|
Copyright © 2001 by Shane
Tourtellotte
First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, February 2001
She saw them across the street, two doors down. There were a couple of video cameras, at least one reporter, and close to a dozen other people. She made sure the baby was all right in her crib on the porch, then went to the low fence between houses, where Mrs. Viselli was clearing weeds from her side-yard garden.
"What's going on at the Muntz place?"
Mrs. Viselli struggled to one knee, and leaned over to look past the corner of her house. "Oh. They must be bringing Josh home."
"Who's that? I knew they had a grown daughter, but I thought that was all." She could now see two policemen approaching on foot.
"No. They ..." She almost stopped. "You may as well know, Elena. Long ago, the Muntz boy attacked three women. Killed ... I think it was two, but maybe the first one lived."
Elena recoiled. "I never heard about that."
"It's not something we talk about casually. We've been trying to live it down for a while." She knelt back down, and her voice grew tart. "Maybe we never will."
The police were talking to the onlookers now. "What happened to him? Did he just get paroled?"
"Never went to prison. He was found insane, institutionalized -- but they've given him that new treatment, and they say he's cured."
A car pulled up in front of the Muntz house. It bore no markings, but still managed to look official. The cops took positions by the doors, while a second car pulled up behind it.
"He got the brain wipe?" Elena said.
"Yes, that's what they call it. Of course the news gave a much longer explanation, about putting someone else's normal brain patterns in the sick areas." She grunted, and tossed aside a large weed with a spray of dirt. "Better if they erased the whole brain, maybe."
Elena didn't hear the last part, as she had fixated on the figure emerging from the car. He was tall and wore a cap, but she couldn't see much else. The cameras, including one from the trailing car, followed him up the walk. Shouts rose from the small crowd. A policeman pushed one person away after he got too close, and when a couple tried to block the walkway, the other cop had to brandish a stunner to move them aside.
Josh Muntz didn't seem to react, but Elena was in a bad position to see if he did. "Are we going to have this happen every day?"
"I doubt it. Maybe a protest or two, and the news'll run profiles of Josh. Just enough to blacken our reputation all over again."
As Josh and his escort reached the door, Dinah Muntz appeared. She said a few words to the police, and took her son inside with an arm draped around his shoulder. She gave no acknowledgement to the cameras pressing in, and the blinds had been drawn in advance.
"Nobody told me," Elena repeated. "Nobody asked us whether we wanted this."
Mrs. Viselli looked up. "Nobody had to."
Before Elena could reply, she heard fussing. She went to tend the baby, and that odd interlude was over.
Josh Muntz wanted to be alone. He hadn't been in this house, or anywhere outside The Facility, for thirteen years. It was strange and oppressive, and he wanted to detach himself from it, to sink into a somnolent fugue where nothing could reach him.
Mother wasn't allowing that, with all her fussing -- and she was right. Isolation had been a symptom back then: the long stretches spent in his room, doing nothing, refusing to look for a work or school position, to see friends, to interact in any way. If he gave in to that now, Mother would think he was right back where he started, and that would be too horrible for her. And for him.
Mother has shown him all around the house, and now was puttering in the kitchen, starting to get dinner ready. Josh snooped into the refrigerator and cupboards, looking over the food with a vague anxiety. Perhaps the variety unsettled him, after so many years of institutional feeding. Soon he stopped, letting Mother work unhindered.
It pained Josh to watch her. He knew she had aged, had seen the hair graying and wrinkles deepening on her visits to the California Medical Facility. What he hadn't seen was her slowing down, beginning to bend under the burden of age. She wasn't that far from retirement, and now she had a son to care for all over again.
"Here, Mom, let me do that."
She instinctively pushed his hand away. "Oh, I didn't mean that, Josh, but it's my gravy, and I know how to stir it. You just sit down and relax."
He tried, but a minute later he was up again, setting the table. She chided him, weakly. Soon, she gave him the task of fixing the peas. "But not in the microwave. They're never any good from the microwave."
That was a relief, because Josh didn't remember how to use one. He had enough trouble judging the right level of a boil for the water. Mother was itching to intervene, but held off.
They heard someone on the front stoop. "That must be Owen," she said. A couple of minutes passed, though, with no one entering or ringing the bell. "What's keeping him?" Dinah said, as she headed to the door. "Now don't touch anything."
Josh couldn't stand the suspense for long, and peeked into the front hall. Mother was closing the door. "Owen, you don't have to speak to them. Why can't they --" She saw Josh, and stopped.
