The Link (19 page)

“It might indeed,” mocks Westheimer.

Robert stands in silent anger as Ruth “reads” his aura.

He does not register her comment that she sees some zigzag lines in his right groin. “Better keep an eye on that,” she tells him.

“What is particularly interesting,” Ruth observes, “is the strong psychic coloring I see in my brother’s aura. He has an enormous gift which, up until now, he has denied.”

“Pity,” Westheimer says.

Robert drives Ruth home, trying to be polite but unable to disguise his tension.

“You’ll feel better when you accept your gift, Robert,” she tells him. “It is from God and not be taken lightly.”

When he gets home, it is to find Bart lying by the mailbox, waiting for him. The dog is clearly in pain, making noises of distress.

That night, when Robert wakes up, the Lab is lying by his bed, breathing laboredly and whimpering in his sleep. Robert looks down at him in concern.

The next day he takes Bart to Amelia. He’s obviously in pain, she says. “I can give you stronger pills; they’d help a while but—”

He takes Bart home, not knowing what to do. Agonized to see the dog suffering but hating the alternative to keeping him home.

He sees the woman’s name and address on the seminar participants’ sheet.

Stares at it.

Later. Bart seems worse despite the new sedation. Robert hesitates, paces, talking to himself.

Finally, he gets Bart into the car and drives toward where the woman lives. He tells himself he is an idiot for doing this but what else is there now? He finds the small tract neighborhood in Queens and stops the car in front of the house. Sits looking at the house. Starts the motor. Turns it off. Starts it again and drives away. This is stupidity,” he berates himself.

Bart is lying on the front seat beside him. Robert caresses his head.

After driving several blocks, he groans and pulls the car over, stops, the motor idling. “Bartie, what should I do?” he asks.

Bart’s tail thumps once, weakly.

“Oh, God,” Robert swallows. Then, deciding, he makes a fast U-turn and returns to the woman’s house.

She isn’t home.

“Perfect,” Robert says. He hisses angrily. “Idiot,” he says. “Why didn’t you phone her first?”

He goes back to the car and gets in. Sits indecisively, stroking Bart’s head.

An hour later, Brenda Turner comes home. Robert is still there and accosts her. She tells him she’s a little tired. He explains: the long drive, sitting here for an hour, his dog in pain. Clearly, he hates to have to say these things to a stranger by any possibility of helping Bart is more important now than his feelings.

The woman accedes and Robert brings Bart into her living room. Even in pain, Bart is polite and friendly. “Nice dog,” Brenda says.

“Yes,” murmurs Robert.

She sits on the floor beside Bart. Strokes his head. Looks into his eyes. Robert sits immobile on the sofa, staring at her.

After a while, the woman looks at him.

“He’s in terrible pain,” she says. “Very bad. I see inoperable cancer near the lungs.”

Robert’s breath shudders. “Inoperable,” he mumbles.

“He wants to have the pain end,” Brenda says. “I told him that was possible only one way, that he wouldn’t be alive any more.”

Robert stares at her dazedly.

“He told me that he’s willing for that to happen if you’ll hold him when it’s done.”

It is as though Robert has been struck. His breath staggers. He stares at her in stricken silence.

He spends an agonizing evening with Bart, trying, in vain, to comfort him. A double doze of the new sedation barely helps. He holds the Lab in his arms, stroking him endlessly, speaking endless, soothing words.

It is after midnight when he calls Amelia. He is sorry to be calling so late. Is there any kind of stronger medication?

Hearing the sound of his voice, she says, “Why don’t you bring him over, Robert?”

He has to carry Bart to the car. The Lab is breathing poorly, whimpering with pain.

“I thing this is the right thing, Robert,” Amelia tells him when he arrives minutes later.

When he tells her that he wants to hold Bart when she injects him, she is taken back. “You’re sure you want to do that, Robert?” she asks.

He says he must. Reluctantly, she takes them into one of the treatment rooms and prepares the injection as Robert sits on the floor, holding Bart in his arms. Speaking to him softly, stroking him.

Saying goodbye to a beloved friend.

“I want you to know, pal, it’s been wonderful to have you with me all these years. You’ve been the best dog anyone could ever want. A good companion. Just a perfect friend. My pal. My Bart. I’m going to say goodbye to you now. If there is another life ahead, you wait for me, hear? Just… be waiting for me and we’ll take a nice, long run together. You and me, Bart. Just you and me. Okay? You’ll wait for me, pal?”

He speaks a little longer, then nods to Amelia.

“I love you, Bart. I won’t forget,” he whispers.

