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  “That would be accurate, Dr. Banks, yes. Does that make me paranoid?”

  She gave a small laugh. “I wouldn’t be much of a psychiatrist if I came to a diagnosis like that on the basis of a short exchange like this, would I, Mr. Walker?” I didn’t answer. She took a breath and added, “Besides, at the Richard John Erickson Institute, we try to take a broader view. We don’t really think in terms of disorders or syndromes…” She shook her head. “Psychosis, neurosis, schizophrenia, paranoia…even normality! They are all very limited views of the mind.”

  I made my voice dull to reflect my lack of interest. “Really?”

  “We prefer to look at the relationship between the so-called individual’s mind, and the collective mind of society. Where a person is socially integrated, conflict naturally disappears and there can be no paranoia. Does that make sense?”

  “Well, Doc, I’ll tell you what, it sounds to me like you’re all out to get me and make me one of you.” I smiled. “The Invasion of the Mind Snatchers.”

  “Are you not already one of us, Lacklan? What makes you different?”

  I yawned loudly. When I’d finished, I rubbed my face and looked at her with an expression that said she was boring me intensely. “Mainly, Doc, I guess, the fact that I am a paranoid schizophrenic homicidal maniac.”

  “Do you consider yourself dangerous?”

  “Very. Where are my clothes?”

  “They are being laundered.”

  “No, Banks, they’re not. You are keeping me in this robe, in this wheelchair, in a pathetic attempt to make me feel humiliated and rejected by the society around me. It’s undergraduate social psychology, and while you are playing your stupid games, people’s lives are at stake out in the real world.”

  “And they need you to save them. Is that how you integrate, Lacklan? As a hero? You must either be an outcast psychopath, or a hero.”

  “Smart.”

  “How long do you think you are going to be here, Mr. Walker?”

  “Do you know how transparent you are? When you want me to feel alienated you call me Mr. Walker. When you want to offer me integration you call me Lacklan.”

  “How long do you think you are going to be in here?”

  “I don’t know, but I have to be out before Friday.”

  She leaned her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her hands. “You’ll be lucky to leave here in ten years, Lacklan. More likely, you’ll be here for the rest of your life. If I were you, I would start adjusting.”

  I gazed at her for a long moment, thinking. Finally, I said, “OK. If there is one thing I do understand, it’s power. Just tell me what I have to do, and I will do it.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, Mr. Walker.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No, you see—and this is why it might take the rest of your life—you have to want it.”

  “I have to want to become part of your society?”

  She nodded. “That’s right. We will, of course, help you in every way.”

  “Help?”

  “With courses, mental training, meditation, hypnosis, group activities…” She paused and smiled. “…medication, electronic aids. We have some very advanced technology.”

  I gave a single nod. “I understand. Well, Doctor Banks, I feel very motivated to fall in with your program and make lots of progress very quickly.”

  She sat back in her chair and laughed. “Oh, Mr. Walker, I don’t believe that for one moment. I think you are being devious and manipulative, and I know just the cure for that.”

  She pressed a button on her desk and, after a moment, four very large male nurses stepped in. The biggest one, a Russian-looking giant with a bald head, said, “You gonna come quiet, or we have to pacify you?”

  I looked at him, and then the other three: a black guy with a mustache, an Aryan with real short hair and a guy who looked like Stallone with a lobotomy. They all looked like wrestlers, and I figured there were ten more where these had come from. I shook my head. “No, I’ll come quiet.” I looked at Dr. Banks and gestured at the wheelchair. “May I stand or am I going to be wheeled?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You may stand.”

  I stood, and my only excuse for what happened next is that it caught me totally by surprise. Perhaps it shouldn’t have, but it did. The big Russian nurse plunged a huge fist into the pit of my stomach. I folded and sank to the floor, retching. And that was when they started kicking me and stamping on me. It wasn’t hard enough to do permanent damage. They didn’t want to break my bones or rupture my organs. They just wanted to teach me that I wasn’t such a tough guy. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

  I don’t know how long it went on. It felt like a couple of hours, but it was probably not more than a minute or two. I adopted the fetal position and tried to ignore the pain by thinking about what I was going to do to each one of them when it was my turn. I fixed their images in my mind so I would not forget.

