Analog SFF, April 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Lucinda turned to O'Doul, who was done closing. “How do we stop this?” she asked. “Can we?"

  "Should we?” he replied.

  "I don't like leaving my work for people I don't know to finish."

  There was no more time for discussion. The orderlies were there, one securing his left arm, the other binding his legs, making the patient a prisoner once more. Lucinda took a last look at him. His eyes were slits, showing the stirrings of returning consciousness.

  Then they shot open.

  Lucinda only had time to touch O'Doul's sleeve and whisper “Edwin,” before the man lunged. His bonds cut the lurch short, but he still reached the instrument tray with his free hand, and grabbed the biggest scalpel. His eyes fixed on Lucinda, frenzied. She couldn't look away. She couldn't move away.

  He swung the scalpel—into his own wrist. Blood spattered Lucinda's face. The moment of near-frozen time crashed into bedlam—shouts—hands grabbing for his arm—a second slash of his wrist arrested mid-stroke—his arm yanking free.

  Lucinda wrapped a hand around his wrist, trying to squeeze the scalpel free. He jerked his arm, knocking her off-balance. A second jerk, and the blade connected with her flailing free hand, biting through latex into her palm. She almost lost her grip, and he dragged the scalpel toward his bared neck.

  Two pairs of hands grabbed his elbow and yanked. The scalpel flashed through the air, and clattered across the floor. He thrashed once more, reaching for the tray, but Lucinda and the orderlies pinned his free arm.

  Then he screamed. What began as an animal howl became a quavering, tormented wail, leaping and plunging in pitch, going on seemingly forever until it began to sputter with sobs. Lucinda turned her head, and saw agony.

  "Why did you stop me?” he cried. “I want to die! Oh Christ, I deserve to die!” His wail began again, now a spent echo.

  Lucinda had never been there when a patient woke up. Had any of them been like this? Or was he unique, with so much on his conscience?

  She grabbed his face, a hand on each cheek, and made him look straight at her. “Not anymore, you don't,” she said. “Tell them everything. Start making amends, now."

  He gave a wide-eyed nod. She pulled away, leaving a smear of her blood on his cheek. The nurse and orderlies started working on his gashed wrist.

  "They recruited me nine months ago,” he said. “Two of them. Sayyed was—"

  "Get them out of here!” the nurse said. One of the orderlies hustled away the two doctors, as O'Doul was still tending to Lucinda's bleeding hand.

  The double door shut behind them. O'Doul sighed. “I guess that was a success."

  "I guess so.” Lucinda's breath started turning ragged. “God, I hope so."

  * * * *

  IV

  Lucinda awoke groggily. Without looking at a clock, she knew she had slept long. She took a shower, and dressed in clothes starting to get stiff and smelly on her third day under Mount Weather. After a second's hesitation, she went to open the door.

  It would not open.

  "Can I help you, ma'am?” said someone outside, presumably the guard. “Can I get you breakfast? Or lunch?"

  Lucinda was ready to start demanding answers—but if what she feared had happened, they wouldn't do her much good. “Lunch, please,” she answered flatly.

  "Right away."

  Lucinda retreated to a chair. Was this how Kate and Edwin had disappeared? Had they lasted as long as they were useful, as long as the authorities required to prepare someone else to do their work? Maybe she should take pride in being last to go. The thought was barely in her mind before she rebuked herself for it.

  She had worked through three overlays yesterday. Someone had replaced Kate for the second interrogation session, and her inquiries gained no information. Then they took her out of the second operation to monitor the third interrogation. O'Doul had never joined her during that job, and when she reached the operating theater, there was another surgeon in O'Doul's place. He was resting, they said, and in her fatigue Lucinda had accepted that explanation. She wondered how they'd explain her absence now, before remembering there was no one left to ask.

  When the lunch trolley arrived, Lucinda tried to skirt past the steward bringing it. Her guard stepped smartly into the doorway. “Please stay inside, Doctor."

