The Link

by Richard Matheson

  He’s right.

  “You never had a psychic experience before that night in the club?” asks Peter.

  “It’s what I said,” snaps Teddie. “You want an affidavit from some damn notary public?”

  Another test—a steely-eyed Stafford on the lookout for fraud. (“Tell that blockhead I’m here to be tested, not to burglarize the furniture,” Teddie complains to Peter.) A box is fastened to the ceiling of the test room, a set of numbers printed inside, randomly selected that morning. They push a switch to turn on a bulb inside the box and Teddie blows out cigar smoke, gazing up at the box.

  Nothing.

  They wait. Has he come to the end of his gift already?

  Suddenly, he glares at them. “The bulb isn’t working, damn it, how am I supposed to see the numbers?”

  They stare at him, then lower the box and check.

  He’s right again. The bulb has burned out.

  “You’ve never shown any signs of ESP before?” Cathy asks, incredulous.

  Teddie gives her a look. “Darling—” he grates.

  “All right, I believe you,” she interrupts.

  His smile is feral. “I’m suffused with gratitude,” he tells her.

  Time for a distance perception test. Cathy and Robert, following the instructions on envelope number 78, go to the campus of Columbia University. This time Robert makes no effort to transmit visual signals.

  It doesn’t matter. When they return to ESPA, it is to discover that Teddie might have been standing beside them. Sitting in the reclining chair, blowing smoke at Stafford to aggravate him while the Professor tried to operate his equipment, Teddie has described into the cassette recorder everything they looked at.

  They are all delighted, Stafford non-committal.

  Teddie is morose. Why do testers have to stay in the room with him? he demands. How does he know they aren’t giving him clues of some kind?

  They try to reassure him but he isn’t buying. “Listen,” he says, “I could be getting it through body language for all I know. Hell, through some subliminal audio from a loudspeaker in the next room. You think I trust you people?”

  He will not continue, he tells them, unless they leave him alone in the testing room.

  Stafford is against it; “That would vitiate all minimal precautions,” he declares.

  Peter outvotes him. “Just this once,” he says. “To reassure him.”

  They leave Teddie alone in the room, a “guard” placed outside to make sure Teddie doesn’t leave. Robert and Cathy take to “the field” again, this time with envelope number 110 which leads them to Wall Street.

  When they return, they all enter the testing room.

  Teddie has vanished!

  “Good God, the man has de-materialized,” says Peter, only half in jest.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Teddie’s sepulchral voice comes drifting from behind a sofa. He crawls out, scowling. He’s been lying back there, eyes shut, hands over his ears, to make certain no one could give him a clue.

  Nonetheless, his taped remarks (he took the microphone with him behind the sofa) are again incredible; he could be describing the Wall Street location from a travel guide: He does everything short of giving names.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” says Peter, awed.

  “So will we all in time,” Teddie responds.

  Time for Stafford’s observations, everyone increasingly bored, especially Carla.

  “We proceed on the supposition that only one force can provide an explanation for the so-called paranormal,” Stafford tells them, “that is, electromagnetic forces acting on the constituents of the human system. Accordingly, we must search for an electromagnetic signal of measurable strength emitted by a so-called psychic at the time that he or she (“I’m a he,” Teddie breaks in.) is ostensibly causing a particular effect.”

  Carla yawns and mumbles something to Teddie. He scowls.

  “If so-called clairvoyant viewing does, indeed, occur, (“What the hell have I been doing here, dancing a tango?” Teddie growls) it is assumed to be some sort of energy wave being utilized to create a picture of the distant scene.”

  Carla gets “sick”. “We have to go,” says Teddie. “It’s been a thrill, believe me.” Will he come back? inquires Peter. “Maybe, maybe not,” says Teddie.

  Surprisingly, he turns to point at Robert. “Use him,” he says offhandedly. “He can do it.”

  Robert tries to laugh it off but a nerve has been struck and Cathy sees it, Peter less so.

  Teddie and Carla depart and, trying to be nice about it, Cathy asks Robert if he won’t consent to trying his hand at distance perception.

