Superstition (9 page)

“Foolish old women and nervous bachelors,” Roger interrupted scornfully, “holding hands in darkened rooms, waiting for a sign from Mother on the other side. Good God, you're not calling that science, are you?”

“Some of the best minds of their day were involved, here and in Europe—doctors, physicists, philosophers, people whose work in their own fields still stands today—”

“And it's that work for which they're remembered—not for dabbling in senseless mumbo jumbo that led nowhere.”

“On the contrary, they saw that something very interesting was happening, and they had the intellectual curiosity—and honesty—to try to find out what it was. You taught me that the essence of the scientific method is the willingness to place one's own ideas in jeopardy.”

“Which they did, quite rightly—and came up with nothing! As long as there is not a single repeatable experiment to prove the reality of ESP—”

“There are many repeatable experiments that prove beyond doubt the effect of consciousness—both human and animal—on random events. The statistics are there to be seen.”

“Statistical proof is a contradiction in terms.”

“The laws of physics are statistical.”

“Quantum events may be unpredictable, but they average out to give us laws which are consistent—enough so that we use them in everything from digital watches to space shuttles. Your so-called experiments add up to no more than a scattering of anomalies from which no coherent pattern emerges, and for which there appears to be no practical use. All you have is some vague unknown force called ‘psi’ which is supposed to account for whatever minor deviations from chance you've observed.”

“‘Psi,’ my dear, bigoted Roger, is no less definable than what you call the ‘observer effect’ in physics. Now are you going to tell me that
that
doesn't exist?”

“You can't extrapolate from the micro world to the macro.”

“You can't draw a line between them either. They're not two different things, just opposite ends of a spectrum.”

“At my end of which are the basic limiting principles of science, and at yours anything goes. So-called ‘psi’ abilities,” he spoke the word with deliberate scorn, “are supposed to operate as though space and time were meaningless. Forget the inverse square law, relativity, and thermodynamics—‘psi,’ which we can neither measure, predict, nor otherwise define, rules the universe. You're running a religious cult, not practicing science.”

“If you're so keen on basic limiting principles like cause and effect, why don't you come and look at what I'm doing before you make up your mind about it?”

“Because I know without looking that I can't disprove any of your claims, and that's why they don't interest me as a physicist and never will. The essence of any scientific theory is that it remains open to being proved false in the light of fresh evidence. The essence of any crackpot idea is that it cannot be proved either true or false in any circumstances.”

“What if you sat in a room and watched a table move around, and even levitate, of its own accord—all in broad daylight?”

“I would applaud an excellent conjuring trick.”

“It's been done—morethan once. I'm going to repeat—note that word repeat—the experiment, and it is not a conjuring trick.”

“Then I would echo the view of David Hume on miracles—that it is more rational to suspect knavery and folly than to discount, at a stroke, everything that past experience has taught me about the way things actually work.”

Joanna had been sitting like a spectator in the stands as the two men batted their argument back and forth across the room. She wanted to get the exchange on tape for use in writing her magazine piece, but hesitated to do so openly without the professor's agreement. So she had furtively slipped her hand into her bag and pressed the record button, hoping that the machine would pick up at least some of the exchange. She felt a moment of guilty unease as Fullerton suddenly looked her way.

“What do you think of all this, Miss Cross? As a journalist?”

“As a journalist, Professor, I'm not supposed to have a view. I just try to write about both sides of the argument.”

It sounded a little mealymouthed, and was in fact untrue. But this was not an argument that she particularly wanted to find herself in the middle of.

“But you must have some personal feelings,” Fullerton persisted. “Everybody does, one way or another.”

“Well, I suppose I think, you know, maybe there are ‘more things in heaven and earth’…”

She broke off the quotation without bothering to finish it.

“But I can't give any good reason. Except my father, who's a very down-to-earth man, claims to have seen a flying saucer one time when he was a pilot in the navy.”

“Wait a minute,” Sam interrupted, “I don't mean to be rude, but just for the record, UFOs and crop circles have nothing whatsoever to do with parapsychology.”

