“Say we did turn back, say that somebody else started spreading the power? The very fact that we torture ourselves about the effects shows that we’re not wrong people for it to happen to, even if it did happen by blind chance. Other people might not worry about the effects.”
“Yes… you could be right. But—”
She suddenly broke and began to cry in his mind, tearlessly, but all the more poignantly for that. Her stubborn spirit was beaten, her argument exhausted. She knew now that this could not be rejected or talked away.
He felt her dependence on him. In many ways hers was a male mind, with its logic, its dedication, its planning and patient working to a goal. But within was a cool, clear pool of femininity. Only now it was desperately troubled, lashed by storms.
“There… there,” he said, over and over again, in her mind, like a mother soothing her child. “I’m here. Lean on me. We’ll see it through together. I won’t let you suffer.” Then, because that was not enough, because her pain was of mind and therefore not wholly curable by mind, he stroked her hair and kissed her forehead.
She clung to him. “Oh, Arnold,” she sobbed.
He kissed her lips then and caressed her trembling body. The trembling gradually ceased—then began again to a different rhythm. He fought against it, feeling that he was betraying his trust. The power gave him responsibility, not claims. But the need—hers as well as his—was too great.
It was a union such as he had never known with any woman before. Instead of a groping towards identity, a stripping of bodies for a pitifully fractional merging—minds only merging in a frenzy of mutual abdication—instead, this was true nakedness both of body and mind, the nakedness of their minds so utter that they twined with each other as urgently as limbs. The relief they sought—and found—was not in a greater identity but in a state where total identity, already achieved, could be tolerated.
But the aftermath was the same.
He roused in the night and saw her lying beside him in the dim light. Some dream had roused him to half-waking. He smiled sleepily as he turned over. The mind still, mercifully, had its defences. Dreams were still one’s own.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He awoke and it was still dark. He realized that he had not set the waker light control. That would have been the last thing he would have thought of. He jabbed a button by the bed and the window louvres tilted. It was a grey morning.
He shifted round on his elbow. Claire was already up. Or—he felt a quick pang; even after last night he could still fear her elusiveness—gone. But then he heard her moving in the kitchen. He swung out of bed, donned a shirt and slacks, slipped his feet into moccasins and padded out kitchenwards.
Claire was dressed, looking as if she had been up for hours. She was busy at the high-frequency cooking unit. She turned as he entered.
“Top of the morning to you,” he greeted her in mock Irish. It was one of the accents he used to cover embarrassment. This morning he felt slightly embarrassed.
“Good morning,” she said primly.
“You found everything, then?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t a lot. I haven’t kept much account of such things lately. I mean, since—”
“There’s quite enough, thank you.” Her manner was unexpectedly curt. Her subsequent silence, as she fussed with plates and cups, plainly indicated that his presence in the kitchen was superfluous.
He did not speak again until breakfast was over. He felt, after what had happened, that it was advisable to let her speak first.
But when she did, immediately on laying down her knife and fork, her words startled him by their briefness.
“Thank you,” she said. “I shall be leaving now.”
“Leaving? Why so soon? Do you have work on that you have to get finished?”
“Work?” She shrugged. “It will take time to gather up the threads of that. No, I’m—I’m just backing out, that’s all.”
“What? But why?”
“Need you ask that question after last night?”
“Oh—no!” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You sound just like an old-fashioned wronged heroine.”
“You can joke if you like. There’s nothing old-fashioned about my reaction. It’s up to date. Desperately up to date.”
“But I don’t understand. Really I—”
“Don’t you? Do you see now what this power can do? What happened only confirms my fears. It means that one person can impose his will on another person.”
So that was it! “But a person’s always been able to do that, without the power.”
“Not so decisively. No, despite what I may have said last night, you can forget about my having any more to do with it. And, if you take my advice, you’ll think terribly hard before you do.”
He ought to have felt dismayed at her words. But he felt, if anything, rather flattered at the assumption that he had imposed his will on hers.
“Come off it,” he told her. “You’re just playing the outraged female. It’s got nothing to do with the power and it’s got nothing to do with your artistic independence. You’re just annoyed to hell that you lost your precious female independence.”
“Of all the—”
Her face flushed, and he rejoiced ignobly that her usual composure was shaken. It made her more feminine, more human.
“Don’t fret too much,” he told her, conscious that he was rather overplaying it. “It wasn’t the end of the world. It was only for a night.”
She started to her feet, furious, and picked up her coat from where it still lay over the back of a chair. She was thrusting it on when Arnold had a sudden notion. He cast around briefly for an object, then thought hard—and purposively.
Claire turned, her coat only half-on.
Switch on the light, he told her.
Her mind instantly repelled the mental command.
Switch on the light, he repeated more insistently.
His concentration wavered then—in amusement. Claire had just divined the true nature of the test and had started to move towards the switch. It was hardly more than a mental movement, for it was stopped in its tracks as she knew—and knew that he knew—that there could be no cheating in this—inevitably.