  Lucinda knew better than to try him. “Could you at least see if I might speak to Kate Barber? She's my colleague. We were brought here together."

  "I'll see what I can do, ma'am.” The steward left the room, the guard closed the door, and a click announced it was locked again. Lucinda started in on her meal, watching the door.

  An hour later, long after she had finished eating, they came for the used trolley. “What about Kate?” she asked the guard.

  "Nothing yet."

  "Then try Dr. O'Doul. We were working on the overlays together. It's important that I consult with someone."

  "I'll see what I can do,” he said, and shut her in again.

  Lucinda knew what that meant now. It wasn't his malevolence: he was under orders. Still, he was her only link to the outside, and she had to work on him.

  "Your superiors are treating me like a prisoner, Corporal Lemmer.” She had taken pains to look at his nametag and rank insignia while lunch was being cleared away. “I was brought here in hopes of tracking down whoever destroyed Washington. I gave them that help. So did my colleagues. This is what it's earned us. If nothing else, I'd like to know why."

  She let that question work on him awhile, then started anew. She told him about Sam's fate back at Berkeley. She told him about Kate's young daughter, whose father was in Missouri. She told him about her dog Ben stuck home without her, saying nothing about Josh looking after him. She would have said something about O'Doul's missing person at Georgetown, but didn't know whether that was family or friend, male or female.

  Footsteps in the corridor interrupted one monologue. She waited, but they left again. So much for getting results. She started in again, but got cut short when she appealed to her guard by name. “I'm not Lemmer, ma'am,” the new voice said.

  Of course they wouldn't keep one guard permanently in place. She renewed her campaign, but slowly ran out of steam. What could she do, appeal to every soldier they had in this place as they cycled past her door?

  Her appeals dissolved into pleas. “At least bring me some news from outside, what's happening in the world. Or some books. Anything to occupy my time in here. God knows how much of it I'll have."

  The hours crept past until dinner. The usual steward arrived with the usual trolley. She briefly contemplated starting a hunger strike, which struck her as so self-martyring that she ate much more than her dulled appetite warranted.

  An hour later, the steward returned, took the trolley, and left some items on her table. There were two thin paperback books with worn spines, plus a handheld computer puzzle.

  In a flash of inspired desperation, Lucinda riffled through the pages of the books, looking for any concealed message folded between the pages or scribbled in the margins. She found nothing, of course, and she laughed bitterly at herself for even trying.

  She read the covers of the books. No Solzhenitsyn, which would have showed somebody had a sense of humor here, however warped. Not even an old Tom Clancy book, with massive terror attacks against America, and having the saving grace of being long and time-consuming. Just a pair of pedestrian detective novels. Nothing worth her time. She set them aside.

  Half an hour later, she picked one up, and read halfway through it before feeling tired enough to sleep.

  Late the next morning, she had broken down enough to start playing the puzzle game. The moment she heard the snick of the unlocking door, she guiltily shut it off and put it on the end table, behind the books.

  Two soldiers looked in through the open door. “Dr. Peale, would you come with us?"

  She barely had the energy for a jaundiced look. “What is it? A new patient? I didn't know I was doing that work anymore."r />
  Their expressions didn't shift. “Come with us, please."

  She obeyed. There was no point in resisting just to resist. They led her outside—a relative term inside the Mount—to a waiting cart, and drove off. She turned to look at the pond and fountain as they passed, but the sight gave her no pleasure. It was an artifice, an attempt to make this place something it wasn't.

  They slowed as they approached a white-fronted building with a heavy guard. Not another hospital, surely. A prison? That seemed redundant. Her guards bundled her out of the cart, toward a checkpoint at a side door. There they checked her badge, took a retina scan, and passed her through to another set of soldiers.

  They led her inside, down bare hallways, up a flight of stairs, to another checkpoint. They scrutinized her again, and passed her again, this time to escorts mostly clad in suits. They took her down a hall with a brighter paint job, into an anteroom. That's where she got thoroughly checked. She submitted quietly to it. By now, she believed she knew the reason.

