The Touch Read online

  But Lara was already smiling when Jones picked up the scalpel, flipped it in a rapid spin, and caught the razor-sharp instrument between two fingers. “Come on, guys, loosen up,” Jones said, and as they realized he was poking fun at them, he lifted his mask, spat on the scalpel blade and wiped it on his sleeve. “Okay, Roscoe, all sterile! Here we go.” He turned to the replica brain on the table and made a quick, sure incision.

  From that moment on, Jones was all business. And Lara, Malcolm, Brenda, and all the others watched quietly, transfixed by the sureness of his technique. In the laboratory control room they could speak without Jones hearing; still their voices were muted, in awe. Brenda leaned close to Lara and whispered, “Why is he going so fast?”

  “He’s already done it in his own mind. He just lets his hands go, so his thoughts won’t intrude.”

  They watched Jones’s remarkably steady hands work their way into the crucial area of the test brain. “You guys keeping up in there?” he called.

  Lara reached to the control panel in front of the lead tech and hit the talkback button. “We’re hanging on. And there’s no need for you to shout. We can hear you just fine.”

  “I was just trying to wake Roscoe up; he seems a little unenthusiastic to me.” Jones paused to look at the replica brain, then at the scans of the real brain that Roscoe was made from, displayed in high definition on a huge monitor placed at the foot of the surgical table so that Jones could see it with the slightest shift of his eyes. “Well,” Jones said, “here’s where we separate the men from the boys. Or the girls. That’s a joke.”

  “Just get on with it, please. Our instruments are recording, and I’m the one who has to pay our electric bill this month.”

  “I’m entering the cortex.”

  Now all the playfulness disappeared. Jones’s eyes settled into a trancelike stare and he began to work the probe in minuscule movements.

  On the control room’s monitors the movements showed in massive magnification. One of the assistant lab techs noticed something, and wondered aloud, “He’s moving like… in pulses.”

  “He moves between heartbeats,” Lara said, her voice stronger than she felt.

  The lead tech read his monitors, then checked them again to be sure. “He’s reached the failure point of our best attempt,” he said.

  Jones kept moving… kept moving… and then paused. Holding the handle of his probe absolutely motionless and moving only his lips, he said, “Show me your last trial at this section.”

  The techs stabbed buttons; flashing onto the screens in front of Jones were three views of Lara’s last attempt—a wider view of her, a closer external view of her instruments on Roscoe, and the view of the optical fiber cameras in the simulated brain. Jones watched the replay, watched Lara’s instruments trying to negotiate a turn through the same passage of synthetic blood and bone as his instruments were about to attempt. On that recording the failure lights suddenly flashed, and in the recorded replay Lara turned in frustration to glare at the camera.

  “Okay,” Jones said, “give me real time again.”

  They switched his monitors back to displaying his current attempt, and Jones drew in another long, slow breath and then continued, resuming his rhythmic, trancelike state.

  In the control room they watched him breathlessly, as their monitors showed his probes working ever deeper into the replica brain.

  The lead tech glanced up at Lara’s back; she was motionless, staring through the glass at Jones. “We’ve never been this far before,” the tech said.

  “What’s the threshold level on the death sensors?” Malcolm asked.

  “Ninety-five percent of fatality level,” the tech answered.

  “Make it a hundred five! We’re talking a human life here!” Malcolm snapped.

  “I have no ego in this, Malcolm,” Lara said evenly. “He’s not competing with me.” She turned back to the glass, stared through it for a moment and added, “It’s more like he’s competing with God.”

  Jones had reached the most critical area. Lara had never made it that far before—no surgeon ever had cut that deep, except on an autopsy. In the history of brain science it had been thought impossible for any doctor to thread surgical instruments through such critical areas of a living brain and have that brain survive. Lara Blair’s father had tried for decades to do it and had failed; Lara had spent years in the same quest and had built on her father’s work to go even further, but ultimately she too had reached the point where all her knowledge, all her skill, and all her hopes could not take her beyond those limits. Now Jones was standing almost within reach of what had become for Lara the Holy Grail.

