Breakthrough - Richard Cowper, page 10
‘No,’ I said, ’the only connection between the two people I’m thinking of was that they shared this peculiar dream.’ Dumps slotted the book back into its place on the shelf. ‘Hell, Jimmy, there’s an awful lot of people in the world, and all of them sleep and all of them dream.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I admitted.
He helped himself to another gherkin. ‘What was this dream, anyway?’
‘Do you remember Miss Bernstein coming to see you at the end of last term?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, I recall it,’ he said non-committally. ‘You remember a dream she told you about? The one that was bothering her?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he grunted.
‘Well, I had it too. Four years ago.’
Dumps paused in mid-bite. ‘You did, huh?’
‘Well, almost the same. There was just a slight difference of detail, that’s all.’
‘And what was that?’
‘I didn’t go right through with it—through the flames, I mean. I jumped down from the altar. Otherwise it was just like hers.’
He took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped his fingers. ‘So you did meet up with her again.’
‘Yes,’ I said and wondered whether I dare risk telling him just how that had come about.
‘What do you make of her?’ he asked.
‘I—I like her,’ I said.
‘You don’t find her neurotic—hysteric—unbalanced?’
‘Good God, no! ’
’O.K. O.K.,’ he grinned. ‘I was only asking.’
‘Why? Did you?’
’Far from it,’ he said, settling back and taking up his beer once more. ‘By rights she ought to have been plumb cuckoo —but she wasn’t.’
‘What did you tell her?’ I asked. ’Or is that classed under private and confidential?’
He chuckled. ‘I told her I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. And that was the truth.’
‘And those pictures?’
‘You tell me,’ he laughed.
‘And that’s the way it still is?’
‘In two words—Exactly.’
‘But haven’t you got any ideas?’
He pursed up his lips then pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and slowly massaged his closed eyes. ’Tell me,’ he said at last, ‘if you were out walking one day and you came across a big, shiny, metal cylinder say, lying right there on the ground, and this cylinder was tick-tick-ticking away. What would you do?’
‘Why, go and tell someone, I suppose.’
‘Uh-huh. Who would you tell?’
I shrugged. ’The police?’
‘Yeah, O.K. The cops. Well, the cops come along and they take a look at this thing and they don’t know what it is any more than you do, but they think it looks as if it might be some sort of bomb. So they get hold of the bomb disposal people and they come along and they say, “This isn’t like any bomb we’ve ever seen, but maybe that clever Doctor Dumpkenhoffer will be able to help.” And so Doctor Dumpkenhoffer comes along and he takes a look at it and he’s never seen anything like it either. But all the same, he suspects he’s the only one who might be able to discover what it is. So he says to these other guys who’re all standing around, “You bring it along to my laboratory and I’ll do what I can.” But just as they’re about to pick it up a little voice, just loud enough for the Doctor to hear, says from inside this thing, “If you do that you’ll be sorry.” As soon as he hears it the Doctor, who is a very quick-witted guy, turns round to these others and says, “Hold it, fellas 1 I’ve just remembered. This object happens to be a harmless Oriental Ogostrobolos. It must be left exactly where it is until it is ready to be moved.” And that, my friend, is exactly where it is.’
I gazed at him thoughtfully. ‘It—the voice—didn’t say why he’d be sorry?’
Dumps scratched his chin. ’The Doctor gathered that the effects might well be far-reaching and probably extremely unpleasant for anyone in the immediate vicinity.’
‘And he accepted that?’
’The Doctor, my friend, is one of the bravest men I’m privileged to know,’ he said solemnly, ‘but he’s no fool.’
‘Yes, I can believe that,’ I said. ‘And do you think she will come?’
‘“She”?’ he repeated, eyeing me slyly. ’The Oriental Ogostrobolos is of no gender known to human science. It may come or, again, it may not.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘We wait.’
From behind the round lenses of his spectacles, his brown eyes contemplated me thoughtfully. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,’ he said. ‘Maybe you think I’m holding out on you, huh?’
‘No, not really,’ I said, ‘but I’ve lived through some pretty weird experiences since I saw you last and I’d been cherishing a faint hope that you might have found a path through the wood—one I could follow.’
‘No dice, Jimmy. You’ll have to keep going on your own. I’ll let you know the minute anything turns up. That’s a promise.’
I slowly swirled the remaining beer round in the bottom of my mug. ‘If this sounds crazy, Dumps,’ I said slowly, ‘you’ll just have to forget I ever said it, but can you give me any idea what might happen if someone fell in love with one of these Oriental Whatsits?’
‘In love, eh?’ he repeated. ‘And with an Ogostrobolos? Boy, that’s quite a question.’
‘But it could happen?’
’Frankly, my friend, I don’t think it could—unless…’ He paused and drained off the rest of his beer.
’Unless what, Dumps?’
’Unless by some freak of fortune one happened to be some species of Ogostrobolos oneself.’
I stared at him. ‘And how would one know that?’
He chuckled. ‘I guess the other one would let them know soon enough.’
’That’s just what I was thinking,’ I said.
