by John Saul
Both of them were dead.
Turning away from the two bodies, Dover gazed at the smashed tank and the mass of tissue that lay on the floor amidst the broken glass. Then his eyes shifted to the other tank, and the strange-looking object inside it.
A brain.
A human brain, suspended in some kind of fluid, a maze of wires sprouting from its cortex; tubes and more wires protruding from the arteries, veins, and nerve cord at its base.
A shiver passed through him as he scanned the complicated machinery surrounding the tank. A small pump was running steadily, and on a monitor above the tank the activity of the brain in the tank was still displayed.
Beneath the monitor a neat placard identified the brain waves it was tracking:
AMY CARLSON
A wave of nausea swept over Dover, but he managed to control it. “It isn’t possible,” he breathed, not even aware he’d spoken aloud.
“It’s just like the class,” Josh whispered.
“The class?” Dover asked, looking down at the boy standing next to him. “What class is that, Josh?”
Josh’s eyes never left the monitor as he spoke. “Dr. Engersol’s class. The seminar on artificial intelligence. W-We were monitoring a cat’s brain.” He fell silent, staring at the monitor.
Amy?
Could it really be Amy?
He wanted to cry, but clamped down on the sob that rose in his throat, threatening to choke him. “Sh-She’s not dead,” he whispered. “It’s just like I said. She’s still alive.”
Dover hesitated. “Josh, do you know how to work this computer? Can you shut it down?”
For the first time Josh’s eyes left the monitor, and he gazed up at the police officer. “Shut it down?” he asked. “B-But if we shut it down, Amy will die.”
Alan Dover squeezed Josh’s arm reassuringly. “She’s already dead, son,” he said. “She must be.”
Josh shook his head adamantly. “She’s not dead,” he insisted. “Look at the monitor. If she was dead, there wouldn’t be any brain waves. And they’re not even flat. It’s like …” He cast around in his mind. “It’s like she’s asleep or something! M-Maybe I can talk to her. Maybe I can wake her up!”
“Son, that’s just plain—”
“I have to try!” Josh exclaimed.
As Josh went to the keyboard and began exploring the programs that were not only keeping Amy alive, but had allowed Engersol to communicate with her, Dover picked up the phone that hung on one wall of the lab, knowing that this far below the surface of the ground, and surrounded by concrete, his radio would be useless.
“Phil?” Dover said when the desk sergeant at the police station answered his phone. “You know where Amy Carlson’s folks are staying?”
“Don’t have to ask,” Phil Rico replied. “They’re here, wanting to know what we’re doing about their daughter.”
Dover sighed. “Have someone bring them over here, Phil. It—Well, it seems like maybe their daughter isn’t dead.”
There was dead silence from the other end. Then: “Don’t jerk my chain, Dover!”
“Just do it, Phil,” Dover replied. He hung up the phone, then returned to Josh. He stared uncomprehendingly over the boy’s head at the computer screen, feeling more useless than he ever had before in his life.
31
Frank Carlson maneuvered his rented Toyota into a narrow space next to the police car that had escorted them up to the Academy. Two ambulances were already there, and though he switched off the engine, he made no move to get out of the car. Instead he gazed mutely at the crowd that had gathered in front of the mansion. Margaret, sitting next to him, slipped her hand into his.
“What’s happening?” she whispered. “Why are there ambulances here? What’s going on?”
Was it really less than half an hour ago that they had gone into the small Barrington Police Department to demand more information from the team investigating Amy’s death? All day yesterday they had agonized alone, asking themselves what they could accomplish by staying in Barrington. Margaret, still numb from the shock of her daughter’s death, had wanted to go home. “It won’t bring her back, Frank,” she said over and over again. “Even if they find that teacher, it won’t change anything.”
“We can’t just go home,” Frank had argued. “That son of a bitch might still be alive! And if he is, I want to see him! I want to hear him admit that he killed my daughter!”
