“Victor, as your doctor, I—”
“Do it as my friend! Roger, I need this! Have you ever read anything about ESP?”
“Well, naturally, I’ve read the literature. But I don’t think—”
“Good! Then you know the tests are fairly simple as well as statistically reliable. There isn’t that much work involved.”
“It’s not the work that I’m thinking about,” Roger said. He was wavering now, torn by uncertainty that was clearly communicated to Victor. “Maybe next week.”
“Tonight!” Victor had to struggle to keep from shouting. He was intoxicated with the vision of an end to his nightmare. “You won’t help me to relax by forcing me to wait a week,” Victor said quietly. “It won’t be difficult to get the materials or set up the equipment. If I fail, well, I’ll have all the time in the world to relax. Isn’t that right, Roger?”
Victor gazed steadily back into the eyes of the tall man. “All right,” Roger said, picking up Victor’s folder and tucking it under his arm. “Tonight.”
Victor paused in the lobby of the medical center and studied the knots of people moving past, crowding the sidewalk on the other side of the thick, glass doors. All his anger had been drained. In a few hours he would do battle with his fears in the neutral territory of a laboratory before the disinterested eyes of a man who believed he was hallucinating. It was all he asked. The tension and anxiety that had been steadily building over the long months was suddenly gone and in their place was an insatiable curiosity. Talking to Roger had brought him out of himself; his words had lanced the psychic wound that had festered in his silence. He was sure now that the sounds and images were real. Since he was not hallucinating, there was only one other possibility; he was telepathic.
Telepath. Victor rolled the word around in his mind, speaking it softly with equal parts fear and fascination. What if he could learn to control and interpret these sensations?
Victor pushed open the doors and strode out into the auburn glow of the late afternoon, plunging without hesitation into a small crowd of pedestrians who were waiting on the corner for the traffic light to change. Quickly, like a man pitching his body into an icy lake, Victor opened his mind and extended it out toward the man standing next to him. He remembered the time as a child when he had sought to prove his courage to a group of older boys by holding his arm over a campfire, holding it there until the soft down on his flesh had shriveled and fallen to the ground. It was like that now; his mind was suspended in the consciousness of another and he was burning. Still he hung on, struggling to stretch the words into sentences and trace the images and sounds to their source. A shaft of pain tore through him, erupting like a geyser.
Victor staggered back against a building, ignoring the frightened stares of the people at the crossing. The man whose mind he had touched was holding his head in his hands; he had dropped the briefcase he had been holding and was looking about him with a dazed expression. Victor pushed away from the stone facade and forced himself to walk the few paces to a phone booth that stood empty across the street. He half-stumbled into the glass enclosure and slammed the door shut behind him.
Icy sweat had pasted his clothes to his body. Victor rested his head against the cold metal of the telephone and peered out from his sanctuary as he waited for the scream inside his head to subside. He had seen something inside the man’s mind, something cold and dark that he did not understand and which frightened him; this time he had seen what before he had only felt.
I must practice, Victor thought; I must delve even deeper into this mysterious awareness which I now possess. Perhaps, in time, I could even learn to control the pain.
He hunted in his pockets for change, having decided to call Pat and tell her he would not be home for dinner, not until after he had seen Roger. Right now there was no time to waste; there was too much to learn.
Roger hesitated with his hand on the telephone as he tried to dispel a lingering uneasiness about the call he had decided to make. He finally picked up the receiver, dialed a number and spoke in quiet earnestness for some minutes. When he had finished he poured himself a tall drink from a bottle that had been a Christmas present and which had been around the office, unopened, for the past two years. He ground his knuckles into his eyes and groaned as pools of electric, liquid light darted and swam behind his eyelids.
Acting on an impulse, he had gone ahead and developed the latest series of X rays, the set he had taken of Victor’s skull earlier in the afternoon. He had not expected to find any significant change. He had been wrong. Now the entire surface of the large fluoroscope in his office was covered with negatives arranged in chronological order so as to provide, at a glance, a complete visual record of X-ray exposures taken over the past four months. Viewed in this manner, the effect was astounding.
On the left were the plates taken soon after Rafferty had been rushed to the hospital, more dead than alive. The carnage on the right side of the skull was indicated most vividly by small dots of light in a sea of gray, bits of bone imbedded deep in the tissue of the brain.
The next series of plates had been exposed three days later, after the marathon operation had been completed. The splinters of bone had been removed from the brain tissue and a metal plate inserted into the area where the skull had been pulverized. The rest of the exposures had been taken at two to three week intervals.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, Roger realized that the effect was evident, even in the early exposures: a tiny discoloration a few millimeters to the left of the injured area. Placed side by side, the plates offered conclusive evidence that the discolored region was rapidly increasing in size. It was almost as if the machine were not recording this area, but Roger had checked and rechecked the equipment and there was nothing wrong with it.
In the set of plates taken that afternoon the normal skull and brain tissue patterns were virtually nonexistent; the entire plate exploded in rays of light and dark emanating from that same tiny region just below the steel plate. It was as if the architect’s brain had somehow been transformed into a power source strong enough to interfere with the X rays—but that was impossible.
