Alien Accounts by John Sladek Page B

kind of locality. He had already attracted a few half-joking rumours:
    Was he a vegetarian? Was it true that he slept only four hours per night?
    In reality there was nothing fanatical or eccentric about him. He was a hard-headed practical research chemist, author of a well-known textbook on polymers. Ten years earlier, his brother had died. Dr Smith had consulted mediums, meeting with the usual mixture of disappointing vagueness and uncanny truth. He’d decided to turn his scientific scrutiny upon the entire field of psychic research – in his spare time. Passing interests have a way of becoming vocations, however: he now headed our Paranormal Experience Research Group. He handed the letter back. ‘Chilling detail,’ he said. ‘Will you be following it up?’
    ‘Of course. If even half of it can be corroborated, it’s just what we need. Imagine: A village that doesn’t exist, except –’
    ‘Except on Tuesdays!’ He shook his head. ‘Obviously not an hallucination, and too detailed for a mirage.’
    ‘Perhaps there’s a sort of, well, rupture in the space-time fabric. Could he be looking at a village that exists in some other time or place? Or even some other universe running parallel to ours?’
    ‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘After all, our concept of the space-time framework is very hazy indeed. There are a lot of unanswered questions, aren’t there? Black holes, for example. Some scientists suspect they are just such “ruptures” as you describe. If so, it may go some way towards explaining many really puzzling phenomena: a-causal events, such as Koestler’s coincidences, begin to make sense if we can discard the notion that causes come before effects in time. Of course it might also explain ESP. Why do we find “Two minds with but a single thought?” Simply this: Minds are not fettered to local time and place.’
    We talked for some time. The general theory sounded difficult, but I felt I could grasp it intuitively:
Mind
is not my mind or your mind or Smith’s mind,
but a kind of energy ocean in which we, all thinking beings, are immersed.
    ‘I’d better start checking out the facts in this letter,’ I said, taking my leave. ‘By the way, until I’ve proved it, not a word to Beddoes?’
    We hadn’t meant to tell Beddoes much about our animal experiment,either, until the second series was completed. But one day, while we were only half-finished with the series, Beddoes’s smugness broke through even Smith’s usual reserves of calm.
    The conversation began innocently enough, when Corcoran mentioned Uri Geller.
    ‘Uri Geller?’ Beddoes asked. ‘Ah, you mean the Israeli paratrooper.’
    Corcoran asked if that was supposed to be a joke.
    ‘Not at all. I understand he was a paratrooper. Amazing. Don’t see how he did it.’
    Smith showed his teeth in a smile. ‘Very funny. The implication being that you do see how he managed, during one television performance, to make stopped watches start ticking all over Britain.’
    ‘I have an idea, yes. According to a New Zealand study, if you play about with any stopped watch, chances are it will start ticking. In fact, you have about a forty percent chance that it will keep going for a few days. No, it’s the parachute jumps that really astound me.’
    Corcoran winked at me. ‘Perhaps Dr Beddoes has psychic insights into how Uri does what he does with spoons. Perhaps we ought to study Dr Beddoes?’
    Beddoes tried imitating Uri Geller’s voice. ‘You want me for a subject?
Me?
But I tell you, I don’t know from where I get zis power. From God, maybe. Or my agent.’
    No one but Beddoes laughed. I said, ‘Why don’t you tell us, once, what you do believe in? If anything.’
    ‘Thought-communication,’ he said. ‘I think it’s a distinct possibility. Of course it’s tricky. One makes the right facial expressions, speech sounds and gestures, but it doesn’t always get across.’
    Smith said, ‘Get your laughs while you can, Beddoes.’ And he