Neuropath (22 page)

Despite Sam and his feeling of dawning regret, it seemed right that he hold Nora like this. Like coming full circle.

'I always loved this duvet,' Nora said vaguely, running her fingers over the floral patterns.

Adolescent shouts filtered through the windows. The afternoon light possessed a peculiar copper cast. The air was sticky and smelled of guilt.

His gut turned to sand. Her words from the transcript wheeled unbidden through his mind.

'He wasn't Neil…'

Something savage rattled through him. Suddenly, inexplicably, it seemed he knew, with Old Testament certainty, that
she was to blame
. Not him. Not the father who slept while his son was stolen.

He found himself asking, 'Why, Nora?'

She pressed free of his arms and turned toward him. Her look was hard, almost vicious in its intensity.

But her voice was calm—the pedestrian tone she used to describe grocery lists and co-workers. 'I want you to kill him, Thomas. Promise me you'll kill him.'

Neil. Destroyer of worlds.

Thomas watched Nora from the front door. She put Ripley's things into her Nissan, then after a shy wave, walked across to Mia's to get Ripley. She wanted to 'Say hi to the old fag,' she had said, making Thomas wince. For some strange reason she always insisted she could use the term because she was a woman.

Thomas had told her to give Ripley his love. He didn't feel strong enough to say goodbye.

Out of habit, he flipped the mailbox lid on his way in, fishing out assorted bills and what looked like yet another garbage BD from AOL—why wouldn't they just die? But the lack of flash and color on the case caught his attention. He pulled it out and froze.

In dark blue marker, someone had written

GOODBOOK

across the transparent plastic. The Blue-ray flashed like a knife beneath.

Thomas backed through the door, hands shaking.

No-no-no-no-no-no…

Thoughts of Frankie flooded his eyes with tears.

Please, God… Please!

He stumbled on a mat. The envelopes tumbled to the ground.

Not my boy…

The BD felt at once insubstantial and like an impossible weight. He raced to the kitchen, yanked the silverware drawer so hard it popped its rollers. Knives, forks, spoons scattered across the floor, making patterns like an augur's knuckle-bones. Thomas clutched a steak knife in a trembling hand, began sawing at the tape.

Evidence! Evidence
! something within him cried.

He stopped. Ran a hand through his hair. Dashed to the phone.

'Logan,' the voice on the other end answered.

'Sam! He sent a Blue-ray to me. Another fucking BD.'

'Tom? Slow down. What are you talking about?'

'Jesus-jesus, what if it's
him
, Sam?'
No-no-no-no-no-no
… 'Sam? What if it's
him
?'

Not my boy, please…

He stared at the thing: quicksilver reflecting a stranger's anguished face.

'Listen closely, Tom. Do not, under any circumstances, touch that disc. Do you understand me? You could—'

'What if it's
him
, Sam?' Thomas whispered.

He hung up, dropped the phone on the couch, scrambled across the living room rug. He cut through the remaining tape while crouching before his Blue-ray player. The phone trilled continuously, but for some reason it was nearly inaudible. An unearthly calm had possessed him.

Kneeling beneath the TV, he worked the remote control with numb fingers.

The phone stopped ringing. Shallow breaths. The disc whirred in its chilly womb.

The screen flickered to life.

The couch felt hard, like stainless steel—like a coroner's table.

'Tom?' someone asked gently.

Sam.

He pulled his hands from his face. Sam knelt over him, her eyes filled with tears. Gerard seemed to tower behind her, his expression somewhere between stern detachment and… Just what was his expression?

'Was it him, Tom?' Sam asked. 'Was it Frankie?'

He shuddered, exhaled, feeling something like twin incisions across both his lungs. How much more could he take?
Should get my blood pressure checked
, he thought inanely.

'Tom?' Almost a whisper.

'No,' he croaked.

Not yet.

He could remember Neil chiding him during exams. 'Your working memory isn't designed for multitasking, you fucking idiot. It's not as advanced as Windows. You gotta do. One. Thing. Ata. Time.'

'The televangelist,' he explained. 'Jackie Forrest.'

Then my boy.

Tears spilled down Sam's cheeks. She glanced nervously at Gerard, who remained stone-faced. How many rules had she broken, Thomas found himself wondering, by sleeping with him? Certainly fewer than by falling in love.

