Mind's Eye (16 page)

“Would you like me to read the message to you?” asked Maggie.

“No. But put its history on screen.”

He glanced at the data now on his monitor. The e-mail message in question had been sent two mornings earlier to a Fresno, California police hotline, and to thirty-eight high level civilian and military leaders in such agencies as the NSA, FBI, CIA, and HSA; to publicly disclosed e-mail addresses in each case. Colonel Justin Girdler had not been among the intended recipients.

As Girdler had known would be the case, the NSA computer had blocked the message from going to anyone when it had first come in, deeming it to have been spam and not worth anyone’s time or attention.

But the message had obviously undergone a major change in status since this time. The colonel was tempted to ask Maggie what had prompted the change, but he decided to read it first before digging any further.

“Maggie, display the message please.”

The e-mail message appeared on his screen below the background information Maggie had already placed there.

From: Nick Hall

Subject: Urgent, life in jeopardy

I awoke this morning in a locked warehouse without any memory of who I am, hearing voices in my head. I may be insane, in which case I’m only imagining sending this message. If you receive this then I am not insane. A man was here when I awoke, and he left ten minutes later, but I was able to read his mind. Not just read, but fish anything out of it I wanted to. I know how all of this sounds. But bear with me.

Girdler looked up from the screen and barely suppressed a groan.
Are you shitting me
, he thought angrily. He had read somewhere that more than half a percent of the population was schizophrenic, which amounted to well over two million people in America alone. And the colonel was pretty sure he had heard from every last one of them.

But this message had been delivered by the NSA’s top computer, which integrated data from thousands of government, military, and civilian sources. It was also the most advanced computer ever built, and its software had been allowed to evolve itself to maximize efficiency. It weighed countless pieces of data and countless probabilities to reach its decisions.

Even so, it almost seemed like the computer was playing a practical joke on him. If it were April first he would have been sure of it. Sure, send the message from the ESP nutcase to the head of Black PsyOps. Very amusing.

It was true that PsyOps had once experimented with parapsychology, but enough educated people believed there was something to it that it would have been malpractice for the military not to at least have attempted to investigate this area. But they had abandoned these projects years ago, even though the ridicule they had sparked still remained.

But this wasn’t a practical joke. Because the NSA’s Expert System didn’t make mistakes. Not mistakes this big. There had to be more to this than met the eye. But what?

There was only one way to find out. As silly as he felt, he needed to finish reading, and then ask Maggie why the most impressive computer system ever built was suddenly taking this crazy message seriously enough to warrant his urgent attention.

18

Megan Emerson waited impatiently for the hostess to seat a young family.

“A table for two, please,” she said when the woman returned. “I have a friend coming to meet me.”

The hostess, a tall brunette, led her to a table, while Megan concentrated on counting diners. The four-star restaurant was small, dark, and cozy, and several blocks from any other concentration of people, which was ideal for their needs. Megan thanked the hostess, sat facing the door, and took a proffered menu that said,
The
Maple Terrace,
and under this,
Award-Winning Fine Dining
.

 
“How’s it going in there?”
came Hall’s telepathic thought.

“I need a few more minutes,”
she replied. A waitress brought her a glass of water with a lemon slice already in it, which was a pet peeve of hers. Even when she specifically requested no lemon, half the time she got it anyway.

When the waitress left, Megan rose from the table and walked the short distance to the kitchen, barging in before anyone could stop her. A young woman with her hair tied back into a bun, wearing a white chef jacket, looked up from where she was plating a piece of salmon covered in glazed walnuts and spinach. To the chef’s left, a single busboy was placing a drink order on a tray.

“Can I help you?” said the chef, looking perturbed. “Customers really aren’t supposed to come back here,” she admonished.

“Sorry about that,” said Megan. “I was looking for the restroom.”

A quizzical expression came over the chef’s face, as though she couldn’t believe anyone could be so stupid as to confuse the kitchen with the restroom, especially in a restaurant that was so small and had only a single dining area.

Megan apologized and quickly headed back to her table, stopping at the restroom along the way to be sure no one was inside.

As she was reseating herself she broadcast to Hall.
“Okay, I’ve got the count.”

“Good. So I’m reading eighteen people, including you.”

“That’s right,”
she replied with a smile.
“There’s a waitress and hostess in the main restaurant, and a busboy and cook in the kitchen. Along with me and thirteen other customers, that makes eighteen. How far away are you?”

“
The odometer says I’m exactly a half mile
.”

“Have you noticed any loss of ah . . . intensity?”

“None. And while I can detect the usual babble from all around, I can focus in and detect individuals in the restaurant in isolation of the others.”
There was a pause.
“I’m going to go out to two miles.”

After their conversation in the family room of their borrowed home, at Megan’s encouragement, they had tried numerous experiments under the category of, “What other tricks might Nick Hall be able to do?” He had complained the entire time that he felt like a total idiot, but he had been a good subject and had given it his all.

In the end, they were unable to discover a single new ability. He couldn’t move anything through telekinesis. He had strained until Megan thought the veins in his neck would burst, but he couldn’t even get a piece of facial tissue to move a hair.

