Analog SFF, March 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Lucinda shuddered. That faint warning had just become a klaxon. “I know. I'm taking another long step down a road ... but no, we have to do this. It's our best shot; maybe our only one."

  "I agree completely,” Curt said. “And for what it's worth, I'll be doing the overlays. It's my overt act, not yours."

  "That's ... well, it's something. Thanks."

  "No problem. Here's to success.” He touched unopened beer cans with her. “Now drink up. You could use it."

  * * * *

  Lucinda and Curt prepared the equipment in the scanning room. Two Secret Service agents watched over their shoulders, while a third swept the room for any conceivable threat. The doctors made no protest. The more secure the president felt here, the better.

  The third agent finished and left, with no indication whether she was satisfied or not. The others remained, silently observing. Lucinda felt no fear, only a quiet suspense. If Curt's face meant anything, he didn't even feel the suspense.

  A moment later, agents and soldiers squeezed through the door, with President Burleigh two steps behind their phalanx. Curt automatically stood, and Lucinda followed a split-second behind. Burleigh's eyes fell on both of them, and Lucinda felt the first tiny kink in her stomach.

  "Everything set up for me, Curtis?"

  "Just a couple last things to do, Mr. President. I can finish those while you're getting into the machine. You can take off the coat and tie, if you like. Lucinda, I'll handle it here. Head up to the monitoring booth."

  "In a moment, doctor.” She shrugged off Curt's surprise, and walked as close to Burleigh as his guards would allow. “Mr. President ... I owe you an explanation."

  Burleigh's eyes grew guarded. “About what, Dr. Peale?"

  "About how our relationship started off. I think you've heard part of it: that you were taking the side of my old adversary in office politics, and I resented it. That's completely true, but it isn't the entire story."

  Curt whispered her name, but Burleigh gave a sharp “Go on."

  "Well. It may be a character flaw of mine, but I hate being strong-armed, coerced, no matter by whom, no matter for what reason. Even if there are legitimate and urgent reasons for it, when someone pushes me, I get my dander up and I push back. That's what I did to you the day we first met. Regardless of how right you were, I was pushing back.

  "I wanted you to know that I did things wrong that day, and regret it ... and that I see things differently now. I see you differently now, especially after what certain people tried to do against you and your program. You've proven yourself to be ... an American Pericles.” Her eyes wavered. “I only hope you'll accept my apology."

  "Of course,” Burleigh puffed out. He reached for Lucinda's hand. She kept her grip soft, letting his firm pump dominate her. “And may I say, you're showing an uncommon maturity. I'm glad I was wrong about you, Dr. Peale."

  "Thank you, sir,” she breathed, and took back her hand. She passed close to Curt. “I'll be in the monitoring room, doctor."

  She made it to the monitoring booth without her serene visage cracking. Once inside, where she could be sure of some camera being on her, she kept herself looking professional. She switched on the live feed from the scanning room. President Burleigh was being secured onto the bed for the MEG scanner. He had his coat and tie off, and his collar open.

  She allowed herself a smile. He definitely was relaxed.

  He slid inside, and Curt began asking baseline questions. Lucinda could work through this part blindfolded by now. Soon, Curt had the president talking about his policies against terror and hate, and the need to defeat opposition to his initiatives. Burleigh needed little prompting to speak at length.

  Lucinda noticed something unusual and took a closer look. The prefrontal cortex was a patchwork, highly overaroused in places, underaroused in others. His sense of the morality of his actions was at once dulled and hyper-aware. She followed the exchange while checking records from some minutes back and finally saw the pattern. He was convinced of his own righteousness, and much less concerned about the effects he had on others.

  Seen that way, she could scarcely be surprised.

  Having primed his patient, Curt switched to having Burleigh reread passages from his speeches. Lucinda buckled down: here was the payoff.

