As a government agency, the SDA displays portraits of the president in all their offices. You know the kind—an official government photo of our nation’s leader smiling blankly in his official bird costume and sacred headdress, with painted-in guardian spirits hovering in the background, like Secret Service agents. In the middle of all their testing, when I realized none of it was going to do anything worse than bore me, I started looking around the room and my eyes clicked on the president’s portrait. Paul was there. His face looked down at me from underneath the president’s jewelled and feathered cap of office. “There he is,” I told them. “Right there. In that picture.”
They all stared and then a bunch of them ran over with their meters and gauges. By the time they’d reblessed their equipment the photo had changed back again, but that didn’t stop them. After about ten minutes they announced “Significant computational levels of post-manifestational residualism.” SDA people love talking like that.
They went back to me after that and tested me all the rest of the afternoon. Later, I found out they had sent teams to the various places and objects where I’d told them I’d seen Paul. At the end of the day they reported that early indications showed that the “manifestations” were genuine (I figured that that meant I wasn’t crazy) and did not come from “the enemy”. That was why the protection teams hadn’t picked up anything. They’d set their monitors for Bright Beings only. The investigators said they needed to do further tests and run computer analyses, but I could go home.
Wait a minute, I told them. Go home? What did they plan to do? Analyze. Examine. Ponder. Report in five days. I jumped up and strode from the office. “Ellen?” Alison Birkett called, but I didn’t turn. A moment later, my folks came scurrying after me.
The week went more quickly than I thought it would. Paul appeared twice—once as my school principal in the middle of an assembly, the second time as a kid running out of a store, with the store owner chasing him and calling him a thief. I almost joined the chase, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. Even if I’d caught him, he would have changed back again.
Six days later (it took them an extra day) we were all back there; me, my folks, Ms Birkett, her own team, the SDA techs, and their boss, a real “holycrat” as Alison called such people. Only now two other people had come along; government lawyers in their dark suits and short haircuts. Alison had invited them. Summoned them was more like it. Told them they would “hear something vital to our mutual concerns”. So they came and sat upright, frowning at both the SDA and Alison Birkett, who appeared very relaxed in an antique chair with curved arms and a flared back. She wore a dark gold suit and had her hair combed back from her face. Leaning back in her chair she set her right elbow on the chair arms and rested her chin in the bridge between her first and second fingers. She looked the absolute model of fascination as she listened to the techs explain what was happening.
It must have taken some doing even to look fascinated. The whole thing was about me and Paul, but I still felt like going to sleep. “Transcendental biology” the SDA people called it, a subject even more confusing to me than sacred physics. What it came down to was this. When people die they take several weeks to really let go of their attachment to their bodies, or rather their memories of their bodies—“the post-consciousness morphological field” as one of the techs put it. Once the dead person does that they suddenly discover their guide and off they go to the “Whistling Land” as a deep meditation traveller once called the Place of the Dead.
This is the way it’s supposed to work. Sometimes, however, if the death comes as too great a shock, the person gets jolted right out of his morphological field. And then he can get stranded, because by the time the guide shows up the person’s spirit essence has wandered off and the guide can’t smell where to find him. Not knowing what to do, the dead person tries to get back to the world of the living.
“But why me?” I asked. “I mean, why does he appear just to me?”
“Well, we don’t know that he does,” the holycrat said. “Perhaps he manifests to others who simply fail to identify him.”
“Oh,” I said cleverly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But in fact,” one of the techs said (his boss frowned at him, but he didn’t seem to notice), “detached spirits usually try to fix themselves to a significant figure from their past existence. The technical term for this is emoto-tropism.”
Another joined in, “Don’t forget, in several of the manifestations, such as the television programme, only Ellen perceived the anomalous presence.”
“Though not all,” said yet another. “Let’s not forget the presidential portrait. Or the incident with the skateboard.”
I wanted to ask how we could help Paul, but before I could speak Alison signalled to me to keep silent. She said, “It looks like we might have a special opportunity here. A chance to act in the best interests of both my clients and the government.”
Later, after the meeting, Ms Birkett took my folks and me to a restaurant in Greenwich Village. While we ate lunch she explained what she had in mind. “We could keep after them,” she said, “but frankly, the lawsuit would take years. And believe me, the strain would not help you, and it certainly would not help Paul. He needs anchoring.”
My mother said, “Can’t they just release him? Maybe they can summon some sort of guide for him.”
“Perhaps,” Ms Birkett said. “But maybe we can think of something else.” Sometimes, she said, the Bright Beings can raise up a human spirit.
Mom said, “You mean Paul can become a Benign One?”
“Not exactly. But he can become a helper or a guardian.”
Dad said, “And does that mean we just let the government off the hook?”
Ms Birkett said, “Believe me, the scandal will not vanish just because we come to a settlement concerning our private suit. After all, we brought the suit to draw attention to the case. In that sense, it has served its purpose. Maybe the time has come for you to get back your lives.”
“I don’t know,” Dad said.
“Let me put it this way,” Ms Birkett said. “If it serves the politicians and the media to pursue this, they will do so with or without our suit. And if they decide it does not serve their purposes, they will let it quietly die away, no matter what we do to keep it alive.”
“What about Paul?” I asked. “Doesn’t anybody care what Paul wants?”
Alison nodded. “Yes. Exactly. Ellen, Paul has attached himself to you. What do you think he would want? To go to the Place of the Dead—provided we could somehow arrange that, and I don’t know that we can—or to find a fixed place here in the world?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and could feel myself wanting to cry. “I just don’t know.”
She leaned forward slightly, and I think she might have taken my hand, or patted it, if my folks hadn’t been there. “I’m sorry,” she said, “Maybe we all need some time to think.” I nodded, not looking at her.
Mom said, “Perhaps you could investigate what we could get? For a settlement, I mean.”
“Certainly,” Ms Birkett said.
We left pretty soon after that. I don’t think any of us cared very much about dessert. In the car, my folks argued most of the way home. Not about the case, or Paul, just dumb-things. Petty things. I thought, this has got to stop.