Brain Child Part 21

"Alex," he heard his father whisper. "Alex, what's wrong?"

Alex shook his head, and glanced around. His mother was looking at him worriedly. A few feet away he recognized Lisa Cochran with her parents. He scanned the rest of the crowd: Kate Lewis stood next to the flower-covered coffin, with Valerie Benson at her side. Over by the wall, he recognized the Evanses.

"Alex?" he heard his father say again.

"Nothing, Dad," Alex whispered back. "I'm okay."

"You're sure?"

Alex nodded. "I just...I just thought I remembered something, that's all. But it's gone now."

His father's grip relaxed, and once more Alex let his eyes wander over the cemetery.

The voices were silent now, and the cemetery suddenly seemed right again.

And why had he thought about priests?

He gazed up at the village hall that had once been a mission, and wondered how long it had been since there had been priests here. Certainly there hadn't been any since he was born.

Then why had he remembered priests tending the cemetery?

And why had all the faces of the people looked strange to him?

The words that had been whispered in the depths of his mind came back to him.

"Thieves...murderers..."

The words from his dream. All that was happening was that he was remembering the words from his dream. But deep in his mind, he knew that it was more. The words had meaning, and the dream had meaning, and all of it was more than dreams and false memories.

All of it, some way, was real, but he couldn't think about it now. There were too many people here, and he could feel them watching him. He had to act as if nothing was wrong.

He forced himself to concentrate on the funeral then, focusing on the coffin next to the grave.

And then, once more, he heard his father's voice.

"What the h.e.l.l is that son of a b.i.t.c.h doing here?"

He followed his father's eyes. A few yards away, standing alone, he saw Raymond Torres.

He nodded, and Torres nodded back.

He's watching me, Alex suddenly thought. He didn't come here for the funeral at all. He came here to watch me.

Deep in his mind, at the very edges of his consciousness, Alex felt a sudden flicker of emotion.

It was so quick, and so unfamiliar, that he almost didn't recognize it. But it was there, and it wasn't a dream. Something deep inside him was coming alive again-and it was fear.

"How are you, Alex?" Raymond Torres's hand extended. Alex took it, as he knew he was expected to. The funeral had ended an hour ago, and most of the people who had been there were gathered in Valerie Benson's patio, talking quietly, and searching for the right words to say to Kate. Alex had been sitting alone, staring at a small fishpond and the waterfall that fed it, when Torres had approached.

"Okay," he said, feeling the doctor's sharp eyes on him.

"Something happened at the cemetery, didn't it?"

Alex hesitated, then nodded. "It...well, it was sort of like what happened up in San Francisco."

Torres nodded. "I see. And something happened here, too." A statement, not a question.

Alex hesitated, then nodded. "The same thing. I came in, and for a minute I thought I recognized the house, but it's different than I remember it. It's the fishpond. The whole patio looked familiar, except the fishpond. I just don't remember it at all."

"Maybe it's new."

"It doesn't look new," Alex replied. "Besides, I asked Mrs. Benson about it, and she said it's always been here."

Again Torres nodded. "I think you'd better come down tomorrow, and we'll talk about it."

Suddenly his father appeared at his side. Alex felt his father's arm fall over his shoulders, but made no move to pull away. "He'll be going to school tomorrow," he heard his father say.

Torres shrugged. "After school's fine."

Marsh hesitated. Every instinct in him was telling him to inform Torres that he wouldn't be bringing Alex to him at all anymore.

But not here. He nodded curtly, making a mental note to clear his schedule tomorrow so that he could take Alex to Palo Alto himself. "That will be fine." And tomorrow afternoon, he added to himself, you and I will have our last conversation. Keeping his arm around Alex's shoulder, he started to draw his son away from Torres, but Torres spoke again.

"Before you make any decisions, I'd like to suggest that you read the waiver you signed very carefully." Then Torres himself turned and strode out of the patio. A moment later, a car engine roared to life, and tires squealed as Torres shot down the road.

