The Forever Drug

by Lisa Smedman

  The young nurse was Sandra's niece.

  Dr. Sandra Bjornson was consulting with a nurse as I approached the doctor's station. But as soon as she saw me, she broke off the conversation and gave me a wide smile.

  "Romulus!" she exclaimed. "Good ta see ya!"

  Sandra is human, with a shock of short hair that can only be described as battleship gray. She has a chin that juts just enough to give her a determined look, and eyes that can bore through a foolish notion like a laser through tissue. She takes no guff, does Sandra. But she's also the most compassionate person I know: a magician who followed the healer's path.

  Sandra is in her sixties and practiced "therapeutic touch"—with phenomenal results. Just by laying on hands she could quiet the churning turmoil of a schizophrenic's mind, or bring a smile to the face of a severely depressed patient. She used her body—her "healing hands" to create a bridge between the astral and physical planes, channeling healing energy into the bodies of her patients.

  Sandra occasionally slipped into a Maritimer's accent, but that didn't mean she wasn't educated. She'd received her PhD in psychiatry from MIT&T and had enough diplomas to paper a wall. She greeted Jane warmly when I introduced her, then ushered us into her office.

  "Office" probably isn't the right word for it. Describe it that way, and you'd expect a desk, stiff plastic chairs, and book shelves filled with medical texts. Instead Sandra's inner sanctum was bare of furniture save for a thick, soft rug and brilliantly colored Rajasthani cushions. The smell of lavender, sage, and rose oil filled the room, and the air was filled with soft, atmospheric music reminiscent of a gentle rain. One wall had a "window" that looked out onto a pristine woodland—actually a holo that could be turned to a number of different outdoor scenes. Sandra must have chosen Primeval Forest for my benefit; she knew it would bring back pleasant memories of the wood where I was born. The other walls were set with tiny niches, each one holding a statue of a deity associated with healing.

  We settled onto the cushions and Sandra offered us tea that smelled of ginger and honey. She listened carefully as I explained Jane's strange loss of memory and her apparent lapses into other personalities. I didn't leave anything out; I told Sandra the entire story. I trusted her discretion.

  Jane listened avidly, as if what I was relating was all new to her. When I finished, she looked to Sandra expectantly.

  "Hmm," Sandra said, sipping her tea and meeting Jane's eyes with her own penetrating gaze. "You're a bit of an odd sock, Jane. It sounds like all t'ree of the general memory types are damaged. Most of your 'unconscious memory'—learned motor skills and abilities like reading and writing—is still there, but you've forgotten how to work magic, despite the fact that you're obviously a spellcaster, from what Romulus here says. Your 'semantic memory'—the ability to recall names, dates, and other factual information—is still intact. But it's four years behind the times.

  "The worst part of it is, you've lost your 'episodic memory'—the ability to recall episodes and events from your life." Sandra's eyes grew compassionate. "And with it, you've lost your sense of self."

  Jane pressed her lips together. It was a moment or two before she could speak. "I don't know who I am," she said softly. "I'm not... me."

  "What would have caused the memory loss?" I asked.

  "Well, let me see ..." Sandra took another sip of her tea, then directed her comments at Jane. She was the patient, after all. "Memory loss can be caused by diseases like Alzheimer's, by prolonged alcoholism or drug abuse, or by a severe stroke. But you look young and healthy. If this was the twentieth century, I'd be looking for scars on your scalp, wondering if a surgeon had removed part of your brain..."

  I couldn't hide my look of revulsion. "You're not serious, are you, Sandra?"

  "I am indeed," she said, fixing me with a grim look. "Medical experimentation on the human brain was commonplace in the previous century. Have you ever heard of a lobotomy?"

  Both Jane and I shook our heads.

  "It was a surgical procedure in which the frontal lobe of the brain—usually the cerebrum—was cut. At first, it was an experimental surgery done on lab animals. Then in the 1930s, a Portuguese doctor used the procedure on violent psych patients. It left them indifferent about life and with sluggish emotions. That was a success, as far as the medical community was concerned; the doctor received a Nobel Prize for his new technique.

