Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

by Spider Robinson

  "I wonder if you can imagine what that's like? Perhaps, if you've ever thought of telepathy at all, you've thought of how terrible it would be if someone were inside your strongest defenses, privy to all your secrets and desires and shameful memories and frustrated lusts and true feelings. Well you might—but have you ever considered how terrible it would be to find yourself in someone else's head, with all that unsought and unwanted knowledge? As long as people remain locked in their own skulls, they should be—because as most people intuitively realize, the things that grow and fester in a sealed skull aren't always fit to share.

  "On top of that, there's the sheer shock of directly confronting a naked ego as strong as your own, and Paul told me that night that it doesn't help a bit that the other ego is unaware of you. Most people never get over believing that they're the center of the Universe, even when they know it isn't so—to have your nose rubbed in it is unsettling.

  "And so, Paul told me between sobs, he began avoiding people the best he could as his strange and terrifying power grew in him. Repeated exposure made the minds of his immediate family tolerable to him, and his telepathy seemed to be sharply limited by distance, with an effective radius of about a hundred feet or so. By keeping strangers beyond that limit, Paul could achieve peace of a sort, the flashes of telepathy bringing him only glimpses of Dad, Mother, and myself. Dad he pitied with an intensity heretofore unknown to that emotion; Mother he hated beyond all understanding; and me he often found soothing, until I grew up enough to start having dark secrets of my own. He told me some things about myself then, that... but that's irrelevant.

  "The point is, that night, communing with himself in the moonlit gravel pit, he met a girl, about his age or a little older. One of the strange things about out-of-the-way places is that, while you almost never meet anyone there, anyone you do run into is somehow very liable to be friend-material. At any rate, she seemed to Paul the nicest and most gentle girl he'd ever seen in his life, not at all like any other girl he'd ever met. She spoke softly, and only when she had something to say, and he felt in her a difference that he could not explain to me in words.

  "Whatever the reason, he let down his guard for once. Instead of running away or driving her from him with rudeness, as he had learned to do with strangers, he stayed to talk. Before too many minutes had passed, he began to lose the usual terrifying fear that his wild talent would strike, began to believe that it might be all right if it did, began finally to almost hope that it would.

  "And it did.

  "I'm sure she was a lovely girl, but the best of us harbor dark secrets—sometimes even from ourselves. I don't know specifically what shattered Paul that night, but I'm sure it was nothing that a bishop on his death-bed would have felt compelled to confess. Maybe it was nothing more dishonorable than her lifetime's accumulation of pain, for one's own sorrow may be bearable by its familiarity and yet staggering to a stranger.

  "In any event, it hit Paul even harder than usual, because he had dared to hope. Now, if your ears are overloaded, you can stuff your fingers into them; if your nose is outraged, you can hold it; if your eyes are blinded you can shield them with your arm. But when your brain itself is overwhelmed by direct input, all you can do is smash at it with a rock, hoping to drive the other consciousness away with your own. Sometimes, if you're lucky, it works.

  "For Paul, that night, it hadn't worked.

  "Now you must understand that I was very young. I barely comprehended the things that Paul was telling me, and if I understood what had happened, I surely didn't understand why it had hit him as hard as it obviously had. Being able to read minds had no drawback that my nine-year-old mind could see; I sure didn't know much about human nature. But I was trying hard to empathize with my big brother.

  "That's the only explanation I have for what occurred. Because as Paul reached the terrible climax of his story, for one split second a shutter opened—-and like a camera plate, my child's mind was imprinted with the total contents of the mind of my brother.

  "It lasted only that split second, and it faded about as fast as a flashbulb-burst from two feet away; the impact was over quickly, but the blinding afterimage seared my brain for many seconds more. I screamed. Several times. Instantly our positions were reversed, and Paulie was holding me, restraining my hands. He knew at once what had happened, and the grim set of his jaw said that he had been expecting it for years now.

  " 'It's over,' he barked, 'Jimmy listen to me, it's over. It won't happen again for months, maybe years.'

