by A. A. Bell
‘Matron! Dowse the lights!’ Ben yelled. ‘And, you — Hawthorn, is it? Close the blinds!’
Ben stayed with Mira, soothing her with his voice and his gentle hands, while Van Danik and Zhou spoke excitedly between themselves.
‘Brain activity just spiked off the scale,’ Van Danik reported. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’
‘There’s something wrong here,’ Zhou replied. ‘Her eyes opened momentarily, but the scope didn’t catch anything — no rolling image and no still shots. It’s all blurred.’
‘I’m sorry! So sorry!’ She fisted both hands over her eyes. ‘I’m trying to be good, I am, but it hurts so much! And the soldiers. Ben, I can’t stand to see them drowning!’
‘What soldiers?’ asked Ben and Sanchez in chorus.
‘Don’t answer that yet,’ Zhou snapped — but not unkindly. ‘She’s lost a few wires. Let me hook her back up and see if we can figure out what’s happening.’
‘Is the natural light in here enough to work with?’ asked Ben.
‘My screens are illuminated,’ said Van Danik.
‘Mine too,’ said Zhou. ‘The scope also generates its own light with a low-intensity laser.’
‘A laser?’ Mira complained. ‘That will burn me!’
‘No,’ Zhou crooned with a voice almost as soothing as Ben’s. ‘It’s so cool it couldn’t melt butter. Just relax, Miss Chambers.’
Yes, Ben’s here, she reminded herself. I’m safe when Ben’s here. Tension ebbed from her eyelids a little as she relaxed and focused inwardly on the weight of his hands on her shoulders; so large and yet so gentle despite all those rough calluses.
‘That’s it,’ Zhou said. ‘Now, when you’re ready — as slow and as steady as you like — open your eyes again.’
PART FIVE
Thresholds of Clarity
All of us who live
are nothing but images or
insubstantial shadow
Sophocles
TWENTY-ONE
Zhou felt guilty for pushing Mira so much. He watched through the ophthalmoscope as she complied with his request to open her eyes. Ever so slowly, he saw her magnified lashes rise to reveal a pair of blurred opaque discs that soon filled his field of vision. He tapped the side of the scope, thinking that it wasn’t working properly. Still nothing. He glanced over the top of the scope to make sure she hadn’t closed her eyes again and …
‘Whoa!’
Her irises weren’t opaque at all. They shone like mirrored diamonds. He stared at them for a long moment, speechless.
‘Greek Gods in Tartarus!’ Sanchez muttered. ‘They’re stunning!’
‘They’re starting to ache!’ Mira said. ‘Please hurry?’
Ben patted her shoulder. ‘She’s something, isn’t she, Doc? Didn’t I tell you?’
‘I’ll say,’ said Van Danik from his side of the table. ‘EEG readings are spiking off the scale again. You need to see this, Zan. There are segments of her brain that just blinked with signs of activity in patterns I’ve never seen before … What have you got?’
‘See for yourself,’ Zhou replied. ‘You’d never believe me.’
Van Danik’s chair squawked as he stood up. ‘You’re the eye specialist, Zan. Can’t you … Whoa!’
‘Exactly. I think she’s reflecting the laser back on itself.’
‘Is that from the tapetum?’
‘Possibly …‘ Zhou leaned closer; so close he could have kissed Mira’s cheek.
She leaned away from him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked again.
Zhou flinched away from her. ‘Can you see me?’
‘No. I can’t see anything. Which is really weird. I always see something with my eyes open.’
‘If you’re properly blind now, how did you know when to pull away from me just then?’
‘Don’t take offence,’ she replied, ‘but you need to brush the salmon out of your teeth.’
Laughter rippled around the room, the loudest from Van Danik. He clapped Zhou on the shoulder and sat down again. ‘And I’ll bet he’s been worried all these years about his scars scaring girls away. All this time it’s been your breath, Zan!’
‘Very funny.’ Zhou switched off the ophthalmoscope and Mira screamed.
‘What did you do? Stop!’ she cried. ‘Put me down! I hate it up here!’