He took out his pipe and began to fill it. ‘Are you religious?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I’m not a practising member of any church, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Do you believe in a God?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said carefully. ‘Maybe.’
‘And the concept of the human soul? How about that?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ’That I accept.’
’As distinct from the mind?’
‘Well, maybe as part of it—as acting through it.’
‘Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci once plotted the soul’s exact location in the brain?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘His calculations landed him right plumb in the middle of the pineal gland.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s sometimes called “the third eye”,’ he said, ‘but no one knows for sure what its function is.’ He struck a match and waved it backwards and forwards over the bowl of his pipe. ’To me that gland is the most fascinating area in the whole of the human brain.’
’The road which leads to Rome?’ I suggested with a smile. He blew out the match. ‘Could be,’ he agreed.
’Is that what you’re working on now?’
‘Let’s just say we’re groping round to it. “Groping’s” the word all right.’
‘But you are getting somewhere?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ve had something of a breakthrough, I guess.’
It was as if someone had tipped a bucket of ice-water down my back. ‘What sort of “breakthrough”, Dumps?’
‘Well, maybe that’s too big a word. Do you remember any of your physics?’
‘Some,’ I said.
‘Do you remember what an oscilloscope is?’
‘A thing for displaying electric currents, isn’t it? Dots and wavy lines and what not?’
’That’s right. Well, if you connect an oscilloscope up to the brain you can get a visual record of the electrochemical impulses which are passing through that part of the brain you’re in contact with—a thing like this—’ He waved his pipe stem rapidly up and down and from left to right in a wave pattern.
‘I know the sort of thing,’ I said.
’O.K. Well, if you connect up the Y-inputs of two oscilloscopes to gadgets called sine-wave frequency generators whose frequencies differ by a factor of 2; and you connect the X-inputs of the ’scopes to constant sweep time bases of the same period, you’ll get two different patterns—like this—’ Again he moved his pipe stem, once in a rapid up-and-down wave and the second time in a slower, longer one.
I nodded vaguely, already several fathoms out of my depth.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘if we take our two sources of oscillation and connect them to the same ’scope—one to the X-input and the other to the Y-input—the trace we get will look like this—’ This time he moved his pipe stem in a rapid, graceful figure-of-eight.
I felt like saying ‘So what?’, but Dumps was so obviously under the impression that I was following him that I hadn’t the heart.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now up till six months ago electroencephalographic traces had always been displayed one under the other with a common time-scale—you must have seen the sort of thing—a lot of wiggly horizontal lines all down the page.’
’Oh, yes,’ I said brightly. ‘I’ve seen plenty of those.’
’They’re fine as far as they go, and I’m not the one to deny we’ve learnt a lot from them, but they’re still a hell of a long way from reproducing anything resembling the genuine pattern of thought itself. Still, what other way was there? Then, out of the blue, I hit on the notion of displaying these encephalic voltages in different planes. The technical problem was fantastic, but luckily a friend put me in touch with Peter Klorner. He and I kicked the concept backwards and forwards for days, and finally he came up with a method of combining voltages from different parts of the brain and treating each of them in a different way by using some to modulate others and so forth. Then we divided these into two groups which we presented together by displaying them on the two axes of an oscilloscope.
’Our first attempts were a washout, but we kept right on, trying out different combinations, modulating here, inverting there and so on, and then, just when we were on the point of chucking our hands in, we struck the paydirt. Boy! Was that a moment! ’
‘I wish I’d been there,’ I said. ‘What form did it take?’
‘Well, we’d taped off a record of encephalic impulses—from Betty actually. We’d had her concentrate on the idea of a dog—anything concrete would have done as well, I guess—we just wanted something fairly easily identifiable. Using this recording as our base, we worked our way systematically through close on a thousand different possible link-ups. Once or twice we thought we’d got something, but each time it turned out to be a dud. Talk about spots before the eyes! Pete and I almost got so we were barking at each other.’
‘And then?’
‘And then there it was. A bit charred round the edges, maybe, but it was a dog all right. We dragged Betty in and showed it to her, and that was that. She recognized it at once, in fact she said it was an Alsatian. Frankly I think she was even more astounded than we were. After that it was simply a question of improving the definition of the image.’ ’When did you actually see it for the first time?’ I asked. ‘Can you remember?’
‘Can I not?’ he chuckled. ’Tuesday. September ist. 4.25 p.m. Greenwich mean.’
I put my hand into my breast pocket and took out the postcard from Rachel. I handed it over to him. He read it through and looked blank. ‘Who’s “R.B.”?’ he asked.
‘Rachel Bernstein.’
‘So?’
‘She posted that to me on the second. She was in Malta. On the night of the twelfth she got in contact with me.’
‘She phoned you?’
I wondered if he was being purposely obtuse. ‘No,’ I said. ’Telepathically.’
’Is that so?’ he said in a neutral tone.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘Sure, I believe you.’
‘She did, anyway,’ I said. ‘Whether you believe it or not.’
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I’m listening.’
‘She told me there’d been a breakthrough,’ I said. ‘She used that very word.’
‘What sort of breakthrough?’
‘She didn’t seem to know.’
