his familiar, the sorcerer's mysterious creature
companion.
Covering her surprise, Cree cleared her throat and took a sip of water from the glass on the podium.
"Excuse me!" she apologized. She scanned the nearer rows of the audience, located the earnest face of the woman who had spoken,
smiled, and found her thought again. "It's hard to explain, but I've been asked that question before and I've given quite
a bit of thought to how to answer it. I think I can convey the sensation to you if you'll follow along with me."
Moving to the side of the podium so that everyone could see her clearly, she raised her voice. "Put your index and middle
fingers together and place them just under your right ear, where your jawbone meets the muscle that comes up the side of your
neck. Got it? Now move the fingers forward, just under the jaw, until you feel them slide into the notch there. About halfway
to your chin." Cree tipped her head and tossed her hair back as she demonstrated. There. Most of the audience were obligingly putting their hands to their throats, wondering where she was going with this.
"You might have to push fairly hard. But you should be able to feel your carotid artery there—a rubbery cord about as big
around as a pencil? You can feel it stiffen and soften with every heartbeat."
She gave them a moment just to feel it.
"You're putting your finger right on your physical life. That throb—it's always been with you. Your heart's keeping you alive
without your conscious thought—it's living inside you almost as if it's a separate creature alive in your chest. It does
its job day in, day out. Most people don't like feeling it. We don't like to be reminded that there's an automatic part of
ourselves, going about its business without our conscious supervision. It's a little creepy, isn't it? Vital, insistent, sort
of foreign somehow? Yet of course it's deeply intimate, that pulse—deeply familiar, right?"
The audience was silent; most of them had their heads tilted, hands at throats. Some serious expressions, a few uncomfortable
grins. Two hundred people feeling the secret pulsing inside.
"So, to answer your question, that's how it feels. That's how . . . intimate it feels. That's how real it feels, how disconcerting it feels, to experience a ghost. Both physically and psychologically, that's the closest analogy
I can come up with. That's the way experiencing a ghost reminds you of what you really are."
And if you don't like that, Mason, if that's too "spiritual" for you, she thought defiantly, screw you.
At the rear, the silhouettes of Lupe and Mason Ambrose hovered, motionless as a trompe l'oeil painted on the back wall.
The woman who had asked the question was clearly among those who were uncomfortable with touching that pulsing serpent. She
nodded seriously, two fingers still held against her neck.
There was another moment of quiet, and then Dr. Zentcy, the conference's coordinator, moved from the wings and took over the
microphone. He was a pleasant-faced man who struck Cree as rather too young and too informally dressed to be an academic of
any kind, let alone head of the psychology department of a major university.
"And I think that should be our last question for Dr. Black today. Thank you, Lucretia, for a provocative talk, and for taking
so many questions. You've given us a great deal to think about. And thank you all for coming. Dr. Black's lecture is the final
event today, but I hope we'll see you all here tomorrow for the final presentations in this year's Horizons in Psychology
seminar."
The wash of applause was genuine, but as the room lights came up Cree didn't feel the gratifying release of tension that typically
came after she'd delivered a lecture. Mason Ambrose didn't just casually show up at conferences, and his presence disturbed
her. She hadn't seen him in four years, hadn't even spoken to him in perhaps two. If he was here, he had a reason. She
companion.
Covering her surprise, Cree cleared her throat and took a sip of water from the glass on the podium.
"Excuse me!" she apologized. She scanned the nearer rows of the audience, located the earnest face of the woman who had spoken,
smiled, and found her thought again. "It's hard to explain, but I've been asked that question before and I've given quite
a bit of thought to how to answer it. I think I can convey the sensation to you if you'll follow along with me."
Moving to the side of the podium so that everyone could see her clearly, she raised her voice. "Put your index and middle
fingers together and place them just under your right ear, where your jawbone meets the muscle that comes up the side of your
neck. Got it? Now move the fingers forward, just under the jaw, until you feel them slide into the notch there. About halfway
to your chin." Cree tipped her head and tossed her hair back as she demonstrated. There. Most of the audience were obligingly putting their hands to their throats, wondering where she was going with this.
"You might have to push fairly hard. But you should be able to feel your carotid artery there—a rubbery cord about as big
around as a pencil? You can feel it stiffen and soften with every heartbeat."
She gave them a moment just to feel it.
"You're putting your finger right on your physical life. That throb—it's always been with you. Your heart's keeping you alive
without your conscious thought—it's living inside you almost as if it's a separate creature alive in your chest. It does
its job day in, day out. Most people don't like feeling it. We don't like to be reminded that there's an automatic part of
ourselves, going about its business without our conscious supervision. It's a little creepy, isn't it? Vital, insistent, sort
of foreign somehow? Yet of course it's deeply intimate, that pulse—deeply familiar, right?"
The audience was silent; most of them had their heads tilted, hands at throats. Some serious expressions, a few uncomfortable
grins. Two hundred people feeling the secret pulsing inside.
"So, to answer your question, that's how it feels. That's how . . . intimate it feels. That's how real it feels, how disconcerting it feels, to experience a ghost. Both physically and psychologically, that's the closest analogy
I can come up with. That's the way experiencing a ghost reminds you of what you really are."
And if you don't like that, Mason, if that's too "spiritual" for you, she thought defiantly, screw you.
At the rear, the silhouettes of Lupe and Mason Ambrose hovered, motionless as a trompe l'oeil painted on the back wall.
The woman who had asked the question was clearly among those who were uncomfortable with touching that pulsing serpent. She
nodded seriously, two fingers still held against her neck.
There was another moment of quiet, and then Dr. Zentcy, the conference's coordinator, moved from the wings and took over the
microphone. He was a pleasant-faced man who struck Cree as rather too young and too informally dressed to be an academic of
any kind, let alone head of the psychology department of a major university.
"And I think that should be our last question for Dr. Black today. Thank you, Lucretia, for a provocative talk, and for taking
so many questions. You've given us a great deal to think about. And thank you all for coming. Dr. Black's lecture is the final
event today, but I hope we'll see you all here tomorrow for the final presentations in this year's Horizons in Psychology
seminar."
The wash of applause was genuine, but as the room lights came up Cree didn't feel the gratifying release of tension that typically
came after she'd delivered a lecture. Mason Ambrose didn't just casually show up at conferences, and his presence disturbed
her. She hadn't seen him in four years, hadn't even spoken to him in perhaps two. If he was here, he had a reason. She
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