was the father, then?" he asked, impatient with her.
"I can't be sure. I believe it was either Peter Sandza or his son."
" Robin Sandza? "
"She must have told you about him."
"Gilly approached the matter, over a period of many months. The telling was difficult, her memories fragmented. This is all I know. Gillian believed that she and Robin Sandza were, her description, 'psychic twins.' Born at the same moment, to different mothers, during a solar eclipse, while other potent conjunctions of the planets were at their most effective. That eclipse may have been the catalyst for Gillian's ... for the 'gift' both children shared. They were to have been fraternal as well as psychic twins, she said, but the scheme went awry. The other baby you carried, Gillian's identical twin, strangled on his umbilical in the womb while Gillian was being born."
"The ethereal entity that became Robin Sandza had to find a different mother, and quickly; someone already far along in labor. Robin's mother was quite beautiful. She died young, of complications from an infected tooth. Peter Sandza was a covert MORG agent. He had to leave the raising of his son to his sister Fay, who was living a life of religious drudgery with an impotent fanatic. I learned much of this long after the events that took place at Psi Faculty."
"And there's some evidence that Gillian had sex with Robin's father?"
"Only supposition. Gillian wasn't able to tell me anything."
"Could she have recalled, under hypnosis?"
"I wasn't willing to put her through that. Why should I have? She'd had the baby, which she was in no condition to care for. At the time it seemed that she might never ... get her mind back. I already knew most of what had taken place. Peter Sandza and Gillian were on the run. He was desperate to find his son. Before they reached Psi Faculty they put up at an inn in Mount Carmel, Connecticut, then at a ski lodge called Shadowdown, which was not far from the Psi Faculty campus in the Adirondacks. I'm certain that they spent at least two nights together, sharing a room. In both places where they stayed, Sandza registered Gillian as his daughter. Of course he wasn't going to let Gillian out of his sight; she was the key to his recovering Robin.
"By then Gilly, in a variation of the captor/hostage syndrome, may have been emotionally dependent on him. They'd dosed her heavily with hypnotics and psycho-suppressive drugs at Paragon Institute. Virtually canceled her identity. That was my fault, for leaving her there. But I did so because I was terrified of my own daughter, unsure of my sanity. I had bled like a slaughtered pig. I needed to be sedated. Dr. Irving Roth and his associate from Paragon, a young Chinese woman, came to our house in Sutton Mews. They'd been highly recommended to my husband. I learned from Dr. Roth that Gillian had the power to make me, to make almost anyone, bleed, when she was in a psychometric trance. Roth put our dilemma in terms Avery and I could understand. He said, 'Are you familiar with the short story about the man who traveled in time and changed the fate of the world by accidentally stepping on a butterfly? When the man returned to his own time he found that because he'd been careless in a prehistoric epoch, the world was now a grotesque, savagely distorted place with nothing beautiful in it anymore.
"'Gillian,' Roth said, 'as she flashes back and forth in time according to her clairvoyant visions, is like the man who crushed the butterfly. Her very thoughts can significantly affect reality as we know it.'"
"We've come a long way since then, in our understanding and uses of the paranormal."
"Uses and misuses. The world has become the savagely distorted place Roth predicted, although none of it was Gilly's fault."
"She wanted to do good. To be of help, when the others sought her out. I didn't like it. MORG was still there. The opposition was too powerful. I was afraid something would happen to her. It happened."
He felt
"I can't be sure. I believe it was either Peter Sandza or his son."
" Robin Sandza? "
"She must have told you about him."
"Gilly approached the matter, over a period of many months. The telling was difficult, her memories fragmented. This is all I know. Gillian believed that she and Robin Sandza were, her description, 'psychic twins.' Born at the same moment, to different mothers, during a solar eclipse, while other potent conjunctions of the planets were at their most effective. That eclipse may have been the catalyst for Gillian's ... for the 'gift' both children shared. They were to have been fraternal as well as psychic twins, she said, but the scheme went awry. The other baby you carried, Gillian's identical twin, strangled on his umbilical in the womb while Gillian was being born."
"The ethereal entity that became Robin Sandza had to find a different mother, and quickly; someone already far along in labor. Robin's mother was quite beautiful. She died young, of complications from an infected tooth. Peter Sandza was a covert MORG agent. He had to leave the raising of his son to his sister Fay, who was living a life of religious drudgery with an impotent fanatic. I learned much of this long after the events that took place at Psi Faculty."
"And there's some evidence that Gillian had sex with Robin's father?"
"Only supposition. Gillian wasn't able to tell me anything."
"Could she have recalled, under hypnosis?"
"I wasn't willing to put her through that. Why should I have? She'd had the baby, which she was in no condition to care for. At the time it seemed that she might never ... get her mind back. I already knew most of what had taken place. Peter Sandza and Gillian were on the run. He was desperate to find his son. Before they reached Psi Faculty they put up at an inn in Mount Carmel, Connecticut, then at a ski lodge called Shadowdown, which was not far from the Psi Faculty campus in the Adirondacks. I'm certain that they spent at least two nights together, sharing a room. In both places where they stayed, Sandza registered Gillian as his daughter. Of course he wasn't going to let Gillian out of his sight; she was the key to his recovering Robin.
"By then Gilly, in a variation of the captor/hostage syndrome, may have been emotionally dependent on him. They'd dosed her heavily with hypnotics and psycho-suppressive drugs at Paragon Institute. Virtually canceled her identity. That was my fault, for leaving her there. But I did so because I was terrified of my own daughter, unsure of my sanity. I had bled like a slaughtered pig. I needed to be sedated. Dr. Irving Roth and his associate from Paragon, a young Chinese woman, came to our house in Sutton Mews. They'd been highly recommended to my husband. I learned from Dr. Roth that Gillian had the power to make me, to make almost anyone, bleed, when she was in a psychometric trance. Roth put our dilemma in terms Avery and I could understand. He said, 'Are you familiar with the short story about the man who traveled in time and changed the fate of the world by accidentally stepping on a butterfly? When the man returned to his own time he found that because he'd been careless in a prehistoric epoch, the world was now a grotesque, savagely distorted place with nothing beautiful in it anymore.
"'Gillian,' Roth said, 'as she flashes back and forth in time according to her clairvoyant visions, is like the man who crushed the butterfly. Her very thoughts can significantly affect reality as we know it.'"
"We've come a long way since then, in our understanding and uses of the paranormal."
"Uses and misuses. The world has become the savagely distorted place Roth predicted, although none of it was Gilly's fault."
"She wanted to do good. To be of help, when the others sought her out. I didn't like it. MORG was still there. The opposition was too powerful. I was afraid something would happen to her. It happened."
He felt
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