Black Horizon

by Robert Masello

  “I'm not a religious man,” he said, “never was. My idea was, you die, that's it—you're dust. Now I know that's not so. Something else happens, afterward: you go on, in some state. Whether you see the face of God or whatever, I don't know. What I wanted to say—what I guess I wanted to tell the world—was that you do go on. There's something else, after.” He looked at Arlette's pen, dashing across the notebook page. When it stopped, he repeated, slowly, “There's something else, after.” She drew a quick underline beneath the last sentence.

  Mrs. Zakin poked her head in the doorway. “How are you doing, Adolph?”

  “Another minute.”

  She withdrew.

  “Mr. Zakin, I write for the Post, as you know, but also for several other publications.” She hoped he wouldn't ask which ones. “I wonder if I could have your permission to use these quotes—which are really quite wonderful—in whatever forum I can place them.” She had worked out the wording of that last request before coming over.

  “Why did you think I was telling you all this?” he said. “I've made a lot of money in my time; I haven't made a lot of discoveries. This one I thought I should share. As far as I can tell, it's good news.”

  And very good copy, Arlette thought, flipping her notebook closed. Maybe even good enough to help her make a name for herself.

  Next stop, that institute.

  Nancy had apparently hit the jackpot with this Logan guy. Although Sprague hadn't been all that excited when she left the lab the night before—in fact, he'd been his usual gloomy self—by the next morning he was jumping all over her. “Call Jack Logan,” he'd said, the second she'd come through the door from her Tuesday morning seminar. “Call him and tell him we need him to come in for further testing. Tell him the tests we did were mechanically flawed. Tell him anything you need to—promise him another hundred bucks.”

  From Sprague, perpetually short of funds, this was a big concession.

  “I'll try him this afternoon,” Nancy said, wondering why all the urgency.

  “Try him now,” Sprague shot back. “And if he gives you trouble, promise him two hundred bucks.”

  Two hundred? If Nancy hadn't thought Sprague was already crazy, she'd have definitely thought so now.

  As she went back to her desk and located Logan's phone number on the appointment calendar, she wondered what had happened, hours after Logan had left the lab, to get Sprague so excited. The only thing it could be, she thought, as she dialed Logan's number, was something to do with the printouts. Sprague had intended to look them over after the Quillerman slides had been stained and labeled.

  “Hello, this is Jack Logan.” An answering machine. “You can leave a message for me here, or with Radio Registry, at 555-4242. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.” At the beep, Nancy left the message. Then went looking for the EKG and EEG readings.

  They weren't where they should have been—in the examination room, or in Sprague's lab, or in the files; in fact, the manila folder that should have been in the file cabinet, to hold Logan's medical history forms, was missing altogether. Sprague must have been keeping the whole thing under lock and key in his own office.

  At two o'clock, just as she was unwrapping her tuna fish sandwich, Tulley buzzed her from the security desk downstairs.

  “I got a reporter down here, says she wants to talk to you. Stein.”

  “Who?” Nancy heard him ask for the name again.

  “Stein. Arlette Stein. Says she's from the Post.”

  Nancy racked her brain; she remembered who she was, but had she made an appointment with her?

  “So what do you want to do?” Tulley said over the intercom. Nancy knew he liked nothing better than to refuse people admission.

  “It's okay,” Nancy replied. “Send her up.”

  There was an abrupt click.

  Stein came out of the elevator as though it were the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby. Suddenly, she was a lot friendlier than she'd been on the phone, giving Nancy a firm handshake and a big warm smile. She was small, smaller even than Nancy, and had curly red hair that bobbed as she talked.

  “Hope this isn't a bad time for you, but I thought, since we've been working together, it might be a good idea to meet in person.”

  Working together?

  “Your call last week really got me thinking. I mean, Adolph Zakin is an important person, so whatever happens to him is important to begin with, but this whole business of returning to life makes it kind of special, I think. Something worth following up on. That's why I came by.” Nancy ushered her into her office. “I wanted to know what you've managed to find out about Jack Logan and what really happened that night—from your angle.”

  Angle? Nancy was having a very hard time keeping up with this woman.

  “I was just over at Zakin's place at the Carlyle"—Arlette wondered for a second if she should be giving that away yet—"and I had a great, exclusive interview with him. He hasn't talked to any other media people yet, so for the time being he's still entirely our story. I got some very good stuff,” she said, taking her note pad from her purse, “about his feelings of leaving his body and all that. But it would be super if some of the research or whatever you're doing here corroborated what I got over there.” She looked up expectantly, with her pen poised over the pad. “What have you guys been up to here?”

  “We guys,” Nancy said, with great deliberation, “haven't been up to all that much yet.” She wondered what, if anything, she should admit to. “We have done a preliminary interview with Mr. Logan—”

  “Which uncovered what?” The pen hovered.

  “It would be much too early to say. And whatever we did find out, would have to come to you from the director of the program, Dr. Sprague.”

  “I see.” The pen dropped. “Is Dr. Sprague around? Can you buzz him or something?”