  Burleigh gave a good performance, and had no hesitation in giving a repetition, “just to be sure.” During his second excerpt, Lucinda thought she recognized a flash of activity, focusing into Wernicke's area and then out again. Was that “own?” Was that the shape of a single word in a man's brain? Fortunately, she didn't have to decide that now, by herself.

  Curt soon wrapped up the session and made sure to lavish thanks on the president for consenting to assist them. “Of course, Curtis, of course,” Burleigh answered, as an agent helped him on with his coat. “How could I decline something so important?"

  Like myself? Lucinda imagined him adding.

  Once Curt had seen Burleigh out and shut down the equipment, he joined Lucinda in the monitoring room. They kept their conversation on the work of crafting the new template, work that would take them some time. Paring away the unnecessary pathways of neural activity was the easy part, the first chiseling of a granite block into a statue. Deciding what to include was the finer work—especially in one instance.

  Curt waited a while before viewing the particular snippet Lucinda had saved for him. She noticed his attention, but kept to her end of the work, in case eyes were prying. Finally he spoke up. “Is this bit worth keeping?"

  That was the code phrase they had settled on in his rooms. “I thought so,” she replied, acting casual. “Let's make sure."

  It took only a few minutes to be sure, and into the template it went. They finished the rest briskly, but not in obvious haste, and uploaded the result to the template bank. They both sighed as one, then smiled as one.

  "Will I see you later this evening?” Curt asked.

  "Yes,” said Lucinda. “It'll be good to relax. See you then.” With that, they left the booth, their performances done.

  Lucinda checked in at her dormitory's information center—no messages—then, finding her cot vacated early, lay down for half an hour to think. Next came dinner in the canteen: the salmon wasn't really good, and she didn't really mind. Then came a short walk along the dark streets of the Mount, before she turned herself toward a familiar building and fished out her passcard.

  Curt met her at his door. She was already sitting on his bed when he eased the door shut. He walked up, quite calm and cool until the disbelief finally broke out all over his face. “Where did that come from?"

  "You mean my buttering up the president? Did you like it?” She couldn't hold back a spreading grin.

  "Like it! You—you should have told me—but no, I would have told you not to. And you totally sold him. How did you pull that?"

  "I told you, the best way to deceive someone is with the truth.” Lucinda began ticking off her fingers. “I do hate being coerced. I do regret how I handled things that day, because I didn't either play along and act eager or just sock him in the nose.” Curt swallowed a laugh, and her grin widened. “I do see him differently now—much worse—and I sure did hope he'd accept my apology."

  "But Pericles?” He sat down beside Lucinda. “Pericles? That was ludicrous flattery, except that he loved it. Did you just pluck that out of thin air?"

  "Not at all. You'd know that better, if you had had my professor for Freshman Ancient History."

  "Well, explain it to a lowly premed.” He headed to the fridge. “Something to drink?"

  "No, thanks. Anyway, Pericles was the ruler, more or less, of ancient Athens. When Sparta declared war, Pericles came up with an unusual strategy. He wouldn't fight Sparta's army directly on land. They could march into Attica, burn all the crops, destroy the vines and olive trees, but the people would stay hunkered down behind Athens’ city walls. Pericles meant to convince Sparta of the futility of war, so that they would end it."
<
br />   "Oh, Lord.” Curt came back with a bottle of water. “And Lew—the parallel, I see it."

  "Exactly. Pericles would launch a few naval raids, but that was it. And somehow, Sparta didn't get the message. They kept despoiling the land, and the people kept hiding in Athens. A very crowded, unsanitary Athens. And the plague broke out."

  "Ohhh.” Curt began quivering with silent laughter.

  "The demos got sick of Pericles’ strategy and deposed him from his offices. And the next year, he caught the plague and died.” Curt had almost doubled up with mirth. “And after a quarter-century more of terrible warfare, Sparta crushed Athens."

  Curt sobered up quickly. “Oh. Wow. I'm glad Lew's not much of a classicist."

  "I don't think he'd even see through it if he were. Easier to believe the compliment."

