Brain Child Part 24

"I didn't mean to scare her," Alex said. "All she did was ask me if I thought Mr. Lewis did it, and I said I didn't."

"I know what you said," Carol sighed. "And I'm sure Lisa will get over it. But this morning she just wanted to go to school by herself. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Alex had replied. He'd said good-bye to Lisa's mother, then continued on his way to school. But he wasn't surprised when no one spoke to him, and he wasn't surprised when the cla.s.sroom fell silent when he came in.

Nor was he surprised to see that there was no empty seat next to Lisa.

He wasn't surprised, but neither was he hurt.

He simply made up his mind that in the future he would be more careful what he said to people, so they wouldn't think he was crazy.

He listened to the first few words of the teacher's history lecture, but then tuned him out, as he had tuned his parents out the night before. All the material the teacher was talking about was in the textbook, and Alex had read it three days earlier.

The entire contents of the history text were now imprinted on his memory. If he'd been asked to, he could have written the book down word for word.

Besides, what concerned Alex that morning was not the history text, but the book about the brain that he had borrowed from the library. In his mind he began going over the problem he had discussed with his father the night before, looking for the answer. Somewhere, he was certain, he had made a mistake. Either he had misread the book, or the book was wrong.

Or there was a third possibility, and it was that third possibility that he spent the rest of the day considering.

The idea came to him late in the afternoon.

His last cla.s.s had been a study hall, and he'd decided not to bother with it. Instead, he'd wandered around the campus, trying once more to find something that jogged one of his dormant memories to life. But it was useless. Nothing jarred his memory, and more and more, everything he saw was now familiar. Each day, there was less and less in La Paloma that he had not refamiliarized himself with.

He was wandering through the science wing when someone called his name. He stopped and glanced through the open door of one of the labs. At the desk, he recognized Paul Landry.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Landry."

"Come on in, Alex."

Alex stepped into the lab and glanced around.

"Recognize any of it?" Landry asked. Alex hesitated, then shook his head. "Not even that?"

Landry was pointing toward a wooden box with a gla.s.s top covering a table near the blackboard. "What is it?" Alex asked.

"Take a look. You don't remember it at all?"

Alex gazed at the crude construction. "Should I?"

"You built it," Landry said. "Last year. It was your project, and you finished it just before the accident."

Alex walked over to examine the plywood construction. It was a simple maze, but apparently he'd made each piece separately, so that the maze could be easily and quickly changed into a myriad of different patterns. "What was I doing?"

"Figure it out," Landry challenged. "From what Eisenberg tells me, it shouldn't take you more than a minute."

Alex glanced at his watch, then went back to the box. At one end was a runway leading to a cage containing three rats, and at the other was a food dispenser. Built into the front of the box was a timer. Forty-five seconds later, Alex nodded. "It must have been a retraining project. I must have wanted to be able to time the rate at which the rats learned each new configuration of the maze. But it looks pretty simpleminded."

"That's not what you thought last year. You thought it was pretty sophisticated."

Alex shrugged disinterestedly, then lifted the gate that allowed the rats to run into the maze. One by one, with no mistakes, they made their way directly to the food and began eating. "How come it's still here?"

Landry shrugged. "I guess I just thought you might want it. And since I was teaching summer school this year, it wasn't any trouble to keep it."

It was then, as he watched the rats, that the idea suddenly came into Alex's mind. "What about the rats?" he asked. "Are they mine too?"

When Landry nodded, Alex removed the gla.s.s and picked up one of the large white rats. It wriggled for a moment, then relaxed when Alex put it back in its cage. A minute later, the other two had joined the first. "Can I take them home?" Alex asked.

"Just the rats? What about the box?"

"I don't need it," Alex replied. "It doesn't look like it's worth anything. But I'll take the rats home."

Landry hesitated. "Mind telling me why?"

"I have an idea," Alex said. "I want to try an experiment with them, that's all."

There was something in Alex's tone that struck Landry as strange, and then he realized what it was. There was nothing about Alex of his former openness and eagerness to please. Now he was cold, and, though he hated to use the word, arrogant.

"It's fine with me," he finally said. "Like I said, they're your rats. But if you don't want the box, leave it there. You may think it's pretty simpleminded-which, incidentally, it is-but it still demonstrates a few things. I've been using it for my cla.s.s." He grinned. "And I've also been telling my kids that this project would have earned the brilliant Alex Lonsdale a genuine C-minus. Even last year, you could have done better work than that, Alex."

"Maybe so," Alex replied, picking up the rat cage and heading toward the door. "And maybe I would have, if you'd been a better teacher."

