Exodus Code (21 page)

‘My assistant, Win.’

Win smiled, accepting Jack’s coat while asking if he’d like tea or coffee.

Jack said coffee, then fol owed the doctor to a sitting room off to the left of a wide, carpeted staircase.

The room was comfortable and warm, expensive without being excessive. A fire burned in a marble hearth, an original Mary Cassatt hanging above it. Jack smiled. He had met Mary in Paris once or twice during the War. She would have appreciated the irony that one of her paintings hung in a psychiatrist’s sitting room in the twenty-first century.

Jack settled in a high-backed leather chair. Dr Steele sat opposite him on a matching leather couch. In white linen pants and a loose yel ow shirt, her skin soft and pale, she looked, Jack thought, ten years younger than he remembered.

She folded her hands on her lap, crossing her legs at her ankles. ‘Captain Harkness, I must say your phone cal intrigued me, especial y since currently I have a ful ward of women experiencing breakdowns similar to your –’ she arched her brows – ‘sister’s. And, according to many of my col eagues around the country, mine is not the only psychiatric floor ful of female patients.’

Her assistant carried a silver tray into the room with a decanter and two crystal glasses on it. Setting it down on the table between them, she said, ‘I thought you both might prefer a cocktail instead of coffee.’ She rested her hand on the doctor’s shoulder in a way that suggested she was more than just an assistant.

‘What would I do without you?’ The doctor placed her hand on her partner’s.

‘A great many things, I’m sure, but none of them with drinks served on time.’

‘Whisky, Captain?’

Jack nodded.

Leaning forward, keeping her ankles crossed, she uncorked the decanter.

‘Win’s family own a distil ery in the highlands. This is one of their best single malts.’

Jack relaxed into the chair. ‘Dr Steele, I want to apologise for getting off on the wrong foot with you.’

‘Olivia, I insist.’

‘Then it’s Jack.’

‘And there’s no need to apologise. It’s forgotten.’

‘Friends?’ asked Jack.

‘Friends,’ said Olivia pouring him a healthy dram.

He tilted the glass before lifting it to his nose. He inhaled its smoky peaty warmth, and as soon as he did he heard a distinctive chime of music that sent a jolt of pleasure through him. He gasped. Recovering from the sensation quickly, he answered, ‘Wonderful. Truly.’

‘It is, isn’t it,’ said Olivia, sitting back on the couch. She took a sip from her glass. ‘Of course, I realised when I got in the lift what you were doing, that you incited my rant so I’d unwittingly reveal patient information. I should probably have had you removed from Ms Cooper’s visiting list.’ She smiled.

‘Although that’s moot now, isn’t it. An unforgivable error on security’s part.’ She sipped a little more. ‘Have you heard anything about where she might be?’

Jack shook his head. ‘Not yet. Her husband is worried she may hurt herself again. Or, worse, someone else.’

‘Yes,’ said Olivia, ‘that’s seems to be the worst symptom of this strange il ness, doesn’t it? But Ms Cooper was given her anti-psychotic medication before she escaped, so I hope she’l be less inclined to hurt anyone and wil be back in custody before she needs another dose.’

Putting the glass to his lips, Jack took a sip, this time prepared for his body’s startling response. He held the whiskey in his mouth for a beat, then another, letting the warmth of it caress his tongue, the sweet flavours electrifying his entire mouth, every taste bud alive and tingling and then he swal owed, the liquid like velvet on his throat. He shivered.

‘You do look like you’re enjoying the whiskey,’ smiled Olivia. ‘Win wil be pleased.’

Not as pleased as I feel, thought Jack, shifting slightly in his seat. The intense sexual feelings were wonderful, but not entirely welcomed. Jack was aware that his body was reacting to stimuli in heightened ways recently, and given what had happened during the earthquake, the sighting of the puma, and his emotional breakdown, he was beginning to worry. He tried to focus.

Olivia balanced her glass on the arm of the couch. ‘I believe you said you had a theory you’d like to share with me about why al these women around the world are fal ing prey to this so-cal ed masochistic madness.’

