Robin wondered what had happened to him after he’d lost his balance in the wall that separated the promenade of Karl Schurz Park from the East River fifty feet below. It was all he could remember, black night and a half-circle of encroaching, ultimately blinding lights and the fine mist coming down, making the footing treacherous on the incurved iron railing that was supposed to keep people from jumping in and drowning. Everybody said the tidal river was bad there, washing swiftly seaward; so if he’d fallen in why hadn’t he drowned?
He wished he was dead, because if he wasn’t ever going to see his Dad again…
Robin’s face got miserably flushed before he started crying, and the tears were hotter still, as if his insides were one huge blister he’d cruelly pricked, allowing the corrosive and scalding fluid to drain out. In trying to stop the tears he smeared them all over his face like a child, which made him mad and caused him to bawl in frustration as well as pain.
“Hey now, good gosh, what we’re going to have here is a big old saltwater pond if this keeps up.”
The voice was feminine, exaggeratedly gruff; the hand that touched him was meant to be friendly. But Robin jerked away, doubly humiliated now that he knew he was observed.
She stood back toweling her hair while Robin got himself in order, blinking and wondering what he could blow his nose on, it was getting messy. She handed him the towel. “You want, I’m through with it.” Robin dried his face and sneaked looks at her. She stood a dozen feet away, hands on hips, appraising him with a tight compressed smile of concern.
The first thing he noticed was how good her hair looked even when it was fluffed half-dry; it didn’t stand out ratsey all over her head and show unappetizing expanses of scalp. She plucked a brush from the waistband of her low-slung, mint-green Lee Riders and gave her mane a few licks until it settled down thick and lion-toned, shading to smoke, curling like wood shavings on her bare shoulders. She had a firm small body with just enough hip-swell and pear seat to distinguish her from boys.
From the navel up she was heartily woman: she wore a bouclé halter top fully loaded with good brown jugs, each a perfect seemly roundness … and nipples that, by contrast, made aggressive high-rise peaks in the material. The quantity of down on her arms and legs glinted like hazy golden wire. A drop of water ran down one ankle and into the space next to her big toe. Her feet were quite small, and so were her hands. She had vegetable-green elliptical eyes and heavy lashes to shade them and subdue the explicit gaze. Her nose was small and cunningly snubbed, like a child’s nose that had not changed over the years. The rest of her tanned; her nose peeled, but prettily. She had a set of dimples and minor beauty marks in unexpected, catchy places and, when Robin finally put the towel down and looked directly at her, she exhibited a dead-center dazzling smile that seemed to show all of her white teeth, a smile that worked on him like gravity.
“I’m Gwyneth,” she said, “but I like Gwyn. Do I call you Robbie?”
“Robin.”
“Okay. I’m starved. Why don’t we sit and if you don’t want to eat, we’ll talk while I eat.”
Bart was right there with her breakfast when they reached the table. Herb tea, two scrambled eggs and trout, a serving of which was also placed in front of Robin.
“Even if you’re not hungry you don’t have to chew or go to any trouble, the trout fairly melts in your mouth.—Who are you looking for?”
“They told me I was going to meet someone named Dr. Charles when I—”
Gwyneth shook her head, trying to suppress her amusement; her dimples whitened in her cheeks.
“Okay, you’ve got me. I’m the good doctor. What’s the matter, don’t I look old enough? Go on, flatter me—tell me how old you think I am.”
“… Nineteen … ?”
“Twenty-eight. Well, ho-ho; I’m cheating. I’ll be twenty-nine on the fifteenth of July. So you’re just in time for my birthday. Let’s see, you were thirteen in February, right? Boy, you’re really sprouting for someone who’s just thirteen. How tall are you?”
“Five ten and three-quarters.”
“You’ll easily grow another four inches—maybe five, you’ve got long bones. Don’t you want to ask what kind of doctor I am?”
