Twelve

Psi Faculty

June-July 1975

Robin awoke still tasting the oily river, and his stomach was badly unsettled. He got down off the high double bed with its posts of oak almost as big around as telephone poles; he was wobbly on his feet. He had on his old yellow cotton pajamas, washed so many times you could read a newspaper through the material. The pajama shirt hung unbuttoned. Someone had mended the tear under one arm.

He swallowed several times, finding his throat a little raw, and then a cramp propelled him into the bathroom. He retched until he was worried he'd rupture his navel. Nothing much came up but bright yellow bile. His head ached from his exertions. He looked around the bathroom with teary eyes. Everything was on a vast scale, even for him, and he was getting closer to six feet all the time. Half an acre of tiled floor, probably a billion of those little six-sided tiles, a square basin big enough to bathe in, a curious tub like a big sea shell that stood four feet off the floor. Wherever he was, it was a dumpy old place, older than the house in Lambeth.

Thinking of Lambeth and his Aunt Fay caused the tears to run and run until he washed his face in cold water. When he finished his fingers still tingled but the stomach cramps had stopped. His pajamas were spotted and wet, so Robin took them off before returning to the bedroom.

He'd had a noiseless visitor. The drapes were open; sheer curtains billowed in a lavish morning breeze. The air, scented by a forest, felt and tasted good, it melted on his tongue like a wafer. Also it gave him a raging appetite. That had been anticipated. On a round table in the center of the bedroom he found a tray with an icily sweating carafe of fresh orange juice. And there was a typed note for him.

 

GOOD MORNING ROBIN!

WOULD YOU TAKE THE YELLOW AND GREEN CAPSULE AND THE WHITE TABLET WITH YOUR JUICE THEY'LL GET RID OF THE NAUSEA AND HELP YOUR HEAD

KINDEST REGARDS

GWYNETH

 

Gwyneth?

Robin poured a generous glassful of the juice, sipped eagerly, remembered the pills and studied them with suspicion. He compromised and swallowed the tablet, which was so small he had trouble picking it up with two fingers. Anything that small probably wouldn't kill him. He hadn't seen anyone in this place yet, but he didn't trust them no matter what.

Because the juice tasted okay he finished what was in the glass. Then he looked around for clothes to put on.

With a little effort Robin found most of his old stuff, including a lot of things he hadn't taken to that other place in New York, because they'd told him he was only going to be there for a few days. Also there were new Levi's, the style he liked, and body shirts and walk shorts and a couple of dress-up outfits, including a double-breasted knit blazer from Saks Fifth Avenue. In other drawers he found neatly packed away games and books and pictures and other precious memorabilia. One closet was filled with his sports gear.

"Robin?"

The sweet clear voice startled him just as he was about to give in to the push and shove of memory and start weeping again. Someone outside, calling him. Who was she, and what did she want? He grabbed a pair of stringy cut-off Levi's and a faded red tank top and put them on. Then he walked barefoot onto the balcony which was outside the tall windows that opened like doors, and there he had his first look at his new surroundings.

Blue-green mountains and a far sparkling lake and, nearer, fieldstone buildings with steep slate roofs in a naturally wooded setting. A school? Nearer still he saw a garden with squared-off hemlock hedges, beds of marigold and gracefully curving footpaths walled with roses. Beside the house there was a private swimming lake studded with rock outcrops, ringed by perfect specimens of spruce. A wooden bridge arched above a spillway. A multilevel, flagged terrace in the wide angle formed by the wings of the house went down to the water's edge.

The girl swimming in the green water raised an arm when she saw him.

"Hi! Come on down and finish your breakfast!" She dived beneath the surface and he saw her stroking underwater, fluid as an otter, toward the terrace.

A tall man wearing a white mess jacket and pinstripe gray-and-black trousers was waiting for Robin in the bedroom doorway. He smiled, revealing crinkled lines around the eyes.

"This way, sir," he said.

Robin followed him. The hallway was an interior gallery rich in wood, with a carpet like an abstract painting in tones of burnt orange, rust and brown. The gallery was lit by high opposing windows, thr.ee of them, each the size of a badminton court; the streaming hot light of the morning sun was regulated by stained glass louvres which appeared to have a religious motif.

"We'll take the elevator to the terrace," the man said. "It's faster than walking down all those steps. By the way, I'm Ken."

"What is this place?"

"It was the home of the Chancellor of Woodlawn College for Women, before the school went broke. When Psi Faculty took over the campus it became the Director's office and residence."

"Psi Faculty?"

"Dr. Charles will explain all that to you," Ken said, smiling again. He showed Robin the cabinet-sized elevator, which descended to the first floor. They walked through a chapel which had been turned into a luncheon/meeting room and out onto the terrace, past a grotto with a trickling waterfall. Here religious Statuary had been removed, replaced by a huge piece of stone that looked like a cross to Robin, except for the top part, which was in the form of a loop.

"What's that?"

"It's called an ankh, " Ken explained. "It's the ancient Egyptian symbol of—immortality, I think. Dr. Charles knows more about it than I do, you could ask—"

Another man in a mess jacket was setting out breakfast on an oval-shaped, wrought-iron table painted a subdued shade of yellow. The table had a pebbly glass top and was shaded by a large fringed umbrella.

"Bart," Ken said, "this is Robin."

"Hello, Robin," Bart said. He had a lot of brassy curly hair and keen blue eyes and a smile the equal of Ken's. "Why don't you sit here, facing the water? Dr. Charles will be along in a minute. Would you care for more juice?"

"No . . . thank you."

"Okay, well, there's iced Persian melon to start, or sliced fresh papaya if you prefer that, it's really good with a big spoonful of Devonshire clotted cream. We have toast made from the terrific wholegrain bread they sell down at the co-op, or frosted bran muffins, those are especially good with raspberry jam. I'll take your egg order now . . . no eggs? Could I tempt you with a small filet of poached speckled trout? Fresh-caught at five o'clock this morning, just a half mile down the road from here."

When Bart left him Robin picked up a spoon and dipped into the pale soft melon, but his throat tightened before he could take a bite.

