INTERVENTION

by May, Julian; Dikty, Ted

  Denis was deeply engrossed in a new book on the calculus that I had just bought, thinking we might learn it together. Sunny was knitting. Outside the little house on School Street a frigid wind from Canada howled down the Androscoggin Valley and solidified the old snowdrifts into masses like dirty white styrofoam. I hated to think of walking home.

  Don came back into the living room sans outdoor wear, carrying a cup of steaming hot cocoa. Grinning, he held it out to me. "Just what you need, Rogi mon vieux, to warm you up on a truly rotten night."

  My brother making a cup of cocoa was an event about as unprecedented as me doing a tap dance on the bar at the Blue Ox. I probed his mind, but the usual barriers were in place. What was he up to?

  Little Denis looked up from his differentiation formulas. His eyes went first to his father, then to his mother. His expression was puzzled.

  Sunny gasped.

  Don held out the cup to me.

  "No!" Sunny cried. She sprang from her chair and slapped the cup from Don's hand. It made an ugly brown splash on the wall. I was flabbergasted.

  Denis asked me gravely, "Uncle Rogi, will you tell me why lysergic acid diethylamide makes cocoa taste better?"

  Don started to giggle. Sunny regarded him with a terrible expression of outrage. His mind-screen, shaken by her unexpected action, wavered just enough to let me see what kind of joke he had intended to play on me. Little Denis had had no trouble penetrating Don's psychic barricade when it was still firm, and he had perceived the name of the drug emblazoned on his father's short-term memory trace as on a lighted theatre marquee.

  But how had Sunny known!

  Don's laugh was louder, more unsteady. "Hey, it was only a gag! This hippie came into the Ox lookin' to deal, and we were ready to throw him out on his ass when I remembered ol' Rogi jabbering about altered states of consciousness. And I thought—hey! Whole lotta talk about the wild side of the mind, but never any action. That's you, Rog."

  I said, "You were going to slip the LSD into me and supervise my trip."

  His grin became a grimace of pure hate. "You been experimenting. I figured it was my turn."

  Sunny grabbed his arm. "You're drunk and you don't know what you're saying!"

  He shook Sunny off as though she were some importunate kitten and took one step toward me, big hands opening and closing. Denis whimpered, abandoned his book, and scuttled aside.

  "I know exactly what I'm saying," Don blustered. "You and your fuckin' mind-games! You turned my own kid against me! And my wife—my wife—" He faltered, looked at Sunny in a dazed fashion. His mind-walls were down and I could see the wheels turning as he made the connection about the cup of cocoa and Sunny's frustration of his plan.

  "You knew," he accused her. His tone was confused, the anger momentarily sidetracked. "But how?"

  She straightened. "Denis asked me about the LSD before he asked Rogi. Our son has been teaching me telepathy. It was to be a surprise for you and Rogi."

  I was stunned. None of my books on parapsychology had prepared me for a mind capable of exercising psychoredaction, the "mental editing" faculty that is so taken for granted in Milieu pedagogy and psychiatry. I cried:

  Sunny—is it true!

  She didn't respond.

  Denis said: Mommy can only mindspeak me. She can't hear you or Papa. You aren't strong enough.

  Don looked down incredulously at the little toddler in corduroy overalls and a miniature lumberjack shirt. Denis was on his hands and knees. His lower lip trembled.

  "I'm not strong enough?" Don roared. He stooped to seize the child, ready to shake him, to slap him—

  Sunny sensed what was coming and I saw it clearly in Don's mind. We both started to intercept him. But it wasn't necessary.

  "Papa won't hurt me," Denis said. He climbed to his feet and stood in front of his father. His head was about on a level with Don's knees. "You won't ever hurt me, will you Papa." It wasn't a question. The boy's magnetic blue eyes were rock-steady as he looked up.

  "No," said Don. "No."

  Sunny and I let out suppressed breath. She bent down and lifted Denis in her arms.

  Don turned to me. He moved like a man in a dream, or one in an extremity of pain. His mental walls were back in place. I had no idea what message Denis had transmitted, what coercive interdict the child had used. I knew that Denis would never be harmed by his father—but the protective aegis did not extend to me.

  Don said, "You won't have to bother coming over in the evening anymore, Rogi."

  "I suppose not," I said.