  During the beating, I heard Dr. Banks get up and walk over. I couldn’t see her because I had my head covered, but I knew she was watching. I had her fixed in my mind, too.

  By the time they had finished, I was partially unconscious and unable to walk. They lifted me back into the wheelchair, took me back to my room, and dumped me into my bed. After they had left, Nurse Rogers came in with a bowl of hot water and a cloth. She sounded as perky as ever.

  “What have we been up to, then? You are a naughty boy! Let’s have a look at these cuts and bruises.”

  She cleaned me up as I drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point I felt a sharp prick on the inside of my elbow, and a moment after that I was enfolded by darkness. As I sank into oblivion, Sergeant Bradley’s New Zealand voice inside my head kept saying, “Well, a fine bloody mess we’ve got ourselves into, lad, haven’t we?”

  * * *

  When I awoke I did not feel hung-over, but I did feel completely devoid of any kind of motivation. I knew I could move my arms and my legs, but I couldn’t be bothered to try. I shifted my eyes and noted without much interest that I was in a different room. It was identical, and everything was in the same place, down to the jug of water, but the view through the window was different. I was not looking down on trees, I was looking into them. I was on the ground floor.

  I considered my condition and knew it was the effect of the injection Nurse Rogers had given me. It was like being deeply depressed, only without the sadness. It was actually quite pleasant. It occurred to me that they were watching me and monitoring me. They must know by now that I was awake, and pretty soon somebody would come in to take me to the next stage of the process where they broke me down and destroyed my identity. This pleasurable, drug induced apathy would be the haven I was allowed to return to, after they subjected me to regular bouts of hell. A hell I would be blamed for, a hell I would bring upon myself by resisting them. And all I would have to do to get back to this blissful apathy, would be surrender my mind and my will to them.

  As I thought that, the door opened and Nurse Rogers walked in, smiling as ever.

  For the few moments she had the door open I saw a large room, like a lounge, with nests of tables and armchairs, and beyond them two sets of glass doors that opened onto lawns and gardens.

  “So, how are we feeling?”

  In my mind I told her, “What, both of us? Fuck you, Nurse Rogers!” But for the cameras I smiled weakly and said, “We’re feeling kind of good. Have I told you how pretty you are, Nurse Rogers?”

  She grinned. “No, but it’s nice to hear. We all like to be told nice things, don’t we?”

  She came and helped me to sit up. I gave a comfortable chuckle. “I guess we do. Nurse Rogers…?”

  “Yes, Mr. Walker?”

  “Have you got a soul?”

  She patted my pillows. “Now what kind of question is that?” She winked. “That’s the drugs talking!”

  “Do you think we all have the same soul? Like Manitou?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t k
now about that, but it’s a very comforting thought, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is. Am I going to see the doctor today?””

  She came close to me and leaned forward, with her hands placed against her thighs, just above her knees, so I could see her cleavage. It was a nice cleavage, but it didn’t do anything to me. She smiled into my face and spoke to me like I was ninety.

  “First we’ll have some breakfast, then we’ll take you to sit in the sunshine for a bit, and then maybe this afternoon, Dr. Banks will have another chat with you.”

  I winced. “Do you think she will have me beaten again this time?”

  She cocked her head on one side with the same, bright smile. “Not if you behave yourself! Do we think we can behave ourselves this time?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  She didn’t say, “Good boy!” but she may as well have. She left the room and I closed my eyes. I explored my body with my mind. There was a complete absence of desire. All I wanted was to remain motionless and be in the moment. It was almost like Zen meditation. The window was open and I could hear the sporadic song of the birds in the gardens, the sigh of the breeze through the pine trees, and the occasional touch of the cool air on my cheek. I felt my ego dissolve, and I was all of those sensations. The moment wasn’t going anywhere, it wasn’t leading to anything. It just was, and I was it. It was peaceful and it was beautiful, and I wanted it to last forever.

