announcement that all mediums were being tested so that their abilities, if any, could be used in the war effort went out, the Foundation had been besieged by applicants. The big names, of course, had refused to show their faces. They were scared spitless of The Amazing Randi and with good reason. He knew the tricks they used and how to expose them, submitting to tests by him would destroy their livelihood. That reasoning hadn’t helped them, they had found themselves being picked up by the FBI, bundled into the back of a Chevvy Suburban and brought down to the Foundation. A few hours later, they had been on their way back, their fraudulent claims exposed and discredited.
“Not one. Not one genuine medium in the whole lot. There was a time when that would have delighted me but not now. We know there’s something out there but we can’t get at it. It was easier being an atheist, now I don’t know what to believe. Guess that makes me agnostic.”
“No, James. I know that the idea an agnostic lies between the extremes of atheism and religious fanaticism but it does not. It is a separate line of thought. An atheist denies the existence of any sort of god, the theist affirms it. An agnostic believes that the existence or non-existence of a god can never be proven, the Gnostic believes that the existence or non-existence of a god is subject to rational proof. If I understand your position correctly, you were a Gnostic Atheist. You denied the existence of a god and thought you could prove that your denial was correct.”
“And I was wrong, General.”
“Why James? We know now that there is life after death, that is undeniable. We know that the afterlife is ruled by beings. Why do you believe those beings are gods? We have already proved we can kill their servants with almost absurd ease. Why cannot we kill them as well? They’re probably more trouble than they are worth anyway.”
“We don’t like our gods, so we kill them. Now that’s a soldier talking.”
“No James, it is not. A soldier fights for those who cannot fight for themselves. Today we fight for all those who have died, who are being held in horrid slavery. We fight for all humanity, past, present and future. You are part of that fight, don’t forget it. In this war, you are as much a soldier as I.”
“General, while we are speaking on this subject, may I ask something? How does The Message affect you and your people? Few or you are Christian.”
“On one level James, The Message does not concern us. I am a Buddhist, so are more than 90 percent of my people. The Lord Buddha was not a god, he was a man. A very wise man who laid down rules for living one’s life as well as possible on an imperfect earth. Good rules that when applied mean one lives a good life. To us, being a Buddhist simply means following those teachings, I could give you a long lecture on what that means but here is neither the time nor the place. When we meditate we simply ponder the teachings of the Lord Buddha and try to seek enlightenment on how they can solve our problems. When we pray to him, we simply are asking him what he would do under these circumstances. Any question of gods or devils is quite irrelevant to that center core belief. In my country, we are animists, we believe that everything has a spirit that lives in it, a spirit we can talk to and who will talk back to us. So The Message didn’t affect us much. On another level, what does affect us is the assertion that all humans go to eternal punishment no matter what they believe. The Message made no distinction between the religions or stated that one would be exempt while another was condemned. All humans are subject to the same fate. So we fight. That’s why governments pay us the big bucks.”
“Which brings us back to where we started. We’ve been pulling in every psychic, every medium, every fortune teller we can find. When we’ve exhausted this country’s supply, we’ll start abroad. Yet, for all our efforts we have not come up with one single person who can actually speak to the dead. What if there are none? What if the dead are indeed beyond contact?”
The General finished her whisky and refilled her glass. “Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. Perhaps we should consider the possibility that so-called mediums cannot speak to the dead but that those who can speak to the dead are not mediums. After all, let us suppose that one can communicate with the dead. What will we learn? That the dead are subject to an eternity of hideous torture, without hope of end or reprieve. That the same fate awaits us all. Now, the grieving family of a dead person turns up on our doorstep. They want reassurance, they want to know that their beloved husband, or wife, parents or children have gone to the better place promised, that they are happy in their afterlife. Would you tell them the truth? That a terrible fate has fallen on them and that the same awaits their relatives?”
Randi shook his head. Such cruelty would be inconceivable. Thinking about it, The Message itself was an act of diabolical cruelty, one that only a truly foul mind could conceive. When Satan had proclaimed his dominion over the Earth and proclaimed that all its souls belonged to him, regardless of virtue or cause, he had fully lived up to his reputation. “So where do we look?”
The General sipped her whisky, savoring its smoky taste. “Imagine yourself as someone who can speak to the damned dead, know their pain and anguish, feel their agony, know that the same fate awaits you and that there is no hope, that the fate ahead is what inevitably awaits you. What would you do?”
Randi thought for a second. “I think I would go mad.”
The General looked over the rim of her glass. “Quite. So shouldn’t we start looking amongst the mad? Looking at those who hear voices, voices whose messages are so dreadful that they have driven the listener insane? All through history there have been those who have claimed they have heard voices that drove them to acts of rage or despair. They’ve always been treated as though they were insane but suppose they were not? Suppose they really did hear voices, either accidentally or deliberately. In ancient times, such people were described as possessed but in our arrogance we assumed otherwise. We assumed that they were sick, that they had a mental defect that we could treat. Perhaps they were not, perhaps they really were possessed by the demons who now assail us. That they were victims of the hideous game we are now playing to its final act.”
“So we should start looking amongst the mentally ill. That will be a long job.”
“It will indeed, James, but it is one we can move fast on. We are looking for specific kinds of people, those who hear voices that drive them insane. I think computers can help with this, we need to have the records searched so that we can find the most promising cases. Then we can bring them here.”
Office of the National Science Advisor, Washington D.C.
“Call for you, Doctor Surlethe. From Florida.”
“Thank you, put it through.” Surlethe waited for a moment. “Surlethe here.”
“Doctor, this is the James Randi Educational Foundation.” Surlethe recognized the contralto voice, one that had a threatening growl underneath it. The sound of a well-fed tiger that was eying a small animal with the thought that it had just a little room left in its stomach.
“Ah yes General. How is the research going down there?”
“We’ve hit a dead end, our initial concept was wrong so we’re changing tack. We’re writing off the known mediums etc as source material, its pretty obvious they’re all frauds and confidence tricksters. Instead, we’re going to start looking at people who claim to hear voices in their heads and are under treatment for such ‘delusions’.”
“So you and The Amazing Randi think that some of them really do hear voices.” Surlethe’s voice was bitter. Scientists had never forgiven Randi for exposing tricksters whose acts had fooled ‘scientific’ testing. Randi had pointed out that the skills needed to expose a fraud were different from those needed to conduct an experiment. It hadn’t helped, if anything it had made things worse.
“We do. What we need you to do is to get as much information on such cases to us as possible so we can start working through them. Also, I read the note about the search for energy fields? Can you get some instrumentation down here pretty quick, if we do start finding what we’re looking for, we should be able to measure what it is they’re hearing.”
“I’ll get the equipment sent down, along with some experts to install it. Thank you General, and good luck.”
Surlethe leaned back in his seat. A new front had been opened against the forces that were threatening humanity. While the armed forces were picking off the baldricks who appeared in earth, science and reason were striking at the very heart of their power. For the first time since The Message, Surlethe felt good.
Chapter Five
