Second Sight - Alan E. Nourse

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Second Sight by Alan Edward Nourse. Note the following excerpts
from Amy Ballentine's journal have never actually been written down
at any time before. Her account of impressions and events
has been kept in organized fashion in her mind for
at least nine years. Even she is not certain when

(00:20):
she started. But it must be understood that certain inaccuracies
in transcription could not possibly have been avoided in the
excerpting attempted here the editor. Tuesday, sixteen May. Lambertson got
back from Boston about two this afternoon. He was tired.
I don't think I've ever seen lambertsince so tired. It

(00:42):
was more than just exhaustion too, maybe anger, frustration. I
couldn't be sure. It seemed more like defeat than anything else.
And he went straight from the copter to his office
without even stopping off at the lab at all. It's
good to have him back, though that I haven't had
a nice enough rest with Lambertson gone. Dakin took over

(01:04):
the reins for the week. But Dakin doesn't really count,
poor man. It's such a temptation to twist him up
and get him all confused that I didn't do any
real work all week. With Lambertson back, I'll have to
get down to the grind again. But I'm still glad
he's here. I never thought i'd miss him so for
such a short time away. But I wish he'd gotten
a rest, if he ever rests. And I wish I

(01:26):
knew why he went to Boston in the first place.
Certainly he didn't want to go. I wanted to read
him and find out, but I don't think I'm supposed
to know yet. Lambertson didn't want to talk. He didn't
even tell me he was back, even though he knew
i'd catch him five miles down the road. I can
do that now. With Lambertson, distance doesn't seem to make
so much difference anymore if I just ignore it. So

(01:49):
all I got was bits and snatches on the surface
of his mind, something about me and doctor Custer and
a nasty little man called Eron's or Baron's or something.
I've heard him somewhere, but I can't pin it down
right now. I'll have to dig that out later, I guess.
But if he saw doctor Custer, why doesn't he tell
me about it? Wednesday, seventeen May, it was Erin's that

(02:14):
he saw in Boston, and now I'm sure that something's
going wrong. I know that man. I remember him from
a long time ago, back when I was still at Bairdsley,
long before I came here to the Study Center. He
was the consulting psychiatrist, and I don't think I could
ever forget him even if I tried. That's why I
am sure something very unpleasant is going on. Lambertson saw

(02:37):
Doctor Custer too, but the director sent him to Boston
because Aarons wanted to talk to him. I wasn't supposed
to know anything about it, but Lambertson came down to
dinner last night. He wouldn't even look at me. The
skunk I fixed him. I told him I was going
to peak, and then I read him in a flash
before he could shift his mind to Boston traffic or something.
He knows I can't stand traffic. I only picked up

(03:01):
a little, but it was enough. There was something very
unpleasant that Eron's had said that I couldn't quite get.
They were in his office. Lambertson had said, I don't
think she's ready for it, and I'd never try to
talk to her into it. At this point. Why can't
you people, get it through your heads that she's a
child and a human being, not some kind of laboratory animal.
That's been the trouble all along. Everybody's been so eager

(03:24):
to grab, and nobody's given her a wretched thing. In return,
Erin's was smooth, very sad, and reproachful. I got a
clear picture of him, short, balding, mean little eyes and
a smug, self righteous little face. Michael. After all, she's
twenty three years old. She's certainly out of diapers by now,

(03:45):
but she's only had two years of training aimed at
teaching her anything. Well, there's no reason that that should stop,
is there be reasonable Michael. We certainly agree that you've
done a wonderful job with the girl, and not sure
you're sensitive about others working with her, but when you
consider that public taxes are footing the bill, I'm sensitive

(04:07):
about others exploiting her. That's all I tell you. I
won't push her, and I wouldn't let her come up
here even if she agreed to do it. She shouldn't
be tempered with for another year or two at least.
Lambertson was angry and bitter. Now three days later he
was still angry, and you're certain that your concern is
entirely professional. Whatever Erin's meant, it wasn't nice. Lambertson caught it,

(04:33):
and oh my chart slapping down on the table, door, slamming,
swearing for mild patient Lambertson, can you imagine? And then
later no more anger, just discussed and defeat. That was
what hit me when he came back yesterday. He couldn't
hide it, no matter how he tried. Well, no wonder
he was tired. I remember Erin's all right, He wasn't

(04:56):
so interested in me back in those days, wild one,
he called me. We haven't the time or the people
to handle anything like this in a public institution. We
have to handle her the way we'd handle any other defective.
She may be a plus defective instead of a minus defective,
but she's as crippled as if she were deaf and blind.
Good Old Aaron's. That was years ago, when I was

(05:18):
barely thirteen, before doctor Custer got interested in and started opthelmoscoping
and testing me, before I had ever heard of Lambertson
or the Study Center, for that matter, before anybody had
done anything but feed me and treat me like some
kind of peculiar animal or something. Well, I'm glad it
was Lambertson that went to Boston and not me, for

(05:39):
Aaron's sake. And if Aarons tries to come down here
to work with me, he's going to be wasting his
time because I'll lead him all around Robin Hood's barn
and get him so confused he'll wish he'd stayed home.
But I can't help but wonder just the same, Am
I a cripple? Like Aaron said? Does being SI high
mean that? I don't think so? What does Lambertson think?

