Senta did not look at him. She had turned and fixed her gaze on a small bottle of transparent fluid that Anson had taken from his pocket. The expression on her face made Rob shiver at the intensity of its yearning. Seeing that, he felt that no one who had seen a taliza addict could ever become one.
“Painful?” Senta’s voice was distant and uninterested. “That depends on what I remember. It is exactly as painful as the experience itself, no more and no less. How could it be anything other, since it is re-living? But this… this is more painful than memory.” Her voice faltered. “Howard, please don’t make me wait any longer.”
“Just a few more seconds, love.” Anson was pouring an ounce of liquid, carefully measured, onto a pad of clean cotton. He replaced the stopper, moved to Senta’s side and began to rub the pad steadily against her temples, first one side and then the other. After a pause of twenty seconds he repeated the action, watching Senta’s eyes.
She stood rigid and expressionless. Ten more seconds, and she sighed deeply. Her eyelids began to flutter in brief, spastic movements. Anson at once wrapped a dark cloth that he was holding around her brow, covering her eyes, and gently lowered her to sit on the sofa.
“Howard.” Rob spoke rapidly and softly, his eyes not moving from Senta’s face. “Do we have to do it like this? Isn’t there any other way to find out what we want to know from Senta, some way of just asking the right questions? If taliza can pull it out of her, she must have the information stored away somewhere.”
“I wish we could do it like that.” Anson was still watching Senta closely, apparently waiting for some key reaction. “But it’s not in her conscious mind at all, not now. I’ve asked her about it often enough when she’s not on the drug, and she can’t remember a thing. I don’t know if she was given a huge dose of Lethe and a spell of conditioning, or if she just rejected the memory herself because it was too painful to live with. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s buried deep. And we know that it’s there. When she is pulled into that experience during taliza-trance, it frightens her more than any other memory she has. Something is back there, something involving Morel and Merlin and Goblins.”
“I can see that memories of Joseph Morel might do that.” Rob was recalling the expression in Morel’s gray eyes as Regulo’s assistant fondled the communicator giving him control over Caliban. “He disturbs me, too. But doesn’t Senta—”
He broke off. Howard Anson was waving him urgently to silence. Senta had leaned forward and begun to breathe in rapid, shallow panting.
“A few more seconds,” Anson said softly. “She has the blindfold, so she won’t go off on some random visual trigger. Quiet now. The wrong words might push her off on some other memory track.”
He sat down on the sofa next to Senta, peering at her closely. Rob felt a shock of recognition. As he watched, Senta’s cheek was losing its shrunken look and taking on the bloom that he had seen at Way Down. Her full mouth was curving again into a faint, secret smile.
“Here I am, Howard,” she said. “I’m feeling good. Now, what game shall we play?”
She laughed, deep in her throat, and wriggled against the soft cushions of the sofa. Her look had become coquettish and full of explicit sexual promise. Anson gave Rob a quick, helpless glance, then bent forward close to Senta’s ear.
“Joseph Morel,” he said clearly. He paused after the name. “Gregor Merlin. Joseph Morel and Gregor Merlin. Say their names to me, Senta. Say them.”
Her look was blank, confused. “Joseph Morel. Gregor Merlin. Yes, I can say them. I’ve said them. But Howard, why do you…”
Her voice trailed away into silence. Once again, the parade of expressions was moving across her face: fear, joy, greed, compassion, lust. As her look stabilized, she bent her head to one side and nodded, then seemed to listen intently.
“Merlin… Merlin has them,” she said at last. She was looking up, a frown wrinkling her forehead and a look of worry and confusion on her face. “That’s right, Gregor Merlin. I just heard it from Joseph, over the video. He has no idea how they got there, but he’s convinced of their location in the labs.”
“Damnation.” Anson bit his lip and looked across at Rob. “I was afraid of that. It’s the same one that you heard before. There was a good chance of it, because I used almost the same key words. Now I’m afraid she’ll have to play it right through.”
Senta was listening to unseen companions, until at last she nodded firmly. “That’s right, there are two of them. No, they weren’t alive — there was no air in the supply capsule. I don’t know if Merlin knows where they came from, but he must have a good idea. He told McGill he had found two Goblins — that’s his name for them — in a returned medical supply box. He sent one of them to another man, Morrison, and now he’s going to try and do the full autopsy. He already knows what has been happening to them, but he won’t…”
Her face was changing, again becoming a melting-pot for all the human emotions. Before the change was complete, Howard Anson was leaning forward, ready to speak to her again. Rob put up his hand in protest.
“Don’t go on with it, Howard,” he cut in. “Didn’t you see her expression? She’s in absolute torment when she goes into that part of her past.”
“I know that, Rob.” Anson’s manner was full of pent-up anger. “I don’t enjoy this any more than you do. But we have to find it before we can exorcise it. We’re doing it for Senta’s sake. Now, keep quiet or we may apply the wrong trigger.”
He leaned forward again. “Senta, once more. Say these names after me. Morel, Merlin, Goblins, Caliban, Sycorax. Do you hear me? Say them, Senta.”
Even before he had finished speaking the reaction to the spoken trigger began. Her features began to writhe and grimace, a travesty of her usual beauty. As her face twisted into grotesque expressions, the veins in her neck stood out, swollen and congested. Her final look was one of mounting horror. For a second, her mouth opened and closed wordlessly.
“Killed?” she said at last. She began to rock back and forth on the sofa, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. “I don’t believe it. It can’t be true. You’re not serious, are you?” There was a pause, then: “Oh God. You do mean it. You’re insane, you must be. Do you realize what you’ve done? All those innocent people, dead. Why did you do it?”
There was a longer silence, while Rob and Howard Anson stared at each other. Rob could tell from Anson’s expression that this was not simply a repeat of a previously heard recall.
“I don’t care what they were doing,” Senta went on at last. “It makes no difference. It couldn’t be so bad that you had to kill them. Gregor Merlin was your friend, wasn’t he? You had known him for years, for the longest time.”
Anson flashed a look of fierce satisfaction and sympathy towards Rob, while Senta became once more the prisoner of those inner voices. After a few seconds, tears began to trickle from under the dark blindfold. She was shaking her head.
“It’s no good telling me that, Joseph,” she said. “I know you’re lying. Don’t try and pretend. I was watching the display. I heard the orders you gave, though I didn’t know what they meant. You said burn the building, and set the bomb.” She fell silent for a moment, then muttered again, almost too softly to hear, “Burn the building and set the bomb. But why? Why that? Nothing could be so important, nothing in the world. He said they were already dead when they got there, so they couldn’t have told anything, to him or his wife. I don’t understand what the `Goblins’ were, but it makes no difference.”
She paused again, then shook her head firmly. “No, I won’t. If you refuse to tell me the truth, I’ll find it out for myself. I’ll go to Christchurch, and I’ll visit the labs. Someone there will know.”