The Link

by Richard Matheson

  Before retiring, Kirlian decides to do a little extra work on the high-frequency generator of an electrical massage machine. Tired, he has a lapse of judgement and a sudden electrical discharge passes through him.

  Valentina runs to him. “Are you all right?” she asks. He is. Excitedly, he starts to tell her what he saw. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could photograph it?

  CUT TO days later. Kirlian has rigged an insulated table as a base, a photographic plate wrapped in black paper sitting on an electrode.

  Attaching another electrode to the top of his hand, he presses his palm down on the plate, steps onto a rubber pad and nods to his wife.

  Worriedly, she throws the switch. There is a click. She disengages the switch.

  A frantically impatient Kirlian watches as his wife develops the photographic plate.

  Appearing is the silhouette of his hand, its bones clearly outlines.

  Surrounding the fingertips is a mysterious aura.

  The young couple hug each other joyously. “It worked, it worked!” cries Kirlian.

  “Endless experiments followed,” says Adamenko’s voice.

  We see the Kirlians trying to improve the image, using various materials from fabric to tinfoil to place between the hand and the photographic plate. Again and again, the luminescence shows around the hand, clearer each time.

  “What distinguished their work,” Adamenko narrates, “was their intuitive feeling that what they were seeing was more than just the simple electrical phenomenon known for decades as ‘corona discharge’.”

  We see the couple examining other items for evidence of the aura—rubber, coins, metals, leather, wood, paper, textiles, plastics. The emanation from each varies—and is totally different from the pattern of emissions from their hands.

  It is not an easy study. More than once, they each suffer electrical shocks that throw them, stunned, to the floor. Finally, they solve this problem by replacing the switch with a foot pedal. Whenever a shock knocks them back now, the foot, kicked off the pedal, cuts off all current.

  CUT TO Adamenko in the cab en route to see Kirlian. “When I was a little boy,” he says, “I lived around the corner from the Kirlians.”

  CUT TO their apartment, a group of candy nibbling children watching the Kirlians operate their machinery—from the safe distance of a doorway.

  “On Sundays, they would ask us in, give us candy and let us watch them operate their mysterious machinery,” says Adamenko’s voice.

  CUT TO children running outside, picking leaves off trees.

  “They would tell us to go out and pick them leaves in pairs. We would race each other and whoever brought back the prettiest pair of leaves won an extra piece of candy.”

  CUT TO the children, open-mouthed, looking at the photographs of the leaves.

  “Later, they would show us photographs of our leaves,” says Adamenko’s voice. “Little did we know what a marvel we were viewing.”

  E.C.U. of photograph of leaf. A stunning sight, the leaf surrounded by a brilliant array of twinkling lights.

  “The Kirlian effect,” says Adamenko’s voice reverently.

  CAMERA HOLDS, then CUTS TO the Kirlian’s workshop in later years as they photograph a set of leaves.

  “One day, in 1949, the Kirlians were photographing a set of leaves given to them by a chairman of a major scientific research institute when something very strange occurred,” Adamenko’s voice goes on.

  The photographs of the “twin” leaves differ from each other.

  Picture after picture is taken. Still the same results.

  The luminescence of one leaf shows roundish, spherical flares of light scattered symmetrically over the entire image, the typical Kirlian effect appearance.

  The second leaf shows tiny geometrical dark figures grouped sparsely here and there.

  The couple works through the night but nothing changes.

  In the morning, weary and troubled, they show their results to the scientist.

  Instead of being disturbed, the man’s face lights up. “You’ve found it!” he says excitedly.

  CAMERA IN ON the two dissimilar photographs, the scientist’s finger pointing at them.

  “This leaf,” he says, pointing at the photograph with the dark figures, “has been contaminated with a plant disease. There is absolutely nothing on the plant or leaf to indicate this. Yet you have discovered it.”

  CUT TO Adamenko.