He got up and walked to the edge of the lake, thinking about the girl he'd seen swimming. He hadn't been able to tell much about her from the third-floor balcony. The half submerged rocks at the water's edge were fringed with green-gold streamers, some sort of aquatic plant life. But the water had a decided flow even this close to shore and it looked clean, so clean and clear he could see the round brown stones on the pebbled bottom out to a depth of seven or eight feet.

Robin wondered what had happened to him after he'd lost his balance on the wall that separated the promenade of Karl Schurz Park from the East River fifty feet below. It was all he could remember, black night and a half-circle of encroaching, ultimately blinding lights and the fine mist coming down, making the footing treacherous on the incurved iron railing that was supposed to keep people from jumping in and drowning. Everybody said the tidal river was bad there, washing swiftly seaward; so if he'd fallen in why hadn't he drowned?

He wished he was dead, because if he wasn't ever going to see his Dad again . . .

Robin's face got miserably flushed before he started crying, and the tears were hotter still, as if his insides were one huge blister he'd cruelly pricked, allowing the corrosive and scalding fluid to drain out. In trying to stop the tears he smeared them all over his face like a child, which made him mad and caused him to bawl in frustration as well as pain.

"Hey now, good gosh, what we're going to have here is a big old saltwater pond if this keeps up."

The voice was feminine, exaggeratedly gruff; the hand that touched him was meant to be friendly. But Robin jerked away, doubly humiliated now that he knew he was observed.

She stood back toweling her hair while Robin got himself in order, blinking and wondering what he could blow his nose on, it was getting messy. She handed him the towel. "You want, I'm through with it." Robin dried his face and sneaked looks at her. She stood a dozen feet away, hands on hips, appraising him with a tight compressed smile of concern.

The first thing he noticed was how good her hair looked even when it was fluffed half-dry; it didn't stand out ratsey all over her head and show unappetizing expanses of scalp. She plucked a brush from the waistband of her lowslung, mint-green Lee Riders and gave her mane a few licks until it settled down thick and lion-toned, shading to smoke, curling like woodshavings on her bare shoulders. She had a firm small body with just enough hip-swell and pear seat to distinguish her from boys.

From the navel up she was heartily woman: she wore a boucle halter top fully loaded with good brown jugs, each a perfect seemly roundness . . . and nipples that, by contrast, made aggressive high-rise peaks in the material. The quantity of down on her arms and legs glinted like hazy golden wire. A drop of water ran down one ankle and into the space next to her big toe. Her feet were quite small, and so were her hands. She had vegetable-green elliptical eyes and heavy lashes to shade them and subdue the explicit gaze. Her nose was small and cunningly snubbed, like a child's nose that had not changed over the years. The rest of her tanned; her nose peeled, but prettily. She had a set of dimples and minor beauty marks in unexpected, catchy places and, when Robin finally put the towel down and looked directly at her, she exhibited a dead-center dazzling smile that seemed to show all of her white teeth, a smile that worked on him like gravity.

"I'm Gwyneth," she said, "but I like Gwyn. Do I call you Robbie?"

"Robin."

"Okay. I'm starved. Why don't we sit and if you don't want to eat, we'll talk while I eat."

Bart was right there with her breakfast when they reached the table. Herb tea, two scrambled eggs and trout, a serving of which was also placed in front of Robin.

"Even if you're not hungry you don't have to chew or go to any trouble, the trout fairly melts in your mouth. Who are you looking for?"

"They told me I was going to meet someone named Dr. Charles when I—"

Gwyneth shook her head, trying to suppress her amusement; her dimples whitened in her cheeks.

"Okay, you've got me. I'm the good doctor. What's the matter, don't I look old enough? Go on, flatter me—tell me how old you think I am."

". . . Nineteen . . . ?"

"Twenty-eight. Well, ho-ho, I'm cheating. I'll be twenty-nine on the fifteenth of July. So you're just in time for my birthday. Let's see, you were thirteen in February, right? Boy, you're really sprouting for someone who's just thirteen. How tall are you?"

"Five ten and three-quarters."

"You'll easily grow another four inches—maybe five, you've got long bones. Don't you want to ask what kind of doctor I am?"

"What—"

"M.D.; specialty’s neurobiology. Nerves, the brain; you know. I also have an advanced degree in theoretical physics. What am I doing with that? I don't know, seemed like a good idea at the time. Listen, I'm just stuffed full of smarts! Graduated college at sixteen, graduated Columbia Med three and a half years later. They didn't want to accept me in the first place, I was so young. Took a lot of hassling to change their minds. Special favor to me, Robin, just try a forkful of the trout."

Robin humored her, but he could barely get the bite of fish down. He looked unhappily at her. Gwyneth's own appetite flagged.

"I know. Oh, I know the feeling; you're hungry but you just can't—my uncle said you took it so goddamn hard. What else? I want you to know I ate him out good for the way he handled you. What a tactless man he can be. God, you might have died!"

On the promenade, headlights blinding; he runs and runs, but there is no place left to go.

Childermass, stepping out of one of the cars.

' I'm your father's friend! He would have wanted me to look after you!"

"Your uncle?" Robin said, dismayed.

"Childermass." Gwyneth shrugged, disclaiming responsibility for one's relations. "He's . . . sometimes I think he's like a displaced tyrant from a fairy tale. A king of the legendary present. Honestly, he does have his good points. I'm told your father would have trusted him with his life."

"I don't trust him," Robin said, not looking at her. "And I don't believe my dad is dead."

"That's understandable. But you know he lived, chose to live, dangerously. Robin, the information I have is still sketchy, but . . . do you want to go into this now?"

"Yes."

"He was on assignment in Lamy, one of those West African plague lands squatting along the Equator, miles and miles of swamp and jackal bush and no civilization to speak of. The country is one big clap-trap, medically it's back in the stone age, but there's a volatile mix of tribes and territorial disputes have been going on for thirty centuries. Now it seems there's a prize worth dying for, a potentially big oil field under the delta, exploitable at today's prices. So the tribes are getting tons of arms from the usual sources and having at each other in mercenary style."

