“At 4:00 A.M. on January the fifth, 2001,” he began, “in the town of Millstadt, Illinois, four police officers and a bartender on his way home from a one-night stand with a cocktail waitress all found an arrowhead. The arrowhead was black, triangular, two stories tall and about the size of a football field, and it was floating in the air above the cornfields, moving slowly on a southwesterly course at perhaps fifteen or twenty miles an hour, maybe a thousand feet above the ground. There were three bright lights on it, one at each corner. One of the police officers was a man named Curtis Marshall, and he had a camera on him and tried to take a picture, but it didn’t come out very well. The vessel hung in the air for about twenty minutes, then rose and flew off in a northerly direction. Twenty minutes. Five reliable witnesses, four of them officers of the law trained to observe and give testimony. So they filed their reports, the police officers did, sworn to tell the truth, saying just what they saw with their own eyes and experienced with their senses, and I should say two officers were together but the other two were in separated locations. The bartender had stopped by a tree to take a leak. Independent of each other, they all saw the same thing. Described it the same way. Later, one of the officers said it must have been a blimp. Man-made. Recanted his story, but the other four gentlemen stuck to what they’d said originally. Today, the only officer who kept his job is the one who recanted. Two of the police officers were fired and the third was so harassed that he quit. The bartender left town after a series of events, including kids making crop circles in his lawn with an herbicide.”
Jaynes took a drink of water. He was a mesmerizing speaker, DeLuca had to admit, with a deep plangent tone to his voice, full of emphasis and dramatic pauses. DeLuca glanced at Penelope Burgess, who seemed bemused.
“What is it in our natures that makes us resist the inexplicable? Where did we lose our capacity for ambiguity? How did this black and white either/or mentality arise, where we make room for that which is literal and visible but have no room in our hearts and, more to the point, in our minds for the unseen and the spiritual? There was a time, early in human evolution, when the gods spoke to us all the time. You study cognitive evolution and you find that way back when, the two halves of the human brain were less integrated, physically less connected, the cerebral cortex much smaller, without half the ganglions we have today, when the right brain, the controlling superego brain, tried to speak to the left brain, the emotional brain, it sounded to us like God talking, a big voice of unimpeachable authority saying, do this, do that, that’s right, that’s wrong. Nobody knew it wasn’t God. And sometimes, the lizard brain back here, the cerebellum, just got scared and started stomping around like Godzilla, crushing every new thought upon arrival—that’s what the Godzilla brain is good for, but it’s not good for much else. For the most part, we accepted spiritual experiences beyond our ken. Took ’em at face value. A burning bush was God pointing the way. Ezekiel lifted bodily into heaven was just that, a rare occurrence and awe inspiring, no doubt, but we didn’t ostracize the folks who were there to witness. Nobody lost their job. Nobody got their lawn trashed. Things from the unseen realm could show up all of a sudden in our physical literal world and it was all right. It was okay.
“Nine years ago, I started interviewing people who said they were abducted by aliens, taken aboard space ships, studied, probed, specimens taken, sperm from the men and eggs from the women, frozen by light and lifted bodily from their beds and cars and homes. I listened to hundred of stories. Young, old, men, women, kids, doctors, farmers, children two and three years old. You can imagine what the Godzilla brains at Harvard thought about that when I began my work…”
He stomped around the lectern, imitating Godzilla, to much laughter and applause.
“You gotta admit he’s fun,” DeLuca said.
“There’s a reception afterward if you’d care to be further amused,” Burgess whispered back.