Then he was gone, and Paul Landry was left alone, trying to reconcile the Alex he'd just talked to with the Alex he'd known the year before. He couldn't, for there was simply no comparison. The Alex he'd known last year had disappeared without a trace. In his place was someone else, and Landry was grateful that whoever he was, he wasn't in his cla.s.s this year. Before he left that day, he took Alex's project and threw it into the dumpster.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

The kitchen door slammed, and despite herself, Ellen jumped. "Alex?" she called. "Is that you? Do you know what time it-" And then, as Alex came into the living room, she fell silent, her eyes fixed on the cage he held in his right hand. "What on earth have you got there?"

"Rats," Alex told her. "The ones from my science project last year. Mr. Landry still had them."

Ellen eyed the little creatures with revulsion. "You're not going to keep them, are you?"

"I've figured out an experiment," Alex told her. "They'll be gone in a couple of days."

"Good. Now, let's go, or we'll be late. In fact," she added, her eyes moving to the clock, "we already are. And you know how Dr. Torres feels about punctuality."

Alex started toward the stairs. "Dad and I aren't sure I ought to keep going to Dr. Torres."

Ellen, in the midst of struggling into a light coat, froze. "Alex, what are you talking about?"

Alex's face remained impa.s.sive as he regarded her. "Dad and I had a talk last night, and we think maybe something's wrong with me."

"I don't understand," Ellen breathed, although she was afraid she understood all too well. She and Marsh had barely spoken to each other this morning, and today he had, for the first time in her memory, failed to call her even once. And now, apparently, he was going to use Alex as a p.a.w.n in their battle. Except that she wasn't going to tolerate it, particularly when she knew that in the end, the loser would not be her, but Alex himself.

"I've been doing some reading," she heard Alex saying.

"Stop!" Ellen said, her voice sharper than she'd intended. "I don't care what you've been reading, and I don't care what your father and you have decided. You're still a patient of Raymond Torres's, and you have an appointment for this afternoon, which you're going to keep, whether you want to or not."

Alex hesitated only a split second before he nodded. "Can I at least take this up to my room?" he asked, raising the cage.

"No. Leave it outside on the patio."

As they drove down to Palo Alto, neither of them spoke.

"I thought your husband was coming today, Ellen." Raymond Torres remained seated behind his desk, but gestured to the two chairs that Ellen and Alex normally occupied.

"He's not," Ellen replied. "And I think we'd better talk about it." Her eyes s.h.i.+fted slightly toward Alex. Torres immediately picked up her message.

"I don't think the lab's quite ready for you yet," he told Alex. "Why don't you wait in Peter's office while he sets up?"

Wordlessly Alex left Torres's office, and when he was gone, Ellen finally sat down and began telling the doctor what had happened between herself and her husband the night before. "And now," she finished, "he's apparently convinced Alex that something's wrong, too."

Torres's fingers drummed on the desktop for a moment, then began the elaborate ritual of packing and lighting his pipe. Only when the first thick cloud of smoke had begun drifting toward the ceiling did he speak.

"The problem, of course, is that he's right," he finally observed. "In fact, today I was going to tell him that I want to check Alex back into the Inst.i.tute."

Ellen suddenly felt numb. "What...what do you mean?" she stammered. "I thought...well, I thought everything was going very well."

"Of course you would," Torres said. "And for the most part, it is. But there's something going on that I don't quite understand." His head turned slightly, and his gaze fixed on Ellen. "So Alex will come back here until I know what's happening, and have decided what to do about it."

Ellen closed her eyes for a moment, as if by the action she could shut out the thoughts that were suddenly crowding in on her. How could she handle Marsh now? If she left Alex at the Inst.i.tute, as she knew Raymond was going to insist upon, what could she say to Marsh? That he'd been right, that something was, indeed, wrong with Alex, and that she'd left him with a doctor who had apparently made a mistake? But then she realized that that wasn't what Torres had said. All he'd said was that something was wrong.

"Can you tell me just exactly what's wrong?" she asked, unable to control the trembling in her voice.

"Nothing too serious," Torres a.s.sured her, his voice soothing while his eyes remained locked to hers. "In fact, perhaps nothing at all. But until I know just what it is, I'll want Alex here."

Ellen found herself nervously twisting her wedding ring, knowing that if he insisted, she would inevitably give in. "I don't know if Alex will agree to that," she said so softly the words were almost whispered.

