John Saul - Brain Child

His last class had been a study hall, and he’d decided not to bother with it. Instead, he’d wandered around the campus, trying once more to find something that jogged one of his dormant memories to life. But it was useless. Nothing jarred his memory, and more and more, everything he saw was now familiar. Each day, there was less and less in La Paloma that he had not refamiliarized himself with.

He was wandering through the science wing when someone called his name. He stopped and glanced through the open door of one of the labs. At the desk, he recognized Paul Landry.

“Hello, Mr. Landry.”

“Come on in, Alex.”

Alex stepped into the lab and glanced around.

“Recognize any of it?” Landry asked. Alex hesitated, then shook his head. “Not even that?”

Landry was pointing toward a wooden box with a glass top covering a table near the blackboard. “What is it?” Alex asked.

“Take a look. You don’t remember it at all?”

Alex gazed at the crude construction. “Should I?”

“You built it,” Landry said. “Last year. It was your project, and you finished it just before the accident.”

Alex walked over to examine the plywood construction. It was a simple maze, but apparently he’d made each piece separately, so that the maze could be easily and quickly changed into a myriad of different patterns. “What was I doing?”

“Figure it out,” Landry challenged. “From what Eisenberg tells me, it shouldn’t take you more than a minute.”

Alex glanced at his watch, then went back to the box. At one end was a runway leading to a cage containing three rats, and at the other was a food dispenser. Built into the front of the box was a timer. Forty-five seconds later, Alex nodded. “It must have been a retraining project. I must have wanted to be able to time the rate at which the rats learned each new configuration of the maze. But it looks pretty simpleminded.”

“That’s not what you thought last year. You thought it was pretty sophisticated.”

Alex shrugged disinterestedly, then lifted the gate that allowed the rats to run into the maze. One by one, with no mistakes, they made their way directly to the food and began eating. “How come it’s still here?”

Landry shrugged. “I guess I just thought you might want it. And since I was teaching summer school this year, it wasn’t any trouble to keep it.”

It was then, as he watched the rats, that the idea suddenly came into Alex’s mind. “What about the rats?” he asked. “Are they mine too?”

When Landry nodded, Alex removed the glass and picked up one of the large white rats. It wriggled for a moment, then relaxed when Alex put it back in its cage. A minute later, the other two had joined the first. “Can I take them home?” Alex asked.

“Just the rats? What about the box?”

“I don’t need it,” Alex replied. “It doesn’t look like it’s worth anything. But I’ll take the rats home.”

Landry hesitated. “Mind telling me why?”

“I have an idea,” Alex said. “I want to try an experiment with them, that’s all.”

There was something in Alex’s tone that struck Landry as strange, and then he realized what it was. There was nothing about Alex of his former openness and eagerness to please. Now he was cold, and, though he hated to use the word, arrogant.

“It’s fine with me,” he finally said. “Like I said, they’re your rats. But if you don’t want the box, leave it there. You may think it’s pretty simpleminded — which, incidentally, it is — but it still demonstrates a few things. I’ve been using it for my class.” He grinned. “And I’ve also been telling my kids that this project would have earned the brilliant Alex Lonsdale a genuine C-minus. Even last year, you could have done better work than that, Alex.”

“Maybe so,” Alex replied, picking up the rat cage and heading toward the door. “And maybe I would have, if you’d been a better teacher.”

Then he was gone, and Paul Landry was left alone, trying to reconcile the Alex he’d just talked to with the Alex he’d known the year before. He couldn’t, for there was simply no comparison. The Alex he’d known last year had disappeared without a trace. In his place was someone else, and Landry was grateful that whoever he was, he wasn’t in his class this year. Before he left that day, he took Alex’s project and threw it into the dumpster.

The kitchen door slammed, and despite herself, Ellen jumped. “Alex?” she called. “Is that you? Do you know what time it—” And then, as Alex came into the living room, she fell silent, her eyes fixed on the cage he held in his right hand. “What on earth have you got there?”

“Rats,” Alex told her. “The ones from my science project last year. Mr. Landry still had them.”

Ellen eyed the little creatures with revulsion. “You’re not going to keep them, are you?”

“I’ve figured out an experiment,” Alex told her. “They’ll be gone in a couple of days.”

“Good. Now, let’s go, or we’ll be late. In fact,” she added, her eyes moving to the clock, “we already are. And you know how Dr. Torres feels about punctuality.”

Alex started toward the stairs. “Dad and I aren’t sure I ought to keep going to Dr. Torres.”

Ellen, in the midst of struggling into a light coat, froze. “Alex, what are you talking about?”

Alex’s face remained impassive as he regarded her. “Dad and I had a talk last night, and we think maybe something’s wrong with me.”

“I don’t understand,” Ellen breathed, although she was afraid she understood all too well. She and Marsh had barely spoken to each other this morning, and today he had, for the first time in her memory, failed to call her even once. And now, apparently, he was going to use Alex as a pawn in their battle. Except that she wasn’t going to tolerate it, particularly when she knew that in the end, the loser would not be her, but Alex himself.

“I’ve been doing some reading,” she heard Alex saying.

“Stop!” Ellen said, her voice sharper than she’d intended. “I don’t care what you’ve been reading, and I don’t care what your father and you have decided. You’re still a patient of Raymond Torres’s, and you have an appointment for this afternoon, which you’re going to keep, whether you want to or not.”

Alex hesitated only a split second before he nodded. “Can I at least take this up to my room?” he asked, raising the cage.

“No. Leave it outside on the patio.”

As they drove down to Palo Alto, neither of them spoke.

“I thought your husband was coming today, Ellen.” Raymond Torres remained seated behind his desk, but gestured to the two chairs that Ellen and Alex normally occupied.

“He’s not,” Ellen replied. “And I think we’d better talk about it.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward Alex. Torres immediately picked up her message.

“I don’t think the lab’s quite ready for you yet,” he told Alex. “Why don’t you wait in Peter’s office while he sets up?”

Wordlessly Alex left Torres’s office, and when he was gone, Ellen finally sat down and began telling the doctor what had happened between herself and her husband the night before. “And now,” she finished, “he’s apparently convinced Alex that something’s wrong, too.”

Torres’s fingers drummed on the desktop for a moment, then began the elaborate ritual of packing and lighting his pipe. Only when the first thick cloud of smoke had begun drifting toward the ceiling did he speak.

“The problem, of course, is that he’s right,” he finally observed. “In fact, today I was going to tell him that I want to check Alex back into the Institute.”