  Where did this woman get her nerve? “Dr. Sprague is a very busy man. It might make more sense—”

  “Oh sure, I understand that,” Arlette burst in. “But I do want to break this story as soon as possible, and I don't have a lot of time. Could you just try to round him up now, while I'm here?” She cocked her head to one side, curls bobbing, and gave Nancy a hopeful smile.

  Nancy said, “Wait here,” and went in search of Sprague.

  She found him in his back laboratory, the one he used to conduct, in relative secrecy, his paranormal investigations. He was tinkering with the random-number generator.

  “What?” he said, not even bothering to look at her.

  “You have an unexpected caller.”

  “Logan?” Now he looked up.

  “No, but it's related to that. It's the reporter from the Post, the one who wrote about Zakin.”

  “What's he want?”

  "She wants to talk to you. She seems to think we're all working together on a big story. She's already spoken to Zakin himself; he's apparently out of the hospital.”

  “Did she say what he said?”

  “According to Ms. Stein, ‘I got a lot of good stuff about leaving his body and all that.’ She wants to know what we're up to over here.” Sprague sat back in his chair. Nancy could see he was dealing with his warring instincts: on the one hand, he hated people and he hated intrusions; on the other, he loved attention, particularly from the press. In the end, his ego won out.

  “I'll talk to her in my office.”

  Nancy performed the introductions, then, knowing Sprague would want the whole show to himself, left. Arlette was sorry to see her go; this Dr. Sprague was a sort of creepy-looking guy, so pale and so white, almost an albino. Thinking of the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, she jotted down “March Hare” in her note pad.

  And at first, he wasn't easy to interview, either. When she asked him about the general purpose of the Institute for Abnormal Psychology, he went off on such a tear, talking about schizophrenic chemical imbalances, deviant socialization patterns, cortical and neural anomalies, that she could hardly get it all down, even in shorthand an
d skipping the stuff that made no sense at all to her. But it did eventually dawn on her that none of what he was saying had much to do with the sort of thing that had happened to Zakin that night and that he was supposed to be investigating. So she asked him why that was.

  He stopped for a second, and pressed the tips of his long, bony fingers together, making a kind of steeple in front of his face. “I was saving that,” he said. “You see, the research that I've been describing so far is what the institute understands, funds, and sanctions. I, personally, have ancillary interests. These I pursue,” he added, with a nod toward her pen, “on my own time, and with separately acquired grants.”

  “Got that,” Arlette said. “And these other interests, they include stuff like the Adolph Zakin episode?”

  “They include a wide range of paranormal phenomena, everything from psychokinesis to astral projection. But yes, I am most interested in questions of mortality, of soul, if you will.”

  “Like reincarnation?”

  “Reincarnation is, by and large, a lot of claptrap, a theological shell-game that only idiots like Shirley MacLaine would fall for. If human beings do have an incorporeal essence, and specifically an essence that survives in some manner after the death of the physical body, I see no reason or logic for believing that that essence should willingly, karmically, much less repeatedly, enter into a dairy cow, sea slug, or another human being. That's just some sort of wishful thinking, on the part of people who are none too careful about what they wish for.

  “I believe,” he continued, leaning forward and laying his palms flat against the desktop, “that there may indeed be some such essence commonly denoted as soul, but that if there is, it is immutable, and possibly immortal. I also believe that if it does exist, then there must be some way of verifying, even quantifying, its existence. There must be a way of locating it, observing its particular dimensions and peculiarities, tracking it, if only by inference. We don't see quarks and neutrinos, but we know they exist because we have found ways to detect their presence and their migrations. Imagine if we could do the same for the soul! Imagine if we could prove in some manner that emotions are only the everyday ingredients of what we now think of as personality—and that personality is only the simplistic catch-all for something much greater and more mysterious! Imagine the revolutionary consequences, in every realm of human thought and endeavor, if some separate entity, operating along lines entirely its own, was empirically established once and for all.”

  Arlette had long since given up getting it all down. She was wrapped up in what Sprague was saying, and the almost mesmerizing fashion in which he spoke. This could be a big story, after all—as big as they come, if there was anything to back up all the conjecture. All she had to do was stay on Sprague's good side long enough to find out.

  “Your assistant,” she ventured, “told me that you'd interviewed Jack Logan.”

  “Did she?” he replied. “She told me you had interviewed Adolph Zakin.”

  A silence fell, during which they studied each other across the desk. Arlette spoke first.

  “I wonder if you found anything interesting?”

  The corners of Sprague's mouth turned up in a wintry sort of smile. “Nothing I want to broadcast just yet. But the early results, I will say, are promising. Very promising.” He paused. “Perhaps if you could share with me whatever you learned earlier today, I could keep you apprised of whatever progress I make here. I will need, ultimately, a vehicle with which to communicate my discoveries to the greater public.”

  The terms of the bargain were perfectly clear in return for her help now and in the future, Arlette could become the privileged vehicle to which he referred. Which seemed more than fair. She wouldn't have much of a story without Sprague's help—and with it, she could have a whopper. Without so much as blinking, she flipped her note pad to her Zakin notes, and began to read them aloud.