"But Alex doesn't have anything to say about it, does he?" Torres pointed out. "Nor, for that matter, does your husband." Then, when Ellen still hesitated, he spoke once more. "Ellen, you know that what I'm doing is in Alex's best interests."

Ellen hesitated only slightly before nodding. "But can't it wait a day?" she pleaded. "Can't I at least have a day to try to convince Marsh? If I go home without Alex this afternoon, I hate even to think what he might do."

Raymond Torres turned it over in his mind, briefly reviewing once again what his lawyer had told him only that morning: "Yes, in the long run the release will probably hold up. But don't forget that Marshall Lonsdale is not only the boy's father, but a doctor as well. He'll be able to get an injunction, and keep the boy until the issue is decided in the courts. And by then, it'll be too late. I know you hate it, Raymond, but in this instance, I suggest you try to negotiate. If you don't try to take the boy, perhaps they'll give him to you."

"All right," he said. "For today, I'll just take some tests, but tomorrow I want you to bring Alex back. You have twenty-four hours to convince your husband."

Alex had been in Peter Bloch's office next door to the test lab for almost five minutes before he saw the stack of orders on the technician's desk.

On the top of the stack, he found Torres's neatly typed orders relating to himself. He scanned the single page, trying to translate the various abbreviations in his mind, but none of it meant anything to him.

And then his eyes fell onto a line near the bottom of the page: "Anesthesia: SPTL."

He stared at the four letters for several seconds, then his eyes moved to the old IBM Selectric II that sat on the desk's return. The idea formed in his head instantly, and almost as quickly, he made up his mind. He inserted the page into the carriage, and carefully lined up the letters with the red guidemarks on the cardholder. Thirty seconds later he was finished, and the line near the bottom of the page was changed.

"Anesthesia: NONE."

When Peter Bloch came in a few minutes later, Alex was sitting in a chair next to the door, thumbing through a catalog of lab equipment. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the technician go to the desk and pick up the thin stack of orders.

"Hunh," Bloch grunted. "Finally talked him into it, did you?"

Alex looked up, laying the catalog aside. "Talked him into what?"

Bloch made a sour face, then shrugged. "Never mind. But if you don't like what happens today, don't blame me. Blame yourself and Dr. Brilliant. Come on, let's get started."

Twenty minutes later Alex was strapped securely to the table, and the electrodes had all been connected to his skull. "Hope you don't decide you want to change your mind," Bloch said. "I don't have any idea what's going to happen to you, but I can practically guarantee you it isn't going to be pleasant." Leaving Alex's side, he stepped to the panel and began adjusting its myriad controls.

The first thing Alex noticed was a strange odor in the room. At first it was like vanilla, sweet and pleasant, but slowly it began mutating into something else. The sweetness faded away, and was replaced by an acrid odor, and Alex's first thought was that something in the lab must be burning. Then the smoky scent turned sour, and Alex's nostrils suddenly seemed to fill with the stench of rotting garbage.

It's in my mind, Alex told himself. It's all in my mind, and I'm not really smelling anything.

And then the sounds began, and with them the physical sensations.

The room was heating up, and he could feel himself beginning to sweat as a shrill screaming noise cut through his eardrums and slashed into his mind.

The heat increased, and suddenly centered in his groin.

A hot poker.

Someone was pressing into his genitalia with a white-hot poker.

He could smell the sickly sweetness of burning flesh, and he writhed helplessly against the bonds that held him to the table.

The sound in his mind was his own voice screaming in agony.

The burning stopped, and he was suddenly cold. Slowly, reluctantly, he opened his eyes, but saw nothing except the blinding whiteness of snowflakes swirling around him, while the wind whistled and moaned in his ears.

Suddenly there was pressure on his left leg.

It was gentle at first, as if something were there, touching him every few seconds.

Then, its yellow eyes glaring at him through the blizzard, its fangs dripping saliva, he saw the face of the wolf.

The image disappeared, and as the beast's hungry snarl drifted high over the wailings of the wind, he felt its jaws close on his leg.

His flesh was being torn to shreds, and in the strength of the wolf's jaws, his bones gave way. His lower leg went numb, but he could sense his blood spurting from the severed artery below his knee.

All around him, the blizzard shrieked.

Suddenly the sounds began fading away, and with it the pain. The blinding whiteness of the blizzard began taking on tinges of color, and soon he was surrounded by a sea of soft blue. He felt the warm waters laving his skin, and a cool breeze wafted over his face.

He floated peacefully, rocked gently by the motion of the water, and then began to feel something else in the back reaches of his mind.

It was indistinct at first, but as he began to focus on it, it became clearer.