Hilton Jaynes spoke for another half hour, offering the proofs to his conclusion, that alien spacecraft had, for a number of years, beginning about the time man first started bouncing radio signals off the stratosphere, been visiting earth, taking human beings bodily into their ships and using them for what appeared to be a breeding program to create a hybrid race, not motivated by any sort of Mars-needs-women mentality but to save the planet Earth, a place that was rapidly and irreversibly despoiling itself. DeLuca couldn’t tell how many people in the audience (not dressed in red overalls) were buying it, but the man at the podium had a convincing way about him, and enough charisma to warrant suspicion as a “Traveler,” along with Frank Sinatra and Elvis. Jaynes cited five factors that argued against abduction as an endogenous phenomenon produced purely in the psyche: the extreme consistencies from story to story and person to person; the lack of experiential basis for such stories, nothing in the lives of the Chosen to give rise to what they said happened to them; the physical proofs, cuts, lesions, scars, and so forth, following their abductions; the independent observations of spacecraft in the areas where abductions occurred by members of the media and impartial witnesses; and the fact that the phenomenon had been observed by children too young to be aware of the cultural references from which such reported experiences might be falsely drawn.
When he was done, he opened the floor up to questions.
“Dr. Jaynes,” a young woman in the third row said, standing as she spoke. “Have you been to the Groom Lake facility at Area 51, and how do you explain the fact that several of the people who worked there later showed up in doctors’ offices with evidence of genetic cross-pollination with aliens?”
She sat down.
Jaynes sipped from his water bottle.
“You’re talking about the ‘Fish People,’ I gather?” he said, looking at her and then nodding. “To answer the first part, no, I have not been to Groom Lake. I’ve driven the length of Alien Alley, Nevada Route 375, and I was brought in the darkness illegally one night to Freedom Ridge by a group of interceptors, after the government closed it off, and we looked through binoculars and night vision goggles, but I didn’t see anything remarkable. Saw a delta-winged craft that we now know as the Stealth bomber, but that’s old news. As for the so-called ‘Fish People,’ I believe the scaly skin you’re talking about, that’s it, is it not? That’s what you’re referring to? My understanding is, that’s been proven to be a kind of epidermal eczema caused by the burning of toxic materials upwind of the facility. I’m good with that explanation. You see, dear, when there is a scientific explanation, I’ll take it. It’s when science is misapplied or applied unevenly to serve the Godzilla brains that I take umbrage. Yes, sir—you in the back row.”
“I’d like to read you some statistics… ” the young man began.
“Oh-oh,” Hilton Jaynes said, to laughter. “There’s one in every crowd. Yes, sir. I apologize for interrupting you.”
“I’d like to address a comment you made about the lack of common experiential basis,” the questioner said, “because you very frequently talk about the lack of any psychological consistencies between the selectees—that their stories have consistency, but there’s no one type of person who consistently gets abducted…”
“Son, we’ve gotten identical stories from aboriginal tribesmen in Australia and Inuit people in Canada and a village in Ghana,” Jaynes said, “people with widely disparate cultural and experiential circumstances. I’ve interrupted you again—what is your question?”
“My question is this. I’m referring to the study you’re probably aware of done by Bascomb and Halvorsen…”
“Yes, yes.”
“Where the majority of your test subjects were reinterviewed. Bascomb and Halvorsen compared the statistical probabilities of abductee personality types against the general population. So let me give you and the audience the statistics. Sixty-six percent of the abductees had imaginary friends as children, against 12 percent in the general population. Nearly 100 percent were susceptible to hypnosis, which you used during your own interv
iews, though only about 30 percent of the general population is thought to be susceptible. Seventy-six percent said that at some time in their lives, they’d heard voices or things talking to them, against 7 percent general. Eighty-three percent claimed to have had psychic experiences, premonitions, telepathic experiences, and so on. Eighty-eight percent had what they described as ‘out-of-body’ experiences, either floating sensations or full astral projections. Ninety-two percent said they’d sleepwalked or had waking dreams, night terrors, hallucinations. Half said they been communicated with by some kind of spirit or higher intelligence, and about three-quarters said they’d seen ghosts. In all of these aspects, the rate for the general population is between 10 and 15 percent. So my question is, how can you claim there is no consistent psychological type of abductee, when statistically it seems pretty clear they are all quite prone to fantasy, as it’s been historically regarded by the psychological community?”
Jaynes paused, smiling at his accuser.
