Дэймон Найт - Orbit 4

“Incredible!” breathed the Chief Justice.

“Permit me to disagree, your honor. Many of us have some degree of psi, but are not consciously aware of it. Consider the studies of William E. Cox on train wrecks some years ago. He proved that the number of passengers on a train involved in a wreck was generally substantially less than the number for the same train the day before, or two, three, or four weeks before. He concluded that the missing passengers somehow had a ‘hunch’ about the impending wreck, and simply didn’t make the trip. If they were Pullman passengers, they simply canceled the reservation.”

Justice Blandford leaned forward. “That’s curious indeed, Mr. Winters. It so happens I canceled a plane reservation to Miami tonight. Does that mean I’m clairvoyant?”

“I trust not, your honor. I mean, considering the circumstances, and the other lives involved. I merely make the point that psi is a generalized American experience, so common in fact that science must take notice, even though its possessors do not.”

“I would go further than the Chief Justice,” said Justice Burke. “This is not only incredible; it is absurd. Be that as it may, I think we are digressing.”

“Yes, your honor. I was about to mention psi politicians. Lincoln is the prime example. He experienced autoscopy in eighteen sixty, shortly before he left Springfield, Illinois for Washington.”

“Autoscopy?” said Helen Nord.

“It simply means seeing oneself. Lying on the horsehair sofa in his home in Springfield, he saw two images, one firm, one vague, in the mirror across the room, which was not positioned to reflect any image of him. He correctly understood that the strong image meant that he would serve out his first term, and that the weaker image meant he would die in his second term. And in the first days of April, eighteen sixty-five, he had his famous dream of his own mourner-lined catafalque lying in the East Room of the White House. ‘The President has been killed by an assassin,’ they told him in the dream. And he knew, at least subconsciously, when it would be. Every night previous, when he dismissed his guard, he had said ‘Good-night, Crook.’ But on that night, Good Friday, April fourteenth, as he left for Ford’s Theatre, he said, 'Goodbye, Crook.’

“And Chauncey Depew was another psi politician. We all know how Coleridge ‘saw’ the lines of Kubla Khan as he came out of an opium dream, and was busily writing them down when interrupted by a ‘person from Porlock.’ But how many of us know that Depew’s speech nominating Colonel Theodore Roosevelt for governor of New York was similarly pre-recorded? He had a vision of the nominating convention, and of himself making the speech, while sitting on the front porch of his home on the Hudson. The vision faded, but the speech remained vivid in his mind, and he quickly wrote it down. And so Theodore Roosevelt was launched into national politics—by psi.”

From time to time during this interplay Edmonds had glanced down the bench where Oliver Godwin was busy taking notes. Godwin, he knew, had the remarkable faculty of abstracting and summing up a case during argument. He would turn his notebook over to Augusta Eubanks, who would flesh out the skeleton outline, cite the proper controlling decisions, and revise some of the old gentleman’s language. (Augusta would write, “This is indeed a novel proposition, and one for which counsel urges no precedent in our judicial history,” instead of Godwin’s simpler “Sheep-dip.”)

In a moment, Godwin would close his notebook and very likely doze off. Edmonds sighed.

“Let’s get back to the camera/’ said Pendleton. “How can a camera inside a safe take a picture?”

“The technique is well established,” said Winters. “Peter Hurkos in Holland and Ted Serios in this country were able to cause images to appear on film in a Polaroid camera. Fukurai and his associates in Japan did substantially the same thing, but caused Japanese ideograms to appear on the emulsion. Although the initial chemical mechanism within the emulsion is obscure, the subsequent steps of developing the latent silver image, fixing with hypo, and using the resultant negative to make positive prints or enlargements are the same as in conventional photography. One can only speculate as to how the sheer force of will, operating at a distance, could make certain molecules of silver bromide sensitive to the photographic developer, while leaving others unaffected.”

Edmonds’ temples were beginning to throb. He was glad when Burke interrupted.

“Tell me, counselor, why don’t these clairvoyants play the ponies, or break the bank at Monte Carlo, or get rich in the stock market?”

“Apparently many do, your honor. But of course they would not publicize it.”

Pendleton frowned. “My background in Wall Street is no secret. Are you suggesting that I am a psi?”

“I suggest nothing, your honor. But perhaps you will agree, on the other hand, that your success is not inconsistent with the possibility.”

“Hmph.”

“If all these psi’s have this power,” demanded Burke, “why didn’t they warn President Cromway in the first place?”

“Several claim they did. The data are still coming in. It’s quite similar to the warnings attempted for Kennedy’s benefit in nineteen sixty-two, by Jeane Dixon, John Pendragon, Helen Greenwood, and even Billy Graham. Jeane Dixon even named the day and the hour—and from fifteen hundred miles away.”

“Even if all you say is true,” said Edmonds bluntly, “you have offered nothing to prove that the particular clairvoyance in issue was used lawfully.”

“I believe I can satisfy your honor on that point. If the court please, I would like at this time to place psi in its proper perspective in police technique. For it is a police technique, quite modem, but as useful in its way as the Bertillon measurement system, the Henry fingerprint system, the Keeler polygraph, radar for speeding, alcohol detection in the breath and bloodstream, spectroscopic analysis of dust, ballistics, blood analysis, differentation by blood groups, voiceprinting, and many others. Many police departments in Europe, and in Holland especially, use clairvoyants routinely. Professor W. H. C. Tenhaeff at one time maintained a whole team of ‘paragnosts’ for assistance to the Dutch police. And they are used in this country much more often than is generally realized. For example, Gerard Croiset, the Dutch clairvoyant, told the FBI in nineteen sixty-four where the bodies of three civil-rights workers would be found in Mississippi. And the equally famous Dutch clairvoyant, Peter Hurkos, assisted materially in the Boston Strangler case.”

“But Hurkos failed on the Jackson case, in Virginia?” demanded Edmonds.

“The results were inconclusive, your honor. But these are not the only examples. Some years ago, a policeman in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, was found to have the knack of locating the criminals before the crime had even been reported to the police.”

“What is clairvoyance, Mr. Winters?” asked Pendleton.

The assistant attorney general shook his head. “I don’t know, your honor. Even clairvoyants themselves don’t know. I mean, they know when it happens to them, but they don’t know how it happens. Clairvoyance, of course, is just one well-defined variety of psi experience. There are several others.”

“Would you explain that?”

“Certainly. Clairvoyance is a unilateral extrasensory phenomenon. Only one person is involved—the percipient. He perceives a visual or aural experience taking place at a different time or place. Telepathy requires at least two people, a sender and a receiver. Telekinesis is the mental ability to control the motion of matter. Gamblers have it frequently with dice. Radiesthesia is a special kind of psi.”