Eye to Eye: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (25 page)

I said, very quietly, "Not
this time, Isaac."

"I understand," he said. "You have worlds of
your own to conquer, first, what?"

I said, "Something like that, yes."

We shook hands, and then we embraced. There
were tears in his eyes. He said, "God bless you, Ashton."

"He blessed me with you, Isaac," I replied.
"And Holden, and all the others. Tell him, when you see him, that I
told you that."

He smiled a smile of pure
delight, turned it onto Holden, then the two old friends bade me
farewell and went arm in arm into the great room.

Laura had been waiting her
chance at me. She, too, embraced me, and very warmly. I kissed her
lightly on the lips and she gave me a moist nibble then laughed
softly and said, "I hope you understand."

I replied, "Of course I understand. Some
things I don't, though."

"Such as?"

"The rollback itself."

She said, "Well, don't
feel bad. It had us going for awhile, there, too. We were trying to
ascribe it to a chemical reaction, some hormonal effect at the
cellular level. Very dynamic process, you see. It took your
insights to make us see that the process was occurring at a much
more fundamental level."

"Which is?"

She laughed again and told me, "You already
have the answer to that."

"I do?"

"You gave it to us."

I said, "But I have a lousy memory."

She laughed some more—obviously very happy,
at this moment in time—then said, "There isn't time now, my dear,
to refresh your lousy memory but I'm sure it will all come back to
you, bit by bit. You will awaken in the middle of some night, I'm
sure, and cry out 'Eureka!' And then you will understand how
space-time structures are vested with living energy from outside
space and time to expand within space and time in thermal
equilibrium."

"You are speaking of an energy packet," I
decided.

"Of a type, yes. The
space-time structure that arises is a direct consequence of the
energy initially vested in a living field. This structure imbeds
itself in matter as a guiding-wave structure to harmonize with
spatial properties, expending its own vested energy in the process.
As the initial living energy is dissipated, the guiding waves are
proportionately weakened and the material structure suffers
consequent destabilization. This is the phenomenon we observe as
the aging process. It is not a strictly biological process, as
classical theory supposes, but is a consequence of
entropy."

I said, "Really."

"Yes. Well, to qualify that, entropic
influences within the living system which are then broadcast
throughout the biological structure."

I said, "So the rollback results from an
increase of energy in the living field."

"A shot in the arm, so to speak, yes. The
jinn revitalize the living system."

"Which, I suppose, are jinn, itself."

"Jinn systems," she corrected me.

"Got you," I said, but I was not sure of
that. I would have to think about it. Even then, probably, I would
never be sure.

I told her, "Godspeed,
Laura."

She told me, "Speed as
relative to what?"—laughed softly, pinched my cheek, and left me
standing there with forty billion questions trembling at my
tongue.

The adventure, yes, for these people, was
just beginning.

Chapter Thirty: Eye to Eye

For all my spouting on the
subject, I know nothing of life and death, birth to burial and all
that comes between. I am an observer and know it, but know not what
I observe nor even where I stand for point of view.

I began this case in one
of those unnerving confrontations with brutal death and I am still
aware of the bruises placed upon my senses by that confrontation,
but I am no closer to an understanding of any world in which such
ignoble trespasses occur as a matter of routine. I am aware of and
immersed in the human longing for justice and beauty and
compassion, and all the transmutations thereof as viewed in our
institutions and philosophies, so I cannot turn blindly and mutely
away from human suffering with trite phrases to appease the pain,
and yet I know that the brutalities and the ugliness and the pain
inherent in our human situation is not the true story of mankind,
is not the moving force that propels us from amoeba to starman—but
also do I stand dumb and frozen in the apprehension of that force,
unable to comprehend or to even intelligently examine its face or
its implications.

So that is where I was, on
that Tuesday morning atop Mount Palomar, as my new friends made
final preparations for the greatest adventure of all. Isaac had hit
it squarely on the head in his observation, moments earlier, that I
would not join them in the adventure because I had my "own worlds
to conquer." All of my worlds are within myself, and I had
conquered none of them. How would I then dare to venture into a
greater unknown, unsure as I was of the most intimate
unknowns?

I could not go with them,
no, but I must admit that I greatly would like to have done so. I
felt a deep sadness, also, with the realization that the time for
the great farewell had arrived. I had developed a strong affection
for these hardy souls, despite the brief time I'd known with them,
so it was an especially emotional moment when Holden came back to
me in the "safe zone" to take my hand once again in a private
good-bye.

"Wouldn't be here, except
for you, you know," he reminded me, the strong old voice thick
with emotion. "You are a remarkable young man. See to it that you
stay that way. Do not surrender to frittery. Keep the horizons
distant."

I replied, "Thank you, Holden. Come back to
see me, from time to time, why don't you. Keep me straight. The
door is always open, you know."

He said, "Ho, yes, that would be bully. Very
well. I shall try to arrange that."

And then there was Jennifer again.

She told me, "I think I just may find the
time to do it all. What do you think of that?"

I told her, "Eternity is a very long time.
So why not?"

She kissed me, passionately, said, "I'm
going to do this again someday, too. With you."

I said, "Maybe you will, kid. I hope you
do."

"You're still calling me 'kid.' That's
sweet."

I said, "Are we talking biological age or
what?"

She said, brightly, "You're right. Maybe
you're old enough, somewhere, to be my
great-great-grandfather."

I told her, "I think it's more likely that
we all began together, in that 'somewhere,' where time and age are
meaningless."

She arched her brows at me and said, "Give
me time to think about that, eh?"

'Take all the time in the
world, kid," I told her. "You've got it."