(06:01):
Sometimes when I try to read Lambertson, I'm the one
that gets confused. I wish I could tell what he
really thinks. Wednesday night, I asked Lambertson tonight what doctor
Custer had said he wants to see you next week.
He told me, but Amy, he didn't make any promises.
He wasn't even hopeful. But his letter, he said the

(06:23):
study showed that there wasn't any anatomical defect. Lambertson leaned
back and lit his pipe, shaking his head at me.
He's aged ten years this past week. Everybody thinks so
he's lost weight and he looks as if he hasn't
slept at all. Custer's afraid that it isn't a question
of anatomy amy. But what is it then, For heaven's sake,

(06:45):
he doesn't know. He says it's not very scientific. But
it may just be that what you don't use, you lose.
Oh but that's silly. I chewed my lip, granted, but
he thinks that there's a chance. Of course there's a chance,
and you know he'll do everything he can. It's just
that neither of us wants you to get your hopes up.

(07:08):
It wasn't much, but it was something. Lambertson looked so beat.
I didn't have the heart to ask him what Eron's wanted,
even though I know he'd like to get it off
his chest. Maybe tomorrow will be better. I spent the
day with Charlie Dakin in the lab and did a
little work for a change. I've been disgustingly lazy, and
poor Charley thinks it's all his fault. Charlie reads like

(07:31):
a twenty point type ninety percent of the time, and
I'm afraid he knows it. I can tell just exactly
when he stops paying attention to business and starts paying
attention to me, and then all of a sudden he
realizes I'm reading him, and it flusters him for the
rest of the day. I wonder, why does he really
think I'm shocked or surprised or insulted? Poor Charlie. I

(07:53):
guess I must be good enough looking. I can read
it from almost every fellow that comes near me. I
wonder why, I mean, why me and not Marjorie over
in the main office. She's a sweet girl, but she
never gets a second look from the guys. There must
be some fine differential point I'm missing somewhere, but I
don't think I'll ever understand it. I'm not going to

(08:13):
press Lambertson, but I hope he opens up tomorrow. He's
got me scared silly by now. He has a lot
of authority around here, but other people are paying the bills,
and when he's frightened about something, it can't help but
frighten me. Thursday, eighteen May, we went back to reaction
testing in the lab with Lambertson today. That study is
almost finished, as much as anything I work on as

(08:35):
ever finished, which isn't very much. The test had two
goals to clock my stimulus response pattern in comparison to normals,
and to find out just exactly when I pick up
any given thought signal from the person I'm reading. It
isn't a matter of developing speed. I'm already so fast
to respond that it doesn't mean too much from anybody

(08:55):
else's standpoint, and I certainly don't need any training there.
But where along the line do I pick up a
thought impulse? Do I catch it at its inception? Do
I pick up the thought formulation or just the final
crystallized pattern. Lambertson thinks I'm with it right from the start,
and that some training in those lines would be worth
my time. Of course, we didn't find out, not even

(09:18):
with the ingenious little random firing device that Dakin designed
for the study. With this gadget, neither Lambertson nor I
know what impulse the box is going to throw at him.
He just throws a switch and it starts coming. He
catches it, reacts, I catch it from him and react,
and we compare reaction times. This afternoon, it had us
driving up a hill and sent a ten ton truck

(09:40):
rolling down on us, out of control. I had my
flasher on two seconds before Lambertson did, of course, but
our reaction times are standardized, so when we corrected for
my extra speed, we knew that I must have caught
the impulse about zero point zero seven seconds after he did. Crude,
of course, but not nearly fast enough. And we can't
re produce on a stable basis. Lambertson says, that's as

(10:03):
close as we can get without cortical probes. And that's
where I put my foot down. I may have a
gold mine in this head of mine, but nobody is
going to put burholes through my skull in order to
tap it. Not for a while. Yet. That's unfair, of course,
because it sounds as if Lambertson were trying to force
me into something, and he isn't. I've read him about that,