“I’ll bet you were up all night working on that one,” Jaynes said, drawing more laughter. “No, no, people, don’t laugh. This young man has a very good point. A very good point. I would take issue with some of his numbers, but let’s assume that in general he’s right. He has a valid point, but he’s nevertheless missing mine. Let me give you one more statistic, sir. You wanna know what’s going on in the sky, maybe we should talk to the people who live in the sky, who work there. Four years ago, there was a survey of airplane pilots. Done at Columbia University by a man named Jacobs, if you want to check his work. He asked over a thousand pilots whether or not they’d ever seen any unidentified flying objects, but he gave them two ways to answer. One was anonymously, the other wasn’t. In the one that wasn’t anonymous, 2 percent said they’d seen UFOs. In the one that was, 54 percent said they had. I’ve been standing up here talking about the difference between the people who are open to the unseen and people who aren’t. We know what happened to those police officers in Millstadt, Illinois, and I think you know what would happen to an airplane pilot who said he saw a flying saucer, don’t you, son? The selectees who came forward to speak with me were the selectees who had indeed already exhibited receptivity to the unexplained and were comfortable with a higher level of ambiguity. It can be statistically proven that I have only spoken with a very small percentage, just the tip of the iceberg, because the vast majority of the Chosen aren’t going to come forward now, are they? Years ago we thought child abuse was rare, until people started coming forward and we find out that sadly, it’s not so rare at all. There is much we do not speak of. Just as there is much we do not know. My message is that we must be open to the mystery if we are ever to penetrate it.”
He fielded a few more softball questions and then thanked his hosts. Penelope Burgess said his speaking fee was seventy-five hundred dollars—she hoped the students got something out of it. DeLuca caught sight again of Sami. Apparently Brother Antonionus had stayed home.
“So what’d you think?” DeLuca asked her.
“I think it’s significant that the funds to pay for this are coming out of the student entertainment budget,” Burgess said. “Some people were upset that they gave him a room in the science building, but he’s still a Harvard psychologist.”
“So what’d you think?” DeLuca repeated.
“I think I want to flatten Tokyo,” she said. “Wanna go down and meet him? I’m skipping the reception.”
They made their way to the stage, where Jaynes was surrounded by people asking him to sign their copies of his book. Three were dressed as Star Trek characters, and another wore an alien Halloween mask. It seemed fairly clear, by the way Jaynes hugged two of the Brethren of the Light members, that they knew each other already. When Penelope Burgess introduced herself, his eyes lit up and he told her he’d read the last three papers she’d published and was interested in reading more—the idea of measuring extraterrestrial life fascinated him—would she be interested in having lunch? She politely begged off, but he seemed sincere and earnest in his praise. She introduced DeLuca as her date, though it was DeLuca’s impression she’d used the word date to let Hilton Jaynes know she wasn’t interested in him the way the three flirty coeds standing next to her evidently were. Judging by the way Jaynes smiled at them, it seemed equally evident that despite his advanced age, he probably didn’t have much trouble scoring groupies.
“How are you, sir?” Jaynes said, shaking his hand. “Thank you for coming.”
“What do you make of the Brethren of the Light?” DeLuca asked him in his friendliest voice. “I’m guessing it’s not unusual for such groups to attend your lectures.”
“Not unusual at all, Mr. DeLuca,” Jaynes said. “All are welcome. What do I think of my more eccentric fans? Sir, I grew up in a little town called Falling Waters, West Virginia, right on the Potomac—the Winchester and Western Railroad ran through my backyard, and later my father moved us about forty miles northeast, to the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. And you know what happened there. My whole life, I saw crazy men dressing up in costumes to reenact all the various battles from the War of Northern Aggression. I recall a friend of my father’s who cut up a wool bath mat to make a vest and splashed battery acid on a pair of gray work pants from Sears to affect the tattered and scruffy look of a true Johnny Reb, and he used to stand in his backyard, practicing his rebel yell, prior to the reenactments he attended. Ended up shooting his own hand off with a cannon he tried to build from a section of sewer pipe. Thought he was channeling the spirit of his great-grandfather. Believed that with all his heart. I have seen men inspired to the point where they behave quite foolishly, but that doesn’t mean the Civil War didn’t happen now, does it? That answer your question?”