  “It was then,” he says, “that the Kirlians realized that the galaxies of sparkling lights they saw in their photographs were nothing less than a kind of energy counterpart body of the leaf.

  “That, long before illnesses could manifest themselves in the physical body of the plant, they could be seen in this counterpart body.”

  The cab arrives at the research institute. They get out and start toward the building, Adamenko looking at it as though toward a shrine.

  “The names of the Kirlians will live in history for having devised their method of recording, on film, the very spark of life which animates all living beings from plant to man,” he says.

  Cut to Kirlian’s office, Adamenko embracing the slightly built man with the pure-white receding hair, horn-rimmed glasses accenting his thin, scholarly face.

  “My dear old friend,” he says to Adamenko.

  Adamenko addresses him, in Russian, as “Master”.

  Then Kirlian extends his hand to the group, smiling as he says, as though it is necessary, “I am Semyon Kirlian.”

  CUT TO a color motion picture film being projected for them, Kirlian describing what they see.

  “You see, here, the surface structure of various live subjects surrounded by their typical halo of high-frequency discharge.

  “Here under extreme magnification, you see the discharge channels breaking out in dots—crowns—torches—all of different hues.”

  The sight is awesome. The luminescent concentrations are blue, lilac, yellow. Bright or dim. Some burning steadily, others flickering. Some flashing periodically, stationary or weaving.

  We see the discharge channels at the subject’s fingertips, following the pattern of the skin, turning upward like torches.

  We see other skin sections, golden and blue spots flashing up suddenly while clusters in other colors spill over from one point of the skin to another, there to be absorbed.

  What it looks like is no less than the plasma behavior seen in observations of the Sun itself.

  “In all living things,” says Kirlian, “we see the signals of the inner state of the organism reflected in the brightness, dimness and color of these flares. The inner life activities of the human system written in hieroglyphs of light.”

  CUT TO Kirlian’s office, later. They are having coffee and cakes, listening to Kirlian.

  “The Kirlian effect can also measure emotions,” he tells them. “It can determine whether people are genuinely in love or merely think they are. Can you imagine what this could do for the institution of marriage?

  “It can also help in treating alcoholics and drug addicts, informing us whether the cure is truly taking effect or whether the patient is faking.”

  He smiles. “Something very interesting is being done at present,” he says. “In 1973 and ‘74, the auras of one hundred children were photographed at birth.

  “The program has a fifty year span. Each child, as it grows to adulthood, will have its aura photographed once a month.

  “As time goes by, the progression of monthly photographs of these auras will yield case histories nothing short of staggering in amount of information.”

  “This is what you are working on now then?” Peter asks.

  “No, no,” says Kirlian, smiling. “Nowadays, I deal with wheat and corn.”

  CAMERA MOVES IN SLOWLY ON his saint-like face.

  “I am exploring such problems as what effect frost or extended heat have on wheat, for instance. Did you know that when wheat can take no more frost, there is a bursting of the aura, a cry for help so
to speak, then death?”

  His face fills the screen.

  “You might say I am conducting survival tests,” he tells them.

  Moscow. April. They are leaving for home in a few days. Robert and Cathy are walking in a park, discussing the future. He must, of course, be tested fully at ESPA, Cathy projects. Who knows where his psychic talents will take him? He’s healed her. He’s saved her life twice, once with distance perception, once with an OOBE. He’s demonstrated telekinetic power. He acted as a medium in England.

  “Teddie was right,” he says. “I am turning into a regular three-ring ESP circus.”

  She kisses his cheek and squeezes him, her arm around his waist. “No, love,” she says gently.

  A couple passes them, nodding, smiling. “I’ll de damned,” says Robert after the couple are out of hearing. The Vitroslavas again. “Maybe they’re clones,” he says.

  She sighs. “I guess Teddie was right about them,” she has to admit.

  They are sitting on a bench, chatting, when a man sits down beside them, pretends to read a newspaper and speaks to them furtively.

