False Memory

61

The trailer park huddled defensively in the high wind as though anticipating one of the tornadoes that always found such places and scattered them across blasted landscapes for the wicked delectation of television cameras. Fortunately, twisters were rare, weak, and short-lived in California. The residents of this park would not have to endure the practiced compassion of reporters torn between thrilling to a big story of destruction and admitting to what drams of human empathy had survived their years in service of the evening news.

The streets were laid out in a grid, one exactly like the next. The hundreds of mobile homes on concrete-block foundations were more alike than not.

Nevertheless, Dusty had no difficulty recognizing Foster “Fig” Newton’s place when he saw it. This community was wired for cable television, and Fig’s was the only trailer with a small satellite dish on its roof.

Actually, three satellite receivers were mounted on Fig’s roof, silhouetted against the low night sky that was painted a sour yellow-black by the upwash of the suburban light pollution. Each dish was a different size from the others. One was aimed toward the southern heavens, one toward the northern; both were stationary. The third, mounted on a complex gimbal joint, tilted and swiveled ceaselessly, as if plucking tasty bits of elusive data from the ether in much the way that a nighthawk snatches flying insects out of the air.

In addition to the satellite dishes, exotic antennae prick-led from the roof: four-and five-foot spikes, each featuring a different number of stubby crossbars; a double helix of copper ribbons; an item resembling an inverted, denuded metal Christmas tree standing on its point, with all branch ends aimed toward the sky; and something else like a horned Viking helmet balanced on a six-foot pole.

Bristling with these data-gathering devices, the trailer might have been a spaceworthy extraterrestrial ship crudely disguised as a mobile home: the sort of thing that callers were always reporting on the talk-radio programs that Fig favored.

Dusty, Martie, Skeet, and Valet gathered on an eight-foot-square porch covered by an aluminum awning that might, after takeoff, deploy as a solar sail. Dusty knocked on the door when he couldn’t find a bell push.

Clutching his blanket-cloak, which flapped and billowed in the wind, Skeet resembled a figure from a fantasy novel, following the trail of a fugitive sorcerer, exhausted by adventure, long harried by goblins. Raising his voice to compete with the wind, he said, “Are you really certain Claudette’s not sick?”

“We’re certain. She’s not,” Martie assured him.

Turning to Dusty, the kid said, “But you told me she was sick.”

“It was a lie, something to get you out of the clinic.”

Disappointed, Skeet said, “I truly thought she was sick.”

“You wouldn’t really want her to be ill,” Martie said.

“Not dying, necessarily. Cramps and puking would be enough.”

The porch light came on.

“And bad diarrhea,” Skeet amended.

Dusty had a sense of being studied through the fish-eye lens in the door.

After a moment, the door opened. Standing on the threshold, Fig blinked behind his thick spectacles. His gray eyes were made huge by the magnifying lenses, brimming with the sorrow that never left them even when Fig laughed. “Hey.”

“Fig,” Dusty said, “I’m sorry to bother you at home, and this late, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Sure,” Fig said, stepping back to let them in.

“Do you mind the dog?” Dusty asked.

“No.”

Martie led Skeet up the steps. Valet and Dusty followed.

As Fig shut the door, Dusty said, “We’ve got big trouble, Fig. I might have gone to Ned, but he’d probably strangle Skeet sooner or later, so I—”

“Sit?” Fig asked, leading them to a dinette table.

As the three of them accepted the invitation, pulling chairs up to the table, and as the dog crawled under it, Martie said, “We might’ve gone to my mother, too, but she would just—”

“Juice?” Fig asked.

“Juice?” Dusty echoed.

“Orange, prune, or grape,” Fig elaborated.

“Do you have any coffee?” Dusty asked.

“Nope.”

“Orange,” Dusty decided. “Thanks.”

“Grape would be nice,” Martie said.

“You have any vanilla Yoo-hoo?” Skeet asked.

“Nope.”

“Grape.”

Fig went to the refrigerator in the adjoining kitchen.

On the radio, as Fig poured the juice, people were talking about “active and inactive alien DNA grafted to the human genetic structure” and worrying about “whether the purpose of current Earth colonization by aliens is enslavement of the human race, elevation of the human race to a higher condition, or the simple harvesting of human organs to make sweetbreads for extraterrestrial dinner tables.”

Martie raised her eyebrows as if to ask Dusty, Is this going to work?

Surveying the trailer, nodding, smiling, Skeet said, “I like this place. It’s got a nice hum.”