  The child reached out to comfort and reassure me. In those days I knew nothing of the intimate mode of farspeech, that which tunes directly to the personal mind-signature of the recipient; nevertheless, I was aware that Denis spoke to my mind alone when he said:

  We will find a way to continue.

  "Denis has had enough coddling," Don said, "and Sunny's going to be too busy to play games with you two. Did she tell you she's expecting again?"

  She held Denis close, her eyes brimming with tears. She hadn't. And I'd never noticed the knitting. "Congratulations," I said in a level voice.

  Don was at the front closet getting my coat and things. He held them out to me, a defiant smile twisting up one side of his mouth, his thoughts unreadable.

  He said, "I plan to take care of the next kid's training myself."

  15

  EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, EARTH

  28 JANUARY 1972

  HE CLIMBED, AS he often did when the tensions became too great, clutching at slippery rocks and gnarled heather stems with frostbitten hands gone numb.

  HALLOO!

  Reveling in the height, the separation from the world of ordinary mortals, he scrabbled for precarious footholds. His mud-clotted, soggy waffle-stompers abraded the fresh blisters on his heels, adding to the welcome ensemble of pain.

  HALLOO OUT THERE!

  His heart was banging in his throat fit to brast. The wintry gusts blowing into the steep defile called the Guttit Haddie froze his hurdies and his ears and his chin and his nose.

  HALLOO! OI! IS THERE A BODY CAN HEAR ME?

  He climbed like a man pursued by demons invisible, never looking down. The spreading sea of city lights seemed to undulate dizzily below—glittering currents of traffic, dirty backwaters of tenements and shops, the up-thrust reefs of church steeples and castle ramparts and the perilous shoals of the University.

  HALLOO!

  Down there ran the Pleasance and on it stood the building with the laboratory. It had a grand name: the Parapsychology Unit of the Department of Psychology of the University of Edinburgh; but it was only a big dreary room up under the eaves, partitioned into cramped wee offices and carrels for the endless testing. It was presided over by the eminent Dr. Graham Finlay Dunlap, whose staff—alas!—consisted only of two graduate assistants, William Erskine and Nigel Weinstein, and him: fames Somerled MacGregor, a silly gowk of twenty, by virtue of his fey talents awarded a bursary at one of the finest universities in Britain—and for all that bored and wretched and wanting only to go home to Islay in the Hebrides.

  HALLOO! WHAT'S NEW? DAFT JAMIE SAYS: SOD YOU!

  Climb up laughing at the uselessness of it. Climb above the winterfast reeky city toward a louring sky still scarlet in the west. Climb up the steepest, most dangerous way in shifty twilight, hurting all the while. Scramble up rocks. Creep along the igneous ridge all frosty and windblasted. Climb finally to the top of that ancient crag, that sentinel of Dun Eadain beloved of tourists and sentimentalists and trysting lovers. Climb up to Arthur's Seat!

  HALLOO! HURRAW! EXCELSIOR!...

  The near-gale blowing up the Forth from the North Sea now smote him squarely. To escape he sprawled bellyflaught, face cradled in his arms, and let rattling gasps from his parched throat soften while his heart tripped over itself and slowed. He licked cracked lips and tasted salt from wind-tears and wool from his sweater. The sheepy taste and the ocean taste and the smell of wet cold stone and mo
orland! The thrill of climbing in the high air, the pain of it, the happiness ... and see—the humor was coming on him again, just as it used to so easily in the early days when he was still excited with the novelty of demonstrating his uncanny powers to the psychologists. He felt it coming. He knew that he was going to be able to do it again.

  The thing he thought he'd lost. What they'd been coaxing him vainly to do again down in the damned laboratory for nigh on a year.

  The out-of-body thing.

  I'M AWAY!

  Oh, aye, it was grand! To soar up and see himself left prone below, a husk without a soul. He sped into the sunset, across West Lothian's black fells and crouching Glasgow and the Firth of Clyde, over Arran and Kintyre and tiny Gigha, beyond the sea to home. To Islay, to his private place. Like a sea bird he hovered, seeing the surf crash against the shoulder of Ton Mhor. A few sheep skirted the bog on their way downhill. Somewhere one of the dogs was barking. The ruins of the old croft near the bay sheltered a shaggy red longhorn stot. In his own snug home the lights were on and a thread of smoke rose from the chimney. Suppertime on a winter's Friday night, and Granny portioning out the sweet while Mum dished up savory haddock and fried potatoes. Dad and Colin and old Iain came trampling in tired and famished and red-cheeked.