  I smiled.

  One of the stupidest questions gurus, life-coaches and therapists will ever ask you—and they will ask you all the time—is, “What do you want?” And they will stress the last word as though they are conveying some especially profound meaning: “What do you want?”

  It’s a stupid question because what you want will change every time your circumstances and your body chemistry change. If I ate two hours ago, I want to use the can. If I haven’t eaten for three or four hours I want to eat. If Nurse Rogers hadn’t been feeding me a cocktail of drugs, I would probably want to explain graphically to her and her cleavage exactly what ‘we’ wanted, and after that I’d want a long cold beer. Since Marni had gone missing I had wanted to find and protect her. But right now, because of the cocktail of drugs Nurse Rogers and Dr. Banks were feeding me, I wanted nothing. Literally. Nothing was the thing that I wanted. What you want changes all the time. That’s why it’s a stupid question.

  The smart question is: what do you intend? Because where your desires can fluctuate, your intention can stay constant—if you’re made of the right stuff. I reached deep down inside myself and found the last voice that had spoken to me as I had sunk into unconsciousness. Sergeant Bradley, from the Regiment, the hardest, toughest son of a bitch I had ever met. A Kiwi built like a brick shithouse with a grin that would turn your blood to ice. I heard his voice, with his rich New Zealand accent, leering at me. “A fine bloody mess you’ve got yourself into, Captain Walker! Haven’t you? And what, may I ask, do you intend to do about it?”

  And his eyes told me exactly what I intended to do about it.

  Eleven

  I was given breakfast and then taken to the lounge where I sat and stared out at the garden, the sunshine, and the birds. I used the opportunity to do some meditation. Anyone who has done martial arts seriously has learned to meditate, and in my drug-induced state it was very easy to achieve a deep trance.

  After an hour or so I was taken to Dr. Banks’ office. This time I was allowed to walk, though I still wore the bathrobe I had been given earlier. Nurse Rogers opened the door for me and smiled as I went in. I smiled back. I had learned that, as we were ‘we’ and not you and ‘I’, it was always important to respond in kind. That is a big part of belonging. You smile, I smile, we all smile.

  I stood looking down at Dr. Banks, as Nurse Rogers closed the door behind me. The doctor gestured to the chair across from where she was sitting, behind her desk, and said, “Please, sit.” I sat. “How are we feeling today?”

  I nodded. “We’re feeling very peaceful. I know the feeling is drug induced, but it feels good.”

  She studied my face for a moment and leaned back in her chair, holding a fountain pen like it was a twig she was about to snap.

  “I have to say, Lacklan, I am surprised at the speed with which you have adapted. I am a little suspicious.”

  I smiled in a way you could call rueful and gave a rueful little snort to go with it. “What day is it?”

  “Why is that important?”

  “Because I don’t know how quickly I have adapted. All I know…” I paused, as though I had realized that I knew more than I thought. Then shrugged and went on. “When those guys gave me that beating. That has never happened to me before. Normally I would have killed them all, and it would have taken a few seconds. Less than a minute. Being on the receiving end like that…” I paused again, staring at the silent trees beyond the double-glazed windows. “I realized how tired I am of killing, how tired I am of fighting.” I looked her in the eyes, like I’d had a sudden thought. “I don’t know if you are genuinely providing therapy, or whether you are simply here to condition me…”

  I left it like that. It was not a question, but it invited an answer. She smiled, “Maybe the two are not so different, Lacklan. Had you thought of that?”

  I smiled like I was impressed by her intelligence. “No,” I said. “I had not. Maybe you’re right. Can I tell you something about my childhood?”

