Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (11 page)

The room was beginning to tilt. Something
was wrong with my eyes. I looked at Jennifer, then into Esau's
wineglass, noted that I had emptied it, began making the connection
just as the room began fairly spinning around me.

The gathering of scintillating scientists
were now gathering around me, and some were reaching out to me,
supporting me, keeping me from spinning off to wherever the rest of
the room was going. I groaned, "Damn it, Jen..."

"It's okay," she told me in a very soothing
manner. And that was the last sound I heard before I spun off into
cosmos.

Chapter Twelve: In the Eyes Of...

I dreamed that I'd finally
gotten my wish and not only saw a flying saucer but was actually
aboard one. It looked suspiciously like Holden Summerfield's glass
bubble room, though, and every member of the crew scintillated with
the same constrained excitement noted in his guests at the
gathering. Holden himself was aboard. I think he was an admiral, or
whatever corresponds to admiral in the inter-galactic fleet,
because his white uniform was resplendent with radiant stars. He
was a forty-eight-star admiral, and that's a lot more rank than
anyone down here ever saw. I noticed for the first time, in that
dream, how closely Holden resembled C. Aubrey Smith—but that
probably would mean nothing to you unless you're an old-movie buff
like me.

Esau was the command pilot but he was
wearing a really weird uniform made of goat skins—and I kept asking
him, "Are you Esau or are you Jacob?" but he kept ignoring the
question and dunking ambrosia in wine and trying to get me to share
it with him. I was having none of that—we all know that ambrosia
makes you immortal and I was not about to go for that until someone
told me where we were headed.

I am a bit embarrassed to
relate the rest of the dream because it got highly erotic. I will
just say, here, that Laura was involved, clad only in her long
shiny hair but grown considerably longer so that it was pulled up
through her thighs like a loin cloth, on between humongous breasts
and tied with a pretty denim bow behind her neck. There was
something even stranger about Laura, though—some vague problem
having to do with what lay beneath all that hair, suffice it to say
that I was having trouble with a connection. There was a deep
sorrow in her eyes, probably because of that, and she kept
murmuring over and over, "She should have told you."

The dream was so vivid
that I had trouble making the transition to the waking state. I was
lying on a hospital bed in a brightly sunlit room, Laura was
bending over me in a white smock, and I had her hair in both my
hands. She laughed softly and asked me, "Are you awake? Do you know
where you are?"

I replied, with a mouth full of mush, "Hell,
I'm sorry, kid, but I just can't find it."

She laughed again, freed her hair from my
grasp, and told me, "Well whatever you're looking for, you won't
find it in there. I'll have you know I brush my hair a hundred
strokes every morning and every night."

It all came back to me,
then. I shoved her away from me, I guess a bit too forcefully, and
sat bolt upright on the bed. She sort of hit the wall and gave a
little shriek. Two guys came running in from somewhere and gave me
a hard but somewhat undecided look.

"It's okay, it's okay," Laura assured them.
"He just awoke with a bit of confusion. Let's get some food in
here, now. And coffee, right away."

"No ambrosia," I added thickly.

The guys grinned and went back out.

Laura stood at the wall, arms folded across
that magnificent chest, and said, "You'll have to forgive my
bedside manner. I do have an M.D. but I haven't really practiced
it."

"Don't worry about it," I growled. "You'll
probably grow up to be a pretty good doctor some day." My head was
booming, hangover style. I held it in both hands to keep it from
falling off my shoulders and asked her, "What did you people give
me? How'd you get this jackhammer in here between my ears?"

She said, "Sorry about the headache. It will
pass soon, once we get some food into you. You're going to be just
fine."

I said, "I was just fine
last night when I walked in here."

"That wasn't last night," she informed
me.

I glanced at my bare wrist, cast about for
my watch, located it on the bedside table, succeeded in focusing
one eye on the tiny day/date display. Damn. It was Monday
already.