  Realizing that he’s pretty well cornered, and not wanting to create another unpleasant confrontation with Cathy, he agrees, quickly adding, however, that Teddie’s psychic gift obviously deserted him when he identified Robert as being able to “do” distance perception.

  Politely but firmly, he draws the line at an extensive physical and psychological profile. That really isn’t why he’s at ESPA, he tells them. If they want to conduct an “informal” test on him, he’ll go along with it. No more though.

  Hearing this, Stafford backs out. “We’re losing every minimal protection now,” he frets.

  This time Peter and another ESPA tester go into the field, Cathy remaining with Robert in the testing room. She reassures him that she doesn’t want to be “pushy” again but—she hesitates—well, is there something about the idea of being psychic that upsets Robert? That, certainly, is the message he’s giving.

  “Please,” she says, “if it’s none of my business, tell me so.”

  He doesn’t answer at first, then says that he’ll go so far as to tell her that “certain members” of his family had “unfortunate” experiences with ESP and he is “gun-shy” on the subject.

  “Not, I assure you,” he adds, “that I’ve shown any signs of it myself; I haven’t. It’s just that the subject is… well, uncomfortable for me.”

  She says she understands. That’s obviously why he doesn’t choose to commit himself on any aspect of the subject, she observes.

  “Of course,” he admits. That’s why he chooses to maintain a strictly balanced objectivity on psi.

  “Why do you suppose Berger said what he did then?” Cathy asks.

  Robert chuckles. “To get out of here,” he says.

  The time arrives for the test to proceed and Robert closes his eyes. “Just relax—I’m so glad you don’t smoke a cigar—and tell me what you see,” Cathy tells him.

  What he begins to see is an outdoor plaza, various shops around its perimeter. He doesn’t see it clearly but in flashes, partially distorted. There are flowers and ceramic pots, fountains, paths, overhead trellises intertwined with leafless vines. He sees what appears to be a pole with arrows sticking through it. Hanging from one arrow is piece of paper reading WEAVING STUDIO.

  “Do you see anything?” Cathy asks. “Anything at all?”

  Robert takes a deep breath. “A building, I think,” he says. “Brick. Old. Some where… near the waterfront maybe.”

  “Near the waterfront,” she says with interest.

  “Yes, I think so,” he responds. Looking at the plaza as he speaks. “I hear horns, I think.”

  “Do you see anything else?”

  Abruptly, unexpectedly, the plaza vanishes and he sees the Arizona desert, the ruins of a temple on a hill above. The vision is so sudden and so vivid that he twitches, opening his eyes.

  “What is it?” she asks, concerned by his expression.

  He swallows, forces a smile. “Nothing, I…” He shrugs and manages a soft laugh. “I told you he was wrong.”

  Peter and the other tester come back to reveal the place they went to, photographs and all. A garden shopping plaza in Greenwich Village, craft shops on its periphery. Robert looks at one of the photographs, a pole with arrow-shaped signs attached to it. One of them reads WEAVING STUDIO.

  He nods. “Mm-hmm.” He makes a haple
ss gesture. “Well, you better hope that Berger comes back,” he says. “You’re dealing with a loser here.”

  He avoids Cathy’s eyes as she walks him to the entry foyer of ESPA. There she puts a hand on his arm. He has to look at her now.

  “Was he wrong, Robert?” she asks.

  “Of course he was.” His voice is edged with tension and she backs off instantly.

  It is a nervous Robert who drives home, takes care of Bart, then tries to work. He cannot work. He cannot concentrate. He paces tensely. More than once, his memory flashes to the vision in Arizona. He doesn’t know it’s Arizona but it bothers him. He picks up the bio-feedback control and tries, in vain, to lower the howling noise.

  SHOCK CUT TO the dream again, this time the music of the 1950 song louder, the CAMERA ANGLES more extreme, its movements more erratic. By the time the CAMERA MOVES toward the hall, sight and sound are both askew. This time the rushing CAMERA reaches the foot of the staircase where it jolts to a visually shocking halt and Robert wakes up with a startled grunt, a sheen of perspiration on his face, the thumping of his heartbeat audible beneath the exaggeratedly loud ringing of the telephone.

