The Touch

Alan

Alan felt his heart throw a few premature beats when he answered the knock on his door and saw Axford standing there.

This is it, he thought.

Axford had a bottle in one hand and a sheaf of papers under his other arm. He looked like he had already sampled the bottle a couple of times before his arrival.

"Is this a party?" Alan said, stepping back to let him in. "Or a wake?"

"Get some glasses," Charles said gruffly. "This is good stuff, even if you don't like bourbon."

He poured an inch or so into each of the two plastic cups Alan got from the bathroom and they tossed it off together.

"Smooth. What's the brand?"

"Maker's Mark," Axford said. "Have some more." He quickly poured another shot, but Alan didn't drink.

"Well?" Alan said, forcing himself to ask the question that had made the last two days a living nightmare. He had envisioned himself slowly deteriorating over the next few years until he became a drooling vegetable sitting in a pool of his own excrement. "Do I have Alzheimer's disease or don't I?"

Axford emptied his glass and walked over to the window.

"You know something, Bulmer? Sometimes I have to wonder about myself. I'd have found it so much easier to tell you you've got Alzheimer's than what I really have to say. Some kind of bloody bastard, what?"

"I'll tell you something, Axford," Alan said, allowing his rancor to rise to the surface. "You've got the bedside manner of Attila the Hun! What did you find?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" He knew he was shouting, but he couldn't help it. "All those tests—"

"—reveal something I can't explain."

Alan sat down on the bed and sipped at his glass. "So there is something after all."

"Your memory changes are similar to the Alzheimer pattern, but as you know, the way things stand now, the only way to make a definitive diagnosis is at autopsy."

Alan couldn't help but smile. "I signed a lot of consents, but I don't remember agreeing to that."

Axford's face was completely deadpan as he looked at Alan. "You did. You just don't remember. It's scheduled for nine a.m. tomorrow."

"Not funny."

"But seriously, though, we can make a pretty good presumptive diagnosis of Alzheimer's clinically and radiographically without cutting into your brain and finding some neurofibrillary tangles."

Alan realized that Axford was speaking to him as he might to a layman, probably not sure of how much Alan had retained about the disease. Alan himself didn't know what he knew or had forgotten, so he let Axford go on.

"Clinically you might be suspected of having a case, but your CT scan shows none of the usual stigmata—no cerebral atrophy or ventricular dilation, no widening of the sulci."

"That's a relief."

"Your PET scan, on the other hand, is markedly abnormal. Areas of the cortex and hippocampus have shut down, showing no metabolism—a classic picture of the advanced Alzheimer brain."

Alan's insides knotted. "Well, is it or isn't it?"

"I can't say. If you have Alzheimer's, you don't have any form I've ever seen."

Alan held out his cup for more bourbon. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Do you think it's the Touch that's doing it to me?"

Axford shrugged. "I don't know."

"Don't know much, do you?" Alan snapped.

"We know what rhythm your 'Hour of Power' follows."

Alan felt his spine stiffen. "I'm listening."

"It comes and goes with high tide."

It was like a punch in the gut. "High tide?"

Axford nodded.

Feeling shaky, Alan got up and took his turn at the window, looking down at Park Avenue below, barely hearing Axford talk about a periodic disturbance in his EEC.

High tide! God! Why hadn't he seen it? The clues were all there—the way the power traveled around the clock, coming an hour or so later every day. It was so obvious once it was pointed out. If he'd only known! It would have been so easy to work with it. All he needed was a tide chart. If he'd had one in his pocket at the Board of Trustees hearing, he wouldn't be in this mess.

But the tide controlling the waxing and waning of the Touch. It had such an elemental feel to it, hinting at something incredibly ancient at work.

He turned to Axford as a thought occurred to him.

"You realize, don't you, that you've just so much as admitted that the Touch exists."

Axford had dispensed with his cup and was now taking pulls straight from the bottle.

His voice was slurred. "I don't admit a bloody damned thing. Not yet. But I do want to do a repeat PET scan on you tomorrow. Confirm those dead areas."

Alan wanted to confirm those areas, too. "Fine. I'll be here." He watched as Axford walked unsteadily for the door. "You're not driving, are you?"

"Hell, no. Only a bloody idiot would keep a bloody car in this bloody city!"

He slammed the door behind him, leaving Alan alone with the prospect of trying to find sleep while thinking about dead areas in his brain.