The Key to Midnight

at them. After recent developments, anything seemed possible.

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    51
        
        Alex and Joanna ate lunch in a busy cafe near Piccadilly Circus.
        Heavy rain sluiced down the windows, blurring modern London until only the ancient lines of the city were visible. The inclement weather was a time machine, washing away the years.
        Over thick sandwiches and too many cups of tea, they read the old clippings from The New York Times and The Washington Post.
        Franz Rotenhausen was a genius in more than one field. He had degrees in biology, chemistry, medicine, and psychology. He'd written many widely recognized and important papers in all those disciplines. When he was twenty-four, he lost his hand in an automobile accident. Unimpressed with the prostheses available at that time, he invented a new device, a mechanical hand nearly as functional as flesh and bone, controlled by nerve impulses from the stump and powered by a battery pack. Later, he'd spent eighteen years as a lecturer and research scientist at a major West German university. He was mainly interested in brain function and dysfunction, and especially in the electrical and chemical nature of thought and memory.
        'Why would they let anyone work on this?' Joanna asked angrily. 'It's George Orwell time. It's 1984, for God's sake.'
        'It's also the route to ultimate power,' Alex said. 'And that's what all politicians are after. So of course they funded his work.'
        Fifteen years ago, at the peak of a brilliant career, Franz Rotenhausen had made a terrible mistake. He'd written a book about the human brain with an emphasis on recent developments in behavioral engineering, contending that even the most drastic of techniques - including brainwashing - should be used by 'responsible' governments to create a dissension-free, crime-free, worry-free Utopian society. His greatest error was not the writing of the book but his subsequent failure to be contrite after it became controversial. The scientific and political communities can forgive any stupidity, indiscretion, or gross miscalculation as long as public apologies come loud and long; humble contrition doesn't even have to be sincere to earn a pardon from the establishment; it must only appear genuine, so the citizenry can be allowed to settle back into its usual stupor. As controversy grew in the wake of publication, however, Rotenhausen had no second thoughts. He responded to critics with increasing irritation. He showed the world a sneer instead of the remorse it wanted to see. His public statements were given an unusually threatening edge by his harsh voice and his unfortunate habit of making violent gestures with his steel hand. European newspapers were quick to give him nicknames - Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Frankenstein - but those soon gave way to another that stuck: Dr. Zombie. He was accused of wanting to create a world of mindless, obedient automatons. The furor increased. He complained that reporters and photographers were hounding him, and he was intemperate enough to suggest that they would be his first choice for behavior modification if he were in charge. He steadfastly refused to back down from his position, and thus he was unable to take the pressure off himself.
        'I can usually sympathize with victims of press harassment,' Alex said. 'But not this time.'
        'He'd like to do to everyone what he did to me.'
        'Or worse.'
        The waitress brought more tea and small cakes for dessert.
        The lunch crowd was thinning out.
        Beyond the windows, the rain was coming down with such force that London had been blurred back into the eighteenth century.
        Alex and Joanna continued to read about Rotenhausen:
        In Bonn, back in that time before reunification, the West German government was exceedingly sensitive to world opinion. Rotenhausen was widely viewed as Hitler's spiritual descendant. The brilliant doctor ceased to be a national treasure (not so much because of his work but because he'd been unable to keep his mouth shut about it), ceased to be even a national asset, and became a distinct liability to the German state. Pressure was brought to bear on the university that gave him a research home, and eventually he was dismissed on a morals charge involving a student. He denied all wrongdoing and accused the university and the girl of conspiring against him. Nevertheless, he was weary of wasting time on