The Prisoner's Dilemma (12 page)

“What were they thinking?” Sticky said.

“I suspect my brother’s spies did much of the thinking for them,” Mr. Benedict said. “Indeed, confident assurances and promises of fortune, when whispered into the right ears, often serve as substitutes for thinking at all.”

“Well, this is hideous news, all right,” said Kate. “But why did Mr. Pressius want to tell you about it?”

“He didn’t,” Mr. Benedict said. “It’s doubtful he even knows I’m aware of it. The transaction was meant to be kept secret from me. I’ve told
you
about it so that you can better understand the reason Mr. Pressius came here today. The real reason, I mean. I believe his visit was timed to distract me, you see, for tomorrow—”

“They’re coming for the Whisperer,” said Constance impatiently. “We know already.”

Mr. Benedict raised an eyebrow, and the corners of his mouth twitched. “Forgive me, I should have guessed you would. Well, then, there you have it. The gears of my brother’s machinery are turning once again, and he is doing what he can to prevent my throwing a wrench into them. That is the reason Mr. Pressius came here today, I have no doubt.”

“The real reason,” Reynie clarified. “And what about the stated reason? Is that important?”

Mr. Benedict hesitated. “Please understand that I am not worried about what Mr. Pressius had to say. If I seem troubled it is only because I’m concerned about how you will respond to it yourselves. Be assured, however—”

Constance spluttered in exasperation. “For crying out loud, what
is
it? What did he tell you?”

Mr. Benedict took a deep breath, let it out, and looked Constance in the eyes. “He said, my dear, that you are his long-lost daughter.”

“I
t’s a lie, of course!” Mr. Benedict hastened to say, and he reached to take her hands. Constance didn’t resist as she normally might, but sat quite motionless, blanching, reddening, and blanching again so quickly it was as if someone were adjusting her color by remote control. The other children gaped in disbelief.

“I assure you,” Mr. Benedict said with unusual vehemence, “this is a ploy, nothing more—a wicked attempt to distract us at a crucial time. You must not believe it for a moment.”

“But… if it’s a lie,” said Constance, her voice rising and rising, “then why is everyone so upset? You, Rhonda, Number Two—you’re all… all of you…” Before she could find the words to describe what she sensed intuitively, Rhonda and Number Two were at her side.

“We’re just worried about you,” said Rhonda with tears in her eyes, and Number Two added in a choked, furious voice, “And angry with
him.
It’s such a vicious deceit!”

“We feel protective, you see,” said Mr. Benedict with an uneven smile. (He was clearly striving to remain calm—and thus awake.) “We consider you a part of our family, even if our ties have yet to be made official. For Mr. Pressius to argue otherwise was terribly offensive to all of us.”

“And perhaps a little upsetting,” said Rhonda with a weak smile of her own.

“It’s an outrage!” snarled Number Two. “And for him to have done so much to prove…” She bit her tongue, evidently having said more than she intended. But seeing there was no hiding the details from Constance now, she said, “Mr. Pressius has had some false documents produced. Expert forgeries—they must have cost a fortune—but forgeries nonetheless. We’re intimately familiar with this sort of thing, you know.”

Constance seemed encouraged. Still she looked to Mr. Benedict for assurance. “You’re sure they aren’t real?”

“Quite sure,” he said, squeezing her hands. And when he saw she believed him, Mr. Benedict smiled more naturally this time, obviously relieved. He took a carrot from his pocket and handed it to Number Two, remarking that she had not eaten since lunch, and that was almost an hour ago.

“Furthermore,” Mr. Benedict continued, “if these papers had come from the proper offices, we would have located them ourselves long ago. We’ve sought them most strenuously, you know. But no such papers have been found, no records at all, and though we could have produced false ones—even better forgeries, I daresay, than the ones Mr. Pressius has—we wanted nothing that smacked of falseness to be associated with your adoption. We all felt that this would be important to you.”

