Speaker 1: Second Sight by Allan Edward Nourse. Note the following excerpts
Speaker 1: from Amy Balentine's journal have never actually been written down
Speaker 1: at any time before. Her account of impressions and events
Speaker 1: has been kept in organized fashion in her mind for
Speaker 1: at least nine years. Even she is not certain when
Speaker 1: she started. But it must be understood that certain inaccuracies
Speaker 1: in transcription could not possibly have been avoided in the
Speaker 1: excerpting attempted here the editor. Tuesday, sixteenth May. Lambertson got
Speaker 1: back from Boston about two this afternoon. He was tired.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen Lambertson so tired. It
Speaker 1: was more than just exhaustion, too, maybe anger, frustration. I
Speaker 1: couldn't be sure. It seemed more like defeat than anything else.
Speaker 1: And he went straight from the copter to his office,
Speaker 1: without even stopping off at the lab at all. It's
Speaker 1: good to have him back, though, not that I haven't
Speaker 1: had a nice enough rest With Lambertson gone. Dagon took
Speaker 1: over the reins for the week, but Dacon doesn't really count,
Speaker 1: poor man. It's such a temptation to twist him up
Speaker 1: and get him all confused that I didn't do any
Speaker 1: real work all week. With Lambertson back, I'll have to
Speaker 1: get down to the grind again. But I'm still glad
Speaker 1: he's here. I never thought i'd miss him so for
Speaker 1: such a short time away. But I wish he'd gotten
Speaker 1: a rest, if he ever rests. And I wish I
Speaker 1: knew why he went to Boston in the first place.
Speaker 1: Certainly he didn't want to go. I wanted to read
Speaker 1: him and find out, but I don't think I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to know yet. Lambertson didn't want to talk. He didn't
Speaker 1: even tell me he was back, even though he knew
Speaker 1: i'd catch him five miles down the road. I can
Speaker 1: do that now. With Lambertson, distance doesn't seem to make
Speaker 1: so much difference anymore if I just ignore it. So
Speaker 1: all I got was bits and snatches on the surface
Speaker 1: of his mind, something about me and doctor Custer, and
Speaker 1: enough sty little man called Erins or Barons or something.
Speaker 1: I've heard of him somewhere, but I can't pin it
Speaker 1: down right now. I'll have to dig that out later,
Speaker 1: I guess. But if he saw doctor Custer, why doesn't
Speaker 1: he tell me about it? Wednesday, seventeenth May, it was
Speaker 1: Errands that he saw in Boston, and now I'm sure
Speaker 1: that something's going wrong. I know that man. I remember
Speaker 1: him from a long time ago, back when I was
Speaker 1: still at Bairdsley, long before I came here to the
Speaker 1: Study Center. He was the consulting psychiatrist, and I don't
Speaker 1: think I could ever forget him even if I tried.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm sure something very unpleasant is going on.
Speaker 1: Lambertson saw Doctor Custer, too, but the directors sent him
Speaker 1: to Boston because Erons wanted to talk to him. I
Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to know anything about it, but Lambertson came
Speaker 1: down to dinner last night. He wouldn't even look at me.
Speaker 1: The skunk I fixed him. I told him I was
Speaker 1: going to peak, and then I read him in a
Speaker 1: flash before he could shift his mind to Boston traffic
Speaker 1: or something. He knows I can't stand traffic. I only
Speaker 1: picked up a little, but it was enough. There was
Speaker 1: something very unpleasant that Erins had said that I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite get. They were in his office. Lambertson had said,
Speaker 1: I don't think she's ready for it, and I'd never
Speaker 1: try to talk her into it at this point. Why
Speaker 1: can't you people get it through your heads that she's
Speaker 1: a child and a human being, not some kind of
Speaker 1: laboratory animal. That's been the trouble all along. Everybody has
Speaker 1: been so eager to grab, and nobody has given her
Speaker 1: a wretched thing. In return, Erin's was smooth, very sad,
Speaker 1: and reproachful. I got a clear picture of him, short, balding,
Speaker 1: mean little eyes in a smug, self righteous little face. Michael,
Speaker 1: After all, she's twenty three years old. She's certainly out
Speaker 1: of diapers by now, but she's only had two years
Speaker 1: of training aimed at teaching her anything. Well, there's no
Speaker 1: reason that that should stop, Is there be reasonable, Michael.
