Orbit 4 - Anthology Read online

  ”The information was not sworn to?”

  ”Oh, it was sworn to. But the officer who gave the sworn information admits he obtained it from on Dr. Drago, who admitted that he obtained it by his own personal clairvoyance.”

  ”You don’t believe there’s such a thing?” demanded Justice Burke.

  Oliver Godwin said calmly, “Don’t answer that, sonny.” He turned a bland face to his outraged colleague. “Relax, Mr. Burke. What counsel thinks personally is irrelevant.”

  Sickles sighed. If he were back in Brooklyn, he would be comfortably leaning back in his old wooden swivel chair, dictating during coffee break. He said, “I’d like to answer that this way, Your Honor. If there is such a thing, then it’s the same as wiretapping. Maybe worse. And any evidence obtained by its use cannot justify a warrant. The circumstances of the issuance can be examined in court. This court has so ruled. And if the warrant issues wrongfully, the evidence obtained with the warrant is inadmissible, the same as if it had been obtained by wiretapping. Clairtapping... wiretapping... the legal consequences should be the same.”

  ”There’s no other evidence of Tyson’s guilt?” asked Helen Nord.

  ”Not much, Your Honor. Just that of Dopher, the elevator operator. He testified he saw Tyson leaving the empty office, carrying an object in front of him. That alone is not enough to convict Tyson. His life or death depends on the admissibility of the rifle.”

  ”Dr. Drago testified that clairvoyance is a fact?” asked Pendleton.

  ”He did, but he didn’t offer proof beyond the bare statement, which was merely his own opinion.”

  ”How about the camera in the safe, and Drago’s predictions?” asked Edmonds.

  ”The contents of the safe are not actually in evidence, Your Honor. And as for his predictions... their value depends on the decision of this court. They have no present probative value.”

  ”He predicted we’d grant the certiorari?” pressed Edmonds.

  ”He did, but-- “

  ”And that we’d hold the warrant invalid, and reverse?”

  ”That is my expectation and hope, Your Honor.”

  ”So that, if he turns out to be right, doesn’t that prove clairvoyance, and would it not therefore follow that the warrant was in fact valid?”

  ”That involves a hopeless paradox, Your Honor. Anyhow, every case that is decided here is won by somebody, without benefit of clairvoyance.”

  Edmonds smiled. He had been thinking the same thing himself, but he wanted Sickles to make the point in open court.

  ”He! he!” Godwin slapped the bench with his open palm. “Well said, young man.”

  Sickles bowed to the aged justice-- and wondered how many votes he had just lost.

  ”Mr. Sickles,” said Helen Nord, “do you know what is in the safe-- on the camera film, I mean?”

  ’No, Your Honor. I’m interested, of course. It may be nothing at all. But whatever it is, it can have no relevance in these proceedings.”

  ”Suppose, Mr. Sickles,” said the Chief Justice, “that it shows the face of the assassin?”

  Sickles looked up at the great man in astonishment, then shrugged. “And who is the assassin, Your Honor? How would face and deed be connected? But I respectfully submit that the camera and its contents, whether present or prospective, are moot. Exhibit Q is not in evidence.”

  ”Yes, that’s true.”

  ”Can electromagnetic radiation penetrate that safe?” asked Helen Nord.

  ”Quite impossible, Your Honor. The walls are one-inch steel and form a perfect Faraday box.”

  ”So that, if psi does exist, and is a form of electromagnetic radiation, it would not be possible to penetrate the steel shell and affect the photographic emulsion in any way?”

  ”That’s right, Your Honor.”

  ”Then,” asked Pendleton, “if we open the safe, and find the film activated, wouldn’t this prove that psi is not a violation of Section six-oh-five of the Federal Communications Act, and hence that you have no benefit under Nardone v. United States?”