As he drove out of La Paloma, Raymond Torres wondered if it had been a mistake to go to Martha Lewis's funeral after all. He hadn't really intended to go. It had been years since he was part of La Paloma, and he knew that he would be something of an intruder there.

And that, of course, was exactly what had happened. He'd arrived, and recognized many of the faces, but most of the people hadn't even acknowledged his presence. It was just as his mother had told him it would be when he stopped to see her before going into the cemetery.

"Loco," she had said. "You are my son, but you are she had said. "You are my son, but you are loco loco. You think they want you there? Just because you have a fancy degree, and a fancy hospital all your own, you think they will accept you? Then go! Go let them treat you the way they always did. You think they've changed? Gringos Gringos never change. Oh, they won't say anything! They'll be polite. But see if any of them invite you to their homes." Her eyes had flashed with fury, and her body had quivered with the pent-up anger of the years. "Their homes!" she had spit. "The homes they stole from our ancestors!" never change. Oh, they won't say anything! They'll be polite. But see if any of them invite you to their homes." Her eyes had flashed with fury, and her body had quivered with the pent-up anger of the years. "Their homes!" she had spit. "The homes they stole from our ancestors!"

"That was generations ago, Mama," he had protested. "It's all forgotten. None of these people had anything to do with what happened a hundred years ago. And I grew up with Marty."

"Grew up with her," the old woman had scoffed. "Si "Si, you grew up with her, and went to school with her. But did she ever speak to you? Did she ever treat you like a human being?" Maria Torres's eyes had narrowed shrewdly. "It's not for her you go to the funeral. It's something else. What, Ramon?"

Under his mother's penetrating gaze, Raymond Torres found his carefully maintained self-confidence slipping away. How did she know? How did she know that his interest in the funeral went beyond the mere paying of respects to the memory of someone he'd known long ago? Did she know that deep in his heart he wanted to see the pain in the eyes of Martha Lewis's friends, see the bewilderment on Cynthia Evans's face, see all of them suffering as he'd suffered so many years ago? No, he decided, she couldn't know all that, and he would never admit it to her.

"It's Alex," he had finally told her. "I want to see what happens to him at the funeral." He told her about Alex's experience in San Francisco, and the old woman nodded knowingly.

"You don't know whose grave that was?" she asked. "Don Roberto had a brother. His name was Fernando, and he was a priest."

"Are you suggesting that Alex Lonsdale saw a ghost?" he asked, his voice betraying his disbelief in his mother's faith.

The old woman's eyes glittered. "Do not be so quick to scoff. There are legends about Don Roberto's family."

"Among our people, there are legends about everything," Torres replied dryly. "In fact, that's about all we've got left."

"No," Maria had replied. "We have something else. We have our pride, too. Except for you. For you, pride was never enough. You wanted more-you wanted what the gringos gringos have, even if it meant becoming one of them to get it. And now you have tried, and you have failed. Look at you, with your fancy cars, and your fancy clothes, and have, even if it meant becoming one of them to get it. And now you have tried, and you have failed. Look at you, with your fancy cars, and your fancy clothes, and gringo gringo education. But do they accept you? No. And they never will." education. But do they accept you? No. And they never will."

And so he had left the little house he had been born in. His mother had been right. He had felt out of place at the funeral, even though he knew almost everyone there.

But he was right to have gone.

Something had had happened to Alex Lonsdale. For a few moments, before his father had grasped his arm, Alex's whole demeanor had changed. happened to Alex Lonsdale. For a few moments, before his father had grasped his arm, Alex's whole demeanor had changed.

His eyes had come to life, and he had seemed to be listening to something.

But what?

Raymond Torres thought about it all the way back to Palo Alto. When he reached the Inst.i.tute, he went directly to his office and began going over the records of Alex's case once more.

Somewhere, something had gone wrong. Alex was showing more signs of emotional behavior.

If it went too far, it would destroy everything, including Alex himself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Alex stood in the middle of the plaza, waiting for the pain to strike his brain, and the strange memories that didn't fit with the real world to begin churning through his mind. He gazed intently at the old buildings that fronted on the plaza, searching for the unfamiliar details that he had expected to find in them. But nothing struck a chord. The buildings merely looked as they had always looked-a village hall that had once been a mission church, and a library that had once been a school.

