The Third Gate

14

Logan found his office in a far corner of the Exotic Sciences wing. It was modular, like the others, and contained a desk, two chairs, a laptop computer, and a single empty bookcase. He noted-with faint amusement-that there was no other equipment.

Placing his large duffel bag on the guest chair and opening it, he put a dozen or so books in the bookcase. Then he removed several pieces of equipment and placed them on the desk. Next, he removed two quotations in small frames and hung them on the wall with pushpins. Then he closed the duffel and turned to the laptop.

He logged in with the password and ID he’d been given during that morning’s processing. The site’s network was relatively easy to navigate, and he immediately saw there were three e-mails awaiting him. The first was a generic welcome, explaining the layout of the Station and the whereabouts of important locations (Medical, cafeteria). The second e-mail was from the HR woman who had processed him, laying out a few ground rules (no straying from the site, no unauthorized sat-phone communications). And the third e-mail was from a person who identified himself as Stephen Weir, assistant to Porter Stone. It was essentially an aggregation of all the strange, unanticipated, or unfortunate events that had occurred since the site went live two weeks before-in other words, the reason he was here.

Logan read over the list twice. Many of the items could be immediately discounted-lights flickering, systemic effects like nausea or dizziness-but several others remained. Firing up the laptop’s word processor, he began to make a list.

“Huh,” Cory had said to him not half an hour before. “Maybe that explains it.”

Logan looked up from the screen. He already knew about the last one, of course. He’d witnessed it himself.

His thoughts drifted to King Narmer’s curse. Any man who dares enter my tomb will meet an end certain and swift… His blood and his limbs will turn to ash and his tongue cleave to his throat… I, Narmer the Everliving, will torment him and his, by day and by night, waking and sleeping, until madness and death become his eternal temple. There was something the recitation of incidents had in common. Except for the diver and the Jet Ski rider, nobody had been hurt. That did not jibe with the details of the curse.

Of course, Logan thought to himself, nobody had yet found-or entered-Narmer’s tomb…

For perhaps the dozenth time, he wondered what Narmer’s tomb might contain. Why had the pharaoh expended such effort, made such lavish sacrifices of gold and men’s lives, bestowed such a curse, to make sure his remains were never violated, his most important possessions undisturbed? What was Porter Stone keeping from him? What would a god take with him to the next world?

There was a quiet sound behind him. Logan turned from the laptop screen to see Ethan Rush standing in the doorway.

“Mind if I come in?” the doctor asked with a smile.

Logan took his duffel bag from the guest chair and placed it on the floor. “Help yourself.”

Rush stepped in, glanced around. “Rather spartan accommodations.”

“I guess the interior decorators were uncertain just how to stock the lair of an enigmalogist.”

“Funny thing about that.” Rush took the empty seat, glanced toward the bookshelf. “Interesting selection of books: Aleister Crowley, Jessie Weston, Stowcroft’s Organic Chemistry, The Book of Shadows.”

“I have eclectic interests.”

Rush peered at a particularly old and moth-eaten book, bound in leather. “What’s this?” He reached out, glanced at the title. “ The Necro- ”

“Don’t touch that one,” Logan said in a quiet voice.

Rush pulled back his hand. “Sorry.” He turned his attention to the two framed quotations. “ ‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,’ ” he read from one of them. “ ‘It is the source of all true art and science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead. Einstein.’ ” He glanced at Logan. “Message?”

“Only that it sums up my vocation rather well. You could say I’ve got one foot in the world of science-Einstein’s world-and the other in the world of the spirit.”

Rush nodded. Then he turned to the other frame. “ ‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.’ ”

“It’s Virgil. From the Aeneid.”

“I don’t read Latin.”

When Logan didn’t offer to translate, Rush turned to the objects on the desk. “What exactly are those?”

“You use scalpels, forceps, and blood-oxygen meters, Ethan: I use tri-field EM detectors, camcorders, infrared thermometers, and-yes-holy water. Which reminds me: Do you think you can scare up a key for this desk drawer?”

“I’ll talk to Supplies.” Rush shook his head. “Funny. I guess I never thought of you as using instruments at all.”

“That’s not all I use. But then, we all have our professional secrets.”

This was met with a brief pause.

“I suppose,” Rush said, “you’re referring to what you saw in my examination room a few minutes ago.”

“Not necessarily. Although I am curious.”

“I wish I could tell you. But I’m afraid that research is of a rather, ah, sensitive nature.”

“So is mine.” He thought of what Romero had said: Maybe with you poking around, people will calm down. “I’m on-site now. If I’m to be of any use at all here, you can’t be keeping things from me.”

This was followed by another, longer silence.

“Oh, hell!” Rush suddenly burst out. “You’re right, of course. It’s just that Stone is so into compartmentalization, he lives and breathes secrecy…” He paused. “Listen. I’ve told you of our work at the Center.”