‘We know a number of things already,’ said Jack, reluctantly setting his glass on a mahogany table next to his chair. ‘Obviously, it’s happening only to women and each one is self-mutilating in some way during her psychotic incidents. From the reports I’ve studied, the most common thing they’re doing is damaging their eyes, ears or tongues.’

Except Gwen, he thought, who’s carved a strange symbol on her forearm.

‘Suggesting,’ added Olivia, ‘that their neurosis is tied to their senses in some way. Yes. I think that’s a reasonable assumption.’

‘Exactly,’ said Jack, reaching to sip more whiskey but thinking better of it, for now anyway. What he had to say was too important. ‘I think al of these women are synaesthetes, Olivia, and whatever is affecting them has made their synaesthesia acute and extreme, overwhelming their senses.’

And mine, too, thought Jack. He glanced at the whiskey glass, catching a whiff of its palate and experiencing another kick of desire that went right to the growing ache of pleasure in his groin.

‘Fascinating, Jack!’ Olivia finished her whiskey and refil ed her glass. She held the decanter up to Jack who shook his head, more aggressively than he intended. ‘I wrote a paper on synaesthesia in my third year at Cambridge. My professor at the time was one of the first neuroscientists to study the phenomenon seriously, and he made some quite startling discoveries about it.’

‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘I read your work and his earlier this evening.’

Olivia looked into her glass for a few beats. ‘You know, you may be on to something, Jack. Synaesthesia operates on a spectrum, but unlike, say, depression or many other mental disorders, synaesthesia is not a mental il ness. Far from it, in fact. Many synaesthetes are artists and creative types who believe it’s not an affliction but a gift from God, an incredible heightening of their senses that al ows them to experience the world from multiple places in their brain at the same time.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.

‘Are you a synaesthete?’

‘I think I am,’ said Jack. ‘Or… I think I’ve become one. In the past few weeks, I’ve started perceiving days of the week and months of the year as colours and shapes, seen time in waves of coloured lines, sometimes even with music.’

What he did not share was that in the past few days, this synaesthesia had been getting stronger, affecting al of his senses in disturbing ways.

‘Of course – it
is
the nature of your brain, but it’s not the way most people perceive the world. Yours, though, is one of the most common forms of synaesthesia – grapheme to colour.’ She stepped over to a set of tightly packed bookshelves and lifted a book from midway up. She handed it to Jack before returning to the couch.

Jack read the title aloud: ‘
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue
.’ He smiled. ‘Mine’s golden brown.’

Olivia nodded. ‘Most synaesthetes don’t know that they are special, that they are experiencing the world through multiple modes of perception. When someone like yourself, say, with a mild form, tastes or smel s something he or she wil experience the taste as a sound or a colour which heightens perception. Synaesthetes are experiencing al of their senses at the same time.’

‘Like our wires are crossed?’ asked Jack, thinking of the rush of desire he’d experienced minutes before from the trigger, the taste and smel of the whiskey.

‘That’s what we used to think, but scientists now believe, thanks to sophisticated brain imaging, that it’s not crossed wires, it’s more like multiple wires connecting al at once, senses cross-talking instantaneously instead of connecting one to one. I’m simplifying, of course, but in the synaesthetic brain, the connections among the senses are polymodal.’

Jack sat forward in the chair, the smel of peat from the whiskey quickening his pulse again.

‘Years ago researchers had a difficult time separating true synaesthetic responses from a person’s metaphorical thinking or even separating a synaesthete’s response to a sense from a memory triggered by that sense.

Olfactory senses in particular evoke memories incredibly powerful y.’

Jack had to stand up, cool his desire, get away from his drink, the whiskey too strong a siren cal to his senses. He stood in front of the fire. ‘What do you mean, “metaphorical thinking”?’