Owen saw him too. He took a few stiff steps forward. "Hello, son." His gaze wavered, then came back. "I'll be cleaning up," he said, and headed upstairs.
His father always washed and changed after a day at the auto shop. Putting off more intimate greetings was never a slight, if you understood the man. When Father returned, though, he was little warmer. He hugged his son as though it hurt. Josh could think of nothing to say.
He hesitated before sitting down to eat, then remembered his cap. Old manners clung to him. He took it off, exposing the stubble on his scalp growing over the surgery scars, and trying not to notice as his parents' eyes turned and lingered.
Dinner was quiet. Josh told them about the custodial job he'd be starting in two days, on a graveyard shift beginning Sunday night. "I'll try not to make too much noise leaving or coming back. I'll be doing one or the other while you're sleeping, until they trust me enough to give me a daytime shift. If it's too --"
"Don't worry about that," his father said. "Do what you need to." He took a bite, frowning. "The ... hospital arranged this job?"
"Yes. It's part of the trial program."
"Right. So why couldn't they arrange housing, too? They have halfway houses."
"Owen, we went through this. Family support will help Josh readjust."
"But those other families --"
"Moved out of state. The university couldn't monitor them properly if they were with their families." She pushed out a smile. "It's lucky for Josh we stayed nearby. He needs us, and he has us."
Owen looked at his son. "Yeah. You've got us."
After dinner and a tense hour in the den, Josh finally went to his room. The furniture was the same, and a few other familiar items had endured his long absence, but the room still felt barren. He looked over the bookshelf, but no title struck him as anything he cared to read. Half were old textbooks, dry stuff. The others were juvenile, not him at all.
His door remained ajar. He didn't want them thinking he was closeting himself away. He kept his movements quiet, so he wouldn't disturb them, and they could talk without interruption.
The one obviously new item was the computer center on his desk, a low-end model. He turned it on, and reluctantly went to the news. He didn't want to see the coverage, but it was a matter of responsibility, not preference.
The automatic audio stream was the first thing to download, and he turned off the sound. The video was from his walk to the house. It showed the shouting man plainly, but no caption identified him, and the short text story didn't give his name either. Josh raised the volume a notch, leaned close to the speaker, and dragged the progress bar back.
"What about Karen? Who's going to give her back to us? You?"
Josh winced, recalling this part quite well. He went farther back.
"... this forceful reaction from John Parr, the father of Muntz's first victim."
Josh cranked the sound off again, and fought to push away the memories. By the time he could stand to listen again, a younger man was speaking.
"... this rewiring in secrecy. They didn't tell me, or my parents or my sister, until the day before yesterday, when they said they were releasing him. They never consulted the families. They never asked us!"
They never asked me. It was all decided by his caseworkers, and his parents giving informed consent. It isn't my fault.
He was able to gather some names from the news stories, and one home city, but nothing else. He thought of digging deeper, but refrained. His computer might be monitored, and he didn't want to give them any reason to swoop down on him.
Was it paranoia and delusion to think that, or recognizing their caution? He left the question unexamined, but shut off the computer.
It was still quiet. He listened, but heard not a murmur downstairs. He had hoped to overhear them, to get some idea of what they thought of all this in their unguarded moments. His parents simply weren't speaking tonight.
Was it the estrangement he had feared? Or did they no longer have unguarded moments? He hadn't had any for years and years—but he had been constantly under watch all that time. That taught you new behaviors.
Josh started rearranging the room, for activity as much as comfort. He looked in the drawers for room to put away some items. The top ones were filled with clothes bought for him in the last few days. The bottom one—apparently his parents had used it for the same purpose, putting things out of the way.
Half a dozen Joshes looked up at him. The photos were of various ages, the oldest from when he was about twenty. Josh picked that one up. His hair was shaggy, his eyes dark and sullen. He had no smile, but those of his parents were bright, still full of confidence and promise.
He felt no connection to that man, that boy; no tug of a reminder how to live an ordinary life. Then again, that Josh hadn't known how to be normal either, how to translate his smarts into good grades, how to hold a job or friends, or even how to look for a girlfriend.
Even thinking of that brought on a flood of horrible memories. By the time he fought them down, he couldn't stand to look at that photograph any longer. Was it even him in that picture? That person had changed too much, mutating from a listless youth into a lunatic killer. Then the treatment, the patterns of a healthy person's brain impressed over dysfunctional portions of his, making him -- what?
Whatever I am now, the rational part of himself said, and whatever I make of myself.