After Nurse Hernandez was sent home with a promise of a full night’s pay for two hours less work than she had been contracted to provide, after Nurse Ganguss was repeatedly assured that there was nothing their movie-star patient required at the moment, and after Nurse Woosten found a few new excuses to display the gymnastic abilities of her sprightly pink tongue, Dr. Ahriman returned to his unfinished business in room 246.

The actor was in bed, where he’d been told to wait, lying atop the covers in his black bikini briefs. He stared at the ceiling with as much emotion as he had brought to any of the roles in his string of colossal hit pictures.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, the doctor said, “Tell me where you are now, not physically but mentally.”

“I’m in the chapel.”

“Good.”

During a previous visit, Ahriman had instructed the actor never again to use heroin, cocaine, marijuana, or other illegal substances. Contrary to what the doctor had told Nurses Ganguss and Woosten, this man was now effectively cured of all drug addictions.

Neither compassion nor a sense of professional responsibility had motivated Dr. Ahriman to free the patient from these destructive habits. Simply, this man was more useful sober than stoned.

The movie star would soon be used in a dangerous game that would have enormous historical consequences; therefore, when the time came for him to be put into play, there must be no possibility that he’d be parked in a jail cell, awaiting bail for narcotics possession. He must remain free and ready for his appointment with destiny.

“You move in elite circles,” said the doctor. “In particular, I’m thinking of an event you’re scheduled to attend ten days from now, Saturday night of next week. Please describe the event to which I refer.”

“It’s a reception for the president,” the actor said.

“The President of the United States.”

“Yes.”

In fact, the event was a major fund-raiser for the president’s political party, to be held at the Bel Air estate of a director who had earned more money, garnered more Oscars, and risked contracting a sexually transmitted disease with more would-be actresses than had even the late Josh Ahriman, King of Tears. Two hundred of Hollywood’s glitterati would pay twenty thousand dollars apiece for the privilege of fawning over this ultimate politico as they themselves were daily fawned over by everyone from famous talk-show hosts to riffraff in the streets. For their money, they would get, alternately throughout the evening, both an ego rush so tremendous it induced spontaneous orgasms and a deliciously perverse feeling that they were nothing more than servile pop-culture scum in the presence of greatness.

“Nothing whatsoever will deter you from attending this party for the president,” the doctor instructed.

“Nothing.”

“Illness, injury, earthquakes, nubile teenage fans of either sex — neither those distractions nor any others will prevent you from being on time for this event.”

“I understand.”

“I believe that the president is a particular fan of yours.”

“Yes.”

“On that evening, when you come face-to-face with the president, you’ll use your charm and manipulative skills to put him instantly at ease. Then, induce him to lean especially close, as if you intend to impart an irresistible bit of gossip about one of the most beautiful actresses present. When he is very close and most vulnerable, you will seize his head in both hands and bite off his nose.”

“I understand.”

The trailer was indeed humming, as Skeet had noted, but Martie found the hum more annoying than nice. In fact, an auditory tapestry of electronic buzzes and purrs and sighs and tiny tweets wove through the air, some constant in tone and volume, others intermittent, still others oscillating. All of these sounds were quite soft, whispery, never shrill, and the combined effect was not dissimilar to sitting in a meadow on a summer night, surrounded by cicadas and crickets and other insect troubadours as they sang of bug romance. Maybe that was why the hum made Martie itchy and gave her the feeling that things were crawling up her legs.

Two walls of the living room, of which this dining area was an open extension, were lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves holding computer monitors and ordinary televisions, most aglow and streaming with pictures, numerical data, flow charts, and abstract patterns of shifting forms and colors that made no sense to Martie. Also on these shelves was a large quantity of mysterious equipment featuring oscilloscopes, radar-display units, gauges, light-snake tracking graphs, and digital readouts in six different colors.

When everyone had been served juice, Fig Newton sat at the table, too. Behind him was a wall papered with star charts, Northern and Southern Hemisphere skyscapes. He looked like a hillbilly cousin of Captain James Kirk, skippering a bargain-basement version of the starship Enterprise.

The mascot of the space command, Valet, lapped water from a bowl the captain had provided for him. Judging by his happy attitude, the dog was not bothered by the trailer’s hum.

Martie wondered if Fig’s perpetually flushed face and cherry-bright nose resulted from the radiation emitted by his collection of electronic gear, rather than from exposure to the sun during his day job as a housepainter.

“So?” Fig asked.

