“Greetings,” he said in a clipped tenor voice. “I am Dr. Silas Jamaisvous.”
Staring at the whitecoat, Doc felt his mind slip away.
Dulce, New Mexico Redoubt, 1998
THE INTER VIEW ROOM was a lounge, used for breaks by various members of the duty staff within the massive Dulce redoubt when they didn’t want to go to the full-service commissary, and as such the furnish- ings were simple. Vending machines and a small coffee machine lined one of the windowless walls.
Dr. Theophilus Tanner had been kept sedated during the move. He was unable to determine if he had been told the truth, or was being subjected to yet another mind game.
Such as the one now under way.
“I’m going to ask a battery of questions. Respond and-”
“I do not think so.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, no.”
“No?” Dr. Herman Welles looked across the table at the frowning man who’d uttered the single syllable.
“No,” Tanner replied flatly, his blue eyes flat in their sockets like shards of gravel peeking out from beneath his brows. “I shall ask the questions for a change. I have endured enough of your inquiries. I have suffered through your physical tests. I have been kept in the dark long enough. I am not an idiot, nor am I easily confused or baffled by these futuristic trappings.”
“I know. This is one of the reasons why you were chosen.”
“So I have heard. If I am capable of comprehension, ergo, it is time I received some answers of my own.”
Welles pondered this, tapping his ballpoint pen against the front of his teeth absentmindedly, then, much to Tanner’s surprise, he nodded in agreement. “You’re right, Dr. Tanner. Proceed.”
Tanner folded his hands in front of him on the scuffed tabletop, covering a faded ring left in the plastic covering ages ago by a coffee cup. “So, ask,” Welles prodded. Tanner held up a hand for silence. Then he spoke. “First, let us establish a few essential facts. I am Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner.” Welles agreed. “Yes.”
“And you,” Tanner added, pointing a bony finger at the corpulent figure seated across from him in a white lab coat, white shut, black slacks and garish green tie, “you are Herman Welles.”
“Correct. At least, that’s what it says on my birth certificate.”
“Such forms of identification can easily be faked,” Tanner noted.
Welles shrugged. “The price we pay. You will have to take my word.”
Tanner stood and crossed the room to the community coffeepot, pouring himself a foam cup of the steaming brew. “Coffee?” he asked. “No, thanks.”
Tanner returned to his chair and took a long pull from the cup before setting it down on the table, purposely placing it within the existing scorch mark. Welles watched silently, observing. While Tanner’s back had been turned, the overweight man had taken out his pipe and now was busy tapping it against a glass ashtray on the tabletop, knocking out the previous bowl of tightly packed ashes.
Waiting until Welles had finished and relit the pipe, filling the small lounge with the smell of burning cherry, Tanner asked his next question. “Married?”
“No. Divorced. Six years now.”
“Children?”
“None.”
“How tragic for you. I have a wife, Emily-”
Welles cut in. “No, you don’t.”
Tanner pressed on. ‘ ‘And two children, a boy and a girl.”
“Both deceased,” Welles added.
Tanner continued to speak, his words overlapping Welles’s voice. “I chose-we chose, Emily and I- chose their names, their most unusual names. Special names. Rachel after my wife’s mother. Jolyon for one of my own family members who died in battle during the War Between The States.”
Welles puffed on his pipe and sighed, consulting his notebook. “The names you give are correct, Doctor. However, they are names of the dead.”
Tanner’s placid facade collapsed. Welles suddenly found himself sitting across from a lion. His patient bared his fine white teeth and howled in wordless frustration and rage, slamming his hands on the table and sending the half-full coffee cup and ashtray crashing to the floor. “I am Dr. Theophilus Algernon Tanner! I have a wife! I have two children! I am a teacher, a scholar, a lecturer! By God, I am halfway through writing a book! Nonfiction! The finest minds of my generation consult with me on a daily basis!”