by Thomas Page
“Well, what do you think? I’ve been working three days on it. It utilizes designs I’ve been playing with since college days.”
Jones sat on his bench, legs dangling off the edge while Dutton examined the equipment. “This is an encephalograph, isn’t it?” Dutton asked, touching the headband.
“You bet it is. It’s portable. Watch.” He lifted the headband and fitted it over his forehead. Electrodes covered his frontal lobes, his ears, temples, and crown. Wires dangled from it into a cable feeding one of the recorders. “It’s a bit more elaborate than most encephalographs. I’ve fixed it to monitor impulses along the optic and auditory nerves and the skin. If I see, feel, or hear anything, it’ll show up next to the brain waves.”
With the wires dangling before his face, Jones looked like some kind of tree, perhaps a weeping willow. Dutton kept a tactful silence. Jones indicated the antenna and trumpet-shaped collector.
“The oscillator sends out pulses of seven million per second. Another little design of mine. The beats will fill every molecular hole in a room. If anything moves, whether it’s a truck or an atom, it’ll disturb the pulses and I can pick it up on the other tape system.” Jones removed the headset and set it on the table. “Sometimes I think I should never have been a doctor.”
Sometimes Dutton thought Jones should never have been a doctor either. “What can I say? The latest in ghost-catching. It’s been tried before.”
“No. No one’s had a Daniel Forrester before. No one’s ever pinpointed the time and location of a ghost’s appearance as well as we have and nobody’s ever looked inside a human head when a ghost is present. What I need now is somebody who can break down my brain waves and whatever contact I pick up into a common element. Get me? Now I know that you were heavy into neurology . . .”
“Not me.”
Jones’s face reflected sharp, resentful disappointment as he poured a coffee refill.
“I can’t help you,” Dutton said.
Jones stirred the surface of his coffee with his pen. “Didn’t Shaw say nobody ever accomplished anything in this world without making a fool of himself first?”
“Why?”
“I know how I must look to you. Look here, two thousand years ago, a man was crucified by Romans. Every morning, Evan Branch wakes up and talks to him. Now am I any crazier than he is?” Jones had eyes that saw everything, bagged, classified, and stored away information, and never revealed true anger. “I’m about to prove Branch might have been right after all. I’m not closing off old possibilities. I’m reopening them.”
Dutton asked bluntly, “Something in this whole Forrester business hits you personally, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe. Sure.” Jones drained his cup and set it on the desk. “One day you wake up and realize you’re not just a normal, regular sawbones who’s supposed to spend his life tying off hemorrhoids. You see, I get feelings about what the purpose of life is. I went into medicine because I had a feeling it would be important. And it is today because Forrester has just been dumped in my lap.”
“I get it,” Dutton nodded. “Now it figures. You were put here by Fate to do something great involving Daniel Forrester. This Fate diverted you from engineering into medicine and placed you, Daniel Forrester, and the LS system all together in Clayton.”
Face reddening, Jones said, “It’s not so egomaniacal. It’s the logic of drama, it’s called destiny. Forrester changed all our lives. I could hear the dominoes falling the minute I saw that capsule. If Shakespeare or Euripides can say that, why in hell can’t Gareth Jones? Huh?”
“You wouldn’t call it Fate or destiny, would you?”
“There’s other words. Like synchronicity.”
Dutton had to give Jones credit. He was an epic crackpot instead of a run-of-the-mill one. Some of the greatest intellects of the century harbored a quiet belief that plain coincidence was governed by physical laws, which Jung dubbed synchronicity. Synchronicity was not a new concept anymore than Karma or God was, it was a word coined by physicists who jumped into the act as they pondered the contradictions bequeathed them by the atomic universe.
“All right, Jones. You’re a man of destiny. I tell you what, I can take your tapes to a man who might put them together for you. His name is Jordan. I studied at Cal Tech with him. He knows more about brains and nerves than anybody alive.”
“Is he a teacher?”
