Part 2
The second time that Dr Guard met Adam Franks was shortly after the murder at the Turnstone Laboratory, a research company in the Franks Transnational portfolio.
She had tried to find him. She had called and written to the contact address he had left, had her secretary place messages for him, even driven out there one afternoon to be met by a polite landlady who had offered her tea and explained that Mr Adam had gone away. She'd given a small amount of effort to contacting the army or some of Franks' companies, but her interest had palled. A short paragraph in the business pages told her that Feynman Franks had flown to Europe, to Geneva. There was nothing about Adam. And there were other clients and a life to get on with. And after what Feynman had said to her, she felt no real responsibility to him or his son.
War had come, first Afghanistan, then Iraq. But the tyrants fell; Emily approved. If she'd thought about the vision in the mirror, she might have had pause, or wondered if the mirror could be wrong. But, on the whole, she didn't care that much what happened to bad people.
The murder, when it made the news, was a brief ghoulish sensation.
Dr Henry Clive, the administrative head of the laboratory, had been discovered in a state of advanced hysteria with a substantial proportion of his lower anatomy fused into a volume of crumpled metal wreckage that later turned out to be prototype quantum entanglement device. Undergraduate rumour would subsequently run to the suggestion that someone had managed to achieve a macroscopic rather than atomic scale teleport and had proceeded to materialise the machine through the unlucky Dr Clive, though of course this never made it to the sort of papers that Dr Guard would read. And besides, it's impossible without a massive explosion resulting from the Fermion collisions. Naturally the surgical attempts to… separate Dr Clive proved entirely fatal.
A day or so after Emily had read of these events, there came a pounding at her door. This in itself was alarming, as there had been no phone call from the receptionist to say a patient or visitor had been admitted. Curiosity tempered with a touch of fear brought Emily to her door. There was Adam. If anything, he looked even more ghostlike than on his previous visit. Immediately he beseeched her:
"Did I do it, doctor? Am I the monster?"
"Adam! Whatever do you mean?"
"Dr Clive! Could I have killed him?"
"I… I think you should come in. Come and sit. We can talk."
She took him through to her couch in front of the mirror, only half attending to what he was saying. He'd been there, it seemed, at Turnstone. He was vague about how it happened: something set up by lawyers after his father had gone away. A compromise. Better to rule in hell, that's what Milton had said.
"Uncle Henry… he was like a second father to me. Or a big brother. He was one of father's oldest friends."
"There was something on the news. They said there was some kind of accident?"
Adam was scornful. Dr Clive's was not the first "accident". One of the research students had been nearly crushed under a large ferrous meteorite sample that was being studied for its unusually high noble gas content; another was found poisoned by a dose of experimental serum; a visiting academic had been hospitalised when an infestation of rare spiders resulted in her being badly bitten; a senior technician was discovered badly burned under a sun lamp that had somehow been modified to emit gamma radiation.
"And you think this was you? Why? Why would you think that?"
"I… I'm not sure. I've been drinking. Drinking a lot recently. To forget, isn't that what they say?" He almost laughed, an unsettling, angry choked-off chuckle. "I don't always remember everything I do."
"You're saying you might be doing these things unconsciously? Really, that only happens in movies. Do you have a motive to murder your uncle?"
"No! No, he was… trying to help… in his own way."
"And do you have any idea how you could cause this… I'm sorry, bizarre accident?"
"I… I don't know. Not really. Science was more my father's… I keep thinking about it, though. How I could have gone to the lab and… I don't know…"
"Adam," she said, "You imagine that you may have done these things. That is natural. All of us contemplate… possibilities. The ability to play the game of 'what if?' is a part of what makes us human. It's the great intuitive leap that sets us apart from the animals. But it's still only a game."
"But why would I think such horrors?"
"We conceive horrors so that we can reject them. It's one way we test ourselves."
"Then… then, I didn't do it?"
"I think that you didn't. Here, sit, sit. Would you like coffee?"
"Coffee would be delightful, thank you ma'am," he said, repeating it like a childhood rote. She made sure he was settling on the couch before going to turn on the machine for coffee. She steeled herself. Then she turned to look at him in the mirror.
Blood, she saw blood again: this time it was Adam's face awash with it; the same worm of madness that she had seen in his father consuming him from within.
She saw Feynman Franks' death. She saw Adam signing letters in his dead father's name. She saw DNA samples recognising him as his father, biomass for biomass, blood for blood. She saw doors at Turnstone opening for him. But he wasn't the killer. He just wanted to be. He just wanted to be someone, even if that someone was a murderer.