  Jones inserted a second tiny instrument—a wire of gold so fine that most surgeons could not even lift it without breaking it—into the channel of the first probe he had pushed into place; he paused for the space of a heartbeat and then made a move…

  A sudden noise exploded the silence. But it was not the alarm: it was a bell, and with it, a steady green light burning above the control panel.

  “What is that?” Brenda said, angry that everyone else seemed to know but she didn’t.

  Jones pulled down his mask and looked at Lara.

  Lara began to walk, very slowly at first, across the control room, through the door into the surgical lab.

  Malcolm, watching Lara, said to Brenda, “He’s done it.”

  Lara moved into the lab, faster and faster until she was running into Jones’s arms, laughing and shouting: “Yes! Yes!!!!!”

  16

  One of the techs had an old boom box in his locker, and he had placed it top of the control panel; it was blaring “Start Me Up” by the Rolling Stones. Champagne corks were popping and researchers from other parts of the company as well as executives and secretaries were joining the excitement as the celebration spilled through the rear doors of the control room and out into the hallways. Only the surgical lab itself, where Roscoe now lay with a new smile drawn on his face in Magic Marker, was off-limits. This was a day for the whole company to taste victory.

  On the monitors of the control room the techs were replaying Jones’s work for their fellow geeks, marveling at what he had accomplished. “Look at this margin!” one of the techs said, over the music and the laughter. “You know how close that is to the death sensor?!”

  “Two micrometers,” his fellow geek said.

  “Two micrometers! That’s like one tenth of a human hair!” The control room was full of people hugging each other, pounding Jones on the back, congratulating Lara. She found Jones with her eyes and raised her champagne glass in toast to him; he smiled and returned the gesture.

  Malcolm was in a flurry of activity, giving instructions to his aides. “I want twenty video copies of this trial overnighted to the top neurosurgeons on our list.”

  “The stock’ll go through the roof,” the aide said.

  “Tell them to block out training time and give us an estimate on when they could attempt the surgery!”

  As Malcolm rattled on, Brenda moved up beside Jones. “Not bad,” she said. “For a poet.”

  “You’re the corporate shrink—right?” Jones asked Brenda.

  “Yeah,” Brenda said. “You wanna see my couch?”

  The company lawyer appeared beside Jones and said, “We have some paperwork you’ll need your attorneys to look over.” Lara stepped out of her crowd of well-wishers and moved toward Jones, reaching him as the lawyer was adding, “We’ll have preliminary drafts delivered to your hotel. Once your attorneys get back to us and we’ve sorted the details—”

  “We don’t need to sort,” Lara said. “Dr. Jones can name his price.” She said it loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear.

  “That’s right, Dr. Jones!” one of the techs said. “Who da man? You da man!”

  Jones grinned and told the tech, “Hey, good job with those monitor references.”

  As the tech held up his hands to the applause of his friend, Lara asked Jones, “What were you look
ing at there, when you paused?”

  “The route you tried through the nerve bundle in the center of the cortex. The aneurism wasn’t the same on my Roscoe as on yours.”

  Malcolm, who seemed to hear everything everybody ever said within the walls of Blair Bio-Medical, stepped closer and said, “Both replicas are made from the same patient. And we made them identical to the scans. Didn’t we?”

  “Absolutely,” the lead tech answered. “I checked them myself.”

  “Then the scans were made at different times,” Jones said. “Flash ’em up.”

  The lead tech punched two scans onto the overhead monitors. Lara moved over and compared them. Suddenly the room had gone quiet.

  “He’s right,” Lara said into the stillness. “The aneurism on this new scan has deteriorated. Roscoe is too far behind.”

  The room was so quiet it was painful. “Hey, cheer up, guys!” Jones said. “Most patients don’t deteriorate; until there’s a sudden rupture, the anomaly is stable. Once you get production up to speed, keeping your scans up to date will be no problemo!”

