Hazard (10 page)

On the first run Hazard had eleven hits. Only one above the average score that could be expected through mere chance. Hazard was disappointed but didn't show it. The second run he hit eight, and on the third run, nine. Discouraged and self-conscious about not doing well, he wanted to quit, but Kersh urged him to continue.

After fifteen more runs with less than a little more than average chance results, Kersh suggested a break. They went out and walked the grounds to the upper edge of the woods. Neither man was very talkative, but they were learning one another. They went down to the shore and along to the beach house that was shuttered tight and aging too quickly from neglect. Hazard felt sorry for the place which needed opening and care.

When they got back to the main house Hazard didn't want to undergo any more tests. He was supposed to stay over but he made the excuse that he had a long standing important engagement back in the city. Kersh didn't insist. Hazard left believing the whole episode had been a travesty. You'll never see me again, he thought.

But the next Thursday, there he was.

Kersh didn't seem surprised to see him, nor did he reveal how pleased he was. He liked Hazard.

More tests with the playing cards.

The first run, Hazard hit twenty-two out of the fifty. The second run, twenty-eight.

They did, altogether, a hundred runs, with Hazard repeatedly scoring in the twenty to thirty range. For the last dozen runs, Kersh asked him to try for the exact designation of each card: ace of diamonds, king of clubs, and so on.

Hazard's first attempt at that resulted in twenty-five hits. Of the other twenty-five, he got the correct value of ten cards and the correct suit of twelve. He only completely missed three out of fifty. Remarkable. And he went on to do as well and frequently even better on the following runs. The odds against such consistently high scores were in the area of five billion to one.

Kersh praised him.

Hazard felt good, like a winner.

But what had brought about the drastic improvement over scores from the week before? The difference had to be in Hazard. All week long his pride and competitive nature had picked at him because he'd failed and so quickly retreated. There was that. And then there was Kersh. Hazard found he liked the older man. That was exceptional because normally Hazard was as much a loner when it came to men as he was the opposite with women. Another motivation for Hazard was a practical one—the five hundred a week. Hazard needed it.

The three-week trial period they'd agreed on passed quickly. During that time they had six day-long sessions. Kersh accelerated the tests and exercises, made them increasingly more complex and demanding. Hazard seemed to develop right along with them. The greater the challenge the more determined he was to keep his scores above the probability level. Really bucking the odds.

Kersh didn't bring up the
DIA
requirement. He was afraid Hazard would quit and he doubted he'd ever again find such a prime subject, surely not one so likable. But then it got to be four weeks, five, and one afternoon during a break when they were sitting out on the terrace Kersh put it to him.

It brought the usual bitter response from Hazard about the government. But no mention of quitting. Hazard's convictions hadn't weakened, but now there were other considerations. He was hooked. On admiration for Kersh, interest in the project, and surely the weekly five hundred. In the precarious balancing of his winnings and losses Hazard had come to count on that five hundred. He referred to it as his
fuck-you money.

He asked Kersh, “Who would I have to answer to?”

“Only me.”

“No Washington shit?”

“No Washington shit.

“I could quit anytime?”

Kersh nodded.

The decision was so contrary to his style that Hazard couldn't be direct. He looked down the slope in the direction of the beach house. “Maybe I could fix that place up and use it,” he said. “Would that be okay with you?”

“Fine.”

And so Hazard committed himself to enlistment in the
DIA
, although his motives for becoming an intelligence agent were something less—and more—than patriotic.

He opened the beach house, cleaned, and painted it. He slept there whenever he came up for his scheduled exercises and he also spent some of his other time there. More often than not he brought a friend along. Models, hardly ever the same one twice. Hazard liked being able to invite them to what he called his beach place up in Connecticut. He didn't ask Kersh's permission to have guests, but Kersh didn't mind. Sure it was a Government installation and undoubtedly the
DIA
would consider such conduct out of line. However, it wasn't unpleasant for Kersh to glance down to the beach and see a lovely young creature topless and sometimes also bottomless. That was the extent of Kersh's interest in any of the girls Hazard brought.