Speaker 1: We certainly agree that you've done a wonderful job with
Speaker 1: the girl, and naturally you're sensitive about others working with her.
Speaker 1: But when you consider that public taxes are footing the bill,
Speaker 1: I'm sensitive about others exploiting her. That's all I tell you.
Speaker 1: I won't push her, and I wouldn't let her come
Speaker 1: up here even if she agreed to do it. She
Speaker 1: shouldn't be tampered with for another year or two at least.
Speaker 1: Lambertson was angry and bitter. Now three days later, he
Speaker 1: was still angry, and you're certain that your concern is
Speaker 1: entirely professional. Whatever Errans meant, it wasn't nice. Lambertson caught it,
Speaker 1: and oh my charts slapped down on the table, door slamming,
Speaker 1: swearing from mild patient Lambertson, can you imagine? And then later,
Speaker 1: no more anger, just discussed and defeat. That was what
Speaker 1: hit me when he came back yesterday. He couldn't hide it,
Speaker 1: no matter how he tried. Well, no wonder he was tired.
Speaker 1: I remember Erin's all right. He wasn't so interested in
Speaker 1: me back in the days. Wild one, he called me.
Speaker 1: We haven't the time, more the people to handle anything
Speaker 1: like this in a public institution. We have to handle
Speaker 1: her the way we'd handle any other defective. She may
Speaker 1: be a plus defective instead of a minus defective, but
Speaker 1: she's as cripple as if she were deaf and blind.
Speaker 1: Good old Errands. That was years ago, when I was
Speaker 1: barely thirteen, before doctor Custer got interested and started off
Speaker 1: thaumoscoping me and testing me, before I'd even heard of
Speaker 1: Lambertson or the Study Center, for that matter, before anybody
Speaker 1: had done anything but feed me and treat me like
Speaker 1: some kind of peculiar animal or something. Well, I'm glad
Speaker 1: it was Lambertson that went to Boston and not me,
Speaker 1: for Aaron's sake. And if Aarons tries to come down
Speaker 1: here to work with me, he's going to be wasting
Speaker 1: his time because I'll lead him all around Robin Hood's
Speaker 1: barn and get him so confused he'll wish he'd stayed home.
Speaker 1: But I can't help but wonder just the same, am
Speaker 1: I a cripple? Like Aaron said? Does being sy hi
Speaker 1: mean that? I? I don't think so. But what does
Speaker 1: Lambertson think? Sometimes when I try to read Lambertson, I'm
Speaker 1: the one that gets confused. I wish I could tell
Speaker 1: what he really thinks. Wednesday night, I asked Lambertson tonight
Speaker 1: what doctor Custer had said. He wants to see you
Speaker 1: next week. He told me, But Amy, he didn't make
Speaker 1: any promises. He wasn't even hopeful. But his letter, he
Speaker 1: said the studies showed that there wasn't any anatomical defect.
Speaker 1: Lambertson leaned back and lit his pipe, shaking his head
Speaker 1: at me. He's aged ten years this past week. Everybody
Speaker 1: thinks so he's lost weight. And he looks as if
Speaker 1: he hasn't slept at all. Custer's afraid that it isn't
Speaker 1: a question of anatomy amy. But what is it then,
Speaker 1: For heaven's sake, he doesn't know. He says it's not
Speaker 1: very scientific. But it may just be that what you
Speaker 1: don't use, you lose. Oh but that's silly. I chewed
Speaker 1: my lip, granted, but he thinks that there's a chance.
Speaker 1: Of course there's a chance, and you know he'll do
Speaker 1: everything he can. It's just that neither of us wants
Speaker 1: you to get your hopes up. It wasn't much, but
Speaker 1: it was something. Lambertson looked so beat. I didn't have
Speaker 1: the heart to ask him what Erin's wanted, even though
Speaker 1: I know he'd like to get it off his chest.
