GRGR(3): Jessica and Roger, Mind-to-mind

[keith woodward]

At p.58, the reader seems to get a taste of Jessica's own capacity of ESP.
As Roger is working himself into a frenzy over the Psi Section, he finds
himself incapable of speech, yet Jessica seems to be aware of what he was
going to say.  It's a strange passage because, at the same moment that
Roger appears to be rejecting the notions had by the Psi Section, Jessica
comes to embody (at least one of) them: "communication mind-to-mind" (GR
58.8-9), one of a list of many actions Roger finds unlikely, becomes:

"[...]*how does she know* [...] know so exactly what Roger meant to say?

	"*Mind-to-mind* [...]" (58.11-16).

It seems to me that P is hitting on that sympathetic tendency between
lovers which makes itself apparent in actions like Jessica's, being able to
finish another's sentence, &c.  It's a fairly common experience, I suspect.
But the phrasing here (the seeming connection between the question that
ends the first paragraph here and the opening of the second), when joined
with the certainly ESP-based Pis Section notion earlier in the paragraph,
seems to connect jessica to the Psi Section.

Roger is considered by the Psi Section people to have a special power
because he can reasonably predict the distribution of rocket hits across
the London grid.  Both his and Jessica's, er, special powers seem to be
situated within the (relatively speaking) mundane: mathematics and love.
Yet much of the novel appears to revolve around these two subjects
(particularly contemporary mathematics (is that the term I want?
Statistics, maybe...), which examines randomness).  [The Blicero/Gottfried
thread has continued to blossom in the midst of this...]  Love in
particularly seems to be often ignored in GR, but aren't there instances
where it attempts to rear its head?  Roger for Jessica, Slothrop (perhaps)
for Katje?  I don't mean so much the nasty dynamics of the relationships,
but the ways that characters think about the other.

It also seems interesting that Roger is capable of calculating situations
of death and Jessica situations of sexuality...

Keith W