Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  How could I, indeed? I knew her like I knew myself. No, better than that. I knew her like I wished I knew myself.

  It is said by virtually all the mystics that good and evil are mere states of mind—that is, human constructs. God, or the eternal being by whatever name, does not recognize the difference because the difference does not exist, cannot exist, in unity.

  And the more enlightened of the mystics have gone on to point out that there is not, and cannot be, a duality in unity. All is one and one is all. That includes you and me, kid, and the rabbit and the snake—the butterfly in the little girl's hand as well as the hand, itself, kings and slaves, cabbages and stars.

  Where do those old guys get that kind of thinking?

  Maybe my "shot in the dark" to Jennifer, that automatic response, was pretty close to the mark, at that.

  How does all this stuff exist independently yet come together as a unity?

  Maybe, yeah, maybe the jinn was the grand inductor. It had sure inducted the hell out of these people. In physiology, an inductor produces a change or a response in an organism.

  Grand Inductor. Yeah, maybe so. Another term for whatever.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Eternally

  The case was getting "curioser and curioser," as you will see. But let me try to develop some analogy to help you understand where we are, now. If you go to a movie tonight, you may be able to relate the most memorable scenes, or at least the central theme, of that movie to a friend a few hours later, or tomorrow at work. You will not, however, have total recall of every scene, every word of dialogue, unless you are most unusual. By next week you will recall even less of the movie and next year you may have trouble "remembering" if you even saw that particular movie.

  A lot of the same sort of thing occurs routinely with all our experiences. We may "remember" tonight that we bumped into an old acquaintance this morning but already not be sure as to where the meeting occurred or what exactly was said. The next time we bump into that same person, we may have difficulty remembering when we saw him last.

  This is all very useful and practical, for all the value placed on "good memory," and there is evidence to suggest that the human brain is designed to function in just this manner. Recent research suggests that the brain has some method to automatically sort and file experience in what is termed a "print" to either a short term or a long term memory, depending upon the importance of the experience. Presumably "short term" memory decays quickly and is lost forever, in this theory. However, I have seen remarkable recall of trivial detail by hypnotized persons, so I am not comfortable with this quick-decay idea. Maybe there is a passover to a dead storage file—to all practical purposes, lost, but indelibly woven in somewhere and accessible by extraordinary means.

  Any way you look at it, though, the human brain is a wondrous device. I am told that it may contain as many as one hundred billion cells, or neurons, with a complexity that defies all attempts to fully understand how it works. So don't get too tough on me for shooting in the dark here. I'm no oracle and certainly no authority on any of this stuff.

  And that is precisely the point I am trying to make. For all the apparent wizardry unleashed in the magic circle, I am still just a guy with an ordinary brain and subject to all its limitations and programmed functions. Through some "magic," I was able to briefly link up with some other ordinary human brains to effect a sort of "brain bank"—like combining data pools in a computer link. But I did not "become" all those people. For awhile—a very brief while, as it turned out—I had access to an abundance of strong memory prints, and apparently there was a brief integration of all that in my own mind, an integration which produced some rather remarkable intellectual conclusions. One minute later, however, or one second later, for that matter, I could not repeat any of those equations and had only the vaguest "memory" of having uttered them in the first place.

  In that same sense, then, my "merging" of consciousness with all those others did not automatically absorb any of the personalities into mine. When I say that I "knew" something about that personality, I speak of general assumptions, an integrated impression or hunch or understanding involving the totality of personality but not the trivia underlying that totality. It is a bit more complicated than that, because there are various plateaus of "totality," but this is basically where I was at, that night on Palomar Mountain.

  I "knew" certain things about these people without truly understanding the detail that formed such knowingness.

  Like, I know that Gary Cooper was the good guy in High Noon without really remembering all the detail of characterization that led to that generalization; and I recall the character with fondness, remember that he was a lawman of some sort, and identify with the central theme of the story but I cannot now recall a single line of dialogue from that movie.