Speaker 1: Maybe tomorrow will be better. I spent the day with
Speaker 1: Charlie Dakon in the lab and did a little work
Speaker 1: for a change. I've been disgustingly lazy, and poor Charley
Speaker 1: thinks it's all his fault. Charlie reads like twenty point
Speaker 1: type ninety percent of the time, and I'm afraid he
Speaker 1: knows it. I can tell just exactly when he stops
Speaker 1: paying attention to business and starts paying attention to me,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden he realizes I'm reading him,
Speaker 1: and it flusters him for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: I wonder, why does he really think I'm shocked or
Speaker 1: surprised or insulted? Poor Charlie. I guess I must be
Speaker 1: good enough looking. I can read it from almost every
Speaker 1: fellow that comes near me. I wonder why, I mean,
Speaker 1: why me and not Marjorie over in the main office.
Speaker 1: She's a sweet girl, but she never gets a second
Speaker 1: look from the guys. There must be some fine differential
Speaker 1: point I'm missing somewhere, but I don't think I'll ever
Speaker 1: understand it. I'm not going to press Lambertson, but I
Speaker 1: hope he opens up tomorrow. He's got me scared silly
Speaker 1: by now. He has a lot of authority around here,
Speaker 1: but other people are paying the bills, and when he's
Speaker 1: frightened about something, it can't help but frighten me. Thursday,
Speaker 1: eighteenth May, we went back to reaction testing in the
Speaker 1: lab with Lambertson to day. That study is almost finished,
Speaker 1: as much as anything I work on as ever finished,
Speaker 1: which isn't very much. This test had two goals to
Speaker 1: clock my stimulus response pattern in comparison to normals, and
Speaker 1: to find out just exactly when I pick up any
Speaker 1: given thought signal from the person I'm reading. It isn't
Speaker 1: a matter of developing speed. I'm already so fast to
Speaker 1: respond that it doesn't mean too much from anybody else's standpoint,
Speaker 1: and I certainly don't need any training there. But where
Speaker 1: along the line do I pick up a thought impulse?
Speaker 1: Do I catch it at its inception? Do do I
Speaker 1: pick up the thought formulation or just the final crystallized pattern.
Speaker 1: Lambertson thinks I'm with it right from the start, and
Speaker 1: that some training in those lines would be worth my time.
Speaker 1: Of course, we didn't find out, not even with the
Speaker 1: ingenious little random firing device that Dakin designed for the study.
Speaker 1: With this gadget, neither Lambertson nor I know what impulse
Speaker 1: the box is going to throw at him. He just
Speaker 1: throws a switch and it starts coming. He catches it, reacts,
Speaker 1: I catch it from him and react, and we compare
Speaker 1: reaction times. This afternoon, it had us driving up a
Speaker 1: hill and send a ten ton truck rolling down on
Speaker 1: us out of control. I had my flasher on two
Speaker 1: seconds before Lambertson did, of course, but our reaction times
Speaker 1: are standardized, so when we corrected for my extra speed,
Speaker 1: we knew that I must have caught the impulse about
Speaker 1: zero point zero seven seconds after he did. Crude, of course,
Speaker 1: not nearly fast enough, and we can't reproduce on a
Speaker 1: stable basis. Lambertson says, that's as close as we can
Speaker 1: get without cortical probes. And that's where I put my
Speaker 1: foot down. I may have a gold mine in this
Speaker 1: head of mine, but nobody is going to bur holes
Speaker 1: through my skull in order to tap it. Not for
Speaker 1: a while. Yet. That's unfair, of course, because it sounds
Speaker 1: as if Lambertson were trying to force me into something,
Speaker 1: and he isn't. I've read him about that, and I
Speaker 1: know he wouldn't allow it. Let's learn everything else we
Speaker 1: can learn without it first, he says. Later, if you
Speaker 1: want to go along with it, maybe, but right now
Speaker 1: you're not competent to decide for yourself. He may be right,
Speaker 1: but why not? Why does he keep acting as if
Speaker 1: I'm a child? Am I really? With everything and I
Speaker 1: mean everything coming into my mind for the past twenty
Speaker 1: three years, haven't I learned enough to make decisions for myself.
Speaker 1: Lambertson says, of course everything has been coming up. It's
Speaker 1: just that I don't know what to do with it all.
Speaker 1: But somewhere along the line, I have to reach a
Speaker 1: maturation point of some kind. It scares me sometimes because
Speaker 1: I can't find an answer to it, and the answer
Speaker 1: might be perfectly horrible. I don't know where it may end.
