by A. A. Bell
No need for her to find out, Sanchez decided. She headed back to her office, reassuring herself that the chances of Mira Chambers earning privileges for a day pass were about as remote as King Sisyphus pushing his boulder to the summit of his hill in Hades.
SEVEN
‘How’s your foot coping?’ Ben asked as they turned another corner. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a turn in the wheelchair?’
‘I’m blind, not crippled.’ Mira found the left wall with her elbow and used it as a guide to help her steer straight. ‘The cut on my foot is nothing.’
‘I’m glad to hear that. Still, it’s not very gentlemanly of me, is it?’
‘We’re in a hurry, aren’t we?’
‘I suppose,’ he replied.
‘And do you suppose you can hop faster than me?’
‘I guess not. Don’t use your super-powers against me, though. I’m on your side.’
‘You’d better be. In the meantime, it’s a nice change to be pushing one of you around.’
Ahead, she could hear two unfamiliar male voices, and, beyond them, the clumping sound of familiar shoes. She also heard a set of wheels labouring away from her under the weight of a heavy patient.
‘Twenty steps to the two men?’ she guessed. ‘Assuming that’s who we’re here to meet?’
‘Actually, there are three men and one woman in a wheelchair.’
‘I wasn’t counting Neville or Sarah-3. They’re leaving; nearly to the end of the corridor, am I right?’
‘Now you’re just showing off.’
‘You teased me first.’
‘Did not.’
‘Did too.’
Ben chuckled. ‘Sounds like an argument between three-year-olds. Listen, I wasn’t teasing you in a mean way, Mira. I was just testing you with a playful dig. That’s something we all have to cope with, whether we’re physically disadvantaged or not. Remember how Neville and Steffi teased me? You’ll have to learn not to be so touchy if you’re serious about living outside by yourself. It’s a big step. I tell you, Mira, some days I’d rather be a client in here, relaxing, safe and pampered.’
‘You can have my room right now and I’ll move in with your mother.’
Ben laughed. ‘Well, my dog might not argue, but —’
‘Names?’ called a man whose voice sounded heavy with authority.
Like a policeman, Mira thought. He smelled like breath mints.
‘Bennet Chiron,’ Ben replied. ‘And Mira Chambers.’
Mira drew the wheelchair to a halt and dropped her chin, hoping her thick fringe would obscure the sight of her butchered eyelids.
‘Hey, excellent make-up,’ said a younger male voice nearby. ‘Those stitches look real.’
He smelled different to his companion: clean, as if he’d taken great care with soap and musky aftershave to cover the smell of something else.
A flash of white pain stung her eyes and she flinched. The smell was familiar. Frightening, but at the same time it reminded her of her father. Gun oil! Pain stung the back of her eyes again. She remembered her father oiling his shotgun every week, sitting on one of the verandas of their secluded home. He used the gun to scare rabbits out of the vegetables, never for killing. However, the smell made her worry about what he was doing here.
‘Ma’am?’ persisted the young gun oiler. ‘Did you hear? I asked if you’re in the play too?’
‘Not exactly,’ Ben answered for her. ‘But I hope we’ll be in the audience.’
Mira nodded, distracted by the lingering pain; she clenched her eyes tighter and rubbed her temples. Someone scratched two large ticks onto paper with a fine-tipped ballpoint pen. It wasn’t working properly. She heard a hasty zigzag scribble before they tried again.
Behind the closed door, she could hear rock music, muffled but high-pitched, like a hungry mosquito.
‘Take a seat in the hall,’ said the gun oiler. ‘Someone else has slipped in ahead of you.’
‘Oh, we’re not that late?’ Ben asked.
‘Late enough,’ grumbled Mr Authority. ‘Someone else came along and demanded to take your place.’
‘Freddie Leopard,’ Mira said. She could hear him on the other side of the door, arguing that he shouldn’t have to take off his earmuffs to hear their questions because he could lip-read. ‘He was the first friend I made when I came here. They think he has multiple personalities,’ she whispered to Ben, ‘but he really hears ghosts who chatter at him all at once.’
