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reading. It isn't a matter of developing speed. I'malready so fast to respond that it doesn't mean too much from anybodyelse's standpoint, and I certainly don't need any training there. Butwhere along the line do I pick up a thought impulse? Do I catch it atits inception? Do I pick up the thought formulation, or just the finalcrystalized pattern? Lambertson thinks I'm with it right from the start,and that some training in those lines would be worth my time.

  Of course, we didn't find out, not even with the ingenious littlerandom-firing device that Dakin designed for the study. With thisgadget, neither Lambertson nor I know what impulse the box is going tothrow at him. He just throws a switch and it starts coming. He catchesit, reacts, I catch it from him and react, and we compare reactiontimes. This afternoon it had us driving up a hill, and sent a ten-tontruck rolling down on us out of control. I had my flasher on two secondsbefore Lambertson did, of course, but our reaction times arestandardized, so when we corrected for my extra speed, we knew that Imust have caught the impulse about 0.07 seconds after he did.

  Crude, of course, not nearly fast enough, and we can't reproduce on astable basis. Lambertson says that's as close as we can get withoutcortical probes. And that's where I put my foot down. I may have a goldmine in this head of mine, but nobody is going to put burr-holes throughmy skull in order to tap it. Not for a while yet.

  That's unfair, of course, because it sounds as if Lambertson were tryingto force me into something, and he isn't. I've read him about that, andI know he wouldn't allow it. _Let's learn everything else we can learnwithout it first_, he says. _Later, if you want to go along with it,maybe. But right now you're not competent to decide for yourself._

  He may be right, but why not? Why does he keep acting as if I'm a child?_Am_ I, really? With everything (and I mean _everything_) coming into mymind for the past twenty-three years, haven't I learned enough to makedecisions for myself? Lambertson says of course everything has beencoming in, it's just that I don't know what to do with it all. Butsomewhere along the line I have to reach a maturation point of somekind.

  It scares me, sometimes, because I can't find an answer to it and theanswer might be perfectly horrible. I don't know where it may end.What's worse, I don't know what point it has reached _right now_. Howmuch difference is there between my mind and Lambertson's? I'm psi-high,and he isn't--granted. But is there more to it than that? People likeAarons think so. They think it's a difference between _human_ functionand something else.

  And that scares me because it _just isn't true_. I'm as human as anybodyelse. But somehow it seems that I'm the one who has to prove it. Iwonder if I ever will. That's why Dr. Custer has to help me. Everythinghangs on that. I'm to go up to Boston next week, for final studies andtesting.

  If Dr. Custer can do something, what a difference that will make! Maybethen I could get out of this whole frightening mess, put it behind meand forget about it. With just the psi alone, I don't think I ever can.

  * * * * *

  _Friday, 19 May._ Today Lambertson broke down and told me what it wasthat Aarons had been proposing. It was worse than I thought it would be.The man had hit on the one thing I'd been afraid of for so long.

  "He wants you to work against normals," Lambertson said. "He's swallowedthe latency hypothesis whole. He thinks that everybody must have alatent psi potential, and that all that is needed to drag it into theopen is a powerful stimulus from someone with full-blown psi powers."

  "Well?" I said. "Do you think so?"

  "Who knows?" Lambertson slammed his pencil down on the desk angrily."No, I don't think so, but what does that mean? Not a thing. Itcertainly doesn't mean I'm right. Nobody knows the answer, not me, norAarons, nor anybody. And Aarons wants to use you to find out."

  I nodded slowly. "I see. So I'm to be used as a sort of refinedelectrical stimulator," I said. "Well, I guess you know what you cantell Aarons."

  He was silent, and I couldn't read him. Then he looked up. "Amy, I'm notsure we can tell him that."

  I stared at him. "You mean you think he could _force_ me?"

  "He says you're a public charge, that as long as you have to besupported and cared for, they have the right to use your faculties. He'sright on the first point. You _are_ a public charge. You have to besheltered and protected. If you wandered so much as a mile outside thesewalls you'd never survive, and you know it."