“What—”
“M.D.; specialty’s neurobiology. Nerves, the brain; you know. I also have an advanced degree in theoretical physics. What am I doing with that? I don’t know, seemed like a good idea at the time. Listen, I’m just stuffed full of smarts! Graduated college at sixteen, graduated Columbia Med three and a half years later. They didn’t want to accept me in the first place, I was so young. Took a lot of hassling to change their minds. Special favor to me, Robin, just try a forkful of the trout.”
Robin humored her, but he could barely get the bite of fish down. He looked unhappily at her. Gwyneth’s own appetite flagged.
“I know. Oh, I know the feeling; you’re hungry but you just can’t—my uncle said you took it goddamn hard. What else? I want you to know I ate him out good for the way he handled you. What a tactless man he can be. God, you might have died!”
On the promenade, headlights blinding; he runs and runs, but there is no place left to go.
Childermass, stepping out of one of the cars.
“I’m your father’s friend! He would have wanted me to look after you!”
“Your uncle?” Robin said, dismayed.
“Childermass.” Gwyneth shrugged, disclaiming responsibility for one’s relations. “He’s … sometimes I think he’s like a displaced tyrant from a fairy tale. A king of the legendary present. Honestly, he does have his good points. I’m told your father would have trusted him with his life.”
“I don’t trust him,” Robin said, not looking at her. “And I don’t believe my dad is dead.”
“That’s understandable. But you know he lived, chose to live, dangerously. Robin, the information I have is still sketchy, but … do you want to go into this now?”
“Yes.”
“He was on assignment in Lamy, one of those West African plague lands squatting along the Equator, miles and miles of swamp and jackal bush and no civilization to speak of. The country is one big clap-trap, medically it’s back in the Stone Age, but there’s a volatile mix of tribes and territorial disputes have been going on for thirty centuries. Now it seems there’s a prize worth dying for, a potentially big oil field under the delta, exploitable at today’s prices. So the tribes are getting tons of arms from the usual sources and having at each other in mercenary style.”
“My dad—”
“I can’t speculate on what he was doing there. I know he was riding in a Land Rover with two other men, in daylight, in a supposedly secure area. The Rover was raked with automatic weapons fire, and all three were killed. By the way, my uncle’s organization has been trying to raise your Aunt Fay on Inanwantan radio for the past couple of days, but the weather’s been very bad in that part of New Guinea. If they can’t get a message through on the missionary frequency, they’ll send a helicopter up to the mountains as soon as the weather clears.”
“If … he’s dead, they’ll be bringing him back, won’t they?”
“Robin, the area in which your father was killed is completely cut off now. In that part of the world they have to bury the dead quickly. Eventually I hope his personal effects will be returned. All the legal matters on this side are being taken care of by my uncle, who has power of attorney. Your father’s estate, including insurance, comes to a little over two hundred thousand dollars. After taxes the remainder will be placed in a trust account for you. I think most of your things, other than what you had in storage, are already here. We’re really trying to make the transition as painless as—”
“What kind of place is this? What am I doing here?”
“I think the best way to explain Psi Faculty is to show you around,” Gwyneth said with a pleased smile.
Gwyn usually rode to work on her ten-speed bicycle, but when she had a guest she drove an electric cart. A c
arillon was pealing as they cruised soundlessly over a watercourse and through bowers; they were splashed in passing by hot droplets of sun.
“Those mountains are the Adirondacks; that big lake out there is Lake Celeste. We own four hundred and eighty acres, and there’s a mile-wide greenbelt surrounding the campus. It’s a government reservation, Chief, so once in a while you’ll see some old poots patrolling with a dog or two. Don’t be intimidated, that’s just to keep the campers and hunters out of the woods, they can be a nuisance sometimes. My grandmother went to school here; Woodlawn had a terrific reputation in the old days. But the endowment was just too thin, they couldn’t pay their bills any more. My uncle picked up the whole thing for a song. Half the buildings are in mothballs, so to speak, but we’ve put the lab space to good use and built more to suit our needs. How long were you at Paragon Institute, Robin?”
“Six days.”
“Did anyone explain to you what ‘paragon’ means?”
“No.”
