The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (66 page)

Jean read the question: “‘Do you know Molly Toogood? Do you know Sir Gervase Desmond?’”

“We’d still face uncertainties,” Don observed, “even if the answers were all ‘yes’, even if Molly and Sir Gervase were described with great consistency—because we might hypothesize telepathic communication between the mediums.”

“Certainly not an unreasonable explanation,” said Godfrey Head.

“As I recall,” said Don, “the question gave us very little information; no one seems definitely to know anyone else.” He looked at his watch. “It’s late…Shall we call it a night?”

Head and Cogswell agreed. They rose to their feet. “Incidentally,” said Head, “have any of you been over to hear the Fighting Preacher at the Orange City Auditorium?”

“Not I,” said Cogswell. “What about him?”

“Dill, from our Political Science department, took me to hear him. Dill is alarmed. He says this Hugh Bronny is an alarming phenomenon, a nascent Hitler. He’s got a force, a gift of gab, no question about it. But I only mention him because he’s attacking ‘devil-inspired scientists who’re fooling around with God’s business!’ He says that they’re trying to produce life in test-tubes and also trying to sneak sinners into Heaven. He says places like the Parapsychological Foundation ought to be stopped—by force, if necessary. He really means business.”

Jean sat rather limp. “He mentioned us—by name?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, he singled out the Parapsychological Foundation.”

“Anything to constitute slander?” asked Don lightly.

“He called you a Godless scientist, in league with the Devil. If you can show that he acted in malice and that your reputation is injured—you can sue.”

“First,” said Don ruefully, “I’d probably have to prove I
wasn’t
in league with the Devil.”

“Maybe we can take our stable of mediums to court,” suggested Dr. Cogswell, “and materialize the Devil for a witness.”

“There’d be difficulties swearing him in,” Don remarked.

“That does it,” said Head. “Good night all.”

Kelso, Vivian Hallsey, and Dr. Cogswell took their leave immediately after.

Don turned to Jean, took her hands. “Tired?”

“Yes. But not so tired that—” she stopped short, staring across his shoulder. Don turned. “What’s the trouble?”

“There’s someone outside—at the window.”

Don ran to the door, opened it, went out on the porch. Jean came out behind him.

Don asked, “Did you see his face?”

“Yes…I thought it was—” she could not speak the name.

“Hugh?”

She pressed against his arm. “I’m afraid of him, Donald…”

Don raised his voice a little. “Hugh! Why don’t you come out, Hugh? Wherever you’re hiding…”

A tall shape materialized. Hugh stepped out onto the gravel path. The street-light shone yellow in his great angular face; shadows filled his eye-sockets and the pockets under his cheekbones.

Jean said in a sharp voice, “Why don’t you press the doorbell, Hugh? Why do you look through the window?”

“You know why,” said Hugh. “I came to see with my own eyes what goes on at this house.”

“See anything worthwhile?” Don asked.

“I saw evil men and women leaving this place.”

Don said in a voice that was light and dry and edged, like sandpaper, “I hear you’ve been including us in your invective.”

“I’ve been preaching the Holy Lord God’s word as I understand it.”

Don studied him a moment, his mouth set in a disdainful smile. “You may be a power-mad hypocrite, Hugh—or you may just be a plain fool. One thing you’re certainly not—that’s a Christian!”

Hugh stared back, his eyes like kettles of hot blue glass. He said in a heavy voice, “I’m a Christian minister. I walk four-square down the Holy Path. And no sneering atheist like yourself can turn me aside.”

Don shrugged, turned to go inside.

“Wait!” commanded Hugh hoarsely.

“What for?”

“You spoke ill of me just now. You reviled me. You denied my Christianity—”

“Christ taught kindness, the brotherhood of man. You’re no Christian. You’re a demagogue. A rabble-rouser. A hate merchant.”

Now Hugh grinned, a painful uncomfortable grimace that showed long yellow teeth. “You’ll be sorry,” he said simply. Then he turned on his heel, his feet crunched down the gravel path.

Don looked back at Jean. “Let’s go home.”