  "Later, lobotomies were used to 'cure' schizophrenia, neuroses, epilepsy, and manic depression. They were primitive surgeries; one doctor became famous for performing these operations using a gold ice pick. But they were popular. Between 1935 and 1960, tens of thousands of North Americans were lobotomized."

  "And did they all lose their memories?" I asked. The story was horrifying yet fascinating, like a bad car wreck.

  "No," Sandra said. "Just their ability to express emotion. But there were other surgeons who pushed this experimental brain surgery to the limit. In 1953, Dr. William Scoville operated on a patient known in the medical literature only as 'H.M.' It was a travesty of medicine. Scoville sucked out H.M.'s brain—and his memories with it."

  "Sucked out his brain?" I asked, incredulous. "Literally?"

  " 'Fraid so. Scoville cut open H.M.'s forehead and peeled his scalp down, then drilled two holes the size of poker chips through his skull with a hand drill the doc bought in a hardware store. He put metal spatulas into these holes and lifted the frontal lobes, then used a silver straw to suck out the hippocampus from both sides of the brain and the tissue surrounding it. Altogether he took the parahippocampal gyrus, the entorhinal and perirhinal cortexes, and the amygdala—a mass of brain the size of a fist. Scoville even left a few metal clips behind inside H.M.'s brain—so he could show other doctors where he'd cut—and then sewed his patient up again."

  Jane grimaced, and touched a hand to the side of her head. No ... she was touching her ear, running a finger along the rounded top of it as if feeling for stitches. Had she really done what I suspected: used plastic surgery to remove the pointed tips of what would otherwise be eleven ears? Was she actually an elf, masquerading as a human? If so, why?

  Sandra plunged on with the story of the horrifying medical experimentation of a previous century. Her anger was clear; this case really wound her crank. "After his operation, poor H.M. couldn't hold a thought for more than twenty seconds at a time. He still had the same personality as before and knew who he was, but he suffered from severe amnesia. A nurse could leave the room and return five minutes later, and H.M. would forget that he'd ever met her before."

  I looked at Jane, then at Sandra. "Jane seems to be having the same problem," I said. "She keeps forgetting who I am." She also kept forgetting who the elf named Galdenistal was, but that didn't bother me nearly so much.

  "From what Romulus has told me, Jane, you're able to retain a short-term memory for several hours at a time."

  Jane nodded.

  Sandra continued: "So it's not your hippocampus that's damaged. If it were, you wouldn't be able to form new short-term memories at all. You would only be able to hold onto a piece of information for five to fifteen minutes, maximum, and then only by continually concentrating on that data.

  "No, it's the ability to form and access long-term memories that you've lost. That would suggest that the storage sites themselves are damaged. And unfortunately, memory is not localized; it's spread all over the brain."

  I was still thinking about the possibility that Jane might be an elf. Like me, she might not be as human as she seemed. The fact that she was fluent in Sperethiel seemed to confirm this. And it had been an elf—one with connections to the Tír government— who had tried to kidnap her, to take her back to Tír Taimgire. The thought jogged something in my memory.

  "What about laes?" I asked suddenly.

  I was referring to a drug that was rumored to be in use by Tír Taimgire's Peace Force. An injection of laes was said to produce retrograde amnesia. I figured that Sandra, given her profession, would have heard
about the drug, and I wondered why she hadn't mentioned it yet.

  "Laes only works on memories that have been laid down immediately prior to the injection," Sandra answered. "Fifty micrograms of laes will wipe the two to twelve hours that immediately preceded the administration of the drug. Laes physically changes the potential gradients of various chemicals in the neurons, erasing those memories. It doesn't cause the type of damage Jane has.

  "If a drug were involved, my guess would be colchicine. In experiments done on mice in the late 1900s, it prevented newly acquired memories from becoming permanent memories by preventing the stable molecular configurations of tubulin in the cell membrane."

  "So somebody drugged Jane?" I asked.

  Sandra gave a slight shrug. "Colchicine would only explain part of the problem. Something happened that wiped out memories Jane had formed years ago—many years ago, by the sound of it. And that suggests extensive damage to several parts of the brain."