  "It wasn't what he said but the pure joyous relief of how far away his voice sounded that cut through my child's terror and brought me back from the edge of hysteria. Why, Paulie was miles away—at least a foot! And there were comforting walls of bone, cartilage, and skin—and blessed empty air!—between us. I calmed down, and Paulie held me tightly in his arms and in savage whispers explained to me what I was, what had happened to us, and what I could expect from now on. He had hoped, he said, that I would be spared because my maternal genes were different from his; he explained genetics to me, as well as it can be explained to a nine-year-old, and he told me what a mutant was. He told me how much easier to bear the telepathic flashes would become, and he told me how much easier they would not become. He told me how often to expect the onslaught ('flashing,' he called it), and advised me on how to avoid flashing by avoiding sentient beings as much as possible. I suppose you could say it was the end of my childhood. I know that four years later, when my father haltingly undertook to explain the Facts of Life to me, they came as a helluvan anticlimax.

  "I suppose that next landmark in the story is the night my father and I found Paul collapsed across my mother in the living room, the lamp that had crushed her skull still clenched in his hand, but I don't think I want to talk about that now. They took Paul away that night, like a sack of sugar, and hauled him off to King's Park, completely catatonic. He's been that way ever since, and as far as I can tell he never flashed again. Or anything.

  "That was fourteen years ago."

  Callahan had been refilling his glass as he talked, but MacDonald spilled this one over half the table. He drank the rest as fast as it could pour and shut up.

  "I get it," Fast Eddie said after a while. "Yer afraid de same t'ing is gonna happen ta you."

  "Jesus," Doc Webster said in an undertone behind me, "he's just about due." I did some rapid mental calculation, and turned pale.

  "No, Eddie," I said aloud. "Jim's overdue. Unless..." I let it trail off.

  MacDonald grinned hideously, shook his head. "No, friend, I haven't killed anyone yet... though I wouldn't care to make any predictions for tomorrow. No, my pattern didn't follow Paul's after all. Not precisely, that is. For one thing, I never was an Instant Echo.

  "I waited all through adolescence for the next flash, and when it hadn't come by the time I graduated high school I dared to begin to hope that I was different. By sophomore year of college, I'd shoved the fear back into the far corners of my mind, and convinced myself that my one fleeting experience had been a freak, perhaps Paul sending instead of receiving for once.

  "In junior year it hit again, in the middle of a party. I was paralyzed. There were twenty-one people there, and for one awful second I was sure my head would burst from overcrowding. I learned more about human nature that night than I had in the previous twenty years, and I very nearly died. I passed out eventually, but not before I'd gained an undeserved reputation as an acid-head, and lost my girlfriend.

  "From that point on, they started coming again and again. The next flash was six months later, the next four and a half, then five, then three, then I stopped keeping track. Right now I'd guess they hit every day or so, but I'm not sure. I can't tell you an awful lot about the time between them." His head dropped.

  "Why do you suppose your pattern was different from your brother's, Jim?" Doc Webster asked.

  "I'm not sure," MacDonald repeated without looking up. "Maybe the different heredity, maybe random cha
nce."

  "Perhaps," I put in, "it was getting your first jolt so much younger than Paul did. Maybe the trauma hit you so young you hadn't come to accept limits on your mind yet, and your subconscious whipped up some kind of defense that lasted as long as the trauma did."

  "Maybe so," MacDonald said, glancing up at me with hopeless eyes. "But if it did, it's forgotten how to do it again. And my conscious doesn't know the trick." He giggled. "I haven't even improved on Paul's trick with the rock." The giggle dissolved into hysterical laughter, the table danced, and his glass shattered on the floor.

  Callahan's broad hand caught him open-palm across the cheek, rocking him in his chair. His laughter cut off, and his shoulders slumped for a second. Then he sat up very straight and stuck his hand out soberly. Callahan shook it gravely and produced a full glass of beer from nowhere; MacDonald took a grateful sip.

  "I suppose I should say, 'Thank you, I needed that,' Mister... uh..."

  Callahan told him his name.

  "...Mr. Callahan, but to tell you the truth I almost think I'd rather do it myself." He looked around at the rest of us and his face went all to pieces and he buried his head in his arms. "Oh, Jesus!"