"What happened to Sunday?" I asked her.

"Sorry, we had to check
you out thoroughly. That's what happened to Sunday."

An Indian woman came in
with a tray, placed it beside me and withdrew without looking
directly at me. I realized only then that I was totally naked. The
tray had coffee, two cups, cream and sugar—silver service. I
repositioned the sheet about me and swung my legs over the side of
the bed. That was a mistake. I hung onto the bed for dear life
while Laura poured the coffee. She held the cup to my lips for a
couple of sips.

"Bathroom," I croaked.

"Are you nauseous?" she
inquired, properly concerned about that, as she helped me to my
feet.

"Piss call," I replied.

She laughed softly and
steered me into the proper direction, suggested, "A shower could
help."

I reached back for the
coffee and carried it with me to the bathroom, gaining stability as
I went and not the least embarrassed about my nakedness, hard-on
and all.

And, yeah, the shower did help—but not the
hard-on, the piss call took care of that, but five minutes beneath
a near-scalding spray unkinked the brain and rekindled the
circulation. I came out of it beet-red all over and feeling almost
human again, pardon the expression. The coffee had cooled so I
gulped it down, cinched a towel at the waist and stepped out for a
refill. Laura was seated beside the bed, cup poised at pouted lips
but nothing happening there, engrossed in some dark mental
study.

She looked up as I filled
my cup, said, lightly, "Well thank God you've found your
modesty."

I clucked my tongue at her and replied, "And
you a medical doctor."

'Told you I haven't really practiced," she
said soberly. "Truly, Ashton, you're a hell of a turn-on."

I gave no response to that, verbally or
otherwise, but returned to the bathroom with my coffee, for a
shave. Had to wonder, though, about her obviously mismatched
marriage and the possible stresses therefrom; wondered, also, how
much of my dream had been pure fantasy and how much...

But I chased that away. It
wasn't fair, I knew, to speculate about such matters, not even in
the privacy of one's own mind. I felt it okay, though, to relate
that whole idea to my observations on Jennifer. Both of these young
women apparently possessed a surprising sexual energy, or maybe it
was merely a sexual forthrightness, a proper recognition of an
entirely natural human process. Call it a good attitude about
sex.

Or was that really the
case? Did it have something to do with this
Bride of Science
idea? Was it a
healthy attitude or was it downright horniness born of
frustration?

In a way, I decided, Laura
Summerfield was in about the same sexual boat as Jennifer Harrel.
For a bright young female scientist, maybe marriage to a sweet and
supportive grandfatherly man was tantamount to remaining a Bride of
Science. But who the hell was I to hand down that kind of decision?
What did I know about it? Different people marry for different
reasons—and different people fall in love with different
attributes. So what if a beautiful young woman gets turned on
occasionally to an exciting young man? That's not love, it's
chemistry. It may take some really rare attributes of the male
character to turn that same young woman's thoughts to true
love—attributes, perhaps, found only in a truly mature man. So
what, then, if he happens to be mature enough to be her
grandfather. And whoever said that sex is dead in the rocking
chair. I'd known some pretty damn feisty old...

Jennifer had intimated a very strong
affection for Isaac, even to the point of suggesting that she would
marry him if he were so inclined. I supposed that Isaac and Holden
were roughly the same age; ditto for Jennifer and Laura. In
Jennifer's case, I'd assumed hero-worship had something to do with
it—but what the hell—reflecting on that, I decided there was not a
hell of a lot of difference between hero-worship and being in love.
Wasn't that what every guy who ever lived really wanted: to be
worshiped like a God by his woman?