  “That’s why we are here. There is a Freudian element to the work we do.”

  “I didn’t know this as a kid, but my father was one of the senior members of Omega. By the time he died, he was Gamma. There were only two members who were senior to him.”

  She checked her notes. “This is the organization you claim is the government within the government.”

  I knew I had never told her that, but I played along. “Yes. He was a harsh, brutal man, with very little compassion. At least that was how I saw him. He always favored my brother, because my brother was always willing to comply, and go along with my father’s wishes—to be an extension of my father’s will. I rebelled. The more I rebelled, the more he favored Robert. The more he favored Robert, the more I rebelled.”

  “How about your mother…”

  I gave her that, “You’re good” look. “My mother is English, minor aristocracy. Highly intelligent, well educated, cold as ice and tough as nails.”

  “Those are two very powerful similes, Lacklan, ice and nails.”

  “That’s her. She hated my father, and so did I. We formed a kind of alliance against him and Robert. It was a secret alliance, but we were there for each other.”

  The most effective lies are the ones based on truth. I was aware of that, and I was also aware that as I was telling her these things, in my drug-induced semi-trance, it was having a cathartic effect. I was seeing and understanding things about myself, about my relationship with my parents and with Marni, that I had not realized before.

  Banks said, “She was an ally whom you trusted, even though she was not physically there for you. You were forever chasing her, though you never caught her.”

  “That’s exactly it. I left home and joined the SAS. They trained me in many things, but what I learned best was to fight. Never to give up. However powerful or invincible the enemy may seem, you never give up. You find the weak spot and you bring them down. You kill them.” I smiled. “But that was a lesson I had learned already. I had taught it to myself with my father.” I laughed. “I guess that’s an unresolved Oedipal complex, huh? My father should have won, but he didn’t. I did. My mother left him and returned to England. I won.”

  “So you never introjected your father as your superego. You never became one with your father, never integrated with society.”

  “I guess not.”

  She stared at me a while, “And…?”

  I took a deep breath. “With Marni…”

  Again she checked her notes. “This was the daughter of your father’s best friend, whom you say he was in
structed to kill…”

  I nodded. “Yes, that’s right. She wanted me to give up the Regiment and marry her. I was in love with her. I still am, I guess. But instead of accepting what life was giving me, I said no. And now I understand why.”

  “That’s interesting. Tell me why.”

  I shrugged like it was obvious and I had been stupid and blind not to see it before. “I didn’t know how to be her husband. All I knew was how to fight, how to kill. It was what I had done for my mother, and it was all I knew how to do for Marni.” I shook my head. “I cast her in the role of my mother: distant, unattainable, somebody I could love and adulate from a distance, while I fought to protect her. And I cast the whole, damned world in the role of my father, and myself as the invincible Oedipus.”

  I felt a tear on my cheek. I was surprised to find it there. I wiped it away with the sleeve of my bathrobe, and when I spoke again I was astonished to hear a crack in my voice.

  “I am tired of fighting, Dr. Banks. I am exhausted. I am sick of killing. The other day I bound a man with wire coat hangers, I cut off his thumb, and then I shot him in the head…” I gave my head several rapid shakes. “I don’t want to be that man anymore. And when…” I gestured at the floor where the four gorillas hade given me my kicking. “When those guys beat me up, you know what? It felt good to surrender at last. If I have changed quickly, I forget how you phrased it, maybe it’s because at heart I was ready. Maybe it hasn’t been quick. Maybe you just got me at the end of a long, long process. I am tired.”

  For the last minute or so, while I’d been talking, she had been making notes. Now she raised an eyebrow without looking at me, and asked, “And what do you want as a reward?”

  I frowned, taken aback by the question. “Reward?” I shook my head again. “I don’t want any reward. All I want is to rest. Like I said, I am tired. I need to rest.”

  She put down her pad and considered me for a moment. “When you came in, you asked what day it was. What would you say if I told you it was Friday the 18th?”