  This is about where I was "at" with Jennifer, Laura, Esau, Holden, and the others.

  It was a marvelous place to be, let me assure you. I was awed, almost overwhelmed, by the tiny grain of understanding I had of these people—and there was enough of knowingness there to send my own mind into a spin if I thought about it too carefully. But it is so damned far out, all of it, that I have this problem, now, of how to present it to you in a credible way. If I just lay it out for you the way it was laid out in my mind at the time, you are probably going to be skeptical as hell, as well you should be. So I have to beg your indulgence while I set it up properly and give you the opportunity to come at it through some of the detail that formed my understanding.

  So back to the story.

  I must have been really beat up because I drifted back into sleep soon after Jennifer left my room, that evening, and this time I guess I really made it count because it was past midnight when I again awakened. I think I must have dreamed the whole time. You will fully appreciate that only if you understand something about modern sleep research.

  The sleep labs have discovered definite cyclic patterns in the sleep process, varying between periods of deep sleep, during which the brain produces an EEG pattern termed "synchronous," characteristic of mental inactivity; and periods of light, or REM, sleep with a desynchronized EEG pattern more characteristic of the waking, or mentally alert, state. Dreams supposedly occur only during REM sleep; presumably REM (Rapid Eye Movement) always indicates that the sleeper is dreaming.

  The average adult spends about twenty percent of sleep in REM, with the first REM stage occurring after the first hour of deep sleep, lasting for about ten minutes that first time but with the REM stages lengthening to about an hour as the cycles continue. Infants appear to spend about half of their sleepy time in REM, and no one really knows why this is so, but it makes me wonder about my own maturity because I believe I do most of my sleeping in the alert REM state. I can even doze off for twenty seconds in the middle of the day and get a dream out of it.

  Incidentally, for all the sleep lab-research, nobody really knows why we dream or what it means to dream (let alone what dreams, themselves, mean) but there are a lot of learned theories on the subject. The theory I personally prefer—for ordinary, run of the mill dreaming—has a dream as nothing more remarkable than the spin-off result of the brain's data-processing activities while we sleep; that is, the brain is going through the day's activities, sorting and filing and throwing out the debris.

  It is fairly obvious, though, to any unbiased researcher, that not all dreams are of the "run of the mill" variety. Some of the greatest music and the noblest ideas ever to grace our planet were conceived in dreams. There is also an unmistakably indismissable psychic component to some dreams. And then there are those dreams that almost certainly seem to originate in some other reality; we classify these as mystic dreams, and human history in every culture about the globe has been beatified by such dreams.

  I do not know how to classify my continuous-REM sleep on that Monday evening atop Palomar Mountain. I do know that I fell asleep exhausted, experienced some five to six hours of extremely active mental alertness while asl
eep, and awakened totally refreshed. I felt, in every sense, a new man. Perhaps I even scintillated, for awhile there. And I believe that I perhaps threw off a lot of "debris" during that period.

  Anyway, I came out of it tingling with the vague memories of what I'd experienced earlier that evening and an even more vague understanding of it. I ate the fruit I'd stashed earlier that day, washed up, and went adventuring again.

  This time I went straight to the dining hall. I had noticed a collection of portraits adorning those walls on my first casual inspection but had not given them any particular attention. These were photographs, not paintings, but done up in heavy frames and mounted similar to paintings, large—about 11x17. Holden was there, and looked about the same as in the flesh, so I presumed the others were relatively recent, too.

  Holden was there, yeah, and in favored company. To one side of him was a man of roughly the same age who looked, yes, like Dr. Zorba—Isaac. I studied that one closely, and had to smile. How relatively slight are surface signs of age, yet how dramatically amplified are those subtle changes in our gross perceptions. A line here, a puff there, a bit less hair or a bit finer and less pigmented, a slight droop as flesh succumbs to the law of gravity; a map of experience: that is what age is, yes, and I smiled at the Edwardian texture of this map.