  He struggles for composure, draws in a shaking breath, then reaches out to pick up the receiver. “Hi!” says Alan Bremer cheerily. His voice makes Robert twitch. “Did I wake you up? Hell, I did! It’s only seven-thirty your time, isn’t it? Oh, God, I’m sorry!”

  “‘s all right,” Robert mumbles.

  Can he come to the coast in a day or so? Alan asks. He wants to discuss the outline to date. Also, he’s located some “astounding” newsreel footage he’d like Robert to look at.

  Robert runs a hand across his wet brow, swallowing again. “Sure,” he says.

  He is getting ready to sit on the airplane when there is a tap on his back. He turns. “Good morning,” Cathy says. Alan made arrangements for them to fly to Los Angeles together. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “Mind?” He smiles. “I’m delighted.”

  As he helps her off with her jacket, a button tears loose. “Oh, no,” she says.

  “Next time you buy a jacket,” he tells her, “touch the center of each button with a drop of clear nail polish. That’ll seal the thread and keep the buttons on longer.”

  Cathy laughs. “From one of your books?”

  He nods. “I don’t remember which: my brain is a clutter of disparate—or desperate—information,” he chuckles. “Well, I know it wasn’t the last book,” he says.

  As he reaches up for something, Cathy notices the limited extension of his left arm. “Vietnam,” he tells her and we see a mini-flashback of him thrown into the air by a ground explosion, his uniform torn and bleeding at his left shoulder. “Circumscribes the reach a bit,” he says. “No pain.”

  The airline takes off and they clink together glasses of champagne. “To your project,” she says.

  “And our friendship,” he adds.

  She smiles. “I’ll drink to that,” she says softly.

  The flight. The two getting to know each other better. He learns more about her family, she does not probe further into his; “when you want to talk about it” is all she says.

  Robert nods. “Thank you.”

  Hours passing. A montage of their expanding relationship, broken by moments of particular conversation; she calls him Rob and asks if he minds; he doesn’t. They talk about Peter, Carol, Teddie. Drink together. Eat together. Ignore the movie together, moving up to the lounge.

  Where, at one point, as he speaks, her smile is so involved that, suddenly, he feels compelled to say, “You’d better stop that, Catherine.”

  She looks startled. “Stop what?”

  “Smiling at me like that”, he says; a smile he cannot very well respond to since she is transmitting it from a “guarded environment.”

  “My marriage, you mean,” she says.

  He nods.

  She puts her hand on his. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any harm,” she tells him. “I wasn’t aware of it.”

  He smiles. “Well,” he says, “if we’re to be no more than fellow psi-trekkers…”

  She nods. “You’re right.”

  He gazes over her beautiful face as though allowing himself the license one time. “I’ll say it now and get it over with,” he tells her. “I’m extremely attracted to you but I respect your marriage and I won’t do anything to—well, you know.”

  She smiles and nods and, in recognition of what was beginning to take place between them, they mutually withdraw, trying not to be unfriendly about it, their conversation taking on a more general tone.

  They land at LAX where a limo picks them up. “Good Lord, the way they operate out here,” says Cathy.

  At the studio, they meet with Alan who still effuses about the project; he is up to date on it, Robert having sent the latest pages to him by express mail.

  “I’m not so sure about the fraud stuff though,” he says. “I don’t think the viewers would respond to it too well.”

  “We should present both sides of the case,” Robert reminds him. “Otherwise, we leave ourselves open to justified criticism.”

  “I suppose,” says Alan, frowning slightly. “Still… we do all that great stuff with the Fox Sisters and Home and Palladino, then we show Houdini saying they were fakes.”

  “We also show the virtual monomania against Spiritualism that motivated Houdini,” Robert responds.

  “What do you think?” Alan asks Cathy.

  “That we’re better off presenting both sides of the picture,” she replies.