“Yes, he is. He’s more a psychologist than a doctor.” Dutton’s eyes fell on the wooden handle of a pistol protruding from under the welder. “Jones, is that what I think it is?”
Jones showed it to him. It was a thirty-eight-caliber revolver with all the chambers loaded. “It’s a gun, Larry. Bang, bang. Oh, it’s not for Forrester, hell no. It’s for the live nuts who congregate at every haunted house in the world. I don’t fancy a bunch of teenagers throwing lighter fluid on me. Don’t worry, I’ve got a license. Let me show you round the place. You’ve never been here before, have you? Always meant to throw a party but you know how lazy bachelors are . . .”
Jones escorted Dutton back to the living room where the Indian music was still playing. He showed off the electronic gear that grew throughout the house like strange clumps of vegetation, the amplifiers that pulled down satellite signals, the cassette and cartridge systems. He ran a tape of a Russian music broadcast, then guided him out the door, all within ten minutes.
As he pushed shut the door to Dutton’s car, he said through the window, “By the way. Moving Forrester out of here is the best thing we can do.”
“Why?” asked Dutton, starting the engine.
“Because he won’t know where his body is. Think about that. Bury a man in Kansas, he goes back to his childhood home in Detroit or something. Forrester will die in Denver but wake up in Santa Eulalia or here and he won’t know which way is up. He won’t know where the plug is. His body has no sight, hearing, or sense, and he’s just a little bit of magnetism when the machine pulls him back. He has no will of his own.”
“Well, good luck, Jones. Bring him back alive.”
“Say, that’s pretty good. I’ll call tonight. Tell Branch to say a few prayers for me, will you?”
“He only prays for believers.”
“I’m a believer. Me and Branch are closer than you think. Even than he thinks.” Jones slapped the hood of the car and waved Dutton off. Dutton had never seen him more outgoing, or just plain nicer than today. Even crackpots have their good days, he decided.
“Lorraine? It’s Kate.”
“Well, of course it is, just got out of the pool I bet.” The editor enjoyed being miserable. “Nice and dripping after ten laps. Where’s my article? Did you bring back a zombie?”
“I brought back some exposed film and some impressions and I’m prepared to grovel.”
“Oh, goody. Washout, huh? Plastic skeletons on wires, stuffed bats on the ceiling, hidden speakers going boo.”
“Not even that good,” Kate laughed, stroking Mr. Fudd on her lap. “In the first place, the house just doesn’t look spooky. It’s a plain old tacky box of a house.”
“How about voices, Kate? Did you hear any women pining for their lovers?”
“Not a peep. I did run into a friend of mine up there . . .”
“How nice, a man?”
“Er, yes.”
“Is he good-looking?”
“Sure is, Lorraine, he looks like he’s just been uncrated.”
“Lucky girl. No good-looking men in an office building, they don’t get enough exercise or something. Well, Kate, back to work. Bring it in on Friday, will you? Love you mucho, bye.”
By the swimming pool below, the concrete walk meandered between a grocery store and a dry cleaning shop, which formed a little shopping mall for the twin buildings. From between them stepped Daniel Forrester. He paused on the steps, looking uncertainly around at the pool.
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sp; Kate pushed open the sliding door to her balcony and stepped to the railing. She started to wave, but he was already gone. Probably he had gone back into one of the shops. She waited for two or three minutes, but he did not appear again. No matter, he could ask around and find out where she lived.
Some coffee and a ridge of toast were cooling on the kitchen counter. Kate poured out some food for Mr. Fudd and then ate the toast.
What was Forrester doing in the house?
She would ask him as soon as he came in the door. Kate continued waiting for the sound of the downstairs buzzer which would mean he had tracked her down at last. However, bachelors were insensitive bastards, so she continued to wait and wait at the counter, scarfing down coffee, thinking the whole bloody performance reminded her of college days, when her friends all but hanged themselves with piano wire waiting for a man to call. Maybe Daniel was stupid. Maybe he couldn’t find her apartment.