Dusty said, “Martie and I have to go to Santa Fe, and we need—”

“To be energized?”

“What?”

“It’s an energy locus,” Fig said solemnly.

“What is? Santa Fe? What kind of energy locus?”

“Mystic.”

“Really? Well, no, we’re just going to talk to some people who might be witnesses in…a criminal case. We need somewhere for Skeet to stay for a couple days, where no one would think to look for him. If you could—”

“Gonna jump?” Fig asked Skeet.

“Jump where?”

“Off my roof.”

“No offense,” Skeet said, “but it’s not high enough.”

“Shoot yourself?”

“No, nothing like that,” Skeet promised.

“Okay,” Fig said, sipping his prune juice.

This had been easier than Martie expected. She said, “We know it’s an imposition, Fig, but could you make room for Valet, too?”

“The dog?”

“Yeah. He’s really a sweetheart, doesn’t bark, doesn’t bite, and he’s great company if—”

“He dump?”

“What?”

“In the house?” Fig asked.

“Oh, no, never.”

“Okay.”

Martie locked eyes with Dusty, and apparently his conscience was as guilty as hers, because he said, “Fig, I’ve got to be really straight with you. I think there’s going to be someone looking for Skeet, maybe more than one someone. I don’t believe they’re likely to show up here, but if they do…they’re dangerous.”

“Drugs?” Fig asked.

“No. It has nothing to do with that. It’s…”

When Dusty hesitated, struggling to capsulize their bizarre plight in words that wouldn’t strain Fig’s credulity to the breaking point, Martie took over: “Crazy as this might sound, we’re caught up in some mind-control experiment, brainwashing, a conspiracy of some—”

“Aliens?” Fig asked.

“No, no. We—”

“Cross-dimensional beings?”

“No. This is—”

“Government?”

“Maybe,” Martie said.

“American Psychological Association?”

Martie was speechless, and Dusty said, “Where’d you come up with that one?”

“Only five possible suspects,” Fig said.

“Who’s the fifth?”

Leaning over the table, his pink pie-round face as close to an expression of solemnity as it could ever get, limpid gray eyes flooded with the sorrow over the human condition that was always with him, Fig said, “Bill Gates.”

“Good juice,” Skeet said.

The naked actor. Frivolous man of movies. Fame and infamy.

Dreadful. If beautiful women did not easily inspire the doctor to reach the heights of poetic composition, this thespian with his surgically sculpted nose and collagen-enhanced lips was not likely to be the subject of immortal haiku.

Rising from the edge of the bed, staring down into the placid face and the jiggling eyes, Ahriman said, “You will not chew the nose once you have bitten it off. You will at once spit it out in such a condition that it can be reattached by a team of first-rate surgeons. The intention here is not assassination and not permanent disfigurement. There are some people who wish to send the president a message — a warning, if you will — that he cannot ignore. You are simply the messenger. Tell me whether or not this is clear to you.”

“It’s clear.”

“Repeat my instructions.”

The actor repeated the instructions word for word, far more faithfully than he ever delivered the lines from one of his scripts.

“Although you will do no additional harm whatsoever to the president, all other attendees at this event will be fair game in your attempt to escape.”

“I understand.”

“The shock of the assault will give you a chance to slip out of arm’s reach of Secret Service agents before they react.”

“Yes.”

“But they will be on your heels in an instant. After that, do what you must…though you will not be taken alive. You may want to think of yourself as Indiana Jones surrounded by Nazi thugs and their evil minions. Be inventive in creating mayhem, using ordinary objects as weapons, swashbuckling your way through the house until you’re shot down.”

This nice bit of work with the actor was a contract job, which the doctor was obligated to accept from time to time. This was the price he paid to be permitted to employ his control techniques for personal entertainment, with little or no fear of imprisonment in the event that any of his games went awry.

If this had been one of his private amusements, the scenario would not have been this simple. In spite of the lack of complexity, however, this little game had a high fun factor.

After programming the actor to have no accessible memory of what transpired between them here this evening, Ahriman led him into the living room of the suite.

Originally, the doctor had intended to spend at least an hour dictating semicoherent psychotic rants while the actor entered them into his personal, handwritten journal as if they were his own dark fantasies. They had done this during a few previous sessions, and almost two hundred pages of feverish paranoid terror, bitter hatred, and doomsday prophecies — virtually all related to the President of the United States — filled the first half of the journal. The actor would remember writing none of this and would open the journal only when instructed to do so by his psychiatrist; however, following the assault on the presidential nose, once the perp had been gunned down, the authorities would discover this heinous document buried under the collection of souvenir panties that the movie star had talked off the legions of women whom he had seduced.

