Lois Bujold - Mirror Dance

“It’s very strange. This, I expected,” she nodded to the re-assembled weapons, and began putting them back in the cloth bag. “ That,” a toss of her head indicated his little story, “doesn’t fit. Trees made out of sugar sound pretty dream-like to me.”

Doesn’t fit what? A desperate excitement surged through him. He grabbed her around one slim wrist, trapping her hand with a stunner still in it. “Doesn’ fi’ wha’? Wha’ d’ you know?”

“Nothing.”

“Na’ nothin’!”

“That hurts,” she said levelly.

He let go of her instantly. “Na’ nothin’,” he insisted again. “ Som- thin. Wha?”

She sighed, finished bagging the weapons, and sat back and studied him. “It was a true statement that we did not know who you were. It is now a truer statement that we are not sure which one you are.”

“I gotta choice? Tell me!”

“You are at a … tricky stage of your recovery. Cryo-revival amnesiacs seldom recover all of their memories at once. It comes in little cascades. A typical bell-curve. A few at first, then a growing mass. Then it trails off. A few last holes may linger for years. Since you had no other gross cranial injuries, my prognosis is that you will eventually recover your whole personality. But.”

A most sinister but. He stared at her beseechingly.

“At this stage, on the verge of cascading, a cryo-amnesic can be so hungry for identity, he’ll pick up a mistaken one, and start assembling evidence to support it. It can take weeks or months to get it straightened out again. In your case, for special reasons, I think this is not only more than usually possible, it could be more than usually difficult to detangle again. I have to be very, very careful not to suggest anything to you that I am not absolutely certain about. And it’s hard, because I’m theorizing in my head probably just as urgently as you are. I have to be sure that anything you give me really comes from you, and is not a reflection of some suggestion on my part.”

“Oh.” He sagged back in bed, horribly disappointed.

“There is a possible short-cut,” she added.

He surged back up again. “Wha’? Gimme!”

“There is a drug called fast-penta. One of its derivatives is a psychiatric sedative, but its usual use is as an interrogation drug. It’s actually a misnomer to call it a truth serum, though laymen insist on doing so.”

“I … know fas’pent’.” His brows drew down. He knew something important about fast-penta. What was it?

“It has some extremely relaxing effects, and sometimes, in cryo-revival patients, it can trigger memory cascades.”

“Ah!”

“However, it can also be embarrassing. Under its influence people will happily talk about whatever crosses their minds, even their most intimate and private thoughts. Good medical ethics requires me to warn you about that. Also, some people are allergic to the drug.”

“Where’d … you learn … goo’ med’cal ethics?” he asked curiously.

Strangely, she flinched. “Escobar,” she said, and eyed him.

“Where we now?”

“I’d rather not say, just yet.”

“How could that contam’nate m’ mem’ry?” he demanded indignantly.

“I can tell you soon, I think,” she soothed. “Soon.”

“Mm,” he growled.

She pulled a little white packet from her coat pocket, opened it, and peeled off a plastic-backed dot. “Hold out your arm.” He obeyed, and she pressed the dot against the underside of his forearm. “Patch test,” she explained. “Because of what I theorize about your line of work, I think you have a higher than normal chance of allergy. Artificially-induced allergy.”

She peeled the dot away again—it prickled—and gazed closely at his arm. A pink spot appeared. She frowned at it. “Does that itch?” she asked suspiciously.

“No,” he lied, and clenched his right hand to keep from scratching at the spot. A drug to give him his mind back—he had to have it. Turn white again, blast you, he thought to the pink splotch.

“You seem to be a little sensitive,” she mused. “Marginally.”

“ Pleassse …”

Her lips twisted in doubt. “Well … what do we have to lose? I’ll be right back.”

She exited, and returned shortly with two hyposprays, which she laid on the tray table. “This is the fast-penta,” she pointed, “and this is the fast-penta antagonist. You let me know right away if you start to feel strange, itch, tingle, have trouble breathing or swallowing, or if your tongue starts to feel thick.”

“Feels th’ck now,” he objected, as she pushed up both his sleeves on his thin white arms and pressed the first spray to the inside of his elbow. “How d’l tell?”

“You’ll be able to tell. Now just lie back and relax. You should start to feel dreamy, like you’re floating, by the time you count backward from ten. Try it.”

“Te”. Nan. Ei’. Seben. Si’, fav, fo’, tree-two-wun.” He did not feel dreamy. He felt tense and nervous and miserable. “You sure yo’ go’ rat one?” His fingers began to drum on the tray table. The sound was unnaturally loud in his ears. Objects in the room were taking on hard, bright outlines with colored fringes. Rowan’s face seemed suddenly drained of personality, an ivory mask.

The mask loomed threateningly toward him. “What’s your name?” it hissed.

“I … I … yiyi …” His mouth clogged with stutters. He was the invisible eye, nameless… .

“Strange,” the mask murmured. “Your blood pressure should be going down, not up.”

Abruptly, he remembered what was so important about fast-penta.

’Fas’pent’—maksmeyper.” She shook her head in non-comprehension.

’Yiper,” he reiterated, out of a mouth that seemed to be seizing up in spasms. He wanted to talk. A thousand words rushed to his tongue, a chain-collision along his nerves. “Ya. Ya. Ya.”

“This isn’t usual.” She frowned at the hypospray, still in her hand.

“No sh’t.” His arms and legs drew up like coiled springs. Rowan’s face grew charming, like a doll’s. His heart raced. The room wavered, as if he were swimming underwater. With an effort, he uncoiled. He had to relax. He had to relax right now.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked. Her dark eyes were like pools, liquid and beautiful. He wanted to swim in those eyes, to shine in them. He wanted to please her. He wanted to coax her out of that green cloth armor, to dance naked with him in the starlight, to … his mumbles to this effect suddenly found voice in poetry, of a sort, actually, it was a very dirty limerick playing on some obvious symbolism involving wormholes and jumpships. Fortunately, it came out rather garbled.

To his relief, she smiled. But there was some un-funny association… . “Las’ time I recited that, som’bod’ beat shit outta me. Wuz i fas’pent’ then, too.”

Alertness coursed through her lovely long body. “You’ve been given fast-penta before? What else do you remember about it?”

“ ’Is name wuz Galen. Angry wi’ me. Doan’ know why.” He remembered a reddening face wavering over him, radiating an implacable, murderous hatred. Blows raining on him. He searched himself for remembered fear, and found it oddly mixed with pity. “I doan’ unnerstan’.”

“What else did he ask you about?”

“Doan’ know. Told ’im ’nother poem.”

“You recited poetry at him, under fast-penta interrogation?”

“Fer hours. Made ’im mad as hell.”

Her brows rose; one finger touched her soft lips, which parted in delight. “You beat a fast-penta interrogation? Remarkable! Let’s not talk about poetry, then. But you remember Ser Galen. Huh!”