XI

Instead of driving home Don and Jean drove out on the desert, passing Indian Hill. Jean looked up toward the invisible hulk of the Freelock house. Don slowed the car. “Want to go up and hunt ghosts?” he asked, wanly facetious.

“No thanks,” said Jean decidedly.

“Scared?”

“No, not any more. I’m not afraid of the ghosts: it’s the atmosphere which hangs around the house…” She hugged his arm. “I can’t feel unkindly about the place—because that’s where I decided to marry you.”

Don laughed mournfully. “You probably thought you were picking a nice normal junior executive.”

“No,” said Jean. “I knew you were nice and—well, sufficiently normal—but I knew you’d never be the sort of man to plump for security and routine.”

“Didn’t you give up hope when the exaggerated report of my death came through from Korea?”

“In a way…But somehow I couldn’t believe it. I had a feeling you’d turn up.”

“Like a bad penny…That was a tough three years. I think I was half out of my mind the whole time…Mmf!”

“What’s the trouble?”

“I’ve forgotten all the Russian and Chinese I learned so diligently. I doubt if I could ask for a drink of water now…”

They turned off on a side-road, drove two miles into the dark desert, parked, got out of the car.

The night was clear and quiet; constellations rode across the sky, the air smelled fresh of sage and creosote bush.

“We should be in bed,” said Don.

“I know.” Jean leaned back against him. “But I wouldn’t be able to sleep…Not after tonight.” She looked up into the sky. “Look, Don: all the stars, and the galaxies beyond—and beyond and beyond. Could the after-life world be as enormous as ours?”

Don shook his head. “We’ll have to ask the question at another mass seance.”

“And where is it, Don? In our minds? All around us? Off in another dimension?”

“All we can do is guess. I don’t believe it’s inside our minds, or in another set of dimensions. At least no dimensions with any formal or mathematical relationship to our own.”

“‘If it exists—it exists somewhere!’—to quote that eminent student of the occult, Professor Donald Berwick.” Smiling, she looked up over her shoulder into his face.

“Right! Where that somewhere is, is the problem. Perhaps we’ll have to go there to find out.”

She turned around, faced him. “Now look here, Mr. Berwick—I don’t want you toying with such ideas…Such as dying in order to make a personal investigation.”

Don laughed. “No. I don’t want to die for a while.” He kissed her. “It’s too much fun being alive…But maybe it might be possible to tiptoe along the borderline—during a period of extreme stupor, or unconsciousness. Even sleep.”

“Donald!” exclaimed Jean. “Sleep! Dreams! Do you think—?”

Don laughed. “It
would
be amusing, wouldn’t it? If every night everybody made little excursions into the after-world?…It’s not impossible, not unthinkable. Our dream-world certainly is a world of the mind. It’s palpable, sensible—we feel, hear, see, taste. But dream-worlds—” he thought, laughed. “I was about to point out that dream-worlds are a function of individual experience, and couldn’t possibly be the after-life…Then I remembered the results of Question One.”

Jean took his shoulders in her hands, shook him. “If the after-world is the dream-world, I don’t want you going. Because some terrible things happen.”

“Sure! But we always wake up safe and sound, don’t we? But I’m not convinced of this dream-world—after-world equation. The dream-world shifts so rapidly.”

“How do we know that the after-world doesn’t behave the same way?”

“We have the answers to Question One. And other reports, in the books of Eddy, Stewart Edward White, Frank Mason. They—or I should say, the spirits they contacted—describe the after-world as Utopia—more beautiful, more glorious, more happy than our own.”

Jean nodded. “That accords, more or less, with what we heard tonight.”

“More or less. There are differences. Peculiar differences.” He took Jean’s hand, they walked slowly along the pale ribbon of road. “These men are honest and intelligent, and they’ve tried to be objective. Stewart Edward White’s Betty, Mason’s Dr. MacDonald, Eddy’s—I’ve forgotten his name—Reverend something-or-other; they give pictures of the after-world which are similar but not exact. Their hows and whys differ considerably.”