  They finally satisfied whatever arcane requirements they had, and two of the suited escorts led her through one last door into the office beyond. One look confirmed Lucinda's belief. The room was oval.

  Two agents stood at opposite sides of the room. A third man was hunched over the desk near the far wall, writing. His thin, graying hair was unkempt, his tie was crooked, and his suit jacket was rumpled, almost as if it was too big for his shoulders. President Lewis Burleigh made Lucinda forget her self-consciousness about her own appearance, but that was scant comfort.

  "Dr. Peale, please sit down."

  The President said it without standing, with barely a glance upward. She walked slowly to one of the chairs in front of the desk. The door clicked shut behind her, with one of her guards remaining inside, standing before it at parade rest. As Lucinda sat down, Burleigh finished his writing, and uploaded it from his pad to the console on his desk. Finally he looked up, quietly appraising her. She returned the look.

  "Dr. Peale,” he said, his high voice a little tired, a little nasal, “first let me offer my personal sympathies for the three colleagues you lost in Washington on Friday."

  Lucinda tightened all over. She had held no hope, but this note of finality was still a blow. “Is that confirmed, Mr. President, or are you ... just assuming the obvious?"

  "I'm afraid it's confirmed. We excavated the shelters beneath the Capitol complex, what was left of them.” His eyes looked past her. “No shelters seemed to be enough that day."

  Lucinda read between the lines. “You have my condolences, sir, for all the colleagues you lost as well."

  Burleigh nodded absently. “They died in service to their country, as I consider your three associates to have done.” He shook off the sorrow. “Speaking of service, you've rendered us important service over the last few days. You have your nation's thanks for your aid in examining the men we captured and brought here."

  "You're welcome, Mr. President. About those men, I wonder whether I could have access—"

  "Excuse me. I have rather more to say.” The suddenness of the rebuff stopped Lucinda cold. “I would say thanks for helping bring those men to justice, but in their altered condition, I find that's taken on a different meaning. It's a meaning that I think needs wider currency, and that is where I am asking you and your colleagues here to continue helping us."

  Lucinda showed no reaction. He could have his say, but it would have to be pretty spectacular to move her. His first words were a fair start.

  "The world is poised to annihilate itself, either all at once or piece by piece. I will not permit the former, but right now I am powerless to prevent the latter. We saw on Black Friday that, when people are determined to kill and destroy, they will find a way to do it. And it's only getting easier for them to acquire the means, whether it's to destroy a neighborhood, or a city, or a country.

  "It's a flaw, inherent in human nature—so human nature must change.

  "Raising our defenses won't work. Aside from whatever flaws would remain, like homegrown attackers, it would be an exponential drag on the economy, grinding it to a halt. I have some very perceptive advisors confirming my intuition on this matter."

  "Did you happen to have Agent Morris Hope advising you, sir?"

  The President received the question worse than Lucinda suspected he would, with the lines around his eyes deepening sharply. “God, not him. I know how much initiative he showed bringing you here, but the man is a menace. He didn't spend that flight filling your head with claptrap about China, did he?"

  Lucinda remembered the glimpse she had gotten of the last prisoner's face before he went into the scanner, his particular Asian features. “He mentioned them once,” she said, “as one of the dozen or so entities that could have bombed Washington, along with Second Al-Qaeda, Pakistan ... Iran.” O'Doul had recognized their third detainee's curses at Kate's replacement as being in Farsi. He had had Iranian graduate students, years ago.

  Burleigh's face creased again. “Hope was chomping at the bit, wasn't he? That doesn't surprise me. He'd have me retaliate against nuclear powers, touch off the holocaust we avoided once with the Russians, end the world, and call it justice."

  Lucinda wanted to say that wasn't how Hope thought. She also wanted to ask whether China and Iran really were responsible. Lone nationals weren't cast-iron proof, and Burleigh surely knew more. She held her tongue.