No voices whispered in his head, and no pain racked his mind. It was all as it had been throughout his lifetime.

When he was at last certain that nothing in the plaza or the buildings around it was going to trigger something in his mind, he walked slowly into the library and approached the desk. Arlette Pringle, who had been librarian in La Paloma for thirty years, raised her brows reprovingly.

"Did someone declare a holiday without telling me, Alex?"

Alex shook his head. "I went to Mrs. Lewis's funeral this morning. And this afternoon...well, there's some things I need to look up, and the school library can't help me."

"I see." Arlette Pringle tried to figure out whether Alex had just told her a very smooth lie-and after thirty years of dealing with the children of La Paloma as well as their parents, she thought she'd heard them all-or if he really was working on a school project and was here with the blessing of his teachers. Then she decided it really didn't matter at all. So few of the kids came to the library anymore that a young face was welcome under any circ.u.mstances. "Can I help you find anything?"

"The town," Alex said. "Are there any books about the history of La Paloma? I mean, all the way back, when the fathers first came?"

Arlette Pringle immediately nodded, and opened the locked case behind her desk. She pulled out a leather-bound volume and handed it to him. "If it's the old history you're after, this is it. But it was printed almost forty years ago. If you need anything more up-to-date, I'm afraid you're out of luck."

Alex glanced at the cover of the thin oversized book, then opened it to study the first page. Superimposed over an ink drawing of the plaza was the t.i.tle: La Paloma: The Dove of the Peninsula La Paloma: The Dove of the Peninsula. On the next page was a table of contents, and after scanning it, Alex knew he'd found what he was looking for. "Can I check this out?"

Miss Pringle shook her head. "I'm sorry, but it's the only copy we have, and it can't be replaced. I even made Cynthia Evans sit right here every time she had to refer to it for the hacienda." When Alex looked puzzled, Arlette Pringle suddenly remembered what she'd been told about Alex's memory. "For the restoration," she went on. "In fact, after you read about it, you might want to go up to the Evanses' and see what they've done. On the outside, at least, it's exactly as it used to be." The front door opened, and Arlette instinctively glanced toward it. "If you have any questions, I'll be here," she finished, then turned to the new arrival as Alex settled himself at one of the heavy oak tables that graced the single large room of the library.

The book, as he paged through it, proved to be primarily a collection of old pictures of the early days of La Paloma, accompanied by a sketchy narrative of the history of the town, beginning with the arrival of the Franciscan fathers in 1775, the Mexican land grants to the Californios in the 1820's, and the effect of the Treaty of Hidalgo Guadalupe in 1848. An entire chapter dealt with the story of Roberto Melendez y Ruiz, who was hanged after attempting to a.s.sa.s.sinate an American major general. After the hanging, his family abandoned their hacienda in the hills above La Paloma and fled back to Mexico, while the rest of the Californios quickly sold their homes to the Americans, and followed.

The rest of the book was devoted to detailed drawings of the mission, the hacienda, and the homes of the Californios. It was the drawings that commanded Alex's attention.

There was page after page of floor plans and elevations of all the old houses that still stood in and around the village. For many of them, there were accompanying photographs as well, showing how the houses had been altered and modified over the years.

Near the end of the book, Alex found his own house, and stared at the old drawings for a long time. Little had changed over the years-of all the houses in La Paloma, the Lonsdales' alone seemed to have survived in its original condition.

Except for the wall around the garden.

In the detailed drawings of the house that had been done by one of the priests shortly after the mission had lost its lands to the Californios, the patio wall was shown in great detail, complete with intricately tiled insets at regular intervals along its main expanse. Between the insets, set with equal precision, were small, well-clipped vines, espaliered on small trellises. Alex studied the picture carefully.

It was exactly as he had thought the wall should look when his parents had first brought him home from the Inst.i.tute. But in the photograph of the same wall, taken forty-odd years ago, the vines had long since grown wild, covering the wall with a tangle of vegetation that completely obliterated the insets.