He got ready for sleep, before the night stretched too far. Soon the lights were off, he was in bed, and he was left with nothing but himself, and time to think.
"You get nervous when I look at you?"
Josh shook his head fast. Rafe Lilly had been showing him through the basement of the municipal building for five minutes. That was too soon to get fired, no matter what his shift boss's attitude was. "No, sir."
Rafe gave him another of those looks. "I do know where you've been, but I'm buckling down on you because you're new, not because of where you were. I've worked with people coming out of bad places before, you know. Part of the job here."
"Oh. Do we, uh, they usually work out?"
"Some of you do. A few don't." His smirk faded. "I hear you're a special case."
Self-consciously, Josh's hand brushed his cap. "I guess so."
"Hm. I hope they helped you. Still, that won't make me any softer on you. I'm gonna watch you close, make sure you learn what you've gotta do, so eventually you can do it without me looking over your shoulder."
He raised a finger at Josh. "And I'm gonna keep you awake. Some folks on night shift treat staying awake the whole eight hours as optional. I don't."
"Don't worry about that, sir," Josh said with a misshapen smile. "I won't have any trouble staying awake."
Josh got home just as his parents were going to work. He woke up just as they were coming home. What was dinner to them was breakfast to him, but they had it together.
Silence fell once Josh's small talk about work ran dry. Owen soon broke it. "There's a news show that wants to interview us for their program, Josh. All three of us."
"Owen," Dinah said, "we weren't going to bring that up. Josh shouldn't be pressured about it. None of us --"
"He can make his own decisions, Dinah," Owen said, his voice rising.
"I don't want to be on TV," Josh broke in, "or NV, or whatever it is. That's my decision."
Owen's mouth grew hard. "All right, son. I understand." He carved up the last of his meat. "But we can make our own decisions, too."
Looks passed between Owen and Dinah, freighted with meanings Josh did not understand. He drifted back to his meal, letting the chill descend upon the table.
"I don't understand why Dad wants to expose the family to that scrutiny. Especially himself." He let his head nestle into the soft back of the chair.
"Would he normally shield himself more than you or your mother?" Doctor Tranh's voice was soft and unthreatening, like everything about him from the décor of his office to his peach-colored shirt to his flat, bland face.
"It's just how he's handled this throughout," Josh said. "He almost never visited me in The Facility. He must have been shunning me, trying to deny that I was connected to him. Mom didn't talk about it much when she visited, but you could tell she resented it, and him. I'm kinda surprised they didn't split up after I got put away. Thirteen years of such tension is a long time." He chuckled. "Maybe they stayed together for the sake of the children. More misery because of me."
"Josh, it's pointless to take that blame upon yourself. They have control over their own actions. Besides which, there was nothing you could reasonably do to influence their actions while you were under special care."
Josh suppressed a wince at the euphemism. "It's what I could have done before, Doc. Or what I could have not done. I know you'll say I wasn't responsible, but nobody else was there, doing ..." He recovered fast, before Tranh could latch onto that. "Maybe I should do this, go on television. There are people I have to talk to, to tell things. This might be the best way."
"No," Dr. Tranh said quickly. "Your responsibility now is to your own well-being, not anybody else's. Directing your therapy toward others can hinder your own recovery. You are your first priority. If you need to examine these feelings, this is the place for that."
Josh wanted to argue with Dr. Tranh, but the urge sank down, merging into the knot within him. "The way everybody talked about this surgery, I thought I was cured, the illness gone, the violence erased." He looked at his hands. "I don't feel violent. Of course, I never felt violent except during the urges. Just a few months out of my whole life. I thought I'd have some residual trouble readjusting, coming to terms with my past. I still think that's really all I need."
Tranh shook his head gently. "Mental wellness is a lifetime process, Josh. Integrating into society is continuous, and so is integrating with our own personality. This is something that will be with you the rest of your life." Josh sank into the chair. Tranh didn't notice. "Tell me why it's so important for you to explain your actions to other people, and who these people are."
Josh stared at him. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Not until you tell me."
"It was frustrating." Josh winced as Doctor Peale placed one of the head clamps. Even through the padding, it was cold. "I try to get to the bottom of something, but he deflects me, as if my worries are overblown. It's like he doesn't just have all the answers, but all the questions, too. Doctor Trank's not helping me much."
Lucinda Peale backed away. "Trank? I thought his name was Tranh."
"Oops. That's his nickname in The Facility, among patients. He's so laid-back, guys joke that he's, uh, self-medicating. Listen, this isn't gonna get back to people, is it?"