And then, finally, there was Isaac.

I asked him, "Are you Esau? Or are you
Jacob?"

He laughed dryly as he replied, "Delighted
that you read the old accounts, Ashton. Keep doing so. Much wisdom
there, if one can find the key. Take that very story, now..."

I wondered, "Who told it first?"

He suggested, "In your terminology, perhaps
it told itself."

"I like that, yeah," I decided.

"All the records are in the lab, Ashton.
We've combined them all into a commentary. I doubt that much can be
done with them, without the jinn, but..."

I said, "Well, it will keep the boys busy
for a long time, anyway. Maybe it will even inspire some new
mandala theory and a new age of wizardry."

He sighed. "At least there
will be no jinn bombs. I jest, of course."

I said, "Yes, I caught you there,
Isaac."

He went away smiling, and that is my final
memory of Isaac.

It was twenty minutes
before four o'clock on Tuesday morning, Palomar Mountain time, when
they all took their places in the circle. Several new items of
instrumentation had been added to the equipment. The control panel
was preset with an automatic timer and I had been cautioned to
remain in the safety zone behind the bar. There was no light in
there, now, except that provided by the starry night, but I could
see them clearly, all of them, and I could even hear their excited
breathing.

But then the machinery started.

I was staring so intently into that twilit
room, for what seemed an interminable period, but later turned out
to be a matter of some thirty seconds, that I began to wonder if my
eyes were playing tricks.

I could see movement, in
there—or I guess you could call it movement, some fine
disarrangement of the molecular atmosphere, and this movement was
infused with a pale glow of color. I wondered if that same effect
had been present when I was in that circle during the earlier
"experiment" or if this was a new wrinkle produced by the added
instruments. I would want a shot at those records in the lab but
doubted very much that I would ever see them. And I wondered if I
were seeing the jinn or the jinn effect—like a bubble chamber—or if
my eyes were just playing tricks.

But then I saw Holden lean forward in his
chair and swivel that beautiful old head toward me. He was glowing,
and I mean literally. As bad as the lighting was, I could have
counted the hairs of his brows, and I knew that he was looking me
straight in the eye.

Something happened there,
in that eye contact. Something ignited inside my own head and I had
the sensation of peering out through a telescope—or maybe it was
down through a microscope—infinity is infinity, isn't it, from
whichever end—I just know that I was looking into an entirely
different reality, and I was seeing it through that eye-to-eye
contact with Holden.

It was a brief glimpse,
the flash of a shutter and then it was gone, and I realized that
although I seemed to be looking through Holden I was no longer
looking at Holden. That is, not the physical Holden. I blinked, and
in that blink the whole thing resolved and I could see the physical
Holden in his chair, head swiveled for eye contact with me, and I
saw also another Holden, an ephemeral Holden shimmering against
the window glass some ten to twelve feet above the physical Holden,
a rapidly shrinking holographic image of Holden.

This was all very quick,
hardly more than a finger-snap in time, yet I saw it clearly. The
holographic image, or whatever, contracted to a point then flared
up again and expanded instantly into an almost fearsome sight. The
closest thing to which I can relate this second image are drawings
I have seen of the human nervous system—the nerve trunks,
themselves, streaming down from the brain, and of course the brain
itself. Then, much quicker than I can tell it, here, that second
image convoluted into a small standing wave of sheer energy,
contracted to a point, and vanished.

I said, or something inside of me cried out,
"Ho! bully!"—but already I was involved in the other
transfigurations as one-by-one they slipped away and winked into
the night.

To say that I was overcome
by all this is to simply lose the meanings of words. I was frozen
to the bar stool, a lump of space-time matter attempting to
assimilate the meaning of meaning, and I was still there at four
o'clock when Souza and the advance guard entered the
house.

Someone turned on the
lights and someone else threw the main power breaker to the
equipment. That broke my spell but I still sat there a frozen lump
while Souza ventured into the circle.

A moment later, I heard him say, his voice
coining as though from the far side of the universe, "They're dead.
My God, they're all dead."

But I knew better. I could
still see in the eye of my mind that thoroughly delighted and
enraptured old face of my good friend Holden as he swirled to a
kinder place, where time and age are not even states of mind,
simply do not exist, and cannot be found in the meaning of
meaning.

Ho! Bully!

Epilogue: Casefile Wrap-Up

Well, I did not get that ride in a saucer,
or even see one, but any flying machine has to be satisfied with
ranking as a minor phenomenon and nowhere in the same class with
jinn, so what the hell. I guess they departed with the team,
because I have found no "static" around Palomar since that
event.

But where did they "depart" to? "Where is
that?" as Holden would say.

I wish I knew. I have had
all manner of weird dreams, almost on a daily basis, ever since—but
they do not really tell me anything useful. It is not enough to
simply declare that they are "dead," because I really cannot think
of them that way. There were no marks on the bodies, no visible
evidence of any sort of destructive violence, and I cannot believe
that those people were even remotely thinking of "dying"—at least
not in the usual sense in which we humans commonly think of death.
Rather, they evinced all the excitement and sense of adventure of
any travelers embarking on a delightful exploration of uncharted
territory. The general mental atmosphere shared by that entire
group during those final minutes on earth was one of "sober joy,"
if that is not a contradiction in terms.

I have to believe that they had some
understanding, or at least some presentiment, of what they were
headed toward. The whole phenomenon of biological age regression,
mind-blowing in its own right, was reduced to a mere side-effect in
their total sensing of what was opening to them. Certainly they had
not invited me to join them in a "suicide pact," for God's sake,
but in an exciting adventure.