“I will take her, yes,” Jaspin said.
A flicker of a smile passed across Senhor Papamacer’s thin lips. “Kneel beside the Senhora,” he said. “Both of you.”
4
The conference room was swaying, sliding, trying to turn green. Elszabet breathed deeply and struggled to keep everything in focus. She knew that she was nearing the edge of hysteria. Maybe I should just tell them, she thought, that I had a space dream last night and I am somehow unable to shake myself free of it, and to hell with trying to be professional up here.
No. No. Stay with it, she ordered herself. You can’t just crap out right in front of everybody.
She brought herself back into the meeting. It was an effort, but she brought herself back in.
Briskly she said by way of getting things started, “We all agree, I think, that we’re dealing with something that’s very hard to comprehend. But I think the first thing that we need to acknowledge is that it’s a phenomenon that can be measured and quantified and delineated in purely scientific terms.”
That sounded good.
Naresh Patel looked up from the sheaf of printouts he was studying. “Can it? Tabulations like these, do you mean? Frequencies and geographical distribution of hallucinatory events, variable-similarity scales, imagery analysis, cognitive-filtering vectors, correlation of hallucination with Gelbard-Louit stability-index rating of hallucinator? But what if this is a phenomenon totally inexplicable by scientific means?”
What if it is, Elszabet thought. What if it isn’t? Am I supposed to say something now?
Dan Robinson rescued her. She heard his voice, coming from what seemed like a very great distance.
“If it is,” he said, “then we won’t be able to explain it, will we? But why should we think it is, at this point? Pardon my hopeless western-materialistic bias, Naresh, but I happen to believe that everything in the universe has an underlying quantifiable rationale, which may not necessarily be accessible to human understanding because of limits in our current investigative techniques, but which is there nevertheless. Before the invention of the spectroscope, for example, it would have been the wildest sort of fantasy to claim that we could ever know which elements the stars were composed of. But for a modern astronomer there’s no problem at all in looking at a star fifty light-years away, or, for that matter, five billion light-years away, and saying quite authoritatively that it’s made up of hydrogen, helium, calcium, potassium—”
“Agreed,” Patel said. “Yet I think it is conceivable that a seventeenth-century astronomer could have accepted the idea that it would someday be possible to discover such information. All that was missing was the spectroscope: a matter of technological progress, refinement of technique, not a quantum leap of conceptualization. And I agree with you also that all events do have some underlying rationale. To say otherwise would be to argue that the universe allows pure randomness, and I do not think that is the case.”
The room was turning green again. Patel, Robinson, Bill Waldstein, and the rest were taking on a shining crystalline texture. Elszabet could hear what was being said, but she had no idea what it meant. She was not quite sure where she was, or why.
Patel went on, “. . . but I argue only that the event we consider here may not have a rationale that fits the dogmas of western scientific thought, and that therefore we will not approach any understanding of it by trying to measure and count.”
“What are you really saying, Naresh?” Bill Waldstein asked.
Patel smiled. “For example, what if these shared multiple hallucinations are not hallucinations at all, but rather the first signs of the advent upon our world of the actual numinous force, the divine spirit, the Godhead, if you will?”
“Are you going Hindu on us now?” Waldstein said. Crisply Patel replied, “There is nothing specifically Hindu, I believe, in what I have just suggested. Or eastern in any way, so far as I can see. I think that if we were to consult Father Christie on the subject of the Second Coming we might find that there are Christian elements to the concept, or Jewish messianic ones. I say simply that we are attempting to approach this matter in a scientific way when in fact it may be entirely outside the scope of scientific technique.”
Dante Corelli said, “Come on, Naresh. Are you telling us just to shrug and give up and wait to see what happens? Now that’s a Hindu notion if I ever heard one—”
“I do agree with Naresh on one point,” Dan Robinson cut in. “Where he says these shared multiple hallucinations are not hallucinations at all.”
Bill Waldstein leaned forward. “What do you think they are, then?”
Robinson looked toward the head of the conference table. “Elszabet, shall I respond to that?”
She blinked. “What, Dan?”
“Shall I respond? To Bill’s query? Is this the time for me to explain my idea of what the space dreams really are?”
“What the space dreams really are,” she said. She was lost. She realized that she must have been wandering in far-off realms. “Yes. Yes, of course, Dan,” she said indistinctly.
The Green World lay just beyond the window. Rolling meadows, graceful looping leafless trees.
“Elszabet? Elszabet?”
“Go ahead, Dan. What’s the matter? Go on.”
She looked around. Dan, Bill, Dante, Naresh. Dave Paolucci from the San Francisco center down at the far end of the table. Leo Kresh, all the way up from San Diego. An important meeting. You have to pay attention. She stared at the grain in the redwood-burl tabletop. God help me, she thought. What’s happening to me? What’s happening?
Robinson was saying, “. . . Project Starprobe, which was sent toward Proxima Centauri in the year 2057, I think, and which may now be producing a response in the form of a broadcast signal from the inhabitants of that world, a signal that is increasing in intensity as it approaches the Earth. I want to suggest that a vastly superior civilization in the Alpha Centauri system—Proxima Centauri is one of the three stars of that system, you know—has quite possibly sent a Starprobe of its own toward us, using a technology presently unknown to us but not in any serious way implausible, in order to make direct contact with human minds.”
“For Christ’s sake,” Waldstein muttered.
“Is it all right if I finish what I’m saying, Bill? This signal, let’s say, was received at first only by those here who were most sensitive to such things, which for some reason happened to be patients suffering from Tom O’Bedlam Gelbard’s syndrome in this sanitarium and elsewhere. But as the intensity of the signal has increased, incidence of receptivity has widened to take in a broad segment of the human population, including, as I understand it, a good many people right in this room. If I’m correct, then, what we’re confronting is not in any way an epidemic of some new mental illness, nor is it—forgive me, Naresh—any kind of metaphysical revelation, but in fact is a significant historical development, the inauguration of communication with intelligent extraterrestrial life, and as such an event neither to be feared nor to be—”