selfishness. Afterwards, she spent another few minutes practicing a confident unruffled smile. She placed the golden watch in her purse because she found its tick comforting, and she went to visit Director Howell in his office.
The Director’s office was at the back of the House, on the third floor, and its wide windows looked out over the gardens, which decades of painstaking effort had somehow made moderately green. Sunlight flooded the office. Everything in it was white and clean. In the gardens below, a dozen mad persons with wild and filthy hair sat stiffly beside the paths like dead trees.
The Director himself was a little dark-skinned man with round gold-rimmed spectacles, and a neat black beard, and a mild and reasonable smile. As Liv entered, he rose from his chair with a look of concern on his face.
“Good morning, Director!”
“Dr. Alverhuysen, are you sure you’re well—?”
“Of course!” She smiled. “Of course. Entirely too much work to do for us to waste time, don’t you think? I intend to begin with a study of the victims of the Line’s mind-bombs, the noisemakers. Uncharted territory, not yet visited by science—that’s where I can be of most use. We must all do what we can, don’t you agree, Director?”
“Fresh thinking, Dr. Alverhuysen. What a pleasure!”
The West Wing housed patients whose injuries were (primarily) physical, while the East Wing housed those whose injuries were (primarily) mental. The victims of the mind-bombs were housed on the East Wing’s second and third floors. Liv and the Director toured the cells, and she selected two to be her first subjects. She opened files on them under the names D and G.
D is a woman in her early twenties. From her features, which include a prominent forehead and pale, freckled complexion, I would judge that she is descended ultimately from settlers from Lundroy. Her pupils are abnormally enlarged, which gives her an appearance (likely false) of being quite fascinated by whatever she sees. She is 5' 2'' and somewhat overweight, though she is more physically active than is the norm among victims of the bombs—she is often found running heedlessly down the corridors or through the gardens. She has many bruises and scrapes.
She sings to herself constantly, generally love songs, most frequently something called “Daisy, My Dear,” an irritating composition that I am told is the work of the fashionable tunesmiths of Swing Street in distant Jasper City. The staff have therefore nicknamed her “Daisy.” In fact, her name is Colla Barber. She is the only daughter of a prominent Land Baron in the Delta, who is not incidentally a significant donor to the House. Four years ago, while out riding with a young man, she stumbled across a long-forgotten minefield.
She returns again and again to those songs. Based on my observations to date, this is typical of the victims of the bombs. Most of them have one or two fragments of conversation or knowledge remaining, quite arbitrarily; rather like the way in which (so the Child’s History tells me) when the Line bombards an ancient city with explosive rockets, whole districts may be flattened, but sometimes a single fine old church will be left standing.
Otherwise her responses to communication (words, gestures, touch) appear almost random. Nevertheless she is more active than the average sufferer, less closed off from the world. I have some access to information on her life before the bombs (whereas the lives of most sufferers are a mystery). I propose to begin with conversational therapy.
G is a man of uncertain age, most certainly very elderly. I judge him to be of mixed descent, primarily Dhravian. He is more than six feet tall, and very thin—in fact, I suspect that the House’s staff have neglected his feeding, and I have instructed that that is to cease. When I first found him, he had an immense and filthy white beard, which I had trimmed. For a man of his apparent age, he is remarkably healthy. Perhaps the victims of the bombs, being only half-alive, age more slowly than we do?
How he came to the House is uncertain. He has been in the House for at least seven years, probably more, and no records were kept of his arrival. This is quite typical. It is impossible at this point to determine when in his life he ran afoul of the bombs. If he speaks at all, which he does infrequently, he babbles garbled and nonsensical fragments of fairy tales, which makes me suspect that possibly he was