Strangers

had denied that the hand of God lay behind the miraculous cures and apparitional lights, it was clear to Dom that the priest secretly and deeply hoped to discover that, in fact, a divine Presence was at work. He wanted to be drawn back into his faith, into the bosom of the Church. If the miracles proved to be his own work, accomplished by the exertion of heretofore unrecognized psychic powers, and if those powers proved to have been conferred by a mere germ, as Ginger's crazy-but-canny theory would have it, Brendan's yearning for spiritual elevation and holy guidance would be unfulfilled.
        The salt shaker.
        Dom fixed his eyes on it and tried to clear every thought from his mind except the determined intention to move the shaker. Although he did not want to discover that he had these strange talents, he had to make a sincere attempt to employ them. He had to know if it were true.
        If the power existed, neither Ginger nor any of the others could suggest techniques for tapping it. "But," Ginger had said, "if it can explode spontaneously and spectacularly in moments of stress, surely you can learn to call upon it and control it whenever and however you desire… just as a musician can apply his musical talent any time he pleases. Or just as you apply your writing talent to the blank page."
        The salt shaker remained motionless, unaffected.
        Dom strove to narrow his attention until that humble glass cylinder - with its perforated stainless-steel cap and grainy white contents - was the only thing in his universe. He brought all his mind to bear upon it, every speck of his will, and tried to push it along the table, strained until he realized he was gritting his teeth, fisting his hands.
        Nothing.
        He changed tack. Instead of mentally assaulting the shaker as if he were blasting away with a cannon at the mighty walls of a fortress, he relaxed and studied the object to get an intimate sense of its size, shape, and texture. Perhaps the key was to develop an empathy for the shaker. "Empathy" was the word that seemed right to him, though he was relating to an inanimate and inorganic object; instead of battling it, perhaps he could empathize and somehow… induce it to cooperate in a short telekinetic journey. Only an inch. He leaned forward slightly to better examine the functional simplicity of its design: five beveled facets to make it easy to grip and hold; a thick glass bottom to provide balance and reduce the frequency of spills; a shiny metal cap…
        Nothing. Standing unaffected on the table before him, the shaker seemed like the mythical immovable object, heavy beyond weighing, welded forever to this spot in space and time.
        But of course, like all forms of matter in the universe, it was not immovable, and in some ways it was always moving, never still. After all, it was composed of billions of ceaselessly moving atoms, the outer parts of which orbited, planetlike, around the billions of sunlike nuclei. The salt shaker was engaged in uninterrupted motion on a subatomic level, frantically moving within its structure, so it should not be difficult to induce it to make one additional movement, one little jaunt on the macrocosmic level of human perception, just one little hop and skip, just one-
        Dom felt a sudden buoyancy, almost as if he himself were going to be moved by some arcane force, but instead - and at last - the salt shaker moved. He had become so deeply involved with that homely object that he had actually forgotten Ginger and the others; he was reminded of their presence when, as one, they gasped and exclaimed softly. The shaker did not simply slide one inch along the table - or two or ten or twenty. It rose into the air instead, as if gravity had ceased to have a claim on it. Like a tiny glass balloon, it floated upward: one foot, two, three, and stopped four feet above the surface on which, only seconds ago, it had appeared immovable. It remained suspended several inches above the eye-level of those who were standing, and they stared up at it in awe.
        At the far end of the table, Brendan's pepper shaker rose, too. Mouth open, eyes wide, Brendan stared at the rising cylinder. When it stopped at precisely the same height as the salt shaker, Brendan finally dared to take his eyes from it. He looked at Dom, glanced nervously at the pepper shaker again, as if certain it would crash down the moment he shifted his gaze, then looked at