"My dad—"

"I can't speculate on what he was doing there. I know he was riding in a Land Rover with two other men, in daylight, in a supposedly secure area. The Rover was raked with automatic weapons fire, and all three were killed. By the way, my uncle's organization has been trying to raise your Aunt Fay on Inanwantan radio for the past couple of days, but the weather's been very bad in that part of New Guinea. If they can't get a message through on the missionary frequency, they'll send a helicopter up in the mountains as soon as the weather clears."

"If . . . he's dead, they'll be bringing him back, won't they?"

"Robin, the area in which your father was killed is completely cut off now. In, that part of the world they have to bury the dead quickly. Eventually I hope his personal effects will be returned. All the legal matters on this side are being taken care of by my uncle, who has power of attorney. Your father's estate, including insurance, comes to a little over two hundred thousand dollars. After taxes the remainder will be placed in a trust account for you. I think most of your things, other than what you had in storage, are already here. We're really trying to make the transition as painless as—"

"What kind of place is this? What am I doing here?"

"I think the best way to explain Psi Faculty is to show you around," Gwyneth said with a pleased smile.

Gwyn usually rode to work on her ten-speed bicycle, but when she had a guest she drove an electric cart. A carillon was pealing as they cruised soundlessly over a watercourse and through bowers; they were splashed in passing by hot droplets of sun. "Those mountains are the Adirondacks; that big lake out there is Lake Celeste. We own four hundred and eighty acres, and there's a mile-wide greenbelt surrounding the campus. It's a government reservation, chief, so once in a while you'll see some old coots patrolling with a dog or two. Don't be intimidated, that's just to keep the campers and hunters out of the woods, they can be a nuisance sometimes. My grandmother went to school here; Woodlawn had a terrific reputation in the old days. But the endowment was just too thin, they couldn't pay their bills any more. My uncle picked up the whole thing for a song. Half of the buildings are in mothballs, so to speak, but we've put all the lab space to good use and built more to suit our needs. How long were you at Paragon Institute, Robin?"

"Six days."

"Did anyone explain to you what "paragon" means?"

"No."

"It means the best there is; something that can't be equaled —the incredible power of the human mind. Paragon Institute is basically a testing facility. Here we have the money and the time to study the fundamental stratum of existence, which is consciousness, along with the scientific, philosophical and social implications of psychic research. We call ourselves Psi Faculty, Psi being the twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet—"

"Isn't it the twenty-third letter?"

"Ho-ho, I just wanted to see if you were napping! Twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet, and the ideogram stands collectively for all paranormal experiences. Here's something that might give you a chuckle."

They swooped down on the quadrangle, enclosed by four-story stone buildings jacketed in ivy and by the newer carillon tower, which rose to a gothic peak of one hundred feet, well above the loftiest tree in the vicinity. Where the walks converged in the placid quad there was a statuary grouping that looked, on approach, like the Burghers of Calais, their bronzes weathered to a shadow-darkness in the brilliant sunlight.

"A corny Annunciation stood here," Gwyneth said. "I had it hammered to bits my second day on the job and commissioned this piece. Do you recognize them?"

Robin shook his head. There were two skinny figures; the other was portly. Two were on their feet but the fat one had fallen; he looked to be in a panic. They were all in headlong flight, which was complicated by a burden of chains which dragged them down, even distorted them physically. One of the figures had flung an arm across his eyes as he pulled in despair with his other hand at the crude links fastened to his chest.

Gwyneth hopped out of the car and strolled companionably around the seven-foot statues, tapping an elbow, rubbing haunches, naming each in turn, reading from plaques at their feet.

"Herman von Helmholtz, German physicist, 1821-1894: 'Neither the testimony of all the Fellows of the Royal Society nor even the evidence of my own senses would lead me to believe in thought-transmission. It is clearly impossible.' Lord Kelvin, English physicist, 1825-1907: 'Nearly everything in hypnotism and clairvoyance is imposture, and the rest bad observation.' Thomas H. Huxley, English biologist and noted progenitor: Quote. 'Supposing the phenomena to be genuine, they do not interest me.' Unquote. Three of the finest minds of their century. The century immediately preceding this one, I might add."

Robin, looking up at Gwyn, shaded his eyes and said nothing.

"Maybe we ought to erect a monument to the cow as well," she said, coming back to the cart.

"What cow?"

"In Europe it was once commonly believed that beasts could be possessed by demons and controlled by the evil of Satan. So animals, even birds and insects, were tried by ecclesiastical courts, just like witches and heretics. They were excommunicated, tortured and condemned to death."

"That was in the middle ages."

"There was a trial in the year 1740 in France, the cow I mentioned. The cow was judged, declared guilty of satanic influence and executed. Not so far back in time, in what historians consider to be a reasonably complex and sophisticated age. So we've come a long way in our thinking, haven't we? Responsible investigators are allowed to quietly pursue the notion that the psychic system has a prehistory of millions of years; that a tele-magic sympathy exists between all living things; that there are planes of existence and hierarchies of consciousness barely conceivable at our present level of knowledge. Yet ninety-nine percent of the population of the world struggles along on a primitive level of consciousness, very much like twilight sleep. They think trance-thoughts; their actions are merely reflex movements. There are otherwise sensible people living in this area who believe that the moon landings were a clever illusion staged by a government desperate for prestige. Twenty years ago we could have shown them a visitor from the planetary system of 61 Cygni, on television, live from the Oval Office of the White House. Fact. But they weren't ready for it then, and they won't be ready twenty years from now. If such people become sufficiently agitated by wonders beyond their ken they will listen instead to a new crop of ecclesiastics, inquisitors and exorcists who are prepared to purge all monsters, whether they be space man, cow or clairvoyant."

There was a heavy mist of perspiration on Gwyneth's upper lip. She glanced at Robin, whose head was lowered in gloom. She put a hand on him and sighed.

"What it is, I get so wound up sometimes I go off like one of those clown-cannons loaded with flour, dusting everybody in sight. We're not exactly heroes up here; for the most part psychic researchers, those who are considered the least bit far-out in their thinking, arc the fools of the scientific community. I've got good staff but I could use a dozen more top people. If I could find them, motivate them . . ."

"What you said is the truth. I know I'm a monster."