'What do we do?' Sam asked, sounding curiously helpless.

Gerard scowled. 'Wait for Atta,' he said. 'What else?'

Agent Atta wasn't long in arriving. The August heat seemed to roll in with her—not the brightness, just the heat.

'Tell me you didn't play it.'

Thomas was sitting on the couch, Sam at his side. Agent Gerard stood from his seat at the foot of the stairs, scratching the back of his head.

Thomas looked to his palms instead of the SAC. 'What would you do, Agent Atta? What would
you
do?'

'You seem to be saying that an awful lot, professor,' Atta replied. 'Where is it?'

'Still in the machine,' Gerard said.

'
Zarba
,' Atta muttered, kneeling at the base of the broad screen. Her holster swung into view, gun-metal heavy. The light of the screen flashed across her sweaty cheeks, then the panel framed her in luminous black. Shapes seemed to float in and out of focus, as though they watched things battling beneath black satin sheets. There was a quick glimpse—a shadowy sack of some kind, cement or something—but Thomas was certain he'd glimpsed the name of some kind of farm-supply outlet.

'There… Did you see it? The name on that bag?'

'We'll have it checked out,' Atta said, unimpressed.

Thomas looked to Sam, scowling.

'The webcast with Halasz had the same kind of glimpses,' she explained. 'Specialty labels, products from what seemed to be non-franchise outlets. But when we checked them out, they came from places all over the country. The bastard's playing with us, professor. Throwing us manufactured leads to dilute our resources.'

More and more shapes resolved and vanished in the gloom. The image bobbed, as though the camera probed the bowels of some deep-sea wreck. Thomas found himself every bit as anxious as he had been on his first viewing. For some reason, knowing he
wouldn't
see Frankie made it seem even worse.

Though if he had…

None of this is real. Just things and people in a head that's all in my head…

The frame abruptly stabilized. Peering, Thomas saw what seemed to be a chain-link kennel. A kennel in a basement littered with defunct possessions. A human shambled through the murky interior, apparently oblivious to the watching camera-eye. '
Halleluiah
,' hissed from the speakers, as though surfacing from white noise. The figure stumbled backward, then drunkenly fell to its knees. It was weeping now. 'Halleluiah.'

Light splashed the scene, as sudden and bright as a prison-guard ambush. The figure whirled toward the camera. Thomas heard himself sob—the way he had when he first realized that it wasn't Frankie…

… but Jackie Forrest, hands out, as though fending away paparazzi. His scalp had been bandaged, like Halasz. Silver braces bracketed his head, fixed with what seemed hardware-store screws. '
You
,' he spat in indignation. 'You can't hurt me! I
know
where I'm going! I have
seen!'

HOW HAVE YOU SEEN?

The question apparently shocked the preacher. For a moment, anger and terror warred over his expression.

'I walk by faith!' He wiped his jowls, smiled manically. 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for,' he exclaimed in the wavering baritone that so many preachers reserve for biblical quotations, 'the evidence of sights unseen!'

SO BELIEF WITHOUT EVIDENCE IS EVIDENCE?

'You'll never know, you son-of-a-bitch!' Jackie snarled.

'Not until you writhe in the fires of hell! Then your agon—!'

AGONY? YOU MEAN LIKE THIS?

Spit exploded from Jackie's mouth. He went rigid, bent back like a coat-hanger, then fell thrashing onto the floor. Feces and urine darkened his shift. His shriek was choked into gagging by vomit.

Jackie went slack. 'You sum'bitch,' he sobbed. 'You sum'bitch.'

CALL ON HIM.

Jackie curled into a fetal position. '
Pleasssse
!' he hissed.

HIM. CALL ON HIM.

'
Pleaaasse, Gawwd
!' he bawled.'
PLEEAAASSSE!'

A moment of grovelling silence, then the evangelist jumped, as though surprised by someone tapping his shoulder. He glanced around wildly, then slowly turned his face in the direction of the camera's light. He wiped his nose along his forearm, oblivious to shit smeared across it.

DO YOU SEE?

'H-how?' the trembling lips asked. 'H-ho-how is this possible?'

IS IT GOD?

