you and Brendan met, you subconsciously recognized the power in each
other. On a deep level, you were both reminded of what happened to you
that July night, the thing you've been forced to forget. And both of
you wanted to blast those memories into view. So unwittingly you
generated that weird light, which was a re-creation of the way the moon
changed from white to red on the night of July 6. It was your
subconscious trying to jolt the memory through the block."
Ginger could see that their minds were spinning with all these odd
ideas, and she wanted to keep them unsettled a while longer, because
when they were unsettled they were more likely to absorb what she was
saying. Given time for quiet reflection, the heavy armor of skepticism
would fall back into place, and her ideas would bounce off.
Ernie Block shook his head. "Wait a minute. You're losing me now. You
started all this by suggesting that what turned the moon red was a
scarlet cloud of some biological contaminant. Then you jumped way the
hell to one side and started talking about how the thing that happened
to us was responsible for Dom and Brendan developing these supposed
powers. Where's the connection? What does biological contamination
have to do with all this psychic stuff, anyway?"
Ginger took a deep breath because they had come to the core of her
theory, the wildest part of it. "What if . . . what if we were
contaminated by some virus or bacterium that, as a side-effect, causes
profound chemical or genetic or hormonal changes in its host, changes in
the host's brain? And what if those changes leave the host with
something very like psychic powers, even once the infection is gone?"
They stared at her with a variety of expressions, though not as if they
thought her mad, and not as if she was too imaginative for her own good.
Rather, they seemed impressed by the complex chain of logic which she
had forged and by the inevitability of the final link.
"Good God," Dom said, "I doubt that it's the right answer, but it's sure
the prettiest, most neatly constructed theory I ever expect to hear.
What a concept for a novel! A genetically engineered virus that, as a
surprise side-effect, causes a sort of forced evolution of the human
brain, resulting in psychic powers. For the first time in weeks, I have
a terrific urge to rush to a typewriter. Ginger, if we get out of this
alive, I'll have to give you a piece of the royalties on the book that's
sure to grow out of that idea."
Gently rocking her slumbering daughter, Jorja Monatella said, "But why
couldn't it be the right answer? Why does it just have to be a terrific
concept for a novel?"
"For one thing," Jack Twist said, "if it were true, if we'd been
contaminated with a virus like that, we'd all have developed psychic
powers. Right?"
"Well," Ginger said, "maybe we weren't all contaminated. Or maybe we
were contaminated, but the virus didn't get a foothold in all of us."
Faye said, "Or maybe this special side-effect isn't manifested in
everyone who's infected by the bug."
"Good thought," Ginger said. She began to pace again: this time, not
because she was nervous but because she was excited.
Ned Sarver pushed one hand through his receding hair and said, "Are you
saying the Army knew about this side-effect of the virus, knew that it
might cause these changes in some of us?"
"I don't know," Ginger said. "Maybe they knew. Maybe not."
"I think not," Ernie said. "Definitely not. From what you found in the
Sentinel, we know they closed the interstate shortly before the
'accident' happened, which means it was no accident. So . . . first
of all, I find it hard to believe our own military would intentionally
subject us to contamination with a biological-warfare microorganism in a
hare-brained scheme to test its effectiveness in the field. But even if
such an atrocity were possible, they wouldn't expose us to a virus that
could transform us in the way Ginger has suggested. Because, my friends,
breed of humanity. Formidable psychic power would translate directly
into military, economic, and political power. So if the government knew
it had a virus that conferred these powers, it would not expose a group
of ordinary people like us. Not in a million years. That blessing
would be reserved for those already in positions of high authority, for
the elite. I agree with Dom: I find the redcloud-of-virus theory quite
fascinating . . . though unlikely. However, if we were contaminated
by such a thing, the sideeffect was unknown to the government."
In light of what Ernie had said, everyone was looking at Brendan and Dom
with a new appreciation composed equally of awe, uneasiness, wonder,
respect, and fear. Ginger saw both the priest and the writer squirm
with the exhilarating yet frightening realization that they might have
within them the potential for superhuman power, a potential that, if
fulfilled, would forever separate them from the rest of mankind.
"No," Dom said, starting to get up in protest, then sitting back down as
if he did not think his legs would support him. "No, no. You're not
right, Ginger. I'm no superman, no wizard, no damn . . . freak. If
you were right, I'd feel it. I'd know it, Ginger."