"Relax, Mister Muntz. I'm not going to tattle." She cocked her head, listening to her earpiece. "Okay, they're ready in the booth. We'll set the baseline now."
Light classical music began to play in Josh's ears. He tried to sit back, but the head clamps held him fast. The design of the magnetoencephalograph was new, letting the patient sit instead of lying down. The head was still immobilized, but the patient could see and hear much more.
It probably helped claustrophobes cope, Josh thought, but it wasn't a problem he had. Enclosed spaces were comfortable to him from before his illness, and especially during his confinement. Odd, then, that he felt relief at having an open scanner here.
"Maybe you could help me switch psychologists," he said to Doctor Peale. "Maybe, if the project doesn't have you too busy ..."
"I'm a neurobiologist," Peale said, "not a psychologist. I may be able to help restructure brains from within, but not from without. It's not my field."
"You might be better than you think. You've got a good manner with me."
Peale colored, then frowned. "All right," she said to the voice in her ear. "Please stay quiet, Mister Muntz. We have to restart the baseline."
"Okay." Under his breath, he added, "And call me Josh."
He stayed quiet and calm, thinking as little as possible about what was to come. He had been in this room before, once as a potential subject, once before his surgery, and once after. They always asked him about his crimes. They needed to see how his brain reacted, which neurotransmitters were produced and reabsorbed. They needed to see whether the changes the surgeon had wrought persisted.
The MEG was supposed to be a noninvasive scanner. The interrogations put the lie to that.
Peale stopped her pacing. "Okay, we have our baseline." She flipped down a small video screen in front of Josh, and backed away to a chair next to a control panel. "Now, when you're ready, we'll start with your recollections of Karen Parr."
Josh saw her cross her legs tightly. He made his voice gentle, unconsciously mimicking Doctor Trank. "You're still afraid of me, aren't you?"
Peale made two energetic false starts, then subsided into thought. "Yes," she finally said. "Violence frightens me. I've been around violent people the last few years on this project, talking them through their acts of ... It should have inured me. Knowing the overlay procedure as intimately as I do should convince me that you are no threat. I really believe you aren't, but I still cannot shake this primal fear. It isn't your fault. It's mine." She groaned. "I shouldn't be saying this."
"It's all right. You shouldn't want to be unafraid of violence." His voice caught for an instant. "But you've got an escape route. If it's ever too much for you, you can separate yourself, switch to another project, leave the violence behind."
Peale's frown lightened. "We're actually trying to do that. We're expanding the uses of --" She stopped, listened, and turned testily toward the curved mirror set in a corner of the ceiling. "Okay, Pavel, I know." She looked back. "We need to start the interview now, Josh. Karen Parr."
"All right." Josh fixed his eyes on the screen, and fought down the surge in his chest. If she could face these things, so could he.
Josh got off the bus, still feeling logy even with bright afternoon sunlight beaming down on him. He started walking the four blocks to home, passing people on the sidewalk. None of them turned aside, obviously looked away, or verbally accosted him. Not his neighborhood yet. Not people who know who he was.
He had gotten off work early that morning, as usual. After a week's scrutiny, Lilly was thinking of shifting him to evenings soon. Josh had enough reason to stay in Lilly's good graces; this was just one more.
Josh had gotten a few hours of sleep at home, before he had to go to his latest therapy session. Doctor Trank thought it some breakthrough that Josh said how bad he felt about the attacks, about having killed a woman and left another brain-damaged. Good God, how couldn't he?
He had felt that remorse before the overlay, in a disjointed, apathetic way, the same way he felt most things back then. Now he felt it all, like the surgeon had never closed his skull. From someone so solicitous about his feelings, Josh thought, the doctor wasn't helping much with them now.
Trank still wouldn't sanction his approaching any of the victims' families. Not self-directed, he maintained. No, can't have any catharsis.
Josh didn't mention to him that one note dropped through the mail slot at home, from the brother of one of his victims. Josh didn't want him in trouble. Still, he hoped the guy wouldn't follow through.
He rounded the corner onto his home block. He heard a door close, and saw an old woman across the street stiffen her back as she worked in her garden. A younger woman was approaching him on the sidewalk. She wasn't from the neighborhood; she couldn't know who he was.
She picked up her pace, and he realized he was wrong. She knew him; she was looking right at him. Was she from one of the families? He didn't think so. Before he could try again to place her, she was right there.
"Joshua Muntz?"
"Uh ... yes. I'm Josh Muntz." He braced himself.