“It means the best there is; something that can’t be equaled—the incredible power of the human mind. Paragon Institute is basically a testing facility. Here we have the money and the time to study the fundamental stratum of existence, which is consciousness, along with the scientific, philosophical and social implications of psychic research. We call ourselves Psi Faculty, psi being the twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet—”
“Isn’t it the twenty-third letter?”
“Ho-ho, I just wanted to see if you were napping! Twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet, and the ideogram stands collectively for all paranormal experiences. Here’s something that might give you a chuckle.”
They swooped down on the quadrangle, enclosed by four-story stone buildings jacketed in ivy and by the newer carillon tower, which rose to a gothic peak of one hundred feet, well above the loftiest tree in the vicinity. Where the walks converged in the placid quad there was a statuary grouping that looked, on approach, like the Burghers of Calais, their bronzes weathered to a shadow-darkness in the brilliant sunlight.
“A corny Annunciation stood here,” Gwyneth said. “I had it hammered to bits my second day on the job and commissioned this piece. Do you recognize them?”
Robin shook his head. There were two skinny figures; the other was portly. Two were on their feet but the fat one had fallen; he looked to be in a panic. They were all in headlong flight, which was complicated by a burden of chains which dragged them down, even distorted them physically. One of the figures had flung an arm across his eyes as he pulled in despair with his other hand at the crude links fastened to his chest.
Gwyneth hopped out of the car and strolled companionably around the seven-foot statues, tapping an elbow, rubbing haunches, naming each in turn, reading from plaques at their feet.
“Herman von Helmholtz, German physicist, 1821-1894: ‘Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society nor even the evidence of my own senses would lead me to believe in thought-transmission. It is clearly impossible.’ Lord Kelvin, English physicist, 1825-1907: ‘Nearly everything in hypnotism and clairvoyance is imposture, and the rest bad observation.’ Thomas H. Huxley, English biologist and noted progenitor: Quote. ‘Supposing the phenomena to be genuine, they do not interest me.’ Unquote. Three of the finest minds of their century. The century immediately preceding this one, I might add.”
Robin, looking up at Gwyn, shaded his eyes and said nothing.
“Maybe we ought to erect a monument to the cow as well,” she said, coming back to the cart.
“What cow?”
“In Europe it was once commonly believed that beasts could be possessed by demons and controlled by the evil of Satan. So animals, even birds and insects, were tried by ecclesiastical courts, just like witches and heretics. They were excommunicated, tortured and condemned to death.”
“That was in the middle ages.”
“There was a trial in the year 1740 in France, the cow I mentioned. The cow was judged, declared guilty of satanic influence and executed. Not so far back in time, in what historians consider to be a reasonably complex and sophisticated age. So we’ve come a long way in our thinking, haven’t we? Responsible investigators are allowed to quietly pursue the notion that the psychic system has a prehistory of millions of years; that a telemagic sympathy exists between all living things; that there are planes of existence and hierarchies of consciousness barely conceivable at our present level of knowledge. Yet ninety-nine percent of the population of the world struggles along on a primitive level of consciousness, very much like twilight sleep. They think trance-thoughts; their actions are merely reflex movements. There are otherwise sensible people living in this area who believe that the moon landings were a clever illusion staged by a government desperate for prestige. Twenty years ago we could have shown them a visitor from the planetary system of 61 Cygni, on television, live from the Oval Office of the White House. Fact. But they weren’t ready for it then, and they won’t be ready twenty years from now. If such people become sufficiently agitated by wonders beyond their ken they will listen instead to a new crop of ecclesiastics, inquisitors and exorcists who are prepared to purge all monsters, whether they be space man, cow or clairvoyant.”
There was a heavy mist of perspiration on Gwyneth’s upper lip. She glanced at Robin, whose head was lowered in gloom. She put a hand on him and sighed.
“What it is, I get so wound up sometimes I go off like one of those clown-cannons loaded with flour, dusting everything in sight. We’re not exactly heroes up here; for the most part psychic researchers, those who are considered the least bit far-out in their thinking, are the fools of the scientific community. I’ve got good staff but I could use a dozen more top people. If I could find them, motivate them…”
“What you said is the truth. I know I’m a monster.”