"Hey, that wasn't meant personally."

"And there has to be a special place to keep the monsters. A zoo. No matter what name you call this place, it's still a zoo."

"Come on, Robin!"

"Only I'm not ready for this or any other kind of zoo," he said, his eyes slits, his face tense as a fist. He got out of the cart and started walking back in the direction from which they had come.

He had trudged half way to the house when out of the corner of his eye he saw the cart flashing past him through thickets of birch and black cherry. A white-throated sparrow piped shrilly in the woods like a boatswain welcoming the admiral aboard. Gwyneth was parked on the path below him and waiting, leaning against her car, when he appeared.

"So where are you going?"

"I want to get my things. I don't want to stay here."

"Could I take a shot at an apology?"

Robin didn't say yes or no, but he stopped a few feet away. Gwyn pushed her hair back with both hands, revealing all of her graceful neck.

"Okay. You're a guy I like a lot on short acquaintance. All I really know about Robin Sandza is what I read in a highly confidential report from Paragon. Transcripts of the tapes you made, and so forth. I admit I was—goddamn well stunned by your ability. I understand there are films. I'd like to see them too. What I said about monsters—we're all in the same born-again hotbed, shuffling and scuffling toward a state of grace, most often doing the lousy thing and making the unforgiveable gesture, but sometimes muddling through. But you've made a couple of quantum-jumps toward the perfect state, you're a twenty-first century kid who arrived a little early. Robin, we're all going where you've been already. You make me feel—humble, believe it or not, and just a little too anxious to please and impress. After they fished you out of the river and pumped your lungs out and sedated you, you were brought here because my uncle didn't have any better ideas. It's big and peaceful here, there are a lot of ways to have a great time in this country if you want to.

"Now, technically, your Aunt Fay is your legal guardian, but we can't even find your Aunt Fay. The law in New York says until you're sixteen you need an adult to look after you. Who's it going to be? Your second cousin doing time for embezzlement in Joliet? Your great-aunt Harriet living off her dividends at Leisure World? I don't think you're psychologically equipped, after the tragedy you've experienced, to go knocking around the world on your own. So—give us a chance, please. Stay awhile. Do your own thing. Swim; go hiking; learn to ride a trail bike. I can guarantee, because I run the place, that there'll be no pressure on you to participate in any of our work. You'll be left strictly alone if that's what you want, and, owww, oh, goddamn it!"

Gwyn leaped high and wide and turned around once in the air while grabbing at the seat of her pants. She want hopping and skipping past Robin and he saw the horsefly soar away. She rubbed the bitten place, tears standing out in her eyes.

"Oh, the damn flies we've got around here! Robin, would you see if he welted me?"

The fly had bitten her very low on the back, a finger's width from the ivory rim of one soft cheek. A goodly lump was raising. Gwyn bent over, shoving the low pants even lower. Quite obviously she wore no underpants.

"Rub some spit on it for me? That usually helps when I don't have anything else handy."

Robin wet his fingertips plentifully and coated the bite. Gwyn straightened and hitched up and wiped her tearing eyes on the back of a wrist.

"Ohhh, thanks. It feels like he took a big chunk out. I guess he got a whiff of asshole."

She looked quickly at Robin and tossed off a shrug. "Excuse that last remark. I do get a little vulgar from time to time."

They were standing close together in an open place where the sun was powerful; Gwyn continued to look up at Robin, but neither moved to get out of the other's way. A breeze stirred strands of hair on the crown of her head. He was totally interested in the wavering of her hair, in the mild steady eyes. He found other things that fascinated. Her lips seldom closed all the way. The upper lip had a pronounced arch. She had a serrated front tooth, a visible, strong pulse in her throat and a natural scent that would, in time, prove electrifyingly erotic.

Gwyneth, rising on tiptoes to more nearly approximate his height, balanced herself with one hand on his shoulder; she reached out to touch his pinked sensitive nose with the ball of her thumb.

"We have the same trouble, huh?"

Robin swallowed and thoughtfully bit his lower lip.

She stroked his nose kiddingly and dropped the hand, but she did it with a languid, wistful slowness, keeping light fingertip contact all the way to his beltline. Then she put both hands in her own front pockets, thumbs showing.

"Give me a shot at being a friend?" she said.

In response to the blue uncertainty of Robin's smile Gwyneth lowered her eyes submissively, willing to wait him out.

At the two o'clock staff meeting Gwyneth said, "I think, despite Robin's problems, we've already developed a relationship that can only improve with time." She looked around the table and added, "He's taking me to dinner tonight."

The four men and two women in the conference room smiled at her.

The dinner wasn't a success. Robin was docile, not giving. Gwyn knocked herself out to jolly him and sometimes he smiled, but she'd find him looking at her as if he couldn't convince himself that she really existed. She'd never encountered this much reserve in any male, regardless of age; Robin's attitude perplexed and ultimately defeated her. He withdrew completely then, and threw up high walls.

For a week and a half afterward Robin deliberately avoided contact with her. He slept much of every day and prowled nights. He had the run of the campus, and Staff stayed tactfully out of his way. Gwyn spotted him early one morning, just before daybreak, huddled high and dry on a rock in the middle of the swimming lake. She wondered how he got there without getting wet. He spent long nocturnal hours in the Faculty library, turning the pages of rare books that made up a part of the six-thousand-volume occult collection. Most often he studied maps. He caught a cold and was plagued with a low-grade fever and his appetite didn't improve. One side of his face swelled up from poison oak. He looked and felt miserable.

Analysis of the films made of Robin while he slept showed he was leaving the body for four and five hours at a time.

"Apparently trying to arrange a meeting with his father in the astral," said Newvine, the Faculty psychiatrist and den-mother, a transvestite whose nickname was "Granny Sigmund."

"And not having any luck," a co-worker commented.

"He's been studying all those detailed maps of Equatorial Africa," Gwyneth said. "He could be looking for the body. He needs to be convinced it happened."

"I doubt there is a body," said an Englishman named Salt-marsh, who was on loan from the University of London's Council for Psychical Investigation. "Bloody mercenaries would have chucked the lot of them into a roadside ditch. Wouldn't be much left by now, would there? Rags and a rather cloudy odor."

