“I what? Hell, Pat, I never touched him, and he damn near broke my jaw.” Now that the excitement was dying down, I could feel it, too: my right cheek was getting puffy, and the inside of my mouth felt ragged. I’d had no idea my teeth were so sharp.
“You stood up for me.” The brightness in her eyes softened. “My hero.”
“Who do you think you are, Olive Oyl?”
She squeezed my arm, and laughed. I didn’t feel like joining in. I’m a lover, not a fighter; Pat could do both, maybe, but not an uncoordinated klutz like me. That was why I kept the damn monster locked up in the basement: it could get me into trouble, but not out of it.
I spent the rest of that day expecting some kind of retribution. Jason would jump me in the locker room, or I’d be summoned to the principal’s office and find my probation officer there as well, wanting to know why I was getting into brawls. Nothing. Jason was very scarce, and the principal was as always intent only on interrupting classes with the p.a. system.
The story was all over school within minutes, of course, and when I met Pat for lunch in the lab I found her surrounded by half a dozen girls (including a couple of cheerleaders, for heaven’s sake) eager to make friends with the fastest cane in the west. They took the trouble to compliment me for my part in the fracas, but I didn’t feel like any knight in shining armour; I felt like the guy who sweeps up after the horse. Looking at the incident objectively, I had been rescued by Pat; klutz though I was, I still had enough male ego to feel embarrassed.
No, that was not a good day. Afterward, I started parking Brunhilde off campus, just so we’d avoid The Pit, and Pat agreed it was just as well. But she clearly enjoyed her new notoriety, and I found myself on several evenings having to work by myself because she was off socialising with this or that new girlfriend.
In some ways that was okay. I got to feel sorry for myself a lot, which can be fun, and I also got a little time to myself to think things over.
If all went well, I would be able to use the EEG to put myself into a theta state and then to lift again. If I did it, it would be a major event in scientific history. I wasn’t boasting to myself - well, not entirely - but I knew that since the only other such episodes were miserably lacking in evidence, I would have to make my lifts predictable and observable. That meant some rehearsals and practice, before I was ready to go public, but even those practice lifts would be scientifically important. I knew Gibbs would expect meticulous notes and records, and I didn’t want to go into scientific history as a talented idiot.
Consequently, I had already started keeping a kind of diary, mostly just recording progress in building the equipment, using a little cassette recorder. It was easier, at the end of a long day, to speak a few words into it than to write something down, and I didn’t want to risk putting anything on paper. But who’s likely to pick up one cassette out of dozens and play it?
Meanwhile I had also been trying to lift under my own steam, so to speak. In the morning; in the evenings; in the shower. Nothing. Sometimes, though, I would get a funny kind of feeling, a sense of something moving all around me, an endless wash of energy. Actually, it felt like being in a Jacuzzi only with no water, if that makes any sense. That feeling was all the encouragement I got; it wasn’t always enough. More than once, I decided I’d been dreaming after all, that I’d gone into debt with Wally Preuzer out of sheer stupidity, and I was compounding that stupidity by wasting my time building an EEG.
Nevertheless, I had to admit that building the thing was fun, and keeping me off the streets. So by the beginning of November the EEG was completed.
My first trial was on a Saturday morning. I had to use this gunky paste to stick the electrodes to my temples. The EEG was connected to the biofeedback device, which was now rigged to turn its light on whenever it picked up a theta-wave signal.
Everything worked, but I got nothing. How was I supposed to think myself into a trance, for Pete’s sake? I kept at it, watching the little bulb until I grew bored and started daydreaming.
The light went on. And off. And on.
Every time it glowed, I snapped into a beta state of quivering concentration. Gradually, though, I found myself relaxing even when the light grew brighter. It stayed on; I kept it on. After a while the light was the only thing among many on my mind. Sometimes I was in my room, sitting on the edge of my bed with electrodes stuck to my head like Frankenstein’s monster’s kid brother; sometimes I was somewhere else. I imagined all kinds of things, with memories and fantasies all mixed up. I dreamt.
