Thirst No. 4

by Christopher Pike

  “I don’t follow,” Seymour says.

  “Our laws of physics cannot account for telepathy. Despite the advances in the field, the wild implications of string theory and black holes, we’ve still only identified four forces in the universe. Electromagnetic forces, gravity, and strong and weak nuclear forces. Ask any physicist and he’ll tell you that there are no other powers at work in this world. Yet ESP, even if it exists to only a slight degree, says that’s not true. There has to be another form of power in this universe that we cannot explain. I’d even go so far as to say that the existence of ESP supports the argument that we have a soul. Do you follow me?”

  Seymour hesitates. “I see where you’re coming from.”

  “That’s good enough for now. I know I’ve belabored this point but it’s important that you understand that I approached parapsychology from a purely scientific point of view. And I didn’t have to conduct much research to come to the same conclusion Dr. Rhine did. Let me state it in one clear concise sentence: ESP exists in certain people—perhaps in all people, to a degree—but it’s either a very weak force or a very dormant one.”

  “I’d imagine such a conclusion would have depressed you,” Seymour says.

  Sharp shakes his head. “On the contrary, I was delighted with what I’d discovered. Because it occurred to me that if I could assemble a large enough group of psychics, then I could use them the same way astronomers use groups of radio telescopes to boost the faintest signals given off by the most distant galaxies.”

  “Oh God,” I whisper.

  Sharp nods in satisfaction. “You see where I’m going. Astronomers call such groups of radio telescopes ‘arrays.’ No one telescope picks up much information. But when their data is fed through a computer and scanned for patterns, they prove to be remarkably accurate.”

  “You created a psychic array,” I say, my blood turning cold, never mind that I drank two pints of warm blood this morning.

  Sharp beams. “Yes.”

  “Wait,” Seymour says. “I don’t get it. I don’t care how large a group you assembled, it should only be as strong as its strongest link. I mean, you must have gotten a bunch of answers that were all over the place. That must have happened when you applied your array to reading the ESP deck, didn’t it?”

  “You’re jumping the gun, Seymour. We’re not all as bright as Teri obviously is. Let’s take it step by step. When dealing with a large group, all you need is a one percent deviation by chance to construct a workable array. Let me give you an example. I took a female student who knew nothing about my work and had her focus on the ESP cards one at a time. Usually there are twenty-five cards in a deck, five of each basic shape. I gave her twenty decks to work with. Enough to get a statistically sound average but not enough to exhaust her. At the same time I borrowed four hundred students from the school’s general population. Their job was to try to read the woman’s mind. To see what shape the woman was looking at. I stationed her in an isolated area and put my large group in an auditorium. They could see her via remote camera but she couldn’t see them. They knew when she picked up a fresh card. They knew how long she held it for. They were not allowed to talk to each other. I discouraged them from even looking at each other. I wanted them to focus on the woman and try to guess what shape she was seeing.”

  “Guess?” Seymour says. “They were still guessing.”

  “Of course. And they were wrong most of the time. But I quickly noticed that there would be a certain shape the group would lean toward with any one card. For example, when the woman was staring at a square, often a hundred people in my array would guess a square.”

  “The other three hundred would be wrong?” Seymour asks.

  “Yes.”

  “That doesn’t seem to prove anything.”

  “You’re not thinking this through!” Sharp snaps. “According to the laws of chance, only eighty people should have guessed a square. A hundred people guessing it correctly was very significant. Ninety people guessing it correctly was significant. Eighty-five guessing correctly was also significant.”

  “Come on,” Seymour grumbles. “How can you say eighty-five people getting it right meant anything? They could have done that by chance.”

  “In any one trial, chance was always a factor. But I performed hundreds of trials with each test subject. And my array of four hundred students would lean toward the correct answer one quarter of the time.”

  Seymour struggles to be diplomatic but he is stuck on this point. “By chance they would have gotten the right answer one fifth of the time. I’m sorry, I’m still not impressed.”

  “I’m not offended. That was the identical response I received from my colleagues when I showed them my results. But with the help of my grad students—five of whom were close to me—I began to experiment with my array. I soon discovered that kids were accurate more often than adults. I also learned that concentration didn’t improve accuracy. Kids did better when they relaxed and answered with whatever popped into their minds. Finally, and this was a big key, I discovered that the ESP signal was still weak in the most psychic person I could find. The bottom line was, I had to use a giant array to get accurate results. It was only when I began to use three thousand kids that I was able to create a workable array.”

  “How accurate was that group?” Seymour asks.

  “They would lean toward the correct answer almost every time.”

  “The word ‘lean’ is ambiguous. How many of the three thousand kids would get the correct answer?” Seymour persists.

  I feel I must interrupt and defend what Sharp is saying.

  “It doesn’t matter, Seymour. All that matters is he was able to create a group that had a tendency toward accuracy. That not only proved that ESP existed, it created a situation where it could be tapped for other purposes.”

  Sharp nods. “Thank you, Teri.”