  "Can you use your magic to heal that damage?" I asked.

  "It's not that simple," Sandra answered. "Unlike other cells in the body, neurons aren't replaced when they die. Damage to them is permanent. The connections between the neurons—the dendrites, synapses, and axons—can sometimes grow back. But if the neurons themselves are damaged, there's no way to repair them—even with magic."

  Jane's lip was trembling. I slipped my hand over hers and gave it a squeeze.

  "I'm sorry, my dear," Sandra said, "I don't know if I can help you."

  "But the memories are still there," I said. "Jane keeps having flashbacks. Can't you magically probe her mind while she's experiencing one and find out more about her?"

  "That would only let me read her conscious thoughts."

  "But couldn't you use your magic to trigger those memories for her again? Maybe Jane will be able to tell us something that will help us to figure out who she is."

  Sandra looked at me sharply. "There might be a way..

  She set her tea down and stared at the holo window, lost in thought. "Back in the 20th century, at the height of the lobotomy craze, a Canadian surgeon named Wilder Penfield did open-brain operations on epileptics. He used electrodes to stimulate different parts of the brain, to see whether this would trigger an epileptic seizure. Instead, he got some unexpected results. The electrodes triggered fragments of memory—sometimes just a sound or a smell, but other times an entire incident from the person's past.

  "Therapeutic touch—magical healing—involves the transfer of magical energy from the astral to the physical plane. That energy is, at least in part, electrical in nature. There's a form of touch—a spell—that I use to enhance mental functioning. If I narrowed its focus, and directed the energy like an electronic pulse, I might be able to duplicate the effects Penfield produced..."

  Sandra gave Jane a serious look. "I'd need your permission, Jane, before I tried it. There's no danger of physical damage, but I will have no control over what memories are triggered. They could be unpleasant, or deeply personal."

  "You have my permission," Jane said. "I want to know who I am. I want 'me' back."

  Sandra nodded. She took a deep breath, and clasped her hands together. "Close your eyes, Jane. And try to relax."

  As Jane's eyes closed, Sandra drew her hands apart slowly, as if she were drawing out an invisible something between them. I shifted my vision into astral space and saw a glowing ball of magical energy forming between her hands. The energy was a soothing blue, shot through with crackles of rich forest-green and sunlight yellow. It smelled faintly of soft moss and rain, of... life.

  Sandra used her hands to shape the energy, like a potter squeezing and compressing soft clay. Then she let it hang in the air in front of her. With one hand, she spun out a thread of it by twirling her finger in an ascending spiral. Her other hand hovered a centimeter or two over Jane's head, as if she were using her palm and fingertips to feel for the right spot. When she'd found what she was looking for, Sandra directed the magical energy by means of a feather-soft touch of her forefinger.

  I heard a faint snap! like the crackle of static electricity. Jane jerked as if she'd felt a mild shock. Her eyes opened, but they didn't seem to be focused on anything in the room.

  Jane held out her hand. "Give me your arm, sir," she said in an authoritative voice. The timbre of her voice was low, almost as if she were trying to disguise it as a man's voice. Her fingers closed loosely around something which, even in astral space, was invisible. Her other hand was positioned as if she were holding a pen. She jabbed this into the invisible arm.

  "The letting of your blood will balance the humors, sir. Venesection has a most salutary effect in many diseases and is, indeed, foremost among all general remedies. It has not been used to treat your condition before, but I am of a certainty that..."

  Jane blinked. Her mouth worked but no sound came out, as if she were at a loss for words. Then her hands relaxed, as if the invisible arm and scalpel she'd been holding a moment ago had suddenly disappeared. And they had—disappeared from her conscious memory, that is.

  Sandra shifted her hand and touched a finger to another point on Jane's scalp. I saw another spark of astral energy pop, just above Jane's temple. And then she was lost in another memory. This time, her voice was softer, more womanly. She spoke in rapid, fluent French.