Roger licked his lips and swallowed hard but there was no moisture left in his mouth. He turned off the fluoroscope and reached back for the wall switch before pouring himself another drink. In a few minutes there was the soft ring of chimes in the outer office. Roger glanced at his watch and rose to greet the first of the evening’s two visitors.
Victor knew immediately that something had happened in the past few hours that had made Roger change his mind; he could sense the excitement radiating from the consciousness of the neurosurgeon in great, undulating waves.
“Tell me again how you feel when you experience these sensations.” Roger’s voice was impassive but his eyes glowed.
“Something like a second-grader trying to read Ulysses,” Victor said easily. “You can recognize a few words but most of the time you haven’t any idea what they mean.”
His gaze swept the small anteroom where Roger had brought him. Shipping cartons, boxes of records, and obsolete equipment had been pushed back against the walls to make room for the two wooden tables that had been placed in the middle of the floor. Wedged between the tables and extending about four feet above their surfaces was a thin, plywood partition. On one table was what appeared to be a large stack of oversized playing cards, a pad and a pencil. The other table was bare.
“I want you to sit here,” Roger said, indicating a chair at one end of the empty table. He waited until Victor had seated himself. “I believe you may have been telling the truth this afternoon. Now I think we can find out for sure.”
Victor felt as if he had been hit in the stomach. A few hours ago he would have given almost anything to hear Roger speak those words; now they stirred a reservoir of fear. He might have risen and left if it were not for the knowledge that, by doing so, he would be cutting himself off from the one person who might be able to return him to the worl
d of normal sights and sounds.
“Let me show you what we’re going to do,” Roger said, fanning the cards out, face up, in front of Victor. They were pictures of farm animals. “I’m going to try to duplicate some of Duke University’s experiments in parapsychology. There are figures on my pad that correspond to the pictures on the cards. Each time I turn over a card I’ll signal with this.” Roger produced a small, toy noisemaker from his pocket and pressed it several times. It emitted a series of distinct clicking noises. “You’ll tell me whatever it is you see or feel: dog, horse, cat or cow. At the end, we’ll compute the number of correct responses. Any significant difference between your score and what is considered chance must be attributed to telepathy. It’s as simple, or complex, as that.”
“Fine. Just as long as it helps you to treat me.”
“Victor,” Roger said, shooting him a quick glance, “do you realize what it would mean for you to be proved telepathic?”
“Right now it means that I have a constant headache, occasional severe pain, and that I continually find myself knowing things about other people that I neither want, nor have the right, to know.”
“Yes.” Roger’s voice was noncommittal. He disappeared behind the partition and Victor could hear him shuffling the cards.
It suddenly occurred to Victor that the other man was trying to hide something from him, concentrating hard on a set of words in what seemed an effort to mask an idea; the thought of hiding was floating in the other man’s consciousness, soaring above and hovering over the other things on which he was concentrating. Why should Roger want to hide anything from him? Victor attempted to break through the curtain but Roger’s will, and the pain, were too great. Victor let go and leaned back in the chair.
“Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
Click.
“… Dog.” He said it with far more certainty than he felt.
Click.
“You’re waiting too long.”
“I can’t …”
“Your first reaction!”
Click.
Victor said nothing. There were no animal words in Roger’s thoughts. The words that were there were scrambled and totally unrelated to one another. Why would Roger want to ruin his own experiment? Unless there were no words except those that sprang from his own shattered imagination; unless he had been right in the beginning to suspect he was on the verge of madness.
Clickclickclick.
“You’re not responding, Victor! Tell me what animal you see! Tell me!”
Nerves shrieking, Victor sprang from his chair and stepped around the partition, slapping at the cards, strewing them over the table and floor. Sweat dripped from his forehead and splattered on the wooden surface, their sound clearly audible in the sudden silence. Victor stepped back quickly, profoundly embarrassed. Roger was studying him quietly.
“I—I can’t see anything,” Victor said, his voice shaking. “For God’s sake, Roger, I … I’m very sorry.”
“Let’s try it once more.”
Victor reached for his handkerchief and then stopped, his hand in mid-air; there was a new emotion in the other man, almost a sense of elation. He waited for Roger to look up, but the doctor seemed intent on rearranging the stack of cards, pointedly ignoring Victor’s questioning gaze. Victor returned to his chair and sat down.
“Ready?”
“Ready,” Victor said weakly, cupping his head in his hands. He Suddenly felt very tired.
Click.
Victor slowly dropped his hands away from his head; his heart hammered. “Dog,” he whispered.
Click.
“Cat.”
Now the clicks came faster and faster, and each one was accompanied by a clear, startling, naked impression. It was there! Roger’s mind was open and Victor barked out the words as the images came to him.
Click.
“Cow.”
Click.
“Dog.”
Clickclickclick.
“Cowcatdog.”
Clickclickclickclick.