  Seymour is wary. “What do you mean for other purposes?”

  I turn to Sharp. “I assume you began to use your array to see things other than the shapes on the cards.”

  “Yes,” Sharp says. “At the urging of my graduate students, I tried to see if my array could predict swings in the stock market.”

  “Of all the things the kids could predict.” Paula jumps in suddenly. “Why did you have them focus on the stock market?”

  “It wasn’t my idea. It was Cynthia’s. But her reasons must be obvious. She wanted to see if the kids could help make money.”

  “Up until this point your research had an innocent quality to it,” Paula says. “You were a scientist seeking the truth. But when you allowed your group of kids to be exploited to make money, didn’t it worry you that such an intent would distort your experiments?”

  “We never told the kids what they were predicting. We wanted them to remain innocent, as you say. We just fed them stock symbols and asked if they felt “positive” or “negative” about them. Understand, none of these kids recognized the symbols. I didn’t recognize them. They were from obscure stocks. Cynthia was the only one who knew what companies they belonged to.”

  “Professor,” Paula says, “I don’t wish to hurt your feelings but you’re avoiding my question. The intent of your experiments was controlled at the top. It was you and Cynthia and the other grad students who were in charge. All of you knew you were using the kids for personal gain.”

  Sharp is offended. “Never in my life have I put money at the top of my list of what’s important in life. Look at the path I chose. I could have made a substantial salary as a practicing psychiatrist. With wealth, I could have purchased a large home and attracted a beautiful wife. But I stayed in an academic environment, and remained single, so I could devote my life to teaching others what I knew, and continue with my research. How dare you accuse me of exploiting my subjects for selfish purposes.”

  “I apologize,” Paula says. “The fact you didn’t exploit the kids is admirable. Still, you knew your graduate students weren’t as altruistic. I get the impr
ession you did little to rein this Cynthia in.”

  Sharp snorts. “You don’t know the woman. No one told her what to do.”

  Paula persists. “You still haven’t answered my question. Weren’t you concerned that the intent to make money on the stock market would distort your results?”

  Sharp is a long time answering. The left side of his face, the injured part, seems to tremble. “At that time, I didn’t realize that intention was important in this work.”

  “But later?” Paula asks.

  Sharp holds up a hand. “I’ll get to that later. For now, the main point is we’d made a major scientific discovery. In my mind the most important discovery of our time. My array was not only able to prove the existence of telepathy, it was able to show that people could actually predict the future.”

  “Were you able to publish your research?” I ask.

  Sharp’s shoulders sag and the life goes out of his voice. “No. The fools. I had in hand absolute proof of a force of nature that had been under our noses since we first lived in caves, and no one wanted to hear about it. I should say, no one in the scientific community. Sure, there were fringe groups that were willing to publish my work, but you have to understand that given my position with the university, I couldn’t be seen as avoiding the scrutiny of my peers. Yet they wouldn’t even look at what I had discovered! They joked about me behind my back. I was no longer Professor Sharp but Professor Dull.”

  “Was Cynthia upset your work wasn’t accepted?” I ask.

  He hesitates. “I suppose.”

  “I don’t think so. I think once she and the others saw what you had stumbled upon, they were anxious to keep it quiet. Come on, Professor, isn’t that the truth?”

  He’s still lost in the past, in his anger over the rejection of his years of research. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbles.

  I give the others a look telling them that I want to take control of the questioning. I especially don’t want Shanti to speak up and admit she’s recently been a member of Cynthia’s Array. For all I know it might make the old man clam up with fear.

  Seymour nods, indicating he doesn’t have a good feel for the subject matter. Yet Paula frowns. She’s worried about something I’m missing. That’s fine, she can question him when I’m done.

  “Professor Sharp, please look at me,” I say and he raises his head. “You’ve done a wonderful job of explaining the theory behind your work and how the original arrays first came to be. But you’ve told us almost nothing about your grad students who went on to found the IIC. They’re the reason we’re here. They’re dangerous. You know that as well as we do. Isn’t that true?”

  He blinks as if shaken but his eyes come back into focus.

  “They’re more dangerous than you can imagine,” he says.

  I smile. “I think you’re going to discover that I have a pretty vivid imagination. Help us take a close look at the players involved here. I get the impression Cynthia was the boss when it came to this group?”

  “I was in charge. I taught them everything they knew.”

  “That might have been true in an academic sense. But already you’ve admitted it was Cynthia who came up with the idea to use the large group of kids to predict changes in the stock market.”

  Sharp nods reluctantly. “Cindy was the smartest of the lot, the most driven. She was the first to grasp the implications of my work. She helped me a lot when it came to tinkering with the arrays, improving how the kids did. In the beginning, we were very close.”

  “Did you have a falling out later?” I ask.

  He shrugs and lowers his head. “It wasn’t that way. I got a stroke, I got sick. I was in bed for over a year. The university forced me to retire, although I think they used my illness as an excuse. They never appreciated my work.”

