The Link (34 page)

“And Holder?” Peter asks.

“Served as the stimulus for activating Dr. Keighley’s self punishment,” Cathy says. “I think he knew about the attic, knew about Holder’s background. And used it against himself. And against his family for knowing about his guilty past.”

Peter makes a groaning noise. “Sound like a ‘prime example’ of over-simplification to me,” he tells her.

“All right,” she retreats. “Add more if you like. That, in certain localities, personal psychic factors may actually
mobilize
residual energies from the past and project them onto a hallucinatory screen. Is that enough for you?”

“Except for one point,” Peter says.

“Which is—?” she asks.

“Which is that these residual energies may, in fact, be part and parcel of a surviving personality.”

“No,” she says. She shakes her head determinedly. “No. No. No. No. No.”

“Once more into the fray,” says Robert. “Who will win? Tune in tomorrow.”

“No one’s going to win this one,” says Cathy with a rueful smile. “We’ll be fighting this battle ‘til doomsday.”

They are still fighting it hours later.

“Enough!” cries Robert. “Give it a rest!”

Cathy and Peter laugh and stop.

“If only he hadn’t heard that voice,” says Robert after momentary silence.

“Who?” they both ask simultaneously.

“Hitler,” Robert answers.

CUT TO World War One, Germany; young Corporal Hitler sitting with his comrades in a trench, having something to eat.

CAMERA MOVES IN ON him. Abruptly, a male voice speaks to him, ordering him to, “Get up and walk over there.”

He does not question the validity of the order, thinking it the voice of some unseen officer. Obeying, he rises and walks some two hundred yards down the trench, re-seats himself to finish his meal.

He has barely sat down when an enemy grenade arcs down into the trench, explodes and kills every one of his comrades.

“Think of what might have been avoided if he hadn’t heard that voice,” says Robert.

“The voice was clairaudient premonition,” Cathy says. “Hitler was probably psychic.”

“And, if he’d died,” says Peter quietly, “Germany would have produced another Hitler.

“I suppose,” Robert says. He looks at Cathy. “What do you mean he was probably psychic?”

“Consider,” she says, “—and I don’t take credit for this observation; I heard my mother make it and I doubt if it’s original with her.

“The point is: Hitler had no interest in distance perception tests, in Zenor cards or moving objects in séance rooms like Home and Palladino. No interest in comforting others like Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Leonard, Cayce.

“He chose not to order ball bearings to roll across glass top tables. Instead, he ordered bomber pilots to decimate cities. He didn’t bend spoons. He dispatched panzer divisions to bend Europe and Asia. The Army, Navy and Air Force were his ectoplasmic extensions.”

Robert grunts. “Interesting notion,” he says.

“Because he was probably psychic,” she says, “he was always certain he was right. It was this paranormal sense of certainty that altered, later, to delusions of grandeur which he maintained to the bitter end.”

Two nights later. Ten p.m.; Robert’s hotel room.

He and Cathy have just made love and are lying, warm and comfortable in each others arms.

“I hope you appreciate, my darling,” Cathy says, “that, in the very bosom of my family and marriage, I am lying in your arms like this.”

He kisses the tip of her nose. “I appreciate,” he tells her quietly.

“And that I have become a member of that legion of errant wives who have lied about what they intended to do when they left the house.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“Sitting in my purse, even as we lie here, is a ticket stub to the Mayfair Theatre,” she says. “I went there, bought it, sat in the seat for fifteen minutes, got enough of the play in mind to discuss it in case I was asked, then left, with a program in my purse, to join you here for illicit revelry.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier, my love, to simply tell your husband we love each other?”

“I have,” she says.

He looks at her in amazement. “You
have?”

She nods. “I’m still married to him though,” she goes on. “I couldn’t very well follow it up with an announcement that I planned to join you in your hotel room.”

“For illicit revelry,” he adds.

“For that.” She clings to him. “Oh, Rob, oh, love,” she murmurs. “Why do we have to hurt anyone?”

He holds her tightly, stroking her hair.

After a while, she sighs heavily and says, “I’ve been asking my mother about the psychological background of psychics.”

“Want to make sure they aren’t going to put me away before you marry me?” he asks.

She hits him on the chest. “Ouch,” he says.

“Well, actually, my beloved,” she informs him. “Mumsy did say that psychics are inherently schizophrenic.”

“A vote of gratitude for Mumsy,” he says. Cathy giggles softly. “Mumsy have anything else to say?” he inquires.

“Yes, as a matter of fact she did.”

“Lay it on me, kid,” he says.

“Her feeling is that OOBEs are psychological attempts to simultaneously escape from external reality and ones private self.”

“Reassuring. Is that all?”

“No. She believes that they are also attempts to dissociate ones self from the body and, in so doing, deny the reality of death.”

“Mumsy has really made my day,” he says.

She cuts off another giggle as the telephone rings jarringly on the bedside table. “Oh, dear Lord, I hope it’s not the house detective,” she says casually.

Robert picks up the receiver.

“Mr. Allright?” says Harry on the other end.

“Yes,” says Robert quietly. Seeing his expression and hearing the tight sound of his voice, Cathy stares at him worriedly.

“I apologize for calling so late but I wonder if I might talk to you for a few moments.”

“Uh… well, yes, yes, of course,” Robert falters.

“I’m down in the lobby,” Harry says. “I’ll wait for you in the bar.”

He hangs up and Robert stares dumbly at the receiver.