‘In here,’ called a husky female voice. ‘The rec hall is doubling as a waiting room. Sheesh, Ben! What did you do to yourself this time?’
‘Long story, Narelle.’ Ben turned the wheelchair around but Mira kept up with him, keeping both hands on the handles behind his shoulders as if she was still pushing him. ‘The short version involves an argument with a broken bottle and a pavement.’
Narelle laughed. ‘Don’t tell me — the bottle won.
You’re such a softie, Benny. Would you like a cold drink or coffee while you’re waiting?’
‘Not sure. How long are the sessions taking?’
‘Ten minutes each. But Freddie Kitching’s in there now — with Carlo — and his wig was on sideways, so you know what that means. He’ll waste the first ten minutes telling the doctors’ fortunes and the next ten trying to recruit them for his private rebellion.’
Told you it was Freddie, Mira wanted to say, but she held her tongue in front of Narelle, who might smell sweet, like a basket of honeysuckle flowers, but whose husky voice held a bitchy undertone.
Ben laughed at something else Narelle had said. He tried to roll closer to her. Mira stopped him, holding tighter onto the wheelchair.
‘Freddie’s finishing early,’ she warned.
‘Impossible,’ Narelle said. ‘They’ve only been in there three minutes.’
Across the hall, a door burst open and raised voices spilled into the corridor.
‘You’re all Nietzscheans!’ Freddie shouted. ‘If you’re not brainwashing us into serving your master race, you’re conducting experiments! I knew it! Tell my brother what he can do with his next Christmas card! Oh wait, he never sends any! Tally-ho, Carlo! We’re out of here!’
‘Would you do it for two jelly snakes?’ called a male voice cheekily from inside the room.
‘Not for a whole packet! You’re doomed!’ Freddie laughed maniacally. ‘All doomed for disaster!’
Narelle choked on surprise. ‘She heard him through that door? That’s the old music room! It’s supposed to be soundproof!’
‘Loss of one sense heightens the others,’ Ben replied. ‘I’m keener to know how Freddie could lip-read around corners.’
‘Is nobody listening?’ Freddie wailed. ‘I can hear the future!’
‘You’re up, ma’am,’ called the friendly gun oiler.
Ben turned the wheelchair towards the voice and Mira followed, still keeping her hands on the handles. Freddie bumped past her and grabbed her hand and elbow with the force of his alter-ego Darick, his voice dropping to a deeper and more threatening tone: ‘Hey, Mira! How’s my special patient? Did I do good work with your stitches or what?’
Not as good as if you’d taken my whole eyes like I asked, she mouthed without making a sound. Instead, he’d retreated into the shadows of his mind, allowing Fredarick to come forward and be more lenient.
‘You’ll thank me. Just don’t let those quacks in there fry your brain. They want to take you away with them, and that will end badly, I promise!’
‘Take me away?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Freddie, let go of her!’ ordered Carlo. ‘Read my lips: it’s just a health survey. Who in their right minds would want to take either you or Mira Chambers away from here?’
‘Laugh now, Carlo. You’re doomed even sooner than the rest of them.’ Freddie’s voice drew steadily away from Mira in time with the intern’s footsteps. An elevator chimed and Mira heard doors open. ‘I’m hearing voices that tell me all about you.’
Carlo laughed. ‘Ghostly gossip. Now I’ve heard everything.’
‘No regrets, then, when you’re killed by a flying fish on the old bridge tomorrow?’
Doors chimed again, leaving an awkward silence to hang in the hallway.
‘Never a dull moment around here,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s do this.’
EIGHT
Ben felt Mira’s fingers tighten on his shoulder as soon as they entered. The room was chilly. He wondered if she could hear the low hum emanating from the five tables of electrical equipment. Pushed together into a U-shape, the tables surrounded a chair with a cobweb of cables and power cords spreading out from it.