And she saw again the fateful day he would return to her apartment. Destiny was not so easily averted.
She saw herself, lying on the floor, Adam stood over her. And now she lay face down in a pool of blood!
Matters were worse.
Fear returned and clouded her vision. Deep down, she knew there was something wrong, something she was not seeing, or seeing awry. But her valued objectivity was out of kilter. She followed her fear instead of her instinct.
"Adam…" she asked gently, "Adam, is your father really out of the country?"
"What? Yes, of course," he said but he looked guilty, and the mirror showed concealment.
She maintained a front of calm but, observing herself she would have had to say it was only a front. Her pulse was racing, and she felt on the verge of fleeing: the fight or flight instinct was up and running. She needed to get the threat out of her apartment.
"Perhaps," she suggested, "you would do better to get away for a day or two. Somewhere quiet. To settle your thoughts."
"Do you think that might help?"
"You're probably just stressed." She couldn't look at him; she didn't want to panic him. "It's been a shock, obviously." She did not even dare look at him in the mirror. "You need to, ah, need to let yourself find some peace."
"Um, Okay."
"I know a place. A little lodge-motel upstate. It's self-service, I'm afraid, but it's very peaceful. You could stay there as long as you need."
Carefully, slowly, she stood up. He followed her, but his shoulders were down, slumped, not aggressive. With deliberate movements, she drew out a card from her desk and wrote an address.
"Call me," she said. "When you get there. So I know you're safe."
He left and she shut the door behind him and leaned on it, heaving great breaths into her lungs to abate the huge physical relief.
And yet… had she done the right thing? Now he was gone, she should feel safe, but she did not. The vision of their next meeting remained. And yet… the nagging sensation that she had misread the mirror returned.
Fear and doubt now coiled around each other. Conjoined serpents of bitterness and despair.
***
Two days later she received a call from the FBI, or at least she thought they must be FBI: a man and a woman, dressed in black suits. She was of medium height, very professional, a short dark bob haircut over a face that could be attractive if not so severe. He was a little scruffier, and it looked like someone had once broken his prominent nose. He hung back scuffing his shoe on the carpet and gazing idly around while the woman presented herself at the door.
"Dr Emily Guard?"
"Can I help you?"
"My name is Merriman, this is Dr Thesiger; we represent a government-sponsored agency."
She proffered a business card. It read simply:
"Harriet Merriman,
"Saraqael"
along with a cell phone number and a stylised logo like a pair of wings, a butterfly perhaps.
"You're with the government? Are you FBI?"
"We work with them. From time to time. Dr Guard, can we come in please. We need to talk about Adam Franks."
"Adam? He's… a… patient of mine. What's this about? Is he all right?"
"If we could come in, please?"
Reluctantly she acquiesced. Out of habit, she took them through to the salon where she made her consultations. She had to pull out some more chairs; she didn't think they would want to take a seat on the couch.
"That's a very interesting mirror, Dr Guard," said the man Thesiger. "Black volcanic glass with a lapis edging. Is the design Aztec, perhaps?"
"I… I've never really thought to find out. Please, won't you tell me what's happened to Adam?"
"I'm afraid we were rather hoping that you would tell us," replied the woman called Merriman. "You see, we believe that he needs some extremely… specialised medical help. I'm sure you know why."
"I'm sure I don't!"
"I see. Then perhaps I should ask you if you know Mr Franks' father, he's a rather famous man."
"We met once. It was several years ago. He wasn't very happy with my advice to his son, as I recall."
"No. No, he wouldn't have been. Have you seen him more recently than that?"
"No. As I said, we met only the once. Why don't you ask him?"
"Then you are not aware that Mr Franks is in fact dead."
"Dead? No, he's gone to Geneva. What do you mean, dead?"
"I mean exactly that. Mr Feynman Franks has not gone to Geneva, or to anywhere else unless you believe in heaven. He was killed at his home, and we believe that Adam Franks is either responsible or at least complicit in covering up the fact and maintaining the illusion that his father is still operating the company… none of this is coming as a surprise to you is it? Why not?"
Emily closed her eyes and took a breath. It had been the story that she had expected to hear, it fitted with her vision of Adam in the mirror, with his guilty reaction when she'd asked after his father, that she'd not thought how preposterous it would sound to anyone else. And she'd given herself away. She never gave herself away. She felt a fool.
