Prototype (31 page)

Late afternoon, he ducked off a side street into a music store,
We Sell New And Used
, little hole-in-the-wall shop that smelled of dusty album jackets and earlier incense, with walls half-papered over with do-it-yourself announcements. Clay prowled the shelves of cassettes, missing Erin in a way he had not thought possible. Whatever it was they had, last night he might have wrecked it without saying a word,
because
he'd not said a word, not any words that really mattered.

Don't hurt, Erin. And don't hate me because I don't know how to keep you from it.

He found what he was looking for, a few tapes by Gene Loves Jezebel. All the same to him, he didn't really know their music, but Erin loved them; knew titles, lyrics, everything; they were a perennial favorite and that was good enough. He could play this through his Walkman and let it work whatever magic it might; make it easier for him to feel the space at his side was a little less empty.

He selected one of the tapes by merit of artwork alone, took it to the counter and slid it to the guy on duty. Gave the short plastic carousel of promotional tapes a spin while waiting for the kid to ring him up.

The kid paused with his finger over the cash register, tape in hand. Loose hair to his shoulders, flannel over a concert T-shirt that one more washing would destroy. His narrowing eyes smacked of disapproval.

"Are you still
listening
to them?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Clay. "Are you still selling them for minimum wage?"

The kid smirked and did not answer, took his money, and Clay realized it was the hardest thing he'd done in weeks, giving his cash to this guy. The in-store music seemed to boost in volume, shrieking needles of sound. Clay wondered if the kid noticed the trembling of his hand when he took his change.

The kid did not bothering sacking the tape, just stood tall and superior and flipped it across the counter.

"En
joy
," he said. "Dick."

Clay slipped it into a roomy pocket, stood looking down at his shoes for a moment. They had carried him far in one night, but it was never far enough. Never. He looked up.

He put on his gloves.

"Problem?" the kid asked, with grossly exaggerated concern.

"Uh huh," he said, and punched the brat as hard as he could, felt the nose squash like a plum. Watched him buckle facedown onto the counter, then could not stop himself from grabbing the carousel of promo tapes and lifting it high. He clubbed him once, on the back of the head. Clubbed him again.

It might have been only one more time.

It might have been forty.

She wasn't sleeping as well in Denver as she normally did in Tempe, at least not lately. When the phone rang, somewhere in the depths of the condo, it had no trouble ripping her from sleep, while Sarah dozed like a log, unfazed.

"Probably for you," Adrienne murmured.

She rolled out of bed, got her footing. Sought her robe that hung over the back of a chair, heavy flannel in deference to her first real winter in years; it looked like a horse blanket. Sarah pretended to find it a turn-on, dubbed it lingerie from Frederick's of Iowa.

The phone continued to shrill as she fumbled toward it in the dark. Maybe motherhood was like this, anything to quiet the noise in the dead of night, return to stasis. In the back of her mind she'd always thought she would like to give it a try, but now had to reconsider. A trial run like this and she felt more resentment than anything. Maybe she had no business taking care of a child; no business taking care of anyone.

Eleven or twelve rings, and she found the phone. How much more malevolent they sounded by night, by early morning, at — she squinted at the clock glowing in the kitchen —
four-thirty
in the morning? She said hello and waited, heard nothing but distant traffic, down the street or halfway around the world.

Then: "Adrienne?"

She straightened against the wall, everything coalescing into a phosphorescent pinpoint that burned like a welder's torch.
Clay.
Unaware, she wrapped the spiral cord around her free hand as if she could hang onto him that way, reel him back in.

"I'm glad you called," she said.

"Uh huh." His voice sounded thin and strained. "Can you come get me?"

"Sure." Automatic. "Where are you?"

"I think I might have killed someone."

*

Sarah had offered to drive but Adrienne more than wanted to, she
needed
to. It would leave that much less of her mind free for dread, for every second-guess that floated in from the dark in that predawn hour when nothing seems the same. When love feels sweeter and illness incurable.

Leaving a city behind, a weaving route of on-ramps and merge lanes; Sunday's dawn yet to come and Denver felt dead. Clouds had stolen in overnight to muddy the sky. Adrienne had to consciously stop herself from gnawing at her lower lip. She would show up in Fort Collins looking as if she'd been punched.

I think I might have killed someone.

What if he was right? He would be lost then, to himself and to her, even to his kind; another statistical casualty. If he really had become a danger, she should turn him in. While the doctor-patient relationship was nearly as sacrosanct as that of priest and confessing sinner, she had an ethical duty to the public's safety.

Ah, but she had bent ethics already. If the relationship was that confidential, what was Sarah doing coming along now; what was Sarah doing with full knowledge in the first place?

I am losing all my touchstones,
she was forced to admit.
I'm out here with only my conscience for a guide, and it's rebelling at nearly everything I used to think was sacred. Because none of that works this time.

She’d come to the conclusion that she was doing Arizona Associated Labs’ dirty work. Their invasion of privacy under a pretense of providing care. And while those to whom she reported seemed satisfied with what she was sending in, the joke was really on them. She was not even giving full disclosure anymore.

