False Memory

memories,” she guessed, and felt the truth of it as she spoke.
    “Forbidden memories of our programming sessions,” Dusty agreed. “Our... our handlers, I guess you’d call them, whoever they are—they erased all those memories, they must have, because they wouldn’t want us to remember any of it.”
    “But the experience was still with us somewhere, deep down.”
    “And when it came back, it had to come distorted like this, all in symbols, because we were denied access to it any other way.”
    “It’s like you can delete a document from your computer, and it disappears from the directory, and you can’t access it anymore, but it’s still on the hard disk virtually forever.”
    He told her about his dream of the heron, the lightning.
    As Dusty finished, Martie felt that familiar mad fear suddenly squirming in her again, with frenzied energy like thousands of baby spiders bursting from egg cases along the length of her spine.
    Lowering her head, she gazed down into her mug of beer, around which she had clamped both hands. Thrown, the mug could knock Dusty unconscious. Once broken against the tabletop, it could be used to carve his face.
    Shaking, she prayed that the busboy wouldn’t choose this moment to clear their plates.
    The seizure passed in a minute or two.
    Martie raised her head and looked out at the wedge of restaurant visible from their sheltered booth. More diners were seated than when she and Dusty had arrived, and more waiters were at work, but no one was staring at her, oddly or otherwise.
    “You okay?” Dusty asked.
    “That wasn’t so bad.”
    “The Valium, the beer.”
    “Something,” she agreed.
    Tapping his watch, he said, “They’re coming almost exactly an hour apart, but as long as they’re this mild...
    A prickly premonition came to Martie: that these little recent seizures were merely previews of coming attractions, brief clips from the big show.
    While they waited for their waiter to bring the check and then to bring their change, they pored through the haiku books once more.
    Martie found the next one, too, and it was by Matsuo Basho, who had composed Skeet’s haiku with blue pine needles.

    Lightning gleams
    and a night heron’s shriek
    travels into darkness.

    Rather than recite it, she passed the book to Dusty; “This must be it. All three from classic sources.”
    She saw the chill quiver through him as he read the poem.
    Change arrived with a final thank-you from the waiter, plus the traditional have-a-nice-day, though night had fallen two hours ago.
    As Dusty calculated the gratuity and left it, he said, “We know the activating names come from Condon’s novel, so it should be easy to find mine. Now we have our haiku. I want to know what happens when... we use them with each other. But this sure isn’t the place to try that.”
    “Where?”
    “Let’s go home.”
    “is home safe?”
    “Is anywhere?” he asked.

    56
    Left alone most of the day, turned loose in the backyard rather than walked properly as any good dog deserved to be, given dinner by an intimidating giant whom he had met only twice before, Valet had every right to sulk, to be standoffish, and even to greet them with a disgruntled growl. Instead, he was all golden, grinning, wagging forgiveness, snuggling in for a cuddle, then bounding away in pure delight because the masters were home, seizing a plush yellow Booda duck and biting it to produce a cacophony of quacks.
    They hadn’t remembered to tell Ned Motherwell to switch lights on for Valet, but Ned did indeed mother well, leaving the kitchen brightly lit.
    On the table, Ned had also left a note taped to a padded mailing envelope: Dusty, found this propped against your front door.
    Martie tore the envelope, and the noise excited Valet, probably because it sounded like a bag of treats being opened. She withdrew a brightly jacketed hardback book. “It’s by Dr. Ahriman.”
    Puzzled, Dusty took the book from her, and Valet stretched his head up, flared his nostrils, sniffing.
    This was Ahriman’s current best-seller, a work of psychological nonfiction about learning to love yourself.
    Neither Dusty nor Martie had read it, because they preferred to read fiction. Indeed, for Dusty, fiction was as much of a principle as it was a preference. In an age when distortions, deceptions, and outright lies were the primary currencies in much of society, he had often found more truth in one work of fiction than in slop pails full of learned analyses.
    But this, of course, was a book by Dr. Ahriman,