Mind to Mind Read online

  These same gentlemen tell us, however, that the atom is not an object, not really; what it is, really, is a "field" of electrical energy, possessing mass and charge. Mass means weight. Charge means polarity, like negative and positive. There are so many of these atomic fields in your body that the total number must be expressed in mathematical shorthand. It is usually given as 5 x 1025—or 10 raised to the 25th power times 5. The 25th power of 10 is 1 followed by 25 zeroes. What this all comes to, as it would be written in the U.S., is 50 septillions. In case you are curious about that number, the progression goes thousands, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions, sextillions, septillions.

  But it is not like counting from one through seven; these astronomical numbers use a much higher order of magnitude. A million, for example, is a thousand thousands; a billion is a thousand millions; and so on, raising each step on the order of "thousands of." Thus one million is one thousandth of a billion, a billion is one thousandth of a trillion, and so on. A septillion is a very large number, and you have to count it out fifty times to call roll on the atoms of your body. Don't try it, though; you don't have that much time. If you could count one atom per second for 24 hours a day without pause, it would require nearly 1.6 quintillion years to complete the task. This universe has been here for only about 15 billion years, so if you'd started counting atoms to stuff into your body at the very moment of the big bang, you would have now gathered something like .000000009 percent of the total required, maybe enough to start a toenail. Of course, you'd have had to sort and classify them while you counted, work out the complex molecular arrangements and all that good stuff, so I doubt that you could handle one per second. I mean, you can't just scoop them up and drop them in the sack. You and I weigh out at about one trillion highly specialized cells each, with roughly 50 trillion atoms per cell, and the speciality of each cell is determined by the intricate arrangement of those 50 trillion atoms.

  I hope you don't think that I'm just trying to dazzle you with my footwork here. The point I am hoping to make is that we do, you and I, inhabit a splendidly ordered reality. But it is so large, in relation to us, that we are cast into the position of trying to apprehend the Milky Way from the interior of a cell within the belly of a flea somewhere in North America. It would seem impossible that we could do that. Impossible or no, we seem to be doing it. We do it, I believe, because there is some sort of marvelous linkage between the brain we use and the "brain" that uses us. I can no more hypothesize the dimensions or the complexities of that universal "brain" than could some thinker inside the flea examine the Constitution of the United States, nor can I rationally equate my standing under universal law as something similar to First Amendment protections for the being within the flea. The orator in the belly of the flea might thump the podium and declare himself protected by the American Constitution, but the U.S. Supreme Court has trouble enough deciding the issues of this larger reality; it can hardly be expected to concern itself or to even be aware of the world within the flea.

  And yet the same universal laws that regulate the life of the flea regulate also the lives of you and me. The same atomic fields, the same organization into living cells—the same logic pervades this creation from the biggest to the littlest of things. I call that order and purpose, and I respect it.

  I do not pretend to understand what is happening here. I am awed that I can even be aware that my perspective is somewhat analogous to that from within the flea, even more awed to realize that I am connected somehow, and involved somehow, in this stupendous process called existence.

  Just remember, though, that I give you that from the belly of the flea.

  Chapter Fifteen: Wherewith

  We had a lot to "skull," all right. But first things just simply had to come first. We purchased a few necessities from a shop in the lobby, then drove around to our room. It was very nice, spacious, overlooking the interior courtyard with its pool and water gardens, but neither of us was in much of a mood to appreciate that. We showered together and toweled each other dry, then I put that neat little package on the bed and massaged her to sleep. Took all of two or three minutes.

  I was pretty well shelled out, too, but I did not want to go to sleep. Well, I'll be honest...I was afraid to go to sleep. Afraid to let the guard down, I guess. And I definitely wanted to keep an eye on Alison. So I shaved and put my shorts on and took the vigil in a chair near the patio door, began reaching for some logic.

  Several things had to be considered, and they had to be scrutinized very closely. First of all, Jane's body. Was she moving it around? If so, how? Not by any usual mode of transportation, for sure. I did not even like to think about it but had to. Would have been far simpler and much more comfortable if we'd found that corpse where it was supposed to be, but even that would have been difficult enough. I would have been faced primarily with a materialization phenomenon. As it were, I had to find a way to deal with teleportation plus reintegration of a departed personality with a corpse. And that really bothered me. I had done some parapsychological research on the first bother, teleportation, nearly a year earlier, with entirely negative results. Not that there are not a few authenticated cases in the official literature of parapsychology. All the experts seem to agree that it does occur. But they all also disagree on all of the officially advanced explanations as to how it occurs—and these run from bioplasmic theories to multidimensional manifolds and quantum lattices. Very esoteric stuff and hotly contested.

  Even more bothersome is the question of carnal reintegration. Official parapsychology won't touch it. You have to go to religious "miracles" to get even close to that one. If you read the Christian Bible, then you know that Jesus did a neat reintegration job on Lazarus. And it seems that later he did one on himself. It is not all that remarkable in theology. Trouble is, these are all examples of divine intervention, and I hardly think that would apply to this case.

