Second Sight | Page 6

by bit she began to grab; whatever I had felt in her mind seemed to leap up. I probed her, amplifying it, trying to draw it out. It was like wading through knee-deep mud--sticky, sluggish, resisting. I could feel her excitement growing, and bit by bit I released my grip, easing her out, baiting her.
"All right," I said. "That's enough."
She turned to me, wide-eyed. "I--I did it."
Aarons was on his feet, breathing heavily. "It worked?"
"It worked. Not very well, but it's there. All she needs is time, and help, and patience."
"But it worked! Lambertson! Do you know what that means? It means I was right! It means others can have it, just like she has it!" He rubbed his hands together. "We can arrange a full-time lab for it, and work on three or four latents simultaneously. It's a wide-open door, Michael! Can't you see what it means?"
Lambertson nodded, and gave me a long look. "Yes, I think I do."
"I'll start arrangements tomorrow."
"Not tomorrow. You'll have to wait until next week."
"Why?"
"Because Amy would prefer to wait, that's why."
Aarons looked at him, and then at me, peevishly. Finally he shrugged. "If you insist."
"We'll talk about it next week," I said. I was so tired I could hardly look up at him. I stood up, and smiled at my girl. Poor kid, I thought. So excited and eager about it now. And not one idea in the world of what she was walking into.
Certainly Aarons would never be able to tell her.
* * * * *
Later, when they were gone, Lambertson and I walked down toward the lagoon. It was a lovely cool evening; the ducks were down at the water's edge. Every year there was a mother duck herding a line of ducklings down the shore and into the water. They never seemed to go where she wanted them to, and she would fuss and chatter, waddling back time and again to prod the reluctant ones out into the pool.
We stood by the water's edge in silence for a long time. Then Lambertson kissed me. It was the first time he had ever done that.
"We could go away," I whispered in his ear. "We could run out on Aarons and the Study Center and everyone, just go away somewhere."
He shook his head slowly. "Amy, don't."
"We could! I'll see Dr. Custer, and he'll tell me he can help, I know he will. I won't need the Study Center any more, or any other place, or anybody but you."
He didn't answer, and I knew there wasn't anything he could answer. Not then.
* * * * *
Friday, 26 May. Yesterday we went to Boston to see Dr. Custer, and now it looks as if it's all over. Now even I can't pretend that there's anything more to be done.
Next week Aarons will come down, and I'll go to work with him just the way he has it planned. He thinks we have three years of work ahead of us before anything can be published, before he can really be sure we have brought a latent into full use of his psi potential. Maybe so, I don't know. Maybe in three years I'll find some way to make myself care one way or the other. But I'll do it, anyway, because there's nothing else to do.
There was no anatomical defect--Dr. Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper. Too deep ever to change it.
What you no longer use, you lose, was what he said, apologizing because he couldn't explain it any better. It's like a price tag, perhaps. Long ago, before I knew anything at all, the psi was so strong it started compensating, bringing in more and more from other minds--such a wealth of rich, clear, interpreted visual and auditory impressions that there was never any need for my own. And because of that, certain hookups never got hooked up. That's only a theory, of course, but there isn't any other way to explain it.
But am I wrong to hate it? More than anything else in the world I want to see Lambertson, see him smile and light his pipe, hear him laugh. I want to know what color really is, what music really sounds like unfiltered through somebody else's ears.
I want to see a sunset, just once. Just once I want to see that mother duck take her ducklings down to the water. But I never will. Instead, I see and hear things nobody else can, and the fact that I am stone blind and stone deaf shouldn't make any difference. After all, I've always been that way.
Maybe next week I'll ask Aarons what he thinks about it. It should be