"Hi. I'm Kadie, Kadie Casimir. I'm with CRCRI. That's Californians for Restoration of Civil Rights to the Incarcerated."
Josh looked at her in incomprehension, and started walking again. "I'm sorry. I've never entered into political causes."
"But this is your cause." Kadie kept pace with him, gesturing expansively she spoke. "The law has stripped you of your right to vote, because you were institutionalized for ... your acts." She regained her momentum before Josh could fire back a riposte. "It's a permanent injustice, imposed on the basis of a temporary sentence. Well, really no sentence is justification for depriving you of civil rights."
"I've never voted, either." As he said it, he remembered he had once. Admitting it would only encourage her, but he thought about it.
"That isn't the point. Look at you now: after the overlay, you're fully rehabilitated. It's scientific fact. You're a living example, refuting the injustice that we want to reverse. You can speak for people like you, who have been rehabilitated, or who still languish in incarceration, denied their fundamental rights. We want you to be a spokesman for us."
Josh stopped at the walkway to his house, disturbed. "I'm not political," he said in a weak voice. "I've never cared."
Kadie's smile disturbed Josh worse. "Well, maybe that's not true any more. Your pattern donor -- a lot of them think as we do. Some of their enlightened ideals may have been part of the healthier patterns imprinted onto you."
Josh felt himself turn to lead. He could barely make himself move up the walkway, away from this woman. He couldn't form any words to speak.
"It's no reason to be afraid," Kadie called after him. "It's a better you. Don't reject it."
He didn't stop until he was inside and closing the blinds. He lifted one up an inch, watching her slow retreat. He had the impulse to call her back, which scared him most of all.
"Imagine her nerve!" Owen Muntz said. "I hope you tossed her out of this house."
"She wasn't in the house." Josh followed his father into the kitchen, where Mother was taking a bowl out of the refrigerator. "I turned her away, but -- is it true?"
"Is what true?" Dinah asked.
Josh turned to her. "Mom, when I was younger, did I ever raise a fuss about engineered foods?"
Dinah thought. "No. Of course, I don't buy engineered foods. They never completely got their reputation back, and they're still a little pricey."
Josh gave a pained smile. "I'm relieved -- and that's what worries me. I never cared when I was young, I never thought about it in The Facility, but it matters to me now. Isn't that strange?"
He took a hesitant step toward his father. "Dad, what do you think about this drive to legalize polygamy?"
Dinah gasped. "Joshua!"
Owen bristled. "What do you think? Don't tell me you're in favor of that!"
"I -- I don't know. It was a fringe idea before I went away, and it still is, kinda. But I looked at the story in the paper after I got home, and something inside me said, 'Yes. Good.'"
"Is that how they filled your head in that hospital? Is that what we taught you?"
"No, Dad! That's the point." He raised a shaky hand to his temple. "Have I got someone else in my head? Did those scientists put him there?"
Dinah put her arms around his shoulders. "Josh, dear, that woman's unnerved you. You're still recuperating, readjusting. Really, she had no business saying such things to you."
"Yeah," Owen said, "but what if she was right?" Two heads snapped around. "We heard that talk, Dinah, back when we were being briefed on the operation. Those politicians getting their brain patterns taken, used on people."
"Doctor Patrusky assured us none of that would get carried over," Dinah said. "All the rest was just political smearing. You know better. Don't listen to this," she said to Josh.
"And you know it isn't your political ox being gored." Owen leaned across the kitchen table toward them. "Maybe there's something to this. Maybe they don't know as much as they think they do."
Josh could feel his mother's demeanor change, as she let him go to confront her husband across the table. "Oh, better that than somebody might pin something bad onto you, right, Owen?"
"Do you want this to be my fault? Do you want to drag this argument out of its grave?"
"Stop this," Josh said weakly. "I never said it was your fault, Dad. How could it be?"
"Oh, you'd be surprised what blame some people can spread around. Some of those studio experts --" He put a scornful fillip on the words. "-- during your trial were playing up the 'genetic component' to mental illnesses. Heredity. Us." He jabbed his thumb at Dinah and himself. "Making us complicit, responsible. They liked that conclusion better than the obvious one."
"That's not what this is," Josh tried to say, but his mother was already shouting.
"And you can't stand that, bearing any responsibility for your own son, so you tried to deny even that." She wheeled on Josh. "He got DNA tests."
"Dinah!"
She ignored him. "To see if you were his son. He was hoping I might have gotten knocked up by some random pedestrian, taking him off the hook."