For comfort she instinctively glanced into her mirror. She could see… white monkeys?
Two gangling simian albinos, with sunken bloodshot eyes stood in the room. What was she to make of that? There was no sense of a life story or where it would lead, in fact no feeling of soul at all. The one nearer to the mirror was looking straight back at her. It seemed to realise she was looking at it. It started back, its evil eyes widening and brow shooting up even as Mr Thesiger suddenly backed away from his examination of the mirror.
"Oh yes. Most interesting," he said and swiftly crossed the floor to Merriman and taking her by the arm gathered her over to the far wall for an impromptu conference, forcing Emily to turn her back on the mirror.
"Dr Guard," Merriman was speaking to her again, "I tell you Adam Franks has murdered his father and you clearly believe me."
She wanted to say something about doctor-patient privilege, about client confidentiality, but she just felt weak and nodded.
"Dr Guard, do you know where he is now?"
For a second time, she allowed her fear of that future with Adam to cloud her vision: she'd only seen he was innocent of the killing at Turnstone, she told herself; she'd overlooked the deeper guilt that he'd already murdered his father.
Again, she just nodded.
"Don't you think you had better tell us?"
And she did.
***
The third and final time she met Adam Franks was on the night that she had been dreading.
It was more than a year after Feynman Franks had staged his miraculous "return from the dead". He just turned up at the launch of the President's "Vision for Space Exploration". He claimed that in fact he really had been in Geneva all along.
Emily had thought then that they might release Adam.
She'd hired extra security. She'd meant to go away, be somewhere, anywhere else. She'd packed. Her practice was closed. There was a conference in Denver she could go to. Or even her mother's in Miami. Each day that passed she meant to go, but something kept her in Manhattan. A friend in need. A charity event. A police case. The day itself arrived. Somehow she had just not quite managed to leave the apartment. Phone calls had dogged her all day. An elderly neighbour from the floor above had had a disaster with her plumbing. She'd called for a taxi twice and they'd been engaged. A third time and there was no answer, they just let it ring. Trivia detained her. Events conspired to occur.
As morning turned to afternoon and options became fewer, she'd tried calling on friends. She didn't want to be alone. No one was in. Or they had engagements. Or they turned her down flat.
At six in the evening, she decided she should just go. Go out for the night; find a theatre or a cinema. Or a burger joint, for all she cared. She just had to get out.
There came a hammering on the door.
"Dr Guard, Dr Guard! Won't you let me come in?"
She was frozen in the hallway. Maybe he would go away.
There was a crash. The door flew open. For a moment fear was swamped by outrage. Had he really just kicked…
Adam entered.
He was pale as a vampire, and so thin. His hair was crudely cropped back to the skull. His skin was scabrous. His clothes were too large for him. She wondered if they were stolen. But there was something strangely solid about him. He held himself arrogantly, as if he no longer cared if the universe wasn't looking. He knew he was there.
"How… how did you get past the lobby? There's a guard! Eli sees everyone who comes in."
"A guard, Dr Guard? You know who I am. You know how people can… ignore me. You might see me now, but…"
For a moment he was still and she… she suddenly felt she was not alone in her apartment, that there was someone… he snapped back into focus. She gasped.
"Not quite in the world, am I. And you knew? Yes, I see it, you knew. Did… I tell you?"
"I… discovered it… what your father had done."
"You discovered it, hmm? Your little secret. It's something in here, isn't it…"
He swept past her into her consulting salon, and she trailed in his wake. He started to cast about. She couldn't look at the mirror.
"Adam, did you… did you… kill… your father?"
"What again, you mean?" He seemed almost cheery about it. "Isn't that why you had me put away last time? Must have been a shock when old pops rose from the grave."
"They told me…"
"I just bet they did. And you were gagging to believe them, weren't you. A chance to have mad Adam put back in his box. Another chance to play god."
"To… what? Adam, you're not yourself…"
He giggled and she stepped back from him.
"What's happened to you? What did they do?"
"Why don't you tell me?"
He wasn't looking at her. She glanced at the mirror as quick as she could to snatch a glimpse of truth from him.
Something had changed. Why did he no longer feel haunted, in search of a place? Where was the sense of thwarted creativity, of quiet longing? Instead, she could sense that he felt… powerful. She could see it thrilling him even as it terrified her. Something… priapic.
"You… you aren't… you're not Adam!"
"Oh, you are good, aren't you."
