Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector (10 page)

"Sounds like they might be watching a little too much TV," Bud remarked.

Bud regretted his comment as Rogo frowned at him. "I’m used to having my work here dismissed. Yet the possibility of finding some physical factor in the cortex leading to all this is too important to dismiss."

"Er—just mouthing off, doctor," Bud said hastily. "Have you found anything?"

"Some hints in the EEG charts and the stereoptical-tachystiscope studies."

"I’m not familiar with that term, sir," said Tom. "Medical investigations are pretty remote from what I do."

Rogo nodded. "Think of it as taking a detailed MRI of the functioning brain at intervals—a few seconds apart, say. A physical change, perhaps related to an ESP event, might have occurred; but the neural structures are far too complex and detailed for the human eye to note such a minute variation.

"But now imagine presenting both snapshots to the eye in rapid succession, carefully aligned by computer."

"Oh, I see," Tom responded. "Even a tiny change would call attention to itself in the visual field."

"It jumps out at you. And in that way I’ve identified some physical changes that might correlate with the subjective reports."

Bud spoke up. "If I’m not too much in the doghouse for being a jerk—do you ever test people to see if there might actually
be
something to their mind reading and so on? Is there a way to tell who’s really psychic?"

"I should probably give the standard answer: that science in general hasn’t confirmed that such powers have any existence beyond misinterpretations, coincidences, and test artifacts," replied Dr. Rogo with a smile. "But between us—I
have
seen some performances by my subjects that are hard to account for. In fact..."

The researcher strode over to a counter and picked up a small device resembling a CD headset. "This is a transponder array for an expensive instrument called a DEM-CS."

Tom knew of it. "A Directed Electro-Magnetic Cortical Stimulator. Bud, it uses focused electromagnetic pulses, from multiple directions, to selectively stimulate very small regions of brain cells. Surgeons have known for decades that inducing weak currents in key parts of the brain can cause some pretty impressive effects—overwhelming emotion, hallucinations, even something like ‘memory playback’ that’s as vivid as the original experience."

"A neurosurgeon, Penfield, discovered the phenomenon in the 1940’s," Rogo added. "When I’ve tested some promising individuals using the system they’ve reported strange-feeling, mystical states. There seems to be a significant improvement on standard tests for ESP during such episodes."

"But is it as good as holding hands at a seance?" Bud wisecracked, wishing too late that he had thought twice before cracking.

Tom and Dr. Rogo spoke for some time about his studies and his many subjects, and Tom was allowed to review some of Rogo’s files. "Mulver showed signs of a capacity, and the other two who have gone missing were quite phenomenal."

"It’s a correlation, maybe a clue," Tom mused. "But I take it you have no thought as to what might have happened to the missing two, or who might be after them for some reason?"

"Sorry, no."

As Tom and Bud prepared to leave, the young inventor found his eyes dwelling upon the DEM-CS machine. "Sir... I don’t suppose..."

Stanton Rogo chuckled. "
Everyone
wants to try the machine on for size! Think you might have a psychic gift?"

Bud answered for his pal. "Tom Swift has intuition like fish have fins! That’s kinda psychic, isn’t it, in a way?"

"All right, then. It’s quite harmless, completely noninvasive."

Sitting in a padded chair with a headrest, Tom waited as Rogo put the transponder headset in place and directed Tom’s eyes to a video screen in front of him. "Try to concentrate on watching the shifting light patterns. I’ll be monitoring some of your basic physiological outputs as we zoom-in on whatever ESP cells you might have under that crewcut of yours. Relax."

The test commenced. Rogo slowly adjusted the dials on the device. "Getting some reaction now," he muttered presently. "You can close your eyes."

Bud was watching Tom’s face worriedly. "Tom, do you see anything?"

"I... maybe... but I can’t tell if it’s seeing or hearing or just—thinking."

"All normal," stated Rogo. "The brain’s perceptual modes don’t always match up with the standard five senses. Say whatever you like, Tom. Don’t worry about making sense."

Tom licked his dry lips. "Funny feeling. I’m so high above everything it’s all
small
, far away. Shapes... many people talking, but what are they saying? Over there... a metal dinner plate on its rim... the ocean... somebody said ‘the second edge’...
Ow
! Cutting into my wrists!... What did you say?..." Tom paused as if listening intently. "December?...
aaah
!"

