“Manners. Good.” He sat down across from her and waited while she sucked on the candy.
Nettie’s eyes kept straying toward his, but then she would catch herself and look away. She could sense the threat behind the doctor’s penetrating stare and soft-spoken voice.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
“An old monastery?”
He gave her a patronizing smile. “This is now part of a military research center, a very secret one. Do you know about secrets?” She nodded and he leaned forward, dropping his veneer of civility. “You are never to speak to anyone, not even the guards, about what goes on in here, or you will be punished.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Have you heard of psychic energy?” He started to pace, not expecting an answer. “It is the hidden force in the world, a force that the human mind can harness.” He stressed his next words, rapping his hand on his desk with each one. “Equal. In. Importance. To. Atomic. Energy.” He resumed his pacing. “With this force we can control the body and the mind, achieve telepathic or telekinetic power. See the past and the future.”
He pivoted to her. “Few people are born with the ability to access the source—and those who can are most capable in childhood. You are one of my children now, yes?” He picked up the candy bowl and offered her another.
Nettie nodded, knowing she could do nothing but acquiesce. She took a candy, feeling sick to her stomach.
“Mathematicians deal with space, physicists deal with atoms, and I study the connection between the two, the human psyche.”
He bent forward, as if to retrieve something, and what he pulled from his desk drawer made her entire body lurch. He had her grandmother’s cards.
“These cards are quite interesting. I’ve been told that you use them. Yes?”
Nettie nodded again, unable to speak.
“I’m fascinated with any system of divination that helps us transcend the mind. Tarot cards, theI Ching,runes… they are all codes and we are the code breakers.” He picked out a random card from the deck,The Emperor,and smiled. He obviously thought the card represented him. He showed it to Nettie to prove his point. He was the one in control.
“All symbols have power. They are the doorways that enable us to see beyond the illusion of time.” He looked through each card as he spoke. “Predicting the future is a wondrous thing. Nature has its irreversible processes—an egg cracks and it is broken—which makes time seem to point only in one direction, ahead. While in fact, outside the physical laws of gravity and thermodynamics, time does not move at all.”
Nettie forced herself to look away from the cards. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing how much she wanted them.
“We have already discovered that quantum physics is predictive. On the subatomic level, effect can happen before cause.” He placed the cards on the edge of his desk, as if extending an invitation. “People who see the future can engage their minds at the quantum level. What I want to know ishow.How do you do it?” He motioned to the cards, offering them to her. “By helping me in my studies, you will avoid the gulag. Your family has not been so lucky. Yes?”
With shaky hands, Nettie reached out and took the cards. An immediate feeling of calm washed over her when she held them, as if her grandmother were there, and Nettie felt like she could breathe again. Fighting back the tears pooling in her eyes, she held the cards in her lap like a schoolgirl sitting at attention. She had to figure out how to keep the cards. She couldn’t give them back.
The nurse entered with a tray. Evanoff picked up a large syringe and smiled. “You can keep your gypsy cards. They do not matter to me. What matters is the precious sight they inspire.” He came toward her. “We must find out all about it.”
Nettie quivered with terror. “Please,” she whimpered.
“Hold still or it will hurt worse.”
She watched the needle go into her arm. What scared her most wasn’t the drug, but the fact he looked at her as if she weren’t human.
For more than three years life was hopeless.
Every day the walls closed in tighter and the light grew dimmer. The children who shared the room with Nettie were all test subjects tethered together for the same reason. Like many scientists across Europe, Dr. Evanoff was attempting to grasp the para sciences—telekinesis, telepathy, precognition, and mediumship—in an effort to win the war. They were all mad dogs chasing the scent of something divine, because in this day, it seemed like nothing was.
From that first night on, Nettie shared Liliya’s mattress. The two slept side by side with their backs against each other, as if to protect one another in their sleep.
“Are you awake?” Liliya asked one night. When Nettie answered yes, she asked, “Do you remember Harry Houdini?”
“Of course,” Nettie whispered back. Though the magician had died the year she was born, everyone knew Harry Houdini.
“Don’t you find it odd that he was obsessed with all things mystical, yet he didn’t believe in mysticism? He spent most of his life trying to prove everything was a fraud.”
Nettie waited for Liliya to explain. Liliya rarely spoke of such things—she rarely spoke at all. So Nettie knew whatever was on her mind had to be significant.
“Even though he said he didn’t believe, he had his wife memorize a code with him. He said whoever died first was to communicate the code from the other side, to prove that life after death existed. All he wanted was the proof.” Nettie remembered hearing about this story. Liliya went on. “A year later, a medium said he was in touch with Houdini—that his spirit could not move on and be at rest. Houdini was desperately trying to get the code to his wife. The man presented the code to her and it was correct. ‘Tell all those who lost faith because of my mistake to grab hold of hope again, and to live with the knowledge that life is continuous. There is no death.’” Liliya hesitated. “He supposedly said that from beyond the grave. Houdini’s code was ultimately declared a hoax, even though his wife had written a public letter defending it. People didn’t want to believe. But I do,” she admitted softly.