Now, troubled by the Rhodeses’ commando-style removal of Skeet from the clinic, Ahriman chose to skip dictation this time. The existing two hundred pages would be sufficiently convincing both to FBI agents and the nation’s tabloid readers.

Taking direction well, the actor rolled back into a headstand against the living-room wall opposite the television, as nimble as an adolescent gymnast twenty years his junior.

“Begin counting,” Ahriman said.

When the actor reached ten, he returned from the mind chapel to full consciousness. As far as he was aware, his psychiatrist had just now entered the room.

“Mark? What’re you doing here at this hour?”

“I was in the building for another patient. What’re you doing?”

“I spend about an hour a day in this position. Good for brain circulation.”

“The results are obvious.”

“They are, huh?” the movie star beamed, upside down.

Counseling himself to have patience, the doctor engaged in ten minutes of excruciatingly boring conversation regarding the huge box-office receipts pouring in from the actor’s current megahit, giving the subject something to remember from this visit. When finally he left Room 246, he knew far more than he cared to know about typical attendance patterns at mall theaters in the greater Chicago area.

The famous actor. He bites democracy’s nose. And the millions cheer.

Not great but much better. Work on that one.

With January wind blustering outside and fields of electronic crickets humming inside, Dusty activated Skeet with the name Dr. Yen Lo.

The kid sat up a little straighter at the table, his pale face becoming so expressionless that Dusty only now realized how subtly anguished it had been before. This observation sharpened the ever-present sorrow that he felt over the fact that his brother had been robbed, so young, of a full and purposeful life.

When they went through the haiku and Skeet’s three responses, Fig Newton said, “Exactly,” as if he knew about such psychological control mechanisms.

Minutes ago, in a hurried consultation in Fig’s library — a small bedroom filled with books about UFOs, alien abductions, spontaneous human combustion, cross-dimensional beings, and the Bermuda Triangle — Dusty had outlined for Martie the effects he hoped to achieve with Skeet. What he proposed seemed fraught with risk to Skeet’s already fragile psychological condition, and he worried that he would do more damage than good. To his surprise, Martie at once embraced his plan. He trusted her common sense more than he trusted the sun to rise in the east, so with her endorsement, he was prepared to take the awful responsibility for the consequences of his plan.

Now, with Skeet accessed and his eyes jiggling as they had jiggled at New Life Clinic, Dusty said, “Tell me if you can hear my voice, Skeet.”

“I can hear your voice.”

“Skeet…when I give you instructions, will you obey them?”

“Will I obey them?”

Reminding himself of everything he had learned in their previous session at the clinic, Dusty rephrased the question as a statement: “Skeet, you will obey all instructions that I give you. Confirm or deny that this is true.”

“I confirm.”

“I am Dr. Yen Lo, Skeet.”

“Yes.”

“And I am the clear cascades.”

“Yes.”

“In the past, I have given you many instructions.”

“The blue pine needles,” Skeet said.

“That’s right. Now, Skeet, in a little while, I am going to snap my fingers. When that happens, you will fall into a restful sleep. Confirm or deny that you understand me so far.”

“Confirm.”

“And then I will snap my fingers a second time. On that second snap of my fingers, you will wake up, will become entirely conscious, but you will also forget forever all of my previous instructions to you. My control over you will come to an end. I — Dr. Yen Lo, the clear cascades — will never again be able to access you. Skeet, tell me whether or not you understand what I’ve said.”

“I understand.”

Dusty sought Martie’s reassurance.

She nodded.

Not privy to their plan, Fig leaned forward over the table, rapt, his prune juice forgotten.

“Although you will forget all my previous instructions, Skeet, you will remember every word of what I am going to tell you now, and you will believe it, and you will act upon it for the rest of your life. Tell me whether you do or do not understand what I’ve just said.”

“I do.”

“Skeet, you will never again use illegal drugs. You will have no desire to use them. The only drugs you will use are those that may be prescribed for you by physicians in time of illness.”

“I understand.”

“Skeet, from this moment forward, you will understand that you are basically a good man, no more or less flawed than other people. The negative things your father has said about you over all these years, the judgments your mother has passed on you, the criticisms that Derek Lampton has leveled against you — none of those things will affect you, hurt you, or limit you ever again.”