He couldn’t start a fire with his mind, which wasn’t surprising after his failure at telekinesis. He tried teleportation for fifteen minutes. Nothing. Levitation. Nothing. Transmutation. The same. Megan had brought in a black ant on a stick from the yard, but try as he might, he wasn’t able to kill it with his mind, or even slow it down.

Then, getting inspiration from the X-Men, Megan had forged a tin-foil helmet several layers thick for Hall to wear, but it hadn’t stopped the voices swirling in his head in the slightest. She wanted to try lead as well, and he agreed that the next time they came across a bank vault or other lead-lined room, he would do the experiment. No matter how ridiculous he might feel by the attempt, no one was more eager to find a way to turn off the voices than he was.

“I’m two miles out,”
broadcast Hall. “
I’m still reading eighteen people. And they still seem to be the same intensity.”
There was a pause
. “Are you still reading me telepathically as clearly as before?”

She told him that she was. They continued their range-finding mission with great success. They learned that their ability to communicate telepathically ended rather abruptly at just over five miles.

With respect to others, Hall’s ability to pick up the thoughts of the people in the restaurant was lost at between six and ten miles, with most dropping off his radar at six or seven, and only one managing to hang in there until mile ten. Before the experiment had begun, they had bought untraceable, disposable cell phones, which allowed them to communicate after Hall was out of telepathic range.

Hall finally joined her at the restaurant, a little more than an hour after she had arrived. When the waitress approached to take their order, Hall tried one further experiment. He thought the word
stop
at her, at the top of his mental lungs.

“Did you hear that?” said Megan to the waitress. “I could have sworn I heard someone say
stop.
But I’m not sure from where.”

The waitress looked genuinely perplexed. “I didn’t hear a thing,” she said.

“Oh my god, there’s a tarantula on your arm,”
Hall thought hard at the waitress for good measure.

The woman calmly thanked them for their order and left.

“Well, Megan, it’s looking like you’re one of a rare breed who can read my directed thoughts. I tried to reach several other people telepathically while I was on the road, also, with no luck.”

He sighed. “I’m beginning to think that maybe you’re
more
wired for ESP than average, rather than less. Maybe part of it is that your mind is just naturally able to block me. Instinctively. Like a Venus fly trap that closes when it feels a touch.”

Megan shrugged. “Maybe. But if so, I have no conscious awareness of it.”

There was a long silence, during which Hall seemed lost in thought. “Who knows,” he mused finally, almost to himself. “Maybe you’ve got some Neanderthal DNA in you somewhere.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean? Are you saying I look like a Neanderthal? Or that I’m as dumb as a Neanderthal?”

Whoops
, thought Hall. “Sorry,” he said, wincing. “I wasn’t saying either of those things. I mean, you’re super petite. Nobody looks more like a Homo sapiens than you do. And you’re obviously very bright,” he added for good measure.

“Nobody looks more like a Homo sapiens than me?” she repeated. “Wow. That’s one I’ve never heard before. You really know how to flatter a girl,” she added wryly, her eyes sparkling in amusement.

Hall couldn’t help but smile. Whoever he was, he knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t very smooth with women. “Let me explain. I told you I researched ESP last night at the poker table, when I wasn’t in a hand.”

“Go on,” said Megan. He didn’t need to read minds to know she was wondering what this had to do with Neanderthals.

“I came across a fascinating blog that postulated that Neanderthals had psi powers. Before Neanderthals went extinct, they shared the globe with Homo sapiens. For well over a hundred thousand years. Although they were geographically separated for most of this time, with Homo sapiens inhabiting Africa, and Neanderthals Europe and Asia. There are a number of theories about what happened to them. But many years back, a science fiction writer named Ben Bova wrote a novel called
Orion
. Apparently, in the novel, Bova wrote about a meeting between the narrator, a human, who had traveled back in time, and a group of Neanderthals. I read a fascinating passage from the book that really got me thinking.”

“Did you, um . . . save this passage?” asked Megan. “You know, in the cloud?”

“Didn’t really need to. I can call it up online pretty fast.”

Megan grinned. “If only you came with a printer,” she said. “If the passage isn’t too long, why don’t you read it to me.”

Hall thought about this for a few seconds and shrugged. “Okay. Sure. Give me a second to call it up and find the right place.”

There was a brief pause. “Okay, here we go.” Hall cleared his throat and began reading.

The Neanderthals had no fear of strangers. Warfare and conflict were virtually unknown to them. At first I thought that might be because their telepathic abilities made it impossible to attack someone without his sensing it beforehand and being prepared to retaliate. I was wrong, although I had been on the right track.

They were peaceful because their telepathic abilities allowed them to understand each other much more thoroughly than speech permits true understanding. It was not that they constantly read each others’ minds, I gradually learned. But the Neanderthals were trained from birth to communicate their feelings, their emotions, as well as rational thoughts and ideas. When a Neanderthal was angry or upset or afraid, everyone around him knew of it instantly, and they all did their best to get to the cause of the problem and solve it. Similarly, when a Neanderthal was happy, everyone knew it and shared in the joy.

How alone we Sapiens are! Locked inside our skulls with our individual personalities, we make feeble attempts at communication through speech, where the Neanderthals shared their thoughts as naturally as warmth flows from a fire. There were no psychotherapists among them—or, rather, they were all psychologists.