“Who was it?” Cathy asks in a tone which indicates that she already suspects who it was.

“Harry,” he tells her.

“Oh, dear lord, dear lord,” she says. “Where was he calling from? His office?”

“The lobby,” he tells her.

“What?”

“He wants to meet me in the bar.”

They stare at each other, mutually stricken. Then Cathy says, “He couldn’t know I’m here. He couldn’t.”

Robert draws in shaking breath. “If you’re wrong,” he says, “I trust the murder trial won’t inconvenience you too much.”

Cathy clutches at him. “
Don’t joke like that,”
she tells him.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“If you really think such a thing, you mustn’t go down there,” she says. “I’ll go down.”

No, he tells her. If she’s sure that Harry doesn’t know she’s there, they have to go on that premise.

“I don’t want to gamble your life on it,” Cathy says, panicking a little.

“Shh.” He manages a smile. “Why do I feel like a character in a British B-movie?” he asks.

They hesitate. Then Robert decides. He must go down. He’ll find out soon enough if Harry knows she’s here. If it turns out that he doesn’t, it would be unconscionable to tell him.

In spite of both Robert’s and Cathy’s alarmed depression, the sequence which follows is initially farcical.

Robert, descending in the creaking cage lift, is unable to avoid a foresight into the British B-movie he feels a part of.

We do not realize, at first, that it is one of his fantasies. It looks very realistic.

Harry waiting in the bar, a raincoat on, a tweed hat on his head, a pipe in his mouth. Mumbling, “Sorry, old chap. Bad show.” Informing Robert that he knows “the wife” is upstairs, “badly compromised”.

They are sitting at a table. Harry reaches obviously into his raincoat pocket.

“Wait a second,” Robert says.

“Sorry. Rum go,” Harry responds. He tries to pull a perfectly enormous military pistol from the pocket. Robert stares at it in horror. “Wait,” he says.

“Sorry. Hard cheese,” Harry says. He is forced to rip apart his raincoat pocket in order to pull out the gigantic pistol. “Sorry, this is all I could find,” he apologizes. “Belonged to pater’s pater in the Argonne.”

BAM! The report is like that of a cannon and Robert, hit square, goes flying backward through a wood and glass partition. “Filthy swine!” screams Harry in a cracking voice.

Robert stands outside the bar, looking in. The sound of his gulp is audible. Harry really does have on a raincoat and, sitting on the table is a tweed hat. “No,” he mumbles. Was it really a fantasy this time—or a “prime example” of precognition?

He braces himself, accepts his possible fate and, entering the small room, pulls out a chair and sits across from Harry. Behind him is the wood and glass partition. “Yes,” he says.

Harry nods. “That you for coming down,” he replies.

“A drink?” asks Robert.

“No, thank you,” Harry says.

Robert stiffens, eyes embossing, as Harry reaches into his raincoat pocket. The faintest noise wavers in his throat.

Harry takes out a pack of cigarettes, offers it to Robert. “No, th—” Robert has to clear his throat with some effort. “No, thank you.”

“Mind if I—?” asks Harry.

“Not at all.” Robert watches the other man light up and blow out smoke—discreetly, to one side, so as not to bother Robert.

As it turns out, what Harry has come for is to ask what Robert really feels for Cathy. She’s told him that she loves Robert. Is it an affair that Robert seeks or is it deeper?

Robert feels sick. The man is so damned decent. Quietly, he tells Harry that he’s sorry this ever happened but it did, that he loves Cathy very much and doesn’t want an affair, he wants Cathy to be his wife.

“I see,” Harry nods. A breath shudders in him. “It’s just that… well, I love her so, you see, and only want the best for her,” he says.

Later. Robert comes back to his room and finds Cathy sitting on the edge of the bed, still naked, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. He sits beside her, puts an arm around her. She leans against him limply. “Oh, God,” he says.

“What?” she murmurs.

“He’s such a
nice man,”
he says miserably. She sobs. “I told you,” she is barely able to get out before she starts to cry.

They sit without a word, Robert stroking her back, staring out the window.

His gaze becoming fixed on a neon sign down the block. It looks like a four-bladed scythe, a circle in its center, the slow turns of the blades moving clockwise.

It is a sign for a disco called THE PRIMARY FORCE. He doesn’t know why he stares at it but he cannot remove his gaze.

CUT briefly to the temple glyph in Arizona. BACK to the sign in London. Robert staring at it.

T
hey de-plane at Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen to transfer to the Aeroflot Ilyushin 62 shuttle flight to Moscow.

Waiting in the terminal, they have a drink. Only Cathy seems exuberant. Teddie is still morose about what happened at Harrowgate. Peter is grim because Carol has refused to go to Russia with him, insisting that she visit with her family until they have to return to the United States.

Robert’s solemnity is less apparently motivated. Alone with him for a few minutes, Cathy asks him what’s wrong. Is he already regretting her break with Harry?

He feels terrible that she thinks this and hugs her, gives her a warm kiss. Not at all, he says. It’s the one thing about going to England that made total sense to him. Harrowgate was intriguing but sidetracking. He is apprehensive that Russia will prove to be even more so.

Sidetracking from what? she asks.

He can only smile haplessly and shrug. That he doesn’t know, he has to admit. It is still in the nature of a gut feeling rather than a state of knowledge. However, since he has now pretty well accepted the fact that he’s psychic (although he has no clue whatever as to what direction it is taking him in) he has to accept the gut feeling as something genuine.

“What is the feeling, love?” she asks.