“Hey, that wasn’t meant personally.”
“And there has to be a special place to keep the monsters. A zoo. No matter what name you call this place, it’s still a zoo.”
“Come on, Robin!”
“Only I’m not ready for this or any other kind of zoo,” he said, his eyes slits, his face tense as a fist. He got out of the cart and started walking back in the direction from which they had come.
He had trudged half way to the house when out of the corner of his eye he saw the cart flashing past him through thickets of birch and black cherry. A white-throated sparrow piped shrilly in the woods like a boatswain welcoming the admiral aboard. Gwyneth was parked on the path below him and waiting, leaning against her cart, when he appeared.
“So where are you going?”
“I want to get my things. I don’t want to stay here.”
“Could I take a shot at an apology?”
Robin didn’t say yes or no, but he stopped a few feet away. Gwyn pushed her hair back with both hands, revealing all of her graceful neck.
“Okay. You’re a guy I like a lot on short acquaintance. All I really know about Robin Sandza is what I read in a highly confidential report from Paragon. Transcripts of the tapes you made, and so forth. I admit I was—goddamn well stunned by your ability. I understand there are films. I’d like to see them too. What I said about monsters—we’re all in the same born-again hotbed, shuffling and scuffling toward a state of grace, most often doing the lousy thing and making the unforgiveable gesture, but sometimes muddling through. But you’ve made a couple of quantum-jumps toward the perfect state, you’re a twenty-first century kid who arrived a little early. Robin, we’re all going where you’ve been already. You make me feel—humble, believe it or not, and just a little too anxious to please and impress. After they fished you out of the river and pumped your lungs out and sedated you, you were brought here because my uncle didn’t have any better ideas. It’s big and peaceful here, there are a lot of ways to have a great time in this country if you want to.
“Now, technically, your Aunt Fay is your legal guardian, but we can’t even find your Aunt Fay. The law in New York says
until you’re sixteen you need an adult to look after you. Who’s it going to be? Your second cousin doing time for embezzlement in Joliet? Your great-aunt Harriet living off her dividends at Leisure World? I don’t think you’re psychologically equipped, after the tragedy you’ve experienced, to go knocking around the world on your own. So—give us a chance, please. Stay awhile. Do your own thing. Swim; go hiking; learn to ride a trail bike. I can guarantee, because I run the place, that there’ll be no pressure on you to participate in any of our work. You’ll be left strictly alone if that’s what you want, and, owww, oh, goddamn it!”
Gwyn leaped high and wide and turned around once in the air while grabbing at the seat of her pants. She went hopping and skipping past Robin and he saw the horsefly soar away. She rubbed the bitten place, tears standing out in her eyes.
“Oh, the damn flies we’ve got around here! Robin, would you see if he welted me?”
The fly had bitten her very low on the back, a finger’s width from the ivory rim of one soft cheek. A goodly lump was rising. Gwyn bent over, shoving the low pants even lower. Quite obviously she wore no underpants.
“Rub some spit on it for me? That usually helps when I don’t have anything else handy.”
Robin wet his fingertips plentifully and coated the bite. Gwyn straightened and hitched up and wiped her tearing eyes on the back of a wrist.
“Ohhh, thanks. It feels like he took a big chunk out. I guess he got a whiff of asshole.”
She looked quickly at Robin and tossed off a shrug. “Excuse that last remark. I do get a little vulgar from time to time.”
They were standing close together in an open place where the sun was powerful; Gwyn continued to look up at Robin, but neither moved to get out of the other’s way. A breeze stirred strands of hair on the crown of her head. He was totally interested in the wavering of her hair, in the mild steady eyes. He found other things that fascinated. Her lips seldom closed all the way. The upper lip had a pronounced arch. She had a serrated front tooth, a visible, strong pulse in her throat and a natural scent that would, in time, prove electrifyingly erotic.
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