The last was a startling yelp! "Tom! Are you all― "

Dr. Rogo spoke over Bud. "It’s all right. Don’t shake your head, Tom. Lay back. Can you specify what you’re experiencing?"

Tom seemed to have great difficulty answering. "You all seem far away. Is that the sun? It’s
huge
, in the middle of... a green sunset!... swirling, boiling. What
are
those things? Someone is talking to me, but I can’t make out the words. I... I don’t...
take me out!
"

The scientist clicked off his machine and pulled the headset off his subject. "Your reactions are typical. Hard to remember after it’s over, isn’t it? Short-term memory doesn’t capture it very well, as in dreams."

Tom leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. Then, seeing the expression on Bud’s face, he gave his friend’s arm a squeeze. "I’m okay. Heart’s thudding."

"What was it like?" Bud asked.

"I don’t know how to put it into words, flyboy. Half the time it didn’t seem to be
me
who was experiencing it—and don’t ask me what
that
means!"

Dr. Rogo muttered, "Displacement of ego. What we like to call ‘myself’ is really a big collection of interactive ‘selves’ working cooperatively, it seems. This process provides a truer point of view."

Tom raised a rueful eyebrow. "So am I psychic, Dr. Rogo?"

"All I can tell you is, your pattern of physiological reactions was similar to those I’ve seen in subjects who did well on the ESP tests. Come back any time you have a few weeks free, and we’ll go into it!"

As the boys walked back to the Pigeon Special, Tom seemed weighed down with thoughts that he couldn’t share, and Bud refrained from probing. But as they neared the plane, Tom said suddenly, "Do we know somebody named Jennifer December?"

"Well, I don’t," Bud shrugged.

"That name—strange name, isn’t it?—is sort’ve stuck in my mind."

"You must have heard it during the test."

"Yes, I think so."

"Doesn’t mean anything to you, hmm?"

Tom shook his head slowly—and doubtfully. "I can’t say what the name means or who it is. But it’s like something you know that’s on the tip of your tongue."

Bud grinned. "Stuff like that bugs me. I’ll try to dig it out for an hour—then when I let it go, out she pops!"

Tom took the pilot’s seat. They were high up and bound for Shopton in minutes. Bud knew his friend was struggling with something. He
couldn’t
let go!

Finally the young inventor picked up the thread. "I think I have an appointment with her, Bud."

"With the mysterious Jennifer?"

"If I don’t keep it, something terrible will happen. Jennifer December..." Tom half-turned in his seat. "And I
know
who she is now. She’s the little girl we saw in space—on the way to the Green Orb!"

IF TOM expected Bud to be surprised, it was Tom who received the surprise. "I guessed it," the gray-eyed youth said mildly. "Don’t know why, exactly."

"At some point," Tom reflected, "I felt like I was on—
inside
—the Orb. I was looking out through the green stuff at the sun. But the sun was
swollen
and somehow... distorted. It filled the whole sky; yet it didn’t hurt to look straight at it."

"Were you afraid, pal?"

"I felt overpowering, intense emotions. Fear? I—I don’t know. As if there were
two
emotions at the same time, one awful and one..." Tom glanced aside toward Bud. "Joyful!"

Bud looked ruefully perplexed. "Maybe the answer’s to find this Jennifer kid. Or is she just another pink elephant, like what the others saw in space?"

Back at Swift Enterprises, the young inventor worked for a time on the telejector repair job. But the name Jennifer December continued to bob about in his mind, and at one point it nudged a hunch into view.

"Tom!" said the surprised voice at the other end of the phone. "Leave something behind?"

"No, Dr. Rogo. Sorry to interrupt you twice in one day."

"It’s no problem at all. What can I do for you?"

Briefly and undramatically—to the extent that such was even possible—Tom summarized his recent visionary episodes. "It just occurred to me. These incidents have some kind of psychic connection to one another, it seems, and—it’ll sound more
psychotic
than psychic, but have you ever had a little girl as one of your test subjects?"

The short silence in response was amazed! "Might you be referring to Jennifer December?"

"Good gosh, then you
do
know of her!"