That morning, Margaret had given in, and they’d gone to the police department to find out what progress had been made. But as they were talking to the detective in charge of the case, the sergeant on duty had interrupted them, sending them here.
“Talk to Sergeant Dover. Alan Dover. He’ll tell you what’s going on.”
Now, as they sat in the car watching the crowd in front of the Academy, a terrible sense of apprehension came over them. What did the ambulances and squad cars have to do with them?
Or with Amy?
“Are you going to be all right?” Frank asked his wife.
Margaret took a deep breath, then nodded. “I think so.” Steeling herself for whatever might be about to happen, she got out of the car and started toward the murmuring throng.
“Dr. Engersol’s dead!” she heard someone say.
“So’s Hildie Kramer,” someone else replied. “They found her in some kind of lab that no one even knew was there!”
Dead? Dr. Engersol and Hildie Kramer? Margaret heard the words, but they meant nothing to her. The Carlsons threaded their way through the crowd as quickly as they could, finally coming to the steps that led up to the loggia. A police officer blocked them from going farther. “Sorry, sir. Nobody’s allowed in the building right now.”
“I’m looking for Sergeant Dover,” Frank told him. “We’re Amy Carlson’s parents.”
The officer murmured into his radio for a moment, then turned back to them. “He’ll meet you in Engersol’s apartment. On the fourth floor.”
Nodding, Frank and Margaret Carlson moved into the building and started up the stairs. When they stepped through the door of George Engersol’s apartment, Margaret gasped and Frank instinctively put his arm around her.
Jeff Aldrich’s body, covered by a blanket, was being carried out of the elevator.
Alan Dover, softly issuing orders into his radio, signaled the Carlsons to come inside. Finishing his conversation, he turned his attention to them.
“Mr. and Mrs. Carlson?”
Frank nodded tersely while Margaret, her face pale, stood close by his side, her fingers clamped on his arm. Choosing his words carefully, Dover began filling them in on what had happened that morning. Finally, his eyes meeting Frank Carlson’s, he tried to explain what had happened to Amy. “We’re not sure of anything yet,” he said, unwilling to allow the Carlsons false hope before they understood exactly what was in the laboratory beneath the building. “But your daughter’s brain still seems to be alive.”
Margaret Carlson felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. Her face went ashen. “A-Alive?” she breathed. “B-But Amy’s dead! Her body …” Her words died on her lips as she rememberd the strange words in the coroner’s report, the words that Frank had refused to accept.
Amy’s brain had been missing from her skull.
A fish, someone had suggested. Or some kind of an animal.
But now …
“No,” she whimpered. “It isn’t possible. She’s dead! My daughter is dead!”
Frank Carlson’s arm slid around his wife’s waist, and he led her to the sofa. “Sit down, darling. Try not to—”
“No!” Margaret shook off her husband’s arm. Trembling, she turned to face Alan Dover. “I want to see what’s down there!” she declared. “If Amy’s brain is still alive, I want to see it!”
“Mrs. Carlson,” Dover began, but then, seeing the determination in Margaret Carlson’s eyes, the words he had been about to speak died in his throat. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take you down. But I want you to underst
and that what was going on down there was the worst kind of experimentation imaginable. As far as we know, at least one of the children who was reported to have committed suicide here, didn’t. And what happened to your daughter is … almost unimaginable.”
He led Frank and Margaret Carlson into the elevator. As the car slowly descended into the bowels of the mansion, he did his best to prepare them for what they were about to see.
The bodies of Jeff Aldrich and George Engersol, at least, were gone, and Adam Aldrich’s brain had been taken away as weü.
The lab was crowded now; Josh MacCallum was still there, along with two other officers and a man in a white jacket who looked like he might be a doctor, or at least a medic.
Margaret Carlson’s eyes fixed on the object in the tank, scarcely able to believe what she had been told.
“No,” she breathed again. “It’s not possible. Please, tell me that’s not …” Her voice trailed off as she found herself unable to utter the words.
