"Gesundheit," Finster told him cheerfully. (He was getting very good with other languages.) "How about your neighbors to the east? Would you call the Russians superstitious?"
"Hah! They are perhaps the worst of all." Hannula became very absorbed in the handout material.
"Not much useful stuff here," Finster noted. "Will you look at this, for chrissake? A History of the British Society for Psychical Research, 1882 to Present. Did my editor send me halfway around the world for that kinda shit? And this bio-sheet on MacGregor is hardly anything except summaries of the guy's publications. How's this for a grabber? 'EEG Beta Activity Correlates Among Six Subjects During Short-Range Excorporeal Excursions.' Jeez!"
The Soviet agent managed a perfunctory chuckle. He thought:
Shortrange it must be shortrange source New Hampshire assured us remoteviewing still unreliable but if so why Americans offer so much money Weinstein who try assassinate MacGregor April when idiots allow us enter hall begin sodding demonstration?
"Any minute now," Finster said absently, still studying the press-kit material. "Say—here's a choice bit. Did you know that MacGregor's official title here at Edinburgh University is 'Holder of the Arthur Koestler Chair of Parapsychology'? This Koestler was a famous writer, an ex-Commie who wrote about the abuse of power in the Red Bloc. When he died he left a pile of money to found this psychic professorship. Wouldn't it send up the Russkies if MacGregor has discovered something big? We all know the Reds have been trying to develop Mind Wars stuff for twenty, thirty years. Lately, there've been rumors that they're close to succeeding."
Hannula was blank-faced. "I have heard nothing about that."
Finster flashed his chipmunk grin. "I'll just bet you haven't." He folded the information packet lengthwise and tucked it into the Louis Vuitton shoulder bag that contained the tools of his trade—audiovisual microcorder, cellular telephone with data terminal, and the seasoned reporter's indispensable steno pad with three Bic pens. Only the most careful scrutiny would have revealed the illegal comsat-scrambler hookup on the phone and the needle-gun charged with deadly ricin concealed within the Bic Clic with the silver cap.
"Look!" Hannula cried. "Something happens!"
The doors of the auditorium were opening at last. A ragged cheer arose from the media people waiting in the lobby and the mob surged forward in a body. Finster called out to Hannula, "Stick with me, buddy! I always get a good seat!" And somehow the throng did part minimally to let the dapper little American pass through. The KGB agent hastened to follow, and the two of them raced down the center aisle and plopped breathlessly into seats in the third row. "What'd I tell you?" Finster bragged. "Best seats in the house."
Hannula groped beneath his own rump. He extracted a placard that said: RESERVED TIME MAGAZINE. Consternation creased his brow.
"Relax," Finster told him. He took the Russian's sign, together with one from his own seat that said: RESERVED CORRIERE DELLA SERA, and tore both sheets to bits. Reporters milling about in search of their proper places were open-mouthed. Finster's eyes swept over them. "We have a perfect right to sit anyplace we want. Versteh'? Capisce? Pigez? You dig?"
The other journalists looked away, suddenly absorbed in their own affairs.
The hall was jammed with more than a thousand people, and some of those lurking about the fringes were plainclothes police officers. Finster pretended to jot down items on his notepad as he relocated the other spooks. Only the CIA, masquerading as an SNN Steadicam team, and the TASS crew were more advantageously placed than Finster and his Soviet acquaintance. The Brits were clustered fifth row far left. Both sets of Germans were way in back with the luckless standees—who now included a distinguished Italian science editor and a hopping-mad Time stringer. The Israeli agent and the lady from the Direction Générale de la'Sécurité Extérieure were side by side, chatting chummily. But what had become of the Swiss bankers' spy? Ah. Somehow he had wormed his way to the very front of the theatre, to the area between the seats and the platform edge, where he stood focusing his Hasselblad in the midst of a crush of television technicians. The fellow's mind was wrapped in feverish excitement, but because of the distance, it was impossible for Finster to sift out coherent thoughts. Obscurely troubled, Finster frowned.
"Ah," breathed Hannula. "It is about to start."