  ”That would seem to follow, Your Honor,” said Sickles unhappily. He realized that he was being given the “treatment.” The court frequently, at argument, forced both sides to admit they were in the wrong; then neither could complain if he lost. But he was not ready to admit defeat. “If the court please, I’d like to elaborate a little further on the constitutional question. I respectfully remind this court that under the British common law, before this country had a constitution, it was lawful to extract testimony on the rack. Farfetched, Your Honors? Similar things have happened here, and not too long ago. Your Honors will recall the case of Rochin v. California, in which the police used a stomach pump to recover the ‘evidence,’ two capsules of narcotics, from Rochin’s stomach. After lengthy appeals, it was finally held that Rochin’s constitutional rights had been violated, and the exhibits were ruled inadmissible. Now, if a man’s stomach is sacred, how much more so his mind!”

  ”But surely Tyson does not contend that his body is inviolate from the police for all purposes?” demanded Justice Blandford. “Surely they can still fingerprint him, measure him, take his picture, record his voiceprint, and test his blood and breath for alcohol, and do it all without his consent?”

  ”Well, yes, Your Honor.”

  ”Then how does clairvoyance differ?”

  ”It’s the degree of privacy. The attributes that Your Honor has just mentioned, fingerprinting and so on, well, these are pretty well exposed to the public anyhow. But a man’s thoughts are not. If Americans lose their right to have private thoughts, freedom is gone.”

  Edmonds found himself nodding in agreement.

  ”But you contend there is no such thing as clairvoyance,” said Justice Burke. “How, then, this concern for privacy of thought?”

  Sickles grinned crookedly. “Until this court rules that psi is nonexistent, I have to argue in the alternate: psi doesn’t exist; but if it does, it was used in violation of Tyson’s constitutional rights.”

  ”Yes,” agreed Burke. “Quite logical.”

  Sickles looked down at his wristwatch. He was done. There was no room in him to wonder whether he had saved a man’s life. He felt only relief. He looked up at the Chief Justice. “I have nothing more, Your Honors.”

  Thank you, Mr. Sickles. May we hear now from New York?”

  Guy Winters took a deep breath and walked to the lectern, where he pulled off his watch and laid down a sheaf of notes. His eyes swept the faces at the bench without seeing them. He was tense, nervous. But he had rehearsed for hours, and knew exactly what he wanted to say-- if they would let him.

  ”May it please the court, one issue alone is involved in this case-- the question on which certiorari was granted, namely, whether the warrant was invalidly issued as based on clairvoyant information.” He took another deep breath and wished he could do something about the perspiration soaking his armpits. “It is the position of New York that clairvoyance does exist, and that, although the state police did not explain that the information was obtained this way, the magistrate, had he known, would necessarily have issued the warrant; and if this be so, the warrant was valid under the Fourth Amendment, the rifle was admissible under the Fifth, and Tyson’s conviction must stand.

  ”The record below, through the testimony of Dr. Drago, is replete with a documentation of American psi, even to the very beginnings of history on this continent. With the court’s indulgence, I’d like to digress for just a moment to present this historical background.

  ”As far as North America is concerned, historical psi began with the Aztec chief, Quetzalcoatl. When he was forced to abdicate the Aztec throne in ten nineteen, he predicted that in exactly five hundred years he would return in full war panoply and reclaim his dominions. That was why-- in fifteen nineteen-- the Aztec emperor Moctezuma was too paralyzed to act, when Hernando Cortes arrived at the gates of the Aztec capital.

  ”And psi is an integral part of the history of the Unite
d States. Many famous Americans were involved at one time or another with psi. In fact, we might reasonably infer that their psi abilities contributed to their fame. Their names include some of the best known writers, artists, politicians, poets, and religious leaders. One could turn to the Index of American Biography almost at random. Edgar Allen Poe said he did not know the meaning of Ulalume, the poem that describes a man wandering down a misty cypress-lined path, in the month of October, to the crypt where his wife lay buried. We can well understand his mental block. October, of course, was the month, a few years later, in which Poe followed his wife to the grave.