  Are you Esau, or are you Jacob?

  He was neither, both sons of the biblical Isaac, but he was Isaac himself—right under my nose all the while yet invisible in the mask of youth, scintillating under the onslaught of a fantastic infusion of "living wave" energy.

  Tingle? Bet your ass, tingle. Every hair on my body must have been standing at attention as the physical evidence in those portraits confirmed the vague understanding I'd gained in my tussle with the jinn. Not just the evidence itself but the implications—my God, the implications! Who would not "scintillate" under the influence of such an organic "inductor'' and who would not be bursting to tell the world of such magic? The evidence before me answered a lot of questions, yet the tingling spoke not of answers but of a whole trembling train of new questions.

  Jennifer and Laura did little to relieve that tingle.

  Jennifer was dignified, almost stately, heavy silver hair upswept from the graceful curve of a still beautiful neck, eyes that still mocked with the constant threat of warmth—still beautiful in a way that stole over you—Bergman, yes, as Golda Meir, and I was in love with her.

  Laura was an ancient Pala woman who had learned the white man's ways early, mastered them, blended them with herself behind thick eyeglasses resulting from too many years at the microscope—the long hair a bit coarser, now, and less defined as to color—but beautiful, yes, in her way, still very beautiful.

  They all were there, all this incredible team of senior scientists, the "young" scintillators who had edged my perceptions with visions of aliens from faraway places; they were indeed aliens, of a sort, from as far away as Ponce de Leon and his fountain of youth and who knows how much farther, into the myths and fables and longings of every generation of man since Adam, from all the mandalas of all the wizards in all the lands who patiently practiced their incantations and recited their magical equations—good lord of all the lords, how long and how diligently had mankind searched for this tingle which now leapt at me from these photographs in reverse chronology—and how very privileged I felt to be able to see the past as future.

  Or to see, perhaps, the past and future as a continuum with the present. That, you know, is what eternity is. And eternity, I believe, is what these people had unlocked.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Decision

  I found the team in the study. They had moved in two computer terminals and printers and the place showed evidence of recent bedlam. All was quiet now, though, peace reigned, and the human atmosphere in there was one of sober reflection.

  Holden looked up as I entered and motioned me toward a chair at the blackboard turret, where he sat with Laura and Jennifer. Esau/Isaac was toying with some expressions on the blackboard while conversing in a monotone with another scientist.

  I waded through discarded printouts and joined the group at the table. Holden showed me a delighted smile but said nothing. The two women looked beat, barely acknowledged my presence.

  I observed, to no one in particular, "Looks like it's been back to the drawing board, eh?"

  Jennifer replied, in a weary voice, "Back and back and back again, yes."

  Holden, energetic as ever but speaking in a stage whisper, said, "But they've deciphered it, by God!"

  "Doesn't appear to be a particularly happy conclusion," I said, glancing around at the sober faces in that room.

  Laura smiled faintly and replied, "Not necessarily unhappy, though. Just, uh, sobering."

  I said, "I see that, yeah."

  Jennifer said, tiredly, "May I have a cigarette, Ashton?"

  I passed one to her, lit it, said, "What's the conclusion?"

  She got the smoke going, then replied, "You don't want that in twenty-five words, I hope."

  I told her, "I'd settle for one or two."

  "That's easy, then," she said. "In a word, life."

  “Life?” I echoed.

  Laura picked it up, very soberly. "The jinn are life."

  I looked at Holden and said, "Okay, I'll take those other twenty-four words."

  He waggled the eyebrows and replied, "Let Laura do it. It's her field."

  "Some field I picked," she said, with a grim smile. "Doesn't even belong to our universe, it appears."

  "Ho, we're all aliens," Holden commented.

  "Is that the conclusion?” I wondered.

  Laura said, "It is the inevitable result of our conclusions."

  I said, perhaps in an incredulous tone, "Now wait a minute..."

