a deck of twenty-five cards, consisting of five sets of five simple symbols. Pure statistical chance would be a guess of five cards out of twenty-five, or 20% correct. Any score significantly greater than 20% correct was an indicator of psychic ability, and Rhine discovered test subjects who could predict the cards with accuracy far beyond statistical chance.
Rhine went on to perform laboratory tests of psychokinesis, the movement of objects by the mind, using motorized dice-throwing machines, and in the early sixties his researchers conducted field investigations of poltergeists.
Poltergeists? Laurel thought, startled. They were investigating poltergeists?
And then on the last placard she found the sentence that stopped her dead.
When the Duke lab closed in 1965, seven hundred boxes of research material from the parapsychology lab were sealed and stored in the basement of Perkins Library. Now for the first time in forty-five years, those boxes have been made available for public viewing.
Laurel had to read that last part three times before it fully sank in.
Seven hundred boxes of original parapsychology research material? Right here in this very building? And available to anyone who wanted to look?
She felt behind her for a chair and sat down hard, a little breathless.
It was sensational. It was unbelievable, really, that she hadn’t read or heard about any of this.
Surely someone had already claimed this topic, was writing articles, papers …
J. Walter Kornbluth’s voice suddenly spoke clearly in her mind. “These days nothing less than a book will do.”
Laurel looked over at the glass case, and thought with crystal clarity: This is my book. Her whole body was tingling, her face warm and flushed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you thinking?” she muttered to herself. You’re a psychologist, a research professor. Parapsychology has nothing to do with your life’s work.
Oh, yeah? What life’s work is that? some alien voice whispered back, mocking.
And she hadn’t felt a rush like this, hadn’t felt so enthused, since, well, since before the dream had shattered all her ideas of reality.
She stood from the chair, moved past the glass case in a daze, and went into the main reading room to find the librarian.
As always, Laurel approached Dr. Ward with some caution, and hovered some distance from the tall dark desk. Ward looked her over with a slightly raised eyebrow, and Laurel remembered that she was still in cocktail-party attire. She felt blood rising to her cheeks, and surreptitiously tugged the hem of her dress down.
“I was just reading the exhibit about the Rhine Lab,” Laurel began. “I guess I somehow forgot all that happened here.” Now that she was thinking about it, it hit her that the auditorium downstairs in the Psych Building was called Zener Auditorium. I must have been asleep not to put it together.
“Thirty-eight years,” Ward agreed laconically. “Put the university on the map.”
Encouraged by a whole two sentences from the librarian, Laurel pressed on. “I’d like to know more about it—all. Is it really true that there are seven hundred boxes of original research files right here in the library?”
“There are indeed,” the librarian said, without smiling. Laurel had never seen her smile. “Seven hundred boxes.”
“And anyone can just look at them—any time?”
“Any time.”
Laurel hazarded another question. “Is there some study being done, then?”
“A study?” The librarian repeated.
“A research project, or a book being written, or … I mean … if seven hundred boxes of original research have just been opened to the public, isn’t someone going through them?”
“There have been a few,” the librarian said noncommittally.
“Of course,” Laurel said. There was no reason to think otherwise, after all. She stood for a moment, then suddenly asked. “Do you know why the department was shut down?”
The librarian raised her eyebrows.
“The parapsychology lab was so famous, and then …” Laurel nodded back toward the display case. “The placards say it shut down entirely in 1965 … and I wondered why.”
“Dr. Rhine was approaching retirement age and wanted to move his research to a private institution where he could continue his work,” Dr. Ward recited without inflection.
“That makes sense,” Laurel admitted. “But why shut the whole lab down?”
Again the librarian looked up at her without speaking. This time Laurel didn’t notice; she was off on her own train of thought.
“And why were they sealed?”
The librarian regarded her impassively.
“The boxes,” Laurel elaborated, for some reason feeling uneasy. “Why were they sealed, for all those years?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Ward said.
“Thanks,” Laurel said. Her mind was already a million miles away. “Thanks.”