Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series) (8 page)

Whipple
then went on (in the same letter) to suggest a similar treatment of Doubleday:
"There will be no revision of Earth, Moon, and Planets (a book by Whipple)
forthcoming so long as Doubleday owns Blakiston (the subsidiary), controls its
policies, and publishes
Worlds in
Collision."

Yet
in a statement printed by the Harvard Crimson on September 25, 1950, Harlow
Shapley said: "The claim that Dr. Velikovsky's book is being suppressed is
nothing

but a publicity
promotion stunt. Several attempts have been made to link such a move to stop
the book's publication to some organization or to the Harvard Observatory.
This idea is absolutely false."

What
were these great men so frightened of?

Velikovsky's
thesis was to the effect that global cataclysms had fundamentally and
repeatedly altered the face of the planet Earth during historical times, that
the terrestrial axis had shifted, magnetic poles reversed, even a different
orbit established.

In
horrific convulsions, the oceans had replaced continents, Earth's crust had
folded, massive volcanoes spawned new mountain chains, lava flows of up to a
mile thick covered vast areas of the planet, climatological changes converted
lush gardens to frozen tundra, and forests became deserts.

Civilizations
collapsed in a wink and whole species disappeared as gigantic tidal waves swept
along the continents, crushing and burying everything in their paths.

Stunned
human survivors recorded the events as best they could, and those records
survive today for any who will look and see.

Velikovsky
looked, and he saw and reported it again. He also theorized a logical
explanation, based entirely on the evidence, of how it all came about. Jupiter
gave birth to Venus, which became a comet and roamed the solar system for eons
before inevitable celestial mechanics brought the huge mass into a collision
orbit with Earth.

It
is not even important to my point here that Dr. Velikovsky's radical theories
have been largely vindicated (though not on purpose) by new discoveries during
our space age. Venus is a hot body with a very thin crust, as Velikovsky
concluded, and it does rotate in a retrograde motion, again as he concluded.
Jupiter is a very hot body —now even possibly thought to be a dim companion
star to our sun—and it is a radio source, as Velikovsky theorized.

Many
other of Velikovsky's theories, regarding electro-magnetism and sunspots and
various other phenomena of our solar system, have been vindicated.

None
of that is the point.

The
point is that the entire scientific/academic community rose up to crush these
ideas even before they could be promulgated, and with the aim of suppressing
them rather than meeting them head-on in true scientific curiosity.

This
is one example of a human phenomenon, the curious workings of the mind having
to do with intellectual arrogance and survivalist instincts.

We
will meet another example later, in the discussion of a similar conspiracy to
suppress through ridicule all reasonable debates and/or researches of the UFO
question.

Then
we'll try to figure out why these people are so frightened.

Or
do we already know why?

Chapter Fourteen:
 
Star So Bright

Julie and I had fallen
asleep in each other's arms. I was awakened at a few minutes past two by a
bright light flashing through the bedroom, like automobile headlights can do if
you live close beside a roadway.

I
woke up with a start, thinking,
Oh hell,
they're back.

But
I couldn't hear anything unusual and Julie was sleeping peacefully, so I also
wondered if I had merely awakened from a dream. I carefully disentangled myself
from Julie so as to not disturb her sleep, sat up and lit a cigarette, and knew
that I was going to have a hell of a time getting back to sleep again, even as
tired as I was.

I'd
had only a couple of drags off the cigarette when I heard a movement somewhere
in the house. I was preparing to investigate that when a figure appeared in
the bedroom doorway. It was no more than an indistinct silhouette in the
darkness but I knew that someone or something was there.

So
I hit the bed lamp.

Julie
awoke with a jerk.

Penny
Laker was standing in our doorway. I thought at first that she was still in
"uniform" but as my eyes adjusted to the sudden light I could see that
she was wearing a skintight workout suit similar to the one I'd seen before. It
occurred to me in that same moment that the tights were also very similar to
the uniforms, and I again wondered if the whole saucer thing was mere delusion.
If so, then we had an even larger phenomenon, involving the workings of the
human mind, to consider in trying to understand a universal delusion shared by
every culture upon the globe.

All
that went through the mind in a flash and even as Penny spoke: "Julie? Is
the party about over? Can you take me home now?"

That
voice was quavery, frightened, confused, and finally embarrassed. Very
convincing. The real Penny Laker was back, or at least the one I'd known in the
past.

I
said, "We'll be right out, Penny."

She
retreated from the doorway but I could still hear her frightened breathing as I
pulled on my pants and growled at Julie, "Make it quick, huh."

Julie
nodded her head in understanding and I left her to pull herself together while
I went to talk her boss back into the terrestrial world.

I
hit every light switch we passed to dispel all the darkness inside there as I
took Penny to the kitchen. I sat her down and small-talked without letup while
building coffee and until Julie came to my rescue.

All
the while the actress kept darting glances everywhere and obviously trying to
pull the corners of her mind together in some understanding of where she was
and why.

I
would not have considered asking where she'd been and how she'd gained entry to
that locked house. She seemed to be under the confused impression that she'd
been asleep on the couch.

Julie
came in fully dressed and apparently ready to travel, the tote bag slung from
her shoulder. We had coffee and talked idly for several minutes but Penny was
still obviously very confused when they departed.

Julie
hung back at the doorway to brush my lips with hers and whisper, "I'll
call you."

I
whispered back, "Do that. And keep a close eye on your boss."

