Superstition

8

Sam gathered the members of his department together twice a week to review current projects and consider new ones. They couldn't all fit into his office, so they sat informally around a central reception area where visitors and volunteers normally waited to be called into one of the adjoining rooms. This particular morning the topic under discussion was the new group experiment proposed by Sam. Joanna, with everyone's permission, was taping the meeting and making notes. She had also been told to feel free to make comments or ask questions.

“Essentially it's a reconstruction of the Victorian seance,” Sam was saying, “with the difference that they thought they were conjuring up the dead, whereas we know it's PK-psychokinesis,” he added for Joanna's benefit. “The observable effect of mind on matter.”

“What I don't understand is why you have to invent a ghost to achieve this-aside, that is, from giving Joanna a good story, of which I'm all in favor.” The speaker was Tania Phillips, one of the members of the department Joanna had not met before. She had short dark hair, a wide mouth with an aggressive jaw, but gentle eyes. “We're already getting measurable PK effects with all our work with individual test subjects and REGs, so why use different methods for a group?”

“Because whenever this experiment's been tried, no amount of heavy concentration or earnest meditation has ever produced results. The best approach is a relaxed, sociable group treating it as a kind of parlor game. The imaginary ghost, so the theory goes, serves as a focal point for ‘psi’ forces that we all supposedly have in ourselves, but which we don't know how to make conscious use of.”

“But why does it have to be an imaginary ghost, instead of-I don't know-Julius Caesar or Napoleon?” The question came from Bryan Meade, the engineer in the group.

“We probably could whistle something up and call it Julius Caesar or Napoleon,” Sam said, “though we'd soon discover that he knew no more about the Roman Empire or French history than any of us around the table did.”

“Sam's right. Inventing a ghost who never existed makes the point more clearly.” The comment came from Jeff Dorrell, the theoretical physicist. “I read just recently some stuff on that Toronto group twenty years ago. I agree-it's time somebody tried something like it again.”

“They created a ghost called Philip,” Sam said, looking around the group, his enthusiasm mounting as he spoke, “who was supposed to have lived in the English civil war, then committed suicide after an unhappy love affair. He never materialized physically, but after a while he started talking to them through table rapping. And they got some spectacular poltergeist activity-all of which exists on tape and film.”

Peggy O'Donovan had been listening to the discussion from a corner, balanced on an impossibly ancient beanbag and hugging her knees beneath her usual flowing caftan. “Okay, let me just ask one thing. I presume everybody here has read Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel?”

Everybody had, with the exception of Joanna, who had never heard of it. “I think I know what you're going to say,” Sam said, “but go ahead, tell Joanna.”

Peggy's almond eyes turned in Joanna's direction. There was an almost hypnotic quality in their depth and stillness. “Alexandra David-Neel was a French woman who traveled through Tibet around the turn of the century. She describes at one point how she heard of holy men who were able to create these thought-forms- tulpas.”

Joanna glanced at Sam as she recognized the word from their earlier conversation.

“Eventually, through study and practice,” Peggy continued, “she managed to produce a tulpa of her own-a monk, who took up residence in her house. When she traveled, he would follow. Other people saw him and assumed that he was real. To begin with he was friendly and funny and nice to have around. Then she sensed that he was changing into something that made her feel increasingly uneasy, something malevolent. So, having materialized him in the first place, she decided to dematerialize him. Except he wouldn't go. She said she had six very difficult months getting rid of him.”

Jeff didn't hide the amused skepticism that the story had provoked in him. “My favorite part of that book is where she tells about the hat that walked.” He looked over at Joanna. “Apparently a hat was blown from some traveler's head and landed in a distant valley. Some villagers found it but didn't touch it. They'd never seen anything like it and thought it was some sort of animal. After several days of skirting around it, afraid to get too close, their fears imbued the hat with a life of its own;-and it started to move around by itself.” He chuckled, like a man who thought he'd made his point neatly. “I don't know how literally we're supposed to take Ms. David-Neel, but I smell a little literary license here and there.”

“The point is,” Sam summed up, “that she doesn't deny that her little monk disappeared in the end, nor did he do any mischief when he was around-aside from making her feel uncomfortable for a while. With the Toronto group, their ‘Philip’ vanished the moment even one member of the group got bored with him.”

“Incidentally, what size and kind of a group do you have in mind, Sam? Regulars, volunteers, or what?” The question came from a tall, fair-haired man-Brad Bucklehurst, another physicist and the only other member of the department, apart from Tania, whom Joanna had not met until this morning.

Sam said that by all accounts the optimum number for such a group was six or eight. Because spontaneity was such an important element, it might be an idea to have mainly new volunteers. Joanna, of course, would be among them, as well as Sam himself. Above all, he wanted to avoid anyone who had or even claimed psychic or mediumistic gifts: the aim of the experiment was to demonstrate the power of the normal human brain, not the exceptional one.

Peggy said she'd start drawing up a list of possibles and put out feelers through the usual newsletters, classified ads, and websites. Of the department members only Pete Daniels pressed to be allowed to join, and Sam agreed. The others, though interested, were too busy with their own projects to devote several hours a week to a new one.

When the meeting broke up, Joanna headed for her office, which was a pleasant twelve-block walk on a dry, cool day. Sam accompanied her, on his way to a meeting with the administrator of some research foundation out of which he was trying to squeeze an extra few thousand dollars a year-part of the endless battle for funding in a field that didn't enjoy the kind of support given to cures for cancer or even attempts to build a better mousetrap. They walked in silence for a while, and he glanced sideways at her several times before asking if there was something on her mind.

“I was just thinking about what Peggy said,” she told him.

“What about it?”

“You're sure there isn't any risk?”

“Of what?”

“I don't know. Starting something that we can't stop.”

“We just took a bigger risk crossing the road, and didn't even think about it.”

“So there is some risk.”

“I don't believe so. But you don't have to go through with it if you don't want to. You can write about it without being part of the group.”

“No,” she said quickly, “I want to be part of it.”

They walked on in silence another half-block. “By the way,” he said as they paused at a don't-walk light, “I've been meaning to ask you, is all that business of Murray Ray and the old woman still bothering you?”

Joanna was surprised that he'd remembered Murray's name. It had been some weeks since their first meeting, which was the only time they'd spoken of him. She also realized that he'd made a connection that she hadn't made herself between that unnerving incident and the sense of slight misgiving that Peggy's comment had provoked in her.

She replied honestly. “Whenever I think about it, I tell myself I'm not responsible for his death. I know I'm not. But yes, I do still think about it.”

“And I suppose you think about that ‘curse’ the old woman put on you?”

Joanna hesitated. She didn't know whether the problem was admitting to him or to herself that she did.

“Sometimes,” she said. Then, more brightly:“Then I tell myself it ought to be working by now, but I don't feel anything.”

He laughed. “You're fine.”

A surge of pedestrians came toward them across another intersection. They were briefly pushed apart, then he reached out to hold her at his side, slipping his arm beneath hers and wrapping his fingers around her wrist.

She found that she enjoyed being touched by him.