  I sat stunned. "But Dr. Custer--"

  "Dr. Custer is trying to help. But he hasn't succeeded so far. If hecan, then it will be a different story. But I can't stall much longer,Amy. Aarons has a powerful argument. You're psi-high. You're the firstfull-fledged, wide-open, free-wheeling psi-high that's ever appeared inhuman history. The _first_. Others in the past have shown potential,maybe, but nothing they could ever learn to control. You've got control,you're fully developed. You're _here_, and you're _the only one thereis_."

  "So I happened to be unlucky," I snapped. "My genes got mixed up."

  "That's not true, and you know it," Lambertson said. "We know yourchromosomes better than your face. They're the same as anyone else's.There's no gene difference, none at all. When you're gone, you'll be_gone_, and there's no reason to think that your children will have anymore psi potential than Charlie Dakin has."

  Something was building up in me then that I couldn't control any longer."You think I should go along with Aarons," I said dully.

  He hesitated. "I'm afraid you're going to have to, sooner or later.Aarons has some latents up in Boston. He's certain that they're latents.He's talked to the directors down here. He's convinced them that youcould work with his people, draw them out. You could open the door to awhole new world for human beings."

  I lost my temper then. It wasn't just Aarons, or Lambertson, or Dakin,or any of the others. It was _all_ of them, dozens of them, compoundedyear upon year upon year. "Now listen to me for a minute," I said. "Haveany of you ever considered what _I_ wanted in this thing? _Ever?_ Haveany of you given that one single thought, just once, one time when youwere so sick of thinking great thoughts for humanity that you letanother thought leak through? Have you ever thought about what kind of ashuffle I've had since all this started? Well, you'd better think aboutit. _Right now._"

  "Amy, you know I don't want to push you."

  "Listen to me, Lambertson. My folks got rid of me fast when they foundout about me. Did you know that? They hated me because I _scared_ them!It didn't hurt me too much, because I thought I knew _why_ they hatedme, I could understand it, and I went off to Bairdsley without evencrying. They were going to come see me every week, but do you know howoften they managed to make it? _Not once_ after I was off their hands.And then at Bairdsley Aarons examined me and decided that I was acripple. He didn't know anything about me then, but he thought psi was a_defect_. And that was as far as it went. I did what Aarons wanted me todo at Bairdsley. Never what _I_ wanted, just what _they_ wanted, yearsand years of what _they_ wanted. And then you came along, and I came tothe Study Center and did what _you_ wanted."

  It hurt him, and I knew it. I guess that was what I wanted, to hurt himand to hurt everybody. He was shaking his head, staring at me. "Amy, befair. I've tried, you know how hard I've tried."

  "Tried what? To train me? Yes, but why? To give me better use of my psifaculties? Yes, but why? Did you do it for _me_? Is that really why youdid it? Or was that just another phoney front, like all the rest ofthem, in order to use me, to make me a little more valuable to havearound?"

  He slapped my face so hard it jolted me. I could feel the awful pain andhurt in his mind as he stared at me, and I sensed the stinging in hispalm that matched the burning in my cheek. And then something fell awayin his mind, and I saw something I had never seen before.

  He loved me, that man. Incredible, isn't it? He _loved_ me. Me, whocouldn't call him anything but Lambertson, who couldn't imagine callinghim Michael, to say nothing of Mike--just Lambertson, who did this, orLambertson who thought that.

  But he could never tell me. He had decided that. I w
as too helpless. Ineeded him too much. I needed love, but not the kind of love Lambertsonwanted to give, so that kind of love had to be hidden, concealed,_suppressed_. I needed the deepest imaginable understanding, but it hadto be utterly unselfish understanding, anything else would be takingadvantage of me, so a barrier had to be built--a barrier that I shouldnever penetrate and that he should never be tempted to break down.

  Lambertson had done that. For me. It was all there, suddenly, sooverwhelming it made me gasp