  He watched them, full of joy and with all pain abolished. Then he concentrated on the well-known dear aura. He said:

  It's me! I'm here!

  Granny looked up from the trifle she'd made that day for a special treat: Jamie my dear laddie. It's been so long. And how are you then?

  Ah Gran I'm that miserable here at university I could die I think!

  Such blether.

  No no they're all fools and Dr. Dunlap the biggest of all with his testing testing testing as if he didn't know my powers exist but had to prove it over and over endlessly with his damned statistics and I get so tired and impatient and I feel the hostility from the other undergrads because I'm a privileged character and allowed my special academic track here in the Psychology Department and Gran dear Gran this queer mind of mine sometimes does its tricks and sometimes not but what's the use it's not as though I could use the Sight or the Speech or the Out-of-Body Thing to earn a good living as a bookie or a blackmailer or a spy Lord knows the powers are too unreliable and me too conscience-tender for that but Gran I'm beginning to think I don't want to be a psychologist either not even to study the powers if it means this endless dull dull testing not only of me but of common folk and Dunlap and his two assistants nattering on about "extrachance performance" and the "psi-missing effect" (which means can you believe it test results so rotten that the psi experts have decided they must be significant!) and they keep trying to find a theory in physics to fit the powers and nothing works and still they write their papers and look wise and pretend it all means something when we know it doesn't have to and what I'd really like to do is chuck the whole thing and go off and be a stage magician or a mind reader on the telly and make a packet like Uri Geller or the Amazing Kreskin ...

  Jamie Jamie ungrateful gorlin the time's come to stop playing with the powers selfishly as I've told ye for now they must be put to use for all mankind. And if the good Professor can't solve the problem of making the powers fit into real science then maybe the job's meant for YOU Daft Jamie MacGregor!

  Ah Gran. Dunlap's department doesn't have the money to do the job proper. Ah you should see what a threadbare wee place this Parapsychology Unit is. If we were in America now it might be different for there all the colleges are rich but here in Edinburgh the two doctoral candidates working under Dunlap must live on cheese sandwiches and beer I'm all right of course eating in the Pollock dining room but—

  It's time for us to eat here as well so stop your whinging. You must fulfill your part of the bargain so bear with Professor Dunlap and his perjinkities and study hard and be a credit to us. Then later if you can't abide parapsychology you can shrink silly neurotics and get rich.

  Ah Gran.

  Ah Jamie. Go back now. Your poor body's freezing in the haar and one of your good friends has come searching for you...

  He opened his eyes. He was back in Holyrood Park on the pinnacle of Arthur's Seat and stiff as an iced halibut. He stood upright, tottering in the east wind, tucked his bare hands into his warm crutch, and stamped his feet. The pins-and-needles effect was exhilarating.

  It was too dark now to climb down the way he'd come, for the western side of the small mountain was steep and trackless down the Haddie. And besides, the lights of Edinburgh were turning yellow and fuzzy. It was the haar, as Granny had warned him, sneaking in from the Firth to swaddle the city in freezing mizzle. He'd have to go back the long way, down the easy east path to Dunsapie Loch, and then along the Queen's Drive to the Dalkeith entrance to the park where he'd come in. A dreary mile and a half, but there was no helping it.

  He came down the east side of the knoll into thickening fog. The temperature was dropping and he moved as rapidly as he could along the footpath, comforting himself with the thought that antibiotics easily cured pneumonia these days—

  "Jamie!"

  He heard the thin shout from below. Gran had said a friend was looking for him, hadn't she? But nobody knew where he'd gone! He cantered down a precipitous stretch of track and saw an amber light bobbing about: someone with a torch coming up to meet him.

  "Oi!" he shouted. "I'm here!"

  And there was a familiar stocky figure pouring out vibes of relief only slightly tainted by peevish mutterings.

  "Nigel!" Jamie exclaimed delightedly. "Did you track me with psi? The hill's strongly magnetic, you know. I would've thought that—"

  "Oh, put a sock in it, you young idiot, and let's get down to the car before we both freeze." Nigel Weinstein unwound a long striped muffler from his own neck, flung it at Jamie, and glowered. "You and your magnetism! Dunlap was pissed to the wide when Wee Wully Erskine told him you'd aborted the afternoon magnetometer session and run off. You bloody ass! We had a devil of a time getting that test set up with the physics boys—and now, thanks to your silly-buggery, we can go back to square one."

