Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (10 page)

I suggested, "Autopsy, maybe."

He scratched his nose and replied, "No,
that's scheduled for tomorrow. We're backed up. It's been one of
those weeks. Look, she's here. No chance she could have been
released prematurely. Just give me time to run it down."

Alison seemed a bit pale. And the voice was
a bit out of control as she told the attendant, "This is very
important. I must see that body. I mean, right now."

The attendant stared at
her in silence for a long moment, then asked her, "Exactly what do
you have in mind?"

She said, "We'll just have to look for
her."

He looked at me with a
lopsided grin and asked, "Do you know what she's saying? Know how
many corpses are cooling back there? Know the shape some of them
are in? Can she handle this?"

I told him, "I guess we're game if you're
game. It is important. Wouldn't take your time otherwise."

The guy said, 'Time? What
time? I got all the time in the world. One thing you learn
on
this
job
is
time
. If
you're breathing, you got time. If not ..."

You never know where you
will encounter a philosopher. But all the time in the world would
not have helped that fruitless search. We shook the place down
thoroughly, even invaded the autopsy rooms, then went over to the
med school and checked out the cadavers.

But we did not find our Jane Doe.

And I did not know whether I should be sad
or glad. The thinking mind tends to rebel at too much mystery. I
found that mine was growing numb, withdrawing. Alison's had already
gotten there. Her body was not far behind. As I sent the Maserati
hurtling toward Ojai she withdrew to the far side of her seat in a
dark study, brooding, almost cataleptic.

I was definitely worried about her by the
time we hit the Ventura Freeway. I did not feel much like talking
about it myself, but I patted her leg and said, "Cheer up, kiddo.
It's unraveling. We'll start separating some strands pretty quick
now."

She looked at me then, and I shot a quick
glance at her, necessarily quick because I was merging into a
fast-running interchange off the Hollywood. And I damn near lost
the whole ball game right there because I had to look back again
with direct attention to verify what I thought I'd seen in the
quick glance.

I'd seen it, all right.

They were Alison's eyes, yes, but with an
altogether different cast and sparkle. And they were deviated full
left.

I really did not think it out first. As I
said, I was mind-weary. And I was hurtling along within a sea of
traffic. I guess it was pure reaction. I let her have it with the
back of my hand, hard enough to rattle her teeth and snap the head
back. She woke up screaming. And I sent a quick prayer of thanks to
wherever.

There was no going on
after that. I left the freeway at Studio City and took her to
Sportman's Lodge, a landmark motel where once you could catch your
own trout from the man-made streams and ponds on the grounds and
have them prepared to your own specifications by the chef. The
waters are still there, but the "sportsmen" are not unless you
broaden the concept to include bedroom games. But it is still a
very nice place to spend a few hours or a few nights, has good
restaurants, convention facilities, banquet rooms, etc., and a very
popular lounge.

It was by now late
afternoon. It had been a hell of a day, coming also on the heels of
a hell of a night. We'd forgotten about lunch, had consigned
nothing whatever to the belly since the early-morning doughnuts,
except a few sips of decaffeinated tea at Cochran's. Then that
gruesome afternoon ...

Well, I guess we were both
pretty well shot. I checked us in at Sportsman's, and we went
straight to the coffee shop for a quick fix to the stomach. We
talked very little over the food, but Alison took a cigarette with
her coffee, though obviously unaccustomed to sucking smoke, and
leaned toward me in a conspiratorial huddle across the table to
say, "I have never had an hysterical reaction like that in my whole
life. What happened?"

I really did not want to tell her what
happened, nor even to think about it, not at that moment. So I just
shrugged and told her, "That's your field. You tell me what
happened."

She laterally wiggled her
lower jaw, made rueful eyes, and replied, "You slapped the shit out
of me, that's what happened. But thanks ... I guess. Really, though
..."

I sighed and said,
"Really, though, it has been a tough day. I think you need to
regroup. There's food in the belly now. Next in order, I think, is
a leisurely hot shower or a long soak in a tub and then some
sleepytime. Then we need to skull this thing through before
plunging off into the abyss. That is, unless you'd rather just
forget the whole matter and get back to your sane, ordered
existence."

She asked me, "Is that what you want to
do?"

I said, "I was talking about you."

She said, "I am talking about you."

I told her, "I live for cases like
this."

“
You do?”

"Sure." I took a sip of my coffee, worked at
the cigarette. "But it really is not your bag. So if you—"

She said, "Are you
inviting me to leave? Are you afraid I will start screaming every
time I get a little tired?"

"'Course not." Should I
tell her what I was really worried about? Was her head settled
enough now to handle that? "You've been a big help. I like having
another opinion at my elbow, so to speak. And you were a lot more
familiar with Jane than I was. But ..."

“
But..?”

I took the plunge. "I believe Jane has
attached herself to me."

"How do you mean?"

"I don't know how I mean.
Just attached somehow. She's been battering at my brain all day. I
won't let her in. I know how to control that. You don't. Neither
did little Vicky Victoria. I believe that Jane invaded Vicky while
we were there today. And I believe that she invaded you in the car
a while ago."

Alison just stared at me
blankly for a very long moment, then she took a deep breath,
shuddered, began to hyperventilate, got it under control, said to
me in a strangled little voice: "You're right, this—it's not—this
is not my bag. It sounds ... totally crazy to me. So why am I so
damned scared?"

"Call it awe," I
suggested, "and go with it. But control it. Stay in charge. Keep
questioning, don't let go of that, never stop questioning but
question intelligently, not fearfully, keep the left brain
dominant, don't surrender to the emotional right brain. Know what
I'm saying?"

