Superstition

18

On reflection, Joanna decided to say nothing to her editor about what she had initially regarded as a breakthrough. A single rap, even though captured on tape, as was the reaction of the group on video, was far from conclusive proof that anything out of the ordinary had taken place. So she diligently started to research her story on the UN delegates in New York, while remaining privately convinced that she would soon be back on the Adam story full time.

She had seen her parents only once since their evening with Sam. On their last visit to the city he had been in Chicago taking part in some weekend-long symposium, and since then Bob and Elizabeth Cross had been in Europe. They were spending three months between London, Paris, and Rome. Her father had managed to swing it with the company as part work, part vacation: a kind of dry run for retirement, he called it. They had traveled increasingly in recent years. Her father's job with the airline provided them with almost unlimited free travel and offered major discounts at some of the world's best hotels. As her mother said, it was the best part of growing old-being no longer too poor or too busy to travel, and still young enough to enjoy it. Of course grandchildren would be nice, but she didn't want Joanna to feel any pressure on the subject.

A couple of nights after the first rap, and before the excitement had quite worn off, Joanna stopped by the lab around six to pick up Sam. They had planned to catch an off-off-Broadway theater group, then have dinner at a new Thai restaurant they'd heard about. When she got there, he and Pete had something to show her that they were very excited about. A friend of Pete's in the engineering department had analyzed the table rap that they'd gotten on tape. It had proved to be as radically different from any ordinary kind of knock as it had sounded. She pored over graphs and printouts that meant little to her aside from the obvious differences that Pete pointed to.

“In an ordinary rap,” he said, “if I hit the same table with my knuckles or a hammer or any hard object, the sound starts with maximum amplitude and dies away. This rap, on the other hand, builds up gradually and ends with maximum amplitude. It's exactly the opposite of normal.”

“They found the same thing in Ontario with the ‘Philip’ experiment,” Sam added triumphantly. “We're on our way.”

The theater show was interesting enough to keep them in their seats until the end, and the restaurant was worth waiting for. It was way up on the West Side, so they decided to spend the night at Sam's place. On the cab ride back he fell silent and she sensed a change in his mood. He was unaware of her watching him as he gazed out into the passing night. It was one of those moments of distraction she had learned to accept in him. It couldn't have lasted more than a minute, but when he turned to her it was with the look of somebody waking from sleep to find a loved one watching over them. He took her hand.

“Well…?” she said softly.

He shrugged. “Just the usual question. What does it all add up to? And if it doesn't add up to anything, why is it there?”

“I thought science didn't ask why. Just how.”

“I know. But as Roger likes to point out, his end of it has built the microchip and the Teflon frying pan, while we're no closer to understanding the paranormal than William James was in 1910. He wrote something that I've never had to memorize, because ever since I read it I haven't been able to get it out of my head.”

He paused a moment, his gaze going out again to the Manhattan night.

“‘I confess,’” he began quoting softly, “‘that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal measure, so that although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they also can never be susceptible to full corroboration.’”

“Good quote. I'll use it in the article.”

“You can add,” he said, with some of the usual vigor returning to his voice, “that it didn't stop him trying.”

She increased the pressure of her hand on his. “Can I tell you something?” she said.

“Sure.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “I love you.”

He looked deeply into her eyes.

“Funny,” he said, “I've been thinking the same thing.”

“Telepathy?”

“No, I don't think so.” They kissed again. “Just coincidence.”

The tub of warm paraffin wax excited much interest at the start of the group's next session. Sam repeated the story he'd told Joanna about the phantom hands in Paris.

“Now that's funny,” Maggie said pensively when he'd finished. “That's Paris three times.”

“How do you mean, Maggie?” Sam asked.

“These plaster casts you're talking about are in Paris. We put Adam in Paris. And Joanna was just telling me that her parents are on holiday in Paris.”

Sam thought about it, raised his eyebrows, then he laughed. “You're right. I wonder what it means.”

“The point of synchronicity,” Roger said, taking his usual place around the table, “is that it has no point.”

“Except insofar as it points to what Jung called ‘a unifying principle behind meaningful coincidences,’” Ward Riley demurred.

“The logic of that argument is flawed,” Roger responded, happy to have found someone he could argue with almost as vigorously as he did with Sam. “It rests on the assumption that coincidences are meaningful, for which there is no evidence. To say that a meaningful coincidence has meaning is to say nothing.”

“Steady, Roger,” Sam said, not wanting to be left out of this, “Wolfgang Pauli was on Jung's side. They even wrote a book on the subject.”

“I knew Pauli,” Roger said with a sniff of disapproval. “A genius, but given to flights of fancy, and he drank too much.” He pulled his chair up to the table in a way that suggested the subject was now closed.

When he had them all around the table, Sam announced the test results on the rap recording that Joanna had heard two days ago. Even Roger, she could see, was genuinely interested.

“The last session,” Sam continued, “marked a significant breakthrough, and I'm sure we're going to build on it. I suggest that we try to get a conversation going with Adam, first of all putting questions to him and having him answer one rap for yes, two for no.” He glanced around the group, and received nods of general assent.

“All right,” he said, “let's give it a try.”

He placed his hands lightly on the table in front of him. The others did the same.