INTERVENTION (11 page)

He wanted to take her in his arms and dry her tears. He wanted to shout: You only think you love him! You don't realize that he's bewitched you—coerced you. When he's dead you'll come to your senses and realize that the one you really love is me. You'll cry bitter tears for him, but in time you'll forget that you ever loved anyone but me.

Aloud he said, "I understand. Believe me."

She smiled through the tears. "Be his best man tomorrow, Rogi, and dance with me at the wedding. We'll all drink champagne and be happy. Please tell me that you will."

He took her gently by the shoulders and kissed the top of her head. The smooth hair was as pale and shining as cornsilk. "I'll do whatever it takes to make you happy, Sunny. Goodbye."

***

Dave Valois nearly ruined the plan when he insisted on driving the two of them home after the bachelor bash at the Blue Ox. But Rogi pointed out that walking a mile in the fresh air was just what Don needed to sober up.

"Gotta burn off some of that booze. Ol' Donnie's got such a skinful, he'll be in a coma tomorrow 'less he walks it off. Father Racine won't 'preciate a zombie groom. No, sir! You just leave ol' Don to me."

It was three in the morning, the Ox was closed tight, and the gang was dispersing in dribs and drabs, bidding farewell with honks and convivial hollering. Valois and some others protested a bit, but gave in when Rogi took his twin's arm and started slowly down Main Street with him. Don was all but unconscious. Only Rogi's coercion kept him upright and plodding along the sidewalk. Dave circled the block in his Ford and came back to yell, "You
sure
you don't want a ride?"

"Damn sure," said Rogi. "See you in church."

A few minutes later, he and Don were virtually alone, walking slowly toward the bridge. It was a chilly night with no wind. The Androscoggin was a wide pool of ink reflecting a flawless duplicate of upside-down streetlights and the omnipresent pillars of steam that rose from the pulp mills.

Under his breath, Rogi chanted: "Pick 'em up and lay 'em down. Pick 'em up and lay 'em down. Attaboy, Donnie. Just keep slogging."

"Argh," said Don. His mind was a merry-go-round of fractured images and emotions—hilarity, triumph, anticipation, and erotic scenarios featuring Sunny and himself. He didn't suspect a thing. Rogi had thrown off most of the effects of inebriation and was concentrating on maintaining his mental shield and keeping Don moving. The two of them made slow progress to the center of the bridge. A few cars drove along Main Street, but none made the turn to cross the river.

Rogi came to a halt. "Hey—looky here, man! Look where we are."

Don uttered an interrogatory grunt.

"On the bridge, kid," Rogi caroled. "The good old bridge. Hey, remember what we used to do in high school? Walk the rail! Drive the other guys nuts. They didn't know we could use our PK to balance."

Don summoned concentration with a mighty effort. He giggled, exuding good-natured contempt. "Yeah, I 'member. You were chicken, though, till I showed you how."

"I'm not chicken now, Don," Rogi said softly. "But I bet you are."

The railing was not exceptionally high. It was of metal, wide and pipelike, interrupted every nine meters or so by a lamp stanchion. The two young men stood by one of those stanchions now and Rogi wrapped Don's arm around it so he wouldn't fall down.

"Watch this!" Grasping the lamppost in one hand, Rogi vaulted up. "I'm gonna do it now, Don. Watch!" He extended his arms, teetered a little, then began walking steadily along the pipe. The deep Androscoggin was a star-flecked black mirror nearly twenty meters below. Don could swim, but not strongly. It wouldn't take much mental strength to keep him under in his present condition. The tricky part was getting him off the bridge without laying a hand on him.

"Wah-hoo! Boy, that's a kick!" Rogi skipped along the pipe, which was a hand's span in width. When he reached the next stanchion he hugged it and swung himself around and around, cackling madly. "Oh, that's great! C'mon, Donnie. Now it's your turn."

Rogi jumped to the pavement and faced his brother, tensing.

Don blinked. His teeth gleamed in a crooked grin. "Don't wanna."