  ”And Sam Clemens-- Mark Twain-- dreamed he saw his brother Henry dead of a steamboat accident, lying in a metal casket, and that on his breast was a spray of white flowers centered with a single red rose. When he found him in Memphis, his brother was dying of injuries received in the explosion of the boilers of a river boat, the Philadelphia. On the fourth day, his brother died, and was placed in a metal casket. As Sam looked on, grieving, a lady walked up and placed flowers on the boy’s chest. It was a spray of white blooms, and in the center was a single red rose. I might add that this final detailed touch, completing the dream, or vision, or hallucination, if you like, is quite common.”

  Pendleton broke in. “My question is perhaps not completely relevant, but I am curious. Is there any reason to believe that there is a psi on this court?”

  Edmonds started, but continued to look at the assistant attorney general.

  ”I don’t know for sure, Your Honor,” said Winters. “But I think it likely, simply as a matter of statistical probability, that there are at least three psi’s on this honorable court. And probably more.” He stood there calmly as several of the justices leaned forward suddenly. There was a buzzing rustle in the crowded room behind him.

  The Chief Justice rapped the gavel sharply. “Would you explain that, please?”

  ”Certainly, Your Honor. It’s pretty difficult, of course, to take a census of psi’s, although it’s something the Bureau of the Census really ought to include in nineteen ninety. But fairly large samples have been made in the past. The English Society for Psychical Research canvassed seventeen thousand people in eighteen eighty, and ten percent reported that they had had psi experiences. The Boston Society for Psychical Research made a similar survey in nineteen twenty-five, and that time twenty percent reported that they had had psi experiences. In nineteen sixty-six, one hundred and fifteen students of Aberdeen University were similarly sampled. Thirty percent acknowledged a personal psi experience. The psi percentage of the population is certainly growing, but the rate is hard to determine. We may nevertheless estimate that at least thirty percent of this court is gifted in some phase of psi. And thirty percent of nine is about three. And, having regard to growth rate, and-- forgive me, Your Honors-- the fact that psi correlates roughly with intelligence, culture, and mental activity, one might reasonably expect to find four, possibly even five, psi’s on the court.”

  ”Incredible!” breathed the Chief Justice.

  ”Permit me to disagree, Your Honor. Many of us have some degree of psi, but are not consciously aware of it. Consider the studies of William E. Cox on train wrecks some years ago. He proved that the number of passengers on a train involved in a wreck was generally substantially less than the number for the same train the day before, or two, three, or four weeks before. He concluded that the missing passengers somehow had a ‘hunch’ about the impending wreck, and simply didn’t make the trip. If they were Pullman passengers, they simply canceled the reservation.”

  Justice Blandford leaned forward. “That’s curious indeed, Mr. Winters. It so happens I canceled a plane reservation to Miami tonight. Does that mean I’m clairvoyant?”

  ”I trust not, Your Honor. I mean, considering the circumstances, and the other lives involved. I merely make the point that psi is a generalized American experience, so common in fact that science must take notice, even though its possessors do not.”

  ”I would go further than the Chief Justice,” said Justice Burke. “This is not only incredible; it is absurd. Be that as it may, I think we are digressing.”

  ”Yes, Your Honor. I was about to mention psi politicians. Lincoln is the prime example. He experienced autoscopy in eighteen sixty, shortly before he left Springfield, Illinois, for Washington.”

  ”Autoscopy?” said Helen Nord.

  ”It simply means seeing oneself. Lying on the horsehair sofa in his home in Springfield, he saw two images, one firm, one vague, in the mirror across the room, which was not positioned to reflect any image of him. He correctly understood that the strong image meant that he would serve out his first term, and that the weaker image meant he would die in his second term. And in the first days of April, eighteen sixty-five, he had his famous dream of his own mourner-lined catafalque lying in the East Room of the White House. ‘The President has been killed by an assassin,’ they told him in the dream. And he knew, at least subconsciously, when it would be. Every night previous, when he dismissed his guard, he had said ‘Good-night, Crook.’ But on that night, Good Friday, April fourteenth, as he left for Ford’s Theatre, he said, ‘Goodbye, Crook.’