  I don't speak French, and couldn't understand what Jane was saying. But she seemed to be addressing someone: a Monsieur Pasteur. As she had before, she trailed off in mid-sentence.

  Sandra moved the magical energy to a new location.

  This memory seemed to begin in mid-flow.

  "... a vaccination program, sponsored by the UCAS government. You would be foolish to turn it down." Jane spoke in a somewhat condescending tone of voice. "The national health department is worried about a potential outbreak of new strains of VITAS, particularly in isolated villages like Eskwader—places the earlier vaccination programs overlooked. The vaccinations will be administered free of charge . .."

  I tried to catch Sandra's eye. "That would be a memory from the 21st century," I whispered. "The UCAS didn't exist before 2030."

  Sandra's stem look hushed me. I was disturbing her concentration. But I could sense that we were onto something important. Jane had worked for the UCAS government at one point in her life. But then why was she SINless? She should have been on a database somewhere.

  "Trigger that memory again," I urged Sandra.

  She did, and when Jane started talking about VITAS I cut in, asking her name.

  She twitched, as if irritated. Then she snapped an answer at me: "Mareth'riel Salvail."

  "Try it again!" I said.

  Sandra did, but this time Jane simply repeated the conversation she'd recited earlier, ignoring my attempts to interrupt her and not responding to any of my questions.

  I didn't care. We had a name. "Try another area," I told Sandra.

  Another touch, another memory...

  Jane suddenly made a face, then spat onto the carpet. "Atrocious!" she bellowed. "Dr. Simmons, your Squaw Vine Compound is foul-tasting in the extreme. I have no doubt as to its efficacy, as attested to by yourself. But good God, man. Something must be done about the taste, or it shall prove more of a purgative than a tonic!"

  And another memory...

  Jane's hands became busy, as if she were putting something in place and holding it there. This time, she was silent and needed prompting to speak.

  "What are you doing?" Sandra asked.

  "What's it bloody well look like?" Jane snapped in a broad Australian accent. "I'm applying a hot pack to this patient's leg."

  Her hands continued working on her invisible patient.

  "Why?"

  "Listen," she said. "I'm bleedin' tired of yer criticism. You've got it all wrong. You don't want to immobilize the limb of a polio patient. What's needed is a strict regimen of physical therapy and... and ..."

  The fire and passion drained visibly from her face.

  Sandra had been li
stening thoughtfully, all this time. At last she asked Jane a direct question, using her elven name. "You're a doctor, aren't you, Mareth'riel?"

  Jane looked in Sandra's direction, but her eyes were unfocused, as if she were looking into the distance. And in a way, she was—but that distance was measured in years. Her expression changed.

  "I am an alienist, to be precise," she said in a clipped Boston accent. "And quite a celebrated one, I might add. I challenged a number of the barbarous management practices that had preceded our more enlightened age, including the use of Dr. Rush's restraining chair, used in the management of violent lunatics. I found that there was no need to restrain them if—"

  This time the memory cut off abruptly. Jane screamed, then fell over on her side. In another instant, she was reliving the same trauma that she'd experienced in the Lone Star scanning lab. Her hands tore at her face, as if trying to pull something from her head. "Not the mask!" she screamed. "Not—" Her words became distorted, as if she was trying to speak with something in her mouth. She held her hands in front of her, as if they were held by containment manacles. Then her entire body went rigid. Her face set in a grimace and her mouth opened wide.

  "Dear God," Sandra whispered. She jerked her hands away from Jane's head. The magical energy she'd been sustaining shrank to a point, then exploded into fragments and was gone.

  Working quickly, Sandra summoned a healing spell. Her hands caressed Jane's face and neck, washing them with a deep indigo energy. With each stroke, Jane relaxed. At last her face became utterly calm. Her head nodded, and she fell deeply asleep. I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. I could only hope Jane would be all right. I reminded myself that Sandra was the best psych doctor in the country, and that eased my fears a little.

  Sandra looked up at me, obviously shaken. "I didn't trigger that memory," she said. "It surfaced by itself. And what a horror it was."

  "What was she talking about?" I asked. "What's an 'alienist'?"