester, I couldn’t keep going without you,” Peter assured her, and although Hester was basically too sensible to entirely believe him, there was nothing she wanted to hear more.
Chapter Ten
With his wife in Minneapolis for the birth of a grandchild, Dr. Irving Roth, director of Paragon Institute, found himself with nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve than attend a party of the Hudson Valley Medical Association for some globe-trotting Russians. It was a big, formal, and dull affair in Riverdale, the kind of thing where you had to wear a name tag on your tuxedo. The buffet wasn’t bad. Roth over-ate, as he’d done throughout the holiday season. Pounds and pounds he didn’t need. He was already wide, like a wrestler, but he had short arms and no air of aggression—his smile was too smooth and appealing; All in all, a bit of a charmer. His hair was fading from the top of his head like grass on a drought-stricken lawn.
Roth spoke to men he hadn’t seen much of since med school, and he spoke to a disconcerting number of colleagues who thought he’d retired and moved to a more leisurely part of the world.
“I’m doing basic research,” he said, when the question inevitably came up. No one pressed for details, but several with research projects of their own were interested in the numbers.
“Well funded, I hope,” said a physiologist with a goatee who was looking for a sponsor. Roth smiled the comfortable smile of a man up to his elbows in the public trough. He told the physiologist he needed to make a phone call, helped himself to a third martini, vowing to drink only half of it, and went wandering. It was a depressing house: drafty, with slate floors and dark wainscoting high as a man’s head.
“Irv? Irving Roth?”
Roth turned, smiling automatically.
“Oh, hello, doctor, uh—”
“Tofany,” the man said. He had a kind of cheerful, old-fashioned, turn-of-the-century look: Teddy Roosevelt glasses and strawberry-pink coloring, topped by a confection of pure-white, billowy hair. “Hubert Tofany.”
“Let’s see, tropical medicine, isn’t it? And you’re at Columbia.”
Tofany nodded. “I saw you come in. I was hoping I’d have the chance to talk to you tonight—I’ve meant to look you up. Do you have a minute, Irv?”
“I was looking for a telephone, but it’s nothing urgent. Grandchild due out in Minnesota.”
“I have six grandchildren myself. The oldest will be ready for medical school in a couple of years.”
Roth chuckled and shook his head as if to say Time sure gets away from you, and then he decided to finish the third martini after all. Every damn drop.
“What piqued my interest, Irv, I recalled hearing you were heavily into psychic phenomena these days.”
“As an adjunct to noetics and transpersonal psychology, yes. I suppose you might say I’m interested in psi.”
“I mention it because of a patient, unusual case. I was brought in as a consultant when it seemed there was a good possibility she was infected with one of the really hot viruses that slip into the country from time to time. We had her in isolation at Columbia until we were certain it was nothing more than a particularly vicious flu mutation, similar to the one that was so devastating in Recife last summer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The patient is a young lady of fourteen. She was stricken suddenly, and ran a high temperature. It peaked at one hundred six and two tenths.”
“Wow.”
“Apparently without doing any real damage; they can stand a lot at that age. She convulsed at least once before we saw her, but an EEG two days ago showed normal wave patterns. Now she’s almost completely recovered, in fact we may let her go home tomorrow. It can’t be too soon for Gillian. She’s had some interesting paranormal experiences these past few days.”
“Paranormal?”
“I’m not sure what you’d call them. Visions, perhaps.”
“She saw herself standing before the gates of Heaven, that sort of thing?”
“Nothing so comfortably rooted in mysticism. She was able to describe to me, in great detail, a malpractice suit I was familiar with, because it involved my son-in-law. The case was settled two years ago.”
“She remembered reading about it in the papers.”
“The case was tried in Texas, and even then it rated only a couple of paragraphs.”
“Hospital gossip, then.”