(10:23):
and I know he wouldn't allow it. Let's learn everything
else we can learn without it first, he says. Later,
if you want to go along with it, maybe, but
right now you're not competent to decide for yourself. He
may be right, but why not? Why does he keep
acting as if I'm a child? Am I really? With
everything and I mean everything coming into my mind for

(10:45):
the past twenty three years, haven't I learned enough to
make decisions for myself. Lambertson says, of course everything has
been coming in. It's just that I don't know what
to do with it all. But somewhere along the line,
I have to reach a maturation point of some kind.
It scares me sometimes because I can't find an answer
to it, and the answer might be perfectly horrible. I

(11:07):
don't know where it may end. What's worse, I don't
know what point it has reached right now. How much
difference is there between my mind and Lambert Sin's. I'm
sy hi and he isn't, granted, But is there more
to it than that? People like Aaron's think so. They
think it's a difference between human function and something else,

(11:28):
And that scares me because it just isn't true. I'm
as human as anybody else. But somehow it seems that
I'm the one who has to prove it. I wonder
if I ever will. That's why doctor Custer has to
help me. Everything hangs on that. I'm to go up
to Boston next week for final studies and testing. If
doctor Custer can do something, what a difference that'll make.

(11:49):
Maybe then I could get out of this whole frightening mess.
Put it behind me and forget about it. With just
the sigh alone. I don't think I ever can. Friday,
nineteen May, Todayambertson broke down and told me what it
was that Erin's had been proposing. It was worse than
I thought it would be. The man had hit on
the one thing that I'd been afraid of for so long.

(12:10):
He wants you to work against normals, Lambertson said. He
swallowed the latency hypothesis whole. He thinks that everybody must
have a latent sigh potential, and that all that is
needed to drag it into the open is a powerful
stimulus from someone with full blown sigh powers. Well, I said,
do you think so? Who knows? Lambertson slammed his pencil

(12:32):
down on the desk angrily. No, I don't think so.
But what does that mean? Not a thing. It certainly
doesn't mean. I'm right. Nobody knows the answer, not me,
nor Erin's nor anybody. And Erin's wants to use you
to find out. I nodded slowly. I see, so I'm
to be used as a sort of refined electrical stimulator.

(12:54):
I said, Well, I guess you know what you can tell.
Erins He was silent and I couldn't read him. Then
he looked up. Amy. I'm not sure we can tell
him that I stared at him. You mean you think
he could force me. He says you're a public charge
that as long as you have to be supported and
cared for, they have the right to use your faculties.

(13:17):
And he's right on the first point. You are a
public charge. You have to be sheltered and protected. If
you wondered so much as a mile outside these walls,
you'd never survive. And you know it. I sat stunned.
But doctor Custer. Doctor Custer is trying to help, but
he hasn't succeeded so far. If he can, then it
would be a different story. But I can't stall much longer.

(13:39):
Amy Aaron's has a powerful argument. You're sy Hi. You're
the first full fledged, wide open, free wheeling sy Hi
that's ever appeared in human history. The first others in
the past have shown potential, maybe, but nothing they could
ever learn to control. You've got control, You're fully developed.
You're here, and you're the only one there is. Oh

(14:03):
so I happened to be unlucky. I snapped my gen's
got mixed up. That's not true, and you know it.
Lambertson said, we know your chromosomes better than your face.
They're the same as anyone else's. There's no gene difference,
none at all. When you're gone, you'll be gone, and
there's no reason to think that your children will have
any more side potential than Charlie Dakin has. Something was

(14:25):
building up in me that I couldn't control any longer.
You think I should go with Errands, I said, dully,
He hesitated. I'm afraid you're going to have to sooner
or later. Erin's has some latence up in Boston. He's
certain that they're latents. He's talked to the directors down here.
He's convinced them that you could work with his people,

(14:46):
draw them out. You could open the door to a
whole new world for human beings. I lost my temper.
Then It wasn't just Eron's or Lambertson or Dakin or
any of the others. It was all of them, dozens
of them, compounded year upon year upon year. Now listen
to me for a minute, I said, have any of

(15:07):
you ever considered what I wanted in this thing? Ever?
Have any of you given that one single thought, just once,
one time when you were so sick of thinking great
thoughts for humanity that you let another thought leak through.
Have you ever thought about what kind of a shuffle
I've had since all this started? Well you'd better think
about it right now. Amy. You know I don't want

(15:31):
to push you. Listen to me, Lambertson. My folks got
rid of me fast when they found out about me.
Did you know that they hated me because I scared them?
It didn't hurt me too much because I thought I
knew why they hated me. I could understand it, and
I went off to Bairdsley without even crying. They were
going to come see me every week, but you know