  Chapter Ten

  "ALL RIGHT, GUYS, SETTLE down. We're gonna do another take—and let's try to make it crisper this time.” Burt, the contractor, was sitting up in the control booth, enjoying his power; Jack and the other members of the Steamroller rhythm section—Haywood on drums, Van Nostrand on bass, and Gardiner on keyboards—were laying down the basic track over which the rest of the orchestra, and later the vocals, would all be dubbed. It was all for the thirty-second TV spot that the producers hoped would save the show.

  “Wait a second,” Haywood said, adjusting his headphones. “I got a bad mix in these cans.”

  “What's wrong with it?” Burt said from the booth.

  “For one thing, not enough click.”

  Burt told the engineer to turn up the metronome volume.

  “And for another, the piano's too hot.”

  “Hey man, I can hardly hear myself,” said Gardiner, glissing up the keyboard with the back of his hand.

  The engineer turned down Haywood's keyboard level. Haywood, encased in a Plexiglas booth toward the rear of the studio, tilted the snare drum to an angle he preferred.

  “We all set?” Burt asked the musicians in general.

  Jack looked around, then said, “All set down here.”

  “Then let's put down another one.”

  The metronome, set at 140 beats per minute, started clicking over his headphones again; Jack gave a two-measure count-in, and the rhythm section swung into action. Jack was being recorded “direct,” the microphone set on a stand right in front of his amplifier, so was Van Nostrand, a guy with the biggest hands Jack had ever seen, on bass. He played with his head down, his long brown hair hanging over his face and his fingers plucking the strings with casual precision. Haywood, of course, was sucking on a toothpick while his sticks flew across the surfaces of the cymbals and drums. In thirty seconds, they abruptly stopped and sat very still until the last reverberation of the last note had faded. Burt's voice, sounding pleased, came over the intercom.

  “I think we got it. We're gonna do a playback.” The tape was rolled back, and played for everyone to hear. When it was done, Gardiner, lost behind his mountain of keyboards, said, “I could do that middle riff better. Wanna try one more?”

  “Not today,” Burt cut in. “We're only budgeted for twelve to two, with a possible twenty. There's not enough time. We've got to start laying down the rest of the band.”

  “Then that's it, gang,” Jack said, lifting his shoulder strap over his head. Van Nostrand threw back his hair, and packed up his instrument. Just past the padded door to the control booth, there was a large waiting room where the other musicians were killing time until it was their turn to record; Vinnie was sipping a Dr Pepper. “How'd it go?” he asked as Jack emerged.

  “Smokin’,” Jack said, “we was absolutely smokin’.”

  “You gonna stick around for the overdubs?”

  “I don't know. I'm gonna check my messages first.” There were three pay phones mounted on the wall, and Jack had already put in his quarter and dialed before he realized that Veronica Berghoffer, her back turned, was on the one next to his. He beeped his machine, and it played back his messages: one from Mam, with a touch of the usual confusion, and another—the third he'd gotten in two days—from Nancy Liu at the Institute of Abnormal Psychology. Only this time she upped the ante, to two hundred dollars. At the end of her message, he used his beeper again, to signal the machine to rewind, and this time the sound made Veronica turn. The half-smile on her face froze the moment she saw who it was; the phone cradled on her shoulder started to slip, and Jack instinctively reached to catch it. Veronica recoiled, so suddenly that she bashed into Catalano, talking on the phone behind her.

  “Hey, what gives,” he said, turning in place.

  “Sorry,” Jack said, “my fault.”

  “No, mine,” Veronica said, to Catalano.

  “You guys playin’ dominoes or something?”

  Veronica mumbled something quickly into the phone, and tried to move away. Jack caught her sleeve. “Aren't you ever going to talk to me again?”
/>   “Sure,” she said, not looking at him, and still trying to leave.

  “Whatever happened that night, I'm really sorry. Whatever went wrong for you, it wasn't intentional on my part.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Understood.” She flashed him a glance, meant to make it convincing.

  “You know, we ought to at least be friends again—we may have to be looking at each other in that orchestra pit for a long time.”

  “Not from what I hear,” she said, before abruptly breaking away. Jack watched her make a beeline for the ladies’ room; then he went and joined Vinnie.

  “So what did you do,” Vinnie said, “not call her the next day?”

  “What?”

  “Haywood and I figured you took her home, and you went to bed with her. Now she runs the other way every time she sees you. You either did something terrible, or you are the worst lay she's ever had.” He sucked up the last drops of Dr Pepper with the straw. “Haywood says it's you stink in the sack, but I stuck up for you—I said you'd probably just treated her like shit.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Vinnie made a face, as if to say “Don't mention it.”

  “Let's just say it didn't work out.”

  “No foolin’.”

  “She did say something just now about how she didn't think we'd be seeing each other in the pit for a whole lot longer—you hear anything like that?”

  “You mean about the show closing? I hear something every five minutes—Catalano's a basket case over it.” He slipped the empty soda can under the sofa. “But this spot we're doin’ today could be the last gasp. I asked Burt what was up, and he couldn't even look me in the eye.”

  “They're not going to keep the show running through Christmas?”

  “They're gonna try,” Vinnie said, “but who knows?”