Simmons sat back and panted. He glared up at Carol. “Goddam it, don’t just stand there. Get a real doctor.”
GPEM suits are fast, but you have to watch out where you’re going. She narrowly missed trampling the Western Pope, and widened their door by half a meter.
50 – Mindbridge
Interspecies Communications With the Groombridge Bridge: A Summary
1. Invertebrates
The most interesting invertebrate tested in conjunction with the Groombridge bridge (also the first one) was another bridge.
Communicating with a bridge, via bridge, was not the immediate object of the experiment. The research team, in 2052, was trying to enhance the Groombridge effect by using more than one bridge per rapport-pair. If the two bridges touch, it turns out, the effect is diminished, not increased (though if the bridges are “in parallel”—one in each hand—the effect is the same as with one bridge).
Some of the investigators reported vague feelings of “apprehension” or “uneasiness” when one bridge touched another, though others reported no sensation. There was no apparent correlation between this subjective response and the investigator’s Rhine potential.
That the sensation is real was repeatedly verified by blind testing: the two bridges connected by a conducting circuit that could be opened and closed at random intervals by an unseen observer.
This same apparatus was used in experiments with terrestrial animals. Only a few invertebrates (such as the tarantula and the spiny lobster) produced repeatable responses. In no case could experimenters identify the response with any discrete human thought or emotion: in the words of one, it was “like the feeling you might get when some barely audible sound stops. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t concentrating.”
2. Vertebrates
All vertebrates give some response; with few exceptions, the strength and complexity of the response is a direct function of brain size. Best results, predictably, came from experiments with simians and cetaceans.
(One researcher, Robert Graham of Charleville, claimed to have established communication on a verbal, conversational level with a pair of dolphins. His investigations have recently been discredited, as detailed in Section H.)
Section I following deals with the well-known perception and learning experiments conducted by Theodore Staupe of Colorado on chimpanzees and great apes. Section II details related work done with cetaceans by this author.
The response of other mammals is interesting but wildly variable, depending on the tester and the individual animal. Domesticated animals give the most complex responses; wild ones react mainly with fear. Section III following is a tabular assessment of all vertebrate data.
3. The L’vrai
A total of eleven people have attempted bridge rapport with the L’vrai. Four recorded no meaningful responses, but six suffered (apparently instantaneous) cardiac arrest. One died; the other five are now confined to mental institutions, mute and apparently oblivious to external stimuli. Autopsy revealed only a slight lesion on the rhinencephalon, which might have predated rapport.
Of course there is one individual, Jacque Lefavre, who has repeatedly communicated with the L’vrai via bridge rapport. His highly subjective account of the experience is appended in Section VI following, through the courtesy of his publishers.
4. Apologia
Although this summary is profusely decorated with charts, graphs, statistics, and so forth, readers are warned to interpret our results with the skepticism they deserve. The data herein are for the most part subjective and nonrepeatable; where the data are quantified, the numbers are highly suspect. The summary is prepared in the spirit of a “state of the art” report, primarily to indicate directions for further research.
Hugo Van der Walls, Ph.D.
14 July 2062
AED Charleville
Contents:
I. The Groombridge Effect in Simians: Some Preliminary Observations (Staupe, Theodore; AED Colorado Springs).
II. Bridge Rapport Between Humans and Cetaceans (Van der Walls, Hugo, and staff; AED Charlevile).
III. A Statistical Survey of the Groombridge Effect (Van der Walls, Hugo, and staff; AED Charleville).
IV. Toward a Psychic Taxonomy (Van der Walls, Hugo; AED Colorado Springs).
V. Human/L’vrai Contact: Three Views (Jameson, Philip; Lefavre, Jacque; Chandler, Lewis; AED Colorado Springs).
VI. Mindbridge (Lefavre, Jacque; copyright © St. Martin’s TFX, 2060).
51 – Crystal Ball II
By 2090 people were getting nervous. Nobody but Jacque Lefavre had been able to maintain bridge rapport with the L’vrai, and Jacque was 75 years old. He probably had another quarter-century, but then what?