Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said as I got to my feet, adding angrily, “Didn’t work didn’t work.”

“What didn’t work?”

She looked at me, puzzled again. She hesitated a moment, then said, “Everything went fine.” I followed her to the outside room, where Rossi stood, his hands in the pockets of his suit coat, in a relaxed stance.

“Thanks, Ben,” he said. “Well, you’re all clear. No surprise. The computer-enhanced images — the snapshots of your brain-wave activity, in effect — indicate you were being entirely truthful, except when I asked you to lie.”

Rossi then turned around to pick up a sheaf of files. I approached to retrieve my belongings, and heard him mutter something about Truslow.

“What about Truslow?” I asked.

He turned around, smiling pleasantly. “What do you mean?”

“Were you talking to me?” I asked.

He stared at me for a full five seconds. Shook his head. His eyes stared coldly.

“Forget it,” I said, but of course I’d heard him. We’d been standing no more than three feet apart; there was no way I could have misheard him. Something about Truslow. Baffling. Perhaps he didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud.

I turned my attention to the array of belongings on the table next to us, the watch and belt and coins and so on, and Rossi said again, as clearly as the last time, “Is it possible?”

I look at him and said nothing.

“Did it work ?” came Rossi’s voice again, somewhat indistinct, a little distant, but—

— and this time I was quite certain—

— his mouth had not moved.

He had not spoken a word. The realization sank in, and I felt my insides turn to ice.

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We stared at each other for a moment, Rossi and I. In the long months since that instant, I’ve never been able to explain this aspect to anyone’s satisfaction, least of all mine.

I heard Charles Rossi’s voice almost as clearly, almost as distinctly, as if he’d spoken to me.

Not quite as if he’d spoken aloud. The timbre was different from the spoken voice, the way a long distance telephone connection sounds at once different from a clear, local one. A little less distinct; a little distant, a trace muffled, like a voice heard through a cheap motel room plasterboard wall.

There was an unmistakable difference between Rossi’s spoken voice and his — what else can I call it? — his “mental” voice, his thought voice. The spoken voice was somehow crisper; the mental voice was softer, smoother, more rounded.

I was able to hear Rossi’s thoughts.

My head began to pound, a throbbing, vicious pain that localized at my right temple. Around everything in the room — Rossi, his gaping assistant, the machinery, the rubberized lab coats that hung on hooks by the door — was a shimmering rainbow of an aura. My skin began to prickle unpleasantly, flushing hot and then cold, and I could feel a wave of nausea overtake my stomach.

There have been volumes upon volumes written on the subject of extrasensory perception and psychic phenomena and “psi,” the vast majority of which is packed with nonsense — I know, I’ve probably read every bit of it — but not one theorist ever speculated that it would be like this.

I could hear his thoughts.

Not all of his thoughts, thank God, or I would surely have gone crazy long ago. Certain ones, things that entered his mind with sufficient urgency, sufficient intensity.

Or at least so I came to realize much later.

But at that moment, at that moment of realization, I had not put all of this together the way I have by now. I only knew — knew — that I was hearing something that Rossi had not spoken aloud , and it filled me with a bottomless dread.

I was on the edge of a precipice; it was a struggle now to keep from losing my mind entirely.

At that moment I was convinced that something in me had snapped, some thread of my sanity had broken; that the magnetic forces of the MRI machine had done something terrible to me, had somehow precipitated a nervous breakdown, that I was losing my grip on reality.

And so I responded in the only way I could: absolute denial. I wish I could claim credit for being shrewd, or clever, say I knew even then I must keep this strange and awful development to myself, but that wasn’t the first thing that came to me. My instinct was to preserve some semblance of sanity — not to let on to Rossi that I was hearing things.

He spoke first, quietly. “I didn’t say anything about Mr. Truslow.” He was probing me, watching my eyes from this uncomfortably close distance.

I said slowly, “I thought you did, Charlie. Must have misheard.”

Turning to the lab table, I gathered my wallet, keys, coins, and pens, and began putting them in my pocket. As I did so, I backed slowly, casually, away from him. The headache intensified, the cold flush. It was a full-blown migraine.

“I didn’t say anything at all,” Rossi said levelly.

I smiled dismissively, nodded. Wanted to sit down somewhere, tie something around my forehead, squeeze the pain from it.

He gave me another long, penetrating stare, and—

— and I heard , a murmur: Does he have it?

With forced joviality, I said, “So if we’re all through for the day—”

Rossi eyed me suspiciously. Blinked once, twice, and said, “Soon. We need to sit down and talk for a couple of minutes.”

“Look,” I said. “I have a terrific headache. A migraine, I’m pretty sure.”

I was at least six feet away from him now, putting my suit jacket back on. Rossi was still watching me as if I were a boa constrictor coiling and uncoiling in the middle of his bedroom. In the silence I strained to hear another of these murmurs, these faint voices.

Nothing.

Had I imagined these last few moments? Had they been hallucinations, like the shimmering aura that surrounded all the objects in the room? Would I come to my senses now, after this momentary departure from sanity?

“Are you prone to migraines?” Rossi asked.

“Never had one before. The test must have caused it.”

“That’s impossible. It’s never happened before, not in any test of the magnetic resonance imager, ever.”

“Well,” I said, “in any case, I should be heading back to the office.”

“We’re not quite done here,” Rossi said, turning back toward me.

“I’m afraid—”

“We’ll be done shortly. I’ll be right back.”

He went off in the direction of the adjacent room in which the computer banks were being monitored. I watched him approach one of the computer techs and say something quick and furtive. The tech handed him a small sheaf of printouts.