"Yes, I surely do. I tested her last summer, along with some other residents of Bylands Residence School. It’s a private orphanage up in northern Maine. The staff physician, Lorna Darvey, is an old friend."

"Would you mind describing the girl, sir?"

"Very petite. Basically dark features, but her hair was blond as I recall. She was seven years old at that time."

Tom nodded to himself. The description matched! "Did she do well in the tests?"

"Unusually well," Rogo answered. "The only reason I don’t call her one of my ‘superstars’ is that she couldn’t stay long enough to complete the test protocol. But where on Earth did you run across her name?"

"It came to me, somehow, during your DEM-CS procedure."

"And her appearance too, evidently."

"Let’s just say I connected her name to an image in one of the vision-episodes. I’m sure it’s the girl you just described!"

Bemused and intrigued, Dr. Rogo provided Tom with the telephone number of the orphanage. When the youth clicked off after expressing his gratitude, he felt at last that he had made some progress!

Early next morning the telephone rang in Bud Barclay’s Shopton apartment. "Hey, genius boy! What’s up?"

"How’d you like to go with me down to Fearing this morning, pal?"

"Checking up on that mini-epidemic?"

Tom explained that Harlan Ames had directed his assistant, Phil Radnor, to fly down to look into the matter. "Harlan thinks it could have security implications, and there are some angles I’d like to probe myself, so I offered to fly Rad down in the cycloplane."

"Well sure, Tom," responded Bud excitedly. "Er—no breakfast? The
SwiftStorm
doesn’t have a galley like the
Sky Queen
, y’know."

"Come on! We’ll reach the Fearing mess hall
long
before your stomach starts eating muscle."

"Guess you’re right."

"Just come right on out to the airfield when you get to Enterprises."

"I have to
drive
?" Bud chuckled. "What’s the world coming to? You couldn’t just stop here for me in the cyclo?"

"And have your neighbors flood the Shopton PD with flying saucer reports?"

"They
are
a little excitable," conceded Tom’s chum.

In less than an hour Tom’s ultrasonic cycloplane was streaking southward toward the coast of Georgia, outracing sound as it balanced on its whirling lift-cylinders. "So this Jennifer kid is a real person, eh?" remarked Phil Radnor. "And you think she’s trying to get in touch with you?
Mentally
, yet?"

In the pilot’s seat, but with the craft’s cybertron brain controlling the flight, Tom replied. "That’s the impression I get—whether it’s coming from her directly, or from someone else concerning her."

"I getcha, Tom," said Bud. "That image in space might have been symbolic, not the little lady’s genuine astral body or whatever they call it."

"All these images may just be
byproducts
of some force that reaches directly into our unconscious minds," Tom elaborated thoughtfully. "Someone’s trying to get across a concept, a kind of
living idea
, which is so charged with emotion that it erupts out into the open, so to speak. But human sensitivity is mostly in the area of the visual sense, and so our brains’ basement gives these ‘signals’ the form of visible images—dresses them up, you could say."

"But several of you have seen the same thing," Radnor objected. "In my book, that means it’s real, not some kind of mental hallucination."

Tom smiled. "Good point, Rad. But I don’t mean they’re
hallucinations
—not exactly. Think of it as an artificial reality, a temporary construction that can only last for a few seconds. If one person is a better ‘receiver’ than the others around, he could act as a kind of repeating relay, causing others to see what he’s seeing."

"Wellllp," joked Bud, "if it reached through
my
thick skull, it’s mighty powerful stuff! But it’s sure no surprise that what Tom tunes in on would get passed along to me—or other simpatico types like Sandy and Bashalli."

After a supersonic jaunt the
SwiftStorm
landed, smoothly and vertically, on the Fearing Island airfield. The three breakfasted with Amos Quezada, Dr. Carman, and the head of island security, Mace Vendiablo.

"The eight victims have followed the same course as Arvid Hanson," reported Dr. Carman. "They’re all completely recovered, with no lasting effects as far as I can tell."

"And no one else here has contracted it?" asked Tom.

"Not so far," the medic replied. "The whole situation is most peculiar, gentlemen. It’s not overly unexpected that we haven’t identified the specific infectious agent for such short-lived cases. But I’m struck by the fact that Simpson and I have been unable to find reports of this condition anywhere else. The CDC knows nothing about it; neither do the many parallel agencies overseas."