Gwyn made a face. "For God's sake, they must have buried the poor man! But Robin is going to go bats pursuing his father's ghost, or his earthly remains. I've got to divert him somehow, it's getting critical. I'm afraid Robin will induce a psychopathological condition we can't handle without resorting to the phenothiazines. And drugs may very well close valuable pathemic channels."

"May I make a suggestion?" Granny Sig said. The transvestite was a vast figure with Kerry Blue hair and little round glasses perched on apple cheeks. She laughed a lot, shaking and reddening without ever uttering more than a wheeze of sound.

"I wish you would, Granny Sig. I had him in the palm of my hand, practically, but—"

"I've studied your excellent resume of your first attempts to befriend Robin. You possess a rare flaw, my dear. That flaw is flawlessness. You are brilliant in several fields of study, physically vital and competent at all types of games. You have this maddening ability to pick up expertise in areas that actually don't interest you very much. You can tune your '57 DeSoto like a fine watch, explain role-reversal among coyotes, discuss ballistics with a sharp-shooter and list six plausible ways Johnny Bench can break out of his current batting slump. You have social graces and a funnybone. You also possess an intimidating sexual confidence. Gwyneth Charles is a creature of so many parts that trying to explain her to the uninitiated leaves one in the despairing position of the blind man in the parable who tried to describe the elephant."

"Gee whiz, I've loved hearing all this; however—"

The transvestite shook and trembled with internal laughter, turning the color of a thrombosed vein.

"I have seen you, operating at perhaps half power, demoralize a roomful of excellent men of our acquaintance. Just think of the impact you must have had on that thirteen-year-old boy."

Gwyneth chewed her underlip. "He's no ordinary—"

"We are speaking of emotional capacity. For the moment think of him solely as a sexual being. Genitally he is in a splendid state of development. We have filmed him masturbating to a climax. We may assume that from the wealth of pornographic material available to all growing boys he has adequate technical information. By his own admission he has not experienced sexual intercourse. More importantly, he's had little contact with pubescent females. His most profound sexual experience to date involved the lactating breast of a mother-surrogate with whom he strongly empathized."

"I bet I know where you're going with that."

"Yes. Your long-range plan for Robin is not without the possibility of considerable danger—"

"Not again, doctor!"

"But since you are committed to this course of action, I urge you to re-think your strategy."

"What you're trying to say is, I hustled him to the brink too fast. But I wasn't really working at it——"

"Oh, my dear, two overt contacts within an hour! And you revealed no corresponding areas of vulnerability to which he could respond. Consider his adolescent daydreams: who is he mooning over as he pounds his peenie? Last month's centerfold girl? The saucy sprite selling deodorant on TV? That mountain wench on whom he was severely fixated? It doesn't matter, they are safely removed from the reality of the act as he commits it. I'm certain that he doesn't think of you; perhaps he makes a conscious effort not to. Because you are much too immediate and larger than life, and more woman than he can possibly cope with. Showing him even a portion of your superb derriere was a terribly intimidating, not a provocative act. A blow to his burgeoning sexuality. He may want you, it would be inhuman of him not to want you, but he feels unequal to the task, which could have repercussions."

"You mean I might have driven him into the clutches of Ken or Bart?" Gwyneth said sarcastically, but she had flushed to the roots of her hair. Several of those in the room were having a hard time containing snickers.

Granny Sig smiled peaceably.

"Oh, I'm sure there's sufficient time to restore his confidence. But another bit of advice? Don't fuss over him. Let him make a fuss over you, for a change."

"Ah-hum," Gwyn said, enlightened.

Robin was unaware that the campus of Psi Faculty was as tightly guarded as any facility at Langley or Ft. Meade. He saw no helmeted police with packs of vicious dogs; there were no checkpoints protected by machine guns. Visible security measures included warning signs, a few floodlights at night, some not very formidable gates across access roads. These were tended by dyspeptic middle-aged men with pot bellies who were armed with nothing more lethal than a clipboard.

He occasionally ran into the only active daytime security patrol, two men in faded Forest Service green who chewed toothpicks and prowled the back woods in a pickup with a big German shepherd who rode in the truck bed. The shepherd whoofed and ranted and bared his teeth when anyone approached, just as he'd been taught. But nobody had figured out a way to keep him from wagging his tail at the same time; obviously it killed him not to be liked. Robin also saw pipe-smoking government employees ruminating over soil samples and seedlings; he saw logging crews and maintenance men and meteorologists from the weather station on a bald bluff overlooking Lake Celeste. They liked to strip to the waist and throw a frisbee around during their lunch break. At intervals he saw a helicopter in an otherwise empty sky. Nobody followed him or showed unusual interest in his presence. If he wanted to get on Gwyn's trail bike and ramble for miles he could do so.

He had absolute freedom, and he was totally a captive. Even before Robin's advent part of the MORG reservation had been used to experiment with new types of protective sensors and hardware. The security system that monitored several square miles of campus and woodland was based at the meteorological station, which was a blind. It contained surveillance and tracking devices adapted from all the latest cameras and telescopes which NASA crammed into its spy satellites. The woods were gridded with sensors and honeycombed with sector control bunkers. Each team of operators had at their disposal arsenals which could handle any sort of intrusion. By pushing buttons they could soak the night sky with burning magnesium, destroy bridges or create lethal pitfalls in the winding roads. They could gas every living thing on a two-acre plot in a matter of seconds. Fields were sown with pop-up land mines that contained enough metal fragments to shred an elephant. Heat-seeking missiles awaited low-flying jets.

More canines, monstrous cousins of the tail-wagger in the pickup truck, were available at a nearby farm. Nice old men who scratched their bellies and yawned a lot could kill you in ten different ways if you aroused their suspicions. Ken and Bart, who looked after the house so well, were a particularly murderous team. Ken liked the long silent stalk and the sudden knife; Bart, who had an almost mystical grasp of anatomy, killed inventively with whatever came to hand.

The 250 cc. engine of the trail bike could be blown by remote control if Robin exceeded certain limits of exploration. His every moment in the house was photographed at eight frames per second, with conventional lenses and infrared film.