Clay's outburst in which he demolished the bar stool? She had never told them, for fear she might be removed from the scene, that it was getting too dangerous; not in AAL's mercenary view, but possibly Ferris Mendenhall might rescind his cooperation in loaning her out. Likewise she had downplayed how extensive his break with her had been; feeding the hope, keeping it alive, Clay may come around any day. Much of the conversation in the abandoned factory, which Sarah had recounted for her, Adrienne had relayed as if it had been held with her instead, informally.
See, I'm still getting some results.
Clay's tale of the peppered moth, oh, how they had loved that analogy. She was hip-deep in an ethical quagmire, but unable to convince herself that it was not justified on the most vital level: saving Clay.

If his chromosomes broke the rules, couldn't she?

"Things can't go on like this," Adrienne said, "not if he's going to derive any benefit and get control over himself."

Sarah sat bouncing her knee, holding a mug of coffee whipped together before they had left. "What else can you do that's that much different?"

"I don't know. It's the circumstances, mostly. They don't feel right to me. We dumped him right back into the same life that was creating most of his problems."

"Maybe he'd have problems no matter where he was."

"Maybe." Adrienne nodded. "Probably. If he's really hurt someone up there, it might be possible to commit him now, but…"

"But you really don't want to."

"I don't think it would help at all, I think it'd be giving him the final excuse he needs to destroy himself. I keep thinking I can make
some
difference." She scooted down in the seat, easing off her guard now that they were out of Denver; skinned a hand through her hair and looked at a couple of gold silken strands that came free.
Great, on top of everything else I'm losing my hair.
"I'm wondering now how far I'll go just to try to keep myself in place. I've already held things back at my own discretion, I've twisted things around. Do I draw the line at outright lies?"

After she no longer had access to Clay at all, how many more weeks — days, even — before she began fabricating entire reports, to keep from being recalled home? Turn his case history into fiction, just to avoid giving up on the idea of being part of it?

Sarah's hand, warmed from the mug, found its way to hers; lingered and gave a squeeze before withdrawing.

"Have you thought of hypnotherapy for him?" Sarah said.

"Not seriously, no." It was nothing for which she had ever trained. And while it had its merits, she had reservations that it would even be appropriate. Uncovering a forgotten past was not the issue, and posthypnotic suggestions generally worked better on concrete behavior patterns, not overall ways of relating to the world; thou shalt not smoke, thou shalt not eat to excess.

"He's big on finding out what that chromosome triplet means, you know," Sarah said.

"Trisome."

"Hmm?"

"It's called a trisome."

"Whatever." Sarah gulped at her coffee. "I don't think Clay cares half as much what it's called as he does finding out why it's happening."

"Well, don't we all."

"And not just to him, but to each of them. You know, ever since I talked to him in that factory —"

The factory; now there was a blister to poke. Clay had let Sarah share his inner sanctum when he probably would have waved his chair at Adrienne until she retreated. Jealous? Hell yes.

" — and he told me about the moths, that whole biological and environmental agenda under the surface, you know who I've kept thinking about?"

Adrienne gripped the wheel. This could only be weird. "Who?"

"Remember Kendra Madigan?"

She drew a blank for a moment, and then it hit her, hit her hard. "You've got to be kidding."

"No. I'm not. It might be an interesting thing to try with him, if he'd want to."

Adrienne, shaking her head, was adamant. "
Interesting.
That's a blithe way to put it. Especially when something like that is likely to do more harm than anything."

But this was Sarah she was talking to; typical Sarah, who now and then clung to the oddball and superstitious because she wanted to believe in a shortcut, and she would not be dissuaded. They saw eye-to-eye on much, but here they parted company.

They had heard of Kendra Madigan even before she had come to Tempe for a lecture and debate at the university a year and a half ago. She had been written up in a one-page article Sarah had seen in
Newsweek
, and
Psychology Today
had humored her if nothing else.

A professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a practicing hypnotist and psychologist, Kendra Madigan had written a book in which she claimed to have pioneered a hypnosis so deep it was possible to access the collective unconscious, the species memory that transcended the individual. No one of much note took her seriously, dismissing the technique as so much New Age hokum, although they stopped short of accusing her of fraud. She was, at worst, deluded, her ideas all the more controversial for her use of natural hallucinogens on some subjects. Predictably enough, her reception at Arizona State had been mixed, both enthusiastically pro and skeptically con.

Naturally, Sarah had been enthralled.

"You know what it's like?" Sarah asked. "It's like you're just giving lip service to Carl Jung, and not really putting your money where your ideology is. How can you anchor yourself in Jung like you do and deny the collective unconscious?"

"I never said I was denying it. Did I ever once say that?" Adrienne gripped the wheel harder. This was good, actually. Kept her from dwelling on Clay. "I think it informs most people on a preverbal level, symbolically, maybe in dreams. But you can't convince me someone can give it a voice and ask it questions. That comes close to being as ludicrous as psychics who claim they channel twenty-thousand-year-old entities."

"Oh, forget it." Sarah drew together with a frown. "We've had this argument before."

"It's not an argument, it's a discussion."

"Whatever it is, I'm not budging."