  Curt took her hands. “Well, it's the best veiled insult I've ever heard, or at least the best I've understood. You are an impressive woman, Lucinda Peale, and...” He stopped on the edge of something, hesitated, and stepped back. He let her hands go. “...and I'm glad you're on my side."

  Lucinda had that same chance now: to step back from the edge. She hesitated ... and reached for Curt's hand.

  "Isn't it time we simplified things?” she breathed.

  Curt looked dazed. “Huh?"

  She leaned over and kissed him. He wavered, then responded. She pulled away, letting him catch his breath.

  "The best kind of deception,” she said, “is with the truth."

  He digested her words, until dawn broke on his face. It only took her slightest nod for him to reach for her.

  * * * *

  IV

  It was no use. Josh was gone. So were her resources.

  What could he be planning? Was he sending someone? How would she recognize that someone as a friend? Why, why did he have to be so stupid?

  She reproached herself the moment she thought that. It was unfair to Josh. But still, why couldn't he have listened?

  Lucinda drifted around the parking lot, trying to look like she had a purpose other than loitering. At one point, she stopped near the entrance to read the front page of a newspaper inside a vending machine. But it was a local weekly: no national news, nothing of the upheaval.

  The door opened near her. “—course it was them! They did it once before and got away with it. Why wouldn't they do it again, to Washington?"

  Lucinda tried to look inconspicuous, again. “So what do we do?” the other man said.

  "Nuke ‘em back!"

  "But if China's really in on—"

  "Hammer them too! We've got enough."

  "You're nuts. They'll—whoa, look out."

  Lucinda had pushed past them, not stopping until she reached the far side of the diner. She didn't want to think about this. America had to confront the terrible facts, but it was too much for her right now. She had to calm her breaths, wait out the minutes until—

  She heard the rumble and flattened herself within a shadow along the wall. A truck roared past, heading toward the town. It looked Army. Her grace period was over.

  She jogged down to the street, looked both ways, and dashed across. There was an intersecting street several hundred feet down: she'd turn onto that. Pairs of headlights flashed past her, driving out of town.

  Then one pair quivered and steered right at her, horn blaring. Lucinda screamed and dove away.

  * * * *

  "Cluster forty-six complete. Moving to the final one."

  Lucinda and Curt were almost done with the overlay, or more precisely, the TMS was. They had preprogrammed the transcranial magnetic stimulator before entering the operating theater, and were there mostly to supervise its progress. The finely focused EM fields it produced reached into the patient's brain, repotentiating his neural pathways, changing his mind.

  He had been an Internet dissident before he arrived here. However he had gotten the story of the shootout that killed Governor Gandy, her husband, both sons, and at least four Federal agents, his posting and spreading it made his arrival in a place like this inevitable. It was some comfort to Lucinda that there were still such brave people in America, even as he departed their ranks.

  The overlay was erasing his tendencies toward violence, mild as they were, and replacing his existing religious mindset with a new “module” in the temporal lobe. It was also adding something to Wernicke's area, on the pretext that his aggressive proclivities extended to use of violent language. That was Lucinda's special addition, the one she and Curt had now made dozens of times.

  The program concluded, and an orderly wheeled the patient out. She and Curt shed their somewhat superfluous surgical gowns—the TMS didn't require the slightest incision—and walked out together. The filtered sunlight of an early October dusk beamed upon them through the corridor windows.

  Officially, they were “somewhere in western Ohio,” at a new facility built up from an abandoned military base. The amenities were more stinting than at Mount Weather, but being able to see the sun compensated greatly. It might be through tinted glass and half of the buildings’ volume might still be underground, but the touch of warmth after seven chill months had reawakened something within Lucinda and given her hope.

  They went down to the mess hall for an early dinner and briefly had a table to themselves. They filled a few moments with harmless, comfortable talk, before someone arrived to sit with them. Nancy LaPierre had been transferred with her and Curt, unfortunately, but Lucinda had never let her dismay show. “Hello, Nancy,” Lucinda said brightly. “What's the trouble?"