Addressing the cat who was cleaning his left front paw, Kate intoned, “Statistically speaking, Fudd, the virility of the human male peaks round the age of seventeen while the peak childbearing capacity of the human female comes in the twenties. The trouble is such people are way too young to get married, so they put themselves in cultural hammerlocks that blow apart when they hit their forties. They get divorced. No wonder older single men are such neurotics. Isn’t that a fact?”
At long last the door buzzer rang. Kate snickered to herself, thinking she ought to keep him hanging for at least two rings. Then again he was not in very good emotional shape, so she picked up the house phone. “Yes?”
“It’s Steve, Kate.”
“Oh. Terrific. Is Diane with you?”
“Sure she is. You ready to go?”
“Yes. Steve, is anybody else down there? A guy in a blue blazer?”
“Um, no. Nobody in the lot, nobody in the lobby. You expecting someone, Kate?”
“I guess not. Sit on your buns, I’ll be right down, soon as I put on some pants.”
Kate figured it was just as well, Forrester was a mess. As usual Fudd tried to barricade the door against her going out again. She inspired tremendous protective instincts in cats.
The increasing number of studiously casual phone calls, combined with the curiosity about her private life, gave Kate the feeling that Steve and Diane were not living happily ever after. Steve had dropped hints about Diane. “Her forte is sensitivity, not intelligence” was one of his pearls. “Knowledgeable people make her upset. She’s really very delicate.” When Kate met her husband’s paramour, she knew her instincts were right. Diane was in her mid-twenties. She had straight brown hair, steel-rimmed glasses, and the retiring quiescent manner of one who would remain in place for hours unless forcibly moved.
Kate could tell that a svelte, lean, and graceful figure lurked under Diane’s painter pants, sweatshirt, and loafers. Diane seemed to be one of those people who seemed impelled to bury herself, as though she was embarrassed about her own physique. It made Kate feel old. In college, all the girls had nervous breakdowns trying to get into the clothes that would show off the kind of figure Diane had.
“Hi, Kate,” said Steve, bussing her cheek dangerously close to her mouth.
Kate shook Diane’s weak hand. “So glad to meet you,” she said.
“Oh, me too,” breathed Diane nervously. “I’m glad to meet me—I mean you—too.”
By the pier park, a stretch of grass and blessed shade from the blazing sun, a mass picnic had been set up. This picnic was an annual event which drew literally thousands of people down to the shore in a groundswell of flesh, tinkling cymbals, the cling of mobiles dangling from the few trees, and roaring transistor radios borne by roller skaters wearing tans and practically nothing else. The smells were heated by the sun into a stew of steamed hot dogs, barbecued chicken, sauerkraut, chili, and human sweat overlaid with fragrant coconut oil. Today curry had been added to the garden of odors and everywhere bald Hare Krishna acolytes scurried through the crowd, their scalps and faces weirdly pale compared to those of the natives.
Through the sheer numbing weight of the beach crowd channeled into the narrow Venice lanes, Kate was half-dead on her feet within twenty minutes and wishing she were back in her apartment with Fudd in her lap and a good magazine.
“You hungry?” Steve bellowed into her ear. “Stuff the curry, I’m going to have a hotdog with mustard, chili, onions, bullets, safety matches, everything on it. How about you, ladies?” He spoke as they stood in line to be served some kind of starchy vegetable heaped with red curry sauce.
“You ought to save yourself for tonight,” Diane reminded him nicely enough. “You were going to have a deli sandwich . . .”
“I have to eat,” said Steve simply. “If I don’t eat I’ll get pimples. Come on, Kate, help me choose a doggie.”
Grasping her arm, Steve dragged Kate out of line and through the crowd to the concrete where a couple of hot dog vendors were doing terrific business. Kate said, “That’s not a very nice way to treat your mistress.”
“Did I tell you Diane is a vegetarian?”
“Why, no.” Kate remembered Steve’s eating needs were delightfully simple. He could live off hamburgers forever. “Does she share her cauliflower with you?”
