The Link

by Richard Matheson

  Cathy starts as the older woman pinches her teasingly on the arm. “Perhaps, if you are willing to risk the government’s displeasure,” she says, “I might put you together with Borgeyev and his time machine!”

  Cathy looks blank. Time machine?

  “I hope you haven’t risked your own security by coming here,” says Peter.

  She makes a scornful noise. “When at war, do as at war,” she says. “I take things as they come.”

  Peter shakes her hand. “Our gratitude and admiration,” he says.

  Robert shakes her hand. She grips it suddenly and will not let go, staring fixedly into his eyes.

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh, my.” She whistles softly. “My, oh, my.”

  “What?” he asks.

  She is about to answer, then shakes her head. “No, I think not,” she replies. “I don’t believe you are ready yet.”

  She grips him firmly by the shoulders.

  “But you will be!” she says. “And I am jealous of you!”

  Then she is gone as she came, like a whirlwind.

  Peter looks at Robert.

  “Well, my friend,” he says quietly. “I think I may be jealous of you too.”

  Robert and Cathy get into an argument as they retire.

  You have a closed mind, Robert finally tells her. He realizes that it sounds insane to tell her that considering her acceptance of so many things that standard science rejects. Nonetheless, her mind is closed beyond a certain point.

  “And perhaps your background is catching up with you,” she responds.

  His smile is not one of pleasure. “That’s a low blow,” he tells her.

  “And untrue?” she demands.

  He makes a disparaging sound. “Et tu Brute?” he says.

  “Which means—?” she asks irritably.

  “That you just joined ranks with Westheimer,” he answers. “If you can’t refute the argument, defame the arguer.”

  In the morning, an unpleasant surprise. They are picked up by the limousine but no Ludmilla. Their new guide is a thin, ascetic looking young man named SARASKY who, almost in the same breath, informs them that Ludmilla has been transferred to other duties for “proscribed fraternizing” and that, in the future, it would be “preferred” if they confined their interviews to those “sanctioned” by the authorities.

  “What does he mean by that?” says Teddie. “Did you see somebody last night?”

  “Yes, Ivanova,” Cathy says grimly. “I knew it was a bad idea.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Teddie asks.

  Peter looks at him icily. “Apparently, you were occupied,” he says.

  Cathy looks quickly at Teddie. “Is that what this gentleman meant by ‘proscribed fraternizing’?” she asks.

  The car is deathly still en route to their morning appointment. Robert and Cathy are still in a state of tension with each other and this new double-edged incident has disturbed all of them. Teddie is, predictably, unrepentant.

  When they arrive at the government building, Saransky moves ahead of them, Teddie after him, speaking angrily in Russian. Peter starts to follow, then gives up. “Oh, to hell with it,” he murmurs. “Let the man hang himself.”

  “Catch 22,” says Robert. “We probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Teddie and, because of Teddie, we may not be allowed to stay.”

  “The man’s infuriating,” Cathy says through clenched teeth. “That naïve young girl.”

  Several minutes later, the group is sitting with DR. VLADIMIR RAIKOV of the Psycho-Neurological Clinic. Waiting on his desk are the traditional cookies, pastry and coffee. None of them partake.

  “Before we begin,” says Railkov, “I want to make it clear that we are not regressing people to so-called former lives. Your press in the West has been giving me credit for being some sort of reincarnation expert. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

  His comment so immediately following their “non-sanctioned” meeting with Ivanova makes it obvious that, in some way, they are being “guided” back into areas of investigation preferred by the Soviets.

  “Now,” says Raikov as though the reincarnation subject has been properly dispensed with and they are ready to return to more sensible investigation.

  There are several large packages on the table which he unwraps. The contents are a group of oil and water color paintings and pencil and ink sketches, all portraits of young women. All are quite well done.

  “Excellent artists,” Peter says politely.