  LaPierre shifted things around on her tray. “It's just ... disturbing things going on out there. There's a swell of irrational disapproval of the government, over our thought reform work. They're saying—you tell me. Are our outpatients sounding like clones of our president?"

  "I don't know,” Lucinda said quickly. “I mean, I don't hear him speaking all that much. I'm usually busy with work, or other things."

  "The president actually consulted me about this,” Curt said. “There's some similarity, but they're talking about the same things he is. There are only so many ways to make equivalent statements. I think it's a statistical coincidence."

  "Maybe,” said Nancy, sounding unconvinced. “The country's reacting, though. It makes me glad the Secretary of State's undergoing an overlay, to prove its benignity.” Her eyes narrowed on Lucinda. “You disapprove?"

  "I—well, yes. There's no therapeutic necessity to impinge on a healthy brain. It's bad medicine to intervene without need."

  "Secretary Phelps sees a greater need,” Curt said. “Besides, I know Dr. Rawlins. She's very good. Nothing untoward will happen."

  He laid a hand on Lucinda's shoulder, but she didn't really need the comforting. They both knew Dr. Rawlins was one of them. She had a copy of Burleigh's new brain template in her files off at her facility, and thanks to the messages Curt had slipped through to her, she knew how to use it.

  Dinner ran its course, with more mundane subjects discussed. Curt and Lucinda parted at the door and went their separate ways. There wasn't the same clinging desperation here as under the Mount. They could give their relationship, now open, a bit of space.

  Lucinda went down two floors, through one of the tunnels linking buildings in their facility and up a floor to her dorm. The same partitions were there on the same crowded floor, but she didn't have to share this cot with anyone, yet. She had room to herself, to read and to write.

  Censorship remained in effect: she still needed to limit what she wrote. She was getting very used to that with Josh.

  She still had told him nothing about Curt, save as one of her colleagues. There was no way she could explain it, make it sound right. Perhaps that was because it wasn't right—but she didn't let herself dwell on that.

  Several mornings later, she was putting together a template with a newly arrived technician when she first heard the ruckus outside. The voices in the corridor stopped, but rose up a few minutes later, lasting lo
nger. She and Henry ignored it long enough to finish the template, then emerged to find two guards down the hall talking excitedly.

  "What was going on?” Lucinda asked, walking their way.

  The larger of the two, a corporal, answered. “The Secretary of State just had his press conference, doctor. It was ... kind of a fiasco."

  The smaller soldier plucked out an earpiece. “Phelps turned parrot,” he said, before getting elbowed by the corporal.

  "What was he saying? Could I hear?"

  "It's over now, ma'am. Sorry.” The corporal had regained his stony equipoise.

  Lucinda left a flustered Henry to his own devices and started looking for Curt. After not finding him in a few obvious workplaces, she headed for his quarters, making sure she had her pass. Near the tunnel entrance, she passed a stunned Nancy LaPierre. Lucinda managed not to stare, but she noticed Nancy's head turning slowly to follow her as she passed.

  Curt was in his room, and it was the first he had heard of the presser debacle. He had the privilege of a computer in his room, with hobbled Internet access that allowed download only, from approved sites. The first news site he checked didn't have the video; the second apparently had just taken it down. The third time was the charm.

  They watched Secretary Phelps walk into the press room at the State Department and give his prepared opening statement. He then began taking questions. The first few were puffballs, set-ups to let him say more of what he wanted to. That didn't stop the wheels from coming off.

  "No, nothing's been subtracted from my mind. It's been added. And it doesn't feel that strange at all. There's been little effort needed for me to own this new—uh, part of my mind."

  Lucinda reached for Curt's hand, clasping it tight.

  Having realized what had slipped out of his mouth, Phelps stumbled through his next couple of answers. Soon he regained his poise, straightened out—and swerved right back.

  "My example is proof that it's not cruel punishment, but a benevolent therapy. For malefactors, it brings them to own their misdeeds, lets them start to repair the—"