"Feynman! My god, you're Feynman Franks!"
"Right again! Go on, tell me how you're doing it."
"You've… you've taken his body!"
"Don't they say we achieve immortality through our children?"
"Oh god… he… he said you wanted to destroy him and you did. You did."
"Come, come, Dr Guard, that's hardly fair. I made this body for me, not some interloping soul, too decadent to appreciate its potential. Now I'm still waiting to see you do that li'l trick o' yours. I'm dying to see you do it. Or I would be if this body could die."
"How could you? How did you… do it?"
"Well, why not find out for yourself. I reckon it's got to be a device."
"Go to hell."
"I got a machine from them. A machine for making copies of myself. Meat copies. Adam was one. I made another. To cover my li'l disappearance. Adam found it. Clever of him to cover it up. Did you get something from them too?"
"Oh Adam! That's why you felt… you thought… but wait, when did you come back?"
"When?"
He was studying her desk. She risked another glance to her mirror and captured this story from him too.
"It was you. You killed that man, that man at the lab…"
"Uncle Clive. The diseased degenerate. He'd always loved li'l Adam and helped him. But I made old Uncle Clive love me and help me too."
"He was helping Adam. That's why you killed him. To stop them. They wanted to make… more… like him."
"Yes. Yes. A mate for the creature. That was always the plan, wasn't it. I could play daddy. Be godfather to a new breed of über-men. Only it turned out Uncle Clive was a silly old fool whose crazy experiments weren't anything more than just crazy. Poor Adam. No luck there. I deserve something better. Need something better. Smarter. Cleverer. Something… touched… by them. Something like you. Perhaps you can be my bride…"
She looked in the mirror again, it was instinctive. She saw what he wanted: her… degradation. She saw his lust… for power, power to hurt, to hurt her. She saw what he was going to do, if he could…
She saw his eyes looking back into hers!
"Third time's the charm," he said.
He'd caught her, tricked her, seen her looking. He sprang across the room, slamming aside her couch, to study the mirror on the wall. He looked back her grinning like, well, like the maniac he was.
"It's this! It's this isn't it, whatever it is you do, it's this. Yes I see it is."
He swung back around and, placing his hand flat on the wall on either side, leaned in close to leer at the mirror.
And screamed.
Just for a moment, as he reeled away, she saw what he saw. And what he saw was every death he should have had, every death that he had stolen. Like Dorian Gray's painting, it confronted him with his own corruption: his own fleshless skull staring back at him and laughing at his immortality. For a moment she saw, and then he snatched the mirror off the wall and smashed it into her face again and again and again.
For a while there was silence.
Emily Guard could see her own vision of herself: she lay on the floor in a pool of her own blood; Adam Franks stood over her.
There was, understandably, a lot of pain.
Eventually, she dragged herself to all fours and looked up at him.
That was when she saw the rest of it: Feynman/Adam, his face awash with blood, and it was her blood, running down into her eyes from her scalp.
She tried to crawl away and he knocked her down again. He made a sound, like a grunt or a moan. It chilled the blood around her heart. She forced herself to look up at him once more. There was something… lustful on his face. He was going to… was he going to kill her? Or…
She wanted to scream but her face was full of mirror, shards of silver and obsidian penetrating soft flesh of lips, nose, cheeks, eyes…
She was looking at him through her mirror. And she could see the way she always saw in her mirror. She could see his soul.
Something made him take a step back, a half stagger, some blow…? She could read him. She saw what he was seeing, seeing her, seeing her… face… was that her face? The mirror was her face. It had… the coagulating blood had fused it to her, bound it to her, made it a part of her. A new living skin of glass and silver.
Something had changed. Now he feared her.
She pushed herself up till she was kneeling, tilted her head to one side, contemplating him. She could see… no, feel now, she could feel what Franks could see, was seeing in the mirror of her face, into his own darkness. And there was a growing awareness within her that she was now something… more.
Fear held him, she read that, and would hold a moment more, but anger was building again, the monster's monstrous terror.
Well, there was no need to put up with that.
From outside the mirror she could only see reflections; from inside the mirror she could be the reflection. From outside the mirror she could only read people's souls; from inside she could possess them.
Dr Guard seized Feynman Franks' mind in a newfound grasp and without further regard shredded it with pain. She made him stare into his own unfaceable horror until it fried every neuron in his head. And once he was irreversibly reduced to the state of a vegetable, she forced his body into her fridge and left her apartment forever.
Richard Flowers
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