Joanna gave him a look that, in the sweetest possible way, warned him not to patronize her. “Jung thought that UFOs were
tulpas
,” she said. “I researched the subject after you mentioned it the other day—thought-forms either created in the past but still manifest, or being created now by the collective unconscious.”

Sam held up a hand. “I stand corrected. You're right.”

Roger beamed his approval. “It's nice to know,” he said, “that somebody can make him acknowledge the error of his ways.”

“I wish I could say the same about you, Roger,” Sam retorted, “but I can see you're determined not to join us in an experiment that might shake some of your rigid preconceptions.”

“Not join you?” the old man said, eyebrows shooting up in mock astonishment. “If you imagine that I'm going to pass up the chance of holding hands around a table with this young lady for the next few weeks, not to mention watching you make a buffoon of yourself, then you're even dafter than I thought you were.”

It had stopped raining when they walked back to the car. Every step of the way Sam was grinning from ear to ear.

12

J
oanna's parents came in from Westchester County one weekend out of three. They stayed at the same small hotel behind the Plaza that they'd used for twenty years, and where they were gold star clients and got a preferential rate. Their usual routine was to take in a show, maybe catch a movie or an exhibition, and see their daughter.

Elizabeth Cross was an attractive woman with a good figure and a flair for simple, stylish clothes. She looked a good deal younger than her fifty-six years, as did her husband, Bob, who would be sixty in the spring. Although of only medium height and balding now, he still had the trim physique and confident agility of a much younger man. Joanna was always proud to be seen with her parents. Normally the three of them would dine in some favorite restaurant. Tonight was no exception, aside from the fact that they were going to be four: Joanna had invited Sam to join them.

To get the introductions over in as relaxed an atmosphere as possible, she had everybody over for a glass of champagne at her tiny apartment in Beekman Place. Sam, as Joanna had expected, was charming and amusing and completely at ease. She could tell that her father liked him at once, though her mother was less than at ease with his choice of profession.

“Is it anything like that film
Ghostbusters
that's always on television?” she asked.

Sam smiled. It was question he was familiar with.

“Nothing so dramatic,” he said. “I only wish it were. But we're just scientists investigating hard-to-categorize phenomena.”

“Something like
The X-Files
?” her father suggested.

“A little, I guess, in some ways. Except we have nothing to do with the government.”

“But this thing about creating a ghost,” Joanna's mother persisted. “It sounds positively morbid.”

During the cab ride to the restaurant, which was in the sixties between Lexington and Third, Sam explained in as much detail as he could what the experiment was designed to achieve. Joanna could see that her mother wasn't much reassured, but her father was fascinated.

“So let me see if I've got this right,” he said, after they'd been seated at their table and placed their orders. “Telepathy is communication mind to mind, while clairvoyance is seeing some place or event, as opposed to the contents of another mind.”

“Correct,” Sam said, “although there's obviously some overlap. Seeing at a distance often involves seeing what somebody else is seeing.”

“Precognition,” Joanna's father went on, ticking the subjects off on his fingers, “speaks for itself, though why these people who can do it don't just get rich at the racetrack I don't understand.”

“Well, sometimes people do predict a winner,” Sam demurred. “It just isn't reliable enough to beat the odds consistently.”

“And finally there's psychokinesis, which means mind over matter—moving solid objects by thought alone.”

“And maybe creating solid objects,” Joanna added. “Or at least solid-looking.”

“Well, I think it all sounds very strange, and I'd rather have nothing to do with it,” Joanna's mother said. “Call me superstitious if you like, but I think there are some things in this life that we should just leave alone.”

“Elizabeth, if we all took that attitude, we'd still be living in caves,” Joanna's father said. “Today's technology is yesterday's magic. People were burned at the stake for ideas that led to Teflon and television. Hey, Sam, did Joanna ever tell you that I saw a flying saucer one time?”