Until Keven.

She was different from the start. She didn't just lie on the beach or roam around the grounds as though the world were an eye aimed at her. Keven was actively curious about the project. She often intruded on the exercises. She kept asking Kersh to test her, claiming she wanted to know herself better. Kersh believed she was merely being competitive and he wasn't entirely wrong about that.

By then Hazard had made amazing progress. He enjoyed being number one. No one else was even a close second. An analysis of all tests and exercises showed, however, that he was a much better sender than receiver. As a matter of fact he was comparatively poor at reception. It would have been ideal had he been equally proficient at both sending and receiving, and perhaps the latter could be developed over the long run. But for efficiency, Kersh decided to place total emphasis on expanding Hazard's strength as a sender.

That left Kersh looking for a receiver of equivalent ability. He found and tested several candidates, a few of whom showed potential. But they all lacked the required consistency. He even tested Julie, whose talents didn't approach her enthusiasm for the subject. It was a crucial problem for Kersh. To take his research to a higher level it was imperative that he have a sender-receiver team.

When he tested Keven he didn't have any high hopes. Mostly he did it only to accommodate her. But when he tallied up her scores and saw how consistently she hit high above the probability-of-chance level, he realized that it was Keven who was accommodating him. She was a natural. Kersh wondered, unscientifically, if such inclinations had been passed down by her superstitious Irish ancestors.

Did she mind enlisting in the
DIA
?

She didn't know what it was.

Kersh explained.

She told him she hated uniforms. As long as she didn't have to wear a uniform, okay. What she didn't tell him was that it saved her from having to look for another awful, steady job.

So Kersh now had his telepathy team. And a new problem: To make the team work and hold it together.

Much of his success or failure with that problem would be clear at the end of this present demonstration for the
DIA
men, Richland and Whitley. Ignoring Richland, Kersh again pressed the square button on the laboratory console, signaling to Lowery out on the ketch.

The exercise continued.

Lowery activated the box containing the images. The spindle rotated, moved up another card at random. Hazard took it and began peeling off its adhesive covering.

At that moment Keven felt a little itch in the center of her back. Unreachable. It was most distracting, could ruin everything, she thought. She tried willing it away and then resorted to flexing and rubbing against the cushion behind her. But the itch was in that difficult-to-reach concave spot right between her shoulder blades. Damn! She was about to call in to Kersh to have him come give her a scratch when luckily the itch subsided on its own.

Reminded by this how delicate the line was between the success and failure of what was expected of her, she quickly brought her attention to the soft, black, felt-covered wall before her. She thought about what she was thinking and remembered something she'd once heard Kersh say—that the most amazing thing about the human brain was its ability to reflect on itself, and that was why man felt special enough to have what he called a soul. But it also brought on a lot of suffering, from a punishing conscience to neurosis to total insanity.

Keven tried to feel herself thinking and it seemed she could, although it was a neutral, nondescript, continuous sensation.

Clear your mind, she told herself, and again used the soft black confronting her to try to direct her mind into believing it was receptive.

Suddenly a profusion of images came to her, one after another, just bits and pieces not apparently related, as though her mind's eye were sighting through a rapidly rotating kaleidoscope. She wasn't aware that she was no longer aware of the soft black wall. Nor was she aware that those bits and pieces were increasing steadily in number, that she was presenting them to herself more and more rapidly, too rapidly for premeditation. It was actually a pleasant sort of confusion; so much for her mind's eye to see. Delightful! More and more. There didn't seem to be any limit, and then …

Change.

It was as though a vertical seam inside her abruptly parted and folded neatly back to reveal an emptiness inside. A void. Not black, but a white, substantial nothingness, clean and still as new milk.

A dormant region.