After three weeks the men assigned to plotting and anticipating his every move began to see a pattern of dependability emerging; he was getting used to his new home, settling into a routine. He made no real overtures to Gwyn, but he became more talkative around Ken and Bart.

Near the time of her twenty-ninth birthday Gwyn planned to spend several days with an old beau, a novelist, who was in residence at Yaddo, the artists* colony down the road in Saratoga Springs. Prior to departure she said nothing about her trip to Robin, but she left him a brief cheery note.

It was immediately evident that he was shocked by her absence. A couple of times he went into Gwyneth's apartment, which was on the third floor near his own bedroom, just to look around. He read and re-read the handwritten note.' He borrowed a Swiss Army knife from Ken, who had quite a collection, and walked the woods searching for pieces of basswood to whittle into figures. He began to eat all of the sandwiches that Bart packed for his day-long odysseys instead of throwing them away after a bite or two. Hour after hour he worked feverishly at his woodcarvings, broke many of them in dissatisfaction, started anew. He cut his fingers several times, covering the damage with Band-Aids.

Granny Sig had Ken and Bart down to her shop on the quad for a consultation.

"His level of prescience has been very low due to emotional trauma. Now that he's showing signs of recovery, we must be very careful around him. If Robin knew the extent of our protective arrangements, he would be upset and frightened. Later the security precautions will make no difference to him; if anything he'll be flattered knowing it's all for his sake. Right now we wouldn't want to alert him to any of the bloody truth about your misspent lives, my dears."

"He actually reads minds?" Ken said uneasily.

Granny Sig laughed and laughed, sounding like a broken bellows.

"That's a serious misapprehension. One of his remarkable talents is the phenomenon of psychometry. And all that is—well, someday we may actually know how the mind transcends time-and space; "reality" as we know it. For now let me say that there is a bioplasmic universe, and in that universe is a record of every human impulse, word and deed—from lives past and lives to come. Robin, by touching you, or something that belongs to you, makes a connection between the timeless world and the physical world, what clairvoyants call a "vision." He culls from your past or future—which is all one, anyway, part of the huge collective consciousness."

Ken said, "Do you suppose he'll read anything off that knife I gave him? It was practically new, I never used it."

"Not to worry, then."

"Won't he get a lot of wrong vibes from Gwyn?" Bart asked.

"We pondered that problem at length. All I can say is, Gwyneth is not in possession of any single piece of information that could betray her. She will never have to lie to him. Shortly we will stage a set-piece for the ultimate benefit of their relationship, but Gwyn won't know about it in advance; she'll have to improvise, responding to opportunities as they happen. And, as the boy falls deeply in love with her, he will soon be no more perceptive about Gwyn than he is about himself. Clairvoyants are notoriously unable to divine their own fortunes."

It was raining lightly and getting dark when Robin made his way home that afternoon on the bike, skirting a cove of Lake Celeste. He wasn't looking for it, but through the tamarack and the spruce he couldn't miss Gwyn's car parked on a flat promontory; it was one of her "thinking places," where she would gaze uninterruptedly for hours at the perfect reflection of the trees on the face of the water. The car was a red and white DeSoto, twenty years old but beautifully maintained; she had referred to it proudly as "one of the really great, tacky, tail-fin, park-n'-grope Dee-troit honeywagons."

She was home a day early from Saratoga Springs. He wondered why. He skidded to a stop and looked down at the car. Headlights winked on and off twice in the settling gloom.

Robin took a slippery needled trail down to the lake shore, pulling up next to the DeSoto. Gwyneth was slumped behind the wheel. She didn't look at him but raised a hand in wan salute.

He killed the bike engine and put the kick-stand down, but he didn't get off.

"Thought I heard my .old banger," Gwyn said. "How've you been?"

"Okay."

She sat up and eased the door open and got out. She took a tender deep breath, looked at him and through him.

"You said you wouldn't be back before—"

"Tomorrow, but alas the reunion ended today. Once again I couldn't stay the route with good old Vic."

Gwyn smiled somberly, wiped the mist of rain from her forehead and walked down to the edge of the lake. She was barefoot. She walked stiffly, as if her left side hurt. She stood for a few minutes with her feet in the cold water. Robin wandered around and scuffed at rocks. Gwyn came back.

"We're getting wet," she said.

"What happened to your side?"

"What? Oh, I . . . bruised it. Hurts. Kind of."

"Your mouth is cut."

"Where? Here, you mean. So it's cut, okay."

"How come?"

"Oh, shut up, Robin," Gwyn said mildly. Then she lifted her hands, palms up, a gesture of apology. She winced. "Sorry. I got hit a couple of whacks, that's all. The ribs are the worst this time. I've learned not to stick around for the full cycle. Tears and recriminations were on tomorrow's schedule, if I stayed out of the hospital. Vic is stalwart and charming for a day, he drinks for a day, he becomes incomparably . . . compulsively . . . destructive."

"Why would he hit you?"

"I can't explain that very well. It's not because he doesn't like me."

"Oh."

"Throw the bike in the car and I'll drive us home."

He would have liked to ask more questions; it made him edgy and angry to think that she had been hurt. But Gwyn wasn't angry, she just looked very sad; her lips moved soundlessly a couple of times as she drove, as if she were now phrasing all the things she wished she could have said to Vic.

Then, catching Robin looking at her, she smiled and leaned over and pounded a chummy fist on one knee.

"I'll be okay."

"Not if you hang around what's-his-name," Robin said a bit fiercely.

"But it's over. AH over. Finally."

"How long did you—"

They had reached a wide place where three unpaved roads intersected. Two muddy sedans were parked there. A man in a hat and a pale trench coat was getting out of one car and into the other. He looked up, briefly, just as the DeSoto's headlights flared on his face.

Robin was staring through the rainy window. He bucked as if touched by a live wire.

"MY DAD."

"What?" Gwyneth said, startled from her despondent reverie. She looked back but didn't stop. Robin had rolled down the window, saw only taillights vivid in the slash rain as the sedans went divergent ways.

"Gwyn! Stop! Go back! I saw DAD."