Dumps glanced at the front of the card and then passed it back to me. ‘Maybe we won’t have to wait as long as I thought,’ he said.
’Then you do think there’s a connection?’
He smiled. ‘I think you think there is.’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘And I pray to God you know what you’re up to, Dumps.’
“
‘More things are wrought by prayerhe quoted, ‘“than this world dreams of.” What would you have me do, Jimmy?’
‘Just go on tiptoe, that’s all.’
’Oh, brother,’ he groaned fervently. ‘Do you think I haven’t spent the last six months peering over the edge of an abyss? What I’m on the verge of is way beyond the compass of your philosophies. I tell you, Jimmy, where I’m going no one—I repeat no one—has ever set foot before. If you think that knowledge doesn’t fill me with awe and trepidation you’re doing me a bigger injustice than you can hope to comprehend.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It isn’t that I doubt your integrity; it’s just that I’m beginning to realize how big a stake I’ve got in this game.’
‘You can say that again,’ he murmured.
‘Where are you planning to go from here?’
‘We’ve already gone a whole way on from September one,’ he said. ‘What you saw this evening bears the same sort of relation to Betty’s Alsatian as a Boeing 707 does to Montgolfier’s balloon.’
‘You mean I did—’
‘Sure. You saw what you thought you saw. That glorified space-helmet I was wearing was an encephalo-visual converter—around Mark 6, I’d say. When Pete called out your name it triggered off an immediate and vivid memory response. By means of a series of microminiaturized solid-state devices this was recreated inside the fluorescent block. What you saw, my friend, was my thought of you! It wasn’t any intention of mine that you should see it; it just so happened that a faulty contact allowed a residual field to linger on for a fraction of a second after I thought I’d broken the circuit.’
‘Holy Mother!’ I whispered. ‘If that isn’t the breakthrough she meant, what is?’
’Steady, boy,’ said Dumps. ‘Don’t let’s get confusing the means with the end.’
’The end?’ I echoed. ‘What is the end? Isn’t that enough?’
‘I guess it depends on what you mean by “enough”,’ he chuckled. ‘So we’ve developed a sort of super-sophisticated lie-detector—call it a “thought screen” if you like. So what do we do? Hand it over to the F.B.I. for Godsake?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said feebly. ‘What are you going to do?’
Dumps leaned forward and divided the last can of beer meticulously between our two tankards. When it was done he handed mine to me, lifted his own and drank till it was empty. Then, speaking very quietly and sombrely, he said, ‘What we’ve discovered, my friend, is nothing less than the gateway into the human soul. That realization both appals and exhilarates me. I tell you, Jimmy, I’m beginning to conceive dimly the outlines of a psychic cosmos so fantastic, so unbelievable, that I can hardly dare admit its possibility even to myself. Again and again in the past I’ve found myself having to think the unthinkable and reconcile the apparently irreconcilable. Now, at last, I believe I’ve stumbled on the one key which will unlock my “Casket of Unknowing”. Well, I’ve found the key and I think I know where to fit it in. All I need to do now is to wait for the right lock.’
‘And if she still won’t come?’
Dumps treated me to one of his cosiest smiles. ‘But I think she will, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a hunch that she’s sent you along to tell me that I’m almost ready for her now.’
FOURTEEN
That meeting took place on a Friday. On the following Wednesday Rachel returned to Hampton. I’d written her a note and given it to the porter at her hostel, together with the strictest possible instructions that he should hand it to her the moment she arrived. Now, at eight o’clock in the evening, I was standing in a cold, drifting drizzle beside the lodge gates, wondering whether she had received the message, and, if she had, whether she’d be prepared to venture out. I plucked at the plastic cover I’d fixed over the scooter seats and watched the droplets run together and trickle off in dim tears down the faded bodywork. How passionately at that moment did I envy Dumps the warm privacy of his convenient apartment! I kicked the machine into life, revved the engine for a minute or two and then let it idle.
‘Hello!’
I swung round. ‘Rachel! Where on earth did you spring from?’ I stretched out my hands to her, and she smiled and just touched them with her own.
‘Where are we going?’
‘My digs?’ I suggested tentatively. ’They’re pretty primitive, but at least they’re dose.’
‘All right.’
I stripped off the plastic cover and stuffed it into the pannier. ‘Get on quick,’ I said. ‘Before it gets wet again.’
She settled herself obediently, and I was just about to take my own place when I remembered something. ‘Are you better now?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
I peered at her. ‘You still look a bit pale to me.’
’Oh, do get a move on.’
We did, but we still got wet. When we reached my room I took her anorak and hung it over the back of a chair. Then I switched on the electric fire, dragged up my only armchair and offered it to her. ‘Would you like a glass of sherry?’ I asked her.
‘All right. Thank you.’
She accepted the glass I handed her and gazed pensively through it at the now glowing element of the fire. I lifted the cushion from the divan, dropped it on the floor beside her and squatted down. ‘Well, how was Malta?’ I asked, uncomfortably conscious of an unfamiliar shyness.
‘Hot,’ she said. ‘And dusty. And there were lots of flies.’
‘Did you dig up anything interesting?’