  Everyone waited for Lara’s judgment. She was still staring at the scans…

  But what she was really looking at was the inner turmoil she always kept from everyone else around. For a long, long moment she did not turn around; when at last she did, she smiled and looked at Jones. “Your Roscoe was even harder than mine. Today is a great victory for the company. I want to celebrate.”

  As the clamor around them resumed, she leaned closer and whispered to Jones, “With you.”

  * * *

  They rode in the backseat of the limo, a respectable distance apart. “So where do you want to go?” Lara asked.

  “Where do you celebrate your victories?” Jones asked back.

  Lara called to the driver, “George, see what wonders you can work.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  As George raised the privacy screen and went to work with his cell phone, Jones studied Lara. “Are you bothered about the difference in the replicas? Seemed like a big deal to Malcolm.”

  “He’s head of operations, he’s a perfectionist. But there’s nothing in life that’s perfect, is there?” Lara said this as if she had just come to confront life’s flaws for the first time, as if she had let go of something and was ready to move on. “I’ve looked at scans and surgical trials all my life. It’s time to get on with it.”

  “Get on with…?”

  “Life.”

  * * *

  George seemed pleased with himself as he pulled up outside the sports arena, hopped out, and opened the door for them. “Got two seats in the owner’s box!” he said proudly. “He’s a friend of the senator.”

  Lara stepped out, and Jones was just sliding over to get out the same door when Lara stopped, blocking the doorway. She stood staring at the parking lot, the arena, the crowds.

  She stood there long enough for George to say, “Game’s about to start, Dr. Blair.”

  Lara turned back and spoke to Jones. “Are you crazy for this game?”

  Jones shrugged, noncommittal. He felt up for anything; most of all he wanted to do what she wanted to do, for he felt Lara was working something through, something private, even secret.

  She turned back to her driver and said, “George, why don’t you take the tickets?”

  “Me…?”

  “And—and give one to a kid, maybe that skinny one over there. You got your cell phone? When the game’s over, call a cab, on me. If you can’t get a cab, take a limo.” She turned and shut the door, sealing Jones in the passenger compartment, hopped behind the wheel of the limo, and pulled away.

  George stood there baffled, and then he grinned and headed toward the kid selling souvenirs.

  Lara swung the limo out of the parking lot and lowered the privacy screen so she could watch him through the rearview mirror. “Am I being kidnapped?” Jones asked.

  “Cause trouble and I’ll come back there and torture you.”

  Jones moved up to the rear-facing seat in the passenger compartment, just behind the privacy screen, so he could speak to her through the opening just behind her. “So where are you taking me?”

  “I know just the place.”

  * * *

  He sat there behind her and watched her driving. She did not glance into the rearview mirror for a long time and he said nothing, and yet they both felt connected, encased together in both peace and adventure, moving into the unknown. Jones wanted to touch her, put his hand on her shoulder, or reach his fingertips into her hair, or cradle her palm into his. But he just sat with her and rode quietly.

  Lara turned the limo onto the long tree-lined drive that he recognized as the lane that led to her estate. Then she looked into the rearview mirror and caught his eye. “Tonight I’m making up for lost time,” she said.

  She parked in the rear of the mansion, got out and led him into the kitchen, switching on lights. “First,” she said, “we eat.” She opened one of the huge refrigerators and found food left over from the party.

  Jones leaned against the counter behind her. “Can I help?”

  “Not a chance.”

  A butler appeared, blinking with surprise. “Dr. Blair?”

  “Oh, hi, Harold. Harold, Dr. Jones.”

  “Hi, Harold.”

  “Is there anything I can get for you?”

  “Thank you, Harold, no—in fact, you and Gladys should take the night off. Come back tomorrow. Late tomorrow. Day after tomorrow.”

  Harold hesitated.

  “Good night, Harold.”

  “Good night, ma’am. Dr. Jones.”