  Jennifer shot me an oblique gaze. "We've all had the same reaction, Ashton." She sighed. "Ego problem, I fear. Certainly we should have been prepared for it, though. The pointers have been there, all along."

  I said, "I just don't get the graveyard atmosphere in here. If you people have the solution then it is a triumph of science. So where are all the triumphant scientists?"

  Holden said, "Ho, my sentiments exactly. She said ego problem, though, and there's your clue, Ashton. See here, these people have immersed their very lifetimes in the study of this universe as the home of mankind. Now they've discovered it's only a blasted way station, so to speak. Put yourself in their place, my boy. Way you do that, way I did it, was to imagine myself the only self-aware ant in the colony. Oh, say, how puffed up I am, how delighted with my own brilliance after I have deduced all the secrets of the anthill. Then, one adventurous night, I crawl out onto the face of the planet and behold the lights of the city. In a sudden intuitive flash, I divine a whole new order of anthills and an intelligence so far surpassing my own that I am abysmally humbled with awe. And I don't know whether I should venture out into that magical night with all its unknown perils or if I should very quietly retreat into my own hill and pull the hole in behind me."

  Laura was giving him a warm gaze as he spoke. When he finished, she said, "Very good, Holden."

  Jennifer sighed and said, "Yes, Holden has it by the balls. Just wish I could..."

  Holden waggled eyebrows at me and said, delightedly, "She's been so horny since she rolled back."

  "Haven't we all," Laura said, but without humor. "And now it seems..."

  Something was wrong, here. Holden's analogy may have been right on the mark and perhaps partly responsible for the mood of the group, but there was more to it than that—quite a bit more, I decided.

  Before I could get an angle on the thought, though, Esau/Isaac stepped over from the blackboard and extended his hand to me.

  I shook it, asked him with a smile, "Are you Esau or are you Isaac?"

  He smiled back as he replied, "Isaac, of course. Regret the little charade, Ashton. Jen told us that you were familiar with some of my work." He ran a hand across his face. "Didn't want to shock you too much with this, uh, anom
aly. Remarkable thing, isn't it."

  I replied, "Remarkable is an understatement. I was just down in the dining hall, checking out the portraits."

  He smiled. "Yes, well..." His gesture included everyone present. "You see what has happened."

  "I see," I said, "but I really do not understand."

  "Nor did we, at first. Had us completely fooled. Thought the jinn were interacting biologically, at the cellular level—but good Lord—it was happening too fast. A biological inductance was perfectly understandable, yes—even a rapid effect, locally, as any other spontaneous mutation—but broadcast uniformly throughout the organism? Good lord!—we had a tiger by the tail and we knew it. Then Laura showed us that the interaction was not biological."

  I said, "So you were using yourselves as guinea pigs."

  "Unwittingly, yes, at first. Didn't know what we were involved with there, you see. We had noted what appeared to be biological interaction. We were doing focus studies, similar but much less concentrated than last night's experiment, using tissue specimens. Noted some small effect on the specimens, enough to enormously mislead us for awhile. But then we began to experience the changes within ourselves. Then, yes, conscious guinea pigs. And you see the result before you."

  I gazed at Holden and said, "But..."

  "But, yes, isn't it so often the way...? Our greatest friend and most generous benefactor experienced a negative effect early on. We very regretfully were forced to exclude him from—"

  "Ho, made me senile, you see!" Holden rumbled from the sidelines.

  Isaac smiled at him and said, "Senility is reversible, Holden, you know that. At any rate, I'll take you senile over twenty ordinary men at their best." He turned back to me. "We know better, now, thanks to you and your postscript for Holden."

  I said, "I remember that but it hardly seems earth- shattering."

  "Ho!" said Holden.

  Isaac smiled at him and said to me, "A philosophical postscript, perhaps, but it has led us to a reassessment of the data and a better understanding of Holden's negative reaction."