  That all means absolutely nothing, of course, when you are confronted with the phenomenon in direct experience. It just is. You have to accept that it is. But it does help to have at least some shadow of understanding if you do not wish to feel like Alice in Wonderland. I had not the merest shadow of understanding in this situation.

  And you hardly know where to begin. A disembodied spirit I can deal with—intellectually, at least. A lifeless corpse I can deal with. Put the two together; I cannot deal with that, not even if they belonged together before "death" occurred. And the thinking mind waffles. Is she really dead? Was there a mistake, a mix-up, and is poor confused Jane still really alive and well and merely seeking comfort as anyone would in the circumstances? If so, how did she get to Malibu—and how did she even know to go to Malibu? And how did she then get from Malibu to East L.A., my place to Alison's, wearing nothing but a damp towel and at the speed of light? How could so many professional people—from doctors and nurses to hard-boiled cops—be party to such a monstrous error?

  So you tell the thinking mind to settle down and accept the facts. Jane died. Her body was transported from the hospital to the morgue, which share the same grounds, and the transfer was duly recorded. Time of receipt at the morgue was 4:22 P.M. An official autopsy order is filed, and the body is placed in cold storage. About twelve hours later the body is in my bed at Malibu; it is apparently physically healed, very much alive, and the resident personality is obviously the same Jane Doe. So one can only state that Jane Doe was there. She made love to me with overwhelming ardor. She ate and drank, walked about the house, left a message on my computer, took a shower, zipped over for a quick visit with Alison, then physically vanished.

  How did she do that?

  And where is the body now? What has she done with it—or what had it done with her? Is it parked somewhere or is she parked somewhere? And if either is parked, parked where? What is the time limit on the meter?

  So much for Jane's body. I was left right where I started: nowhere.

  Next item: Jane's personality. With all the other magic afoot
here, why is she still aphasic? Why hasn't she just behaved herself and gone along with the other spirits, wherever that is? What does she want from me (other than what she already got)? What can I do for her now? Is she dangerous?

  Yeah, still nowhere.

  So: Vicky Victoria. Is there a connection there? In the file of incredible credibilities, could it be pure coincidence that she is the spitting image of Jane Doe...even to the aphasia? If wishes were fishes...

  Vicky is ten years old. Her aphasia is congenital, according to her adoptive mother who has had her since shortly after birth. Jane is somewhere in the frame of twenty-five to thirty; her aphasia can be explained as the result of recent injury—but who the hell knows if that is true? If someone bashed Vicky twenty years from now, wouldn't the same presumption be made if no one was there to tell the truth? What the hell could this mean?

  Why was I so uncomfortable with that adorable ten-year-old on my lap? I am not a pedophile. I had never felt that particular type of discomfort with a child. I did not make the "invasion scenario" in that respect until the incident with Alison in the car moments later. Thinking back, I had actually seen nothing in Vicky to warrant such a scenario; I had only felt a psychological discomfort I later linked to the incident involving Alison. Was the discomfort simply a natural movement of psyche caused by some unconscious linkage within my own mind between Jane and Vicky—as innocent, perhaps, as similarity of physical appearance?

  Right: another nowhere.

  And I did not know where to go from there. My instincts were telling me to bail out, get away. I did not like the "feel" to any of this. Yet I felt compulsively drawn to the situation, challenged by it, emotionally involved with all of the principals. Jim Cochran was a longtime friend. Not the type you hang out with or even keep in touch with between cases. But a friend in spirit. I liked the guy. His emotional involvement in the situation involved me also, even if that was all there was to it. But there was more than that. I liked that little family. I liked the mother and I liked the kids. I was emotionally involved there too.

  I had to admit that I was emotionally involved with Jane Doe too. The emotion had begun with her. Only later did it spread to include Jim and his family. I was also intellectually involved. I really wanted to know what the hell was going down here.

  Alison? Yes, I was involved with Alison. But not in a way that also involved this case, not essentially. Alison was a supernumerary in this case, only incidentally attached to it. Wasn't she? Well...she had been, until the incident in the car. And possibly I was reading more into that than it deserved. I had reacted to a situation, not analyzed it. People quite commonly deviate their eyes to one side or the other in normal reaction to everyday situations. You can even tell which side of the brain a person is thinking with if you ask a question and watch the eyes. An intellectual exercise will usually send the eyes rightward; an emotional one, leftward. Alison had been through a disturbing afternoon. She was beat. She relaxed in the car, lapsed into a wakeful right-brain state, avoiding the necessity to intellectually deal with a vexing problem—and that was all that I slapped her out of. Could be. Except that I had felt...

  I shivered in the memory of what I had felt at that moment. I was at an intellectual dead end myself—emotional as well, probably; fully ensconced in nowhere.

  So I picked up Jane's graphics and began studying them. I don't know how long I was engrossed with that—I mean, ten minutes, twenty minutes, who knows? I guess I had fallen more into a right-brain mode with only a background left-brain monitor. That is natural. I was dealing with shapes and forms, spatialities, patterns. Anytime you concentrate the attention on designs, the balance of power swings to the right without any conscious decision to do that. Which is why mandalas and various geometric patterns help in reaching meditative states. Meditation is a right-brain exercise except for that five percent of the population whose hemispheres are reversed. That is true of some left-handed people. If you are a leftie and write with the hand inverted—that is, turned back toward the body—then you are lateralized like the rest of us. But if you write with the left hand noninverted—hand straight, pointed toward the top of the paper—then your hemispheres are lateralized opposite to most people, with verbal abilities oriented right, spatial left. The same is true if you write with an inverted right hand. So if either of these cases apply to you, you are among the five percent to whom the left-right orientations apply reversely. I don't know that this has any particular significance in the workaday world; I note it here in case a few of you are confused by the eye-deviation matter mentioned just above.

