False Memory

chapel only when I kiss your eyes and call you princess.”

After waiting a minute, the doctor timed the pulse in Martie’s left wrist. Slow, thick, steady. Fifty-two beats per minute.

Now on to Mr. Rhodes, housepainter, college dropout, closet intellectual, soon to be infamous from sea to shining sea, unwitting instrument of vengeance.

* * *

The novel was about brainwashing, which Dusty realized within a page or two of encountering Dr. Yen Lo.

This discovery startled him almost as much as seeing the name from Skeet’s notepad. He didn’t fumble the book this time, kept his place, but muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

At the kid’s apartment, Dusty had searched without success for evidence of cult membership. No tracts or pamphlets. No religious vestments or icons. Not one caged chicken clucking worriedly as it awaited sacrifice. Now, when Dusty hadn’t even been thinking about Skeet’s troubles, here came the mysterious Chinese physician, popping up from Condon’s novel, revealing himself to be an expert in the science and art of brainwashing.

Dusty didn’t believe in coincidence. Life was a tapestry with patterns to be discerned if you looked for them. This book didn’t just happen to be the one Martie had been carrying around for months. It had been made available to them because it contained a clue to the truth of this insane situation. He would have given his left testicle — or, with more alacrity, all the money in their checking account — to know who had ensured The Manchurian Candidate would be here, now, when needed. Although Dusty believed in a universe intelligently designed, he had difficulty crediting God with working miraculously through a paperback thriller rather than a burning bush or the more traditional and flashier signs in the sky. Okay, so it wasn’t God, wasn’t coincidence, and therefore must be someone of flesh and bone.

Dusty heard himself speaking aloud, as though he were imitating an owl, and he silenced himself with the realization that he knew too little to answer his question.

In Condon’s novel, which was set during and after the Korean War, Dr. Yen Lo had brainwashed some American soldiers, turning one of them into a robotic killer who remained unaware of what had been done to him. Back home, acclaimed a hero, the soldier would lead a normal life — until, activated by a game of simple solitaire and then instructed, he became an obedient assassin.

But the Korean War had ended in 1953, and this thriller had been published in 1959, long before Dusty had been born. Neither the young soldier nor Dr. Yen Lo was real. There was no apparent reason why a connection should exist between this novel and Dusty, Martie, and Skeet with his haiku rules.

He could only read further, in search of revelation.

After he had shot through several more pages, Dusty heard the lever-action handle squeak against its escutcheon on the other side of the door to Ahriman’s office, heard the click of the latch, and suddenly felt that he must let no one catch him reading this book. He was abruptly, inexplicably nervous, and when the door seal broke with the pop and sigh of a violated vacuum, he tossed the paperback aside with alarm, as though he were about to be caught reading vile pornography or, worse, one of the numerous pompous tomes pumped out by his father and stepfathers.

The book slid across the small end table beside his chair, off the edge, and hit the floor with a plop just as the heavy door opened and Dr. Ahriman appeared. Unaccountably flushed, Dusty was getting to his feet even as the paperback was still falling, and he coughed to cover the plop.

Flustered, he heard himself say, “Doctor, is Martie — Did it go — Will she—”

“Viola Narvilly,” the doctor said.

“I’m listening.”

50

After they went through the enabling litany of Dusty’s personal haiku, Dr. Ahriman escorted him into the office and led him directly to the armchair in which Martie had been seated earlier. She slept upon the couch, and Dusty didn’t glance at her.

Ahriman sat in the facing armchair and studied his subject for a minute. The man had a slightly detached attitude, but he responded immediately to the doctor’s voice. His passive expression was nothing stranger than the looks one saw on the faces of motorists caught in the boredom of bumper-to-bumper, rush-hour traffic.

Dustin Rhodes was a relatively new acquisition in the Ahriman collection. He had been fully controlled by the doctor less than two months.

Martie herself, operating under the doctor’s guidance, on three occasions had served to her husband the meticulously blended dose of drugs required to slip him into the twilight sleep that allowed him to be effectively programmed: Rohypnol; phencyclidine; Valium; and a substance known — although only to a few cognoscenti — as Santa Fe #46. Because Dusty always had dessert with dinner, the first dose had come in a slice of peanut butter pie; the second, two nights later, lent neither flavor nor odor to a bowl of creme brulee with a crown of toasted coconut curls; the third, three nights after the second, would have been undetectable to a bloodhound, tucked away in an ice-cream sundae topped with fudge sauce, maraschino cherries, almonds, and chopped dates.

The man knew how to eat. As regarded culinary preferences, at least, the doctor felt a certain kinship with him.

The programming had been conducted in the Rhodeses’ bedroom: Dusty on the bed, Martie sitting cross- legged and out of the way on the big sheepskin pillow in the corner, a floor lamp serving as an IV rack. All had gone well.

The dog wanted to be a problem but was too sweet and obedient to do more than growl and sulk. They shut him away in Martie’s study with a bowl of water, a yellow Booda duck with a squeaking tummy, and a Nylabone.

Now, after a seizure of REM passed out of Dusty’s eyes, Dr. Ahriman said, “This won’t take long, but my instructions today are very important.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Martie will return here for an appointment on Friday, the day after tomorrow, and you will arrange your schedule to be able to bring her. Tell me if this is clear.”

“Yes. Clear.”

“Now. You surprised me yesterday — all your heroics at the Sorensons’ house. That was not according to my plan. In the future, if you are present when your brother Skeet attempts suicide, you will not interfere. You may make some effort to talk him out of it, but you’ll do nothing but talk, and in the end you will allow Skeet to destroy himself. Tell me if you understand.”

“I understand.”

“When he does destroy himself, you will be utterly devastated. And angry. Oh, enraged. You will give yourself completely to your emotions. You’ll know at whom to direct your rage, because the name will be there in the suicide note. We’ll discuss this further on Friday.”

“Yes, sir.”

Always one to find time for some fun, even when he had a busy schedule, the doctor glanced at Martie on the couch, and then turned his attention to Dusty. “Your wife is succulent, don’t you think?”

“Do I?”

“Whether you do or not, I think she is a succulent piece.”

Dusty’s eyes were primarily gray, but with blue striations that made them unique. As a boy, Ahriman had been a marble collector, with many sacks of fine glass shooters, and he had owned three that had been similar to, but not as lustrous as, Dusty’s eyes. Martie found her husband’s eyes particularly beautiful, which was why the doctor had gotten such a kick out of implanting the suggestion that her autophobia would really begin to get a grip on her when she had a sudden vision of sticking a key into one of those beloved eyes.