“I suppose we have to make allowances for the medium, the control and even the predisposition of the author.”

Don agreed. “Another point: consider the curious way in which the after-life seems to keep pace with contemporary sciences; never ahead, sometimes behind. For instance, Dr. MacDonald, a spirit, is asked to treat the medium Bib Tucker. He prescribes herbs which are unknown at the time, but used sixty years before. Still, in 1920 when Mason asks him about the nature of electricity, Dr. MacDonald gives a contemporary answer—describes it as a phase of atomic energy. It’s inconsistent and unconvincing—if we assume Dr. MacDonald to be a true spirit.”

They stopped. Don picked up a stone, tossed it out into the dark. “If we think of Dr. MacDonald as a function of the author Mr. Mason, the medium Bib Tucker, and the other members of the particular group—he becomes more credible.”

“You mean that this Dr. MacDonald is an illusion—that Molly Toogood and all the others are illusions?”

“No. I think that they’re real enough. Actually, I’m only speculating. But perhaps they’ve been created, brought into being…This may be the way ghosts, apparitions, spooks in general appear. Enough people believe in them—and suddenly they’re real.”

Jean maintained a dubious silence. Don slipped his arm around her waist. “Don’t like it, eh?” They started back toward the car.

“No,” said Jean. “There’s so much that your theory doesn’t explain. The acts of free-will—like my father coming to us, telling us to continue drilling.”

Don nodded. “True. But on the other hand, consider young Myron Hogart’s control, Lew Wetzel. So far as we know, he never existed outside of a novel. Think of ghosts—the grotesque ones: the chain-rattlers, the women in shrouds, the luminous monks, carrying their heads in their arms. Isn’t it reasonable to suppose that these are the concreted product of minds? It may be possible.”

“Whatever they are,” said Jean, “I don’t really want to see any…I must admit, that in spite of my brave words, two-thirds of the time I’m scared as blazes…I suppose we should be starting back.”

“Cold?”

“A little…It’s not the air…Sometimes the work we’re doing frightens me. It’s so remote from normal life. And death has such a close connection with it. I don’t like death, Don.”

Don kissed her. “I don’t either…Let’s go home.”

XII

Don, Jean, Dr. Cogswell, Kelso, Godfrey Head and Howard Rakowsky, met at 26 Madrone Place at eight o’clock the next evening. Cogswell introduced Rakowsky, a short dark man of forty-five, resilient and active as a ping-pong ball, as a fellow member of the Society for Psychic Research from San Francisco. Don inquired as to Rakowsky’s personal theories regarding spiritualistic phenomena, as he did of most people interested in the subject.

Rakowsky shrugged. “I’ve seen so much I’m confused. Ninety-five percent is fake. But that hard five percent—” he shook his head. “I suppose I take it at its face value: communication from the souls of the dead.”

Don nodded. “I’m a hard-headed Scot. I was skeptical until I had an experience that practically rattled my teeth. Our teeth, I should say. Jean and I saw a beautiful fiery ghost one night. I was startled enough to do some reading. I found lots of honest accounts—but none of them conducted under what a scientist would call test conditions. Our Exercise One the other night, so far as I know, is the first of its kind.”

“You were confounded lucky,” said Rakowsky. “Good mediums are gold.”

“Not to mention cooperative controls,” said Cogswell.

“We did pretty well,” said Don, “even though we still proved nothing, in a rigorous sense.”

Kelso blinked. “Surely you’ve proved some sort of post-death existence!”

“I’m afraid not,” said Don. “In fact I’d like to discourage that particular emphasis. The average dabbler in parapsychology, when he strikes a bit of evidence, thinks he’s proved that death isn’t final; that he’s demonstrated life beyond the grave. Being human, he’s overjoyed. He doesn’t worry about verification, or if he does, he interprets it to corroborate what he wants to believe.”

Rakowsky had raised his black eyebrows. “You sound as if you yourself have doubts.”

“I don’t think it’s proved,” said Don. “Not until there are no more alternative, equally consistent, theories.”