Brain Child Page 0,119
box containing Raymond Torres’s name, there was another box.
It was empty.
Alex closed the book and laid it on the hearth in front of the fireplace, then moved on to Torres’s desk. Without hesitation, he pulled the bottom-right-hand drawer open, reached into its depths, and pulled out a nondescript notebook.
In the notebook, neatly penned in a precise hand, was Raymond Torres’s plan for creating the son he had never fathered.
It was getting dark when Alex heard the car pull up. He retrieved the gun from the corner behind the door. When Raymond Torres entered the den a few moments later, it lay almost carelessly in Alex’s lap, though his right forefinger was curled around the trigger. Torres paused in the doorway, frowning thoughtfully, then smiled.
“I don’t think you’ll kill me,” he said. “Nor, for that matter, do I think you have killed anyone else. So why don’t you put that gun down, and let us talk about what’s happening to you.”
“There’s no need to talk,” Alex replied. “I already know what happened to me. You’ve put computers in my brain, and you’ve been programming me.”
“You found the notebook.”
“I didn’t need to find it. I knew where it was. I knew where this house was, and I knew what I’d find here.”
Torres’s smile faded into a slight frown. “I don’t think you could have known those things.”
“Of course I could,” Alex replied. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”
Torres closed the door, then, ignoring the gun, moved around his desk and eased himself into his chair. He regarded Alex carefully, and wondered briefly if, indeed, something had gone awry. But he rejected the idea; it was impossible. “Of course I understand,” he finally said. “But I’m not sure you do. What, exactly, do you think I’ve done?”
“Turned me into you,” Alex said softly. “Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?”
Torres ignored the question. “And how, exactly, did I do that?”
“The testing,” Alex replied. “Only you weren’t testing me, really. You were programming me.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Torres replied, “since it happens to be absolutely true. Incidentally, I explained it all to your parents this afternoon.”
“Did you? Did you really tell them all of it?” Alex asked. “Did you tell them that it wasn’t just data you programmed in?”
Torres frowned. “But it was.”
Alex shook his head. “Then you don’t understand, do you?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, no,” Torres said, though he understood perfectly. For the first time, he began to feel afraid.
“Then I’ll tell you. After the operation, my brain was a blank. I had the capacity to learn, because of the computers you put in my brain, but I didn’t have the capacity to think.”
“That’s not true—”
“It is true,” Alex insisted. “And I think you knew it, which is why you had to give me a personality as well as just enough data to look like I was … What? Suffering from amnesia? Was I supposed to remember things slowly, so it would look like I was recovering? But I couldn’t remember anything, could I? My brain—Alex Lonsdale’s brain—was dead. So you gave me things to remember, but they were the wrong things.”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea what you’re talking about, Alex, and neither have you,” Torres declared icily.
“It’s strange, really,” Alex went on, ignoring Torres’s words. “Some of the mistakes were so small, and yet they set me to wondering. If it had only been the oldest stuff—”
“The ‘oldest stuff’?” Torres echoed archly.
“The oldest memories. The memories of the stories your mother used to tell you.”
“My mother is an old woman. Sometimes she gets confused.”
“No,” Alex replied. “She’s not confused, and neither are you. The memories served their purpose, and all the people died. You used me to kill them, and I did. And, as you wished, I had no memory of what I’d done. As soon as the killings were over, they were wiped out of my memory banks. But even if I had remembered them, I wouldn’t have been able to say why I was killing. All I would have been able to do is talk about Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz and venganza. Revenge. I would have sounded crazy, wouldn’t I?”
“You’re sounding crazy right now,” Torres said, rising to his feet.
Alex’s hands tightened on the shotgun. “Sit down,” he said. Torres hesitated, then sank back into his chair. “But it was revenge you wanted,” Alex went on. “Only not revenge for what happened in 1848. Revenge for what happened twenty years ago.”
“Alex, what you’re saying makes