“Gossip about a two-year-old case at Houston Medical Center? I don’t think so. And Gillian knew too much to have casually pieced it together from idle chatter. For instance, she could describe accurately General Robert E. Lee’s aide-de-camp for whom my son-in-law Josiah was named. There’s a portrait of Captain Brakestone hanging in the den down there in Houston, but Gillian couldn’t possibly have seen it. I think the whole thing is rather remarkable.”
“What else has she done?”
“Before it began to trouble her and she stopped talking altogether, she kept the floor nurses entertained … and, I think, a little apprehensive. She was like a, a mental magnet, picking up items of personal information. By that I mean the sort of thing you might not even discuss with your closest friend. Everyone was talking about Gillian on the floor, and I suppose all the attention, plus a certain amount of notoriety, made her cautious.”
“But it could have been a short-lived phenomenon. That isn’t unusual. We’re a long way from understanding how the human mind works. The high fever, well, that could have resulted, in view of the essentially passive condition of the recuperating patient, in some sort of biocommunication, perhaps a veridical hallucination or two …”
“Oh, yes, I see.”
“It would be more significant if the girl had been aware of definite Psi experiences before she came ill.”
“Well, one of the reasons she fainted at the skating rink—”
Roth said alertly, “Skating rink? Are you talking about Wollman Rink in Central Park?”
“Yes.”
“She fainted there, and was taken to the hospital?”
“Roosevelt. Then that evening I had her moved uptown to Washington Heights.”
“Do you remember what day it was?”
“Before Christmas. Tuesday, I think, the twenty-first, because we were due at the Amerdeens at eight, and I—”
“Doctor, I’m sorry, you were saying, weren’t you, that the girl had some sort of paranormal experience at the rink—”
“That’s what Gillian told me, two days after her fever broke and she was able to piece together what had happened to her just before she collapsed. Gillian and her girl friend had been aware of a, some sort of bum, derelict, the park is full of them as you know, he may have been making a nuisance of himself. Asking for handouts. For some reason Gillian felt as if she knew him. At least she knew his name, and his background; he was from some little place in New Jersey. It all, she said, just popped into her mind.”
“His name was—?”
“Raymond. Dun something. Dunkirk, perhaps.”
“Please go on.”
“Gillian remembers feeling a little woozy, out on the rink. She already had a touch of fever, and she was looking forward to a long nap when she got home. It was when she made a turn on the ice that she was severely jolted by the sight of the bum, Raymond, lying on his back, a gunshot wound in his head.”
“Gunshot-wound!
”
“It was dreadful and gory, and that’s what precipitated her faint.”
“But he wasn’t there, it was just a, call it a hallucination.”
“Of course.”
“Gunshot wound, she’s definite about that.”
“Oh, yes,” Dr. Tofany said.
Roth had finished his third martini without tasting it, and he was feeling rather nastily on edge, a little worm of a blood vessel prowling in his left temple, usually an unfailing commandment: thou shalt lay off the hard stuff, take deep breaths in a well-ventilated room, and think benign thoughts about the human condition.
“He said, “With your permission, doctor, I think I’d like to talk to the girl. Gillian?”
“Bellaver.”
“Oh. Those Bellavers?”
“Her father is Avery Bellaver.”
“The family oddball?”
“I found him cultivated and sensitive, although not very … accessible, which may account for his reputation. His wife is a raving beauty.” Roth consulted his watch.
“Let’s see, nine forty-six, the hospital’s just a few minutes from here—”
“You wanted to see her tonight?”
“Clairvoyance, or precognition, is neither rare nor a sign of abnormality, but Gillian has no way of knowing that. She could be one very badly confused girl. Frightened. I think she’ll confide in me, however. And it would be far easier tonight than after she’s discharged, at home with the family.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“New Year’s Eve, my wife’s in Minneapolis—” Roth spread his hands and grinned wryly. “And I’m here, surrounded by two hundred doctors talking shop, I might as well be working. At least I won’t wake up tomorrow with a hangover.”
Dr. Tofany also smiled.