Speaker 1: What's worse, I don't know what point it is reached
Speaker 1: right now? How much difference is there between my mind
Speaker 1: and Lambertson's. I'm cy high and he isn't, granted, But
Speaker 1: is there more to it than that? People like Erons
Speaker 1: think so. They think it's a difference between human function
Speaker 1: and something else, And that scares me because it just
Speaker 1: isn't true. I'm as human as anybody else. But somehow
Speaker 1: it seems that I'm the one who has to prove it.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I ever will. That's why doctor Custer
Speaker 1: has to help me. Everything hangs on that. I'm to
Speaker 1: go up to Boston next week for final studies and testing.
Speaker 1: If doctor Custer can do something, what a difference that
Speaker 1: will make. Maybe then I could get out of this
Speaker 1: whole frightening mess. Put it behind me and forget about
Speaker 1: it with just the sigh alone. I don't think I
Speaker 1: ever can. Friday, nineteenth May to day, Lambertson broke down
Speaker 1: and told me what it was that Erons had been proposing.
Speaker 1: It was worse than I thought it would be. The man.
Speaker 1: It hit on the one thing I'd been afraid of
Speaker 1: for so long. He wants you to work against normals,
Speaker 1: Lambertson said. He swallowed the latency hypothesis whole. He thinks
Speaker 1: that everybody must have a latent side potential, and that
Speaker 1: all that is needed to drag it into the open
Speaker 1: is a powerful stimulus from someone with full blown side powers. Well,
Speaker 1: I said, do you think so? Who knows? Lambertson slammed
Speaker 1: his pencil down on the desk angrily. No, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. But what does that mean? Not a thing.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't mean. I'm right. Nobody knows the answer,
Speaker 1: not me, nor Errands nor anybody, and Erins wants to
Speaker 1: use you to find out. I nodded slowly. I see,
Speaker 1: so I'm to be used as a sort of refined
Speaker 1: electrical stimulator. I said, Well, I guess you know what
Speaker 1: you can tell Errands. He was silent and I couldn't
Speaker 1: read him. Then he looked up. Amy. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: we can tell him that I stared at him. You
Speaker 1: mean you think he could force me. He says, you're
Speaker 1: a public charge that as long as you have to
Speaker 1: be supported and cared for, they have the right to
Speaker 1: use your faculties. He's right on the first point. You
Speaker 1: are a public charge. You have to be sheltered and protected.
Speaker 1: If you wandered so much as a mile outside these walls,
Speaker 1: you'd never survive. And you know it. I sat stunned,
Speaker 1: but doctor Custer. Doctor Custer is trying to help, but
Speaker 1: he hasn't succeeded so far. If he can, then it
Speaker 1: will be a different story. But I can't stall much longer.
Speaker 1: Amy Erin's has a powerful argument. You're sy High. You're
Speaker 1: the first full fledged, wide open, free wheeling sy High
Speaker 1: that's ever appeared in human history. The first others in
Speaker 1: the past have shown potential, maybe, but nothing they could
Speaker 1: ever learn to control. You've got control. You're fully developed.
Speaker 1: You're here, and you're the only one there is. So
Speaker 1: I happen to be unlucky. I snapped, My genes got
Speaker 1: mixed up. That's not true when you know it. Lambertson said,
Speaker 1: we know your chromosomes better than your face. They're the
Speaker 1: same as anyone else. Eulses. There's no gene difference, none
Speaker 1: at all. When you're gone, you'll be gone, and there's
Speaker 1: no reason to think that your children will have any
Speaker 1: more sigh potential than Charlie Dakin has. Something was building
Speaker 1: up in me then that I couldn't control any longer.
Speaker 1: You think I should go along with Erinds, I said, Dolly,
Speaker 1: He hesitated. I'm afraid you're going to have to sooner
Speaker 1: or later. Erin's has some latence up in Boston. He's
Speaker 1: certain that they're latents. He's talked to the directors down here.