(15:52):
how often they managed to make it not once. After
I was off their hands. And then at Bairdsley, Erin's
examined me and decided that I was a crip. Well
he didn't know anything about me then, but he thought
SI was a defect. And that was as far as
it went. I did what Eron's wanted me to do
at Bairdsley, never what I wanted, just what they wanted,
years and years of what they wanted, and then you

(16:14):
came along, and I came to the study center and
did what you wanted. It hurt him, and I knew it.
I guess that was what I wanted, to hurt him
and to hurt everybody. He was shaking his head, staring
at me, Amy, be fair. I've tried, you know how hard.
I've tried. Tried what to train me, yes, but why

(16:36):
to give me better use of my sye faculties? Yes?
But why did you do it for me? Is that
really why you did it? Or was that just another
phony front like all the rest of them, in order
to use me, to make me a little more valuable
to have around. He slat my face so hard it
jolted me. I could feel the awful pain and hurt

(16:56):
in his mind as he stared at me, and I
sensed the stinging in his palm that matched the burning
in my cheek. And then something fell away in his
mind and I saw something I had never seen before.
He loved me. That man. Incredible, isn't it? He loved
me Me who couldn't call him anything but Lambertson, who

(17:17):
couldn't imagine calling him Michael, to say nothing of Mike
just Lambertson who did this, or Lambertson who thought that?
But he could never tell me. He had decided that
I was too helpless. I needed him too much. I
needed love, but not the kind of love Lambertson wanted
to give. So that kind of love had to be hidden, concealed, suppressed.

(17:41):
I needed the deepest imaginable understanding. But it had to
be utterly unselfish understanding. Anything else would be taking advantage
of me. So a barrier had to be built, a
barrier that I should never penetrate, and that he should
never be tempted to break down. Lambertson had done that
for me. It was all there, suddenly, so overwhelming it

(18:05):
made me gasp from the impact. I wanted to throw
my arms around him. Instead, I sat down in the chair,
shaking my head helplessly. I hated myself then. I had
hated myself before, but never like this. If I could
only go somewhere, I said, some place where nobody knew me,
where I could just live by myself for a while

(18:26):
and shut the doors, shut out the thoughts and pretend
for a while, just pretend that I'm perfectly normal. I
wish you could Lambertson said, but you can't, you know that,
not unless custerra can really help. We sat there for
a while. Then I said, let Errands come down, let
him bring anybody he wants with him. I'll do what

(18:46):
he wants until I see Custer. That hurt, too, but
it was different. That hurt both of us together, not
separately any more, And somehow it didn't hurt so much
that way. Monday, twenty two May, Erin's drove down from
Boston this morning with a girl named Mary Bolton, and
we went to work. I think I'm beginning to understand

(19:09):
how a dog can tell when someone wants to kick
him and doesn't quite dare. I could feel the back
of my neck prickle when that man walked into the
conference room. I was hoping he might have changed since
the last time I saw him. He hadn't, but I had.
I wasn't afraid of him any more, just awfully tired
of him after he'd been here about ten minutes. Oh

(19:30):
but that girl, I wonder what sort of story he'd
told her. She couldn't have been more than sixteen, and
she was terrorized. At first I thought it was Erin's.
She was afraid of but that wasn't so it was me.
It took us all morning just to get around that.
The poor girl could hardly make herself talk. She was
shaking all over when they arrived. We took a walk

(19:52):
around the grounds alone, and I read her bit by bit,
A feeler here, a planted suggestion there, just getting her.
I used to the idea and trying to reassure her.
After a while, she was smiling. She thought the lagoon
was lovely, and by the time we got back to
the main building, she was laughing, talking about herself, beginning
to relax. Then I gave her a full blast quickly,

(20:15):
only a moment or two. Don't be afraid. I hate him, yes,
but I won't hurt you for anything. Let me come in,
don't fight me. We've got to work as a team.
It shook her. She turned white and almost passed out
for a moment. Then she nodded slowly. I see, she said,
it feels as if it's way inside, deep inside. That's right,

(20:39):
it won't hurt I promise. She nodded again. Let's go
back now, I think I'm ready to try. We went
to work. I was as blind as she was at first.
There was nothing there at first, not even a flicker
of brightness. Then probing deeper, something responded only a hint,
a suggestion of something deep and hidden. But where what

(21:03):
was her strength? Where was she weak? I couldn't tell.
We started on dice, crude, of course, but as good
a tool as any. Dice are no good for measuring anything.
But that was why I was there. I was the
measuring instrument. The dice were only reactors sensitive enough two
balsam cubes tossed from a box with only gravity to