“Oh, Bob!” Elizabeth said reproachfully, as though he'd made some social faux pas in polite company.

“Yes, as a matter of fact she did, Mr. Cross.”

Elizabeth got on with her dinner as her husband told the story that she'd heard too many times. She had always felt that some unspoken stigma attached to any claim to have seen UFOs, ghosts, or anything else sufficiently out of the ordinary. It was something that set you apart from other people, and she dearly wished that her husband would not talk so freely of his experience.

“I was flying an F-14 off the
Nimitz
in the west Atlantic. I came out of some high cloud around twenty thousand feet—and there it was. It was about three miles east, just hovering there, a silver disk shape, no windows, no lights as far as I could see. But solid. I reported in. They said they had nothing on their screens. I turned to investigate, and as I approached, it just kind of shot off like it was on a wire or something. It didn't accelerate the way any regular craft would. It just went straight from zero to bat out of hell. Disappeared in two, three seconds—just like it hadn't been there. But to my dying day, I'll know what I saw.”

They talked around the subject for a while, but Joanna was conscious of Sam's subtly steering the conversation toward other topics in deference to her mother's unease.

Later, when Elizabeth left the table to go to the women's room, Joanna went with her. She watched her mother as she reapplied her makeup in the mirror. There was something clipped and too brisk in her movements, as though she wanted to communicate that she was unhappy but didn't want to say it.

“You okay, Mom?” Joanna ventured cautiously.

“Yes, of course, darling. Why?”

“I just thought you were a little quiet.” The comment drew no response, so she continued, “Are you still having that dream that you told me about on the phone?”

“Dream? Oh, that—no, I haven't had it since we talked.”

“That's good.” Joanna checked her hair in the mirror, turned, flicked an end. “I didn't much care for that idea of being locked out in the rain all night.”

Another silence as her mother snapped her compact shut and took out a lipstick. “If you're waiting to hear what I think of Sam,” she said after a moment, “I think he's very nice.”

“Nothing was further from my mind,” Joanna said airily. Then added, “But…?”

“I didn't say ‘but’…”

Joanna waited as her mother applied a touch of color to her mouth and pressed her lips together. “But, since you mention it, it does seem a rather strange choice of profession.”

“He's a psychologist. What's strange about that?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. A psychologist is a doctor. That's not what he does.”

“A psychologist is not necessarily a doctor. It's someone who studies some aspect of human psychology.”

“Exactly—
human
.”

“Mom, he's not weird. In fact he's one of the sanest and most intelligent men I've ever met.”

“I'm sure he is. It's just that I find this whole thing you're getting into very—I don't know—uncomfortable.”

“What whole thing?”

“This whole world of weirdness. I wish you'd go back to writing those travel pieces you used to do. Or more of those reports on the environment.”

“I'm a journalist,” Joanna objected stiffly. “I have to cover whatever the magazine wants.”

“Well, the sooner you've covered this particular subject and moved on, the happier I'll be. I still feel a shiver down my spine every time I think about those horrible people you wrote about at that Camp whatever-it-was-called. It's better not to get involved.”

“That was a scam that had to be exposed.”

“So what's the difference between that and what Sam's doing?”

“There's no comparison. This is scientifically based research.”

“Then I'm probably wrong and we won't talk about it…”

Elizabeth Cross gave her reflection one last check and started for the door. Joanna followed her out, catching up with her in the corridor.

“Mother, that is your most irritating habit.”

Elizabeth gave her a look of innocent surprise. “What is…?”

“You know perfectly well—saying something provocative just as you walk out the door and before anyone can call you on it.”

They had reached the stairs. Elizabeth Cross paused with one foot on the first step and turned to her daughter.

“I wasn't aware that I had said anything provocative.”

Joanna felt her lips twitch, and was immediately aware of her mother's amused reaction. That twitch had been a habit of Joanna's since she was a child, and she cursed herself for never having mastered it. It meant that she had put herself in the wrong—said too much or something she didn't mean—but would die before admitting it.