False Memory

Martie was staring down at her hands once more.

“Martie!” the doctor commanded.

Obediently, she met his eyes again.

Ahriman stared at Martie, studying her eyes, then turned to Dusty, turned from one to the other, one to the other, one to the other, until he said, more shakily than he would have liked, “No REM. No jiggle.”

“No shit,” Dusty said, getting to his feet.

Their attitude changed. Gone, the glazed expressions. Gone, the air of obedience.

Rapid eye movement couldn’t be faked convincingly, so they hadn’t tried.

Rising from her chair, Martie said, “What are you? What sort of disgusting, pathetic thing are you?”

The doctor did not like the tone of her voice, did not like it at all. The loathing. The contempt. People did not speak to him in this fashion. Such disrespect was intolerable.

He tried to reestablish control: “Raymond Shaw.”

“Kiss my ass,” she said.

Dusty began to circle the desk.

Sensing a potential for violence, the doctor drew the.380 Beretta from his shoulder holster.

The sight of the gun stopped them.

“You can’t have been deprogrammed,” Ahriman insisted. “You can’t have been.”

“Why?” Martie asked. “Because it’s never happened before?”

“What do you have against Derek Lampton?” Dusty demanded.

People didn’t demand things of the doctor. Not more than once, anyway. He wanted to shoot this stupid, stupid, cheaply dressed, nobody, nothing housepainter right between the eyes, blow his face off, blow his brains out.

A shooting here, of course, would have unpleasant repercussions. Police with their endless questions. Reporters. Stains that might never come out of the Persian rug.

For a moment he suspected treachery at the institute: “Who reprogrammed you?”

“Martie did it for me,” Dusty claimed.

“And Dusty freed me.”

Ahriman shook his head. “You’re lying. This isn’t possible. You’re both lying.”

The doctor heard a note of panic in his voice and was ashamed. He reminded himself that he was Mark Ahriman, only son of the great director, greater in his own field than Dad had been in Hollywood, a puppeteer, not a puppet.

“We know a lot about you,” Martie said.

“And we’re going to find out more,” Dusty promised. “Every ugly little detail.”

Detail. That word again. Which last night had seemed to be an omen and not a good one.

Convinced they had been activated and accessed, he had told them too much. Now they had an advantage, and they might eventually find a way to use it effectively. Game point to the opposition.

“We’re going to find out what you have against Derek Lampton,” Dusty vowed. “And when we’ve figured out your motivation, that’ll be another nail in your coffin.”

“Please,” the doctor said, wincing with pretended pain. “Don’t torture me with cliches. If you’re going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors.”

That was better. He had slipped out of character for a moment. His was a demanding role, complex, intellectual, and richly nuanced. Of the actors who had won Oscars for starring in Dad’s tearjerkers, none could have settled into this part as deeply and successfully as had the doctor. A rare departure from character was understandable, but once again he was the lord of memory.

Now, in response to their pathetic attempt at intimidation, he gave them a lesson in the real thing: “While you’re embarked on this crusade to bring me to justice, you might need to move in with dear old Mom for a while. Your quaint little house burned to the ground Wednesday night.”

The poor dumb children were bewildered for a moment, not sure if what he had said was true or if it was a lie, and if it was a lie, they couldn’t puzzle out a purpose in the deceit.

“Your marvelous collection of thrift-shop furniture — all gone, I’m afraid. And the damning tape recording you mentioned earlier, the message from Susan — gone, too. The tragedy of fire. Insurance can never replace things with sentimental value, can it?”

They believed now. The stunned expression of the displaced, the dispossessed.

While they were emotionally reeling, the doctor hit them hard again. “The goggle-eyed idiot you left Skeet with. What’s his name?”

They glanced at each other, and then Dusty said, “Fig.”

The doctor frowned. “Fig?”

“Foster Newton.”

“Ah. I see. Well, the Fig is dead. Shot four times in the gut and chest.”

Rattled, Dusty asked, “Where’s Skeet?”

“Dead, too. Also four shots in the gut and the chest. Skeet and the Fig. It was a nice two-for-one deal.”

When Dusty started around the desk again, Ahriman aimed the Beretta point-blank at his face, and Martie seized her husband by the arm, halting him.

“Unfortunately,” the doctor said, “I wasn’t able to kill your dog. That would have been a fine dramatic touch, leading to such a nice reveal just now. An Old Yeller moment. But life isn’t as neatly structured as the movies.”

The doctor was back. If he could have jumped into the air and high-fived himself, he would have done so.

Great emotions boiled in the plebs, because like all their kind, they were driven far less by intellect than by raw emotion, but the Beretta required them to control themselves, and second by second, they were forced to come to terms with the hard realization that the pistol was not the doctor’s only weapon. If he was willing to confess to the killing of Skeet and the Fig, even here in the utter privacy of his sanctum sanctorum, then he must have no fear of being brought to trial for murder; he must be confident that he was untouchable. Reluctantly, bitterly, they were coming to the conclusion that no matter how vigorously they sought to defeat him, he would gun them down with his superior gamesmanship, with his superior intelligence, with his disregard for all rules other than his own, and with his exceptional talent for deception — which, in fact, made the handgun the least of his weapons.

After allowing them a moment for this truth to percolate down through their sadly porous gray matter, the doctor brought an end to the standoff. “I think you better go now. And I’ll give you some advice to make this game a bit fairer.”

“Game?” Martie said.

The contempt and revulsion in her voice couldn’t touch Ahriman any longer.

“What do you people want?” Dusty asked, his voice thick with emotion. “The institute … why?”

“Oh,” said the doctor, “surely you see that it’s useful from time to time to remove someone who obstructs important public policy. Or to control someone who can advance it. And sometimes…a bombing by some right-wing fanatic, or next week by a left-wing fanatic, or a dramatic mass murder by a lone gunman, or a spectacular train wreck or a disastrous oil spill…these things can generate enormous media coverage, focus the national attention on a particular issue, and drive legislation that will ensure a more stable society, that will allow us to avoid the extremes of the political spectrum.”

“People like you are going to save us from extremists?”

Ignoring her taunt, he said, “As for that advice I mentioned…From now on, don’t sleep at the same time. Don’t be apart. Cover each other’s back. And remember that anyone on the street, anyone in a crowd, could belong to me.”

He could see they were loath to leave. Their hearts were racing, their minds in a tumult of anger and grief