  “Madame Ivanova has arranged for you to meet Genady Borgeyev if you wish,” he says.

  Cathy is immediately against it but Robert convinces her. “What’s the difference?” he says. “We’re leaving in a few days anyways.”

  The man tells them to follow him—at a distance of no less than fifty meters—and leaves the bench.

  “This is ridiculous, Rob,” she says. “A time machine?”

  “Maybe we can go back twenty years and be together that much longer,” he says.

  “Oh.” She hugs him, groaning in mild distress.

  They follow the man, trying to remember how long a meter is, Cathy getting into a fit of nervous giggles as they try to calculate. The man leads them a circuitous route out of the park and down a side street.

  Cathy’s amusement vanishes as the man disappears. “Rob, I don’t like this,” she murmurs.

  He isn’t sure himself.

  Especially as a black car comes roaring out of an alley and brakes suddenly at the curb beside them. “Rob,” she gasps, clinging to his arm.

  The back door of the car is pushed open and a man beckons them in. “Please,” he says. “Quickly.” His accent is thick.

  They stand immobile. Robert notices that the driver is the man they’ve been following.

  “Please,” says the man in back.

  Robert sighs. “Oh, what the hell,” he says. He looks at Cathy. “I think it’s all right.”

  “Are you guessing or are you being psychic?” she whispers.

  He helps her into the car. “I’m guessing,” he tells her. She throws him a look of such extreme startlement that he has to grin.

  The experience is bizarre. As the car starts cruising Moscow streets, the man introduces himself as Genady Aleksandrovich Borgeyev. On his lap sits something covered with a black cloth.

  “You have had an emotional flare-up,” he tells them.

  Cathy gapes at him. Is the man a fortune teller?

  “As you entered this car, you were worried for your safety,” Borgeyev says. “This emotion manifested itself through your energy field. When you leave this car, that manifestation will remain, an imprint as it were. Not to be seen or heard or felt or smelled but here nonetheless.”

  He looks at them intensely. “Forever,” he says.

  They stare at him, not knowing what to say.

  “Every human being,” he continues, “makes an imprint on his surroundings because we are, at all times, radiating energy. This energy is literally soaked up and stored by our surroundings. Energy can never be destroyed. Therefore, technically, for all eternity, our energy imprints are preserved.”

  They manage to exchange a look as Borgeyev clears his throat, then coughs into a handkerchief. Robert’s expression could be saying: Shall we try it out the window?

  “The living organism,” Borgeyev goes on, “is nothing but a giant, liquid crystal.”

  Robert doesn’t hear the rest, the word crystal causing his mind, unaccountably, to remember the transparent latticework of pentagonal slabs over the Pacific Ocean.

  He is back in a moment, hearing Borgeyev telling them that he has developed a machine which uses liquid crystals to “recover” energy expended on surroundings.

  “It can record, you see, and convert to electrical impulses those ‘memories’ of the past which are stored around us.

  “See,” he tells them, whipping off the black cloth.

  Their initial reaction is that of people told that they are looking at a perpetual motion machine—definite suspicion and disappointment. The device is in two parts connected by wire—one a box with a dial, the other something which looks like a microphone.

  “This is the scanner,” says Borgeyev, holding it up. “It contains the liquid crystals, a collection of organic compounds with characteristics not unlike those of human brain and blood.”

  Cathy, unobserved by Borgeyev but seen by Robert, crosses her eyes and makes an idiotic face which says: This man is absolutely nuts. Robert manages to restrain himself from reacting.

  “The other part of the machine is the meter,” Borgeyev says, “which gives visual proof that electrical impulses are being picked up and recorded.”

  “Uh-huh,” says Robert.

  “In laboratory experiments,” says Borgeyev in a conspiratorial voice, “it has been established that the electrical field of the human brain can affect the water vapor in the air.

  “In other words, our very thoughts can alter the molecular structure of the vapor which then becomes a repository of those thoughts. You see?”

