The Link (46 page)

“I admit now what’s happened. I admit my past; I accept it. I don’t know if that dream I keep having has anything to do with it but I do know my struggle against it is over.

“I accept my heritage.

“The problem is: I don’t know why it’s appeared in my life at this time—after all those years of my resisting it.

“Worse, I don’t know where it’s leading me. I have a definite—irresistible—conviction that it’s leading me somewhere. But where that somewhere is, I haven’t the remotest idea.

“Except that it seems to have something to do with the past. Not my past. Mankind’s—the world’s.

“I keep thinking of what that man said at the Dowsercon. About a vital life stream creating a connection between mankind and some kind of cosmic force.

“I think of what I saw in my mind when he said it—shafts of light coming down through clouds, meeting shafts of energy coming up from earth. And, as they met, a spectacle of light.

“I keep thinking of what Dr. Bellenger said about evidence that what he called ‘unknown realities’ existed in the past as they do in the present. That early man possessed abilities to discover and harness certain earth forces.

“I keep thinking of what Adamenko said – that a matrix of cosmic energy exists in the earth—existed when it was formed. I keep thinking that I saw that matrix in a dream—or what appeared to be a dream—before I even knew about it.

“I keep thinking—of all things—of a symbol on the sign of a London disco called
The Primary Force
. A four-bladed scythe turning clockwise.”

His upper body is on screen now. He holds up the crystal.

“I keep looking at this crystal and wondering what it really is. Wondering why Adamenko saying that the human mechanism is a giant crystal in a state of unsteadiness struck me so hard. Why Borgeyev saying that the living organism is nothing but a giant, liquid crystal struck me again and made me think about that energy matrix on the earth.

“Why it struck me so hard when Adamenko mentioned the suggestion that the earth itself had begun its life as a crystal.

“And I keep thinking, endlessly, of Borgeyev pointing his ‘time machine’ scanner at the piece of crystal and me seeing, in the air in front of me—as clearly as though they were really there—two sculpted bronze hands…”

He holds his hands up as he remembers the bronze hands being held.

“… in between them—suspended in mid-air—a perfect crystal globe.”

He sighs. “What does it mean?”

CUT TO TWO SHOT. He is sitting next to Peter on the airplane taking them back to the United States.

“Whatever you’re on to, Robert,” Peter says, “it certainly is nothing light-weight. I can only repeat what I said when Ivanova saw something in your future. Like her, I’m jealous.”

Robert smiles and gestures haplessly. “I don’t know if there’s anything to be jealous of,” he says. “I may just be going insane.”

Peter chuckles. “That I doubt,” he says.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Cathy,” Robert confides.

“Why Cathy?”

“Well, she wants me to be tested at ESPA,” Robert answers. “She’s really excited about the prospect. And, after breaking up her marriage and dragging her to a new country to marry someone going through what I’m going through—I hate to disappoint her.”

“But ESPA doesn’t appeal to you now,” Peter says. “Cathy’s approach to psi doesn’t appeal to you now.”

“I feel the need for something more,” Robert replies, nodding.

“You’re not alone,” Peter confesses. The need for “something more” exists in him as well. Cathy’s approach to psi is losing its appeal to him too. More and more, he is conscious of the need for some kind of “connective tissue” between the various phenomena of psi.

“Some kind of link,” he says.

Peter is not a happy man. Carol has almost not returned to the United States with him, insisting that she cannot leave her family or her native country; that Peter, if he loved her, would terminate his assignment at ESPA and remain in England.

Peter refused. He has to complete his time at ESPA. At the end of June, they will return to England. With angry reluctance, Carol submitted and is on the plane, sitting with Cathy. She has a bad head cold.

Robert hesitates before broaching the subject, then feels compelled to mention it: Peter’s health.

To his distressed surprise, Peter tells him that he’s quite aware of the state of his health. He didn’t need the dim illumination of the bulb on Adamenko’s Tobiscope to remind him of his hypertension, his being overweight, his problems with his kidneys and his prostate.

Robert feels terrible about his friend. “I wish I could heal you,” he says impulsively. “Maybe I should try.”

“Let’s keep that as our trump card, shall we?” Peter says.

“Why didn’t you say something when we were with the Krivorotovs?” Robert asks.

Peter gestures vaguely. “Didn’t occur to me,” he says.

New York. A car waiting for them. Robert and Cathy are dropped off at his house, then Peter and Carol say goodbye and move on.

Robert insists on carrying Cathy over the threshold of their new home. As he does, he cries out as a sudden pain shoots through his right groin and he almost drops her.