Rogi's guts lurched sickeningly. God! Had he leaked the hostility after all? Given himself away? "Aw. What'sa matter, Don? You too scared to walk the rail? Or maybe your li'l heart's throbbin' too hard, thinkin' about Sunny."

"Ain't my heart throbbin'," Don said, leering.

Rogi kept a grip on himself. "Then you're chicken."

"Nope. Just drunk's a skunk."

"Well, so'm I—but I walked the rail. I'm just as smashed as you and I walked the fucker. Thing is, I don't lose the power when I've got a snootful—and you do."

"Like hell!" Don balled a fist. "Famme ta guêle!"

"I'll shut up when you walk, pansy!"

Don gave a bellow, seized the stanchion in both hands, and hauled himself up. It was perfect. Even if someone saw them there could be no suspicion of foul play. Rogi was ten meters away and Don had taken his first step.

"So long, Don," Rogi said. "I'll take good care of Sunny."

He exerted both PK and coercion with all his strength.

Don screamed and his feet flew out from under him. For a split second he hung unsupported except by his own panic. Then he fell, but he caught the railing and clung to it, kicking. His heavy boots clanged against the ironwork. Rogi concentrated on his brother's hands, lifting the fingers from the dew-slippery metal one by one.

Don was crying his name and cursing. His fingernails broke and his hands slid down the uprights and scrabbled at the toe-plates and the rough concrete footing. Black blood from his lacerated skin splattered the front of his windbreaker. There was a long cut across his right cheek. Don's PK seemed to have deserted him but he still clung to the bridge with all his considerable physical strength, no longer wasting energy in kicking. Waves of rage and imperfectly aimed coercion spewed from his brain.

"Let go, damn you!" Rogi cried. He felt his own powers beginning to weaken. His skull seemed about to burst. He would have to take a chance—get up close and stamp on Don's hands—

He was blind. Deprived of both vision and farsight.

A voice said:
No, Rogi.

Unable to perceive his target, Rogi found that his coercion and psychokinesis were useless. He let out a shout of despair and relief and dropped like a dead man to the pavement. The voice that addressed him was calm and remote:

Once more it seems that I am fated to intervene. How interesting. One might conjecture that Don survived in some other fashion, and yet the proleptic foci show no asymmetry as a result of my obtrusion...

Rogi lifted his head and groaned. "You! You again."

It said: Your brother must live, Rogi. He must wed Marie-Madeleine Fabre and beget children of her according to the great pattern. One of those children will become a man of high destiny. He will not only possess mental powers more extraordinary than his father's, but he will understand them—and help the whole human race to understand them. This child unborn will have to overcome great hardship. He will need consolation and guidance that his parents will be unable to supply, and the friendship of another operant metapsychic.
You
will be that child's friend and mentor, Rogi. Now get up.

Nonono goaway let me kill him Imustonlyway must KILL—

Rogi, get up.

Better perhaps weboth die freaks damned unrealmen unrealhuman kill them kill them BOTH intowaterdowndowndissolve—

Du calme, mon infant.

Best. Would be best.

You know nothing. Nothing! Get up, Rogi. You will remember everything I have said and you will act upon it at the appropriate time.

"You're not
my
Ghost at all." The realization filled him with irrational sorrow.

The thing said: All of you are my responsibility and my expiation. Your entire family. Your entire race.

With great difficulty, Rogi climbed to his feet. He was no longer blind and he could see Don standing under a lamp, swaying, one hand over his face. Poor old Donnie.

The Ghost said: Your brother has forgotten your attack. His injuries are healed. Take him home, put him to bed, and get him to the church on time.

Rogi began to laugh. He rocked and roared and stamped his feet and howled. He wouldn't have to do it after all, and he wouldn't be damned. Only poor Donnie, not him. The Ghost, that meddling shit, had turned "Thou shalt not" into "Thou canst not" and set him free! Oh, it was so funny. He couldn't stop laughing...

The Ghost waited patiently.

Rogi finally said to it, "So I let Don have his way. Then later on I become a kind of godfather to his child prodigy."

Yes.

Fury took hold of him suddenly. "But you couldn't let
me
be the kid's father! You couldn't let me marry Sunny and beget the superbrat myself. Don's genes are Homo superior and mine are—"

The Ghost said: You are sterile.