Now he battered at her mind as brutally as he could, trying to force her towards the switch.
She did not move.
He took the pressure off and smiled. “Sorry about that, but it was necessary.” He crossed over to her and removed the coat from her shoulders. She did not resist. He put the coat back over the chair and placed his hands on her shoulders, facing her, looking into her eyes.
“So much for my strength of will.” He drew her to him. “I didn’t want to bully you,” he said softly. “And I don’t, ever again. But you know now that what happened last night wasn’t just me.” He felt her nod against his cheek. “And I wasn’t being all coarse and male when I said that it wasn’t the end of the world, that it was only for a night. It was much more than that for me, believe me. I only said that because you’re so uncompromising—to yourself, I mean—and I don’t want you to be hurt any more than you have been.”
“I know,” she said. “I know, but—oh, it’s not me I’m concerned about, it’s others.”
“Don’t worry, please. I—I don’t think it will be so bad for others after us. We’re the first, that’s what makes it all the harder. It’s just because of the responsibility you feel—we both feel that we’re bound to explore this. And to suffer, if necessary. We have to accept it. It’s no use fighting it. It’s a frightening thing that has happened to us, but it’s also a wonderful thing. I’m glad it happened. If it hadn’t been for that we would have just exchanged a few polite words at a party and gone off and never seen each other again. Though, knowing us, I’m not sure the words would have been so polite in any case.”
He felt her lips shape a sad little smile against his face.
“I know,” he went on softly, but
urgently, “I know we’re opposed. So opposed that normally we would never be even friends. You think I lack purpose, that my thinking is woolly and romantic—no, don’t protest, you know you do—but I don’t mind your feeling that. It’s probably true. And I respect your independence and strength of mind. But—”
He broke off, knowing that this argument had been the last fluttering of her will against—not him, but the power that had them both at its mercy. There would doubtless be other arguments, other contests, but the main one had been conceded.
“Let’s have another cup of coffee,” he said.
Over the table it was easier to talk. Claire was the first to resume.
“We—we’ll have to be together.” It was a statement, not a question.
He nodded. “I suppose we shall have to. But I—I don’t want any kind of hold on you. I’ll try not to intrude too much upon you. Except for the job of getting this thing known to people.”
She was looking around her. “It means that either I move in here—”
“It would be too small,” he said. That apart, this was a fiercely bachelor block. A good half of the occupants were divorced or separated. All of them lived in a kind of group fantasy. They saw themselves as victimized by womanhood. They had all suffered, even the not yet married whom the ex-marrieds drew into their fantasy. A woman on the premises was overtly tolerated—in actual fact, she was welcomed as a kind of ritual sacrifice. Some had passed through several hands before they had re-emerged, But a woman in permanent residence would have been a symbol of defeat.
He didn’t try to convey that to Claire. Instead, he said, in all truth, “There’s not enough room here for you to work. You must try and get on with that, despite everything that might happen.”
She smiled wanly. “I’ll try. But you’re right; there’s not even room enough to try here. So that settles it. You’ll have to move in with me. Though it’s pretty primitive, I’m afraid.”
“No, it’s fine. But is it big enough? If not, we’ll have to look around for a new place.”
“No. I’ve got used to it. It’s big enough. It’s got three rooms. One’s more or less spare, though it’s the smallest.” She looked around dubiously at his furniture. “Is this all yours?”
“Only about half of it. The rest I took over from the last tenant.”
“In that case, there should be room. But how about the rest? How do you intend going about it?”
“What—spreading the message?” The levity in his own voice annoyed him, but he did not know how else to express it. “I don’t quite know. First, we shall have to get the power proved, substantiated.”
“But that will take time. And money. How will you manage?”
“We’ll work something out.”
“We’re in this together, so we’ll pool resources. My father left me some stock. Not much, but it’s something.”
“We’ll manage. I’ll have to give up my full-time job. Full-time—that’s rich! I’ve been neglecting it like hell lately. But I’m sure I can get free-lance work I’ve got a balance at the bank to see us along. And I’ll get a bit of premium on this place when I give it up.” He smiled. “The housing shortage cuts both ways. Have no fear, we’ll get by. I’ll see to that.”
He rose to his feet. “Let’s shake on it.”
She took his proffered hand.
“That’s to make it all formal and unemotional,” he said. “If we keep it like that we’ll be all right.”
And he tried to sound convincing—to himself as well as to Claire.
CHAPTER NINE
It was three weeks before he could turn around and decide on a plan of campaign.
There had been his job to work out and the contacts for freelance work to make. His own firm would be forthcoming, they promised, and he was confident that they would. Being a small firm, they had to keep their overheads tight, which meant that they were periodically beset by more work than they could handle.
In between times they were slack, for there was never enough volume of work to establish a good average level. It was one of the slack times now, thank heaven, so that his absence from work and his leaving now did not alienate his prospects. And he ought to be able to profit enough from the peaks.