“You’re right,” said Constance, after considering a moment. “It would have bugged me. So what happened, Mr. Pressius just walked in with flowers and expected me to call him Daddy?”

“Perhaps he did,” said Mr. Benedict with a shrug. “His understanding of children seems to be as poor as he is rich. But more likely he hoped to upset you, and thereby to upset
me.
I admit he succeeded at first—I even threw away his flowers.”

“And knocked your head in the bargain,” said Number Two, somewhat less peevish now that she’d eaten the carrot to a nub. “And spilled your books everywhere.”

“Very true,” said Mr. Benedict, giving her an apologetic look. “After I woke up and composed myself, however, I realized the flowers must certainly be yours, Constance, to do with as you please. At any rate—”

Mr. Benedict broke off, for just then Constance jumped to her feet, snatched the bouquet from his desk, and hurled it into the wastebasket with all the force she could muster—so hard that flower petals flew up out of the wastebasket like tiny pink butterflies. Then placing her hands against the wall to steady herself, she stomped one foot repeatedly into the wastebasket as if trying to put out a fire.

“I see we are of the same opinion,” said Mr. Benedict as Constance returned to her seat, and the others congratulated her on her judgment. Then Mr. Benedict cleared his throat and said, “I’m afraid a few unpleasant details remain. Mr. Pressius means to have you removed from my custody. I will never allow this, of course, nor even admit him into the house. But the encounter will be disagreeable, and when it comes I ask you to keep away from the windows. There is no telling what Mr. Pressius will say or how distressing you might find his words, and I shall be far more efficient in dealing with him if I am not also worried about
you.
”

“Efficiency is important,” Rhonda said when she saw Constance’s suspicious look. “There’s little time, and Mr. Benedict still has work to do.”

Constance crossed her arms. “Then you had better do as I say.”

Puzzled, Rhonda said, “What do you mean?”

“
You
know what I mean,” said Constance, looking at Mr. Benedict. “You have to do it right away! If you say no, I’ll throw a fit, I’ll make trouble… I’ll—I’ll make sure you can’t get any work done!”

The others glanced uncertainly at one another. Only Mr. Benedict seemed unsurprised, though he sounded rather disappointed as he said, “Threats are unbecoming in you, my dear, and you know perfectly well they won’t work on me.” He ran a hand through his tousled white hair. “I understand your feelings, however. In your position I would feel much the same.”

“Then you have to do it!” Constance cried, turning crimson with passion. “Oh, you have to use the Whisperer, Mr. Benedict! You
have
to!”

In times past Mr. Benedict had steadfastly declined to use the Whisperer to uncover Constance’s hidden memories. If they existed at all, he said, they might be traumatic, for a person’s mind will sometimes bury painful memories as a means of self-protection. Then again there might be nothing to uncover. Her prodigious mental gifts aside, Constance had been just a toddler when she came to him, and most children that age had yet to form lasting memories. Mr. Benedict had felt the risks of using the Whisperer outweighed the possible benefits.

But circumstances had changed. Mr. Pressius’s visit had stirred up emotions that Constance could scarcely understand, much less handle with aplomb. She longed for the real story of her past, longed to know beyond doubt that the vile Mr. Pressius was not her father. The forged documents didn’t prove he
wasn’t
her father, she argued (a point that Sticky rather unhelpfully conceded was logical), and the only way to be sure was to use the Whisperer. And her only chance for
that
—her only chance forever and ever—was right now.

“I can handle it,” Constance said. “I know it might be upsetting, but I have to know. You said it yourself, Mr. Benedict—you’d feel the same way!”

Number Two pointed out that when Constance was older Mr. Benedict could attempt to recover her memories using hypnosis. “You’ll be more stable then,” she said, which was perhaps an unfortunate choice of words.

Constance leaped to her feet. “
I’m
stable as a table!
I’m
sturdy as an elephant! Not like you, dumb Number Two!
Your
skeleton’s like gelatin!”