  “Was Cindy married to Thomas Brutran at the time?” I ask.

  “To Tom? No, they got together later. When I met Cindy, she was with Fredrick Wild. You must have seen his name listed online. He was on the original IIC board.” Sharp smiles wistfully as he recalls the good old days. “We used to call him Freddy or Fried Freddy. He was a huge devotee of LSD, mushrooms, and other mind-expanding drugs. He used to worry me, I was scared he would damage his brain. He was the exact opposite of Cindy. They were an odd couple, to be sure. But she loved him. I never saw a girl so much in love. And boy she was jealous! If Freddy so much as looked at another girl she went on the warpath.”

  “Did Freddy feel the same about Cindy?” I ask.

  Sharp hesitates. “He loved her, sure, intensely. They were very close. Unfortunately, they weren’t compatible. Freddy was a laid-back hippie and Cindy was driven to get ahead. They wanted to be together but it didn’t work out. And so Cindy ended up with Tom, Thomas.”

  “Does Cindy love Tom?” I ask, although I already know the answer.

  “He loves her but I doubt she ever got over Freddy.”

  “Then why did she marry Tom?”

  Sharp shook his head. “Tom was rich and handsome. They had more in common than Cindy and Freddy. Tom was clean-cut, well disciplined. He wore a sports coat to campus while most kids his age had on shorts and sandals. I knew that one day he’d be president of a company. And you see, that’s what’s happened.”

  “IIC is not a normal company.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that point.”

  “Were Noel Brent and Wendy Brent married when they were your students?” I ask.

  “They got married shortly after I came up with the array. They had to. Wendy got pregnant and Noel pretty much did what she told him to.”

  “It sounds like the women were the real power when it came to your graduate students.”

  “That’s true about Cindy and Wendy. But you couldn’t say that about Freddy. No one told that guy what to do. He was a free thinker. I’ve told you that Cindy helped me refine the early arrays, but Freddy was a big help as well. He was the one who figured out how to get them to talk.”

  My heart skips. “Talk?”

  Sharp suddenly looks as if he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “I didn’t mean that literally.”

  “How did you mean it?” I ask.

  Sharp is distinctly uncomfortable. “Freddy came up with a list of experiments that allowed us to extract information from the kids.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Your usual New Age drivel. I didn’t think it was important at the time.”

  “But later?” I ask.

  Sharp brushes the question away. “Don’t get hung up on that part of our research. There was nothing there we could prove.”

  “Professor, I’m afraid you contradict yourself. On one hand you say Freddy was a big help. He had insights into the early arrays and got them to talk. Then you act like the information he came up with wasn’t important.”

  “I don’t think it was important.”

  “At least tell us how he got the arrays to talk.”

  Sharp shrugs. “None of his techniques were scientific. It was more along the lines of spiritualism. The type of people drawn to those cults are always trying to get messages from beyond the grave. They gather people around a table and try to get the table’s legs to tap once for yes and twice for no. Or else they sit with Ouija boards and channel all kinds of bizarre information. Freddy was drawn to that sort of thing. It impressed me that he was able to adapt our arrays so the power of a large group could contribute to what was being channeled. But, once again, the quality of the information was usually poor.”

  “Give us an example of the type of information you received.”

  “It was no different from the junk you can find in a hundred channeled books at the store. A spirit would arrive with some high-sounding name and profess to have the secrets of the universe. He or she would dictate pages of information on reincarnation or higher dimensions, none of which could be tested. I’m telling you, it was a waste of time.”

  “Professo
r Sharp, do you believe in God?” I ask.

  My question catches him off guard. “Why do you ask?”

  “With all your experiments, it sounds like you were trying to tap into a kind of collective unconsciousness—if you want to use Carl Jung’s label—or a universal consciousness. Would you say that’s fair?”

  “We were trying to tap into a power that had no name. Some people might have called it God. I’m not sure I would have been one of them.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “How can I answer that question? As a scientist, I could only work with what I could prove.”

  I lean forward and take his shriveled hand in mine. “Are you afraid to answer because you think Cindy used the arrays for evil purposes? To give you a stroke?”

  “No.”

  “When we first arrived, you gave that impression.”

  He shakes free of my hand. He acts trapped, restless. “You don’t understand,” he says.

  “Then help us understand.”

  “The arrays were designed to solicit information. To prove we had hidden senses beyond the five obvious ones. I didn’t create them to hurt people. The idea is preposterous.”

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  “It is true!” he shouts back.

  “But you’ve admitted how dangerous the IIC is. You said it was more dangerous than we could imagine.”

  Sharp struggles to answer and I fear I might have pressed him too hard. He’s old and frail. His voice cracks as he answers and I worry he’s going to have another stroke.

  “That company is dangerous but not because of the big Array Cindy eventually created. That’s not what stung you and that’s not what put me in bed for a year and destroyed my health.”

  “If it wasn’t the Array, then what was it?” I ask.

  Sharp hesitates. “The Cradle.”