Superstition

31

They all met just after six at Sam's apartment. There had been an unspoken agreement to avoid the lab, and in spite of a cold wind that had brought in a driving rain from the Atlantic, everyone preferred to make the trip to Riverside Drive. Sam offered drinks or coffee, but nobody wanted anything. Without further preamble he said, “Joanna's found out a couple of things that she thinks you should hear.”

She was sitting on the window seat where they'd huddled together on the first night they'd made love. Gazing out into the darkness over the Hudson, Sam had wondered aloud whether he might conceivably persuade Roger Fullerton to be part of the experiment they were planning. It was only a few months ago, but it seemed like a lifetime. Now Roger Fullerton sat in an armchair opposite her, looking drawn and tired and probably wishing, she imagined, that he'd never heard of any of them. Sam leaned against the arm of the sofa on which Ward and Pete sat.

“I talked to the police patrol who were first on the scene,” she began, looking down at the scribbled notes in her hand. “They have no explanation of what caused the accident. Barry was at the wheel and had an unblemished driving record. Blood tests for drugs and alcohol were negative. An autopsy revealed no underlying medical condition such as heart attack or stroke. The roads were dry and visibility good. There was no skid and apparently no tire blowout. The car was new and the model has no history of mechanical failure. No other vehicle was involved, but three people witnessed the accident and they all tell the same story. The car was traveling at between fifty and sixty miles an hour, and for no apparent reason it swung across two lanes, onto the hard shoulder, and slammed straight into the concrete support of an access bridge. One suggestion is suicide, because the car seemed to take such a direct aim.”

She paused, put away her notes, and went on speaking, but without looking at any of them directly. They, too, avoided making eye contact with her.

“I don't think the suicide theory holds up for several reasons. For one thing I just don't believe it. For another, I found out that Drew and Barry were on their way to see a priest when it happened. His name is Father Caplan. He was Drew's parish priest in Queens before he was moved out to some tiny parish near Ardmore three years ago. Drew had gotten very close to him when their child died. I spoke with him on the phone and he said that Drew had called him early that morning, around seven, and asked if she and Barry could come out and see him. She said it was urgent. He got the impression that they were both very frightened about something, but she wouldn't tell him what it was on the phone.”

She stopped, and now her gaze swept briefly over the four men in the room with her. “That's all I've got.”

Sam pushed himself up from the arm of the sofa. He paced a few steps, then cleared his throat and said, “Anybody have anything to say?”

Roger stroked his mustache and looked down at the floor. Pete sat with his hands between his knees. Ward Riley sat with legs crossed and arms folded, his gaze searching the ceiling.

“I suppose the question in front of us,” Ward said eventually, breaking a silence that was becoming charged with awkwardness, “is whether we feel we should do something or not?”

“Such as?” Sam asked.

“Should we at least say something-to Drew and Barry's family? The police? Or this priest even? About what's been happening in the group?”

Once again nobody spoke. Then Sam said, “We can't be sure that what happened in the group was what they were going to see this Father Caplan about.”

Roger gave a grunt of bleak amusement.” Why don't we just assume it was?”

“All right,” Sam said after a moment, “let's assume that we all know why they were going to see the priest. There's nothing we can say or do that would change the situation, or throw any light on it-at least not what most people would call light.”

“Can I say something?” Pete's voice was tight and trembled slightly, his chin still thrust down on his chest. “There's something I can't get out of my mind. I have to say it.” He glanced up briefly. “I'm sorry, Sam.”

“Say anything you like, Pete. That's what we're here for.”

“A few years ago I met a woman, it wasn't a relationship or anything, just somebody I knew. She claimed she'd been a witch when she was younger, but wasn't anymore. She said never underestimate the power of witchcraft. They can kill you just as easily as look at you. No one ever suspects, because it always seems like an accident. You fall down the stairs. Or your horse bolts. Or your car just goes off the road for no reason. What they do is make you see things that aren't there. You follow a road that looks normal, but it takes you over a cliff, or into a wall. Whatever. That's how they do it.”

He fell silent, hunched like a child in defiance of the chastisement he knew was coming. Sam walked behind the sofa and laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It's okay, Pete. We all feel the same way.”

“Do you?” Joanna didn't know that she was going to ask the question until it came from her lips almost as an accusation.

Sam looked at her in mild surprise but without resentment. “I think there'd be something wrong with any of us if we didn't. It's natural that we're looking for reasons for Drew and Barry's death, and Maggie's. And of course, in view of what's been happening, we're looking in the obvious places. I think it's inevitable. But I think it's mistaken.”

“You think their deaths were just accidents?” Roger asked him. There was a rhetorical edge to the question, challenging Sam to show them just how far he was prepared to press his rationalism in the face of what was happening.

“I think it's clear,” Sam said, “that Maggie's death was from natural causes, arguably precipitated by stress. But it's the coincidence of these other deaths that makes us look for a connection. And frankly I don't see the evidence for one.”

Joanna felt her patience snap. “For God's sake, Sam, you're in denial about this.”