“I understand.”

Across the table, tears shone in Martie’s eyes.

Dusty had to pause and take a deep breath before continuing. “Skeet, you will look back into your childhood and find that time when you believed in the future, when you were full of dreams and hopes. You will believe in the future again. You will believe in yourself. You will have hope, Skeet, and you will never, never again lose hope.”

“I understand.”

Skeet staring into infinity. Fig riveted. Good Valet watching somberly. Martie blotting her eyes on the sleeve of her blouse.

Dusty put thumb to middle finger.

Hesitated. Thinking of all the things that might go wrong, and wondering about the unintended consequences of good intentions.

Snap.

Skeet’s eyes slipped shut, and he slumped in his chair, sound asleep. His chin came to rest on his chest.

Overwhelmed by the responsibility that he’d just assumed, Dusty got up from the table, stood indecisively for a moment, and then went into the kitchen. At the sink, he twisted the COLD faucet, cupped his hands under the flow, and repeatedly splashed his face with water.

Martie came to him. “It’ll be all right, baby.”

The water might have concealed his tears, but he couldn’t hide the emotion that wrenched his voice. “What if somehow I’ve screwed him up worse than he was?”

“You haven’t,” she said with conviction.

He shook his head. “You can’t know. The mind is so delicate. One of the big things wrong with this world is…so many people want to screw with other people’s minds, and they cause so much damage. So much damage. You can’t know about this, neither of us can.”

“I can know,” she insisted gently, putting one hand to his damp face. “Because what you just did in there was done out of pure love, pure perfect love for your brother, and nothing bad can ever come of that.”

“Yeah. And the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

“So is the road to Heaven, don’t you think?”

Shuddering, swallowing a hard lump in his throat, he put an even deeper fear into words: “I’m afraid of what might happen if it works…but even more afraid that it won’t work. How crazy is that? What if I snap my fingers, and who wakes up is the old Skeet, still full of self-loathing, still confused, still the poor sweet feeb? This is his last chance, and I want so much to believe it’s going to work, but what if I snap my fingers, and it turns out his last chance was no chance at all? What then, Martie?”

The strength in her voice lifted him, as always she lifted him: “Then at least you tried.”

Dusty looked toward the dining area, at the back of Skeet’s head, his hair rumpled and uncombed. The scrawny neck, the frail shoulders.

“Come on,” Martie said softly. “Give him a new life.”

Dusty turned off the running water.

He tore a few paper towels from a roll and blotted his face.

He wadded the towels and dropped them in the trash can.

He rubbed his hands together, as if he might be able to massage the tremors out of them.

Clickety-click, claws on linoleum: Inquisitive Valet padded into the kitchen. Dusty stroked the dog’s golden head.

Finally he followed Martie back to the dinette table, and they sat once more with Fig and Skeet.

Thumb to middle finger again.

Come the magic now, good or bad, hope or despair, joy or misery, meaning or emptiness, life or death: snap.

Skeet opened his eyes, raised his head, sat up straighter in his chair, looked around at those assembled, and said, “Well, when do we start?”

He had no memory of the session.

“Typical,” Fig pronounced, nodding his head vigorously.

“Skeet?” Dusty said.

The kid turned to him.

Taking a deep breath, then speaking the name as an exhalation, Dusty said, “Dr. Yen Lo.”

Skeet cocked his head. “Huh?”

“Dr. Yen Lo.”

Martie gave it a try: “Dr. Yen Lo.”

And then Fig: “Dr. Yen Lo.”

Skeet surveyed the expectant faces around him, including that of the dog, who had stood up with his forepaws on the table. “What is this, a riddle, a quiz or something? Was this Lo some guy in history? I was never any good at history.”

“Well,” said Fig.

“Clear cascades,” Dusty said.

Baffled, Skeet said, “Sounds like a dish-washing soap.”

At least the first part of the plan had worked. Skeet was no longer programmed, no longer controllable.

Only the passage of time would prove, however, whether or not Dusty’s second goal had also been achieved: Skeet’s liberation from his tortured past.

Dusty pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. To Skeet, he said, “Get up.”

“Huh?”

“Come on, bro, get up.”

Letting the clinic blanket slip off his shoulders, the kid rose from the chair. He looked like a stick-and-straw scarecrow wearing a fat man’s pajamas.

Dusty put his arms around his brother and held him very tight, very tight, and when at last he could speak, he said, “Before we go, I’ll give you some money for vanilla Yoo-hoo, okay?”