It is over in seconds.

Robert sits holding the motionless dog, his eyes dry.

Unable to release the pain.

He is at the ESPA seminar again, a bomb waiting to explode. Bart’s death has rebounded on him. He is furious at himself for believing what the woman told him, for having the Lab put to sleep.

By poor chance, Stafford has the platform, showing slides of an experiment.

“We attempted to discover if, in fact, there are any abnormally high electromagnetic fields of very long wave-lengths—or any abnormal radio-wave or microwave emission—near a so-called healer’s body during the course of a so-called healing session.”

“So-called,” mutters Robert.

“Accordingly, the so-called healer was wired up with various electrodes on his hands and, during the course of the so-called healing various movable aerials were brought up to the so-called healer’s body and recordings taken of electromagnetic emissions at various wavelengths. At no time was an electromagnetic signal observed beyond the normal levels to be expected. Thus we concluded that electromagnetism was not involved in psychic healing.”

“So-called psychic healing,” Robert corrects aloud.

Westheimer turns. “Is our Spiritualist healer’s brother trying to tell us something?” he asks.

“Guilt by association, Westheimer?” Robert responds. “Senator McCarthy would have loved you.”

“Gentlemen,” says Peter.

“Are you trying to say something?” inquires Westheimer.

“I’m not
trying
to say something, Westheimer. I’m saying it. You made up your mind about psi a long time ago and all you’re looking for here is substantiation of your prejudice.”

“Such a comment from a man who has written a “popular” (he makes it sound like a dirty word) book endorsing psi in every conceivable way is hardly to be credited.”

“Gentlemen,” says Peter.

“Oh, have you read my book?” goads Robert.

“I don’t believe it’s necessary for me to—”

“I submit then,” Robert interrupts, “that you are scarcely in a position to dismiss it until you do. This is what is known, in intelligent circles, as elementary scholarship.”

The meeting degenerates into a shouting match which Peter cannot control.

Cathy’s return does not improve things.

After accepting Robert’s intense embrace and kiss, she tells him that she didn’t say anything about them to Harry. Since Harry’s mother is gravely ill, Harry had assumed that she’d flown over to see her.

“I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d come to ask for a divorce,” she says.

She feels, in fact, uncomfortable about the entire situation. Harry has given her no cause whatever to complain about their marriage and she knows it would shatter him for her to leave it now.

“Would?”
says Robert tightly. “Or
will?”

He has tried to show understanding of her dilemma but his state of mind is not conducive to long-suffering at the moment. When she says she simply hates to face the problem right away, he responds, “Who doesn’t want to go below the surface now?”

She nods tiredly. “Touché,” she says.

Things are no better the next day when both return to ESPA. They are on the verge of open friction.

Peter asks Robert if he’ll assist in a distance perception test and Robert, with a cool smile, asks, “Had enough of me at the seminar?”

Peter does not permit himself to be provoked. “You mustn’t let Westheimer get to you,” he says. “Everything looks yellow to his jaundiced eye.”

“He doesn’t believe in anything,” Robert says. “He’s here to destroy.”

“You mean you
do
believe in something now?” asks Cathy.

She hasn’t meant the question to be insulting but that’s the way it sounds and Robert responds accordingly. “No, I’m as vacillating as ever,” he snaps.

Their friction increases and Peter separates them, sending Cathy into the field on a distance perception test while Robert remains with the subject.

He is sitting, bored, in the testing room when the vision hits him.

Cathy on a Manhattan street corner. A truck out of control. Her body hurled against a store window and through it.

To her death.

Robert jolts on his chair and looks around.

The subject sits quietly in her chair, eyes closed. The room is very still.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Until the vision repeats itself, more vividly this time.

Cathy on a corner; he can see the store name behind her. The truck out of control, the driver pumping its brakes in vain. Cathy struck by the hood of the truck, her body flung violently through the store window glass, cut to shreds.

“No,” he stands abruptly.

The subject opens her eyes and frowns at him. He doesn’t even notice.

Suddenly, he leaves the room. He has to know the target location, he tells the man outside. It’s essential.
Now
.

The man doesn’t understand but there is nothing he can do, he tells Robert. Only people in the field know the target area.

“Oh, my God,” Robert mutters. Then, resisting panic, he tells the man there has to be a master list. If there is, says the man, he doesn’t know about it.

Robert rushes to the meeting room and breaks in on the seminar, pulling Peter aside and telling him what’s happened. Peter hesitates, then, without a word, has Easton open the ESPA safe and remove the master list of 200 locations.