  "Listen, Jim," Tommy Janssen spoke up quickly, "what the hell did you do after that party? I mean, dig, you couldn't stay in school, right? Too many people, flip you right out. What did you do, go home and become a loner like Paul?"

  MacDonald spoke listlessly. "I tried, brother, I tried. I went home and told my father everything—why his second wife had died, and what Paul was, and what I was—and that night he got up to get a drink of water and dropped dead in the bathroom.

  "Thank God I didn't flash that.

  "I got out fast after that—-I got a flash of the man who ran the funeral home that almost did make me a murderer. So I took off, and got myself the only job I was suited for."

  "Lighthouse?" Chuck Samms guessed.

  "Nope. No openings; there almost never are. But the Forestry Service can always use fire-lookouts who don't mind isolation. Miles from anybody in a well-stocked cabin with nothing to do but watch the forest spread out below you. I even got lucky; the area I drew averaged thirty-five days of rain every summer, so I got to sleep late a lot. On hot days in Oregon you get to stand a twelve-hour watch.

  "God, it was peaceful." He was talking freely now. "I think I got a flash from a bear once, but it must have been at the extreme limit of my range. Then one day I flashed a bluejay as it sailed about six feet over my head, and that was... just beautiful!" He shivered. "Almost worth the rest of it."

  "What brings you this way?" Callahan wanted to know.

  "What else? The expected: a forest fire in my zone. Called it in fast, and then got too close to a firefighter who was trapped by a widowmaker and roasting slowly. My boss figured me for an epileptic and fired me as gently as he could. I didn't argue the point. I had a little money saved up. I came back east."

  "Why?" Callahan asked.

  "To see Paul. To visit him."

  "Have you?"

  "No, damn it, I couldn't get near the place. I flew

  right into MacArthur, doped up with sleeping pills so I'd be asleep when we went over New York City, and rented a car with the last of my bankroll when I landed. I intended to drive on through and hope for the best, but halfway out of Islip I flashed a guy in the next lane. He... he was a drug dealer. Heroin and cocaine."

  Tommy Janssen's face went hard as a rock, and he gripped his beermug like a bludgeon.

  "I was very, very lucky," MacDonald continued. "Any crash you walk away from is a good one, and that's what I did: just left the wreck married to a tree, climbed up the embankment and walked away. I walked for hours, and not too long ago the supervisor of this town we're in drove past me in his big limousine and I flashed him. The next thing I knew I was in here, talking a blue streak. Hey, how come you guys believe all this?"

  We looked around at each other, shrugged. "Dis here is Callahan's Place," Fast Eddie tried to explain, and somehow MacDonald seemed to understand.

  "Anyway," he went on, "that's the whole story. King's Park is a long way from here, and frankly, gentlemen, I don't think I can make it any further. Any suggestions?"

  There was a long silence. Fast Eddie opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and left it that way. Shorty scratched where it itched. Doc Webster sipped thoughtfully at his drink. I racked my brains.

  Callahan spoke. "One."

  MacDonald started, turned to face him. He looked Callahan up and down from his thinning red hair to his outsized brogans, and sat up a little straighter. "I would very much like to hear it, Mr. Callahan," he said respectfully.

  "Contact Paul from here," Callahan said flatly.

  MacDonald shook his head violently. "I can't. I told you, this thing can't be controlled, dammit."

  "You said 'no' a little too loud, old son," Callahan grinned. "Maybe you can't do it—but you think you can."

  MacDonald shook his head again. "No. I don't want to flash him. Don't you understand? He's catatonic. A vegetable. I just want to see him, to try and speak with him."

  "Why use words?" I asked.

  "They're less dangerous, damn you," he snapped. "If you fail with words you can say to yourself, 'Gee, that's sad,' and go do something else."

  "What else?" Doc asked. "What did you plan to do after you saw Paul?"

  "I... I don't know."

  "Well, then."

  "Look, what could it possibly accomplish?" MacDonald barked.

