Free Mind to Mind: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective by Don Pendleton

be even more farfetched than—
We both, after
all, experienced her. We didn't both ..."
    "Neither of us dissociated," I assured
her.
    "Well, what I was going
for... what I was trying ... say, just for argument, that the
personality does survive death and that Jane's somehow managed
to—what do they do, hover?—she stayed close, somehow, and
she telepathically stimulated our minds to ... well, to hallucinate."
    I said, "That doesn't wash, either."
    "Why not?"
    I sighed and reminded her
of the towel. Then I produced the Polaroids I'd taken of Jane. "And
how would you explain these?"
    She said, "Yeah, yeah," in hushed
excitement, tapped one of the photos with a nervous finger, added,
"Same towel, that's it. God, this just blows my mind, Ashton."
    I said, "There's more," and took her into my
office.
    "Message from Jane," I
explained, and handed over the printouts from the Tandy's graphics
program. There were three sets. "The first set is mine. My
interpretation of the images from Jane's mind while she was dying.
Second set is just doodling. Jane was here and I was showing her
how it works, inviting her to communicate. She passed. I found the
third set on the computer this morning, after you called
me."
    That third set was very
heavy stuff. If someone had said to me, "Draw me a map of the
subconscious mind," I might have produced something like that, if I
had the imagination and talent to do it. I have neither, so knew
very well that this was not my stuff, from whatever level of consciousness. It
was a riot of images, much of it very distorted spatially, like
images on a TV screen when the vertical and horizontal controls
are messed up. Numbers appeared here and there, distorted faces,
unrecognizable shapes and geometric patterns all jumbled together
in a dimensionality that showed no respect whatever for space-time
conventions. There were several feet of this, at an
eight-and-a-half-inch width, all appearing as a single "painting"
without borders or breaks.
    It awed Alison, as it had me. I left her
with it, to puzzle over on her own without distraction while I
showered and got dressed. She appeared behind me in my bathroom
mirror while I was shaving, held up the graphic, and pointed to a
particular design as she inquired, "Did you get the significance
of this?"
    I stared at the image in
my mirror. It all looked different, in reverse image. For some
reason the spatiality seemed somehow more congruent. The particular
design at question was a strange three-dimensional cube colored
solidly except for tiny "unpainted" background areas that now leapt
out at me as small numerals.
    I told Alison, "Looks like a number buried
within a cube, doesn't it?"
    She replied, "Yes. And I've spotted four of
them scattered about the mural. They—"
    I growled, "Well, dammit!"
    "What?"
    "Mural! You didn't
mean—you meant ...!"
    Alison was affected by my
excitement. "Well, like a mural, some murals. I know, a mural is a
picture painted on a wall. I meant ..."
    "Pictograph!" I nearly
yelled. “It's a hieroglyphic, dammit! Pictures representing an
idea. It's the most primitive form of writing!”
    Alison seemed confused but still affected by
my excitement. "Like the Etruscans? Early Egyptians? That kind
of—?"
    I said, "Sure. Straight out of the right
brain. That's the way they did it. The writing matched the
nonverbal symbols, not the sounds of the spoken language. It was
fucking mind-to-mind communication!"
    "I never heard it put that way before,"
Alison said uncertainly.
    "Neither did I," I admitted. "But I'll bet
it's true. And I'll bet Jane handled it the same way."
    I was dying to get my hands on that graphic,
but my hands were wet and I didn't want to smudge anything. Of
course, the whole thing was stored in computer memory and I could
run off all the copies I wanted, but my head was not settled enough
to think of that. I told Alison, "Let me get this lather off my
face and we'll have a go at that message from beyond. Do me a favor
while I'm