Josh staggered back to the wall, glad for something solid behind him. Father was looking his way, his arms out.
"They kept pushing their agenda, day after day. They drove me past my breaking point. I tried to make her understand, to get some forgiveness -- but she had to drag your sister into it. She did her own tests for Mary, to throw them in my face, to imply there was some doubt about that!" He pointed at Dinah. "And now you've dragged him into it. Now no one is spared."
"There you go again, shifting blame. It's never you. You never have to pay!"
Owen hands fell, bunched, at his sides. "I've paid. For thirteen years, I've paid: with everyone who knows my son was a killer and insane, with however many millions more will know when that interview goes on TV. It's Purgatory, but if you go through enough Purgatory, it's supposed to end. I thought it might be ending, but now, if he's got voices in his head ..."
They ran out of invective for a moment, just long enough for Josh to flee the kitchen and bolt upstairs. He heard their voices rising again, and shut the bedroom door on them. He tried to shut his mind to them as well.
He had put off going online, for fear of what he might learn. He sat down now, and started looking up information on brain template donation. He soon discovered a dispute as acrimonious as he had feared, sometimes as bad as what was going on downstairs. He found lots of conclusions, but nothing conclusive.
"-- your self-indulgent breast-beating, you won't face --"
Josh covered his ears until his mother's voice faded back into indistinctiveness. He cleared the screen, and stared at it. He had postponed looking up any of those addresses, too. Was it something he even wanted to do, with the protective surveillance they might have on him?
"-- enough of 'me' and 'my,' Dinah. What about 'our?' Our son --"
Well, looking up the overlay pattern debate had probably raised flags. Might as well go all the way.
Doctor Peale glanced up from her work, and saw him in the doorway. "Mister Muntz! Were you looking for me?" He barely nodded. "How did you know I'd be here on a Saturday morning?"
"I didn't. I just tried here."
She stood up. "You ... look like you're in rough shape."
"I had a bad night." He shuffled in a step. "Is it true, Doc? Did overwriting my neurons give me the political ideas of another man?"
He watched her jaw stiffen, then move in slow, milling motions. "Mister Muntz, you know we restricted the overlay to the areas in your brain implicated in your illness. Despite that narrow focus, theoretically there could be carryovers beyond the transfer of a mentally stable pattern. A lot of people have gotten worked up about this, but all their evidence is anecdotal. There is no scientific evidence that this happens, or that it has any noticeable effect on the patient."
"Well, chalk up another anecdote, because it happens." He took another step, and Peale drew back. "Did you pick the politicians yourself?"
"No!" Her head dropped, and she murmured something about God into her hands. "Sit down, please." He didn't move.
"Mister -- Joshua, I made a hard decision, a compromise that saved our program when the State Assembly could have left it to wither and die. We've done a lot of good we otherwise couldn't have, but that hasn't made me forget our original ... compromise. We've added many more templates to our catalog since then. Those politicians are a minority now. If we haven't completely balanced their particular inclinations," she said with a hopeful smile, "we've definitely diluted them."
"But you left them in your catalog?"
She nodded. "Compatible templates aren't automatic. It's like organ donation. We need a deep pool."
"Was mine one of theirs? Or maybe someone like-minded, who didn't want the pool diluted?"
Peale's shoulders slumped. "I don't know, and I couldn't find out. Donors have confidentiality rights." She took a tense breath. "I want you to consider that excess overlay isn't the only explanation for any peculiarities in your thoughts. Could there -- please, I'm not being insulting in asking, but --"
"Multiple personalities?" Josh shook his head. "MPD's an extreme form of neurosis. I was diagnosed schizophrenic, though they never pinned down what kind. Some said it was mainly catatonic; a few said paranoid. Blending of symptoms is pretty common, it turns out. Probably what makes people confuse schizophrenia with split personalities."
He laughed, then saw that that unnerved Peale. "But it isn't MPD, and I never heard voices. I don't hear them now. It's just that my own internal voice says things I don't expect." He felt the nervous energy trickle out of him, and he pulled over the chair Peale had offered him. "You've got to do something for me, Doc," he said as he folded into it.
"I want to help you," Peale said.
"Then send me back into surgery. Rewire me so ... you probably can't remove his thoughts, but make it so I don't mind them. Make me oblivious. Make me happy."
"Josh, we aren't close to being able to excise individual thoughts, and ethically --"
"Oh, right, ethics. Then what about my memories? Can you block out the attacks?" Her expression gave him the answer. "How about something simple: disengaging my sex drive?"