“Kate, you know what my problem is? Last week, I finally figured it out. I’ve discovered vanity late in life. Vanity is something people are supposed to indulge in as teenagers, when they are humping in parked cars. Like lust, it’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to grow out of. However, if you’re deprived of vanity or lovers’ lane during your formative years, it comes back fifteen years later and makes hash of your life.” Steve accepted a hot dog and crammed half of it in his mouth.
“You and me think alike. I was mulling over that very thought when you called.”
“That a fact? You into religion, Kate?”
“Steve, this is Kate! We’re married, remember?”
“That woman believes music is an expression of the soul. Which is okay but she dragged Pythagoras into it. She described why social progress is built into reincarnation. She says the world’s population grows too fast for reincarnation to work among the same species. Dig? More people die than are born at any given moment. Now she says St. Augustine believed in reincarnation and she claims Jesus did, too. The trick is, like the Hindus say, people were cows in their previous lives and that’s why you eat alfalfa salads when you’re born again. People were also flies. That’s why spider phobia is so prevalent—you were sucked dry by a spider in your previous life. Any given soul reincarnates upward through the evolutionary scale, cows to people, people to angels and all that, and each level has its own music. That’s why angels are always associated with harps, because harp music is so pure, and cows like Muzak because it’s so bland. . . . Jeez, I can see that girl’s tits over there, look over your left shoulder, Kate.”
Steve always did that to her. She found herself peering through a crowd looking for a girl’s breasts. What did she care about breasts? Steve could get her into a fit of giggles just like that bearded doctor at the lodge. Forrester was never able to do that. She saw a glimpse of a girl wearing a filmy blouse disappearing toward the elephant walk. “Steve?”
“Yes, Kate.” He pushed the rest of the hot dog down his throat and covered a belch.
“You wouldn’t be coming on to me, would you?”
“Would I do that, Kate? Me? Steve? After casting you out of my life like a used Kleenex and taking up with a nearsighted tart who thinks we all started out as flies and end up as angels? Isn’t she great?”
“She’s a regular mommy-long-legs.”
“Stick around, she’ll lay all kinds of recipes on you. Cucumber ice cream . . .”
“I’m going to watch the elephant, back in a second,” Kate said, deciding to get away from him. She bolted the crowd, and headed for the feeble shade. A gaily decorated elepha
nt led by a bald boy in a toga was being yanked around with a cane.
Kate contemplated shooting down one of the side streets to home, but that would be a lapse of courtesy so unforgivable that Diane would probably send Steve out to shoot her. She watched the elephant. Something about huge, methodical beasts calmed the wildest heart. By sheer bulk and dignity, the animal rose above the gabbling crowd.
“Kate.”
The voice was just behind her right ear, so close Kate nearly jumped straight up. Daniel Forrester was standing next to her wearing that huge smile. When Kate’s heartbeat normalized, she felt herself becoming thoroughly angry at him. “Goddammit, Daniel, that’s twice you’ve scared me.”
Again he had that remarkable vividness. He still wore the blazer and coat and tie. Not so much as a drop of sweat was visible despite his warm clothing. Kate stepped back from him. He reminded her of the brightly colored foil and cloth that decorated the park. And that dazed, distant smile he fixed on her was as unnerving as it was yesterday. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Were you looking for me half an hour ago?”
“Yes. And here. I couldn’t find you in the crowd till now.”
“You change moods awfully fast,” she commented. He seemed more straight in his head than he was yesterday.
“I’m nothing but moods, Kate.”
“When did you get back in town?”
That simple question seemed to confuse him. His face wavered through several expressions before he answered, “Not long ago.”
“I’m here with my husband. And I tell you, Daniel, this is turning into the weirdest afternoon in my life. He’s here with his girlfriend. Now you’re here. All I need now is George Hadley. I’ll have all my lovers in one place.”
After a moment Daniel Forrester said, “I know George Hadley.”
Kate gazed at him, half-fearful the man had completely gone off the deep end. There was no other reason why he would make such a remark.