Brain Child (37 page)

“I don’t know,” Torres admitted. “And that’s why I want him back here. Somewhere in his memory banks there is an error, and that error has to be corrected. What seems to be happening is that Alex is becoming increasingly involved in finding the source of those memories.
There is no source,”
Torres said, and paused as his words penetrated the Lonsdales like daggers of ice. “When he discovers that, I’m not sure what might happen to him.”

Marsh’s voice hardened once more. “It sounds to me, Dr. Torres, as if you’re implying that Alex might go insane. If that has indeed happened, isn’t it possible that you’re entirely wrong, and Alex could, after all, have committed murder?”

“No,” Torres insisted. “The word doesn’t apply. Computers don’t go insane. But they do stop functioning.”

“A systems crash, I believe they call it,” Marsh said coldly, and Torres nodded. “And in Alex’s case, may I assume that would be fatal?”

Again Torres nodded, this time with obvious reluctance.
“I have to agree that that is quite possible, yes.” Then, seeing the look of fear and confusion on Ellen’s face, he went on: “Believe me, Ellen, Alex has done nothing wrong. In all likelihood, I’ll be able to help him. He’ll be all right.”

“But he won’t,” Marsh said quietly, drawing Ellen to her feet. “Dr. Torres, please don’t try to hold out any more false hope to my wife. The best thing she can do right now is try to accept the fact that Alex died last May. As of this moment, I do not know exactly who the person is who looks like my son and has been living in my house, but I do know that it is not Alex.” As Ellen began quietly sobbing once more, he led her toward the door. “I don’t know what to do now, Dr. Torres, but you may rest assured that should Alex come home, I will call the police and explain to them that Alex—or whoever he is—is legally in your custody, and that any questions they have should be directed to you. He is not my son anymore, Dr. Torres. He hasn’t been since the day I brought him to you.” He turned away, and led Ellen out of the office.

They were halfway back to La Paloma before Ellen finally spoke. Her voice was hoarse from her crying. “Is he really dead, Marsh?” she asked. “Was he telling us the truth?”

“I don’t know,” Marsh replied. It was the same question he’d been grappling with ever since they’d left the Institute, and he still had no answer. “He was telling us the truth, yes. I believe he did exactly what he says he did. But as for Alex, I wish I could tell you. Who knows what death really is? Legally, Alex could have been declared dead before we ever took him down to Palo Alto. According to the brain scans, there was no activity, and that’s a legal criterion for death.”

“But he was still breathing—”

“No, he wasn’t. Not really. Our machines were breathing for him. And now Raymond Torres has invented new machines, and Alex is walking and talking. But I
don’t know if he’s Alex. He doesn’t act like Alex, and he doesn’t think like Alex, and he doesn’t respond like Alex. For weeks now, I’ve had this strange feeling that Alex wasn’t there, and apparently I was right. Alex
isn’t
there. All that’s there is whatever Raymond Torres constructed in Alex’s body.”

“But it is Alex’s body,” Ellen insisted.

“But isn’t that all it is?” Marsh asked, his voice reflecting the pain he was feeling. “Isn’t it the part we bury when the spirit’s gone? And Alex’s spirit is gone, Ellen. Or if it isn’t, then it’s trapped so deep inside the wreckage of his brain that it will never escape.”

Ellen said nothing for a long time, staring out into the gathering gloom of the evening. “Then why do I still love him?” she asked at last. “Why do I still feel that he’s my son?”

“I don’t know,” Marsh replied. Then: “But I’m afraid I lied back there. I was angry, and I was hurt, and I didn’t want to believe what I was hearing, and for a little while, I wanted Alex to be dead. And part of me is absolutely certain that he is.” He fell silent, but Ellen was certain he had more to say, so she sat quietly waiting. After a few moments, as if there had been no lapse of time, Marsh went on. “But part of me says that as long as he’s living and breathing, he’s alive, and he’s my son. I love him too, Ellen.”

For the first time in months, Ellen slid across the seat and pressed close to her husband. “Oh, God, Marsh,” she whispered. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “In fact, I’m not sure there’s anything we can do, except wait for Alex to come home.”