"What?" Peale needed a moment to regroup. "There was no sexual component to the assaults, was there?"
"It's not about the assaults. Except it is." He tightened, bent a little upon himself. "No decent woman would want a man who did those things. No woman should. Even if I'm better now, I'd have to come clean about my past. Inflicting those horrors on someone I cared about ... terrible, just ..."
Peale cautiously pulled her chair closer. "Joshua, I need to know this. Are you feeling any urges that you experienced ... before?"
Josh snapped out of his seat. "No! Doc, that's the part you got right. I don't think I could hurt anyone if I tried." His face convulsed once. "It's all the rest that's giving me trouble."
Peale nodded, and pushed her chair back to the desk. "Let me call someone for you. Not Doctor Trank -- I mean Tranh. I know another psychologist --"
She had turned to her computer. Josh took that moment of inattention to slip out and hurry down the hall. Peale shouted as he turned the corner, but he heard no sounds of pursuit.
Josh was beginning to think he was lost. He hadn't printed a map or brought a pocket-comp, and in his precipitate departure from the university lab, he could have hopped the wrong bus. His memory for the streets might not be so sharp either. Just one more thing wrong with his brain.
It didn't matter. He'd keep walking. Whether he found it felt almost secondary.
But there it was, right ahead. He had even delivered himself to the right block. He hadn't gotten himself lost—and he almost regretted it.
He walked up the street, tugging his cap down, keeping his head low. He counted the numbers, and spotted the little run-down house that was his destination. A second later, he stopped in his tracks.
There she was, sweeping the porch listlessly. He had an oblique look at her, and it was hard to see the person she had been. More than time had altered Karen Parr's face. The intellectual light had vanished, and taken all of the beauty with it.
No, it hadn't vanished, hadn't peacefully evaporated. He had bludgeoned it out of her.
He walked again, assuming the most passive posture he could. He didn't know whether she would even recognize him -- until she looked up, and froze. So did he.
She began a fearful grunting, and backed away, gripping the broom tighter. Soon her back reached the wall, and her voice rose to a wavering keen. It sounded just like she had after his first blow had struck: the same terror, the same desperation. He remembered his own desperation, too, as she swung again to silence her --
He took a last step forward, arms out, pleading harmlessness. That drove her keen into a shriek. The front door flew open that instant. An older woman rushed out, speaking rapidly and soothingly. A man came right behind, and his gaze fixed on Josh.
He knew John Parr from the news clips. He knew for certain that Parr knew him.
"Get her inside," he told his wife, as he stormed down the stairs. "And call the police!"
Josh didn't run. "I'm sorry. I didn't come to upset her, or anyone. I --"
"You shouldn't have come here at all!" Parr stopped inches from him. "What business can you possibly have in our home?"
"To apologize." Josh was starting to shake. "To begin to make some kind of amends."
"To what? Oh, it's way too late for that. You can't restore my daughter's mind. You can't undo the last fourteen years."
"I know that, sir."
"Do you know you can't bring Sarah Abel back to life, either? So this isn't about making amends. You're here to make yourself feel better -- and I don't want you to feel better! Nobody in this family does!" He took a step back, grinding a fist into his palm. "You are lucky my son isn't here. What he'd do to you ..."
"He told me what he'd do. I took that chance." That deflected Parr's wrath for an instant. "It's important for all of you to understand, even him, especially him."
There was a last muffled shriek from inside the house. "Understand what?" Parr demanded, his anger rekindled. "That some machine has washed away your sin and absolved you? That you're a new man?"
The last words caught Josh off guard. "You're sneering at that, but I think that's what I am. I don't know who or what they've made of me, but that lunatic, that brute is gone. It's not me anymore -- I mean, I'm not whoever that person was, and ..." His face grew blank. "Put it that way, and it's not so bad. Better an identity crisis than the identity I had."
Parr's eyes had narrowed. "Listen to you. You're still crazy. They should never have let you out."
Josh blinked. "I won't say you're wrong." He looked vaguely at Mr. Parr. "I think I was wrong, wrong to come here. I won't do it again." He turned around and began to shuffle back up the street. "Guess it didn't matter."
"What? Son of --"
The blow fell hard on the side of Josh's head. He sprawled to the ground, half on the lawn, his cap falling free. A shadow moved over him.
"If you're going to say my daughter didn't matter, say it to my face! Look at me!"