  "I'm sorry, Nigel." The two of them came to the road. Dunsapie Loch was lost in the murk. They turned right and hurried toward the car-park at the south end. "Were you really worried about me?"

  "You might have broken your neck," the graduate assistant snapped. "Where would we find another test subject with your talent? You know we're all chewing nails worrying about the new research grant."

  The underlying fear leaked through his gruff words: And who knows what kind of stupid thing a morose young Celt might get up to on a slippery crag in the dead of winter?

  "I'm not that depressed," Jamie told him. But thanks for caring. "As for the tests, they'd have been no good anyway. The morning runs wore me down and I just didn't have the heart to keep on. I keep telling Erskine that it's no good endlessly repeating really tough mind maneuvers. I lose motivation and get to swithering and then the powers wonk out. I'm not a bloody computer, you know. And Wee Wully's attitude is no help—Mr. Objectivity, plug me into the circuit and work me like a damn dray-horse!"

  Weinstein heaved a sigh. "Dr. Dunlap would say you're suffering from a psi decline. Me—I'd label you a prima donna."

  "So'd my Granny," Jamie admitted, grinning.

  They found Weinstein's battered Hillman at last and climbed in. There was no traffic at all on the one-way Queen's Drive that encircled Holyrood Park and the fog was getting so thick that the car's headlamps were worse than useless. Nigel muttered a curse, switched them off, and navigated with the ambers. He drove little faster than a walking pace. Outside was a world of dull-glowing golden cotton wool.

  Jamie said, "Tests like those we were doing today are a waste of time. So I try to move drinking straws with psychokinesis and the instrument measures the perturbation of the magnetic field around my head. Super! A needle wiggles, the field gets slightly bent, and it's all recorded for posterity ... which won't give a tinker's dam."
r />   "The research adds to the body of parapsychological evidence."

  Jamie rolled his eyes. "How much evidence do you need, man? It isn't as though the magnetic measurements told you anything useful. You still haven't a clue about the nature of mental energy—what forces operate during PK, how telepathic messages are carried, what mechanism enables me to travel without my body. There's no scientific theory for any of it."

  "We're still assembling data. Eventually we'll fit psi phenomena and the whole notion of mind into the reality framework."

  Jamie huddled closer to the warm air beginning to come from the car heater. "Weird powers have been around since caveman days. How come Australian bushmen and Eskimos and African witch doctors and fire-walking Hindus can use the powers and not worry about it—but scientists can't? Science flies to the moon, but it diddles and daddies and wrings its hands when the mind performs its psychic tricks, and needs to be convinced over and over again that it's not all a sham. As far as useful theory goes, we're not much wiser today in 1972 than we were in 1572—when people blamed it all on the devil and burnt blokes like me at the stake ... For God's sake, why can't we simply buckle down and use the powers without the endless havering?"

  Weinstein laughed. "Science likes things it can measure. Psi powers are too slippery for comfort. So we must try to analyze them, try to formulate theories and test them. And if psychic research had the kind of financial backing that astronautics has, we'd get results."

  "I used to think so," Jamie said slowly, "but I've chewed over the matter a lot lately. And I've about concluded that there may be a basic flaw in the entire concept of psi research—one that makes our kind of research futile."

  "Bosh!"

  "No—listen to me, Nigel. All over the world scientists have been doing serious studies of psi effects. The Russians are keen on it because they think it might make a weapon. Give them credit for a pragmatic attitude, anyhow! The Yanks are a touch leery just because the Russkies believe in it—but they have quite a few dedicated research groups, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science did finally admit the Parapsychological Association to membership. Our British teams are going full throttle. There's good work being done by the Dutch and the Indians and the Finns and the Japs and the Germans. Nobody who matters laughs at us anymore or calls us crackpots. The consensus in scientific circles is that psi effects are real. But ... the net practical result of nearly twenty years of activity has been just about nil! You still get untrained people finding water with forked sticks, and fakirs treading hot coals, and faith healers laying on hands and curing the sick, and all the rest of the disorganized clamjamphrie of PK and telepathy and precognition and all the rest—unreliable and unexplainable—while trained researchers still have no coherent results from their experiments."