Hell,
I just couldn't figure it. Oh in medical terms, sure, it could figure. Dissociation,
split personality, etc. If she'd gone to a shrink and told him about the memory
gaps and waking up in strange places and stranger situations without
remembering anything about flying saucers or aliens, sure—there would be no
problem diagnosing the disease.

The
problem—and I'd been aware of it for years—is that in dealing with any disease
of the mind, the therapist is always using one imprecise term to define
another. With all the talk about chemical imbalances, inherited tendencies,
complexes, and the whole wide range of mental disturbances, nobody really knows
where the crazies come from or what initially produces them. There is not even
now a broad consensus among medical people as to how best treat the symptoms,
and apparently there is no such thing as a true "cure."

The
unhappy truth is that no one really knows what they are dealing with. They talk
about treating the mind without knowing even what or where the mind is. They
are really treating the brain, or trying to, and that organ is of such unutterable
complexity that any tinkering with it is as likely to hurt as to help.

Which
is why I get so upset with people who experiment on themselves with
mind-altering drugs. It scrambles the associations so delicately balanced to
produce a vehicle for consciousness in this space-time framework. Screwing with
the brain with chemicals is equivalent to going at a computer with hammer and
chisel, and I shudder at some of the things done under the label of medical
science.

I
could only guess at the confusions within Penny Laker's brain, never mind what
was causing them.

Because
I really did not know who Penny Laker was.

Hell,
I did not know for sure who I was.

The
human experience is a fragile thing. Presumably everything that we now know,
that we have ever known, and that we shall ever know in this lifetime, is the
result of the electrochemical exchanges within our gray matter. Nobody really
knows why the neurons fire, or how, or to what ultimate effect. We fire,
therefore we think. We fire, therefore we see, and hear, and taste, and smell,
and feel. We perceive our entire reality completely within the head; that is
where we meet the world, and dissect it item by item, then reconstruct it as an
image in the mind. That image is knowingness, yet all we ever know is the
image.

We
"know" by comparing images, by relating new ones to old ones held
captive in something we choose to call memory, and yet even the process of
searching memory and comparing images is electrochemical and made possible by
the firing neurons.

A
neuron, you know, is fantastically complex.

It
is much more mysterious than a flying saucer or interdimensional space. It is
literally a mind within a mind, and there are many billions of them in each
human brain. Yet many are specialists, designed to fire only under specific
circumstances and for specific effects, and the final image we get from
millions of simultaneous firings is totally dependent upon which ones fire and
in which sequence.

Don't
ever take yourself for granted.

You
are more marvelous and more intricate than you could ever imagine. And you are
not the images that appear to you. You are that which produces the images, the
whole intricate, marvelous, unimaginable complex of neuronal processes that
reproduce the universe within your skull.

But
surely you are more than that, too. It is my considered opinion that you are
that which produces the processes, but I cannot begin to imagine the ultimate
implications of that idea.

So...what
is it all about?

What
do they want?

I
am not even sure who "they" are.

But
I believe that the human brain is a multidimensional space-time model of the
universe. That being the case, we at least have the potential for being as
smart as they. And it seems entirely likely, yes, that our origins are the
same.

My
mind was thus occupied when the telephone rang and Ted Bransen again presented
himself to my consideration. The women had been gone for only a few minutes. He
yelled, "Have you seen Penny?"

"She
and Julie were just here," I replied.

"What
time is it there?"

"Little
after two," I told him.

"Shit,
I must be halfway around the world. It's past seven o'clock here! Listen, I'm
worried about Penny. I'm retaining you to protect her. I mean hire all the
people you need but I want her covered twenty-four hours a day."

I
said, "Ted, that's not necessary. She—"

"Don't
tell me what's necessary," he yelled. "I thought she was just going
fruitcake but now I don't know, I mean there's more to this than meets the eye.
But I guess you know all about that, don't you. This guy you sent me to. He's a
UFO expert. You knew that, huh."

"That's
why it's not necessary, Ted. There's no way to protect against this sort of
thing. But if it will make you feel any better, I am on the case and I am
trying to figure out what is going on and why. I suggest that you just try to
relax and—"

"What
the hell kind of talk is that? How can I relax? This friend of yours is taking
care of the paperwork for me. I don't know what his contacts are but he's
already in touch with the right people. They're going to put me on a plane at
ten o'clock. I should be back in there before midnight, your time. I don't
know, I think I might have to go to New York first and get a flight out of
there. Listen, this is crazy stuff. It's going to take me half a day to get
back home. And I'm just gonna sell the goddamn Bentley. No way am I going to
pay—where do those people get off with crap like this! Your friend says I'm not
the first. What is this?—practical jokes from outer space? I still can't
believe it!"

I
said, "Well, they did get your attention, didn't they."

"I
still don't know what to believe. But I am worried about Penny. I think this is
some of what she's been going through. So you sit on her tight until I get back
there."

I
said, "Sure, sure," and hung up.

Hell,
I couldn't even sit on myself.

It
seemed the edge of idiocy to try to play bodyguard against alien power when
even the combined might of all our armed services plus all our police agencies
appeared to be so helpless in the face of it that they wouldn't even admit the
problem. But since I was probably up for the night, anyway, I figured I may as
well spend the test of it parked outside the Laker mansion.

If
there were goings and comings there, I wanted to know about it even if I did
not know what to do about it.

So
I showered and shaved and made tracks as quick as I could. It was exactly three
o'clock when I took the Maserati out of the garage and set off for Brentwood.

I
knew exactly where it was.

All
I had to do was follow the star that was hovering high above it.

Someone
else, it seemed, was already sitting tight on Penny Laker.