'About what?'
'Come, come, sir. Now that you're a prosecutor, the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak. I have always found that all prosecutors think MPs are faking it.'
'Hell, Doctor, he convinced me. I saved his life.'
'And do you regret that now?'
The question took Vail by surprise and he thought about it for a moment before answering. 'I don't… No.'
'It is hard, isn't it? Accepting the absurdities of the mind.'
'That's what you call it? Absurd?'
'Well, to the average person, yes. Absurd. Ludicrous. Preposterous. Crazy. It's very easy to label anything we don't understand or like or accept as fake or insane. Insanity is what I call a phrase of convenience, nothing more than a medical description. Multiple Personality Disorder, on the other hand, ah! Now there we have a recognized mental disease, defined in DSM 3, accepted by the profession, one of the true mysteries of the human condition.'
'DSM 3, that's your bible, as I recall.'
'True, sir, absolutely true. Catalogues and defines over three-hundred mental disorders. The
'Now that you've brought it up, what does DSM say about faking it?'
Woodward stopped. He did not look at Vail; he stared straight ahead and took several puffs of his pipe.
'I assume, sir, this is in the realm of an academic question. By that I mean nonspecific.'
'Of course. Generic.'
They walked down the pavement and then Woodward led Vail out across a broad expanse of lawn bordered by the buildings. From one of the buildings, Vail heard a muffled scream, a howling that quickly changed to laughter and then died away. If Woodward heard it, he made no acknowledgement of the fact. There were several inmates in the quadrangle, one pacing frantically back and forth, waving his hands and screaming silently to himself; another standing against a tree, his face a few inches from the bole, talking intently in tongues; another strapped in a wheelchair, his mouth hanging askew, his eyes half open and unfocused, staring at infinity. It was hard for Vail to ignore these human aberrations. Woodward was right. As sympathetic as Vail felt towards these unfortunate souls, they did seem strange, absurd, and ludicrous and he felt embarrassed for thinking about it.
'It's acceptable to stare, Mr Vail. Natural, in fact. They'll just stare back. You probably seem as bizarre to them as they seem to you.'
He nodded to a patient, who was picking imaginary flowers, and she smiled and nodded back.
'As to your question - about faking multiples - I presume it could be done for a short period of time. I seriously doubt that it could be sustained for very long. Too much involved, you know. My God, changing one's entire posture, body language, voice, general appearance, personality, attitude, persona. Virtually impossible to pull off over a protracted time period.'
'You said
Woodward smiled condescendingly. 'Hah! Forgot I was talking to a lawyer. Virtually impossible, yes, I did say that, didn't I? Well, sir, I suppose nothing is absolutely impossible anymore, technology being what it is. But I would say the chances of winning the lottery are far, far,
'Is Aaron Stampler capable of doing it?' Woodward stopped again, this time staring at Vail hard before he answered. 'If he is, I wouldn't know it. Good lord, man, he was diagnosed as a dissociated multiple personality by your own psychiatrist. You were the one who uncovered this problem, Mr Vail. Now ten years later you drop out of the sky and start raising questions. Questions that, in effect, could destroy eight years of hard work and incredible research? No, this man is not acting. This man is not faking it.'
'I'm just asking, Doctor. We're just talking.'
They strolled further, Woodward puffing on his pipe, obviously deep in thought.
'Do you dream, Mr Vail?' he said finally.
'Rarely.'
'But you do dream?'
'Occasionally, yes.'
'You're in another place, another dimension, and you wake up and suddenly you're in a totally different place' - he snapped his fingers - 'just like that. Right?'