“She’s in 809 Herlands North, and I do appreciate your taking an interest. Why don’t you give me a ring in a day or two?”
The only phone line in the house not tied up by other doctors was a pay phone that had been installed for the convenience of the household staff. It was located in an alcove between the busy kitchen and the butler’s pantry. Roth made a credit-card call to Minneapolis, and was so brusque with his wife she had to ask him if he was feeling well. The baby hadn’t come yet. Roth told Grace-Ann that he would be at home in Pelham in about an hour and a half, she could reach him there after the blessed event. He managed to sound cheerful saying goodbye to her, but she was out of his mind even before he hung up.
Roth was thinking about the dazzling day before Christmas when Raymond Dunwoodie called him from Central Park, and he had a serious attack of the guilts again; he would feel everlastingly guilty about Raymond. They should never have let him try to send from inside the high-frequency electrical field, an experiment that for unknown reasons always has a terrible effect on the organism. A promising young psychic had been reduced to fumbling in trashcans because of a directive Roth should have been sufficiently cautious to ignore. That’s why he always tried to be patient when Raymond was desperate, and shamming, and inventing stories in hopes of cadging a few bucks. (They could have taken care of him, for God’s sake, put him on some kind of pension. The ethical poverty of his employer, the essential lack of respect for human life, shamed Roth.) The story about the girl at the ice rink was too good to be true, of course, but Raymond’s voice sounded different that afternoon. He wasn’t whining. He was excited but not overwrought. There was a suggestion of forcefulness that surprised Roth, so he took time off on a busy day to taxi to the park, expecting almost anything but the sight of Raymond so pathetically dead on a high rock overlooking the rink.
He’d reported it the same day, and later the startling explanation came back to him. Raymond had been seen with Peter Sandza. The decision was made by the MORG team to take out Sandza, because opportunities had been scarce and Childermass was having fits. Unfortunately the attempted assassination went wrong, a grotesque climax to the downhill life of Raymond Dunwoodie.
Roth had his opportunity then to explain about the psychic girl of Raymond’s, but the more he thought about it the more it seemed a terminal fantasy. If she did exist, with Raymond dead how could she be located? So Roth kept the story to himself.
Now, purely by chance, he knew that Raymond had been telling the truth, and Roth quickly had to do something about the girl. It was time to make another phone call—suspiciously past time, depending on how they cared to look at it. He could be in trouble.
The vein in his temple was acting up again. He was standing, and his right leg was going numb from the pressure of the garters he wore only with his formal threads. He ignored the black maid who was prowling around hoping to get possession of the telephone, wiped oily palms on a paper napkin, turned his back, hunched over the receiver and placed a second call.
As usual, once he reached the primary number, there was waiting involved. He was uneasy, thinking of the girl in the hospital, wondering if somehow she might get away from them again; but this time he had her name. Gillian. Just fourteen. Robin Sandza’s age.…
The phone rang and Roth picked up the receiver.
“Hello, Doctor,” Childermass said pleasantly. “How’s tricks?”
Her last night in Washington Heights Hospital, Gillian, for sheer lack of anything else to do, considered throwing a tantrum.
She was in a ludicrous state of frustration; hollow, but not hungry; despairing, but not quite enough to support a good soul-cleansing cry. She had taken her sleeping pill, but she remained starey-eyed awake. Television was contemptible, all music bored or annoyed her, and there was nothing to see through her windows except another part of the sprawling hospital. She had a mysterious rash on her bottom that made it difficult to sit still for any length of time. She had bitten her nails to the bleeding quick. She didn’t feel attractive enough to go to bed and try to get some pleasure from her body; she couldn’t be horny even when she concentrated on an image of Robert Redford at the tennis club, the heart-stopping way his eyes gleamed in his sweaty overheated face when he smashed back a powerful serve. It was hard to have erotic fantasies when your hair needed washing. She knew if Bob could see her now he wouldn’t smile that great cheeky morale-building smile that was especially hers; he would probably throw up instead.