Speaker 1: He's convinced them that you could work with his people,
Speaker 1: draw them out. You could open the door to a
Speaker 1: whole new world for human beings. I lost my temper then.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just Erins or Lambertson or Dacon or any
Speaker 1: of the others. It was all of them, dozens of them,
Speaker 1: compounded year upon year upon year. Now listen to me
Speaker 1: for a minute, I said, have any of you ever
Speaker 1: considered what I wanted in this thing? Ever? Have any
Speaker 1: of you given that one single thought, just once, one time,
Speaker 1: when you were so sick of thinking great thoughts for
Speaker 1: humanity that you let another thought lead through. Have you
Speaker 1: ever thought about what kind of a shuffle I've had
Speaker 1: since all this started? Well you'd better think about it
Speaker 1: right now. Amy, You know I don't want to push you.
Speaker 1: Listen to me, Lambertson. My folks got rid of me
Speaker 1: fast when they found out about me. Did you know
Speaker 1: that they hated me because I scared them? It didn't
Speaker 1: hurt me too much because I thought I knew why
Speaker 1: they hated me. I could understand it, and I went
Speaker 1: off to Bairdsley without even crying. They were going to
Speaker 1: come see me every week, But do you know how
Speaker 1: often they managed to make it? Not once? After I
Speaker 1: was off their hands. And then at Bairdsley, Aarons examined
Speaker 1: me and decided that I was a cripple. He didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about me then, but he thought SI was
Speaker 1: a defect. And that was as far as it went.
Speaker 1: I did what Erin's wanted me to do at Bairdsley,
Speaker 1: never what I wanted, just what they wanted, years and
Speaker 1: years of what they wanted. And then you came along,
Speaker 1: and I came to the study center and did what
Speaker 1: you wanted. It hurt him, and I knew it. I
Speaker 1: guess that was what I wanted, to hurt him and
Speaker 1: to hurt everybody. He was shaking his head, staring at me, Amy,
Speaker 1: be fair. I've tried, you know how hard. I've tried.
Speaker 1: Tried what to train me? Yes, but why to give
Speaker 1: me better use of my sy faculties? Yes? But why
Speaker 1: did you do it for me? Is that really why
Speaker 1: you did it? Or was that just another phony front
Speaker 1: like all the rest of them, in order to use me,
Speaker 1: to make me a little more valuable to have around.
Speaker 1: He slapped my face so hard it jolted me. I
Speaker 1: could feel the awful pain and hurt in his mind
Speaker 1: as he stared at me, and I sensed the stinging
Speaker 1: in his palm that matched the burning in my cheek.
Speaker 1: And then something fell away in his mind and I
Speaker 1: saw something I had never seen before. He loved me.
Speaker 1: That man? Incredible, isn't it? He loved me me who
Speaker 1: couldn't call him anything but Lambertson, who couldn't imagine calling
Speaker 1: him Michael, to say nothing of Mike, just Lambertson, who
Speaker 1: did this, or Lambertson who thought that, but he could
Speaker 1: never tell me. He had decided that I was too helpless.
Speaker 1: I needed him too much. I needed love, but not
Speaker 1: the kind of love Lambertson wanted to give. So that
Speaker 1: kind of love had to be hidden, concealed, suppressed. I
Speaker 1: needed the deepest imaginable understanding. But it had to be
Speaker 1: utterly unselfish understanding. Anything else would be taking advantage of me.
Speaker 1: So a barrier had to be built, a barrier that
Speaker 1: I should never penetrate, and that he should never be
Speaker 1: tempted to break down. Lambertson had done that for me.
Speaker 1: It was all there, suddenly, so overwhelming it made me
Speaker 1: gasp from the impact. I wanted to throw my arms
Speaker 1: around him. Instead, I sat down in the chair, shaking
Speaker 1: my head helplessly. I hated myself then. I had hated
Speaker 1: myself before, but never like this. If I could only
Speaker 1: go somewhere, I said, some place where nobody knew me,
Speaker 1: where I could just live by myself for a while
Speaker 1: and shut the doors and shut out the thoughts and
Speaker 1: pretty tend for a while, just pretend that I'm perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: I wish you could, Lambertson said, but you can't, you
Speaker 1: know that, not unless Custer can really help. We sat
Speaker 1: there for a while. Then I said, let Erins come down,
Speaker 1: let him bring anybody he wants with him. I'll do
Speaker 1: what he wants until I see Custer. That hurt, too,
Speaker 1: but it was different. It hurt both of us together,
Speaker 1: not separately any more, And somehow it didn't hurt so
Speaker 1: much that way. Monday, twenty second May Erins drove down
Speaker 1: from Boston this morning with a girl named Mary Bolton,
Speaker 1: and we went to work. I think I'm beginning to
Speaker 1: understand how a dog can tell when someone wants to
Speaker 1: kick him and doesn't quite dare. I could feel the
Speaker 1: back of my neck prickle when that man walked into
Speaker 1: the conference room. I was hoping he might have changed
Speaker 1: since the last time I saw him. He hadn't, but
Speaker 1: I had. I wasn't afraid of him any more, just
Speaker 1: awfully tired of him after he'd been here about ten minutes.
