Superstition

29

All I can say is that Drew and Barry were ill matched to this experiment. It's my fault-I chose them.”

Joanna gave a wry smile. “They said you'd explain it away.”

“That's not what I'm doing,” he protested. “Explaining it away is saying it didn't happen. I know what happened. All we're talking about is how. Frankly, an eighteenth-century alchemist coming back from the dead doesn't cut it for me.”

They were in Adam's room, she and Sam seated on either side of the new table that had been installed that afternoon, and the lanky form of Pete leaning in a corner, arms folded, watching them.

“Okay,” Joanna said, “so give me an explanation that does cut it for you.”

Sam accepted the challenge with an open-handed gesture. “Barry already had a book about Cagliostro in his library, so he knew about him when Ward first mentioned the name. He says he never saw the design on this so-called magic talisman until last night, but the fact is it existed. He might have seen it and forgotten. Ward might have seen it. Any member of the group could have seen it, but without consciously remembering having done so. The mention of Cagliostro, however, brought it back into play, so-bingo! — it manifests itself in the way we saw. That's the whole point of what we're trying to demonstrate with this experiment.”

“But what about what happened last night? Why did Barry go into that particular bookshop? Why did that particular book fall open at that particular page?”

“We only have Barry's word for the fact that it happened like that.”

“Oh, come on. Why would he lie?”

“I don't know. People have their reasons. All I'm saying is he could have lied-we weren't there.”

“You're doing exactly what you accuse people of doing to you-rejecting an uncomfortable truth by demanding impossible standards of proof.”

He slapped the table with his open hand. “I know! Don't think I'm unaware of the irony.” Then he laughed. “Sorry.”

Pete stirred in his corner, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and refolding his arms. “The problem is that some as yet undiscovered force field emanating from the human brain is every bit as unverifiable as the malevolent spirit of a dead alchemist.”

Sam cocked an eyebrow in his direction. “Maybe so. But which sounds the more likely to you?”

“Which sounds more likely,” Joanna said, “is hardly a scientific test.”

“On the contrary,” Sam contradicted her. “The principle of Occam's razor: Never impose a complicated explanation where a simpler one will do.”

“I'm not sure,” she said, being deliberately provocative now, “that a force field emanating from the human brain is a simpler explanation than a dead alchemist coming back from the grave. How does this force field do what it's doing, anyway?”

“By interacting with other force fields around it-and matter is a force field. There's nothing solid in it. It's just a rearrangement of the same force fields that make up space or the scent of flowers-or the brain itself and the thoughts in it.”

“Why is it we can't identify this force field-‘psi’-when we've identified so many others?”

“I don't know. But I do know that the one sure way to go down in history as an idiot is to proclaim that anything's impossible. Like the professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins who said that powered flight would never happen-two weeks before the Wright brothers took off from Kitty Hawk. Or the astronomer who said ‘space travel is bunk’ just before the Russians launched Sputnik I. Or the whole posse of distinguished experts who said that electric light was an idiotic idea and that Edison didn't understand the first principles of electricity. And don't forget the admiral who told Harry Truman, ‘The atom bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert on explosives.’”

“All of which,” she persisted, undeterred, “means that it could be the alchemist after all.”

Sam shrugged. “It could be invisible green men from Mars. I'd still want to find out how they did it.”

She looked from one to the other. “So, what do we do? Quit? Or carry on without Drew and Barry?”

“You know what I think,” Sam said. “I think we should carry on. But it's up to each member of the group to decide for themselves.”

“What about you, Pete?” she asked.

Pete gave a brief laugh. “The trouble with pulling out now is we'd be buying into the Frankenstein syndrome.”

“The what?” she inquired.

“You know-that bit in all the old movies where somebody realizes what the mad scientist is trying to do, gives him a meaningful stare, and says, ‘There are some things, Professor, that humankind should never seek to know…’”

Sam looked amused. “I think that's the real reason why Roger and Ward are still open to the idea of going on.”

“Are they?” Joanna asked, mildly surprised.

“They'll go along if the rest of us will.”

Pete looked at Joanna. “How about you?”

She looked at the wall where Drew's sketch of their imaginary Adam still hung. “Maybe in playing with this kind of stuff,” she said, “we just stir up problems for ourselves that we could do without.”

“You've already been cursed,” Sam said, “so we know you're immune.”

It was meant as a joke, but the way she looked at him told him she hadn't taken it as one.

“Do we?” she said.

He leaned forward, immediately contrite. “I'm sorry. Look, if you've any doubts at all…”

She cut him short with a shake of her head. “It's okay. I'm a reporter. As long as there's a story, I'll stay with it.”

“Anyway,” he said, reaching over to take her hand in his, “even if we believe this nonsense, which we don't, we still haven't looked into anyone's eyes and at this,” he jabbed a contemptuous finger at the picture of Cagliostro's talisman, “at the same time.”

Joanna's eyes flashed between it and the drawing of Adam and back again, and she felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck that made her shiver. She freed her hand from Sam's and flipped the book shut.

“Let's keep it that way,” she said, “just in case.”