(21:24):
work against. I showed her first, picked up her mind
as the dice popped out. Let her through it. Take
one at a time, the red one first, work on it.
See now we try both once more? Watch it all right? Now?
She sat frozen in the chair. She was trying. The
sweat stood out on her forehead. Aaron sat tense, smoking,

(21:48):
his fingers twitching as he watched the red and green
cubes bounce on the white backdrop. Lamberton watched too, but
his eyes were on the girl, not the cubes. It
was hard work. Bit by bit, she began to grab
whatever I had felt in her mind seemed to leap up.
I probed her, amplifying it, trying to draw it out.

(22:09):
It was like wading through knee deep mud, sticky, sluggish, resisting.
I could feel her excitement growing, and bit by bit
I released my grip, easing her out, baiting her. All right,
I said, that's enough. She turned to me, wide eyed,
A I did it. Erin's was on his feet, breathing heavily.

(22:31):
It worked. It worked, not very well, but it's there.
All she needs is time and help and patience. But
it worked. Lambertson, do you know what that means? It
means that I was right. It means others can have
it just like she has it. He rubbed his hands together.
We can arrange a full time lab for it and

(22:53):
work on three or four lateance simultaneously. It's a wide
open door, Michael. Can't you see what it means? Lambertson
nodded and gave me a long look. Yes, I think
I do. I'll start arrangements tomorrow. Not tomorrow. You'll have
to wait until next week. Why because Amy would prefer

(23:13):
to wait. That's why. Erons looked at him and then
at me peevishly. Finally, he shrugged. If you insist, we'll
talk about it next week, I said, I was so
tired I could hardly look up at him. I stood
up and smiled at my girl, poor kid, I thought,
so excited and eager about it now, and not one

(23:34):
idea in the world of what she was walking into.
Certainly Erin's would never be able to tell her Later,
when they were gone, Lambertson and I walked down towards
the lagoon. It was a lovely, cool evening. The ducks
were down at the water's edge. Every year there was
a mother duck herding a line of ducklings down the
shore and into the water. They never seemed to go

(23:56):
where she wanted them to, and she would fuss and chatter,
waddling back time and again to prod the reluctant ones
out into the pool. We stood by the water's edge
in silence for a long time. Then Lambertson kissed me.
It was the first time he had ever done that.
We could go away, I whispered in his ear. We

(24:16):
could run out on Eron's in the study center, and
everyone just go away somewhere. He shook his head slowly. Amy,
don't we could. I'll see doctor Custer and he'll tell
me he can help. I know he will I won't
need the study center anymore, or any other place or
anybody but you. He didn't answer, and I knew there

(24:37):
wasn't anything he could answer. Not then Friday, twenty six May,
yesterday we went to Boston to see doctor Custer. And
now it looks as if it's all over. Now even
I can't pretend that there's anything more to be done.
Next week, Erin's will come down and I'll go to
work with him, just the way he has it planned.
He thinks we have three years a work ahead of

(24:58):
us before anything can published, before he can really be
sure we have brought a latent into full use of
his side potential. Maybe so, I don't know. Maybe in
three years I'll find some way to make myself care
one way or the other. But I'll do it anyway
because there's nothing else to do. There was no anatomical defect.

(25:19):
Doctor Custer was right about that. The eyes are perfect,
beautiful gray eyes, he says, and the optic nerves and
auditory nerves are perfectly functional. The defect isn't there. It's deeper,
too deep to ever change it. What you no longer use,
you lose, was what he said, apologizing because he couldn't
explain it any better. It's like a price tag. Perhaps

(25:41):
long ago, before I knew anything at all, the sigh
was so strong it started compensating, bringing in more and
more from other minds, such a wealth of rich, clear
interpreted visual and auditory impressions that there was never any
need for my own. And because of that, certain hookups
never got hooked up. That's only a theory, of course,

(26:02):
but there isn't any other way to explain it. But
am I wrong to hate it more than anything else
in the world. I want to see Lambertson, see him
smile and light his pipe, hear him laugh. I want
to know what color really is, what music really sounds
like I'm filtered through somebody else's ears. I want to
see a sunset, just once, just once. I want to

(26:25):
see that mother duck take her ducklings down to the water,
but I never will. Instead, I see and hear things
nobody else can. And the fact that I am stone
blind and stone deaf shouldn't make any difference. After all,
I've always been that way. Maybe next week I'll ask
Erons what he thinks about it. It should be interesting
to hear what he says. End of Second Sight by

(26:47):
Edward Allen Nourse