Brendan Cronin, equally shaken, said, "I've thought that somehow I've
been the vehicle for the healing of Emmy and Winton. I've thought that
something-not God, perhaps, but something-is working through me. I
never thought of myself as the actual healer. Listen, I was under the
impression we'd already decided the toxic-spill story was entirely a
fake, a cover, that what happened to us wasn't an accident of any kind,
neither chemical nor biological, but something altogether different."
Jack and Jorja and Faye and Ned started talking at the same time. The
noise level rose so loud that little Marcie frowned in her sleep, and
Ginger said, "Wait, wait, wait a minute. There's no point discussing it
because we can't prove there was such a virus any more than we can prove
there wasn't one. Not yet. But maybe we can prove the other part."
"What do you mean?" Sandy Sarver asked.
Ginger said, "Maybe we can prove Dom and Brendan have the power. Not
how they got it, but just that they have it."
Dom was incredulous. "How?"
"We'll set up a test," Ginger said.
Dom was absolutely certain that it would not work, that they were
wasting time, that the whole idea was foolish.
Yet he was also scared that it would work, and that the proof of his
power would condemn him to the condition of a freak or at least to a
life forever closed to ordinary human relationships. If he possessed
godlike power, no one would ever regard him without wonder and fear. In
even the most relaxed or intimate moments with friends or lovers, their
awareness of his extraordinary gifts would intrude, either overtly or in
an unspoken subtext. Others, perhaps most, would envy or hate him.
The unfairness of his predicament grated on him. For most of his
thirty-five years, he had been shy and ineffectual, condemned to a drab
existence by his timidity. Then he had changed, and for fifteen months,
until his sleepwalking began last October, he'd been outgoing. Now,
that brief, wonderful season of normality might be passing. If the test
that Ginger outlined were to prove Dom had somehow acquired psychic
powers, he would be isolated again, not by his own sense of inferiority,
as before, but by everyone else's uneasy awareness of his superiority.
The test. Dom hoped to God he failed.
He and Brendan Cronin were sitting by themselves at the long table, one
at each end. Jorja Monatella had put her slumbering daughter in a
booth, and the girl had not awakened. The adults-all seven, including
Jorja-stood in a semicircle around the table, back a couple of paces,
giving Dom and Brendan space to concentrate free of distraction.
A salt shaker stood on the table in front of Dom. Ginger's test
"Just an inch," she had said. "If you can evoke just the slightest
perceptible motion in the shaker, we'll know you've got the power."
At the far end of the three joined tables, a pepper shaker stood in
front of Brendan Cronin. The priest was staring at the small glass
cylinder as intently as Dom was staring at his
own shaker, and his round freckled face was filled with a foreboding
only marginally less grim than Dom's. Although Brendan had denied that
the hand of God lay behind the miraculous cures and apparitional lights,
it was clear to Dom that the priest secretly and deeply hoped to
discover that, in fact, a divine Presence was at work. He wanted to be
drawn back into his faith, into the bosom of the Church. If the
miracles proved to be his own work, accomplished by the exertion of
heretofore unrecognized psychic powers, and if those powers proved to
have been conferred by a mere germ, as Ginger's crazy-but-canny theory
would have it, Brendan's yearning for spiritual elevation and holy
guidance would be unfulfilled.
The salt shaker.
Dom fixed his eyes on it and tried to clear every thought from his mind
except the determined intention to move the shaker. Although he did not
want to discover that he had these strange talents, he had to make a
sincere attempt to employ them. He had to know if it were true.
If the power existed, neither Ginger nor any of the others could suggest
techniques for tapping it. "But," Ginger had said, "if it can explode
spontaneously and spectacularly in moments of stress, surely you can
learn to call upon it and control it whenever and however you desire . .
. just as a musician can apply his musical talent any time he pleases.
Or just as you apply your writing talent to the blank page."
The salt shaker remained motionless, unaffected.
Dom strove to narrow his attention until that humble glass cylinder-with
its perforated stainless-steel cap and grainy white contents-was the
only thing in his universe. He brought all his mind to bear upon it,
every speck of his will, and tried to push it along the table, strained
until he realized he was gritting his teeth, fisting his hands.
Nothing.