Strangely enough, it was a jet flying overhead that reminded me of what I was trying to do. I imagined following it as I had on that first morning. The sense of energy swirling around me became stronger than ever; it would have frightened me if, in my detached condition, it hadn’t seem perfectly natural, a quality of life like sunlight or rain that I’d somehow never noticed before. By thinking about it I could make the energy move around me, the way you become aware of your toes by thinking about them. I imagined the energy flowing under my legs and backside, concentrating there. The bedsprings creaked faintly.
I lifted.
This time I was aware right from the start. I was maybe two or three inches off the bed, still in a sitting position with my hands reaching out as if to hold my balance. But I wasn’t teetering or wobbly; I was absolutely steady. Reaching down, I swept one hand under my backside and confirmed that I was indeed detached from the bed. Realising what a momentous event this was, I reached for my cassette recorder and drifted across the room toward the workbench where it lay. Punching the record button, I uttered these historic words:
“Uh, I’m up.”
Dolt! I had weeks to prepare, and that’s what I came up with. Theta states are great for right-brain work, but lousy for left-brain operations like language.
I was now at the end of my tether, so to speak; the electrode wires wouldn’t stretch any farther. I saw that the light still glowed. I drifted back toward the device, my knees still drawn up. Then I rose, slowly, until my head bumped the ceiling.
What I’m not getting across is the absolute naturalness, combined with intoxicating weirdness, that I felt as I lifted. Maybe people who gain their sight after being blind from birth feel something like it: the sudden acquisition of an impossible power, a power everyone dreams about but can’t imagine actually having. My bed, my workbench, the bookshelves all looked perfectly okay from an altitude of eight and a half feet; my feet, floating off the floor, looked equally normal.
The sense of energy flow, of the Effect, was sharper than ever, and I could even see the hair on my arms fluff up a little. I reached up and felt the hair on my head drifting around a little, but not in the fright-wig way it does in an electrostatic field.
For some time I moved very, very cautiously, keeping my feet under me so that if I fell I wouldn’t bang myself up again. I commented into the tape recorder once in a while, but just to say things like, “I’m straightening my legs. I’m turning right.” Once I even let myself touch the floor, and then lifted back up again.
About then, I noticed that the light had gone out. I was out of theta state, and still airborne. With a reckless tug, I pulled off the electrodes and let them fall to the bed. I stayed up, wide awake, so beta-state I was nearly hysterical.
Freed of my tether, I moved across the room and back again, stopping myself before I hit a wall or bookshelf. Next I turned a somersault, straightening out and ending up horizontal, about two feet below the ceiling. I noted that I still had inertia, just like an astronaut in free fall, and it took a conscious act of will to put on the brakes by altering the energy flow around me to absorb my momentum. Otherwise, I would have crashed into the walls like a diver hitting the bottom of a shallow pool. How did I do it? I decided to move in a certain direction, and I moved; I decided to stop and I stopped. Not instantly, but quickly enough to feel the tug of my own inertia.
Within a few minutes I was tired, but not from lifting. My muscles kept clenchin
g up on me, the way they do when I’m in a dentist’s chair, and I had to remind myself to relax. Finally I settled back onto the bed. The sensation of energy faded, but not entirely. It was there, rippling over my skin like the faintest of breezes, needing only my conscious wish to bring it back.
“Rick - lunch!”
I twitched and blinked and realised I’d fallen asleep for almost an hour.
“Coming, coming.” I staggered to my feet, feeling fuzzy-headed and clumsy. Melinda was already going back downstairs; I trailed after her into the kitchen, which was full of the aroma of chile con carne.
“You sure were quiet in there,” Melinda observed as she handed me a bowl of chile. I settled into my usual chair at the table.
“I fell asleep.”
“What? I’m not going to put up with you burying yourself up there if you’re not actually doing something constructive. I’ve got plenty of jobs for you if you can’t find any for yourself.”
