“I disagree. What the X rays show is that your arms, legs, and ribs weren't broken, that your skulls weren't fractured as you believed. That doesn't mean you weren't beaten. I'll reconstruct what conceivably happened. You both were assigned to protect a man.”

“Yes.”

“He went to a conference at a rural hotel. And while he was there, he was killed. In a graphically brutal manner. With a sword that severed his torso.”

Akira nodded.

“In the process of defending him, the two of you were beaten to the point of unconsciousness,” Weinberg said. “On the verge of passing out, you each were tricked by your failing vision into thinking mistakenly that the other was killed. Inasmuch as neither of you died, something caused the hallucination, and the combination of pain and disorientation is a logical explanation.”

“But why would they both have the same hallucination?” Rachel asked.

“Guilt.”

“I don't follow.” Savage frowned.

“If I understand correctly, your profession means more to you than just a job. Obviously your identity is based on protecting, on saving lives. It's a moral commitment. In that respect, you're comparable to devoted physicians.”

“True,” Akira said.

“But unlike physicians, who inevitably lose patients and are consequently forced to put a shell around their emotions, I gather that both of you have had remarkable success. You've never lost a client. Your success rate has been an impressive one hundred percent.”

“Except for…”

“The events in the rural hotel six months ago,” Weinberg said. “For the first-the only-time, you lost a client. A major threat to your identity. With no experience in dealing with failure, you weren't prepared for the shock. A shock that was reinforced by the vividly gruesome manner of your client's death. The natural reaction is guilt. Because you survived and your client didn't. Because your client's safety meant everything to you, to the point where you'd have sacrificed yourself to save him. But it didn't turn out that way. He died. You're still alive. So your guilt becomes unendurable. Your subconscious struggles to compensate. It seizes on your murky impression that your fellow bodyguard died as well. It insists, it demands, that your client couldn't possibly have been defended if both he and your counterpart were killed and you, too, nearly died in your heroic but demonstrably futile effort to fulfill your vocation. Given your similar personalities, your mutual hallucinations are understandable, even predictable.”

“Then why can't we find the hotel?” Savage asked.

“Because deep in your mind you're struggling to deny that your failure ever took place. What better way than to convince yourselves that the hotel, where your failure occurred, doesn't exist? Or the doctor who treated you? Or the hospital where you recovered? They do exist, at least if your account is authentic. But they don't exist where your urge for denial compels you to search.”

Savage and Akira glanced at each other. As one, they shook their heads.

“Why”-Akira sounded skeptical-”did we both know where the hotel ought to be? And the doctor? And the hospital?”

“That's the easiest to explain. You reinforced each other. What one of you said, the other grasped at. To perpetuate the delusion and relieve your guilt.”

“No,” Savage said.

Weinberg shrugged. “I told you, this was all hypothetical.”

“Why,” Akira asked, “if our arms and legs weren't broken, were we put in casts? Why did we endure the agony of rebuilding our muscles for so many terrible months?”

“Casts?” Weinberg asked. “Or were they immobilizers required to help repair ligaments detached from your arms and legs? Were the casts on your chests actually thick, tightly wound tape that protected bruised-but not broken-ribs? And possibly your bandaged skulls indeed had fractures, hairlines that healed so perfectly an X ray wouldn't detect them. You admit you were given Demerol. It affects one's sense of reality.”

“Certainly,” Rachel said. “And of course I wasn't there. I didn't experience their pain. I grant I'm fond of these two men. We've been through a lot together. But I'm not a fool, and of the three of us, I'm the one with the best claim to be objective. My friends have not been reinforcing each other's delusions.”

“Well, of course you've heard of the Stockholm principle,” Weinberg said. “People under stress tend to identify with those they depend on for their safety.”

“And of course you've heard of the ostrich principle,” Rachel said. “A psychiatrist who puts his head in the sand because he can't acknowledge a problem he's never heard of before.”

Weinberg leaned forward, scowled, and abruptly laughed.

“You were right,” he told Santizo. “This is amusing.”

“You're sublimating, Max. Admit it. She made you angry”

“Only hypothetically.”

Now Santizo laughed. “Hey, of course. Let's write a hypothetical article. About the phenomenon of being hypothetically angry.”

“What's going on?” Savage asked.

Santizo stopped laughing. “A test. To determine if you were cranks. I had no choice. And Max is wonderful. A gifted man with a marvelous mind and a talent for acting.”

“I wasn't acting,” Weinberg said. “What I've heard is so bewildering I want to hear more.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Santizo pivoted. “Come.”

A secretary, who'd brought in the teacups, now brought a large brown folder.

“The MRIs.” Santizo stood.

Two minutes later, he turned from the films. “Thanks, Max. I'll take it from here.” “You're sure?”

“Yes. I owe you a dinner.” Santizo faced the MRIs. “But the problem's back to me. Because psychiatry won't explain this.”

4

Savage stood next to Akira and Rachel, studying the dusky films. Each had twelve images, arranged in four rows and three columns. They made little sense to him, harder to read than the earlier single-image X rays.

“Beautiful,” Santizo said. “I couldn't ask for clearer pictures.”

“You could have fooled me,”Akira said. “They look like ink blots.”

Santizo chuckled. “I can see where you'd get that impression.” He studied the films again. “That's why, to help you understand, I have to begin with some basics, though I'm afraid the basics will still sound technical…An MRI scan is an advanced technique of photography, based on magnetic resonance, that allows us to see past your skull and into your brain. It used to be that the only way we could get pictures of your brain was with a CAT scan. But a CAT scan isn't detailed enough, whereas these are the next best thing to actually opening up your skull and having a look. We take so many pictures from so many different angles, the combined result provides the illusion of 3-D.”

“But what have you learned?” Akira asked.

“Just bear with me a little longer,” Santizo said. “The brain has many parts.” He gestured toward portions of the MRIs. “The right hemisphere. The left hemisphere. Paradoxically the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, and vice versa. Our ability to think spatially comes from the right hemisphere, our verbal skills from the left. The hemispheres are divided into parts. The frontal lobe. The parietal lobe. The occipital lobe. The temporal lobe. And these in turn contain numerous subparts. The visual cortex. The olfactory tract. The somatic sensory area. The pituitary gland. Et cetera. What makes this awesomely complex organ work is the presence of billions of interconnecting nerves that transmit energy and information. These nerves are called neurons. They're analogous to electrical wires and telephone cables, but that's a simplification. No analogy can truly describe them… By the way, have you ever had epilepsy?”

The question was so unexpected that Savage blinked.