  “’Night, Harold.”

  Lara seemed dissatisfied by the contents of the first refrigerator; she opened a second huge refrigerator and found cream pastries. “Aha! We start with dessert!” She shoveled a couple of plates of pastries out to Jones and then grabbed two bottles of chilled champagne.

  An hour later they were sitting in the breakfast room of the mansion and Lara was opening the second of the champagne bottles; the first was already upside down in the ice bucket. She had lit candles and put the plates of party confections on the table; now she poured herself another glass of champagne—Jones had taken only a few sips of the first glass she had poured him—and then she used her fingers to dig into a whipped-cream dessert as she kept talking with rapid excitement, exactly like a child on too much sugar. “You know I love whipped cream. And I never eat it! Is that ridiculous, or what? More champagne? You hardly touched the last bottle.”

  “You’re trying to take advantage of me.”

  “Drink up, plowboy.” She tipped the bottle of bubbly like she was dousing a fire, overflowing both their glasses; he clinked his glass with hers and sipped. She took a long swallow of champagne and looked out over the dark acreage of her estate. “I used to blame my parents that I was such a stick-in-the-mud. Or I blamed the company. But it wasn’t everybody else, it was me.” She scooped her index finger into another treat and licked it clean. “Ooo, this one’s the best! You’ve gotta try it.”

  She put her finger to his mouth. When he started to lick she swiped the cream onto his nose. He lifted a hunk of pie. “That’s good but you gotta taste this!” He held it out so she could take a nibble; then he smeared the pie across her mouth.

  Her eyes lit up and she grabbed at a whole pie. “Food fight!” she squealed. She drew back the pie to throw and he grabbed a dessert to retaliate, when she said, “Wait!” After a pause she added, “I’ve got a better idea.”

  * * *

  The rear of the house was completely dark; then floodlights flared, switched on in stages until the entire rear garden was ablaze. The flowers and decorations still sprang fresh in their vases, and the dance floor lay clean and bare, as if the party planners had left it until daylight so that the surrounding trees could step onto it and cavort to the sound of the wind in their branches.

  Lara emerged from the kitchen, carrying a boom box and leading Jones. She filled her lung
s with the damp spring air and sighed, “Ah. The decorations are still in place, and the guest list is just right.”

  “The hostess is beautiful,” Jones said, smiling.

  “Let’s try the band. It’s from the housekeeper.” She switched on the boom box and a Spanish ballad leaped from the speakers. Lara twisted the dial and began to surf the channels.

  “Wait! That one!” Jones said when she dialed across a honky-tonk dance tune.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No! Here, do what I do!” He took her hand and led her through the simple movements of a western line dance.

  Lara struggled her way into the rhythm. “This is great! How am I doing?”

  “You dance like a doctor. But… that’s a good thing!”

  She switched the radio dial and found an oldie ballad.

  And without embarrassment, as naturally as breathing, they began to dance, holding each other close.

  Encirled within each other’s arms, they felt love rising, not just its lofty emotion but its earthly, physical trance. Both of them sensed it; they broke apart immediately. Jones looked around for anything else to focus on, anything besides her yes, and spotted the barn. He struggled to make conversation. “That’s the nicest barn I’ve ever seen,” he said. “But I don’t smell horses.”

  “No. They’re all gone. My father built that barn.”

  They walked together, side by side but not touching, out of the dome of light around the gardens and into the unlit night, to the broad mouth of the barn. Lara reached for the switch on the wall and illuminated a lane of cedar chips between green- and white-painted walls, with stables carpeted in clean hay, all empty. It wasn’t an extravagant showcase, it was a practical, working barn. Lara said, “He worked so hard to control life and health. He saw horses as wild and liberating.”

  Jones took a few steps down the lane between the horse stalls, then stopped. She watched him as he looked around, breathing in the spirit of the place. “He built this barn for you, didn’t he,” Jones said. Not a question but a statement.

  “You know, you scare me sometimes, what you see.”