  ”And Chauncey Depew was another psi politician. We all know how Coleridge ‘saw’ the lines of Kubla Kahn as he came out of an opium dream, and was busily writing them down when interrupted by a ‘person from Porlock.’ But how many of us know that Depew’s speech nominating Colonel Theodore Roosevelt for governor of New York was similarly pre-recorded? He had a vision of the nominating convention, and of himself making the speech, while sitting on the front porch of his home on the Hudson. The vision faded, but the speech remained vivid in his mind, and he quickly wrote it down. And so Theodore Roosevelt was launched into national politics-- by psi.”

  From time to time during this interplay Edmonds had glanced down the bench where Oliver Godwin was busy taking notes. Godwin, he knew, had the remarkable faculty of abstracting and summing up a case during argument. He would turn his notebook over to Augusta Eubanks, who would flesh out the skeleton outline, cite the proper controlling decisions, and revise some of the old gentleman’s language. (Augusta would write, “This is indeed a novel proposition, and one for which counsel urges no precedent in our judicial history,” instead of Godwin’s simpler “Sheep-dip.”)

  In a moment, Godwin would close his notebook and very likely doze off. Edmonds sighed.

  ”Let’s get back to the camera,” said Pendleton. “How can a camera inside a safe take a picture?”

  ”The technique is well established.” said Winters. “Peter Hurkos in Holland and Ted Serios in this country were able to cause images to appear on film in a Polaroid camera. Fukurai and his associates in Japan did substantially the same thing, but caused Japanese ideograms to appear on the emulsion. Although the initial chemical mechanism within the emulsion is obscure, the subsequent steps of developing the latent silver image, fixing with hypo, and using the resultant negative to make positive prints or enlargements are the same as in conventional photography. One can only speculate as to how the sheer force of will, operating at a distance, could make certain molecules of silver bromide sensitive to the photographic developer, while leaving others unaffected.”

  Edmonds’ temples were beginning to throb. He was glad when Burke interrupted.

  ”Tell me, counselor, why don’t these clairvoyants play the ponies, or break the bank at Monte Carlo, or get rich in the stock market?”

  ”Apparently many do, Your Honor. But of course they would not publicize it.”

  Pendleton frowned. “My background in Wall Street is no secret. Are you suggesting that I am a psi?”

  ”I suggest nothing, Your Honor. But perhaps you will agree, on the other hand, that your success is not inconsistent with the possibility.”

  ”Hmph.”

  ”If all these psi’s have this power,” demanded Burke, “why didn’t they warn President Cromway in the first place?”

  ”Several c
laim they did. The data are still coming in. It’s quite similar to the warnings attempted for Kennedy’s benefit in nineteen sixty-two, by Jeane Dixon, John Pendragon, Helen Greenwood, and even Billy Graham. Jeane Dixon even named the day and the hour-- and from fifteen hundred miles away.”

  ”Even if all you say is true,” said Edmonds bluntly, “you have offered nothing to prove that the particular clairvoyance in issue was used lawfully.”

  ”I believe I can satisfy Your Honor on that point. If the court please, I would like at this time to place psi in its proper perspective in police technique. For it is a police technique, quite modern, but as useful in its way as the Bertillon measurement system, the Henry fingerprint system, the Keeler polygraph, radar for speeding, alcohol detection in the breath and bloodstream, spectroscopic analysis of dust, ballistics, blood analysis, differentiation by blood groups, voiceprinting, and many others. Many police departments in Europe, and in Holland especially, use clairvoyants routinely. Professor W.H.C. Tenhaeff at one time maintained a whole team of ‘paragnosts’ for assistance to the Dutch police. And they are used in this country much more often than is generally realized. For example, Gerard Croiset, the Dutch clairvoyant, told the FBI in nineteen sixty-four where the bodies of three civil-rights workers would be found in Mississippi. And the equally famous Dutch clairvoyant, Peter Hurkos, assisted materially in the Boston Strangler case.”