The man in the white coat turned around as Margaret spoke, and Alan Dover quietly told him who she was.
“I’m Gordon Billings, Mrs. Carlson,” the white-clad man said. “I’m with the university medical center. We don’t know yet exactly what’s happening. All I can tell you is that the brain in the tank is human, and apparently is your daughter’s.”
“Is it alive?” Frank Carlson demanded.
Gordon Billing’s expression tightened. “Biologically, yes, it is. But as to its viability as a brain, I don’t know what to tell you.”
Frank Carlson’s expression hardened. “Tell us whatever you know,” he said. “Or what you think. We’re her parents, and we have a right to know exactly what happened to her.”
Josh MacCallum, who had said nothing until now, gazed up at Frank and Margaret. “Dr. Engersol took her brain,” he said. “He hooked it up to a computer. He did it to Adam Aldrich, too.”
Margaret Carlson felt her knees weaken, and she sank down into one of the chairs that flanked the desk. “Why?” she breathed. “What …?” But once more she couldn’t complete her question, as her mind reeled.
“She’s not dead, Mrs. Carlson,” Josh told her, his voice trembling. “She’s just asleep or something. Adam did something to her, and she went to sleep!”
Margaret stared numbly at Gordon Billings. “Is that true?”
Billings shrugged uneasily. “She’s in some kind of deep coma, yes. But it seems to be far beyond sleep. It looks to me as though her brain must be dying, although the instruments monitoring it indicate that it’s physically healthy.”
“Healthy?” Frank Carlson echoed. His eyes fixed on the tank, and he felt a terrible welling of anger coming from deep within him. “That’s not my daughter,” he declared, his voice strangling on his own words. “That’s not Amy!” His voice began to rise. “Don’t tell me that’s Amy! Do you understand? I will not accept that that—that thing—is any part of my little girl! No!” He was sobbing now, his rage suddenly dissolving into grief as the truth of what had happened to his daughter sank into him. “No,” he wailed again. “Not Amy! Not my little Amy!”
As his anguish filled the room, the lines on the monitor displaying Amy Carlson’s brain waves suddenly changed.
A blip appeared in the gentle wave pattern, a blip that lingered on the screen, slowly moving toward the left as the instruments gathered new data and displayed it on the monitor.
“She heard you,” Josh breathed, staring at the display. “Amy heard you!”
Out of the quiet and darkness into which Amy had retreated, a voice rang out, speaking her name, then died away almost as quickly as it had come. Amy’s first instinct was to cringe away from the stimulus, to retreat further into the shell she had built around her mind.
And yet the voice she’d heard was familiar.
Not Adam.
Not Dr. Engersol, either.
But familiar, nonetheless.
Terrified, she gathered her shell more tightly around her, willing herself not to respond to the stimulus, not to allow herself to be baited into whatever trap Adam had set for her this time. Memories of the demons still haunted her, and the fear that enveloped her was a palpable thing.
And yet a tiny tendril of her mind responded to that voice. Almost unconsciously, she opened a crack in that psychic shell. Reaching out with her mind, she took a tentative exploratory step into the world beyond the confines of her own brain.
She sensed instantly that something had changed.
The cacophony of stimuli that had assaulted her earlier was gone. She hesitated, certain that at any moment Adam would sense that she had opened herself again and let down her defenses, however slightly, and attack.
The attack didn’t ome.
She opened the crack in her shell wider and began to let her mind emerge once again. Still, she remained cautious, creeping forth into the computer’s circuitry, searching for the weapons she was certain were trained on her.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she began to sense that Adam was gone. She could no longer feel his presence, nor detect the stimuli emanating from his brain.
Was he hiding? Had he, too, closed himself down, waiting for her to drop her defenses entirely so that he could spring forth out of the black nothingness of the circuitry?
She reached further, exploring the world within the microchips and the data that were stored there.
Nowhere was there any trace of Adam.