A white-haired woman in a heather-colored suit had come out onto the platform and stood expectantly, holding a cordless microphone at the ready. Behind her was a simple small table with another microphone, and a wooden chair. Hung upstage against a curtain backdrop was an impressive GPD video screen that measured four meters by five. It had been flashing enigmatic test patterns while the audience settled down, but now it had gone blank except for the digital time display in the lower right-hand corner that indicated 09:58. No other apparatus was in evidence.
Ready-lights on the TV cameras surrounding the platform began to wink on like wolves' eyes glittering in fireshine. Technical directors muttered into headsets, giving last-minute instructions to their colleagues who manned a great gaggle of satellite-transmission vans massed outside on George Square and Buccleuch Place. A few still-cameras clicked and buzzed prematurely and print-media people whispered establishing remarks into their microcorders. At precisely ten o'clock, the university spokeswoman cleared her throat.
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Eloise Watson, the director of media relations for the Medical School of the University of Edinburgh. We would like to welcome you to this special demonstration and press conference organized on behalf of the Parapsychology Unit of the Department of Psychology. Immediately after the demonstration, questions will be accepted from the floor. We must ask that you hold all queries until then. And now, without further ado, let me present the man you have been waiting to meet—James Somerled MacGregor, Koestler Professor of Parapsychology."
She withdrew, and from the wings shambled a tall and loose-jointed figure. His jacket and trousers of oatmeal tweed were baggy and nondescript, but he had compensated somewhat for their drabness with a waistcoat cut from the scarlet MacGregor tartan. Still-cameras snapped and whirred and TV lenses zoomed in for close-ups of a lean and wild-eyed face. MacGregor's beaky nose and thin lips were framed with extravagant Dundreary whiskers of vivid auburn. His hair, unkempt and collar-length, was also red. He clutched a sensitive dish-tipped microphone with big bony hands, holding it up as though it were the hilt of a Highlander's claymore presented in defiant salute. When he spoke his voice was gruff, with the barest hint of a lilting western accent.
"What we're going to show you today is a thing that people of a certain mind have been doing for hundreds of years—perhaps even thousands. I learned it myself from my grandmother in the Isles, and I've managed to teach it to numbers of my colleagues. You'll be meeting some of them today. The phenomenon has been called out-of-body experience, remote-viewing, astral projection, even soul-travel. Lately, psychic researchers have taken to calling it excorporeal excursion or EE. I'll stick to those initials during the demonstration for the sake of simplicity, but you journalists can call it anything you like—just so long as you don't call it magic."
There were scattered laughs and murmurs.
Jamie's fierce, dark eyes glowered and the audience fell silent. "EE isn't magic! It's as real as radio or television or space flight!...But I didn't invite you here today to argue its authenticity. I'm going to show it to you."
He half turned, indicating the huge video screen at the rear of the platform. "With the kind assistance of the University's Astronomy Department and the GTE Corporation, we have arranged for several live television transmissions to be beamed exclusively to this theatre from other locations. I will be able to speak directly to the persons you will see, using this microphone—but they won't see me. All they will receive from me is an audio signal, like a telephone call ... Now I think we're ready to begin."
At a gesture from MacGregor, a balding bearded man in his forties came on stage, saluted the audience with
a wave, and seated himself at the table. Jamie said, "I'd like to introduce my old friend and colleague of twenty years, Nigel Weinstein, Associate Professor of Parapsychology here at the University. He will explain his role in a few minutes. But first—may I have the California transmission, please?"
A color picture flashed onto the screen. A smartly dressed woman and an elderly man sat in easy chairs before a low glass table. Opposite was a long settee and behind them potted plants and a window that appeared to overlook moonlit waters spanned by an enormous suspension bridge. City lights starred the surrounding hills. The display in the corner of the screen now read: SAN FRANCISCO USA 02:05.
The woman said, "Good morning, Professor MacGregor—and all of you members of the world media there in Edinburgh, Scotland! I'm Sylvia Albert and I host the Late-Late Talk Show here on KGO-TV, San Francisco. We're coming to you live via satellite in a special closed transmission that was arranged at the personal request of Dr. Lucius J. Kemp of Stanford University. Dr. Kemp is no doubt well known to you all as a distinguished brain researcher and a Nobel Laureate in Medicine ... Will you tell us, Dr. Kemp, why you're participating in this demonstration?"