Zhou snapped the power to the scope back on, just as she began to hyperventilate. As soon as she caught her breath, she muttered her thanks at being let down.
‘It’s okay,’ Ben said, stroking her shoulder, ‘I’ve got you, Mira. You haven’t moved from the chair. Honest.’
‘Invisible chair,’ she panted. ‘Invisible everything up there!’
‘Up where?’ asked Zhou. ‘If you can’t see, what makes you think you went anywhere?’
‘I couldn’t see anything a second ago. It was just like … like having my eyes closed, even though I knew they were open. Then someone switched on a light or something and everything turned blue.’
‘Off actually,’ Zhou said. ‘I switched the laser off.’
‘No! You switched it on!’ Mira insisted. ‘It was dark, I told you — like having my eyes closed, even though I knew they were open. Then I heard the switch, and I blinked, and then I was up in the sky. Up there!’ She pointed, but swiftly returned her fingers to the exact same positions on the fingertip sensor pad. ‘Everything was blue!’
‘I thought you said everything was invisible?’
‘Yes, in the room. Not in the sky. When the sky sucked me up, everything around me was foggy blue, while everything touching me was invisible. Don’t say I’m crazy, though. I’m not! The light switched off and now I’m blind again. Even the blue fog is gone. Except my eyes are still open, aren’t they? So what did you do to me?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Zhou said, checking his instruments. ‘But I can assure you the laser was on — and it’s on again now. It’s only when I switched it off that you had the negative reaction.’
‘I don’t understand this either,’ Van Danik added. ‘As far as I can tell between each spike in my readings, her conscious mind and subconscious agree with everything she’s said.’
‘See? I told you! I’m not lying.’
Zhou sat back in his chair.
‘Oh, great,’ Van Danik grumbled. ‘We had a perfect success rate, and now she’s screwed it.’
‘Hey, don’t take it out on her,’ Ben warned.
‘Dr Van Danik!’ Sanchez snapped at the same time. ‘Please conduct yourself in a civil manner!’
Van Danik snorted. ‘That was civil for me. Look at it from our point of view, Matron. She’s not firing on all cylinders. We came here expecting to prove it — an open-and-shut case. At best, she might have provided us with a case for misdiagnosis. Instead, she’s revealed a glitch in our system that’s so gaping our financiers could park an aircraft carrier in it sideways and still have room to back up.’
‘If that’s the case,’ Ben cut in, ‘why don’t you just remove her results from your statistics?’
‘That’s disreputable!’ Van Danik snapped. ‘A tactic used by pen-pushers and toothpaste-makers to prove they’ve got the best test results. It’s not science.’
‘And it doesn’t fix the problem,’ Zhou said. ‘It could even be counterproductive, because if there’s something wrong with our system — even the slightest glitch — we need to know about it now, not after it’s gone into production. If it doesn’t work one hundred per cent of the time on one hundred per cent of test cases under every kind of test condition, it’s not good enough to hold up in court — or for the interrogation of spies or terrorists when lives are at stake. It must be infallible.’
Van Danik slumped back in his seat. ‘So what do we do?’
‘We ask more questions,’ Zhou decided. ‘This system is designed to tell the difference between visions, dreams and memories, even when the test subject can’t, so I suggest we persist along a line of questioning about this blue sky she’s m
entioned and try to figure out if it’s part of a dream, memory or hallucination.’
‘Regardless,’ Van Danik argued, ‘she’s not sitting in any sky surrounded by invisible people or ghosts at the moment. She’s right here with us — and she knows it. According to this, however, her subconscious and conscious minds are both convinced she’s in two places at once. That’s impossible, no matter whether her sky is a memory, a dream or a blue flying elephant!’
‘It doesn’t sound impossible to me,’ interrupted the matron. ‘It shouldn’t really surprise you either, if you take a second to remember where you are, gentlemen. The Serenity Centre specialises in care for clients with intellectual handicaps, so it’s highly likely that Mira’s subconscious and conscious minds are equally affected by Fragile X syndrome.’
‘That’s not the indication from our first set of control questions,’ Van Danik replied. ‘That’s why we ask them — to initialise our equipment to suit each person’s specific metabolism using questions that can be easily verified.’
