Shift: A Novel

San Francisco, CA

November 7, 1963

Melchior stared at Chandler Forrestal’s body through the window of Chandler’s makeshift hospital room like a father looking at his first child in the neonatal ward. Asleep, Orpheus looked like nothing so much as what he was: a twenty-eight-year-old white man with a face that was a little old Hollywood, a little new: Gary Cooper circa The Virginian crossed with the young star of Splendor in the Grass, Warren Beatty. Even in a hospital robe there was something about him that could only be described as dashing, however fruity that sounded. He had that combination of hard muscles and soft hands that the children of privilege possess; the only lines on his body were faint wrinkles around his mouth from a lifetime of nervous frowning (although on Chandler they looked less like wrinkles than dimples). Melchior had read the files in BC’s briefcase, so he knew about the money Chandler’s family had had and lost, the Wall Street and Beltway connections that still leant a sheen to his name even if they’d long since evaporated. He’d also read everything the Bureau’s spies inside CIA had managed to ferret out about Project Orpheus, which pretty much confirmed what Everton had said. Either they weren’t telling him much, or there wasn’t much to tell. Whores. LSD. Unwitting test subjects and one-way mirrors. Putting aside the scandal that would erupt if the Mary Meyer-Jack Kennedy connection came to light, it sounded like Ultra all over again, and ten years of Ultra had produced nothing besides a couple of Company Christmas parties that got out of hand. Certainly no one seemed to have expected what Melchior had experienced at Millbrook three days ago (although the thought of a telepathic president was enough to make him chuckle). If he were the kind of man prone to self-doubt, he might’ve tried to convince himself he’d dreamed the whole thing up, rather than attempt to figure out how Chandler had managed to project hallucinations into Melchior’s head. But Melchior had never been wrong in his life.

“So, Doctor?” he said, turning to the other man in the room. “You’ve had seventy-two hours with Orpheus, not to mention ten thousand dollars to kit yourself out with all manner of toys. What have you learned?”

Heinrich Keller was almost the definition of nondescript: of medium height, medium coloring, medium age, he seemed to fade away if you looked at him directly. But if you glanced at him out of the corner of your eye, half listened to the things he said, you caught a glimmer of something. A hunger. His nickname in the SS had been der Anasthesiologe, “the Anesthesiologist.” Some people said it was because he put his interlocutors to sleep, but others said it was because he never, ever provided the same mercy to his subjects, no matter how much they begged or how loud they screamed.

“First of all,” he said, his soft voice only mildly inflected by a German mad-scientist accent, “let’s make sure we know what we’re looking for. Have you confirmed what Agent Logan gave him?”

“I went through Logan’s files as well as Scheider’s, and everything else I could find about Ultra and Orpheus. Unfortunately, Agent Logan didn’t survive his encounter with Orpheus, and it didn’t seem prudent for me to ask Doc Scheider too many questions—”

“Because you told them Orpheus was dead,” Keller said, a little smile twitching across his lips.

“Because it didn’t seem prudent,” Melchior repeated. “As far as I can tell, the only thing Logan had access to was pure LSD. A lot of LSD, but completely unadulterated. And he was spreading it around pretty widely too. Presumably if he’d been giving out some kind of altered or amped-up version of the drug, we’d have Orpheuses popping up all over the place—including the White House.”

“So the president is safe,” Keller said. “That still doesn’t tell us much.”

“That what’s I hired you for.”

“Indeed,” the doctor said, and it was hard to tell if he was being ironic or ruminative. “So: it was difficult to do anything at first, since being around Orpheus when he’s on LSD is disorienting, to say the least. However, it occurred to me that Thorazine, which has been used to bring people down from the ‘acid trip,’ might also protect the minds of the people around Orpheus when he’s exercising his power. My surmise proved correct, and, after adding some Preludin to counteract the numbing effects of the Thorazine, I was able to make some progress with my observations. As near as I can tell,” the doctor continued in his sibilant voice, “Orpheus externalizes LSD’s hallucinatory effects. He pulls images from the unconscious minds of people around him and manifests them to their conscious senses.”

“How do you know he’s not making up the images himself?” Melchior asked, without looking away from Chandler. He lay unconscious on a hospital bed, an IV dripping into his arm, his ankles, wrists, and waist fastened to the bed by leather straps.

“Suffice it to say that he’s produced some rather, ah, singular images during our time together.” The smile flickered at the edges of Keller’s mouth again. “However, I think Orpheus can manufacture images of his own, once he grows more accustomed to his new ability. But for now he’s seems to be like a television, only able to broadcast external data. But there’s more.”

“Namely?”

“I said Orpheus’s power is like a television: it can only broadcast what it receives. But the similarity is deeper: the person supplying the content—the other mind—can, once the channel is open, push thoughts into Chandler’s head.”

“And you know this because?”

Keller looked up from his clipboard, and this time the smile was broad and constant. Melchior was torn between the urge to vomit or hit him in the face. “The first time I gave Orpheus a dose of LSD and felt him in my mind, I panicked. When I am afraid, I imagine myself in the position of some of my past subjects. In their place. It was so real that if I hadn’t locked myself in the room adjoining Chandler’s, I am sure I would have killed myself as Agent Logan did.”

A part of Melchior was dying to know in what position, exactly, the ex-Nazi had imagined himself, but Keller was still speaking.

“The second time I gave Orpheus the drug, I was more prepared. When I felt him feeling around in my mind, I pushed back, and for a few moments what I concentrated on is what manifested itself around me. It was hard to maintain focus, though, and the illusion faded after just a few seconds. But I think that if someone learned to discipline himself—”

“He could manipulate Chandler without him even knowing it.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s very important that you keep this information from Chandler, Dr. Keller,” Melchior said. “Presumably once he learns it, he can also learn to defend against it.”

Keller nodded. “Of course, of course. Here,” he continued eagerly, “take a look at this.” He showed Melchior a