She nodded her head, reached for another
cigarette, said, "I could get hooked on these damn things. In your
crazy world, anyway. What do cigarettes do for you?"

"Other than load me with carcinogens?" I
shrugged. "Recent research indicates a relief to the stress
centers in the brain. Maybe they keep me from flying away."

She said, "You're not
afraid of dying, are you? I mean, it doesn't ..."

I replied, "I don't want lung cancer, if
that's what you mean. I also don't want ulcers, boils, or AIDS. But
I don't subvert my expression of life to a plan for dying. Whatever
death is, we're all going to experience it, you know. I am not
afraid of that idea, no. And I'm damned if I'll direct my whole
life toward that point. It will find me, in whatever form seems
appropriate. Meanwhile there are a lot of interesting things to
focus on."

"We've got one now, haven't we?" she
said.

"For me, yeah, very
interesting. For you ...?"

She smiled. "For me too." The smile faded
but hung on there, sort of pasted on. "You think she invaded me,
huh?"

I said, "Yes. You were physically withdrawn,
almost cataleptic. Your eyes became Jane's eyes, even to the left
deviation."

Alison shivered, placed
the cigarette between her lips, lit it, choked mildly on the smoke,
showed me a wan smile. “Why would she do that? If she's attached to
you ... ?”

"I don't know how to
explain it," I replied. "Don't really understand the process. But
possibly she is trying to interact with me. I won't give her direct
access, so she is trying alternate routes."

"Maybe she's in love with you," Alison said
quietly.

"There could be that element," I admitted.
"But I believe the problem goes much deeper than that."

"So why doesn't she just appear in her own
body again? You know the only implication possible from that fiasco
at the morgue. She stole her own body. How could she do that? And
if she can do that, why is she buzzing around our brains now, out
of body? None of this really goes together, Ash- ton."

I said, "It goes together
somewhere. Maybe not in this world, but ..."

"Where is her body now?"

I said, "Hell, I don't know, Alison."

"Well where
could
it be?"

I said, "I don't know."

"Well, just what
do
you know, Professor
Ford?"

I said, "For sure?"

"Yes, for sure. What do you know?"

I said, "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

I said, "Now you've got
it. That is exactly what I know."

Chapter Fourteen: Belly of the Flea

My problem, you see, is that I have too much respect for the
observed physical orderliness of the universe. This whole thing
appears to be a living system, with our own earth and its biosphere
in an intimate relationship with the rest of creation. I get this
vision not from intuition but from the very precise revelations of
natural science. We do not live in an accidental universe (despite
pronouncements to the contrary by various scientific technicians)
but in a beautifully ordered and brilliantly conceived evolutionary
process that could—who knows?—be directly involved in the
development of the ultimate God Being itself. In other words, if
that is not clear enough, our solar system could be an atom in a
cell of a toenail being developed on the embryonic God. Or if you
don't like that analogy, make it an atom in a nerve cell of the
embryo God's brain. Either way, that does not confer particular
importance upon our solar system. Our sun and its planets
constitute but one of several septillion similar systems in space.
Our entire galaxy, which contains at least a billion stars, would
constitute perhaps a single cell of the embryo.

This order of magnitude is
difficult to handle by the human brain, so let's try another
analogy. If we could shrink the known universe to the size of the
North American continent, our galaxy would then be the size of a
baseball lying somewhere in Mexico or the U.S. or Canada. You
could then cover our solar system with the head of a
pin.

So, see, you've just naturally got to
respect the size of this universe—and it is getting larger all the
time. If our solar system is no more than a flea upon the back of a
dog somewhere in North America, where does that leave you and me in
this scheme? Somewhere in the flea's belly, I would suspect.

So who the hell am I to be
making pronouncements as to the nature of reality? When you
say
reality,
pal,
you're talking this whole magnificent production that is just
the
known
universe so far.

Next time you find a flea
on your dog, don't annihilate him right away. First put him in your
ear and try to hear the hollow oration inside; see what the message
from the belly of the flea can tell you about the American economic
system, the arms race, or the rotation of crops in Illinois. Then
see what he can tell you about acid rain in Canada, the financial
crisis in Mexico, and the crime rate in New York City.

On second thought, don't bother.

The "reality system" within the belly of the
flea surely could not even tell you the name of the dog upon whose
backside he feeds.

Do I sound properly
humble? Okay, then let me go on to say that, flea's belly or no,
the human mind has become startingly aware of the dimensions and
apparent attributes of the processes going on around us. We think,
with reasonable confidence, that we know how and approximately
when it all began. We think that we can count the atoms of the
universe and compute their total mass. We think that we know how
atoms are made and that we are made of them ourselves; we even
know, we think, how many atoms and what kind constitute the human
body and the processes that bring them together in a living
system. We can know these things, or at least hypothesize them,
only because the processes are so orderly no matter where they are
encountered. It is not a capricious universe. Every time you step
aboard an airplane or take a dose of medicine, you are
acknowledging that fact with your faith that neither will kill you.
We live in an orderly physical system. And the system was built
with us in mind. We know that because our observations of the
system tell us so. The atoms that now make your body were built
inside a star, which itself may have been built inside another
star, and so on back to the initial creative bang itself. Our
astrophysicists find evidence to believe that
our
particular star, the sun, is a
fourth-generation star, it is a great-great-grandchild of the big
bang. Some of the atoms that now make up your body could have
belonged to other bodies before yours, or they could have been part
of a tree or a rock or a piece of volcanic ash; so say our
gentlemen of science.