Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [9]
'I want to run a continuation of the series on short-range telepathy,' he said.
'You're in the number one capsule, Tommy. You're in the number four, Josh.'
The two young men turned towards the line of four white-painted, fibreglass cubicles, each one domed, almost egg-shaped, and about the size of a small shower unit.
'You don't trust us,' Josh said, matter-of-factly.
Tommy pantomimed surprise, said, 'I hadn't forgotten had I?' and did his best to look wounded. 'You didn't tell us. I have to say that's very hurtful. I thought we were supposed to be a team here? Boldly going and all that sort of thing.'
Josh nodded. 'How are we supposed to get these things right if you don't give us any advance warning? We've bugged the wrong capsules now, we've practised the wrong codes, we're totally screwed.'
'We've wasted a lot of time,' Tommy agreed. 'I don't know how much because I can't afford a watch any more. The thing is, though, you don't seem to be taking this whole thing nearly as seriously as we do.'
It was a disappointment to Barry Hitchins to know that one gaffe bad probably cost him the chance of ever parlaying the research fellowship up to full professor with a department of his own. But once he had accepted the situation, he found that the abandonment of ambition was oddly liberating. If he was never to be respected or respectable then he was free to indulge, metaphorically speaking, in whatever custard-wrestling took his fancy.
On one notable occasion he had amused himself by publicly confirming that a popular mind-reader and metal-bending conjuror, who claimed among other things to have been trained by Israeli intelligence as a psychic weapon, might well have genuine paranormal gifts. An invitation to come to the university to have the telepathy and spoon-bending tested under controlled conditions was readily accepted by the entertainer. Of course the invitation was never taken up, but by then she and Barry had already got plenty of valuable publicity.
On another occasion he had investigated a poltergeist that was supposedly plaguing a suburban semi. The restless spirit was moving furniture, tossing ornaments about and slamming doors. Barry revealed it to be a fairly crude hoax. It turned out that the householder had planned the whole thing because he wanted to get on to daytime
television, and though he succeeded in this, Con men and those who expose them' was probably not the fifteen minutes of fame he'd had in mind. The episode did Barry Hitchins no harm however. Now known as
'Ghostbuster Bazzer' he was well on his way to becoming a minor media celebrity. This further irritated his colleagues which, as far as he was concerned, was a major plus.
Barry had calculated that it would only take one more reasonably high-profile opportunity to demonstrate his expertise in the field of the supernatural and he could make the jump to full media pundit, which would more than compensate for not being a full professor. He was in the process of devising such an opportunity - it involved a haunted vicarage and a particularly spectacular headless spook - when he received an unexpected and rather sinister note warning him that his funding was going to be at risk unless he paid more attention to researching the accepted areas of serious parapsychology.
It's the usual card-reading,' he said. 'Tommy you're reading and sending.
Turn the cards on the light cue. You won't be getting any sort of cue, Josh.
I want you to call out the cards when you think they've been turned.'
'Wait a minute .'Josh stopped and turned back to stare at him. 'Wait a minute. Not only do I have to guess what the card is, I have to guess when it's turned over?'
'Problem?'
'Why the new variable?'
'A small extra pressure, nothing more.'