Part of Bradburn was irritated at himself for being a trained psychiatrist and not knowing which man was pretending to be insane. The other part of him was irritated at Cooper for not telling him.
The first patient had the craziest answers. Perhaps, the doctor reasoned, Cooper thought he was over-acting. The second patient had a history of being turned over to hospitals. Maybe it was a case of the Thinker’s family trying to save him from himself. The third didn’t say anything to make Bradburn think he was crazy—hadn’t really said anything at all—and yet he had been stark raving mad when they had found him. Did Cooper view him as a suspect just because he had been found near Burnley Park, where the light had or hadn’t appeared and where a man had or hadn’t fallen out of it?
The doctor could only stare at the agent and hope this would all be over soon enough. He had the suspicion that the Tyranny was testing him to see if he would indeed report having a Thinker at his hospital. The scary thing was that he had no way of knowing, based on how all of this was going, if he was passing or failing their test—if that’s what it was.
He reminded himself that as long as he kept his head down and did what the Tyranny wanted, he would be fine. Sure, some of his staff had been dragged away and were never seen or heard from again. And yes, others had their money taken during checkpoint searches when they couldn’t prove it wasn’t going to be used for some nefarious purpose. These things had never happened to Dr. Bradburn, though, because the Tyranny only singled out people it had a reason to single out. And as long as he didn’t give them that reason, he knew he would be fine.
When Agent Cooper ignored the previous question, Bradburn said, “Help me understand.” His shoulders slumped as he spoke.
Agent Cooper took in a long breath, carefully eyeing the doctor the entire time. Seeing a man who wanted reassurance and not someone who was questioning him or his authority, he exhaled and patted the doctor on the shoulder.
“Let’s conduct an experiment,” the agent said.
“What kind of experiment?”
Cooper leaned to the side, opened his briefcase, then withdrew a black leather pouch. Unzipping it, he handed the doctor three small vials.
“What is this?” Bradburn said.
“A truth serum,” Cooper said, smiling. “Of sorts.”
It sounded more exotic than Bradburn knew it actually was. The doctor sometimes used psychoactive drugs to elicit feedback from patients. “Sodium thiopental? Amobarbital?”
Cooper winked and said, “A specialty blend, made by the Tyranny’s scientists.”
“What do we do with it?”
“Give each patient a shot. Then go through the questions with them again. You’ll see who the Thinker is.”
8
The Theta Patient Page 7