There were voices coming through the microphone, though. A babble of voices that were being instantly digitalized and transmitted to her brain, tumbling over one another so that none of them was distinct.
She emerged completely from her shell, searching through the computer for some clue as to what had happened, some explanation for Adam’s disappearance. For she had already discovered that the support system for his tank was no longer functioning, nor could she find, anywhere, any trace of activity coming from his mind.
Ranging through the computer, she discovered the archive files, closely compressed, that the powerful Croyden had been steadily generating through every phase of the experiments that had been conducted in the laboratory. Reviewing them in an instant, she watched everything that had transpired in the lab while she had pulled herself down into the deep, black well she had imagined. It was as if she was experiencing a dream, the action as clear as if she’d been watching it herself, but being absorbed into her mind within the space of a split second.
From the still-running cameras suspended from the ceiling, she could see her parents in the laboratory now.
And Josh was there.
Other people, people she didn’t recognize at all.
Did they know what had happened in the laboratory? Or why it had happened?
Her mind fully functional once more, she began to work furiously, for suddenly she knew how it had to end—and what she must do to prepare for that ending.
“What is it?” Margaret Carlson whispered, her eyes riveted on the monitor displaying the activity within Amy’s brain.
Gordon Billings stared at the same monitor. What he saw was impossible. And yet there it was. The alpha patterns, the beta patterns, all of it familiar. And there was no arguing with what it told him. “She’s waking up,” he said quietly. “She’s coming into consciousness.”
“Consciousness?” Frank Carlson repeated. “That’s not possible! That’s not Amy in that tank! It’s not a human being at all! It’s nothing more than a mass of tissue! For God’s sake, someone turn that damned machine off and let it die!”
His words echoed in the room. For a moment no one said anything at all. Then, just as Gordon Billings was about to speak, a voice came from the speaker in the ceiling.
“Not yet, Daddy,” Amy said. “I’m not ready yet.”
Frank Carlson froze, and Margaret, at the sound of her daughter’s voice, instinctively glanced around the room as if half expecting to see her daughter hidden somewhere there.
“Amy?” Josh breathed. “Are you
okay? What happened?”
The adults in the room stared at the boy, who seemed to accept that what they were hearing was actually Amy Carlson’s voice, impossible though it patently was. But before any of them could react, Amy herself spoke once more.
“Adam tried to hurt me,” she said. “He tried to make me go crazy, and I had to hide from him.”
Josh frowned, trying to fathom what she could be talking about. Hide where? How? “But what happened?” he asked again. “They’re dead, Amy. Jeff and Adam, and Dr. Engersol. And Hildie, too. They’re all dead.”
Amy was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was trembling. “Adam killed them, Josh. He took over everything, even the elevator. I never meant for Hildie to die, but he took over and killed her. He killed them all.” Even as she spoke, Amy’s mind continued to work, manipulating data within the massive storage banks of the Croyden, sending and receiving stimuli with far more speed than even the Croyden itself could generate.
“You’re going to see me in a second, Mama,” she said softly. “I’ll be on the monitor above my tank. All you have to do is look up. And I can see you, too. I get images from the camera, and they come into my mind as clearly as if I still had eyes. I’m not dead, Mama. I’m just—different, I guess.”
Her mind half refusing to believe what she was hearing, Margaret Carlson, along with everyone else in the room, looked up at the monitor above the tank in which Amy’s brain was imprisoned.
Slowly, the image developed, built by the Croyden from the instructions generated within Amy’s own mind. It was an instantly recognizable portrait of a freckle-faced, red-haired girl, her face framed by a mass of red curls. And yet, it wasn’t quite Amy. Something about her had changed.
A whimper emerged from Margaret as she stared at the image on the monitor, and she clutched at her husband’s hand.
“You’re not wearing your glasses,” Josh said, cocking his head as he looked up at the face of his friend.
Amy smiled. “I hate them. I always hated them. So I’m not seeing myself with them anymore. Besides, I don’t need them anymore, do I?”