Laura was fussing with the
bed when I finished with the bathroom. Apparently she'd changed the
sheets and was now in the process of installing clean pillow slips.
I went to the window to orient myself, assuming that this room was
somewhere in the Summerfield mansion. It was, off to the side and
somewhat below the cantilever. I could see the tinted blue glass of
the bubble room; it seemed even more imposing by daylight—and,
yeah, not too unlike the popular conception of a flying saucer. I
chuckled and turned away from the window, almost colliding with
Laura, who apparently had planned on joining me there. We still
wound up belly to belly—or belly to towel—and it seemed the only
natural thing to place my hands on her shoulders. Her hands found
my hips as she inquired, "What's funny?"

"Crazy dream I had," I told her. "Am I a
prisoner here?"

She replied, "Of course not. But we would
like for you to stay with us for awhile."

"That's nice," I said. "Why?"

"You could become a highly valuable addition
to our team."

"You don't even know what position I
play."

"I know more about you than you may
realize," she replied with a mischievous flare of the eyes.

I asked, "How much do you know about
Isaac?"

"Oh, much more than that."

"I've never seen the man. Have I?"

She pursed those ripe lips and replied,
"Gosh, I don't know. Have you?"

"Does he look anything like C. Aubrey
Smith?"

She laughed. "Who?"

I amended that. "Like Holden."

"Oh no, I wouldn't say so.
I know who C. Aubrey Smith is. The very dignified British actor. He
was British, wasn't he? You know, come to think of it, Holden does
look like him. Not Isaac, though. Isaac looks like, let's see..."
Those dark eyes were fairly atwinkle, obviously enjoying the game.
"Remember the man who played the older doctor on Ben
Casey?"

I said, "Dr. Zorba. He was played by Sam
Jaffe."

"Right!" she said
triumphantly, making it about a four-syllable word. "Such a dear.
Now
that
is
Isaac."

I thought, well shit, so much for exploding
theories. I had been sort of toying with the notion that Isaac
Donaldson and Holden Summerfield could be one and the same person,
that neither of these young ladies was actually married to either.
After all, I knew only what I had been told. They could tell me
anything, for the sake of cover.

Of course, they could still be doing
that.

I asked her, "Who played
the title role in the 1930s Hollywood production of
Gunga Din
?”

She said, "Are we playing trivia now?"

"It's a test," I told her.

"Okay, I give up. I can see him very clearly
in my mind, but..."

I said, "Same guy. Sam Jaffe. Many years
before Dr. Zorba."

She said, "I'll be darned!"

I said, "Yeah. I'm a little
surprised that you know about Zorba
or
Gunga Din. I mean, even Zorba is
going back quite a few years."

"Not on my television," she
declared brightly. "I can see him any morning at three o'clock. And
I watched Gunga Din on videocassette at my last encampment, just
last year. But, gosh—well, you know, I
do
remember looking at old Gunga and
thinking there was something familiar in the eyes, something
..."

Yes, that's what was bothering me. Something
in the eyes. I was looking into hers as I asked, "Who is Esau?"

She blinked. "I introduced you Saturday
night."

I said. "Yeah. Who is
he?”

"He's... well he's part of our team."

"What's he do?"

"At the moment, for us, he is engaged in
spectroscopic studies."

"And what are you engaged in?"

"Living waves."

"What?"

"Well...biological energy studies."

"Living waves sounds better," I told her.
"Let's stick with that. Find any inside me?"

"You bet I did," she replied soberly.

"Healthy?"

“
Terribly."

"What sort of radiation have I been exposed
to?"

She hesitated briefly, then: "That kind,
yes."

Her hands had slowly inched
along beyond my hips and were now pressing rather insistently
against my backside. I was terribly, warmly aware of her growing
pressure at my front side. My towel fell away. She nuzzled my ear
and whispered, "
Jesus,
Ashton."

Before I could respond in any way whatever,
she pushed her way clear and hurried out of there without a
backward look.

I retrieved the towel, tried to make it tent
back around me but it would not.

I would, I decided, take that cold shower
now.

I just wished that she'd turned back for one
more look. I wanted to see again if I'd seen what I thought I saw
in those deep, dark eyes.

Something there, yeah, for sure...something
in the eyes.