  Raikov laughs. “Exactly what I expected you would say,” he replies. “These were not done by artists at all. They were done under hypnosis by people who were never trained as artists or shown any previous sign of artistic skill. This is our current project.”

  They are taken to a workshop where people of various ages are engaged in drawing and painting.

  “They are all under hypnosis,” Raikov tells them. “They have been told that they are, literally, Repin, Levitan, Ayazovsky, Serov, etcetera—all famous Russian artists.”

  They watch as the various subjects draw and paint in the manner of the famous artists, their emulation of style uncanny.

  Unfortunately, none of the group are in a frame of mind to enjoy what they are seeing.

  Later, in the limousine, Saransky tells them that they are going to the Institute of Normal Physiology again. Dr. Adamenko would “very much like” to see Mr. Berger demonstrate his skill at distance perception.

  Exchanged looks. Is this the price of what they have done?

  “Well, why not?” Teddie says. “Clearly, I must play the role of performing seal in order that our visa be extended.”

  Dr. Adamenko, pleasant and polite, hands Teddie a sheet on which a set of latitude and longitude coordinates have been written.

  Teddie lights his ubiquitous cigar and leans back in the easy chair.

  The demonstration does not last long. Soon a look of intense reaction crosses Teddie’s face. He smiles at Adamenko; a cold, hostile smile.

  “The use of distance perception for strategic and tactical purposes is, of course, inevitable,” he says, apparently starting a non-sequitur lecture. “The capability could ultimately allow an operator to ‘enter’, so to speak, an enemy headquarters to observe plans and dispositions.”

  Dr. Adamenko looks confused. “I suppose this is so,” he says. “However—”

  “For instance, in the Peoples Republic of China,” says Teddie, tossing the sheet of paper on the floor.

  Adamenko still looks confused. “Are you telling me—?” he begins.

  “I am telling you what you already know,” says Teddie.

  He storms from the room. The scene is edged with tension. Only Adamenko seems more baffled than resentful at Teddie’s behavior.

  There is no shutting Teddie up on the ride back to the hotel.

  “You know what the bastards wanted me to describe?” he says. He glances at Saransky. “You need that translated into Russian?” he demands.

  “Teddie, control yourself,” Peter tells him.

  “Control myself?!” Teddie rages. “I have just been asked to function as a Soviet spy by describing the interior of a Communist Chinese military base and you ask me to control myself?!”

  He rants on until Peter grips his arm tightly and stops him.

  “Under the circumstances,” Peter says, “I feel it would be best for you to leave the country. I’m sure that we, too, will be asked to leave in consequence but what’s the point in staying now? What was informational and fascinating has degenerated to a point of antagonistic rancor.”

  “If you expect an apology, you expect it from the wrong source,” Teddie tells him bitterly.

  “I expect nothing from you but your absence from my life,” says Peter. He winces as the tension makes him physically uncomfortable. He looks at Saransky. “I apologize for exposing you to this on your first day,” he says. His smile is grim. “And probably your last.”

  Back at the hotel, Rob
ert and Cathy go to Peter’s room to discuss the situation. They find him lying on his bed; he calls for them to come in.

  They express concern about his health but he waves it off. “Just tension,” he says. “Yesterday was heaven, today—” He grunts with a smile that is without amusement.

  They sit on the bed and discuss what’s happened.

  “We can’t very well deny it,” Robert says. “I don’t think Teddie lied to us.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Peter says. “We would be childishly naïve—” He looks around the room. “Did you get that? Childishly naïve,” he says loudly. He looks at them. “Just in case they’re recording or watching on a monitor,” he explains.

  “Maybe we should let you rest,” Cathy says.

  “No, no, no, no, it will do me good to talk about it,” Peter says. “Obviously, there are things going on in Russia which are designed to run counter to the efforts of our own countries. No doubt a good percentage of parapsychology is part of it. But that’s government, officialdom, military thinking. Most of the scientists are just like us, I suspect. You saw Adamenko. I would lay a year’s wages on the conviction that he was as taken back by what happened as we were. No doubt the coordinates came to him from an outside source. A source who had no idea just how precise Teddie’s distance perception is.”

