Superstition (21 page)

Sam cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “Maybe so. But which sounds the more likely to you?”

“Which sounds more likely,” Joanna said, “is hardly a scientific test.”

“On the contrary,” Sam contradicted her. “The principle of Occam's razor: Never impose a complicated explanation where a simpler one will do.”

“I'm not sure,” she said, being deliberately provocative now, “that a force field emanating from the human brain
is
a simpler explanation than a dead alchemist coming back from the grave. How does this force field do what it's doing, anyway?”

“By interacting with other force fields around it—and matter is a force field. There's nothing solid in it. It's just a rearrangement of the same force fields that make up space or the scent of flowers—or the brain itself and the thoughts in it.”

“Why is it we can't identify
this
force field—‘psi’—when we've identified so many others?”

“I don't know. But I do know that the one sure way to go down in history as an idiot is to proclaim that anything's impossible. Like the professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins who said that powered flight would never happen—two weeks before the Wright brothers took off from Kitty Hawk. Or the astronomer who said ‘space travel is bunk’ just before the Russians launched
Sputnik I
. Or the whole posse of distinguished experts who said that electric light was an idiotic idea and that Edison didn't understand the first principles of electricity. And don't forget the admiral who told Harry Truman, ‘The atom bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert on explosives.’”

“All of which,” she persisted, undeterred, “means that it
could
be the alchemist after all.”

Sam shrugged. “It could be invisible green men from Mars. I'd still want to find out
how
they did it.”

She looked from one to the other. “So, what do we do? Quit? Or carry on without Drew and Barry?”

“You know what I think,” Sam said. “I think we should carry on. But it's up to each member of the group to decide for themselves.”

“What about you, Pete?” she asked.

Pete gave a brief laugh. “The trouble with pulling out now is we'd be buying into the Frankenstein syndrome.”

“The what?” she inquired.

“You know—that bit in all the old movies where somebody realizes what the mad scientist is trying to do, gives him a meaningful stare, and says, ‘There are some things, Professor, that humankind should never seek to know…’”

Sam looked amused. “I think that's the real reason why Roger and Ward are still open to the idea of going on.”

“Are they?” Joanna asked, mildly surprised.

“They'll go along if the rest of us will.”

Pete looked at Joanna. “How about you?”

She looked at the wall where Drew's sketch of their imaginary Adam still hung. “Maybe in playing with this kind of stuff,” she said, “we just stir up problems for ourselves that we could do without.”

“You've already been cursed,” Sam said, “so we know you're immune.”

It was meant as a joke, but the way she looked at him told him she hadn't taken it as one.

“Do we?” she said.

He leaned forward, immediately contrite. “I'm sorry. Look, if you've any doubts at all…”

She cut him short with a shake of her head. “It's okay. I'm a reporter. As long as there's a story, I'll stay with it.”

“Anyway,” he said, reaching over to take her hand in his, “even if we believe this nonsense, which we don't, we still haven't looked into anyone's eyes and at
this
,” he jabbed a contemptuous finger at the picture of Cagliostro's talisman, “at the same time.”

Joanna's eyes flashed between it and the drawing of Adam and back again, and she felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck that made her shiver. She freed her hand from Sam's and flipped the book shut.

“Let's keep it that way,” she said, “just in case.”

30

D
rew was alarmed when she awoke to discover that Barry's side of the bed was empty. There was no light visible beneath the bathroom door, which meant he must be downstairs, unable to sleep.

She got up and peered over the landing. She could see no light below. Then a draft of cold air hit her. She realized it was coming from above. She shivered, pulling her robe tighter, and started up the narrow stairs from where a chill breeze blew. On a level that gave access to the loft, she found a window open. It was just large enough for a full-grown man to get through, giving onto a flat roof over a rear bedroom that had been added sometime after the house was built but before they bought it. She stepped carefully through the window and called Barry's name.

There was no response, and it took her eyes several moments to adjust to the dark. Then she saw a shape on the very edge of the low copestone that enclosed the area. The stone could not have been more than a foot in width, and yet Barry was kneeling on it at one corner, hunched as though in prayer and rocking back and forth with a motion that threatened any second to pitch him headfirst to the concrete yard below.

She cried out in alarm and ran to him, clasping him in her slender arms and pulling him back from danger with all her strength. He offered no resistance, just fell onto the sandpapery tar that covered the roof. She held him there for some moments, breathless more from shock than from effort.

He moaned faintly as though in pain or barely conscious. Half-remembered warnings against too violently waking sleepwalkers ran through her head, but she had no reason to assume he had been sleepwalking. He'd never done it before, so why should he start now?

Eventually she took his arm, whispering encouragement as though to a sleepy child or someone old and very sick. He allowed her to lead him back in through the window and down to their bedroom. By the time they got there he was more or less himself, and he remembered every moment since he woke in bed.

“It was like a waking dream. I haven't had them often, but often enough to know what they are. You know that you're dreaming. It's like waking into the dream and saying, I'm asleep and dreaming now’ just as surely as you'd say, I'm awake now, it's the morning and I've got to go to work.’ I was dreaming about Adam. He'd come into the bedroom and beckoned me to follow him. I knew it was a dream, so there was no reason not to. I wasn't afraid. I told myself it was perfectly natural that he should appear in my dreams after all the time we've spent talking and thinking about him. Actually I felt kind of pleased about it. I thought it could only clarify my thoughts and feelings about what was going on.

“He led me up onto the roof where you found me. He was trying to make me jump. I was fighting him, but I was losing. If you hadn't come when you did, he would have won.”

They got back into bed and Drew held him in her arms for a long time, painfully conscious of how close she had come to losing him.

“I don't understand,” he whispered. “Why would I dream that Adam was trying to kill me?”

