someone, Jesse. I want you to see someone.”
He shook his head. “They’d just tell me I have a tumor. My father died of one. There is something in my head, Amelia, but it’s not a tumor. It’s something they put there. Something that tells them about me.”
Amelia stroked his brow, a nurse again, only this time to a husband who was going mad. “Jesse, listen to yourself. You’ve got to see someone. If you won’t do it for me, do it for Charlie.”
He thought of Charlie, how much he wanted to stay alive and healthy and watch his son grow up. “All right,” he said. “I will.”
He met Dr. Findlay the next day, went through every test the doctor suggested, then returned for the results. The doctor’s diagnosis did not surprise him.
“The tumor is very small,” Dr. Findlay said. “There’s no sign of fluid buildup… but still, it could explain your recent behavior.”
Jesse knew that it was not a tumor, but what was the point of saying so.
Dr. Findlay handed him a small card with a name and address written on it. “Dr. Franklin Traub. He’s the best in the country.”
Jesse took the card. He knew that Dr. Traub would recommend surgery, and that during the course of that surgery, he would surely die as his father had, bearing an unbearable secret to the grave. For a moment, that death seemed sweet, a way of escaping… and allowing his family to escape.
Jacob and Becky watched the television screen where Tom appeared, sitting in a chair like a real celebrity, talking to the host, explaining his certainty that people were being abducted by aliens, even displaying a picture of the aliens themselves, creatures he estimated as being about four feet tall with pear-shaped heads, almond- shaped eyes, elongated arms, and long, extra-jointed fingers.
“Any minute he’ll do a card trick,” Jacob said.
Becky looked at him somberly. “I always knew, Jake. I always did. But I never thought that contactor Mom was building in the garage was going to get… your father’s attention.”
Jacob concentrated on the screen. Tom was now declaring that although he’d once been the nation’s foremost debunker of alien abductions, he had recently come to accept such stories as entirely true, a change he attributed to a “personal experience” he was not “at liberty” to discuss.
Jacob shook his head. No one would believe him, he thought. No one in the world save a few “crackpots” who were actually looking for the proof. And the price to Tom would be enormous. He would be ridiculed ceaselessly, caricatured and lampooned, the butt of a thousand cruel jokes. Ordinary people would cross the street in order to avoid him.
Jacob glanced across the room to where Carol sat with Lisa in her arms, reading to her quietly. It was a frail world, he knew, one he could blast into a thousand pieces with a single word.
He glanced back at the television. The audience was laughing.
Jesse and Amelia took their seats in Dr. Traub’s wood-paneled office and waited for the test results.
The doctor remained behind his desk, his hand on a slender folder.
“You were right,” he said to Jesse. “That thing in your brain is not a tumor.”
Jesse could hardly believe that Dr. Traub had actually confirmed what he’d always known, but never expected anyone to believe, that the thing in his brain had not been formed by his body, not a malignancy of flesh… but of intent.
“It’s very small,” Traub went on. “It looks metallic.” This last remark seemed almost physically to yank Traub forward in his seat. “Where did you grow up?” he asked.
“ Illinois.”
“Any exposure to chemicals?”
“Heroin,” Jesse admitted.
“And you say your father had a similar tumor?”
“Not similar.”
“No?”
“Identical.”
“I see.” Dr. Traub smiled reassuringly. “Well, for the record, we see such deposits occasionally in people who work with unusual chemicals,” he explained. “They’re usually made up of some kind of foreign matter that got swept into a little pile because your body couldn’t figure out how to get rid of it.” He clasped his hands together. “The important thing is that we can treat it without surgery. We can use localized ultrasound therapy to break it up. Once that’s happened, you’ll pass it in a matter of days.”
Jesse glanced at Amelia, then back to Dr. Traub. “No surgery?” he asked with great relief.
Dr. Traub nodded.
“So, if you get this thing out of my head,” Jesse asked tentatively, almost afraid to hear the answer, “then it might make… them… go away?”
“Them?”
Jesse shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Traub looked at him gently. “You don’t think you’ve got a metallic deposit in your head, do you, Jesse?”
“You’ve got your ideas about what’s in my head. I’ve got mine.”
“Why are you here, if you don’t think I can help you?”
“You have to help me,” Jesse said, his desperation rising to the surface. “You have to make this thing go away. I don’t care what it is anymore. I have a nine-year-old son. I don’t want to see him hurt… because of this thing in my head.”
Dr. Traub smiled quietly, though in some way, as Jesse noticed, his eyes remained oddly calculating. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll soon be fine.”
The house was chaos, and all Eric wanted to do was escape it. There were boxes and packing crates everywhere, and Mary was screaming that she didn’t want her Cabbage Patch dolls put in boxes for the move, and Julie was screaming at Mary to
Chet Wakeman stood on the front porch. He was beaming. “We’ve had a fantastic stroke of luck, Eric,” he said. “Jesse Keys is in a clinic in Minnesota.”
“How do you know?” Eric asked, astonished.
“I have a contact there,” Wakeman answered. “A Dr. Traub. In seems that Keys came to see him about some odd behavior. Traub found the same kind of ‘tumor’ that was in Keys’ father.” He clapped his hands together delightedly. “We’ve got him!”
“What do you want to do with him?” Eric asked.
Wakeman smiled. “I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”
“Well, while you’re thinking, don’t lose him,” Eric said impatiently. “I’m not going to make the same mistakes my father made.”
Wakeman looked at him. “Your old man’s been dead what, eight years?”
Eric nodded.
“So don’t you think you can stop trying to kick his ass?” Wakeman asked.
Eric frowned darkly.
Wakeman shrugged. “We’re not going to lose him,” he said. “One of our researchers was going through some of the old files, looking for research that we might have missed. He found these.”
Eric looked at the papers Wakeman handed him. They were transcripts of the markings that were identical to