He didn’t tell Ellen that he wasn’t at all sure Alex would ever come home again.

It was not a large house, but it was set well back from the street. Though he couldn’t read the address, Alex knew he was at the right place. It had been simple, really. When he’d come into Palo Alto, he’d shut all images of La Paloma out of his mind, then concentrated on the idea of going home. After that, he’d merely followed the impulses his brain sent him at each intersection until he’d finally come to a stop in front of the Moorish-style house he was now absolutely certain belonged to Dr. Raymond Torres. He studied it for a few moments, then turned into the driveway, parking the car on the concrete apron that widened out behind the house.

From the street, the car was no longer visible.

Alex got out of the car, closed the driver’s door, then opened the trunk.

He picked up the shotgun, holding it in his right hand while he used his left to slam the trunk lid. Carrying the gun almost casually, he crossed to the
back door of the house and tried the knob. It was locked.

He glanced around the patio behind the house, uncertain of what he was looking for, but sure that he would recognize it when he saw it.

It was a large earthenware planter, exploding with the vivid colors of impatiens in full bloom. In the center of the planter, wrapped neatly in aluminum foil and well-hidden by the profuse foliage, he found the spare key to the house. Letting himself inside, he moved confidently through the kitchen and dining room, then down a short hall to the den.

This, he was sure, was the room in which Dr. Torres spent most of his time. There was a fireplace in one corner, and a battered desk that was in stark contrast to the gleaming sleekness of the desk Torres used at the Brain Institute. And in equal contrast to the Institute office was the clutter of the den. Everywhere were books and journals, stacked high on the desk and shoved untidily onto the shelves that lined the walls. Most were medical books and technical journals relating to Torres’s work, but some were not. Resting the gun on its butt in the corner behind the door, Alex began a closer examination of the library, knowing already what he was looking for, and knowing that he would find it.

There were several old histories of California, detailing the settling of the area by the Spanish-Mexicans, and the subsequent ceding of the territory to the United States. Tucked between two thick tomes was the thin leather-bound volume, its spine intricately tooled in gold, that Alex was looking for. Handling the book carefully, he removed it from the shelf, then sat down in the worn leather chair that stood between the fireplace and the desk. He opened it to the first page, and examined the details of the illuminations that had been painstakingly worked around the ornate lettering.

It was a family tree, detailing the history of the family
of Don Roberto de Meléndez y Ruiz, his antecedents, and his descendants. Alex scanned the pages quickly until he came to the end.

The last entry was Raymond Torres, son of María and Carlos Torres.

It was through his mother, María Ruiz, that Raymond Torres traced his lineage back to Don Roberto, through Don Roberto’s only surviving son, Alejandro. Below the box containing Raymond Torres’s name, there was another box.

It was empty.

Alex closed the book and laid it on the hearth in front of the fireplace, then moved on to Torres’s desk. Without hesitation, he pulled the bottom-right-hand drawer open, reached into its depths, and pulled out a nondescript notebook.

In the notebook, neatly penned in a precise hand, was Raymond Torres’s plan for creating the son he had never fathered.

It was getting dark when Alex heard the car pull up. He retrieved the gun from the corner behind the door. When Raymond Torres entered the den a few moments later, it lay almost carelessly in Alex’s lap, though his right forefinger was curled around the trigger. Torres paused in the doorway, frowning thoughtfully, then smiled.

“I don’t think you’ll kill me,” he said. “Nor, for that matter, do I think you have killed anyone else. So why don’t you put that gun down, and let us talk about what’s happening to you.”

“There’s no need to talk,” Alex replied. “I already know what happened to me. You’ve put computers in my brain, and you’ve been programming me.”

“You found the notebook.”

“I didn’t need to find it. I knew where it was. I knew where this house was, and I knew what I’d find here.”

Torres’s smile faded into a slight frown. “I don’t think you could have known those things.”

“Of course I could,” Alex replied. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”

Torres closed the door, then, ignoring the gun, moved around his desk and eased himself into his chair. He regarded Alex carefully, and wondered briefly if, indeed, something had gone awry. But he rejected the idea; it was impossible. “Of course I understand,” he finally said. “But I’m not sure you do. What, exactly, do you think I’ve done?”