Kemp had been staring at his clasped hands. Now he nodded very slowly several times. "Numbers of my colleagues at Stanford have been involved in parapsychology research for some twenty-three years. I've watched their progress with great interest, even though my own work involves a different area of study—one that you might say is more conventional."
He looked directly into the camera and leveled an index finger at his viewers on the other side of the world. "You might say! I say parapsychology is as respectable as any other branch of psychiatry. Now I study brain cells, things you can see and touch and measure. But the brain is a peculiar piece of matter that houses the mind—which we scientists most definitely cannot see or touch, and which we are only incompetently able to measure. The nature of mind, and its capabilities, are still nearly as mysterious as outer space. It wasn't too many years ago that the majority of educated people—scientists especially—dismissed parapsychology as nonsense. Things aren't that way today, but there are still skeptics in the scientific establishment who will try to assure you that paranormal psychic phenomena are either nonexistent or else freakish effects without practical value. I am not one of those scientists..."
The screen in the Edinburgh lecture theatre was now filled with the Nobel Laureate's face, copper-brown skin stretched over high cheekbones, black eyes narrowed with the intensity of his emotion, a few drops of perspiration trickling from the snowy wool of his hair onto his broad forehead. Then he flashed a brilliant smile.
"Because of that, the parapsychology researchers at Stanford nailed me! They asked for my help with this experiment, and they got it. That's why I'm here in the wee hours of the morning along with Miss Albert and the director and crew of her show and the three impartial witnesses we've asked to assist us."
The camera pulled back again and the talk-show hostess rapidly explained how the experiment was going to work. The three witnesses had each been asked to bring a small card with a picture or a few lines of writing. The subject of the card was to be known only to them, and they had sealed it inside three successive envelopes. The witnesses now waited in the TV studio's green room, where guests assembled before being taken on stage for their interviews. There were no cameras in the green room and the monitor there had been disconnected.
Now Jamie MacGregor asked, "Miss Albert, is it true that there is no means of outside communication in this green room? No telephones or radio equipment?"
"None whatsoever," she said.
"Very good. I want to be sure that the journalists with us here in Edinburgh understand that. Go on, Lucius. Tell us what your own part in the experiment will be.'"
"I'll wait," Kemp said, "until you tell me that your colleague, Dr. Weinstein, is ready to undertake a remote-viewing of those cards the three witnesses have hidden away on their persons. When you give me the word, I'll go to the green room and stand in the doorway. I'll ask the witnesses to take out the envelopes and hold them up, unopened, for two minutes. After that they'll accompany me back here to the cameras, envelopes still unopened. And then we'll see, won't we?" He smiled.
"Aye, we certainly will," Jamie said. "Thank you, Lucius."
The audience in the theatre let out a collective sigh. Seats creaked as many of them hunched forward. Jamie was holding a whispered colloquy with Nigel. The KGB agent turned to Finster and whispered, "If this works—great God, the repercussions!"
"You can say that again," the Mafia's man agreed. "In Finnish."
Nigel picked up his own microphone. He was still seated at the table, while Jamie had withdrawn to the left side of the platform.
"I'm afraid," Weinstein said, his expression mischievous, "that your worst suspicions are about to be confirmed. I'm going into a trance."
Tension-relieving laughter.
"Usually we do this EE business in a soundproofed room to avoid distraction. We relax in a kind of glorified barber's chair equipped with monitoring gadgets that tell what our brains and bods are up to while our minds go soaring through the blue empyrean ... but that wouldn't do today. We want you to see how ordinary EE can be. But I warn you—don't cough or drop your pencils or crack chewing gum while I'm off, or I just might crumble to dust before your eyes like Dracula in the sunlight."
More laughter. Then total silence.
Nigel had closed his eyes and was breathing slowly and deeply. Up on the giant video screen the American scientist and the talk-show hostess waited.
"Ready," said Nigel in a flat voice.
Jamie spoke into his microphone. "You may go to the green room now, Lucius."
The California camera followed Kemp into the studio wings, where he vanished amidst a clutter of equipment. Then it swiveled back to Sylvia Albert and held. Twenty-six seconds clicked by on the digital display.
Nigel's eyes opened. "Got it," he said simply.