She paused for a beat, before continuing. ‘An artist like Georgia O’Keefe, for example, painted while listening to music, transferring what she heard into her lush images. As far as we know, she was not a synaesthete. Wal y Kandinsky, on the other hand, was a synaesthete, and he painted what he heard when he perceived sounds. He painted his perceptions not representations of them.’

‘Ah… But if my theory is correct,’ said Jack, ‘and al these women were mildly synaesthetic before the madness and now something is making it worse… that’l be hard to prove, won’t it?’

‘Unfortunately, yes, but we can try, and it certainly puts us into a different area of research from what we have been pursuing. It may mean that we have to reduce their sedation in order to stimulate them when we run a brain scan, and, of course, we’l need to talk to their families to be sure they are comfortable with the risks that that may involve. But, Jack – this is a step in the right direction towards healing. Final y.’ She finished the last of her drink.

‘Unfortunately, for many of these women, they’ve already damaged themselves beyond repair.’

Jack looked at the Cassatt on the wal , wondering what she had seen when she painted it. ‘Synaesthesia is hereditary, isn’t it?’ he asked, thinking of Anwen and her mismatched fruits, her association of colour with a taste.

‘Yes it is,’ replied Olivia. ‘In my research, I discovered that there is a chromosome marked for synaesthesia, and, although I can’t prove it yet, I’ve always believed that as human beings evolve, a person’s synaesthesia evolves too.’

Jack laughed. ‘So those of us who are synaesthetes are more evolved than humans who aren’t?’

Which, Jack thought, made sense, given that he was from the 51st century.

As this thought flashed across his consciousness, it brought with it the face of the beautiful young woman from the mirror, floating in front of his eyes. Jack tried to keep her there for as long as he could, but Olivia was continuing and he couldn’t hold the image.

She was laughing at his assertion. ‘That’s one way to describe it.’ Without warning, she clapped her hands excitedly, jumping up from the couch. ‘That’s it!’

‘That’s what?’

‘No two people experience synaesthesia in the same way,’ said Olivia, excitement charging her pitch, ‘but some studies have shown that it is experienced more by women than men, present company excepted.’

The clock on the sideboard chimed. A dog barked somewhere deep in the house.

‘I’m sorry… Could you say that again?’

‘Are you OK, Captain… Jack? You’ve gone a bit pale.’

‘Sorry. I’m fine. Just trying to put some of this together.’

‘I was saying that the studies have shown that more women than men experience synaesthesia.’ Olivia walked smartly across the room. ‘I realise that their gender alone doesn’t explain why these particular women are suffering.’ The excitement had drained from her voice. ‘Especial y given that not al women everywhere who are synaesthetes are experiencing a heightening of their senses. And this knowledge certainly doesn’t help us explain any possible triggers.’

‘Ah, but it’s a start,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a start.’

Olivia opened the sitting room door and cal ed for Win to get Jack’s coat.

While they waited in the foyer, Olivia added, ‘At its most extreme, synaesthesia can mean having shapes in your field of vision at al times. It can scramble the senses in terribly debilitating and, as we’ve witnessed, dangerous ways. Think about how you’d feel if you had an extreme form of auditory synaesthesia which resulted in your ability to taste every single sound that you hear. Loud thunder is rotten chicken, a baby crying is curdled milk.

Imagine what Piccadil y Circus would be like for you on a Saturday night, never mind a simple dinner at home with the children.’

‘Vomit-inducing,’ said Jack. ‘Worse.’

‘Indeed.’

JACK STOOD WITH his back to the television, looking out of the living room windows, staring at his own reflection in the darkness, his blue shirt cuffed at his elbows, braces loose at his hips. Hair needs a cut, he thought, running his fingers through it. Maybe a closer shave too.

It was after 10 p.m., and he knew he was leaving Wales the next day. Once he’d returned to the Coopers’ house, he’d spent a couple of hours thinking about the narrative he’d created that day from al the data he’d absorbed from his and Andy’s research. Add that to the information Olivia had given him, and the hypothesis that had been forming in his mind since he’d seen the image tattooed on Gwen’s forearm was al but confirmed.