  Cathy takes his hand and smiles at him. “Try to relax,” she says.

  His laugh is dismal. “I’ll have lots of time to relax on the flight back,” he says.

  Cathy tells him—and Robert—that she knows the moment is hardly suspicious for what she is about to say but she has to say it anyway. She wants to apologize to them for her behavior during Ivanova’s visit, for her behavior generally.

  “I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to accept the sort of things she spoke about, the sort of things we’ve argued over,” she says. “But I’ll try not to be so negative about those who do.”

  She sighs. “I am closed minded,” she admits. “It’s my background. Everything was open-minded in my family so long as the ideas never went beyond established perimeters. That’s me, that’s how I am.

  I’m sorry.”

  “My dear,” Peter kisses her hand. “We’re colleagues. Fellow toilers in the vineyard. Not rubber stamps for each other.”

  Robert puts his arms around her and she leans against him. Peter is obviously not surprised to see it.

  “Well, what now?” he says.

  As though in answer, the telephone rings. “Our bouncer calling, no doubt,” he says. He picks up the receiver. “Dr. Clarke,” he says.

  He listens, his expression going from grave acceptance to surprise to amazement. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, indeed,” he nods. “Yes, Doctor.”

  He hangs up dazedly. “What, what?” asks Cathy.

  “Apparently, we are not getting the hook after all,” he says. “That was Dr. Adamenko calling to apologize for what happened. Nothing was said about our leaving.”

  He smiles in wonderment. “Far from it,” he says. “He is trying to arrange for us to meet Kulagina!”

  A black and white film tells the story of Ninel Kulagina.

  She is sitting at a table, eyes closed, hands held above a sheet of paper.

  “She had begun her explorations with attempted skin vision,” Saransky translates the film’s narration quickly and concisely. “One day, while practicing at home, as she tried to sense the writing on the paper underneath her fingers, she got the impression that the paper was moving.

  “Deliberately, she tried to get the paper to move.”

  After several abortive attempts, we see the paper underneath her hands move.

  CUT TO the group, sans Teddie. They are trying to show interest in the film but are clearly disappointed, Peter most of all. Dr. Adamenko, also present, is aware of their feeling.

  “The film here shows Edward Naumov, a coordinator of Soviet work in parapsychology, sitting with Ninel Kulagina,” Saransky translates.

  Kulagina is young, alert, with an expressive face, wide, beautiful eyes. Her white blouse is simple and becoming, the sleeves short. She submits with acquiescent good grace while Naumov, to demonstrate that there are no strings or threads present, twice passes his hand down between her and the table, from her head to her lap, slowly and deliberately.

  Then, on the bare surface of the table, he places a compass.

  Kulagina’s hands hover over the compass, her elbows akimbo, her long fingers extended toward each other. Her hands come within two or three inches of the compass and we see the needle move a little.

  Then, as her hands make sweeping circular motions, the needle makes four complete revolutions. She makes the needle turn clockwise first, then counter-clockwise.

  Finally, the compass case itself moves. Naumov has to catch it when it falls from the edge of the table.

  In the next sequence of the movie, we see, on the table, a salt cellar and a pile of twenty matches thrown down at random.

  As Kulagina’s hands hover tensely, the salt cellar moves toward the matches, pushing them, their positioning remaining as steady as though they had been glued together.

  When they reach the edge of the table, they fall off, one by one, and Naumov catches the salt cellar as it is about to go over the edge.

  “The narration reminds us,” says Saransky, “that, of necessity, the film has been spliced to avoid the showing of long stretches during which little happened. The film for instance, which is thirty minutes long, took seven hours to complete.”