“Turned me into you,” Alex said softly. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”

Torres ignored the question. “And how, exactly, did I do that?”

“The testing,” Alex replied. “Only you weren’t testing me, really. You were programming me.”

“I’ll agree to that,” Torres replied, “since it happens to be absolutely true. Incidentally, I explained it all to your parents this afternoon.”

“Did you? Did you really tell them all of it?” Alex asked. “Did you tell them that it wasn’t just data you programmed in?”

Torres frowned. “But it was.”

Alex shook his head. “Then you don’t understand, do you?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, no,” Torres said, though he understood perfectly. For the first time, he began to feel afraid.

“Then I’ll tell you. After the operation, my brain was a blank. I had the capacity to learn, because of the computers you put in my brain, but I didn’t have the capacity to think.”

“That’s not true—”

“It
is
true,” Alex insisted. “And I think you knew it, which is why you had to give me a personality as well as just enough data to look like I was … What? Suffering from amnesia? Was I supposed to remember things slowly, so it would look like I was recovering? But I couldn’t remember anything, could I? My brain—Alex
Lonsdale’s brain—was dead. So you gave me things to remember, but they were the wrong things.”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about, Alex, and neither have you,” Torres declared icily.

“It’s strange, really,” Alex went on, ignoring Torres’s words. “Some of the mistakes were so small, and yet they set me to wondering. If it had only been the oldest stuff—”

“The ‘oldest stuff’?” Torres echoed archly.

“The oldest memories. The memories of the stories your mother used to tell you.”

“My mother is an old woman. Sometimes she gets confused.”

“No,” Alex replied. “She’s not confused, and neither are you. The memories served their purpose, and all the people died. You used me to kill them, and I did. And, as you wished, I had no memory of what I’d done. As soon as the killings were over, they were wiped out of my memory banks. But even if I had remembered them, I wouldn’t have been able to say why I was killing. All I would have been able to do is talk about Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz and
venganza
. Revenge. I would have sounded crazy, wouldn’t I?”

“You’re sounding crazy right now,” Torres said, rising to his feet.

Alex’s hands tightened on the shotgun. “Sit down,” he said. Torres hesitated, then sank back into his chair. “But it
was
revenge you wanted,” Alex went on. “Only not revenge for what happened in 1848. Revenge for what happened twenty years ago.”

“Alex, what you’re saying makes no sense.”

“But it does,” Alex insisted. “The school. That was one of your mistakes, but only a small one. I remembered the dean’s office being in the wrong place. But it wasn’t the wrong place—I was just twenty years too late. When
you
were at La Paloma High, the dean’s office was where the nurse’s office is now.”

“Which means nothing.”

“True. I could have seen the same pictures of the school in my mother’s yearbook that I saw in yours.”

Torres’s eyes flickered over the room, first to the bookshelf where his family tree rested, then to the notebook that still lay on top of his desk where Alex had left it.

Next to it, lying open, was the annual from his senior year at La Paloma High. It was open to a picture he had studied many times over the years. As he looked at it now, he felt once more the pain the people it depicted had caused him.

All four of them: Marty and Valerie and Cynthia and Ellen.

The Four Musketeers, who had inflicted wounds on him that he had nursed over the years—never allowing them to heal—until finally they had festered.

And as the wounds festered, the planning had begun, and then, when the opportunity finally came, he had executed his plan.

The memories had been carefully constructed in Alex—the memories of things he couldn’t possibly remember—so that when he finally got caught, as Torres knew he eventually would, all he would be able to do was talk of ancient wrongs and the spirit of a long-dead man who had taken possession of him.

The truth would be carefully shielded, for Torres had programmed no memories in Alex of the hatred he felt toward the four women who had looked down on him so many years ago, ignored him as if he didn’t exist.

Even now, he could hear his mother’s voice talking about them:

“You think they even look at you, Ramón? They are
gringos
who would spit on you. They are no different than the ones who killed our family, and they will kill you too. You wait, Ramón. Pretend all you want, but in the end you will know the truth. They hate you, Ramón, as you will hate them.”