Now Snaresbrook could begin. She entered the O.R., her scrubbed-clean hands held up at eye level, poked her arms through the sleeves of the sterile gown, slipped on the rubber gloves. The instrument table was rolled into position, the tools on it carefully laid out by the scrub nurse. The scalpels, retractors, needles, nerve hook, dozens of scissors and tweezers, all the battery of equipment needed for the penetration of the brain itself.

“Dural scissors,” Snaresbrook said, holding out her hand, then bent to cut open the outer covering of the brain. Once it had been exposed to the air, automatic sprays kept it moist.

Benicoff, standing against the wall, could not see the details now; was just as glad. It was the final stage that mattered, when they rolled over the odd-looking machine that was now pushed back against the wall. A metal box, with a screen, controls and a keyboard, as well as two shining arms that rose from the top. These ended in multibranching fingers that grew smaller and smaller in diameter, each tipped with a glistening fuzziness. This was caused by the fact that the sixteen thousand microscopic fingertips at the branching ends of the instrument were actually too small to be seen by the human eye. The multibranching manipulator had been developing for only a decade. Unpowered now, the fingers hung in limp bundles like a metallic weeping willow.

It took the surgeon two hours, working with the large microscope, scalpels and cautery, to clean the track of destruction, a slow and precise debridement of the lesion left by the bullet.

“Now we repair,” she said, straightening up and pointing to the manipulator. Like everything else in the O.R. it was on wheels; it was pushed into position. When it was switched on, the fingers stirred and rose, descended again under her control into the brain of its designer.

Snaresbrook’s skin was gray and there were black smears of fatigue under her eyes. She sipped her coffee and sighed.

“I admire your stamina, Doctor,” Benicoff said. “My feet hurt just from standing there and watching. Do all brain operations last that long?”

“Most of them. But this one was particularly difficult because I had to insert and fix those microchips into place. It was like combining surgery with solving a jigsaw puzzle, since every one of those PNEPs had a different shape in order to perfectly contact the surface of brain.”

“I saw that. What do they do?”

“They are PNEP film chips — programmable neural electron pathway devices. I have applied them to every injured surface of his brain. They will make connections to the cutoff nerve fibers that end at those surfaces, that control the regrowth of Brian’s nerves. They have been under development for years and have been thoroughly tested in animals. These chips have also been wonderfully effective in repairing human spinal injuries. But until now they have never been used inside human brains, except in a few small experiments. I would certainly not be using them if there were any good alternative.”

“What will happen next?”

“The chips are coated with living embryonic human nerve cells. What they should do is grow and provide physical connections from the end of each of the severed nerves to at least one of the quantum transistor gates on the surface of the PNEP. That process of growth should already have started, and will continue for the next few days.”

“As soon as those new nerve fibers grow in, I’ll start to program the PNEP chips. Each chip has enough switching capacity to take every nerve signal that comes in from any part of the brain and route it out along an appropriate nerve fiber that goes to another location in the brain.”

“But how could you know exactly where to send it?”

“That is precisely the problem. We will be dealing with several hundred million different nerves — and we don’t know now where any of them should go. The first stage will be to follow Brian’s brain’s anatomy. This should give us a crudely approximate map of where most of those fibers should go. Not enough to support fine-grained thought but enough, I hope, to restore a minimal level of functional recovery, despite all the errors in wiring. For example, if the motor area of his brain sends a signal to move, then some muscle should move, if not the right one. So we’ll have a response that later could be relearned or retrained. I have implanted a connector in Brian’s skin, just about here.” Erin touched the back of her neck just above her collar. “The computer communicates by inserting the microscopic ends of fiber-optic cables that communicate with each of the PNEP chips inside. Then we can use the external computer to do the search — to find opposite areas relating to the same memories or concepts. Once these are found, the computer can send signals to establish electronic pathways inside, between the appropriate PNEPs. Each separate chip is like an old-fashioned telephone exchange where one phone was plugged through a board to another phone. I’ll start using the neural telephone exchange inside Brian’s brain to reestablish the severed connections.”

Ben took a deep breath. “That’s it, then. You’ll restore all of his memory!”

“Hardly. There will be memories, skills and abilities that will be lost forever. Really all I hope to do is restore enough so Brian may be able to relearn what is now gone. An incredible amount of work is needed. To understand the complexity of the brain, you must realize that there are many times more genes involved in growing the structure of the brain than in any other organ.”

“I appreciate that. Do you believe that the personality, the person we know as Brian, is still alive?”

“I believe so. During the operation I saw his limbs move through the drapes, a familiar movement that reminded me of the way we move when we are dreaming. A dream! What could that half-ruined brain possibly dream about?’’

Darkness…

Timeless darkness, warm darkness.

Sensation. Memory.

Memory. Awareness. Presence. Around and around and around. Going nowhere, relating to nothing else, an endless loop.

Darkness. Where? The closet. Safety was in the darkness of the closet. Refuge of a child. No light. Just sound. The memory repeated itself, over and over.

Sound? Voices. Voices he knew. Voices he hated. And a new one. A strange one. An accent like on telly. Not Irish. American, he recognized that. Americans, they came to the village. To the pub. Took pictures. One took a picture of him. Gave him a golden twenty pence. Spent it on sweets. Ate them all. Americans.

Here? In this house. Curiosity took his hand to the knob on the closet door. He held it, turned it and opened it slowly. The voices were louder now, clear. Shouting even, that would be his uncle Seamus.

“A bloody sodding nerve to come here! Nerves of brass, you blackguard. Come here right to the house where she died and all. Bloody nerve—”

“There is no need to shout, Mr. Ryan. I told you why I came. This.”

That was the new voice. American. Not really American. As Irish as everyone, but sometimes American. This was too unusual to miss. Brian forgot his anger at being sent to his room so early, forgot his tantrum that had sent him to the closet, into the darkness to bite his knuckles and cry where no one could see or hear him.

On tiptoes he crossed the tiny room, the wood cold on his bare feet, warm on the rag rug by the door. Five years old, he could look out through the keyhole now without standing on a book. Pressed his eye close.

“This letter came a few weeks back.” The man with the accent had red hair, freckles. He looked angry as he waved the piece of paper. “And there’s the postmark on the envelope. Right here, Tara, this village. Do you want to know what it says?”

“Get out,” the heavy, phlegmy voice rumbled, followed by a deep cough. His grandfather. Still smoked twenty a day. “Can you not understand the simple words — you’re not wanted here.”