Don was walking shakily toward him. A single car turned off Main Street onto the bridge, slowed as it passed them, then accelerated again when Don waved mockingly at it.

"I'm sterile . . ."

The Ghost said: The orchitis you suffered five years ago destroyed the semeniferous tubules. Your self-redactive faculty was inadequate to repair the damage. You function as a male but will sire no offspring.

No little Odd Johns to dandle on his knee? Rogi was quite unconcerned. The responsibility for unleashing the freaks on the world would be Don's, not his! But pride made him say, "Heal me! You could. I know it."

It is not possible, nor is it appropriate. When the design is complete you'll understand. For now, let it be. But take heart, because you have a long life to live and important work ahead of you.

It was drunken lunacy! A nightmare. And all at once Rogi was deathly tired. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Go away. For God's sake, leave me alone!"

I'll go for now, but I'll be back ... when I'm needed. Au 'voir, cher Rogi.

Don came stumbling up, a bleary smile on his face. "Hey, Rogi, you look bad, man. Never could hold your liquor. Not like me. C'mon, man, let's go home."

"Right," Rogi said. He draped an arm over his brother's shoulder. Supporting each other, the two of them went off into the night.

EXCERPTS FROM:

ADDRESS GIVEN BY DR. J. B. RHINE
AT THE ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

WASHINGTON, DC, EARTH

4
SEPTEMBER
1967

S
OME IMPRESSION OF
the spread of psi research over the world in recent years can be had from facts connected with the McDougall Award. This annual event, like the Parapsychological Association, was initiated at Duke in 1957 and was later adopted by the Institute for Parapsychology when it took over the laboratory. The Award is granted each year by the Institute staff for the most outstanding contribution to parapsychology published during the preceding year by workers not on the staff of the Institute. During the ten years in which the awards have been made, two have been given for American contributions and two for British, with one divided between the two countries; one award each was made to Czechoslovakia, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Sweden.

Another indication of the expansion of parapsychology may be had from the establishment of new research centers. A number of these have had the sponsorship of psychiatry, such as the one at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, one at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and a third at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. Others with more physically and technologically oriented connections are located at the Newark College of Engineering in New Jersey, the Department of Biophysics at the University of Pittsburgh, and the Boeing Research Laboratories in Seattle.

The center in Leningrad is in the department of physiology; that at Strasbourg, in psychophysiology; and the laboratory at St. Joseph's College in Philadelphia, in the department of biology. Psychology-centered psi research in the university is found mainly in foreign countries rather than in the U.S. City College in New York has what may rightly be called a center; and at Clemson University, as well as at branches of the University of California (Los Angeles, Berkeley, Davis), psychologists are allowed to do psi research. But something more like centers have long existed in Europe at Utrecht and Freiburg. More recently work has begun that seems firmly planted in psychology departments at the Japanese Defense Academy and the Universities of Edinburgh, Lund, and Andhra (India). Some recognized research, of course, is not connected with any institution whatever, as, for example, the work of Forwald in Sweden and that of Ryzl while still in Prague.

One of the noteworthy changes taking place in the present period is the development of more teamwork with workers in other branches and the use of skills, knowledge, and equipment of many other research areas. Some of the psi workers today are working with physiological equipment or with computer analyses; others are depending on electronic apparatus in the measurement of psi performance or utilizing new devices in statistics. Numbers of them are using psychological tests or perhaps working in a laboratory of microphysics, or of animal behavior....

Psi research is obviously of special concern to those who are interested in the full range of the unexplored nature of man, over and above the existing subdivisions of science. As has happened already in many of the smaller branches, parapsychology is certain to find itself grouped sooner or later with other fields in one or more of those composite sciences which are reshaping the modern structure of knowledge—groupings such as the space sciences, the earth sciences, the microbiological sciences, or such major disciplines as medicine, education, and the like. When we come eventually to the stage when the
sciences of man
take a pre-eminent position, we shall find that one of the places around the conference table will have to be reserved for parapsychology.