On the next page, he found Valerie Benson's house. It bore little resemblance to what it had once been. Over the years, it had twice burned, and both times, during the rebuilding, walls had been moved and roof lines changed. The only thing that had not been altered beyond recognition was the patio, but even that had not completely survived the remodeling.

In 1927, a fishpond, fed by a waterfall, had been added.

Once again Alex studied the old drawing and the more recent photograph.

Once again it was the old drawing that looked right to him, that depicted the patio as he'd thought he remembered it only that morning.

He closed the book, and sat still for several minutes, trying to find an answer to the puzzle that was forming in his mind. At last he stood up and carried the volume over to Arlette Pringle's desk. The librarian took it from him and carefully slid it back into its position in the locked cabinet behind her desk.

"Miss Pringle?" Alex asked. "Is there any way to tell when the last time I looked at that book was?"

Arlette Pringle pursed her lips. "Why, Alex, what on earth would you want to know that for?"

"I...well, I don't remember so many things, but some of the things in that book look kind of familiar. And I just thought it might help if I could find out when the last time I looked at it was."

"Well, I don't know," Miss Pringle mused, wondering if it was worth her while to dig through the old records of the locked cabinet. Then, remembering once more what had happened to Alex only a few months ago, she made up her mind. "Of course," she said. "If it were in the open stacks, it would be impossible, but I keep records of every book that goes in and out of that cabinet. Lets have a look." From the bottom drawer of her desk she took a thick ledger and began flipping through its pages. A minute later she smiled bleakly at Alex. "I'm sorry, Alex. According to my records, you've never seen that book before. In fact, n.o.body but Cynthia Evans has looked at it for the last five years, and before that, you and your friends were all so young I wouldn't have let you touch it anyway."

Alex frowned, then wordlessly turned and left the library. He walked home slowly, lost in thought. As he approached his house he finally made up his mind, and, though he was already tired, trudged on up Hacienda Drive.

He stopped once to rest, at the curve where only a few months ago his car had crashed through the safety barrier and plunged into the canyon below. He stayed there for nearly half an hour, searching his mind for memories of the crash.

He knew what had happened: he'd been told the details many times since he'd awakened in the hospital. There had been a party, and he and Lisa had had a quarrel, and she had left. A few minutes later he'd gone after her, but he'd been driving too fast, and had to swerve to avoid hitting her. And that was when he'd gone off the road.

But something seemed to be missing. Deep in his mind, he was sure there was one more image-a fleeting glimpse of something he couldn't quite grasp-that was the real reason for his accident.

Somehow, he knew that there was more to it than avoiding Lisa. There had been something else-someone else-whom he had also swerved to avoid.

But who? He couldn't bring the image into focus, couldn't quite identify it.

Struggling to his feet, he went on toward the Evanses' mansion and the hills beyond.

Marsh Lonsdale sat in the records office of the Medical Center and punched angrily at the keys of the computer. The screen sat like a Cyclops on the desk in front of him. There were times, of course, when he thanked all the various G.o.ds he could think of for the computer system that had been put in the Center five years earlier, but there were times-and this was one of them-when he wished that the microprocessor had never been invented.

"You have to have a special degree just to operate this d.a.m.ned thing," he muttered. From the file cabinet, Barbara Fannon smiled sympathetically.

"It doesn't respond to cursing," she told him. "Why don't you tell me what you're looking for, and I'll pull it up for you." Gently nudging him aside, she sat down and put her fingers on the keyboard.

"Alex," Marsh said. "All I want is the medical records for my own son, and this d.a.m.ned machine won't give them to me."

"Don't be silly," Barbara told him. "You just have to ask it politely, in terms it understands." She tapped at the keyboard for a few moments, and the screen came to life. "There you are. Just push this b.u.t.ton, and it will scroll right on down, from the day he was born until the last time he was here." She stood up, relinquis.h.i.+ng the chair to Marsh once again, and went back to her filing.