  "Maybe a lot," Callahan said quietly. "Here's how I figure: Paul found a way to block the flashes out—a defense. But he found it at the end of his rope—so he just threw it up and slapped ferrocement over it, and he's been huddling inside it ever since." Callahan took the cigar out of his mouth and rubbed his granite jaw. "Now you're in sorry shape, but old son I don't judge you to be at the end of your rope yet. Paul was continuously telepathic by the time he killed his stepmother, wasn't he?"

  "Yes, I believe he was," MacDonald admitted. He was thinking hard.

  "Well, there you are. If you can reach him, remind him of what it's like to be hooked into reality without flashing, maybe you can talk him into coming out from behind that shield, and using it only when he needs it. In return, maybe he can teach you how to build the shield.

  "What do you say, son?"

  MacDonald grimaced. "I can't flash at will. The distance is too great. Our maximum fields of sensitivity don't reach each other by several miles. I'm not due to flash again for at least a day or two, and Paul. . . doesn't flash any more."

  "All right," Callahan agreed. "Those are the reasons why it can't possibly work. Now, why don't you try it?"

  "Because I'm afraid, dammit!"

  Doc Webster spoke up softly. "No reason to fret, son. We'll keep you from hurting yourself."

  MacDonald looked around at us, started to speak and paused. His eyes were terrible to see.

  "That's not what scares me," he admitted at last, in a voice like a murdered hope. "What scares me is that I may establish contact with my brother and not be able to kill myself."

  Callahan lumbered around behind the bar, brought his shotgun from beneath it and laid it on the bar top.

  "Son,", he said firmly, "I don't like violence in my joint. And suicide usually strikes me as a coward's solution. But if you need to die, I'll see that you do."

  A couple of jaws dropped, but nobody objected.

  Except MacDonald. "What about the police?"

  "That's my problem, burglar."

  MacDonald's eyes seemed to see a far place, and I

  hope to God I never see it myself. I suppose he was examining his guts. The suspense hung in the air like the electric calm before a cyclone, and nobody made a sound.

  After a long, timeless moment he nodded faintly. "All right. I'll try, Mr. Callahan."

  We relaxed a trifle in our chairs, and then tensed right back up again. Callahan put out his cigar and laid a hand on the shotgun, unobtrusiv
ely waving Chuck and Noah out of the line of fire.

  MacDonald sat bolt upright, put his hands over his ears. He opened his eyes real wide, looked around one last time, and closed them tight. His brow knotted up.

  Now, I don't know quite how to explain just what happened next, because it doesn't seem to jibe with what Jim MacDonald had told us. But I figure that if he was a telepath, some of us at Callahan's are pretty fair empaths. Maybe he was tapping us himself, maybe not. All I know for sure is that all at once the lights were gone and I wasn't in the bar any more, and Callahan and the Doc and Fast Eddie and Tommy and Long-Drink and Noah and Shorty and Chuck and I were all crowded together somehow, touching, like we were rubbing shoulders in back of a truck we had to push-start. We didn't waste time wondering, we put our backs into it.

  That's crazy, there was no truck, not even a hallucinatory one, but I guess it describes the sort of thing we did as well as words can. We... pushed, and just like with a truck there came a time when the thing we were pushing gave a hell of a shudder and took off, leaving us gasping far behind.

  The thing we were pushing was Jim MacDonald.

  The lights came back and the familiar sights of Callahan's Place came back and I was alone in my skin again, looking around at Callahan and the rest of the boys and realizing with surprise that I hadn't been the least bit scared. They were looking around too, and it was a few seconds before we saw MacDonald.

  He was sitting rigid in his chair, trembling like a man with a killing fever. Doc Webster started for him like an overweight white corpuscle but pulled up short and looked helpless. The air around MacDonald's head seemed to shimmer like the air over a campfire, and we heard his teeth gnashing.

  Then, not suddenly but gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, he began to relax. Muscles unknotted, joints unlocked, his face began to soften. He... I don't know how to say this either. He wore his face differently. The MacDonald he loosened into was changed, somehow older.

  He had won.

  "Our deepest thanks, gentlemen," he said in a more resonant voice than he had used before. "I think we'll be all right from here on."