When Dr. Snaresbrook next visited Brian she was accompanied by her neurosurgical resident, Richard Foster, who had closely followed the Delaney case.

“I’ve never seen so much recovery from such a grave injury.” Foster said. “Unprecedented. This kind of gross brain damage always leads to major deficiencies. Serious muscle weaknesses and paralyses. Massive sensory deficits. Yet all of his systems seem to be operating. It’s amazing that he’s recovered any mental function at all, with such an extensive injury. Normally such a patient would be permanently comatose. He ought to be a vegetable.”

“I think you’re using the wrong concept,” Snaresbrook explained patiently. “Brian has not, in fact, ‘recovered’ in the usual sense of the word. No natural healing process has repaired those connections of his. The only reason that his brain acts like more than a bunch of disconnected fragments is that we have provided all those substitute connections.”

“I understand that. But I can’t believe that we got enough of them right.”

“I suspect you’re completely correct about that. We were only able to approximate. So now, when an agent in one part of his brain sends a signal to some other place — for example, to move the arm and hand — that signal may not be precisely the same as it was before his injury. However, if we got things nearly right, then at least some of those signals will arrive in the right general area, somewhere they can have roughly the right effect. And that is the important thing. Give the brain just half a chance, and it will do the rest for you. The same as in any surgery. All the surgeon can do is approximate. One can never restore exactly what was there before — but that usually doesn’t matter that much because of how much the body can do.”

She looked at the monitors: blood pressure, temperature, respiration, carbon dioxide — and most important of all, the brain wave scan. The characteristic patterns of normal, deep sleep. Without realizing it she let out a deep breath. There were real and positive results now. Everything she had seen in the past weeks that suggested that her unorthodox, new, unproven plan might work after all.

Benicoff was waiting in the room outside, started to stand and Erin waved him back, sat down slowly in the armchair across from him.

“I’ve done it!” she said. “The words bubbled out, finally released. “When you saw him last — it was a very early stage. I have been working with him, helping him to access those memories and thoughts that are the periphery of his mind. He is still confused about a lot of things of course, has to be. But he speaks well now, has told me his age, that he is fourteen years old. And now he is asking about his father and stepmother. Do you realize what that means?”

“Very much so — and I’m happy to be the first to congratulate you. You have taken what was essentially a dead man with a dead brain — and have restored enough of his earlier memories to bring him to a mental age of fourteen.”

“Not really. Much of that is illusory. It certainly is true that Brian has now recovered many of his own memories of himself up to the age of fourteen. But very far from all of them. Some parts are missing, will remain missing, leaving gaps in his memory that may interfere with a lot of his abilities and attitudes. Furthermore, the age of that cutoff is far from sharp. A lot of threads that we’ve repaired do not go all the way up to that date — while others go well past that time. But the important thing is that we’re starting to see signs of a reasonably well integrated personality. Not a very complete one yet — but one that is learning all of the time. Much of the original Brian has returned — but in my opinion not yet enough.”

She was frowning as she said it, then forced a smile.

“In any case, none of that need concern us now. The important thing is that now we can enlist his active, thinking cooperation. And that means that we can proceed to the next stage.”

“Which is — ?”

Snaresbrook looked at him grimly. “We have done just about as much reconstruction as we can do ‘passively.’ But there still are many concepts mat we simply have not reached. For example, Brian seems to have lost virtually all his knowledge about animals, a particular form of aphasia that has been seen before in cerebral accidents. We seem to be at the point of diminishing returns in trying to reconnect all of Brian’s old nemes. So although I plan to continue that, I shall now also begin the new phase. It might be called knowledge transfusion. What I plan to do is to try to identify those missing domains — those domains of knowledge that virtually every child knows, yet Brian still does not — and upload the corresponding structures from the CYC-9 commonsense data base.”

Benicoff weighed the significance of this, started to speak — but she raised her hand to stop him.

“We had better discuss this at another time.” She shook her head, felt herself fading, felt the onslaught of exhaustion too long held at bay.

“Now let’s get a sandwich and some coffee. Then, while Brian is sleeping I’ll get my notes up to date. He is going to need guidance every step of the way. Which means that I — and the computer — will have to know more about him than he knows himself.”

The restraints had been removed and only the raised sides of the bed remained in place. The end of the bed had been lifted up so that Brian was no longer lying flat. The bandages that encased his skull covered the connecting fiber-optic cable that led to the back of his skull. All of the drips and other invasive devices and monitors had been removed; the few remaining ones were small and noninvasive and fixed to his skin. Other than his bruised and bloodshot eyes and pallid skin he looked to be in adequate health.

“Brian,” Erin Snaresbrook said, looking at the brainwave monitor as the wavelength changed to consciousness. Brian opened his eyes.

“Do you remember talking to me before?”

“Yes. You’re Dr. Snaresbrook.”

“That’s very good. Do you know how old you are?”

“Fourteen. My last birthday. What happened to me, Doctor? Don’t you want to tell me?”

“Of course I do. But will you let me set the pace, explain things one step at a time in what I think is the best order?”

Brian thought for a moment before he spoke. “I guess so — you’re the doctor, Doctor.”

She felt a sudden spurt of enthusiasm when he said this. A small verbal joke. But immense in significance, since it indicated that his mind was alert and functioning.

“Good. If you let me do it that way I promise to tell you the complete truth — to hold nothing back from you. So first — what do you know about the structure of the brain?”

“You mean physically? It’s the mass of nerve tissue inside the skull. It includes the cerebrum, cerebellum, pons and oblongata.”

“That’s pretty specific. You have had brain trauma and have been operated on. In addition—”

“There is something wrong with my memory.”

Snaresbrook was startled. “How do you know that?”

There was a weak grin on Brian’s lips at this small victory. “Obvious. You wanted to know my age. I have been looking at my hands while you talked. How old am I, Doctor?”

“A few years older.”

“You promised that you would tell me only the complete truth.”

She had planned to hold this information back as long as possible; the knowledge might be traumatic. But Brian was way ahead of her. The truth and only the complete truth from now on.

“You are almost twenty-four years old.”

Brian ingested the information slowly, then nodded his head. “That’s okay then. If I was fifty or sixty or something really old like that, it would be lousy because I would have lived most of life and wouldn’t remember it. Twenty-four is okay. Will I get my memories back?”