Robert Sawyer - Triggers

Ranjip nodded.

“All right, then,” said Janis. “Given that, I’m thinking of fire and brimstone. Well, not brimstone; I don’t know what that is.”

“Sulfur,” said Ranjip.

“Okay,” said Janis. “But it’s not bringing anything to mind.”

“This is bullshit,” said Eric.

“Perhaps,” said Singh. “But—”

“He’s dead,” said Eric. “He’s gone. And Jan felt him die. We should be worried about her, not him.”

“I understand that,” said Singh. “And, if there is an afterlife, I doubt that any of the symbolism from Christianity—or from Sikhism, for that matter—appropriately captures it. It may just be that the right trigger hasn’t come along to let Mrs. Falconi access Mr. Latimer’s new memories.”

“I don’t care about Latimer,” said Eric, firmly. “What caused Jan to feel this?”

“That’s a very good question,” said Singh, looking at her. “Something must have triggered you to recall Mr. Latimer’s death shortly after it happened, Mrs. Falconi. What were you doing when you had the flashback?”

“Eric was showing me around his condo. It’s just a few blocks from here.”

Singh frowned. “There was no—I don’t know—hunting rifle on the wall, or bloody roast defrosting in the sink?”

“No,” said Jan. “I was just admiring Eric’s furniture.”

“That seems unlikely as a trigger for this,” Singh said. “I wonder how long after Latimer died that the memory of it came to you.”

“Jan collapsed at 12:17 P.M.,” said Eric. Singh looked at him. “I’m a doctor,” Eric added. “You always note when a seizure or anything similar starts and how long it lasts.”

“Agent Dawson,” Singh said, “when did you, ah, um—when did you shoot Mr. Latimer?”

Susan looked up again. Her voice was small. “I don’t know. Sometime shortly after noon, but…”

“Hospital security will know,” Singh said. “They must have recorded the sound of the gunshot; I heard it even down here.” He picked up the phone on his desk and pounded out four digits. “It’s Ranjip Singh. I need to know the time the gun was discharged this past hour. Yes. No. Really? Are you sure? Are you positive? Thank you. Good-bye.” He put down the phone. “The gunshot was recorded at 12:17 P.M.”

“But memories are recalled after the fact,” Eric said. “That’s what recall means.”

“This wasn’t like the other memories of Josh’s I’d recalled,” Jan said. “It felt more real, more…”

“Immediate?” offered Singh.

Jan nodded.

“So you accessed Mr. Latimer’s memories not after they’d been laid down,” Singh said, “but in real time, as he was experiencing the event?” He looked at Susan and lowered his voice a bit. “Did your seizure, as Dr. Redekop called it, start with the gunshot?”

“Yes,” said Jan, “although I didn’t know what it was at the time. There was a flash of light and unbelievable pain, and then I saw her”—she pointed at Susan—“and then I was fading away bit by bit.”

“Amazing,” said Singh. His eyes were wide with excitement. “Amazing.”

“How so?” asked Jan.

“Until this point, people in our linked circle had been accessing memories randomly, and not in synchrony. What I was thinking about or doing had nothing to do with what Agent Dawson was recalling from my memories. But what happened to you was different. At the moment Mr. Latimer was being shot, you experienced what he was feeling, exactly when he felt it.” Singh shook his head slowly, and his voice was filled with wonder. “You weren’t just reading his memory, Mrs. Falconi. You were reading his thoughts .”

Susan Dawson continued to sit in Singh’s lab with her head in her hands. That she’d done everything properly didn’t matter; she’d never get this image—her own memory—out of her mind: the bullet hitting Josh Latimer’s head, his blood geysering out, and him crumpling to the floor.

She’d studied the Zapruder film during training, of course—including the frames not usually shown that depicted JFK’s head blowing open. She remembered her instructor at Rowley saying that it was actually Kennedy’s bad back that had killed him. Oswald’s first, nonfatal shot should have caused the president to pitch forward, out of Oswald’s line of fire from the School Book Depository, but the back brace he wore had kept Kennedy upright, letting Oswald get the subsequent killing shot in.

She’d always remembered those grainy images, but this— this! —was so much more vivid, with vibrant colors, deafening sound, the stench of gunpowder, and the recoil of the weapon. She’d been prepared to take a bullet for Jerrison—she really had been. But killing someone herself turned out to be a very different matter. She couldn’t bring herself to participate in the discussion going on around her, but she listened.

“You weren’t just reading his memory,” Singh had just said to Janis Falconi. “You were reading his thoughts.”

“But why?” Eric Redekop asked. “The intensity of the feelings?”

Susan looked up in time to see Singh make his trademark shrug. “Maybe. But this raises a new level of concern. Fortunately, Mrs. Falconi wasn’t injured—but she could have been. Indeed, if she’d been operating a motor vehicle, or even just walking down a tall staircase, she could have been killed.”

Killed.

Susan thought again about her pistol firing, Latimer’s blood spraying, and bits of his skull flying—and she thought about his eyes. Still tracking, still alive, still thinking for several seconds, like the severed heads of French guillotine victims looking up at their executioners.

“Sadly,” continued Singh, “we’ve learned something else. I’d been hoping that the daisy chain might be like the wiring of Christmas lights—if one went out, the whole chain would go, and all the memory linkages would break.”

Susan briefly wondered what experience a Sikh could have had with Christmas decorations. “But that’s not what happened,” she said.

“No,” replied Singh. “I can still read Dr. Jono, and I take it, Agent Dawson, that you can still read me.”

Susan concentrated for a moment; Singh had had two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast; he, she suddenly knew, always kept a few on hand in that small refrigerator over there. “Yes.”

“And Dr. Redekop, can you still access Mrs. Falconi’s memories?” Singh asked.

Eric tilted his head sideways, then: “Yes. No problem. It’s exactly the same as before.” He turned to Janis, and it looked to Susan as though an idea had just occurred to him. “But you got Latimer’s memories in real time at the end.”

“Yes,” said Janis.

“Obviously, being shot was traumatic for Latimer,” Eric said, “but, well—forgive me, Agent Dawson, I don’t know about people in your line of work, but…”

“But I do,” said Singh, apparently realizing whatever Eric was getting at. “I spend most of my day dealing with people who’ve had to kill—even when it’s their job, even when it’s in the line of duty.” He looked at Susan. “It’s not easy, is it?”

Susan thought about saying something, but simply shook her head.

“What’s the normal procedure following such an incident?” Singh asked.

“Paperwork,” said Susan. “Forms, reports.”

“And counseling?”

It was mandatory. “Yes.”

“Looking at you, Agent Dawson, it’s obvious that killing Latimer was traumatic for you, wasn’t it?”

Susan drew a deep breath, glanced at each of the others in turn, then blew the air out. “It was horrifying.”