He looked at her with a flash of real concern. She felt guilty suddenly, as though she'd betrayed him. “No,” he said, “I'm just trying to look at it calmly and rationally. It's my job to look at things like this calmly and rationally. That's the whole point of this experiment.”

“Damn the experiment!” Her anger slipped out of her control only for an instant before she pulled it back. “I'm sorry. All of this is as much my fault as anybody's-more.”

“It's nobody's fault,” Sam said.

“Whatever. Let's just agree we're going to abandon the experiment.”

Sam turned his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I've always said, that's up to each of us individually.” He looked around at them. “Personally, I still intend to go on-with all of you, or some of you, or with different groups of volunteers. I think we've achieved an extraordinary breakthrough, and I'm reluctant to abandon it easily.”

“I don't think any of us is abandoning it easily,” Roger said quietly.

“But you are abandoning it?”

Now it was Sam pressing Roger to define where he stood.

Roger pushed himself up from the sofa and paced the few steps to the window where Joanna sat. The rain was beating hard and a faint mist of condensation had formed on the inside. He gazed out toward the vaguely discernible lights along the river.

“Do you remember what I said last time we had this discussion?” he asked, his back to the room. “I said that whatever this phenomenon was that we'd started, the best thing we could do was stop it.” He turned. “I feel that even more strongly now.”

“Aren't you curious about how this ‘phenomenon’ works?” Sam asked.

“As a matter of fact, not very. I got involved in this thing for a number of reasons, some frivolous, some less so.” He crossed the room to where a jug of water and some tumblers stood on a tray, and poured himself a drink. “You probably thought that my main aim was to prove you wrong and crow over your failure to produce any phenomena at all. On the contrary, I was fairly confident that we'd produce something. I was equally confident that it wouldn't make any sense, and that we wouldn't know how we were doing it. All of which is consistent with my view of the fundamental laws of nature-or, more precisely, the lack of them. Because I don't believe there are any fundamental laws, or any final theory. I think the only laws we'll ever find are the ones we impose on nature by the way we look at it.”

“The participatory universe,” Sam said, folding his arms and regarding his old teacher with a measure of ironic detachment. “We make it up as we go along.”

Roger acknowledged with a nod. “In a nutshell, yes. I believe that to be the role of consciousness in the universe.”

“This is all very interesting, but perhaps a little academic under the circumstances.” There was an icy sharpness in Joanna's voice that reflected the anger she suddenly felt toward both of them at that moment, and that she made no effort to conceal. “What we need now is not some alternative theory of life, death, the universe, and everything. What we need is to find out whether this ‘thing’ we've created, or raised from wherever, whatever it is, had anything to do with these deaths.”

Pete cleared his throat. “Why don't we ask it?”

Joanna looked at him. “Are you serious?”

“If anybody's got a better idea…”

He looked around, inviting offers. There was none.

“The problem is,” Roger said, “how would we know whether it was telling the truth or not?”

Pete acknowledged with a shrug that he had no answer. “It's just a starting point. I would like to ask Adam, ‘Did you or did you not play any part in those deaths?’”

A sound like a hammer blow came from somewhere in the bookshelves behind where Pete sat. He sprang to his feet and whipped around. Everyone was looking at the same spot, but there was nothing to see.

For some moments they didn't breathe or move. Then Pete, almost inaudibly, said the thing they were all thinking, “One rap for yes.”

Sam turned on him angrily. “For God's sake, Pete, you of all people can't take this seriously. It's nonsense-just a reflection of our own fears.”

Ward held up a hand. “No-let's go on with it.”

“Do you really expect to find out anything like this?” The idea seemed to shock Sam more than anything had shocked him in a long time.

“Perhaps.”

Sam hesitated, then held up his hands to signal that he was backing off from any confrontation. “All right, if that's how you all feel…”

Joanna aimed her question in the general direction of the bookshelves and the space around them. “Who are you? Are you Cagliostro?”

Two sharp raps came from the same place as before.

“So you're Adam?”

One rap.

Sam turned away, dismissing the whole performance with a contemptuous scything of the air.

“Adam,” Joanna continued, ignoring Sam's disapproval, “did you cause the deaths of Barry and Drew this morning?”

One rap-sharp, clear, unambiguous.

Shaken, but determined to go on, Joanna asked simply and directly, “Why?”

She realized at once that she had put a question not answerable by yes or no, and started to rephrase it. But Pete had already pulled a few blank pages from a shelf.

“We'll need a board,” he said, “I'll write out an alphabet, we can improvise. Unless, that is, Sam happens to have-”

“I have nothing here.” Sam saw Pete hesitate, intimidated by the harshness of his tone. “All right,” he added, “go ahead, get on with it. Let's just do it.”

“I don't think that will be necessary.”

Something in the way Roger had spoken made them all turn to follow his gaze. He was looking at the window before which he had been standing a short time ago, and where Joanna had been seated until she'd jumped up and crossed the room with the rest of them.

The silvery gray film of condensation on it now bore the imprint of three words written as though by an unseen finger in a forward-sloping, well-formed script, and followed by an exclamation point.

“Joie de vivre!”