“You’ve left me with no choice but to increase the voltage to a level he may not survive,” Cranch told Drummond.
Charlie craned his neck-the simple act felt like being choked-and glimpsed the interrogator tweaking the rotary dial on the telephone.
Drummond’s eyes were glassy and rimmed red. He sucked a finger, as if to pacify himself. He’d never done that before, and, Charlie reckoned, never would, given the unsanitary nature. So maybe he had something in the works. Also, albeit slightly, he had sat up. But where the flicker of hope should have been, Charlie felt nothing. What could Drummond Clark, even at the height of his powers, do to get out of this fix?
“How about this?” Drummond asked Cranch. “By ‘placebo operation,’ is it possible that your people mean a medical operation performed more for the psychological benefit of the patient than for any physiological effect?”
Cranch sighed.
“Can you at least give me some sort of hint?” Drummond pleaded.
Cranch gestured and Dewart pumped the plant mister five or six times. Charlie’s chest glistened. Cranch moved the tip of the wire toward Charlie’s heart.
Charlie tried to will himself into unconsciousness.
Drummond sat upright in his chair, abruptly, as if he had been shocked. Cranch jumped in surprise. Dewart nearly lost hold of his Gatorade. Like Charlie’s, their eyes flew to Drummond.
Drummond took in the room with unmistakable sharpness. “Ernie, why are we interrogating my son?” he asked Cranch. His voice was ragged, like he’d just risen from a long slumber.
Each time he’d flickered on before, Charlie recalled, it was with an awareness of the immediate past. So the Rip van Winkle act was almost certainly an act. But to what end?
Drummond tried to rub his eyes. The cuff snapped his hand back into place. “Or should I be asking, ‘Why are you interrogating me?’”
“First, allow me to say that I’m flattered you remember me, sir,” Cranch said.
“Dr. Ernest Cranch, you come happily to mind every single time I look in a mirror to shave and see no scar whatsoever from that Croatian hooligan’s blade. Now, what is going on here?”
“There’s an urgent need that we know whether and to what extent Placebo has been compromised.”
Drummond seemed shaken. “Placebo has been compromised?”
“If you could tell us what you last recall of it?” Cranch said.
“Yes. Of course. Tell me, what’s today’s date?”
“The twenty-eighth.”
“Forgive me. Of which month?”
“Forgive me, I should have begun there. It’s December 28,