“In general terms. You’re doing research on people who have undergone near-death experiences. And you implied you’d made some very interesting findings.”

Rush nodded. “And our primary interest lies in one of those findings: that the experience of ‘going over’ has, in many cases, a direct effect on a person’s… well… psychic abilities.”

“Indeed? Manifested how?”

Rush broke into a broad smile. “Thank you, Jeremy. Nine times out of ten, the moment I mention the word ‘psychic’ I get the hairy eyeball.”

Logan nodded. “Go on.”

“The manifestations are quite broad. The bulk of our research at CTS is devoted to codifying it. That’s what separates us from other organizations or universities studying NDEs. There’s no pseudoscience or new age mumbo jumbo about this, Jeremy-we’re using extremely sophisticated statistical algorithms to quantify it. In fact, we have developed a way to very precisely rank a person’s psychic ability. We call it the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale, after the two researchers at the Center who developed it. In some ways it’s not unlike an intelligence test, but extremely subtle and complex. The scale takes into account an entire battery of tests for psychic sensitivity-divination, telekinesis, cold reading, ESP, astrological prediction, telepathy-half a dozen others. Naturally, the scale compensates for such things as standard deviation, probability, and simple luck.”

Rush stood up and began pacing the small room. “Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say I’ve got five bills in my pocket-a one, a five, a ten, a twenty, and a fifty. I pull one out at random and ask you to guess what it is. Assuming a null hypothesis-that is, no psychic ability at all-the base success ratio would be one in five, or twenty percent. On the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale, that equates to twenty. This would be the ranking of your man on the street. On the same scale, a person with some psychic ability ranks, oh, around forty. A person with pronounced psychic power ranks sixty. A person with psychic power developed to a remarkable degree might rank eighty-he or she would guess correctly four times out of five.”

He stopped pacing and turned to Logan. “But here’s what we’ve discovered. Of the people we’ve tested who’ve ‘gone over’ and returned successfully, the average ranking is close to sixty-five.”

“That’s impossible-” Logan began, then stopped himself.

Rush shook his head. “I know. It’s hard to believe, even for you. Why would having an NDE affect one’s psychic ability? But it’s fact, Jeremy-we’ve got hard data, and the data doesn’t lie. Oh, of course, it doesn’t always happen. And the particular psychic gifts vary from person to person. Not everyone’s going to be able to guess, for example, what kind of bill I’m going to pull from my pocket. Some are better at extrasensory perception. Others at clairvoyance. But that doesn’t change the fact that the numbers we’ve accumulated, based on the testing of over two hundred subjects to date, show the average K-W score of a person having undergone a near-death experience is unusually high.”

He sat down again. “And there’s something else we’ve discovered. By and large, the longer the period of time the person ‘went over,’ the higher their ranking on the scale.” He paused. “My wife Jennifer’s heart stopped, her brain activities ceased, for fourteen minutes before I revived her. That’s the longest period of time of anyone we’ve tested at the Center. And her ranking on the Kleiner-Wechsmann scale is also the highest of anyone we’ve tested: one hundred and thirty-five.”

“One hundred and thirty-five?” Logan said. “But that can’t be possible. According to the criteria you mentioned, a score of one hundred would mean a correct guess one hundred percent of the time. How can anyone beat a perfect score?”

“I can’t explain that, Jeremy,” Rush said. “Because we’re not exactly sure ourselves. This is a new science. I can only tell you that we’ve checked and rechecked our findings. Basically, it goes beyond naming the bill you pull from your pocket-it means naming the bill even before you put your hand in your pocket.” He shook his head, as if despite everything he still found it a little hard to believe himself. “And she’s demonstrated it time and time again. Her particular gift is retrocognition.”

“Retrocognition,” Logan repeated. He thought a moment. Then he glanced at Rush. “And that was your wife? In the testing chamber?”

Rush nodded.

“But then what is she doing here? What use could Porter Stone have for heightened psychic abilities-even remarkably advanced psychic abilities?”

Rush coughed delicately into his hand. “Sorry. There are some things I really don’t think I should tell you-at least, for now.”

“I understand. This has been very interesting, thanks.” More than interesting, he thought. Perhaps I’ll look into this on my own.

All of a sudden, the ground beneath them trembled, as if a giant hand had seized the entire facility and given it a violent shake. In the distance came the boom of an explosion. For a moment, the two men looked at each other in surprise. Then a shrill claxon began to sound in the hallway outside the office.

“What’s that?” Logan cried, jumping to his feet.

“Emergency alarm.” Rush was also on his feet, reaching for the portable two-way radio clipped to his belt. Even as he did so, it began beeping shrilly.

“Dr. Rush,” he said, bringing it to his lips. He listened for a moment. “My God,” he said into it. “I’ll be right there.”

“Let’s go,” he said to Logan, clipping the radio back to his belt.

“What’s happened?”

“Generator two is on fire.” And Rush ran out of the office, Logan at his heels.