Josh rolled over, to see John Parr looming over him, fists cocked. He tried to speak, to tell him he had misheard, but he was too stunned to get out a word. An awareness of neighbors beginning to gather on sidewalks or peer through doorways and windows strayed into his mind.
"Or maybe you'd like to come at me, hm? Someone bigger, ready to defend himself. Not so eager for that as for a helpless girl, huh?"
Josh felt the man's glare, felt the long scars on his scalp start to burn as if being heated by waves of hatred. Far in the distance, a siren wailed.
Josh began to pick himself up. That was Parr's cue to lunge.
Doctor Peale caught up with him at the hospital. His injuries were not serious enough to keep him there, and she drove him home. He didn't say a word, and she broke the silence only to call his parents, and someone else. Josh was more talkative once he was home, by degree, and out of necessity.
"I told you, I don't want to press charges."
Dinah touched his shoulder over the back of the chair. "Dear, I don't think it's going to be up to you."
"I provoked him. I'll swear to that."
Peale shook her head. "There were witnesses," she said to Josh's parents. "They'll have a different story. In your son's depressed condition, I think he believes himself deserving of any punishment he gets."
"So your treatment didn't work," Owen said.
Peale looked over to Doctor Dreher. "It's more correct to say it was incomplete," the white-haired lady said. "Schizophrenia correlates to some of the same defects in brain structure and chemistry as severe depression does. The frontal lobes and basal ganglia have lowered metabolism in both conditions. The overlay on Mister Muntz rectified this, and also damped dopamine production in the left hemisphere."
"However," Peale said, "there are some areas implicated in depression that the overlay did not touch, and a few where erasing schizophrenic tendencies arguably strengthened depressive ones. Limbic system metabolism is low in schizophrenia, but high in depression, so when the overlay raised that metabolism, it may have made Josh more susceptible to depression. Also, there were signs of overactivity in the outer edge of the prefrontal lobe, which contributes to depression. Our pre-operative scans found this, but ... we intentionally left this alone."
"What? Why?" his parents chorused almost perfectly. Josh's look of betrayed reproach hit Peale more closely.
"We need to be careful. Overlay treatments are still fairly new; our knowledge is incomplete. We perform only what's necessary. Also ... if we're to take responsibility for releasing violent people back into society, we have to be certain they won't revert to violence. The prefrontal areas I mentioned are where long-term memories are seated."
She looked squarely at Josh. "Memories like yours of the attacks. If we erased those, we'd uproot the anchor for any remorse you'd feel over them, and lower your inhibitions against any surviving inclination to commit them again. It was a calculated compromise." She dropped her eyes. "I'm sorry that it's left you still unwell."
"And that's it?" Owen snapped. "You did your best, and we're stuck with the result?"
"No," said Doctor Dreher. "For one, I'll be taking over Mister Muntz's therapy. My approach is more dynamic that Dr. Tranh's, which may be what Josh needs. Dr. Peale's team will run new scans to confirm our hypotheses about his brain structure."
"That won't do me much good," Josh said, "unless the surgeons -- oh, no." He laid a hand to his temple.
"Actually," Peale said, "there's an alternative. We've made great strides lately with TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation. It can alter neural pathways and chemistry without physical contact. Assuming the animal tests go well, we could start using it on human patients within three months. If you want, you're first on that list."
"More experimenting?" growled Owen, but Dinah's fierce look silenced him.
Josh nodded weakly. "But three months?"
"That's where I come in," Doctor Dreher said. "You'll find my hospital different from the state facility. Much less concentration on security, on sequestering people from society. Still, Luci and I agree it's an appropriate place for you now, to keep you safe."
Josh looked forlornly from one woman to the other. His parents were just visible in the corners of each eye. He closed those eyes, looking inward.
"I think I'd like that."
"Well, there he goes," Mrs. Viselli said, as she rose and brushed dirt off her sleeves. "Can't say I'm sorry."
Elena jounced the baby in her arms as she watched. Two unfamiliar women walked on either side of Josh, while Dinah stood at the front door. The white car had "Oak Shade" printed in modest lettering on its side.
"Those same women were there last night," Mrs. Viselli added. "One of them's a brain-wiping scientist. The pretty one, on the right."
"What happened?" Elena asked. "He didn't --"
Mrs. Viselli's face soured. "He went harassing one of the families yesterday, and had some sort of breakdown. I don't think he attacked another girl. He sure didn't get the opportunity with the family: her father was there."
"Oh, good." The car revved up. "I guess we can get back to normal here now."
"Mm-hm. As good as normal gets around here, anyway."
|