Introductions were made by the youngest assistant, who closed the door, sealing Ben and Mira in with the two doctors.
‘Step right up,’ Zhou said. ‘This won’t hurt a bit.’
‘Who wants to go first?’ asked Van Danik. He stepped closer to Mira and touched her elbow.
Startled, she pulled away from him.
‘Is this a joke?’ Van Danik asked. ‘What’s the go with your eyes? Is that make-up?’
‘She’s blind,’ Ben replied. ‘What’s the go with your attitude? Did you lose your manners?’
‘I wasn’t talking to you, little buddy. I was talking to your nurse.’
Ben laughed. ‘You hear that, Mira? I think you’ll be going home to my mum after all. He thinks that you’re staff.’
‘And he thinks you’re little.’ She smiled; the first time in a decade. ‘He must be blind.’
Van Danik gulped as the colour flushed out of his face.
‘My apologies,’ Zhou said, stepping in. ‘He’s recently been diagnosed with foot-in-mouth. Would you like to take a seat, Miss Chambers, and we’ll. Oh! My goodness! You really are blind, aren’t you?’
‘Do you mind?’ Ben warned. ‘She’s a little sensitive about it.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Zhou stammered. ‘Well, I. I can imagine she would be. Sorry, but I didn’t realise. When I requested a portion of participants who were blind, I never expected anyone with, well. please don’t take offence — with that degree of incapacity.’
‘Blind is blind, isn’t it?’ Ben asked. ‘What’s the big deal?’
Behind them, Van Danik coughed, but held his tongue.
‘Our tests rely heavily on readings taken from your eyes throughout the session,’ Zhou explained. ‘We have to be able to see inner-eye responses or else the rest of the tests may be rendered pointless.’
‘So we’re off the hook?’
‘She is off the hook,’ Zhou replied. ‘And since the misunderstanding was my fault, I’ll mark her down as done anyway, so you’ll still get paid for her session.’
‘I’m getting paid?’ Mira asked.
Zhou walked to the side of the room and filled a cup with cheap-smelling coffee. ‘Indirectly,’ he said, stirring his drink. ‘Our foundation will be making a large donation to help pay for new recreational facilities here in return for volunteers.’
‘Like cheese at the end of a maze for lab mice?’ Ben asked. ‘It’s illegal to use disabled people in medicalexperiments — even if you have somehow gained the consent of their legal guardian.’
‘Experiments?’ Van Danik spluttered. ‘Where did that crazy idea come from? We’re conducting a health survey. The payment is an expression of gratitude, not an incentive. You did volunteer before you knew about the money, didn’t you?’
‘I suppose,’ Ben replied.
‘I didn’t volunteer,’ Mira said. ‘I didn’t know I had a choice.’
‘You would have before we began,’ Zhou assured her. ‘We have to get video consent from all participants. Not that you need to worry about that now. What about you, Mr Chiron?’
‘Hook me up, Doc. If it’ll help to pay for more improvements around here, I’m all for it.’
Ben patted Mira’s hand, rose out of the wheelchair and took his place in the chair at the centre of the U-shaped table arrangement.
Mira took a step to follow, but Van Danik intercepted her, startling her briefly again as he encouraged her to wait on a chair in the corner.
‘There’s a whole mess of wires over there,’ he explained. ‘Don’t want you tripping and hurting anything by accident, yourself included.’
‘We’ll also have to fit you up with a set of headphones,’ Zhou added. ‘We’ll be asking Ben a lot of private questions —’
‘I don’t mind if she listens,’ Ben interrupted. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. It might even help if she gets to know me better.’
‘Sorry, but it has to be this way,’ Zhou replied. ‘You’ll understand why by the end.’
‘But she’s already living in darkness,’ Ben persisted. ‘Don’t take sound away from her too. You might as well put her in a sensory deprivation chamber. In some countries that’s a form of torture, you know.’
‘In others, it’s therapy for relaxation,’ Van Danik argued. ‘Look, it’s not so bad, buddy. She can choose her own music.’