The face crumpled then went blank. 'Y-yessss!' he gasped. 'I can't see… but I
feeeel
him… here… so very close…'

HOW CAN YOU BE CERTAIN?

'This is beyond your puny questions… beyond…'

The evangelist's face floated across the screen, greasy and bloated in the glaring light. Surgical steel gleamed. Blood trailed from the screws. His expression had become plaintive in a wheedling, ingratiating way that Thomas found difficult to look at. Plaintive and joyous.

'I knew it… I always knew it!'

A deep shuddering gasp. Fluttering eyelids. A voice capsized by rapture.

'
Sweet Jeeeesusss! Haaaw, praise-praise-praise

'Bullshit,' Gerard murmured, only to be silenced by Agent Atta's fierce scowl.

'
Forgive me… Haaaw, please-pleas
—'

'It just, goes on like this,' Thomas said over the cooing preacher. 'On and on, until the BD runs out.'

'—
I didn't mean to… Nooooo… Nooooooooo…
'

The air had become unbreathably thick.

'That can't be real,' Gerard said after a moment. He sounded frightened.

'What can't be real?' Thomas asked.

'He can't make somebody see God.'

Thomas shrugged. 'Why not? That's the whole point: experience,
all
experience, is simply a matter of neural circuitry. Why not religious experience? In fact, these experiences are pretty pedestrian for neuroscientists—among the first to be artificially stimulated.'

Gerard looked unconvinced. No, not unconvinced,
unwilling
. He had been able to shrug off what had happened to Powski and Halasz, but not this. He must be born again, Thomas realized, the proud owner of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

But if revelation were simply a matter of wiring…

'It's gotta be some kind of trick,' Gerard said. 'Are you telling me he could do that to you, me,
anyone
,'

Thomas nodded. A frantic edge had crept into the agent's tone.

'Easy, Gerard,' Atta said. 'As far as his argument goes, our only concern—our
one and only
concern—is how we can use it to stop the lunatic bastard. Copy?'

Gerard looked at her with dull incomprehension, the look of a man jarred past the point of copying. 'But if it's all just in our heads, then… then…'

'Then what?' Atta asked.

'Then he's
right
, isn't he?'

Atta rubbed the back of her neck. 'Professor?'

Thomas looked away.

'I could use some help here, professor.'

'Neil's simply showing us facts,' Thomas said. 'When our brains fire in particular ways, we have so-called spiritual experiences. It's as straightforward as that.'

'You think he's right!' Gerard exclaimed. 'You actually
agree
wi—!'

'It's not Neil I'm agreeing with,' Thomas snapped. 'He's not tricking us, or pulling the wool over our eyes. He's simply showing us how it is. If you were Halasz, you wouldn't think, "Oh, that bastard is forcing me to do this." You wouldn't experience his manipulation as a compulsion, as something external you couldn't overcome. You—
you
!—would be like Cynthia Powski. You would
want
to do those… those things. Don't you see? That's what you would choose. Gladly. Freely—as freely as you've chosen to do anything in your life. No alien spinal taps hijacking your body as you sit back helpless, paralyzed. Just
you
, because it was your brain he mucked with, and your brain is all that you are.'

'Bullshit,' Gerard said, his face somehow pale and flushed at once. 'Total bullshit.'

Thomas shook his head. 'Everybody thinks they're the exception, don't they? Even after they're diagnosed with schizophrenia, or Alzheimer's. "If I can just concentrate hard enough," they say, "I can conquer this." Don't you see? Don't you see what he's showing us? There's no such thing as the "triumph of the human spirit". There's no such thing as a human spirit! All of them—Gyges, Powski, Halasz, Forrest—have bootstrapped their way to success, more success than any of us here could reasonably expect. That takes
moxy
, doesn't it? That takes a
will to succeed—
far more than you could muster, agent. So what makes you think you'd be the exception?'

'Now look, professor,' Atta said sharply. 'I've done some research on this. It's not the slam-dunk you make it sound like—'

'Research, Shelley? Then tell me, what's Neil's argument?'

She looked at him warily. 'That we're fundamentally biomechanical. That our choices are the result of physical processes over which we have no control, and so—' she shrugged—'aren't really choices.'

'Then tell me, what are the contrary arguments?'