He changed tack. Instead of mentally assaulting the shaker as if he
were blasting away with a cannon at the mighty walls of a fortress, he
relaxed and studied the object to get an intimate sense of its size,
shape, and texture. Perhaps the key was to develop an empathy for the
shaker. "Empathy" was the word that seemed right to him, though he was
relating to an inanimate and inorganic object; instead of battling it,
perhaps he could empathize and somehow . . . induce it to cooperate
in a short telekinetic journey. Only an inch. He leaned forward
slightly to better examine the functional simplicity of its design: five
beveled facets to make it easy to grip and hold; a thick glass bottom to
provide balance and reduce the frequency of spills; a shiny metal
cap....
Nothing. Standing unaffected on the table before him, the shaker seemed
like the mythical immovable object, heavy beyond weighing, welded
forever to this spot in space and time.
But of course, like all forms of matter in the universe, it was not
immovable, and in some ways it was always moving, never still. After
all, it was composed of billions of ceaselessly moving atoms, the outer
parts of which orbited, planetlike, around the billions of sunlike
nuclei. The salt shaker was engaged in uninterrupted motion on a
subatomic level, frantically moving within its structure, so it should
not be difficult to induce it to make one additional movement, one
little jaunt on the macrocosmic level of human perception, just one
little hop and skip, just one Dom felt a sudden buoyancy, almost as if
he himself were going to be moved by some arcane force, but instead-and
at last-the salt shaker moved. He had become so deeply involved with
that homely object that he had actually forgotten Ginger and the others;
he was reminded of their presence when, as one, they gasped and
exclaimed softly. The shaker did not simply slide one inch along the
table-or two or ten or twenty. It rose into the air instead, as if
gravity had ceased to have a claim on it. Like a tiny glass balloon, it
floated upward: one foot, two, three, and stopped four feet above the
surface on which, only seconds ago, it had appeared immovable. It
remained suspended several inches above the eye-level of those who were
standing, and they stared up at it in awe.
At the far end of the table, Brendan's pepper shaker rose, too. Mouth
open, eyes wide, Brendan stared at the rising cylinder. When it stopped
at precisely the same height as the salt shaker, Brendan finally dared
to take his eyes from it. He looked at Dom, glanced nervously at the
pepper shaker again, as if certain it would crash down the moment he
shifted his gaze, then looked at Dom once more when he realized that
eye-contact was not required to maintain levitation. several sentiments
were apparent in the priest's eyes: wonder, amazement, puzzlement, fear,
and an emotional acknowledgment of the profound brotherhood that existed
between him and Dom by virtue of the strange power they shared.
Dom was intrigued that he did not need to strain to keep the salt shaker
aloft. In fact, it seemed hard to believe that he was actually
responsible for its magical performance. He was not conscious of either
possessing or exerting control of the object. He felt no power surging
in him. Evidently, his telekinetic ability functioned automatically, in
a fashion similar to respiration and heartbeat.
Brendan raised his hands. The red rings had reappeared on them.
Dom looked at his own hands and saw the same inscrutable stigmata
burning brightly.
What did they mean?
Looming overhead, the salt and pepper shakers generated a sense of
expectancy in Dom even greater than he had felt at the beginning of this
test. Apparently, the others felt it as well, for they began to urge
Dom and Brendan to perform additional feats.
"Incredible," Ginger said breathlessly. "You've shown us vertical
movement, levitation. Can you also move them horizontally?"
"Can you lift something heavier?" Sandy Sarver asked.
"The light," Ernie said. "Can you generate the red light?"
Seeking first to accomplish a more modest task than any they had
proposed, Dom thought about giving the salt shaker a slight spin, and
immediately it began to twirl in midair, eliciting another gasp from the
onlookers. A moment later, Brendan's pepper shaker began to spin, too.
Reflections of the overhead lights glimmered liquidly across the shiny
metal caps of the spinning dispensers, flashed off the facets of the
glass, traveled scintillatingly along the edges where one facet met
another, so the shakers looked like glittery Christmastree ornaments.
Simultaneously, the two small dispensers began drifting toward one
another, the horizontal movement Ginger had requested, though Dom was
not aware of consciously directing the salt shaker on this course. He
supposed Ginger's suggestion was accepted by his subconscious, which now
employed psychic energy to accomplish the task, without waiting for him
to make a conscious effort. It was eerie-the way he controlled the
shaker yet was unaware of how that control was exerted.
Above the centermost point of the three joined tables, the salt and
pepper shakers stopped moving horizontally when they were about ten
inches apart. They hung side by side, spinning a bit faster than
before, throwing off spangles of reflected light. Then they began to
revolve around each other in perfectly circular synchronized orbits. But
that lasted only a few seconds. Suddenly, the shakers were spinning