"Oh, no, Robin—"

"Please!" he shrieked at her, lunging dementedly to grab the steering wheel. Gwyn rode the brake on the slick clayed surface; the DeSoto spun like a top and slid a hundred feet.

"Robin!"

She fought him off with one hand and tried to control the skid; the car crashed into a springy alder thicket overgrowing the road and stopped.

Robin threw open the door on his side, fell out, bounded up and ran back down the road.

The cars had disappeared. Robin fell headlong again as Gwyn restarted the engine, delicately gained traction and followed. She caught up to Robin standing dejectedly near the place where he'd seen the man.

Raining harder now, rain thudding on the car top.

His chest heaved and his Rubenesque hair was matted to his forehead.

"Robin, please get back in the car."

He shook his head violently.

"It may have looked—you could not have seen—"

"BUT I DID."

"Robin, no Robin, your father is dead; I can prove that to you if you'll only—"

He turned; in place of eyes she beheld a shocking luminosity in the headlights.

"They never sent him back; so there's no proof!"

She had to go after him.

"Robin, come home with me."

"We could be following them!"

"Where? Which road? I didn't see the way those cars went. Be sensible. If it could have been—by some miracle—he'll get in touch, won't he? Well, don't you think so?"

Robin lowered his head. There was a little blood where he'd bitten his underlip; it washed away quickly. Gwyn took him by the arm. She had to pull him, one sticky, sluggish step at a time, back to the DeSoto. They rode shuddering and in silence the short distance to the house.

He was just out of a hot tub when she called his room an hour later.

"Robin, could you come down to the study for a few minutes?"

Gwyneth had changed into a long tropical skirt and put her hair up. She was drinking Scotch. Her eyes looked a little muzzy. He sat on the seat of a wall-sized bow window that overlooked the swimming lake. At the perimeter of" the terrace Japanese lanterns were lit. The rain had all but stopped. Clouds like chimney smoke rolled away toward the Hudson Valley. In the last full flash of day, trees dripped diamonds.

She brought him a nine-by-twelve envelope from the safe.

"I've had these for a week. I never intended showing them to you. I know I may be making a mistake, but—" Gwyn tried to undo the string-tied flap but her fingers blundered. Robin took the envelope from her hands, opened it, slid out several glossy black-and-white photos. For three or four minutes he stared at the top one. Flat road in a hot country. A baobab tree. Sunflare off the icy shards left in the windscreen of the Land Rover, which had gone off the road and was inclined at an angle of about twenty degrees from the horizontal. Thirty or forty brightly peened bullet holes in the metal. Man in bush jacket sprawled head down out of one side of the vehicle. In the background, two black men dressed in guerrilla fatigues. Paratrooper boots, heavy weapons, bandoliers, berets. Toothy grins. The photography, in all respects, was excellent.

Robin reluctantly abandoned the first photograph. The next one was a full shot of another native soldier, fully equipped but barefoot. He pointed exuberantly at the body in the road. Black blood; swarm of flies about the shattered head.

Robin looked up open mouthed at Gwyn, who was squeezing her glass in both hands.

"Go on," she said stonily. "Keep looking. "

He flipped the two photos face down on the seat and sat with the third in his lap. Closeup of another body inside the vehicle. Sweating soldier with tribal scars holding the head back by the hair, a look of frantic excitement in his eyes. Five, possibly six round dark bullet holes in the victim's face alone. Although the features were distorted by various fluidic pressures, he was easily recognizable.

"Is that your father?" Gwyn demanded.

Robin didn't speak. He turned this photo face down with the others.

"Where did you get those?"

"Childermass."

"Why—would anyone—take them?"

"Gloating privileges."

"What?" Robin said, trembling with rage. He blinked rapidly. His lips were like suet. She was certain he was going to faint.

"I'm so sorry; it's an evil, dirty business, and I honestly didn't want to—but if you go on thinking, the rest of your life, that you might run into him on the s-street; or, or, every time the phone rings you—"

Robin got up and left the room. Gwyn heard him pounding up the stairs with a growling wail that wrenched the heart out of her. She sat down, prickly with nausea, and pressed the cold glass against her head. She wept a little, fitfully, while she nursed one more drink.

About ten o'clock Gwyneth went upstairs to her apartment. She found three wood carvings, the figures hand-polished to a high luster. Tranquil sylvan setting. Mother and two cunning children, a boy and a girl, seated, a large picnic hamper between them. Detail was rendered beautifully: the palm of the mother's hand, the folds of her skirt, the curve of a child's mysterious smile. The figures engrossed her, she was thrilled by this display of youthful talent. Now she understood the reason for all the Band-Aids she'd noticed on his fingers.

A birthday card accompanied the carvings.

I WISH YOU was all it said, all the words he had needed.

She thought she heard Robin in his room. Thrashing in his sleep, crying out. Gwyneth finally overflowed, crying enough tears to sop one bell sleeve of her white crewel-work blouse.

There was a big shower in her bathroom, a modern instrument of torture like an iron maiden, needle spray coming at her from half a dozen different directions. The ribs which Vic had belabored in his love-rage ached horribly, but she stuck it out. She used a loofah to get the blood going even more fiercely.

Gwyn came out red as a radish, breathing hard and pleasantly exhausted, wrapped herself nearly head to toe in a big orchid towel and lay down tingling on her bed to orchestrate emotions. Before she was completely dried she discarded the towel and reached for the little bottle of concentrated hash oil she kept close to hand. She measured a small drop of the valuable stuff directly onto one fingertip. Sitting in the lotus position, she held the firm viscous drop aloft and stared at it. Then she looked down at her gently rounded crinkle-free belly and the soft fume of droplet maidenhair. Without uncrossing her legs she lay back, inserted the finger quickly deep into her anus, withdrew it immediately, placed it inside her vulva, withdrew again and let her fingertip loll deliciously on the fat and uppity joy-button.

Within seconds she was jumping up and down at the brink of what could be a night-long orgasm, to be maintained as long as she wished with a further judicious application of hash oil. Her skin flushed again and her head was a heavy ball of vipers, entwining sensuously, hissing like flame as the incredibly potent oil was absorbed by soft erogenous tissue.