Speaker 1: But that girl, I wonder what sort of story he
Speaker 1: told her. She couldn't have been more than sixteen, and
Speaker 1: she was terrorized. At first, I thought it was Errands
Speaker 1: she was afraid of, but that wasn't so it was
Speaker 1: me It took us all morning just to get around that.
Speaker 1: The poor girl could hardly make herself talk. She was
Speaker 1: shaking all over when they arrived. We took a walk
Speaker 1: around the grounds alone, and I read her bit by bit,
Speaker 1: a feeler here, a planted suggestion there, just getting her
Speaker 1: used to the idea and trying to reassure her. After
Speaker 1: a while, she was smiling. She thought the lagoon was lovely,
Speaker 1: and by the time we got back to the main building,
Speaker 1: she was laughing, talking about herself, beginning to relax. Then
Speaker 1: I gave her a full blast, quickly, only a moment
Speaker 1: or two. Don't be afraid. I hate him, yes, but
Speaker 1: I won't hurt you for anything. Let me come in,
Speaker 1: don't fight me. We've got to work as a team.
Speaker 1: It shook her. She turned white and almost passed out
Speaker 1: for a moment. Then she she nodded slowly. I see,
Speaker 1: she said, it feels as if it's way inside, deep inside.
Speaker 1: That's right, it won't hurt I promise. She nodded again.
Speaker 1: Let's go back now. I think I'm ready to try.
Speaker 1: We went to work. I was as blind as she
Speaker 1: was at first. There was nothing there at first, not
Speaker 1: even a flicker of brightness, then probing deeper. Something responded
Speaker 1: only a hint, a suggestion of something powerful, deep and hidden.
Speaker 1: But where what was her strength? Where was she weak?
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell. We started on dice, crude, of course,
Speaker 1: but as good a tool as any. Dice are no
Speaker 1: good for measuring anything, But that was why I was there.
Speaker 1: I was the measuring instrument. The dice were only reactors
Speaker 1: sensitive enough two balsam cubes tossed from a box with
Speaker 1: only gravity to work against. I showed her first, picked
Speaker 1: up her mind as the dice popped out, led her
Speaker 1: through it. Take one at a time, the red one first,
Speaker 1: work on it. See now we try both once more?
Speaker 1: Watch it all right? Now? She sat frozen in the chair.
Speaker 1: She was trying. The sweat stood out on her forehead.
Speaker 1: Eron sat tense, smoking, his fingers twitching as he watched
Speaker 1: the red and green cubes bounce on the white backdrop.
Speaker 1: Lambertson watched too, but his eyes were on the girl,
Speaker 1: not on the cubes. It was hard work. Bit by bit,
Speaker 1: she began to grab whatever I had felt in her
Speaker 1: mind seemed to leap up. I probed her, amplifying it,
Speaker 1: trying to draw it out It was like wading through
Speaker 1: knee deep mud, sticky, sluggish, resisting. I could feel her
Speaker 1: excitement growing, and bit by bit I released my grip,
Speaker 1: easing her out, baiting her. All right, I said, that's enough.
Speaker 1: She turned to me, wide eyed. I I did it.
Speaker 1: Erin's was on his feet, breathing heavily. It worked. It worked,
Speaker 1: not very well well, but it's there. All she needs
Speaker 1: is time and help and patience. But it worked. Lambertson,
Speaker 1: do you know what that means? It means I was right.
Speaker 1: It means others can have it just like she has it.
