Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

He tapped the scrapings from the bowl of his pipe and began to pack it with tobacco. Without looking up from what he was doing, he said, “Your partner has no time for what she regards as an absurdity, but I take it you are open to the possibility that beings that are not originally from Earth walk among us, or at least visit us from time to time.”

I nodded. “I am certainly open to that possibility. And I think you’ll find my partner is not as closed to the idea as she appears to be.”

He seemed not to have heard. He put the pipe in his mouth and lit it with two tapers, sending big billows of sweet-smelling smoke drifting across the room. Dehan glanced at me, but I could not make out her expression. It might have been withering. Kirkpatrick started to speak again.

“If you try to imagine a mountain wolf trying to communicate with a human being…” He paused. “You are nowhere near close to the difficulty a human being has trying to communicate with an alien civilization. Because, at least the two species of mammals have common DNA, common instincts, broadly speaking a common environment, even common basic values. There are, for example, basic body movements that all mammals will understand, so there is a common, basic framework on which to build some form of communication.

“But when we try to communicate with the Visitors, it is more akin to trying to communicate with water, or air, or an amoeba. I am not talking about the disparity in intelligence, I am talking about the alien nature of their form of intelligence.” He labored each word with a downward stroke of his pipe. “We have no common points of reference on which to start to build a system of communication…”

“In that case,” I said, “perhaps I should ask you, what makes you think you might have?” He glanced at me. I explained, “Established communication. What makes you think you might have?”

He nodded. “That would be a better question.” He took a moment, gazing into the incandescent bowl of his pipe, as though my improved question were in there, smoldering nicely. “Stone, I am a scientist by trade and by training. That means that my brain is conditioned to do two things: prove by experimentation, and evaluate the weight—the validity—of the evidence!”

He spat the last words furiously. For a moment he looked to me like a man fighting back against a lifetime of unfounded, damaging criticism. He leaned back in his chair and went on.

“Whatever you may think, I have no time, no patience, for charlatans and fools who invent evidence where they can’t find any. Telepathy has not been proven! Some, unrepeated, unduplicated, experiments have indicated that perhaps, at a very short distance in space, there may be some quantum level influence of one brain on another! That is not the same—not the same—as telepathy.”

Dehan gave a small cough. “Forgive me, Mr. Kirkpatrick, I am not following you. What has telepathy got to do with…”

He scowled at her. “It seems that the Visitors employ some form of brain to brain communication. And I am trying to impress upon you that I, as a scientist, am very, very resistant to this idea. I do not accept the existence of ESP, astral projection or any of this other New Age hippie garbage that so-called researchers go in for these days. I am a scientist!” He paused for a long moment, puffing and sending aromatic clouds across the room. “However, on that night, it is possible that we might have received some form of brain to brain communication.”

Dehan turned to me. “Is this relevant to our investigation, Stone?”

I smiled blandly at her. “Let’s find out.” I turned to Kirkpatrick. “I know Princeton has been conducting experiments for over twenty years on how consciousness interacts with the physical world at a quantum level. But I understood that the electrical fields generated by the brain were so weak…”

He interrupted me. “That is precisely the point. The brain generates fields at the quantum level, and they are miniscule. So communication between one and another is practically impossible, even when the heads are touching. However…” He sighed. He looked almost like a man about to make a guilty admission. “The issue is not, in fact, the strength or weakness of the signal. A very feeble receptor is capable of capturing a single quantum particle, an electron or a photon, over millions of light years’ distance!”

Dehan snorted. “Come on! That’s ridiculous! How would you even prove such a thing?”

I smiled at her, impressed not for the first time by her irreverence and total lack of respect for her supposed superiors. Kirkpatrick flushed and glared at her. She shrugged and spread her hands. “Sorry, but really…”

Dehan has a face it is hard to stay mad at, and Kirkpatrick sighed and shook his head. “Tonight, Detective Dehan, do yourself a favor and step outside. Try to find a place where the damned city lights have not flooded the sky, maybe Soundview Park, or take a drive to Long Island. Look up at the sky and pick the smallest star you can find and stare at it. When you do that, remind yourself that the feeble electrical fields in your brain are capturing and processing photons that were projected millions of years ago, by a star millions of light years away.”

Her eyebrows rode up her forehead and her jaw sagged just a little. “Son of a gun!”

“The problem,” he went on, “is not whether a comparatively feeble instrument is capable of capturing the signal. The problem is interference. Which is why during the day, or in the heart of Manhattan, you will not capture that same photon.”

I nodded. “I understand. So what happened on Macomb Mountain?”

We heard a noise