'Tell Ken you are here, Niki.'
I saw the child clutch the arms of her chair.
'Ken's sick,' she said. 'He's crying. He doesn't want to play.' The voice of Charon went ruthlessly on.
'Make Ken talk, Niki.'
'Ken won't talk,' said the child. 'He's going to say his prayers.' Ken's voice came faintly through the microphone to the loudspeakers. The words were gabbled, indistinct.
'Gen'ral Jesus, mekan mild,
Look'pon little child,
Pity my simple city,
Sofa me to come to thee
There was a long pause after this. Neither Ken nor Niki said anything. I kept my hands on the controls, ready to continue the programme when Mac nodded. Niki began drumming her feet on the floor. All at once she said, 'I shan't go down the tunnel after Ken. It's too dark.'
Robbie, watching his patient, looked up. 'He's gone into coma,' he said.
Mac signalled to me to set Charon 1 in motion again.
'Go after Ken, Niki,' said the voice.
The child protested. 'It's black in there,' she said. She was nearly crying. She hunched herself in her chair and went through crawling motions. 'I don't want to go,' she said. 'It's too long, and Ken won't wait for me.'
She started to tremble all over. I looked across at Mac. He questioned Robbie with a glance.
'He won't come out of it,' Robbie said. 'It may last hours.'
Mac ordered the oxygen apparatus to be put into operation, and Robbie fixed the mask on Ken. Mac went over to Charon 3 and switched on the monitor display screen. He made some adjustments and nodded at me. 'I'll take over,' he said.
The child was still crying, but the next command from Charon 1 gave her no respite. 'Stay with Ken,' it said. 'Tell us what happens.'
I hoped Mac knew what he was doing. Suppose the child went into a coma too? Could he bring her back? Hunched in her chair, she was as still as Ken, and about as lifeless. Robbie told me to put blankets round her and feel her pulse. It was faint, but steady. Nothing happened for over an hour. We watched the flickering and erratic signals on the screen, as the electrodes transmitted Ken's weakening brain impulses. Still the child did not speak.
Later, much later, she stirred, then moved with a strange twisting motion. She crossed her arms over her breast, humping her knees. Her head dropped forward. I wondered if, like Ken, she was engaged in some childish prayer. Then I realised that her position was that of a foetus before birth. Personality had vanished from her face. She looked wizened, old.
Robbie said, 'He's going.'
Mac beckoned me to the controls, and Robbie bent over Ken with fingers on his pulse. The signals on the screen were fainter, and faltering, but suddenly they surged in a strong upward beat, and in the same instant Robbie said, 'It's all over. He's dead.'
The signal was rising and falling steadily now. Mac disconnected the electrodes and turned back to watch the screen. There was no break in the rhythm of the signal, as it moved up and down, up and down, like a heartbeat, like a pulse.
'We've done it!' said Mac. 'Oh my God… we've done it!'
We stood there, the three of us, watching the signal that never for one instant changed its pattern. It seemed to contain, in its confident movement, the whole of life.
I don't know how long we stayed there-it could have been minutes, hours. At last Robbie said, "What about the child?'
We had forgotten Niki, just as we had forgotten the quiet, peaceful body that had been Ken. She was still lying in her strange, cramped position, her head bowed to her knees. I went to the controls of Charon 1 to operate the voice, but Mac waved me aside.
'Before we wake her, we'll see what she has to say,' he said.
He put through the call signal very faintly, so as not to shock her to consciousness too soon. I followed with the voice, which repeated the final programme command.
'Stay with Ken. Tell us what happens.'
At first there was no response. Then slowly she uncoiled, her gestures odd, uncouth. Her arms fell to her side. She began to rock backwards and forwards as though following the motion on the screen. When she spoke her voice was sharp, pitched high.
'He wants you to let him go,' she said, 'that's what he wants. Let go… let go… let go…' Still rocking she began to gasp for breath, and, lifting her arms, pummelled the air with her fists.
'Let go… let go… let go… let go…'
Robbie said urgently, 'Mac, you've got to wake her.'
On the screen the rhythm of the signal had quickened. The child began to choke. Without waiting for Mac, I set the voice in motion.
'This is Charon speaking… This is Charon speaking… Wake up, Niki.' The child shuddered, and the suffused colour drained from her face. Her breathing became normal. She opened her eyes. She stared at each of us in turn in her usual apathetic way, and proceeded to pick her nose.
'I want to go to the toilet,' she said sullenly.
Robbie led her from the room. The signal, which had increased its speed during the child's outburst, resumed its steady rise and fall.
'Why did it alter speed?' I asked.
'If you hadn't panicked and woken her up, we might have found out,' Mac said.
His voice was harsh. quite unlike himself.
'Mac,' I protested, 'that kid was choking to death.'
'No,' he said, 'no, I don't think so.'
He turned and faced me. 'Her movements simulated the shock of birth,' he said. 'Her gasp for air was the first breath of an infant, struggling for life. Ken, in coma, had gone back to that moment, and Niki was with him.'
I knew by this time that almost anything was possible under hypnosis, but I wasn't convinced.
'Mac,' I said, 'Niki's struggle came after Ken was dead, after the new signal appeared on Charon 3. Ken couldn't have gone back to the moment of birth-he was already dead, don't you see?'
He did not answer at once. 'I just don't know,' he said at last. 'I think we shall have to put her under control again.'
'No,' said Robbie. He had entered the lab while we were talking. 'That child has had enough. I've sent her home, and told her mother to put her to bed.'
I had never heard him speak with authority before. He looked away from the lighted screen back to the still body on the table. 'Doesn't that go for the rest of us?' he said. 'Haven't we all had enough? You've proved your point, Mac. I'll celebrate with you tomorrow, but not tonight.'
He was ready to break. So, I think, were we all. We had barely eaten through the day, and when Janus returned he set about getting us a meal. He had taken the news of Ken's death with his usual calm. The child, he told us, had fallen asleep the moment she was put to bed.
So… it was all over. Reaction, exhaustion, numbness of feeling, all three set in, and I yearned, like Niki, for the total release of sleep.
Before dragging myself to bed some impulse, stronger than the aching fatigue that overwhelmed me, urged me back to the control room. Everything was as we had left it. Ken's body lay on the table, covered with a blanket. The screen was lighted still, and the signal was pulsing steadily up and down. I waited a moment, then I bent to the tape-control, setting it to play back that last outburst from the child. I remembered the rocking head, the hands fighting to be free, and switched it on.
'He wants you to let him go,' said the high-pitched voice, 'that's what he wants. Let go… let go… let go…' Then came the gasp for breath, and the words were repeated. let go… let go… let go… let go…'
I switched it off. The words did not make sense. The signal was simply electrical energy, trapped at the actual moment of Ken's death. How could the child have translated this into a cry for freedom, unless…?