Gwyneth place another drop on the heart-beat nipple where it could not be absorbed too quickly, at least by her. She was avid then to put her hands on herself, to claw out and cling to the steamy pulsating heart, to rub against walls and furniture, fall panting and grinding on the rough carpet, wearing the skin off her hips and behind while she wore out her need. She forced herself to obtain a small measure of self-control, and went keenly along to Robin's room. She was a stifled madhouse, a sweltering storm.

He was sleeping, but poorly; he sat shock upright when she came in.

"Who's that!"-

"Gwyn, darling. Are you all right?"

"I was dreaming. I've got a—terrific headache."

Gwyneth kneeled on the bed beside Robin. She put a hand on his forehead. He was still groggy and had night sweats.

"I was in the bath. I thought I heard you, so I came right away."

"I'll be—"

"I can stay with you," she said urgently.

"I—"

"I want to stay with you. Robin . . . I have something good for your headache."

She hitched closer to him, sat knee to knee, her other knee raised, making him fully aware of skin tone and stressed muscle, the blood's enormous pulse, the bawdy thoroughbred heaving of her breast.

"What is it?" he said in all innocence.

"Oh God Robin, put your arms around me, please please please before I lose my fucking mind!"

But she couldn't wait for him to make even the first sampling move; she gathered him in, flocked his face with butterfly kisses. She treated him to alluring flights of fancy with her tongue. Her hands were loving and roving, then lewd and to the point. Not a moment too soon she was astride him, a nesting pungent lapful, and the loaded nipple was between his teeth.

"Tastes funny," Robin murmured, very nearly his last cogent thought for the remainder of the night.

Five thirty in the morning. The stones of the house were sweating. Conifers in the gunmetal greenery of the garden stood limp with beads of moisture. Fathoms of curling fog, white as bone, wisped hotly from the surface of the black reflecting lake. Two whistling swans glided rose petal smooth in malicious self-admiration to a far bank where the tall spruce, dim sentinels dark as midnight, began to perish in illusion. Birdsong was chilled, isolated. Gwyneth, in bluesy linen and charming sou'wester, drifted along paths far from the hardpan of the soul, cherished by the spirit that unknots the troubling flesh, all her sins exemplary.

She heard the whisper of giant wings an instant before the bird appeared, directly in front of her and only a few feet off the ground. Gwyn recoiled with an oath, thinking the raven would crash into her, but with a rushed tilt of his iridescent black wings he flew off without a sound above the shrubbery, and was swallowed in cotton mists.

Dirty birds, she thought, hating them because of what they symbolized. Several of the ravens haunted the campus, and some of them were large enough to trigger magnetic-wave detection alarms. The one that had almost bumped her had a wing span of more than five feet. Security men occasionally took pot-shots but without much luck; the ravens had learned to be devious and seldom seen in order to survive.

"Is that you, Gwyneth?" said Granny Sig Newvine, and presently she became visible down the path Gwyn was taking. Mild light had struck the grove and, stirring in bare shadow, Granny Sig came forth, vocal, extravagant, stinking of candor, lovely in cloche maroon and supplemental swag. She carried a ferocious-looking walking stick.

"Oh, yes. There you are. Was it that bird? I saw it too. Well, you look—vital, as always. N.ot badly used, as I might have expected after so many hours with your tot-cocky soulmate."

"You know already?"

"Guesswork," said Granny Sig, with a hint of a simper.

"The time was right for—laying ghosts. I would say we're rid of his father once and for all. Robin is totally mine now."

"With the aid of a dollop of hash oil, to break down lingering inhibitions?"

Gwyn said dreamily, "They say that making love in the astral is nirvana; for pure sensation it eclipses anything we can manage in the flesh. But we managed pretty good last night."

"Robin is somewhat adept in the astral, you are not. Be careful, dear."

"What are you afraid of, Granny Sig?"

"For one thing, your proclivities toward the left-handed uses of sex."

"You're being an old Puritan. Using drug and sex rites to implement paranormal experiences is standard occult practice. The release of sex energy through ritual copulation can be very creative. It's white magic. I'm not fool enough to dabble in black magic—"

"You are focusing the libidinal forces of this mind-boggling youngster on yourself. He may prove to be quite extraordinary sexually—"

Gwyn said with a flippant shrug, "Study the films if you want to. It's going to be a class act."

"No joking matter. I think Robin will become far too much for you to handle—"

"Ho-ho-ho!"

"Sheer youthful braggadocio. I have a very healthy respect for the kinetically destructive powers of the sexually aroused. You can satisfy, even exhaust, the physical body, that's purely a matter of mechanics, but what about the "double," the bioplasmic body we know so little about? What happens when it is subjected to conditions of prolonged spasmic orgasm without emission? Can you satisfy Robin in the ethereal? What happens if you don't? You may find yourself in possession of a tulpa, a living nightmare beyond your control."

Mention of the unruly and often terrifying tulpas, part of the lore of Tibetan mysticism, caused Gwyneth's skin to prickle momentarily, but then she scoffed.

"Tulpas are thought-forms, and I'm a hard-headed realist. And Robin is—he's—all boy. I'm really awfully fond of him, Granny Sig. I'm going to take good care of him."

"Very well," Granny Sig murmured. "I only want you to be aware of the possible dangers. Where do we go from here?"

"I think Robin and I will take a brief wanderjahr: he ought to enjoy canoeing on the Ampersand for a week. Hard physical work, and those deep downy sleeping bags at night—lovely! When the relationship is really firmed up I want to introduce him to the kabbalists."

"The Fifty Gardens of Knowledge?"

"Even now, on sheer raw ability, he must be somewhere around the Thirtieth Gate, farther than any of our earthly geniuses can go."

Granny Sig said reverently, "Solomon passed through the Forty-Eighth Gate; by the grace of God only Moses has sojourned in the Forty-Ninth Garden."

"Robin will pass through the last gate."

"To the Final Garden, the Ultimate Mystery?"

"The creation of life itself. And why not?" Gwyn said exultantly, feeling very much up on her luck.

They reached higher ground where the fog was parting. Ahead of them the sun had risen; the blue and speckling day exploded.