“It wasn't a dream,” she said with quiet conviction. “It was a spell.”

Joanna replaced the phone and didn't move. She had been at her desk in the
Around Town
office all morning, polishing a draft of events so far. There was going to be no trouble getting a four-parter out of this, maybe more, which she knew Taylor Freestone would like.

In her narrative she had hidden nothing and invented nothing. As evidence she offered such video and sound recordings as they had, frankly admitting that some people would always choose to believe that trickery was involved. She repeated Roger's quotation of David Hume on miracles, that it was “more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work.”

She also pointed out that Roger Fullerton himself, one of the most distinguished theoretical physicists in the world, was prepared to vouch for the authenticity of what she was describing. Next to this, the fact that she was putting her own credibility as a journalist on the line was of minor significance; nonetheless, both she and Roger accepted that in some quarters they would be called gullible at best and corrupt at worse. Such accusations, she wrote, would merely convince them further of the extraordinary nature of the events in which they had participated.

At this point she felt she was straying into rhetoric a little further than she wished, and pulled back, toning down her protestations, and especially those she found herself imputing to Roger. She reminded herself to stick to the five-point reporter's rule: who, what, where, when, and why. That was how these articles would work best: as straightforward factual reports.

Then her phone had rung. It was Sam.

“I'm afraid I've got some terrible news. Drew and Barry have been killed in a car accident. It happened this morning, about eight-thirty. Apparently they were heading out on the Schuykill and their car went out of control and hit a bridge. They were both killed instantly.”

She felt strangely paralyzed by his words, more precisely by the effort to hold back the flood of questions and implications that lay behind them, and by her reaction to them, which threatened to overwhelm her.

“Joanna? Are you there?”

“Yes, I'm here,” she murmured. “Oh, God.”

“I'm sorry. It's a terrible shock.”

“Do you know where they were going?” she asked.

“I didn't ask. I just got this call from a secretary in Barry's office. She's working through his diary, informing everybody.”

“Can you give me her number?”

“Sure, wait a second…I don't know if she can tell you any more than I can…” He found the number and gave it to her. “Why do you want to know where they were going?”

“I'm not sure. I'll tell you later.”

She put down the phone and covered her face with her hands. After a few moments she sensed a presence and looked up. Taylor Freestone was standing in the door of her office looking down at her, concerned.

“Something wrong?”

She nodded, conscious of a stinging wetness in her eyes. “Two of our group, Barry and Drew, were just killed in a car crash.”

“Oh, my God…!” He took a step in, closed the door behind him. “I'm sorry, truly sorry.” He paused, then added, as though the real significance of what she had just said had only just occurred to him, “Does that mean you'll have to stop the experiment?”

She thought for a moment she was going to throw something at him, but her voice came out flat and resigned. “I don't know. It's too soon to think about that. If you'll excuse me, Taylor, I have to make some calls.”

“Of course. This is awful. Just awful.”

He went out. She took a deep breath, reached for the box of tissues in one of her drawers and wiped her eyes and nose, then picked up the phone.

31

T
hey all met just after six at Sam's apartment. There had been an unspoken agreement to avoid the lab, and in spite of a cold wind that had brought in a driving rain from the Atlantic, everyone preferred to make the trip to Riverside Drive. Sam offered drinks or coffee, but nobody wanted anything. Without further preamble he said, “Joanna's found out a couple of things that she thinks you should hear.”

She was sitting on the window seat where they'd huddled together on the first night they'd made love. Gazing out into the darkness over the Hudson, Sam had wondered aloud whether he might conceivably persuade Roger Fullerton to be part of the experiment they were planning. It was only a few months ago, but it seemed like a lifetime. Now Roger Fullerton sat in an armchair opposite her, looking drawn and tired and probably wishing, she imagined, that he'd never heard of any of them. Sam leaned against the arm of the sofa on which Ward and Pete sat.

“I talked to the police patrol who were first on the scene,” she began, looking down at the scribbled notes in her hand. “They have no explanation of what caused the accident. Barry was at the wheel and had an unblemished driving record. Blood tests for drugs and alcohol were negative. An autopsy revealed no underlying medical condition such as heart attack or stroke. The roads were dry and visibility good. There was no skid and apparently no tire blowout. The car was new and the model has no history of mechanical failure. No other vehicle was involved, but three people witnessed the accident and they all tell the same story. The car was traveling at between fifty and sixty miles an hour, and for no apparent reason it swung across two lanes, onto the hard shoulder, and slammed straight into the concrete support of an access bridge. One suggestion is suicide, because the car seemed to take such a direct aim.”

She paused, put away her notes, and went on speaking, but without looking at any of them directly. They, too, avoided making eye contact with her.

“I don't think the suicide theory holds up for several reasons. For one thing I just don't believe it. For another, I found out that Drew and Barry were on their way to see a priest when it happened. His name is Father Caplan. He was Drew's parish priest in Queens before he was moved out to some tiny parish near Ardmore three years ago. Drew had gotten very close to him when their child died. I spoke with him on the phone and he said that Drew had called him early that morning, around seven, and asked if she and Barry could come out and see him. She said it was urgent. He got the impression that they were both very frightened about something, but she wouldn't tell him what it was on the phone.”

She stopped, and now her gaze swept briefly over the four men in the room with her. “That's all I've got.”

Sam pushed himself up from the arm of the sofa. He paced a few steps, then cleared his throat and said, “Anybody have anything to say?”

Roger stroked his mustache and looked down at the floor. Pete sat with his hands between his knees. Ward Riley sat with legs crossed and arms folded, his gaze searching the ceiling.

“I suppose the question in front of us,” Ward said eventually, breaking a silence that was becoming charged with awkwardness, “is whether we feel we should do something or not?”