Finally the clicking stopped. Victor could feel Roger’s mind begin to relax and he knew it was over. He sat very still, extremely conscious of his own breathing and the rising excitement in Roger as the results were tabulated. In a few moments the excitement had risen to a sharp peak of unrelieved tension. Victor looked up to find Roger standing over him, his facial muscles forming a mask of undisguised astonishment.
“One hundred percent,” Roger said breathlessly, repeating the figure over and over as if unable to accept his own calculations. “Victor, you can read minds. You’re telepathic to an almost unbelievable degree. Here, look at this!”
Victor glanced at the pad on which his responses had been recorded. On the first test he had scored about one correct answer in every four. Chance. On the second test all of the answers were circled in red; the marks grew darker and more unsteady as they proceeded down the page.
He looked up and was startled to find the neurosurgeon still staring at him. It was unnerving; the man’s pupils were slightly dilated and his mouth worked back and forth. His thought patterns were strange and somehow unpleasant.
“Let me guess,” Victor said tightly. “You’re looking for antennae.”
“I’m sorry,” Roger said, stepping back a pace. “I was staring, wasn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re a little hard to get used to. If you have any idea what this means …”
“I’d rather not get into that.”
Roger flushed and Victor immediately felt ashamed. Were their situations reversed, he felt certain he would be the one staring.
“You were blocking me on the first test,” Victor said easily. “Why?”
“Control.” Roger’s fingers were tracing a pattern up and down the columns of red circles. “I had the cards face down on the first run. I didn’t know what they were myself. The second time … Well, you saw what happened the second time.”
“Where do we go from here?” Victor shifted uneasily in his chair. He had the distinct impression that Roger was already thinking in terms of application.
“I wish I knew,” Roger said. “I wish I knew.”
Victor’s head was splitting and the nervous sweat in his armpits was clammy. He concentrated on shutting out Roger’s thoughts; he wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep, but first he needed some answers. “How?” Victor asked at last.
“How what?”
“How does all this happen? What’s going on inside my brain?”
Roger tugged at his lip. “If I knew that, I’d be famous.”
“You already are famous.”
Roger grunted and continued to tug at his lip. When he finally spoke, his tone was flat, his gaze fixed on some point at the far end of the room. “It’s been estimated that during our entire lives we only use fifteen to twenty percent of our total brain capacity. Nobody really knows what happens with the other eighty. For all we know, there may be a great source of power there, power that we never use. We never have need to tap that power and so it atrophies like an unused muscle. Maybe that power is there in reserve, to be used by some future generation; or maybe it’s simply the difference between the ordinary man and the genius. It’s just possible that in your case the energy, or whatever you want to call what’s happened to you, was released as a result of the accident.”
Now Roger rose to his feet and began to pace, lost in thought, his voice a beacon beckoning Victor to follow him through this thicket of ideas into which he had wandered. He fumbled for a cigarette, finally found one in a crumpled pack and lighted it. He couldn’t sit down. “We’ve always assumed brain damage to be disabling,” Roger continued, dragging heavily on his cigarette. “The brain controls everything; coordination, thinking, reflexes. Different areas control different functions and when one area has been damaged, its function is almost always lost.
“We always assume that our present condition is the best. It never occurred to us that br
ain damage could be beneficial in any way.” Roger stopped and looked at Victor. “You’ve shown us how wrong we were. Your injury somehow altered the function of your brain cells, releasing a power like nothing that’s ever been recorded.” He crushed out the cigarette. “I think evolution may have something to do with it.”
“Evolution?”
“Yes!”
“I’m not a superman,” Victor said cautiously. “I’m all of the things everyone else is; no more and no less.”
“That’s not true,” Roger said, his excitement undiminished. “You were gifted—apart from other men—even before the accident. Now you’re telepathic.” He paused for emphasis. “The Cro-Magnons’ forebears were not obviously different from their fellows; they lived, ate, drank, fornicated, and died just like the others. The differences were too small to be seen, at least in their own lifetime. It must be the same with us; to generations of men a thousand years from now, we will seem like Neanderthals. And some of us—you, for instance—are their genetic forebears. If I’m right, a freak accident triggered a mechanism inside your brain that most men will not know for dozens of generations!”
“But how does it happen?” Victor lighted a cigarette, his moves slow and deliberate, his voice completely noncommittal.
“All thinking involves a release of energy. Electrical impulses are triggered by certain chemical reactions within the cells that we don’t yet fully understand; it’s precisely those impulses that we measure in an EEG.” Roger sat down suddenly and began drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “In your case, the cells have been altered to a degree where the nerve endings not only pick up your own impulses but other people’s as well. We’ve always suspected that there was a certain amount of electrical radiation or leakage from the brain, just as there is from any power source. Besides, there are quite a few recorded instances of telepathic communication—but never anything like this. It’s just fantastic, Victor! I wonder if you realize just how unique you are?”
Victor was gently probing now, looking for the meaning behind the words, trying to determine just what Roger planned to do with his newly acquired knowledge. He gave up when he realized that the neurosurgeon was effectively, if unconsciously, blocking him.
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