Speaker 1: He rubbed his hands together. We can arrange a full
Speaker 1: time lab for it and work on three or four
Speaker 1: latent simultaneously. It's a wide open door, Michael. Can't you
Speaker 1: see what it means? Lambertson nodded and gave me a
Speaker 1: long look. Yes, I think I do. I'll start arrangements tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Not tomorrow. You'll have to wait until next week. Why
Speaker 1: because Amy would prefer to wait. That's why. Erons looked
Speaker 1: at him and then at me peevishly. Finally, he shrugged.
Speaker 1: If you insist, we'll talk about it next week, I said.
Speaker 1: I was so tired I could hardly look up at him.
Speaker 1: I stood up and smiled at my girl, poor kid,
Speaker 1: I thought, so excited and eager about it now, and
Speaker 1: not one idea in the world of what she was
Speaker 1: walking into. Certainly Eron's would never be able to tell. Later.
Speaker 1: When they were gone, Lambertson and I walked down towards
Speaker 1: the lagoon. It was a lovely, cool evening. The ducks
Speaker 1: were down at the water's edge. Every year there was
Speaker 1: a mother duck herding a line of ducklings down the
Speaker 1: shore and into the water. They never seemed to go
Speaker 1: where she wanted them to, and she would fuss and chatter,
Speaker 1: waddling back time and again to prod the reluctant ones
Speaker 1: out into the pool. We stood by the water's edge
Speaker 1: in silence for a long time. Then Lambertson kissed me.
Speaker 1: It was the first time he had ever done that.
Speaker 1: We could go away, I whispered in his ear. We
Speaker 1: could run out on errands in the study center and
Speaker 1: everyone just go away somewhere. He shook his head slowly. Amy,
Speaker 1: don't we could. I'll see doctor Custer and he'll tell
Speaker 1: me he can help. I know he will. I won't
Speaker 1: need the study center any more, or any other place
Speaker 1: or anybody but you. He didn't answer, and I knew
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything he could answer. Not then Friday, twenty
Speaker 1: sixth May, yesterday we went to Boston to see doctor Custer.
Speaker 1: And now it looks as if it's all over. Now
Speaker 1: even I can't pretend that there's anything more to be done.
Speaker 1: Next week, Errand's will come down and I'll go to
Speaker 1: work with him, just the way he has it planned.
Speaker 1: He thinks we have three years of work ahead of
Speaker 1: us before anything can be published, before he can really
Speaker 1: be sure we have brought a latent into full use
Speaker 1: of his sigh potential. Maybe so, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: in three years I'll find some way to make myself
Speaker 1: care one way or the other. But I'll do it
Speaker 1: anyway because there's nothing else to do. There was no
Speaker 1: anatomical defect. Doctor Custer was right about that. The eyes
Speaker 1: are perfect, beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic
Speaker 1: nerves and auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there.
Speaker 1: It's deeper, too deep ever to change it, which you
Speaker 1: no longer use, you lose, was what he said, apologizing
Speaker 1: because he couldn't explain it any better. It's like a
Speaker 1: price tag. Perhaps long ago, before I knew anything at all,
Speaker 1: the sy was so strong it started compensating, bringing in
Speaker 1: more and more from other minds, such a wealth of rich,
Speaker 1: clear interpreted visual and auditory impressions that there was never
Speaker 1: any need for my own. And because of that, certain
Speaker 1: hookups never got hooked up. That's only a theory, of course,
Speaker 1: but there isn't any other way to explain it. But
Speaker 1: am I wrong to hate it more than anything else
Speaker 1: in the world. I want to see Lambertson, see him
Speaker 1: smile and light his pipe, hear him laugh. I want
Speaker 1: to know what color really is, what music really sounds like,
Speaker 1: unfiltered through somebody else's ears. I want to see a sunset,
Speaker 1: just once, just once. I want to see that mother
Speaker 1: duck take her ducklings down to the water, but I
Speaker 1: never will. Instead, I see and hear things nobody else can.
Speaker 1: And the fact that I am stone blind and stone
Speaker 1: deaf shouldn't make any difference. After all, I've always been
Speaker 1: that way. Maybe next week I'll ask Erons what he
Speaker 1: thinks about it. It should be interesting to hear what
Speaker 1: he says. End of Second Sight by Allan Edward, nurse