“Oh, my God,” he mutters, doubled over, as she looks at him in alarm. “What all those psychics saw.”

“What, Rob?” she asks.

He makes a sound half-laugh, half-sob. “And on our first night home too!” he groans. “A goddam hernia!”

The doctor Cathy takes him to the next day advocates immediate surgery. Sighing, Robert agrees. By afternoon, he’s in the hospital.

Early the next morning, he is unconscious on the operating table.

Part of him.

The other part hovers above, wide awake, observing every detail of the operation, hearing every word spoken below.

When Cathy drives him home, he tells her of the OOBE and she is newly excited by the expansion of his psychic powers. “It’s going to be wonderful testing you at ESPA,” she says.

His smile is wan.

At home, a basket of fruit is waiting, sent by Peter and Carol. Flowers from Amelia.

And a gift from Cathy.

As he lies in bed, newly installed by a fussing Cathy, she goes to another part of the house. Returning, she tells him to close his eyes. He does.

She puts something beside him and he opens his eyes.

At first, he tenses, resisting, as he sees the small Lab puppy on the bed.

Gradually, then, unable to prevent himself, he starts to stroke the puppy’s head. But he really doesn’t want to go through again what he suffered with Bart.

“Life goes on, love,” she tells him.

“Yes,” he murmurs. He strokes the puppy. It is an absolute darling. It lies across his chest, nibbling on his fingers. “Bart looked just like you,” he says.

Abruptly, he begins to cry, releasing the sorrow he was never able to release when Bart died. Cathy holds him, caressing him gently as he weeps.

That night, a somber note.

Cathy tells him that Peter, in his remaining months at ESPA, plans to launch a full-scale investigation into survival evidence. She is totally against it and has informed Peter that she refuses to have anything to do with it.

“What are you going to work on then?” Robert asks, trying not to react to her rather cold, a priori dismissal of Peter’s plan.

She tells him that she’s located a detective sergeant in the Metropolitan police who has worked on a number of occasions with a psychic. She is scheduled to meet them both and hopes to involve herself in a case they are just about to get started on—the mysterious disappearance of a young girl.

“I’m hoping you’ll work with me, love,” she says.

He hesitates. “You don’t think Teddie would be—?” he begins.

“After Russia?” Cathy breaks in. “Never again.” She looks at him uneasily. “Don’t you want to work together on it?” she asks.

“Of course I do.”

As he holds her in his arms, his look conveys the worry he is feeling.

Suddenly, she laughs. “I forgot to tell you,” she says. “After de Vries’ telly appearance that night, there’s evidence of wide-spread pregnancies across the country.”

Robert looks blank. “How could he have anything to do with that?” he asks.

She laughs again. “Because either he or the women watching him caused their IUDs to bend out of shape and cause the pregnancies.”

He chuckles, shaking his head. “The wonders of the psychic world,” he says.

He strokes the puppy’s head. “What do you think of that, Bart?” he asks. He frowns a little. “I can’t call you Bart,” he says. “You’re Bart Two.”

“Bartoo,” Cathy says.

So the dog is named.

Recovering, Robert has Cathy drive him to Ann’s house on a Sunday afternoon so the two can meet.

The initial contact is unavoidably strained. But neither Robert nor Cathy push it and Ann can see that Cathy is congenial. Her expertise in parapsychology and casual acceptance of Ann’s psychic bent helps toward establishing a relationship between them.

May 9
^th
, ESPA. Prior to a general meeting, Peter tells them that he’s heard from their colleagues in London that Mrs. Keighley and her daughter have left Harrowgate. The doctor has remained—as has the haunting force. “Obviously, the man needs it,” Peter says. “A psychic hair shirt for his past crimes.”

Whether those crimes are punished by more earthly means depends on Mrs. Keighley’s willingness to testify in a war crimes trial.

The meeting commences. Easton notes an upcoming Psi Workshop over the July 4th weekend.

Then Cathy makes her statement.

She is categorically opposed to Peter’s intended survival research. It is anti-science and retrogressive.

“It’s returning to square one,” she declares. “Before we know it, we’ll be back to investigating latter-day Fox Sisters.”

Peter begs to differ with her.

It was noticeable, in Russia, he points out, that the one aspect of Kirlian photography they failed to mention was the “phantom leaf’ effect. Why? Because the ramifications of it contradict their mechanistic approach to psi? That they deliberately choose to ignore the possibility that energy fields of living things can exist in the absence of physical form?

“The idea that all psychic functions are necessarily tied to neural substance is a faulty one,” he says. “It is clear that the dynamics of psi can exist outside the human system.