With other firms it was not so easy. There was a deep-rooted prejudice against free-lances. Their liberty was an affront to the nine-to-fivers. One agency passed on the account of a small household gadget firm and seemed suspiciously relieved. That was the only definite one, but the rest gave enough promises to satisfy him.
But it took time. So did moving. Not so much the moving out as the moving in. He felt that he had to make amends for his intrusion into Claire’s ordered world, so he did what he could to make things easier, materially, for both of them. Like relaying the kitchen floor with molybdene tiles and installing a high-frequency cooking unit—her old cooker was little better than a hot plate. It started with one or two things like that, but it finished only when he realized that his very improvements were too much of an intrusion. And he was trying desperately hard to avoid that. He was even apologetic about having a phone installed, although he knew it was absolutely necessary, and knew that Claire realized that too.
But in every other way he could, he tried to fit in as painlessly as possible. Anything of his which plainly offended Claire, like a bulky old leather armchair that he loved like a friend, he cast out ruthlessly. His new room was shabby, so he redecorated it in a sharp cool yellow, which he fancied chimed with Claire’s idea of an interior.
And he made a particular point of trying to be punctual and tidy in his habits. After years of living on his own, that wasn’t easy.
All the while, he was turning over the problem of publicizing the power. Just how did you set about publicizing something as new and unheard of as this? But by the time he had finished settling in, he had made up his mind. He told Claire. She agreed to go with him.
The building was one of the old places clustered round the Portman Square area. He thought he had recognized the address when he had found it in a directory of research foundations. Now he remembered. It had once been a literary society. He had heard Rabin, the ill-fated American poet, reading his own work there. The memory invoked spacious days when the whole building had been devoted to the pursuit of literature, its lofty colonnaded hall thronged with the famous, the infamous, the unknowns, the hangers-on. Or so it had seemed.
Now the entrance bore the plates of a dozen occupants, including the one they sought, the Schroder Foundation. And the hall, when they entered, seemed to have disappeared. He wondered how a space that size could have simply evaporated. He found out when, in response to his jabbing a button which repeated the words Schroder Foundation, a canned voice announced third floor and an elevator presently opened to them. When they emerged from it he realized that this part of the building was slung from the roof of the old hall. He recognized the vaulting. A whole warren of offices had been built into it. He smiled wryly as he recognized the parallel with his own life. That, too, had once been dedicated, as this building had been. The original purpose lost, it had been broken up, inhabited by too much that was trivial, day-to-day, false.
He thrust the thought away. Once again he was dedicated to a cause.
He opened a door marked Enquiries and ushered Claire in.
A young woman of machine-like sleekness and composure looked up from a desk. Her eyebrows rose in silent, bored, inquiry.
“My name is Ash,” Arnold told her. “I have an appointment.”
“Ash?” The woman riffled the three papers which disturbed the elegant bareness in front of her, then reached beneath. “Kindly fill in this form.” She thrust a large sheet of paper at him and one at Claire. “You’ll find pens over there,” she added, as if pushing the limits of graciousness.
“I don’t think you understand,” Arnold told her. “You do investigate telepathy?”
She looked him up and down in a single glance and said, as if reading from a tape spool
ed in her meticulously coiffed head. “This is the Schroder Foundation, established in 1969 by the bequest of Mr. Van Dyke Schroder for the purpose of correlating data on psionic and related phenomena.”
“That sounds more or less the same to me. With a side nod to Mr. Van Dyke Schroder, of course. We’ve come to demonstrate thought transference.” That, he thought, ought to shake her haughtiness.
It didn’t even ruffle it.
“Kindly fill in the form.”
There was not a grain of kindness in the request. It was a bare, unassailable courtesy. Arnold looked at the form.
It was couched in the ugly, slightly old-fashioned typography common to all questionnaires. He resented the condescension which it somehow conveyed.
“To hell with the form. We haven’t come here to be docketed. Neither did we come here to exchange words with a receptionist. We have an appointment, presumably with a principal. So will you kindly inform him or her that we’re here?”
The woman shrugged almost imperceptibly and flipped a switch. “Mr. Mercer? I have two people here, a Mr. Ash and companion. They refuse to fill in a preliminary. Yes. Yes. Very good.” She looked up.
“Mr. Mercer will be out to see you.” Her tone was still utterly neutral.
Mr. Mercer emerged. He was tall, spare, dressed in a sober plum-coloured suit. He rubbed his hands together briskly.
“Mr. Ash?” he nodded economically at Arnold, then at Claire. “Madam. This is a place of research. As such, it has its routine. All applicants must fill in the preliminary form provided.”
“Applicants?” Arnold couldn’t believe it. “We haven’t come to apply for anything. As I tried to explain to your receptionist here, we’ve come to demonstrate telepathy.”
Mr. Mercer looked genuinely puzzled.
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