‘What if Mira really is in two places at once?’ Ben asked. ‘At least from her perspective? Then your equipment would still be infallible, wouldn’t it?’
Zhou shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t want to argue that against a defence lawyer. Would you?’
Sanchez paced the room and the others watched her, all of them deep in thought.
‘Maybe the laser is strong enough to blind her,’ Ben suggested. ‘So, from Mira’s point of view, the light is off when it’s on and vice versa? I don’t know much about eyes, other than what I learned in high-school science about refraction and focal lengths, but if the laser is reflecting out of her eyes, doesn’t that mean it’s not focusing where it’s supposed to inside her head?’
Zhou nodded. ‘You just earned a B in your science test. It would have been an A, except the human eye isn’t suppose to reflect light like this — and if light can’t get in, I can’t see what’s going on in there without surgery. I can only watch the responses on the surface.’
‘I suppose,’ Van Danik said, ‘it’s possible that it’s only that specific frequency and wavelength of the scope that’s reflecting. Or maybe she does have a fraction of light getting through, since she could see some things before we switched it on … even if we haven’t figured out what those “somethings” were yet.’
‘I already reached that conclusion,’ Zhou replied. ‘I just don’t like the options it’s leaving me.’
‘Like what?’ Sanchez asked. ‘A little more explanation might benefit us all, not the least poor Mira, who must be out of her wits with worry by now.’
‘Oh no, I’m not,’ Mira assured them. ‘I get scared all the time, but you’re listening to me now. Not just hearing me, but actually listening and trying to help me. Do you know how rare that is? I’ll do anything — honestly, anything — to cooperate now, no matter how much it hurts.’
‘It won’t come to that,’ Ben promised. ‘We’re not here to hurt you.’
‘Actually …‘ Zhou sighed and shifted in his chair, making it squeak. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Chambers, but that’s exactly what it’s come to. Maybe not physical pain, but you certainly seemed distressed when I switched off the laser. And to figure out what you’re really experiencing, we’re going to need a period of question-and-answer time while you’re enduring it. And that,’ he said, before Ben or Sanchez could protest, ‘is why I was so hesitant in revealing my thoughts just now. I promised I wouldn’t hurt any of the volunteers here, and I’m loath to break that promise.’
‘On the other hand,’ Van Danik said, ‘she’s the only one who can help us work out the gaping glitch we just found, and there’s only six hours left before we have to meet with our financiers.’
‘She’s not a lab rat,’ Zhou argued. ‘I’m not going to force her —’
‘You’re not forcing me,’ Mira cut in. ‘I’ve lived with this curse since before I was ten. I could open my eyes tonight, tomorrow or the next day — what does it matter how long or how soon it is before it hurts me again? Or how long it is before the sky takes me? I know it will. And I’d much rather it was now,’ she said decisively, ‘while there are so many people here who want to help me, who’ve got the tools to try, and who I …’ She sucked in a breath. ‘Who I trust not to hurt me deliberately. Whether you can figure out what’s really wrong with me or not doesn’t matter so much. Not as much as knowing you want to try, and that I’ll regret it for the rest of my pathetic life if I don’t cooperate while I’ve got the chance.’
‘Yes!’ Ben cheered. ‘Now that’s what I’m talking about! Matron, can you look me in the face now and tell me she’s as immature as her file suggests?’
Sanchez didn’t reply. She retrieved her mobile phone from her pocket, the buttons chiming musically as she dialled.
‘Hello, Neville?’ she said within seconds. ‘I want you to shred the hard copy of Mira’s file … You heard me. Cancel all future medication, restore all privileges and fetch me a clean set of diagnostic papers. We’re starting from scratch.’
Neville Kenny hung up the phone shaking his head. He wondered what Mira Chambers could have done or said to change the matron’s mind so decisively — and whether it involved him.
If it didn’t yet, he knew it soon would. By starting from scratch, the matron would have to cover old ground, right up to recent incidents and arguments with Mira.