  Robert nods without a word. Borgeyev looks at Cathy. “Yes. Yes,” she says as though to a lunatic with a loaded gun.

  “I have proven, in tests, that a room in which there is a reasonable amount of water vapor will retain human thought for up to four days,” Borgeyev says.

  Cathy twitches as he grips her arm unexpectedly. “This is the explanation for what is called psychometry, you see,” he goes on. “An object which a person has possessed and touched for many years—a book, a pen, a ring—is literally saturated with the thoughts and emotional imprint of this person.”

  “Yes,” she murmurs.

  “Energy leaves the body when a person dies,” Borgeyev says to Robert. “With my machine locating and recording that energy, perhaps we will, one day, understand ghosts—or, rather, imprints of a person contained within a certain location. You see?”

  Robert nods.

  “Consider reincarnation!” Borgeyev cries, making both of them start. “The human brain, perhaps at birth, picks up signals from imprints left hundreds or thousands of years ago! The signals are interpreted as evidence of previous lives! Voilà!” His pronunciation of the French word is incredible.

  The conspiratorial expression and tone returns. “With my machine,” he says, “it is possible to seek out the memory of the world itself, its people, its history. Can you visualize that? To know what famous men and women actually thought and felt. To recreate important historical events exactly as they happened. To trace the evolution of man.”

  They stare at him mutely, waiting.

  “Have you an article you wish me to check?” he asks like a waiter asking if they’ve made their wine selection yet.

  It occurs to Robert and he takes the crystal from his side pocket. “What is that?” Borgeyev demands suspiciously.

  “Uh… some thing my father owned,” Robert tells him.

  “Ah-ha.” Borgeyev switches on his machine. “Hold it in your palm,” he instructs. Robert does so and the Russian points the scanner at he crystal.

  An incredible thing occurs.

  Robert does not hear what the man is saying; it is a droning mumble in the background. He does not see the crystal on his palm or Borgeyev or Cathy or the car interior; all is a blur in the background.

  What he sees, hovering before his gaze, are two exquisitely sculpte
d bronze hands, reaching upward, fingers bowed, palms facing.

  Between them, floating, untouched, is a crystal globe.

  He blinks; shakes his head a little.

  “Tremendous electrical impulses,” Borgeyev says. “Too much for my meter actually. Where did your father get this piece of crystal?”

  “Arizona,” Robert tells him.

  “Arizona,” Borgeyev repeats. He nods. “If we could decode those impulses,” he goes on, “who knows what we would learn?”

  SHOCK CUT TO Arizona desert. The temple ruins. The waiting Indian.

  Soon now.

  When they meet Peter for dinner, Cathy tells her mentor about the visit with “crazy” Borgeyev.

  “The man is mad,” she says. “He tells us all these things, then lets us know there’s only one problem left—decoding the electrical impulses his machine picks up!” She is spluttering with laughter by now. “He should be put away! Maybe he will be!”

  Under the circumstances, Robert does not feel inclined to mention his vision.

  Peter says he’s sorry he missed the ride with “crazy” Borgeyev. However, he adds seriously, he has, in the meantime, arranged for something “on the morrow” which is “totally and strictly scientific.” Cathy looks intrigued. “What?” she asks.

  “We’re going to see a man who met an Abominable Snowman,” Peter answers, straight-faced.

  Cathy emits a soft mock scream. “This trip is winding up as a farce!” she says.

  Later that night, as she lies asleep in Robert’s arms, he stares at the ceiling, thinking of the hands he saw, the globe between them, hovering in mid-air. What can they mean?

  Like Cathy, he has been amused by their trip concluding with the Abominable Snowman.

  He does not realize that the experience will take him one step closer to the answer he is, with each passing day, more conscious of seeking.

  PROFESSOR BORIS PORSHEV, Director of the Modern History Department at Moscow Academy picks them up in the morning; their visit almost over, Saransky has retired from their service.