Jamie went to the platform edge. "Would one of you be so kind as to pass up a sheet of paper and something to write with?"
A BBC technical director thrust up a yellow sheet and a pencil. Jamie nodded his thanks and passed them on to Nigel, who scribbled energetically for a few minutes. Then he gave the sheet back to Jamie, who returned it to the BBC man, saying, "Hold on to that. We'll want you to read it shortly."
Almost nine thousand kilometers away, the two minutes having passed, Dr. Kemp was returning to the talk-show set leading two women and a man. The newcomers sat down at the glass table and placed their sealed envelopes in front of them.
Sylvia Albert said, "May I present our guinea pigs! Lola McCafferty Lopez, Assistant District Attorney for San Francisco County; Maureen Sedgewick, Associate Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle; and Rabbi Milton Green of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation of the University of California at Berkeley ... Now, will you tell us what results you have, Professor MacGregor?"
Jamie leaned down to the BBC crewman. "Sir, would you please read out what Dr. Weinstein wrote?" He reversed his microphone so that the tiny parabolic receiving dish at its tip was aimed at the technician.
"First card," came the man's voice clearly. "From a Monopoly game: GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL, DO NOT COLLECT $200."
The audience roared as on the screen, the attorney ripped open her multiple envelopes and showed the card. The cartoon face peering through bars loomed in an extreme close-up.
"Second card," the BBC man read. "Handwritten quote from Shakespeare: 'To be, or not to be: that is the question.'"
The Edinburgh audience was murmuring loudly. As the California camera zoomed in for the second confirmation the noise swelled to a clamor. Jamie lifted his arms. "Please! There's still Rabbi Green's card."
The BBC man read, "Picture postcard of planet Earth taken from space with handwritten note on back: 'Let there be light.'"
Instead, there was bedlam.
The false reporter from the Helsingen Sanomat c
overed his face with his hands and groaned, "Yob tvoyu mat'!" Finster appended, "In spades, tovarishch."
While the hubbub quieted, Jamie gave brief thanks to the California participants and the screen blanked out. Almost immediately it was replaced by a new image, a stark newsroom desk backed by a station logo: Tv-3 AUCKLAND. A comfortably homely man and a blond young woman with an abstracted Mona Lisa smile sat close together at one end of the desk. The time was 20:18.
"Good evening, Professor MacGregor! Ron Wiggins here, with your graduate student Miss Alana Shaunavon, who flew in on Air New Zealand SST from London earlier today. Alana, tell us just a little bit about yourself."
"I'm a doctoral candidate in parapsychology at Edinburgh University, where I work with Professor Jamie MacGregor. There are thirty-two of us at the Unit, in various stages of training for EE—excorporeal excursion. I was chosen to come here and attempt to view a message written by a member of the audience there at the Edinburgh press conference."
Ron Wiggins gave a worldly chuckle. "Well, we'll give it a fair go!...And here to keep a sharp eye on things are Bill Drummond of the Auckland Star, Melanie Te Wiata of the New Zealand Heiald, and Les Seymour of the Wellington Evening Post."
The camera panned over the scribes, who sat at the opposite end of the desk, looking aloof. Wiggins said, "As I understand it, Alana will leave her body here in Kiwi Land and attempt to project herself more than eighteen thousand kilometers to Scotland—"
"Excuse me," the girl interrupted firmly. The close-up showed eyes of a magnetic emerald green. Her voice was low and cajoling as she contradicted Wiggins. "It's really not like that, you know. Subjectively, I may feel as though I were traveling, but I don't—any more than we travel when we dream. Current metapsychic theory holds that the EE experience is a type of sensory response, like long-distance sight. Farsight. But it's not mystical, and my mind certainly doesn't leave my body."
"Mm," Wiggins said. "Be that as it may, let me assure our witnesses here and overseas that we have no electronic means of viewing events there at the Edinburgh press conference. Furthermore, we aren't broadcasting this transmission to our national audience. It's a coded impulse beamed solely to Scotland via satellite. We are recording here for a later presentation, however, in conjunction with the material we expect to receive from our people on the scene in Edinburgh ... And now, Alana, are you ready to begin?"
INTERVENTION Page 35