There on the white, as though projected, all of it, all at once, isolated in unmistakable contrast, was a picture of words. It remained only long enough to register before disappearing. Leaving a void as undisturbed as before. Then, as though reversing experience, a layer of impressions unfolded to envelop and join, replacing the nothing with enjoyable, entertaining, rapid-fire confusion.

Gradually that diminished.

To the point where Keven again thought about what she was thinking and again realized her eyes were open on the soft, black, felt-covered wall.

After a moment she extended her right hand to the electronic keyboard. She had to resist her present thoughts, keep them from distracting her. It was difficult. Her mind seemed to resent her concentration. It protested by offering various impressions, some divertingly erotic.

She nearly giggled, wasn't sure that she hadn't.

Her first finger pecked at the keyboard.

On the corresponding monitor in the laboratory appeared:

BIG BIRD DETAIL
715
SECTION
2
VERIFIED LRAM

Keven had no idea what that meant, didn't know
BIG BIRD
was the
SR
-71, the Air Force's new 2,000-mph, high-altitude surveillance plane,
DETAIL
715 the code number of certain photographs taken by that plane during a particular flight,
SECTION
2 an area in China one hundred fifty miles north of Peking, and
VERIFIED LRBM
that the plane's cameras had caught a long-range ballistic missile.

Out on the Sound aboard the ketch, Lowery was about to record the card that Hazard had just handed over. He read the message that was printed on it and shook his head. The box had selected a toughie, he thought, and doubted they'd scored a hit on that one. On his exercise report sheet he noted the exact times of transmission and then in the allotted space he wrote:

BIG BIRD DETAIL
715
SECTION
2
VERIFIED LRBM

The exercise called for a run of eight images. The fifth image chosen at random was one designed to test incidental accuracy. A drawing of an oddly spotted, one-eared, three-legged dog.

When Hazard finished sending that one they were through for the day. Also, Whitley was belly down on the deck, head over the side, retching up Old Granddad and sandwiches. To multiply the displeasure, he was doing it against the wind.

Hazard, feeling no pity, observed Whitley's anguish for a while and then went below to get out of range.

Less than an hour later they were all gathered again in Kersh's office to review the results. Lowery's record of images sent by Hazard was compared with what the computers had registered via Keven. Out of the run of five they'd scored three perfect hits, a partial hit and an apparent miss.

Kersh congratulated his team.

Keven beamed like a superstar. At that moment she was so high on herself that Hazard couldn't resist bringing her down. He blamed her for the miss.

“It wasn't my fault,” she said, above reproach.

“Had to be.”

“You didn't send it strong enough.”

“Hell I didn't. Anybody could have gotten that one.”

“Not true.”

“You choked on it.”

Actually the missed image was graphically the simplest of all they'd attempted that day. An inverted arrow without a tail. What Keven had gotten was a shape that resembled the flame of a candle.

“That's exactly what came to me,” she said.

A scoff from Hazard.

“No doubt you had something else on your mind.”

He thought she meant her. “Like what?”

“Yourself. You hardly ever get past that.”

Hazard had intended only a little chaffing, harmless enough, but it was getting out of proportion.

“Admit it was your fault,” she said.

He almost did just to get it over with, but stayed on top by nonchalantly pouring himself a cup of leftover coffee. It was cold and bitter, nevertheless he gulped it down and to the empty cup said, “Slows down the sex drive.” Her words that morning.

Her Irish went up a few more degrees. “That's for
sure
,” she promised, and left the room, walking as though she were going a long way.

Kersh had an idea about what possibly had caused the miss. Hazard had sent the inverted arrow; Keven had received it. But at the moment it came to her, Keven's unconscious had interfered, changed the impression to another it considered more acceptable. This wasn't the first time her unconscious had resorted to such guile. But why this time? Kersh felt there was a connection between the two images. Vertical arrow could suggest penetration, aggression. Keven's unconscious had perhaps associated it with masculine dominance and defiantly opposed it, vetoed it, replaced it with an image that was more feminine. Kersh would have suggested all this to Keven if Richland and Whitley hadn't been there.