Laura kept leaning over to look in Melanie's face.
The girl had slumped even farther in her chair.
This film, only ten minutes old, obviously wasn't going to be as engaging as the Spielberg movie. Thus far, Melanie's eyes were open and seemed to follow the action, but Laura wondered how long the girl would remain involved.
* * *
Palmer Boothe paced and drank bourbon with an uncharacteristic lack of self-control.
Albert Uhlander sat with his head low on his sharp shoulders, birdlike in every aspect of his face and body, explaining the project in the gray room.
Though he had been a doctor of psychology, Dylan McCaffrey had nurtured a lifelong fascination with various aspects of the occult. He'd read Uhlander's first few books and conducted a correspondence with him, which eventually had centred on the subject of OOBE, out-of-body-experiences, or what was also known as astral projection. The phenomenon of astral projection was based on the theory that two entities existed in each human being: a physical body of flesh, and an astral or etheric body — sometimes called a psychogeist. In other words, each person has a dual nature, including a double that can function separately of the physical body, making it possible to be in two places at one time. Usually the double, the astral body (or as Uhlander called it, 'the body of feeling and sensation'), resided in the physical body and animated it. But under extremely special circumstances (and routinely upon death) the astral body left the physical body.
'Some mediums,' Uhlander said, 'claim to be able to instigate out-of-body experiences at will, though they are very likely lying. There are, however, many fascinating stories told by reputable people who report having dreamed about rising out of their bodies while sleeping; they tell stories about traveling in an invisible state, often to places where loved ones are dying or are in risk of death. Ten years ago, for example, a woman in Oregon had such an experience while sleeping: She rose out of her body, sailed over the rooftop of houses, went out into the countryside, and came to a place where her brother's car was overturned on a lonely stretch of a little-traveled back road. He was pinned in the wreckage and bleeding to death. She couldn't help him while she was in her astral state, for the astral body frequently has no strength, only sensation, no power of any kind other than the ability to observe. But she returned to her sleeping body, woke, called the police, reported the location of her brother's accident, and saved his life.'
'Usually,' Boothe said, 'the astral body isn't visible. It's entirely spiritual.'
'Although visibility and even physical solidity aren't entirely unheard of,' Uhlander said. 'In 1810, while Lord Byron, the poet, was in Patras, Turkey, unconscious with a high fever, several of his friends saw him in London. They said he passed them on the street without speaking and was seen to write down his name on a register of people inquiring about the king's health. Byron thought this was odd but he never realized he'd experienced an OOBE of rare intensity — and then had forgotten it after recovering from his fever. Anyway, every serious occultist has consciously attempted to initiate an OOBE at some time or other… usually without success.'
Boothe had already returned to the bar to pour more bourbon into his glass.
Dan said, 'Don't get drunk. There's sure as hell no safety in being unconscious. It'll just complicate things.'
'I've never been drunk in my life,' Booth said icily. 'I don't run from problems, Lieutenant, I solve them.' He paced again, but he didn't suck at the bourbon as greedily as he had done previously.
Uhlander said, 'Dylan not only believed in astral projection, but he thought he knew why it was so hard to achieve an OOBE.'
Dylan (Uhlander explained) had been certain that people were born with the ability to step in and out of their bodies whenever they wished — all people, everyone. But he was equally sure that the confining, limiting nature of all human society and teaching — with its long list of dos and don'ts, its overly restrictive definitions of what was possible and impossible — effectively brainwashed children so early that the development of their astral-projection potential was, like many other psychic powers, never realized. Dylan believed that a child could discover and develop that potential if raised in cultural isolation, if permitted to learn only those things that sharpened the awareness of the psychic universe — and if subjected to long and frequent sessions in a sensory-deprivation chamber from a young age, in order to direct the mind inward upon its own hidden talents.
'Isolation,' Boothe interrupted, 'was a way of purifying the child's concentration, a way of sealing out all the distractions of day-to-day life in order to focus her mind more intensely upon psychic matters.'
Uhlander said, 'When Mrs. McCaffrey decided to divorce Dylan, he saw an opportunity to raise Melanie according to his own theories, so he abducted her with that intention.'
'And you supported him,' Dan said to Boothe. 'Accessory to a kidnapping, a conspirator in child abuse.'
The white-haired publisher approached Dan's chair, loomed over him, stared down with undisguised disdain. He had a haughty disregard for the pain that he'd caused. 'It was necessary. An opportunity that could not be missed. Think of it! If astral projection could be proved possible, if the child could be taught to leave her body at will, then perhaps a system could be developed for teaching adults as well… selected adults. Imagine what it would mean if a select group, an intellectual elite, possessed the ability to enter undetected into any room in the world, no matter how heavily guarded, could listen in on any conversation no matter how secret. No government, no business competitor, no one in the world, could hide their plans or intentions from us. Without anyone knowing what we were doing or how, we could at last orchestrate the evolution of one worldwide government without effective opposition or, indeed, without any opposition at all. How could opposition exist if we could sit in on their strategy sessions, know their names, intentions, and secret organizations?'
Boothe was breathing hard, partly because of the effect of the whiskey, but largely due to the dark dreams of power that filled him with a megalomaniacal excitement. The Tiffany lamp cast amber circles of light on his cheeks, smaller spots of blue on his chin, stained his lips yellow, and painted his nose and forehead green, so he again reminded Dan of someone from a carnival, a malevolent roadshow like that in Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. He was a bizarre and demented clown in whose eyes one could see the crimson flickering fires of Hell, a soul in damnation.
'The world would be ours,' Boothe said.
Both the publisher and Uhlander smiled, and they seemed to have forgotten how badly their scheme had worked out and how deep was the trouble in which they now found themselves.
'You're both insane,' Dan said thinly.
'Farsighted,' Uhlander said.
'Insane.'
'Visionaries,' Boothe said. He turned away from Dan and began to pace once more.
Uhlander's smile gradually bled away as he remembered why they were there, and he continued the explanation that Dan had demanded. Dylan McCaffrey had lived in that Studio City house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year after year, staying close to Melanie, making himself nearly as much a prisoner as she was, seeing only a handful of sympathizers from his small circle of friends who bridged the scientific and occult communities and shared his interest — and who were all on the Palmer Boothe dole, one way or another. Dylan became increasingly obsessed with his project, and the regimen he designed for Melanie became ever more harsh, more demanding, less forgiving of her human failings, weaknesses, and limitations. The gray room, which was painted and soundproofed and furnished in such a way as to reduce all distraction to a minimum, became Melanie's entire universe and also the center of her father's world. Those privileged few who knew of the experiment all thought that they were involved in a noble attempt to transform the human race, and they held the secret of Melanie's torture as though they were protecting something magnificent and holy.