"Jeez." He felt sick.

"Right. Bloody damn Jeez. So with your short-term memory all shot to bloody hell, and your PET scan this morning significantly worse than yesterday morning's, there's only one conclusion I can come to. How about you?"

Alan sat in numb silence for a moment, then: "My brain's shutting down."

"Not by itself it isn't, mate. Bit by bit, a little piece of who you are and what you are gets eaten up by this power every time you use it."

"But you just said my second scan was better."

"Right. By not using the power, your brain function improved an infinitesimal degree. By using the power once— and remember it or not, you cured the most precious person in the world to me last night—you knocked out a grossly appreciable area of your brain."

Alan jumped to his feet and paced, his heart pounding, his stomach in a knot. He didn't want to believe what he had heard. "You're sure of this?"

"It's all there on the scans. It comes down to the ratio of a centimeter forward over a period of two days to a meter backward in an instant."

"But if I'm really careful, I can rest up, so to speak, and use the Touch judiciously." He was grasping at straws, he knew, but he was desperate. He kept thinking of the people who needed that power to live. He thought of Jeffy. He couldn't possibly say no after he had promised Sylvia.

"You ever play Russian roulette?"

"Of course not!"

"Well, it's the same thing. You've already damaged lots of nonvital parts of your brain. But what happens if you knock out the basal ganglia or the motor cortex, or the limbic system, or the respiratory center? Where does that leave you?"

Alan didn't reply. They both knew the answer: Parkinsonism, paralysis, psychosis, or death. Some choice.

"One more thing I should warn you about," Axford said. "Senator McCready will be expecting to have a meeting with you tonight."

"Tonight? Why tonight? I expect to be gone by then."

"He has myasthenia gravis, if you get my drift."

Alan got the drift. "Oh."

"Right. It's a decision you'll have to make when the time comes. But I wanted to be sure you knew all the risks."

"Thanks. I appreciate that." He smiled at a grim thought. "Maybe I should write all this down. I might not remember it an hour from now. But no matter what the risk, there's one person who's got to get a dose of the Touch."

"Who?"

"Jeffy."

Charles nodded. "That would be wonderful, wouldn't it?"

He stood up and thrust out his hand. "I'll send you a copy of my report. But in case I don't see you before you go, remember: You have a friend for life, Alan Bulmer."

When he was gone, Alan lay back on the bed and reviewed all Charles had told him. It still seemed clear to him. His retention seemed good at the moment. But knowing that there were pieces of his memory missing—maybe permanently—terrified him. For what was anyone but a sum of their memories? Where he had been, the things he had done, why he had done them: They all made him Alan Bulmer. Without them he was a cipher, a tabula rasa, a newborn.

Alan shuddered. He had made his share of mistakes, but he liked who he was. He didn't want to be erased. He wanted to remain Alan Bulmer.

But what of the senator? If McCready could save his reputation and tell the world that Dr. Alan Bulmer was not a charlatan or a nut, then Alan would owe him. And he would pay that debt.

But Jeffy came first. Nothing would stop him from putting the Touch to work on Jeffy. And if the senator wanted to give it a try after that, fine. But Jeffy came first.

After all that was settled up, maybe it would be time for him to go away with Sylvia and Jeffy for a while to recharge the batteries. When he returned, he'd get his life in order, get everything in perspective, and try to get back into a regular practice. And maybe save the Dat-tay-vao for rare cases of dire need.

One thing was certain: He would not allow himself to fall into the rut that had put such distance between Ginny and him.

No, sir. Alan Bulmer was going to learn to say no once in a while.

___43.___

Charles

"Dr. Axford!" Marnie said, running up to him as he entered the corridor. "I've been looking all over for you!"

She looked positively frazzled. "What's up, Love?"

"Those two new assistants of yours came down to your office and just about emptied your safe!"

"What? Did you call security?"

"They were wearing security uniforms!"

Baffled and alarmed, Charles hurried to his office. He found the safe closed and locked.

"They had the combination," Marnie said in response to his look. "And they were neat. Seemed to know exactly what they wanted."

"I didn't have any money in there," Charles said to himself as he tapped in the combination. "What on earth did they—"

His question was answered as soon as he opened the door. All the Bulmer data were missing. This didn't make sense.

"Call the senator for me."

"I was about to suggest that, since he's the one who sent them down."

A shock ran through Charles. "The senator?"

"Sure. He called first thing this morning. When I told him you weren't in yet, he said that was just as well and that he was sending Henly and Rossi down to pick up some papers from your office. I had no idea he meant from your safe. I'm sorry about this… I didn't know how to stop them."

"It's okay, Marnie."

"Oh, and one more thing," she said as she tapped at the phone buttons. "The senator said to compliment you on your report. But I just typed it in this morning."

Charles felt his intestines knot, lie quickly depressed the cradle arm on Mamie's phone.

"Cue it up for me," he said, and directed her to her CRT. "How did you file it?"

"I named it Bulmerrep."

Try as she might, she could find no trace of the report.

"It's been erased," she said. "I swear I typed it in."

"Don't worry, Love," Charles said, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder and hiding the turmoil within him. "Nothing's perfect. Not even a computer. By the way, did you see which way Henly and Rossi went?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I followed them all the way to the elevators trying to find out what was going on and I noticed that they went down. I was a little puzzled 'cause I figured they'd head for the senator's office."

"Did you happen to notice where they stopped?"

"Yes. One stop down—the ninth floor."

"Right. You sit tight here and I'll go have a talk with the senator."

Charles hurried toward the fire stairs. But he headed down, not up. The events of the morning had suddenly taken on a sinister tinge, but he was sure it was just his own mind creating melodrama out of a series of incidents that no doubt had a simple, rational explanation. He couldn't imagine what that explanation might be, but he did know that he wanted his data back. The ninth floor was the central records section. If Henly and Rossi were storing the data there, he would see what he could do to unstore it, and then pay a little visit to McCready and find out what in bloody hell was going on!

He was storming along the main corridor on the ninth floor when he spied a familiar profile through a magazine-sized window in a door. He stepped back and looked inside.

Henly and Rossi were calmly running a stack of papers— much of it EEG tracings that he recognized as Alan Bulmer's—through a shredder. Charles' first impulse was to burst in, but he backed away and forced himself to walk down the hall the way he had come. There was little to be gained by confronting the two security men—most of the data was already confetti, anyway—but he might well learn a lot by pretending he knew nothing more than what Marnie had told him.