“I know, I know. I was lying on my bed thinking about the biofeedback device, and I just nodded off. Must’ve stayed up reading too late. I’ll get to the chores as soon as I’m finished here. Could I have another bowl, please?”
“If you can walk to the stove and serve yourself.”
“I guess I can manage that.” And I could.
“What’s with Pat these days? Haven’t seen much of her.”
“She had a lot of homework, so she went over to Angela’s to do it with her. We might go out to San Miguel Creek with Marcus tomorrow.”
“Marcus will be delighted, but is Pat up to it?”
“She says she is.”
“You’ve got a tough customer there, Rick. I didn’t think you had such good taste.”
“Thanks a lot. First I get harassed because I don’t pay attention to girls; then I get hold of one and you tell me you doubt my taste. That’s what I get for having high standards. Maybe I should start harassing you to hunt up some guy.”
“My life isn’t complicated enough.”
“I need somebody to take me to baseball games, and show me how to fish. I need a role model.”
“Oh, can it!” She’d picked up that phrase from Pat.
“Maybe he’d even mow the lawn.”
“Are you saying I’d only attract a dummy who’d let you con him into doing your chores?” She gave me a fond tweak on the ear that would’ve rated as aggravated assault in any court in the country. “Speaking of the lawnᚓ”
“Say no more. Your whim is my command.”
Now, why didn’t I tell Melinda right there and then what I’d discovered I could do? The thought crossed my mind as I went down to lunch, and I thought about it some more as I mowed the yard. (November, and still mowing the grass! California has drawbacks.) Partly it was caution - I really wanted to be confident and in control of lifting before I revealed it to anyone.
But mostly it was fear. Not fear that she’d shriek and pass out on the kitchen floor, or anything stupid like that. Fear of our lives changing as I knew they would have to change - suddenly, radically, forever. She was having a good time designing houses and worrying about her weird kid; I’d been having a pretty good time, too, even without my computer. Once I went public, all that would vanish. We might end up rich and famous, but we’d also have no privacy. People would trample over the grass I was now cutting so unenthusiastically, and stare at the windows. Or maybe throw rocks through them. Reporters and TV crews would besiege the place. I’d probably have to drop out of school, at least for a while. Pat would come in for all kinds of corny commentary about playing Lois Lane to my Superman. They’d go after Gibbs, who would not appreciate it.
I wasn’t really ready for all that. It made me feel guilty just to think about it. Who the heck was I to turn people’s lives upside down?
Quite apart from what it would do to people I cared about, I was also pretty scared about what might happen to me. Those crazies were out there, crooning over their guns and their grievances and ready to compromise, if necessary, by shooting me while I sat in a chair. Or the army might indeed declare me top secret and whisk me off to some lab.
By the time I finished the front yard and gone to work on the back, I had a good case for dropping the whole thing. Maybe I’d lift just now and then, in private, as a secret vice. Melinda and Pat could avoid all the upheaval, and so could I.
Halfway through the back yard, I knew that wouldn’t work. Whatever the Effect was, it came out of a fundamental quality of the world that no one had even suspected before (not counting saints and swamis). Whatever that quality was, it had to be explored, studied, and understood. Given my compulsive curiosity, I couldn’t sit on a secret of this magnitude. I was a security risk even to myself.
Nevertheless, I decided as I dumped the grass clippings into the composter, I wouldn’t rush into any premature revelations. First I would learn all I could on my own, maybe for a year or two. Once I was in university, I could tactfully break the news to the physics department.
That wasn’t really very satisfactory, but at least it meant I could postpone anything serious while continuing to investigate the Effect on my own.
I put the mower away in the garage feeling I’d accomplished something; as I came out into the driveway, I saw Jason Murphy’s white Trans Am cruise slowly down Las Etacas Street. He was behind the wheel, with a couple of his buddies as passengers; they all flipped me the bone and boomed around the corner.