When at last Mr. Benedict had calmed Constance down and persuaded her to withdraw, as he put it, “your disparaging remarks about Number Two’s skeletal fortitude,” he adjusted his spectacles and said, “The fact is I expected this and have made my decision already. It’s one reason I’ve been so busy in the basement—I knew we would need to take time for this. Yes, hypnosis might work, but its results can be unreliable. If they led us astray, and if no other clues emerged, we might always regret our missed opportunity to use the Whisperer.”

Constance put her hands to her head. “You mean you’ll do it?”

“Let us proceed upstairs,” said Mr. Benedict, rising, and Number Two and Rhonda leaped up to accompany him. He looked at the older children. “Will you join us? The process can be unsettling, even distressing, and Constance will feel safer with you there.”

“Do you really think they’ll make me feel safer?” said Constance impishly as they headed upstairs. She was in high spirits now that she’d won her long-fought battle. “The scariest things I remember have all happened when I was with
them.
”

“An excellent point,” said Mr. Benedict. “Perhaps you’d prefer to do this alone.”

To this Constance made no reply, only muttered something under her breath, and her friends smiled privately at one another. They followed her up the stairs, shucking out of their overclothes as they climbed.

By the time they had reached the balmy third floor and filed into the appropriate hallway, Constance’s steps had grown noticeably slower and oddly deliberate, as if she were trudging through deep snow. It was a perfectly familiar hallway, with familiar bookshelves lining the walls and several familiar doorways—the holding rooms on the left, the chamber door on the right—and the chamber guards were familiar, too. Yet with every step Constance took, the stranger and creepier everything seemed; even the light had a harsh and sinister cast. Her spirits, so high before, had now plunged equally low, for the truth had begun to sink in: She had an appointment with the Whisperer.

“Steady,” Reynie whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. “We’re right here.”

Constance looked up at him gratefully. He managed to smile, but he looked somewhat less than steady himself. So did the other two, for that matter. Sticky kept reaching for his spectacles then jerking his hand away again, and Kate had unthinkingly flipped open her bucket lid. The children’s last encounter with the Whisperer had been most unpleasant, and of course they were all thinking of it now.

Mr. Benedict spoke cheerfully to the guards as he rummaged through the pockets of his suit coat. He and his guests were the only ones ever allowed into the chamber, whose door was secured with two separate locks. Mr. Benedict produced the first key from his pocket. Number Two had the other. In a moment the door swung open and the little group shuffled inside.

The chamber was a small, softly lit room, painted in a soothing shade of green very much like that of Mr. Benedict’s suit. In one corner was an overstuffed chair where Mr. Benedict’s guests usually sat; in the other, behind a decorative screen, was the Whisperer. Otherwise the room was empty. No windows, no pictures, no books. The sessions with the Whisperer required great concentration, and Mr. Benedict had eliminated all sources of distraction.

“Before we begin,” said Mr. Benedict, gesturing for them to join him on the floor, “let us take a moment to review and prepare. Now, do you recall the effect the Whisperer had on those whose memories my brother edited? I refer not to an entire brainsweep, as he termed it, but to the hiding away of specific memories.”

“Well,” said Kate, “the kids he did that to at the Institute were kind of mixed-up and confused for a while.”

“Dazed,” said Constance.

“Addlepated,” said Sticky.

Mr. Benedict tapped his nose. “The sudden disappearance of a few select memories may not be as disturbing as losing all of them—Milligan can attest to that—but it is disorienting nonetheless, and the sudden
return
of those memories often has a similar effect. We must not be surprised, therefore, if Constance does not seem quite herself after the session. And Constance,
you
must not worry if you find you cannot think as clearly as you like. Rarely do the effects last more than a day or two, and in some cases they are scarcely even noticeable.”

“Will it be…” Constance’s voice faltered, and clearing her throat she sat up straighter and tried again. “Will it be, you know, like… last time?”