“That pretends to answer the question, but actually it evades it,” DeLuca said. “I was asking something quite specific.”
“Well, in that case,” Jaynes said, “I shall have to recuse myself, because Malcolm Percy was a classmate of mine at Yale, and a fellow Bonesman. A few years behind me, so I cannot say that I knew him. He was recently voted the second most embarrassing Bonesman in the history of the organization. I’ll leave it to your imagination to guess who the most embarrassing one might be. Goodnight, Mr. DeLuca.”
Jaynes was swallowed up by groupies as he made his way toward the door. Penelope Burgess said she had papers to grade but would love a drink first and wouldn’t mind company. DeLuca wasn’t sure what kind of hint that was, but he scratched his nose, just in case, long enough for her to see his wedding ring, just in case she was interested, and then said he needed to get back to his motel.
“No luck finding Ms. Escavedo?” Burgess asked.
“Nothing so far,” he said. “Oh, yeah—does the name ‘Bartleby’ mean anything to you?”
“Bartleby?” she said. “Wasn’t that a wine cooler?”
“You’re thinking of Bartles and Jaymes,” DeLuca said.
“Bartleby,” she repeated. “I can’t think of anything. I remember a short story I read in college called that, but don’t ask me to remember any more than that. Why?”
“Just a name that came up earlier,” he said. “Probably not important.”
He excused himself and made his way across the room, to where the woman who’d washed his car the day before was standing, her back to him.
“Hello, Rainbow,” DeLuca said. “How are you? David DeLuca—we spoke at the mansion.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, as if she suddenly remembered. “How are you?”
“David DeLuca,” he said, extending his hand to Sami.
“This is Sami,” Rainbow said. “He’s an initiate and that means he has to observe seventy-two hours of silence, but I’m sure he’s pleased to meet you.”
DeLuca shot Sami a look, then turned to Rainbow.
“I was worried about your daughter,” he said. “Ruby?”
“Oh, that,” she said, “oh, no, don’t worry, Ruby’s fine. She was just with a friend but she’s great. We’re not
allowed to use cell phones or she would have called. Anyway, thank you. Have a great evening.”
Brief eye contact with Sami told him the things Rainbow had just said were not true.
An hour later, he was back at the motel. He’d pounded down a Whopper and fries (wondering why on an unlimited expense account he wasn’t able to eat better), showered, and was standing on the balcony when the phone rang. It was Dan Sykes, wondering how the lecture had gone. DeLuca did his best to summarize. Sykes hadn’t learned much at Foxies, other than that there was an awful lot of what he thought was illegal contact during the lap dances, with the owners and bouncers looking the other way.
“Going from there to prostitution doesn’t seem like that big a leap,” Sykes said. “Or vice versa, I suppose.”
“You were an English major at Stanford, right?” DeLuca asked. “Do you remember a short story called ‘Bartleby’?”
“‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’” Sykes said. “Herman Melville. Why?”
“What’s it about?”
“Dammit,” Sykes said. “I knew there was going to be a test someday.”
“Just in general,” DeLuca said.
“As I recall, it’s about a guy who hates his job,” Sykes said. “I think he works for an insurance agency, or maybe it’s accounting, doing something really mindless, anyway, and his boss is a dick, so one day when the guy tells him what to do, Bartleby says, ‘I would prefer not to,’ and then when they ask him to explain, he says it again, ‘I would prefer not to.’ That’s all he says to anybody about anything, like the raven in the Edgar Allan Poe poem that says ‘Nevermore.’”
“And what happens to Bartleby?” DeLuca asked.
“I think he starves to death or something,” Dan Sykes said. “They ask him if he wants to eat and he says, ‘I would prefer not to.’”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Sykes said. “It was symbolic for the Industrial Revolution or something. I could have that all wrong. It wasn’t one of my better classes.”
Dark Target Page 14
