"That explains a lot. I didn't think the Home Office had the kind of resources to pay for a place like this."
Stephanie shrugged noncommittally, and opened the door into the director's suite. There was a secretary in the outer office, busy with a terminal. She glanced up, and keyed an intercom.
"Go straight through," she said.
The office was at odds with the rest of the Centre. Wall units, desk, and conference table were all customized blackwood, ancient maps and several diplomas hung on the wall, louvre blinds stretched across the picture window, blocking the view, It was definitely a senior management enclave, its occupier claiming every perk and entitlement allowed for in the corporate rule book.
Dr James MacLennan rose from behind his desk to greet Greg, a reassuring smile and a solid handshake. He was thirty-seven, shorter than Greg, with thick dark hair, heavily tanned with compact features. His Brazilian suit was a shiny grey-green.
"For the record, and before we say anything else, I'd like to state quite categorically that Liam Bursken did not slip out for a night, it simply isn't possible," MacLennan said.
His mannerisms were all a trifle too gushy and effusive for Greg to draw any confidence the way he was intended to. He guessed that Berkeley's directors were none too happy at suggestions that psychopaths like Bursken could come and go as they pleased. The method of Kitchener's murder hadn't been lost on the press.
"From what I've seen so far, I'd say the Centre looks pretty secure," Greg said.
"Good, excellent." MacLennan gestured at a long settee.
Greg settled back into the bouncy cushioning. "I will have to ask Bursken himself."
"I understand completely. Stephanie will arrange your interview. Make as many checks as you like. I like to think our record is flawless."
"Thank you, I'm sure it is."
Stephanie leant over the desk and muttered into the intercom, then came and sat at the table next to the settee.
"Right, so how can we help?" MacLennan crossed his legs, and gave Greg his undivided attention.
"As you probably saw in the newscasts, I'm a gland psychic appointed to the Kitchener inquiry by the Home Office."
MacLennan rolled his eyes and grunted. "God, the press. Don't tell me about the press. I've had the lot of them clamouring on the door to interview Bursken, harassing the staff when they come off duty. You see them on the channel 'casts, these packs which follow politicians and royalty around, but I just never appreciated what it was like to be on the receiving end. And that kind of microscopic attention is precisely what we didn't want, Stocken is supposed to be a low-key operation."
"Suppose you fill me in on some background. What exactly is this behavioural reorientation work you're doing here?"
"You know what kind of inmates we hold here?"
"Yeah. That's why I'm so interested in meeting Liam Bursken. I saw the holograms of Kitchener in situ. Tell you, it was plain butchery. I've seen atrocities in battle, and not just committed by the other side. But the kind of mind which perpetrated that was way outside my experience. I want to know what it looks like."
MacLennan nodded sympathetically. "Well, the motivation behind their crimes are basically psychological, in all cases deep-rooted. None of the serial killers sell drugs, or steal, or commit fraud, any of the normal range of criminal activities.
"That sort of everyday crime is mostly a result of sociological conditioning; broadly speaking, solvable if they were given better housing, improved education, a good job, stable home environment, etc. — it's a process for social workers and parole officers—whereas the Centre's inmates probably had those advantages before they came in. They do tend to have reasonable IQs, steady jobs, sometimes even families."
"Do any of them have exceptional IQs?" Greg asked.
MacLennan flicked an enquiring glance at Stephanie Rowe. "Not that I'm aware of," he said. "Why do you ask?"
"Kitchener's students are all very bright people."
"Ah, I see, yes."
"No one here has anything above average intelligence," Stephanie announced; she was studying her cybofax. "Certainly we have no geniuses resident. Do you want me to request past case histories?"
"No, that's all right," Greg said.
"What we are trying to do at Stocken," MacLennan said, "is alter their psychological profiles, eradicate that part of their nature which extracts gratification from performing these barbaric acts."
"Brainwashing?"
"Absolutely not."
"It sounds like it."
MacLennan gave him a narrow smile. "What you refer to as brainwashing is simply conditioned response. An example: strap your subject in a chair and show him a picture of an object, say a particular brand of whisky. Each time the whisky appears you give him an electric shock. Repeated enough times the subject will become averse to that brand. I have grossly over simplified, of course. But that is the principle, installing a visually triggered compulsion. What you are doing in such cases is ingraining a new response to replace the one already in place. But it can only produce results on the most simplistic level. You cannot turn criminals into law-abiding citizens by aversion therapy, because criminality is their nature, derived subconsciously, not a single yes/no choice. And what we are dealing with in Stocken's inmates is a behaviour pattern often formed in childhood. It has to be erased and then replaced."
"How?"
"Have you heard of educational laser paradigms?"
"No," Greg said drily.
"It's an idea which goes back several decades. It was the subject of my doctoral thesis. I started off in high-density data-handling techniques, but got sidetracked. Educational paradigms were so much more interesting. They are the biological equivalent of computer programs. You can literally load subject matter into the human brain as though you were squirting bytes into a memory core. Once perfected, there will be no need for schools or universities. You will be given all the knowledge you require in a single burst of light, sending the information through the optic nerve to imprint directly on the brain." MacLennan shrugged affably. "That's the theory, anyway. We are still a long way off achieving those kind of results."
"It sounds impressive," Greg said. "And you can use it to install new behaviour patterns as well?"
"Behaviour is rooted in memory, Mr Mandel. Conditioning again. You fall into a pool when you are a young child, nearly drowning; and in adult life you are wary of water, a poor swimmer, nor do you have any enthusiasm to improve. It is these countless cumulative small events and incidents in your formative years which decide the composition of your psyche. You are a soldier, I believe, Mr Mandel?"
"Was a soldier. I'm retired now."
"You volunteered for the army?"
"Yeah."
"And were you any good as a soldier?"
Greg shifted his weight on the settee's amorphous cushioning, conscious of Stephanie's stare. "I was mentioned in dispatches once or twice."
"And yet thousands, hundreds of thousands, of men your age were totally unsuitable for the military life you excelled in. Physically no different, but mentally, in outlook, your exact opposite. The respective attitudes both determined in the period between your fourth and sixteenth birthdays. We are what we are because of that time, the child being the father of the man. And that is the time we must alter in order to eradicate real-time psychoses. My aim is to substitute false paradigmatic memories for real recollections, thus effecting a radical change of temperament."
"Have you had any success?"
"Limited, but most promising given we have only been here two years. We have already succeeded in assembling some highly realistic synthetic memories. There is one, a walk through a forest." He closed his eyes and the eagerness and tension which had built up as he spoke drained out of his face, leaving him strangely peaceful. Almost the same expression as a synthohead, Greg thought.