  As he speaks, we see Kulagina holding her hand above a ping-pong ball which is fastened to one end of a flexible spring the other end of which is attached to the top of a heavy Plexiglass cube four inches on each edge.

  Kulagina, without touching the ball, pushes it downward so that the spring is compressed all the way to the surface of the cube. She then moves the cube around the table. When she relaxes, the spring snaps back to its original position.

  During this, her stress is very evident, her dimples deepening as though she is clenching her teeth.

  “Scientists have measured the energy field of electrical discharges around her body and found that, when she concentrates on moving an object, her energy field diminishes to half of a normal person,” Saransky translates the film narration.

  “Their conclusion is that the object moved lies in an electrostatic field and the added energy from Kulagina causes electrical activity in the field which triggers movement.”

  Robert glances at Cathy, smiles. She is nodding, back, once more, in the world she understands and accepts.

  When the film is over, Adamenko tells them that he understands their disappointment at not meeting Kulagina in person. “She does not see anyone these days, however,” he explains.

  He cheers them up by saying that, as a “hoped for compensation” he has made arrangements for them to see the Krivorotovs.

  “Good show!” cries Peter, delighted.

  By the time Saransky drops them off at the hotel, they have forgotten their disappointment at not meeting Kulagina in the exciting prospect of meeting Russia’s famous father and son healing team.

  It is all the more surprising to them when a man accosts them in the lobby and, in English, identifies himself as Viktor Kulagina and tells them that his wife is in the hotel restaurant, waiting to meet them.

  With difficulty, they conceal their dismay at the sight of Ninel Kulagina. The contrast between the alert, bright-eyed young woman in the film and the pale, wan, aged woman sitting at the table is a shocking one; it is nearly impossible to see the younger Kulagina in this older one.

  Her voice is weak and hollow as she greets them; she does not extend her hand in greeting. “I am pleased that you have asked to see me,” she says.

  They sit with her, feeling pity for her obvious exhaustion, guilt that she has dragged herself to the hotel to meet them.

  “As you can see,” she tells them almost in a whisper, “I am not doing so well. No strength in me afte
r the heart attack. I am a shadow of my own self. I cannot find my strength.”

  They don’t know what to say they feel so badly for her.

  “Ninel has spent too many hours under scientific observation,” her husband says, “wired to monitoring devices to register heart action, brain waves, etcetera. Some of the sessions lasted as long as seven hours during which her heart rate rose as high as two hundred and forty beats per minute, her blood pressure rose alarmingly. In one half hour she has lost as much as two pounds in weight and, after many a difficult session, she suffered lack of coordination, dizziness, and vomiting with much bodily pain and sleeplessness.”

  “After four days at the Ostankino television studios, I barely made it home,” Kulagina continues in her feeble voice. “I stayed in bed for weeks, had headaches that would not go away, fainting spells.”

  “And for what?” her husband says resentfully. “To show magical tricks?”

  “Viktor,” pleads his wife. “What I did was important to science.”

  “And you are a victim of science,” he replies in a harsh, pained voice.

  He looks at the three who sit hapless, wordless.

  “Several times during the telekinetic experiments with Sergeyev,” he says, “Ninel became unconscious. When she took electrical energy from around her and sent it to an object, it drained her completely. And more than once, when electrical force from the surroundings rushed back into her body, usually through an arm, it would leave burn marks on her skin.”

  “Still,” says Kulagina, smiling with effort, “I believe that what I have done is important,” she sighs. “Although I wish I could have become a healer. I think I might have if my health was not so poor.”

  “If your health was not ruined, you mean,” says her husband.

  “Please, Viktor.” She tries to smile and he takes her hand and kisses it quickly. Clearly, he loves her very much, his anger all directed at those who misused her.

  “Madame Kulagina,” Peter says. “I think I speak for my colleagues when I say how sorry we are to hear these things. Your work in the field is monumental. You will always have the veneration of parapsychologists all over the world.”