‘Sounds of nature?’ Mira asked hopefully. ‘Like beach sounds or a forest?’
‘Sure, they should be in there somewhere. It’s a fairly eclectic collection.’
Van Danik placed a music-stick in her hands and shifted her fingers manually over the controls to show her how to use it, then helped to fit a set of heavy headphones over her ears. Ben watched her, making sure she wasn’t distressed. Quite the opposite it seemed. Her face relaxed.
‘Can you still hear us?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Van Danik replied, but Ben noticed Mira’s head turn slightly towards his voice and a small smile curled onto her lips.
Zhou told Ben to sit forward and rest his chin on a tall adjustable support. ‘Sit forward a little more,’ he instructed. ‘Keep your back straight and comfortable. This is much like any ordinary ophthalmoscope you’d find at any optometrist’s, so I have to draw it level with your eyes. Now hold still, please.’
‘Looks like a big set of binoculars, except you’re looking through them backwards.’
Zhou chuckled. ‘I suppose it does.’
‘Try not to blink while you’re answering questions,’ Van Danik said, scraping his chair as he took his own seat. ‘These sensor pads will monitor your heart. Put them inside your shirt on your chest and shoulders. I imagine you know how?’
Ben nodded and complied.
‘Now spread your fingers like this,’ Van Danikdemonstrated, ‘and hold them over the glass sensor, like this.’
‘Ready?’ asked Zhou.
‘As I’ll ever be. I feel like a lab monkey about to have my claws filed and detergent squirted into my eyes.’
Zhou chuckled again. ‘The only thing going into your eyes will be light. Some say it looks like a rainbow.’
He switched on the recording equipment and read aloud from a standard disclaimer sheet explaining that all answers were being recorded electronically as voice-to-text documents instead of audio or video files, and that participants understood they were volunteers and could withdraw at any time without penalty or recrimination.
‘If we get to a question that makes you feel uncomfortable,’ Zhou added, ‘you can decline to answer, although please remember that your voice, name and face will not be recorded with any of your test results, so you shouldn’t feel the need to do that. You’ve been assigned a random number to help protect your anonymity — in your case, J40423. In effect, the only way your answers leave this room is in batched charts and tables with data from everyone else.’
‘You’re filming my face, though?’ Ben asked.
‘Only the inner lens and iris of each eye,’ Zhou replied. ‘Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you. Do you accept these conditions for participation?’
Ben tried to nod, but the chin support limited his movement.
‘Please just answer yes or no,’ Zhou said, ‘for the record.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you bring the extracts from your staff file?’
‘I think so. We got a little
sidetracked on the way, but they should be in the back pocket of the wheelchair.’
Ben heard rustling behind him and wondered if — or how well — Mira could hear it too. It really was quite loud to him now that he was becoming more aware of what life must be like for her. He closed his eyes, visualising, and knew the instant the extracts were retrieved.
‘Excellent,’ Zhou said, with a shake of the papers. ‘These will provide the fodder for our control questions. Answering yes or no to questions that we can verify from these will help initialise our equipment to suit your specific physiology before we get to the sticky questions.’
‘Like a lie-detector test?’ Ben asked.
‘You might say that,’ Zhou replied. ‘Now let’s get started. I’m going to ask twenty simple questions from your staff file. The first ten I need you to answer truthfully, and the second ten I need you to lie. Then we’ll make things a bit more interesting.’
Ben frowned. ‘So it is a lie-detector test. I thought so. They’re not accurate, though, I hope you know. I can guarantee that from personal experience.’
‘How so?’ asked Van Danik.
‘I spent —’
‘Don’t answer that yet,’ Zhou interrupted. ‘If you’re willing to answer truthfully, you can help us a lot more if you wait until after we’ve initialised our equipment with your control questions.’
‘My pleasure. I’ve been aching to get a second go at one of these for six years.’
Zhou nodded and flicked to the last page of extracts from Ben’s staff file. ‘Yes or no answers only at this stage, please. Say yes if you understand.’