The old year dragged minute by minute into oblivion. The hospital floor was dismally quiet at five minutes past ten. Most of the rooms around Gillian’s were unoccupied; no one liked to be in the hospital at this time of the year if they could possibly put it off.
Even a visit from Irene Cameron McCurdy would have been preferable to going nuts by herself, but Mrs. McCurdy had entertained right up until eight o’clock, a parade of gimpy garden-club ladies, and she was undoubtedly fast asleep by now. Gillian considered another slow stroll up and down the hall, but there was nobody much to talk to, only a couple of unfamiliar nurses at the brightly lit eighth-floor station. Nor could she while away an hour on the telephone; her friends were out for the evening or having fun in a warmer climate, her mother was God knows where, and her father had left for Boston, where he was to read a scholarly paper to a group of his peers.
There were some books piled on the window ledge, and Gillian went through them unhopefully, stopping when she came to the paperback biography of Peter Hurkos which Mrs. McCurdy had written. Gillian frowned; she thought she had returned it, along with the scrapbook which had sat untouched in her room all afternoon. Maybe she had taken another book back by mistake. She decided to go down the hall and leave the Hurkos book. It was something to do. There might not be time in the morning, and tomorrow she would have nothing else on her mind but going home.
Gillian changed slippers and chose one of the newer wraps from the closet. The single nurse visible at the station opposite the elevators had her back turned when Gillian left her room. Gillian went the other way, past a room half lit by the screen of a silent TV set: the man in the bed had fallen asleep. There was no activity on the floor. It was so quiet she felt a little
spooked.
She was never going to be stuck in another hospital, Gillian thought grimly. If she had babies, she would have them at home.
Irene Cameron McCurdy’s door stood part way open and Gillian looked in. There was a night light near the floor in the corner opposite her bed. Irene was sound asleep on her back, both legs elevated slightly to ease continuing circulation problems. She made snoring sounds that were a little louder than the rasp in the throat of a contented cat. A vaporizer breathed foggily. Irene before retiring had sprayed some flower scent in the air. Gillian found the moist sharply sweet air all but unbreathable as she put the book on top of the dresser.
“Who’s that?” Irene said calmly from the bed. Gillian turned. “Oh, it’s you, dear.”
“I thought you were asleep, Mrs. McCurdy. I was just returning a book you loaned me.”
“That’s very thoughtful,” Irene murmured. Gillian walked toward the door. “But you don’t have to go yet.”
“Well—”
“I’ll be asleep soon. I had a little something extra for the pain tonight, it’s very … relaxing. Would you mind sitting with me for a few moments? Since I was a little girl I’ve dreaded going to sleep alone. That’s silly, isn’t it?”
Gillian approached her. “I feel the same way sometimes,” she said.
Irene smiled and patted the bed.
“Sit right here. Such an exhausting day. So you’ll … be going home tomorrow. We won’t lose touch, though. Oh, no. There’s so much we need to talk about.”
Irene held Gillian’s free hand. Irene’s hand was on the plump side and felt papery but it wasn’t unpleasant to touch, and Gillian was sure that the woman would soon fall asleep.
“We must think of … how to care for all the New People,” Irene murmured. “I know that there are many in High Places who are already using their considerable psychic powers to check the Forces of Darkness; but their power, compared to the power of the New People, is a drop of rain compared to an ocean. And so we cross the threshold of a new age of consciousness. But not everyone is to be trusted. Remember that. History teaches that evil at its most exalted is merely a wretched excess of good. Good becomes righteous; righteousness becomes evil. Are we in the dawn of a Great Awakening, or in the last moment of twilight, just before the plunge into an abyss of ignorance and terror? I don’t know the answer to that question. There are those who will prefer another Dark Ages to the Triumph of the New People, the blinding purity of the psi Enlightenment. I do ramble on, don’t I? Are you there, dear?”
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