Chapter 6
FOR ONCE, PAT’S place was dead quiet when I picked her up; it was seven o’clock on a Sunday morning, and everybody else (except Morty) was still asleep. I took Pat’s rucksack and walked her out to Brunhilde, where Marcus was waiting with his head stuck out the window and his tail thumping. It was a chilly morning under a dull overcast, and Pat had dressed sensibly: wool pants, a flannel shirt, a wool jacket, and a very snazzy black beret. I worried about her shoes, ordinary runners, but she had nothing better.
“Had breakfast?” I asked as we drove east out of town, past the air base.
“Tea and a bagel.”
“I’m glad I brought a lot, then. You’ll need it.”
“Don’t be so patronising.”
“Huh? I’m not being patronising. I just knowᚓ”
“Can it.”
“I’m sorry.”
She made a face and shook her head. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have barked at you like that. Especially when you’re taking me out like this. I just get so damned depressed sometimes, living in that zoo.”
“I know.” I did, too; I’d been invited to dinner there once. Yech.
“And another year and a half of it before I graduate, if I graduate.”
“You’ll graduate,” I said, surprised.
“Not if I flip and bug out of there. Find a job somewhere and live on my own. I could at least make enough money to go to community college.”
“You’re acing all your courses right now,” I reminded her. “You should be able to land some huge scholarship to Cal or Stanford, and then you can be really independent. All you have to do is tough it out a little longer.”
She wasn’t in the mood to be cheered up; hell, I’d be depressed, too, starting the day on tea and a lousy bagel.
“What’s the point of university? I’d just come out a bitchy cripple with a bachelor’s.”
I’d never heard her call herself anything like that. “Is that what you think you are? Really?”
“Oh, not always. I just wonder sometimes if it’s worth all the hassle. If I was on my own and doing just a joe job, at least I’d have some time to myself and some privacy.”
This was all scandalising. “Whatever you want to do with your spare time, you can do it better if you’ve got a decent job, not a joe job. How long d’you think you’d last in a joe job, anyway? You’d just bug everybody until they fired you, and you’d be glad to be fired because the job would keep you trapped with people just like your roommates.”
“Yeah.” She patted my shoulder. �
�You should be a guidance counsellor when you grow up. Don’t mind me. I just get these screaming fits sometimes.”
“Uh-huh.” I reached into the back seat, where Marcus was snoring obscenely, and gave him a poke in the ribs to shut him up.
“What’ve you been up to this weekend?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Oh, fooling around with the EEG, mostly.”
“Getting any theta?”
“Yeah, almost right away.”
“You’re kidding! Wow, how does it feel?”
“Different, I guess.”
“I’ll have to try it. Get any good ideas?”
“Millions.”
“I’ll have to try it. Say, when are we going to bring in the biofeedback device to show Gibbs? He keeps nagging about it.”
“Pretty soon,” I said. “Maybe in a week or two. I can’t run the EEG without it.”
“Why don’t we surprise Gibbs with the EEG as well?”
I was tempted despite myself. “I’d love to, but he’d kill us. He said no messing around with brains or livers.”
“But if we’re just creating a theta state, what’s the harm?”
“He wouldn’t worry about that, I think. He’d be sore because we - because I - did what he said not to.”
“You’ve got a lot of respect for him, don’t you?”
Some girls would have said I was scared of him. “Yeah, I guess. Sometimes I think he’s too fussy, but if he didn’t keep after us we’d all fall apart.”
“Speak for yourself,” she laughed; then she nodded. “You know, he’s the only decent teacher I’ve ever had. He’s a pompous bastard sometimes, but at least he thinks, and he expects us to think, too.”
“Problem is,” I said, “he expects us to think as well as he does.”
As we got out of town and into the foothills, Pat’s mood improved. She had a couple of Melinda’s whole-grain buns (with homemade raspberry jam from our own raspberries) and a little box of orange juice. With her blood sugar up, she cranked down the window to enjoy the rush of cold, clean air. Brunhilde’s poor old heater couldn’t compensate, but Marcus thought it was a great idea. The two of them nuzzled each other while I drove with freezing hands and feet.
LIFTER Page 5