  Anyway...I was buried in Jane's graphics. I don't know how long. Not long enough, anyway, to have reached any startling new conclusions. I was seated comfortably in an overstuffed chair, holding the long scroll-like paper in both hands, mentally immersed in the subject, when the paper began to vibrate, as from a gust of wind, then spontaneously separated into two pieces along a precise line as though cut by invisible shears.

  My small hairs erected as I gaped at the phenomenon, then I became aware of Jane's presence. I did not see her at once, only felt her close presence. I spoke her name softly, and instantly she began to materialize beside the bed. It was a slow process—well, relatively speaking; she did not just suddenly appear but began forming as a sort of fog without distinguishable features, then gradually resolved, like an image in a telescope or binoculars as you focus it in. I would say it was about a twenty-second process—then there she was, recognizable in every detail although still somewhat amorphous; that is, not solid but gaseous.

  She was looking at me, arms sort of outstretched like in an imploring gesture—I don't know, just a few seconds of that—then she turned about and lay down inside of Alison.

  So okay. We were somewhere now.

  I just wished it was elsewhere.

  Chapter Sixteen: Two-gether

  It was another of those purely reactive processes. I was up and moving across the room before the intellect really kicked into the situation. I dashed into the bathroom and turned on the cold water in the shower full-force, then went in and scooped Alison's petite body off the bed. I refer to her in that objective manner because I did not know for sure who I had in my arms there; Alison's body, sure, but who was really there?

  The eyes were deviated leftward. A soft moan escaped moistly parted lips as she snuggled to my chest and clutched me tightly about the shoulders. But then she stiffened as I lurched into the bathroom with her, and she began struggling in protest when she became aware of what I was trying to do. I was trying to get her under that cold spray of the shower, and she was fighting like the devil, pardon the expression, to keep us out of there, arms and legs flailing stiffly to block the doorway.

  She was articulating like hell, too—grunts and groans and a string of expletives—Alison's voice, sure, but peculiarly tinged with Jane's vocabulary.

  It was about a ten-second standoff before I managed to tuck her in and carry her through. The physical shock of the cold spray took my breath and hers too. She gasped, "Oh, no! Please wait!"—and that was the end of that battle. But then I immediately had another on my hands as Jane departed and Alison surfaced, sputtering and gasping in shock and outrage.

  “What are you doing!”' she cried. "Ashton, for God's sake!"

  I quickly mixed in some warm water and set her on her feet. I guess she could tell by the look on my face that I was not playing games with her.

  "You okay?" I asked soberly, shivering with more than the recent cold shock.

  She was frowning and rubbing an arm. Jane had not been exactly respectful of that flesh, flinging it about recklessly during the battle. "It's not the nicest way to wake up," she chattered. "What'd you do to my arm? God... my leg too. What... r

  I turned off the water, began toweling her dry, and told her, "Jane was here."

  She said, "Oh, God!" with a despairing little wail in the voice that also told me she'd already guessed it.

  That incident put an e
nd to the brief respite at Sportsman's Lodge. We got dressed—me without shorts, since they'd gotten soaked in the shower—and got out of there. Out of the room, that is. Alison was jittery, wanted to talk, but not in there. So we strolled the water gardens and soaked up some physical atmosphere while trying to collect the minds. Night had fallen. Which, for this time of year and with daylight savings time, meant that it was past nine o'clock. That surprised me; I had to glance at my watch to confirm the senses on that score.

  Also I was experiencing another of those vague disorientation effects. Senses were heightened or something. No color bursts at the back of the brain, but the outside world was colored a bit more vividly, even in the muted artificial fighting of the gardens. Spatial sensing was somewhat out of whack, too, depth perception affected. I nearly stepped off into a duck pond; would have done so but Alison intervened. Just wanted to look at a duck, not join him.

  She asked me, "Are you...feeling all right?"

  I assured her that I was fine. We sat on a bench. I lit a cigarette, crumpled the empty pack, tossed it basketball fashion toward a trash receptacle, missed by a yard. I was never much at basketball, but never that bad. I told Alison jokingly, "Okay, so I'm a bit scrambled in the cerebral reflexes. Jane seems to do that to me. It'll be okay in a minute."

  The clinician in her took charge, decided to check my proprioceptors. Those are specialized receptor nerves that inform the brain as to the body's mechanical status—what's happening where and why. She took my cigarette and ordered me to close my eyes and slowly bring together the tips of my index fingers. I failed that one four times in four tries. Then she stood me up, feet slightly spread, and gave me a gentle sideways push at the shoulder. That set me to wobbling like a top winding down, and I couldn't stop it until she steadied me again.