When she did that, she’d be documenting every word; conversations that he’d already taken great care to delete from Mira’s file to ensure that his point of view couldn’t be misunderstood.
Disciplinary action wasn’t something he could afford to fight at his age, especially since he knew he lacked the communication skills he’d need to stand up for himself in a legal dispute. If he lost his job now, he knew he’d also lose his small boat and boathouse, which also doubled as his hobby-shed for leather work. Together, these were the things that made his lonely life bearable since the death of his wife.
He gathered the blank documents the matron had requested and told Steffi Nagle he had to duck up to B-block for a few minutes. He didn’t go there directly, though. He took a long detour via the staff parking lot and the boot of his old Ford sedan, which contained the evidence of his late-night visits to Mira’s bedroom.
‘I’ve got a hand-held scope in my bag,’ Zhou said, reaching for it. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been more excited. ‘It can only examine one eye at a time, but it’s non-intrusive, meaning it uses mirrors to magnify up to fifty times without needing to touch you.’
‘No lasers?’ Mira asked.
‘No lasers,’ he promised.
‘Does she need a safe word?’ asked Ben. ‘Something she can say if the pain or distress gets too much, so you know when to stop?’
‘How about “Stop"?’ Mira suggested. ‘It worked last time.’
‘"Stop” works for me,’ Zhou replied.
‘Likewise,’ said Van Danik.
Zhou raised the hand-held ophthalmoscope close to Mira’s right eye, then shifted it to examine her other eye, and whistled.
‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing here. It looks as if you’ve got crystalline deformities in both eyes, and not only are they faceted and mirrored, they also seem to be symmetrical and identical. The phenomenon doesn’t just occur on the surface of each lens, it also replaces the pigment of each iris!’
‘Eyes are the mirrors of the soul,’ Sanchez said. She moved her head closer behind Zhou until both their faces appeared as fractured images in the many tiny facets of Mira’s eyes. ‘Except her eyes really are mirrors, so the souls we’re looking at are ours.’
‘I should be recording this.’ Zhou adjusted his ophthalmoscope to a higher magnification for a closer look. ‘I could set up two of these hand-held scopes on a tripod, but we might as well make sure this works before we go to too much trouble.’
‘You’ve only got one of those hand-held scopes here,’ warned Van Danik.
‘Unfortunately, yes. I ca
n only watch one eye at a time, and I still can’t see inside either of them, so I’ll only be able to register surface changes, which won’t be easy to read either, because every move I make is reflected and distracting.’
‘Sounds like a catch-22,’ Ben said.
Zhou nodded, automatically considering how he might explain it when writing his report for the scientific and medical communities.
‘What about the video?’ asked Van Danik. ‘Can you magnify her eyes later using that?’
‘Good idea.’ Zhou shifted his hand to the power switch on the side of the scope. ‘Ready, Mira? This will probably make you go back into the sky, or wherever you thought you were, so you can describe it to us.’
‘Can Ben keep his hands on my shoulders?’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Ben said, massaging her gently.
‘He can,’ Zhou agreed.
‘Well, okay …‘ Mira closed her eyes. ‘This is as ready as I get, Dr Zhou.’
‘Zan,’ he said. ‘You can call me Zan from now on, Mira, and he’s Mitch.’
‘Tell us anything you need to. Don’t hold back,’ Van Danik added. ‘No matter how strange it sounds. And don’t forget to yell “stop” if it gets too much for you.’
Mira nodded.
Zhou flicked off the switch and Mira began — ever so slowly — to reopen her eyes.
‘Everything’s blue,’ she said, obviously stricken with fear again, but she kept her eyes straight ahead and tried not to blink. ‘Light blues and darker blues, but everything is blue.’
‘True,’ said Van Danik. ‘The EEG spikes are off the scale regularly and those unusual patterns of brain activity are back. However, the troughs and other indicators still confirm that her conscious and subconscious minds are both in agreement. I wish I knew how that could be true, though, when there’s barely a speck of blue in this whole room.’
‘Let’s try to find out. Okay, Mira, try to move your eyes to look around. Just don’t turn your head too much, so I can keep the scope close to your eye without poking you.’