  “Uh-huh.” Alan looks at them uncertainly, then jumps up. “Well, let’s go over to the projection room. You’ve got to see this footage.”

  As they leave the building, Alan asks what’s next in the outline.

  “Logically and chronologically, the work of Rhine at Duke University,” Robert answers. “The beginning of the scientific period of psi.”

  “You mean all those tests with cards with squares and circles on them?” Alan asks.

  “The Zenor cards were fundamental to his testing, yes,” starts Robert.

  “I don’t know,” Alan breaks in. “Doesn’t sound too interesting to me.”

  “What Rhine did,” Cathy says, “was apply mathematical probability to massive accumulations of data. He developed a framework of technique on which generations of parapsychologists were raised. Almost every major researcher in the field was trained by Rhine and his wife or did work in their lab.”

  “How do you show that on the screen?” asks Alan. “Twenty minutes of montage? They’ll be flipping channels, take my word. What I’d like to see is some other stuff from the book—you know, Astrology, the pyramids, Atlantis, ancient astronauts, that kind of thing.”

  Robert and Cathy exchange looks. “Well,” says Robert, trying to sound polite. “Those things really aren’t part of what we’re saying.”

  “I know,” says Alan. Still… he’s looking for Visuals. “We can’t just lecture people,” he tells them.

  Cathy tries to get him interested in sending a film crew to Russia. “They’re incredibly advanced in psi,” she says. Alan does not respond to that either. Robert quickly tells him that the next segment of the story might detail the life of Edgar Cayce, Virginia Beach’s incredible seer and healer.

  “Ah,” says Alan, pointing at him. “Now you’re talking.”

  At the projection room, Alan steps into the booth to speak to the projectionist. Cathy looks at Robert with an expression of only partial mock-dismay. “Astrology?” she murmurs. “Pyramids? Atlantis? Ancient astronauts? Good God.”

  He smiles sadly and nods. “A damned shame if we have to omit Rhine,” he says. “His work is the foundation of contemporary psi research.”

  “Yup,” she says, making a face.

  Alan joins them and they enter the projection room. “Look, I’m not trying to foul up the project,” he says. “It’s just that I know that all these different things are joined somehow. That’s what makes it all
so fascinating. They’re all so weird, they seem to have no relationship to each other. But what if, some day, someone figures out exactly how they fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and we see the picture, the whole damn picture?”

  “It’s a thought,” says Robert. He gives Cathy a look which says: Well, hell, it’s possible.

  She crosses her eyes, tongue tip protruding from between her lips.

  The dimming light obscures his effort to repress a startled laugh.

  The newsreel clips begin—either genuine (if they can be located) or staged. Whoever, from Robert’s outline, could conceivably be on film.

  Then some footage of a Spiritualist conference in the 1940’s, some camp in upper New York State. We see a sitter with a female medium.

  Robert tenses, staring at the screen, his features frozen.

  The medium is his mother; we recognize her even though her name is not spoken—we hear her voice briefly.

  Cathy, leaning over to comment on how beautiful the woman is, sees his expression and stares at him. He glances aside, then turns away, drawing in a shaken breath as he stares, once more, at the screen.

  Being driven to the hotel later, Robert tells her that it was his mother, that his family has a long background in Spiritualism, that his sister still runs a Spiritualism church on Long Island, that his Uncle Jack has a psychic radio program somewhere in the mid-west, that his Aunt Myra is still a practicing Spiritualist psychic in England where his mother’s family originated.

  “Why does that disturb you so?” she asks.

  “Because I never saw any good come of it,” he says. He shudders. “And I just don’t want it in my life.”

  “Rob.” Impulsively, she takes his hand. “It’s all right, I understand.”

  He holds her hand so tightly that he doesn’t notice it is hurting her; she doesn’t tell him.

  “To see her like that, so unexpectedly,” he murmurs.

  He tells her of his mother’s fall when he was six. “I went to play at a neighbor’s house and when I came back she was dead.” He makes a strange noise between a laugh and a sob. “Passed on, I mean,” he adds.