  "It is that kind of person,” Burleigh continued, waving an upraised finger, “that kind of personality that would commit such appalling acts, that must be remade. Whatever those poisonous elements are, either innate or perversely cultivated, must be wiped clean from them, from all humankind. Do you see what I am getting at, Doctor?"

  She did. Horrified as she was, she could see how she, too, might conclude it was necessary. “I think so, Mr. President,” she said slowly, “but that's a dead end. Enemy nations, terrorist groups, would never submit to it."

  "They will. There will be irresistible international pressure to accept curative overlays—because we will lead by example. We will purge America first, and about time."

  Lucinda's head spun. “Of whom? Of terrorist personalities? Of sympathizers with terrorists?"

  "Oh, that's just the start. There are other people just as dangerous to the world. The revanchists, for one, the people who would have me destroy whole countries for this act, and who will do it themselves if they ever gain the power to do it. And beneath them, there's a whole base of intolerance and primitivism that lets those violent attitudes flourish. Their debased mindsets are a luxury we can't afford anymore. No. No, we never could afford them. They brought us to this pass."

  He gave Lucinda a strained smile. “I actually got to see Dr. Petrusky's testimony about this, after the fact. It was persuasive. He can claim partial credit for the decision I've reached. I hope he would be proud of that."

  Lucinda could barely whisper, through a closed throat, “I imagine he would."

  "It's sad those three aren't still with us. We need every trained overlay neurologist and technician we can pull together: to perform the treatments, to train others, to streamline the process so we can handle the numbers this will encompass.” The President ran a hand over his disheveled hair. “It's a lot of work. But the good people of America will be behind us. They'll understand what has to be done to make a clean start on a better world."

  Lucinda waited until she was sure he was done. “I think you'll be surprised, Mr. President. Starting now. I cannot participate in this."

  Burleigh passed right through surprise into severity. “May I remind you, Dr. Peale, you already have."

  "With a man caught red-handed, then with associates he named under circumstances that leave no doubt of their complicity—unless you're telling me that's not so.” Burleigh mumbled some denial. “What you're talking about is forcible overlays on people who have committed no crimes, based on what? What they think? And this isn't just curbing their liberties, or confining them. We'd be alter
ing them fundamentally, irrevocably."

  She sighed. “I'm aware how fine the line is between ethical and unethical uses of overlay. I've been treading that line for seven years. So I've got some standing to say that this goes way over that line, and I will not cross it.” She pushed herself up by the armrests. “I think I'll return to my room now."

  "I think you will stay here, Doctor.” The President didn't move. Neither did the agent standing between Lucinda and the door. She tried to reach around him for the doorknob, and found her hand firmly deflected by his. She wheeled on the President, who remained seated in silent thought. Lucinda didn't return to the chair, but waited with arms crossed, and that agent's breath tickling her neck.

  Burleigh took his time before speaking. “Many people would conclude, Doctor, that you already have crossed the ethical line. That procedure you performed on Mr. Lodish directly contr—"

  "On whom, sir?"

  Burleigh lifted his eyebrows. “The missile launcher. The first man you had overlaid."

  "I see. I never learned his name before now."

  "Oh. That doesn't matter. Your operation directly contravened federal laws regarding humane treatment of persons held in custody. You committed a gravely serious act, Ms. Peale."

  Lucinda boggled at this ploy—and noted in passing that she was no longer “Doctor” to him. “So, you're telling me I've committed an awful crime, and you want me to commit lots more as penance."

  "It isn't a crime now. I signed an executive order on the matter, the morning after the attack. Your other overlays are covered, but not, I'm afraid, the first one."

  Lucinda glared. “Is this the threat? That I'll be locked up for turning a remorseless terrorist conspirator, complicit in destroying the nation's capital, into a man with a conscience?"

  President Burleigh lifted himself up. “You mean cutting open a man's skull, jabbing electrodes into his exposed brain, and doing a mind-wipe on him that sets him to slashing his wrist, and begging for the release of death? There's a word for that: torture.” He looked down at her hand. “As for his conscience, you didn't give him enough of one to keep him from injuring you."