The Key to Midnight

whole face but was maybe one micron deep; a stern frown when he wanted to be perceived as a hard-nosed negotiator; and grief for when his wife died, for when his daughter disappeared, for occasions when American soldiers were killed in one far place or another. Masks. He has all these masks. I think he enjoys manipulating people even more than the average politician. For him it's almost a form of masturbation.'
         'Whew!' Joanna said.
        'Sorry if I come on a big strong about him,' Alex said. 'But this is the first time I've had an opportunity to tell anyone what I really think of the man. He was an important client, so I always hid my true feelings. But in spite of the money he spent to find Lisa and all his weeping about his lost little girl, I never believed he was as devastated about her disappearance as everyone thought. He seemed… hollow. There was a coldness, a deep emptiness about him.'
        'Then maybe we should just stop right here.'
        'That's not an option.'
        Joanna frowned. 'But if the senator is the kind of man you say, if he's capable of anything… we might all be better off if we forget him. At least now I know a little bit about why I've made a loner of myself. Programmed. I don't really have to know any more. I can live without knowing how it was done or who did it or why.'
        Mariko glanced at Alex. He met her eyes, and he was clearly as dismayed as she herself was. 'Joanna-san, maybe right now you feel that you can live without knowing, but later you'll change your mind. You'll be curious. It'll eat at you like an acid. Everyone needs to know who he is, where he's come from. Ignorance isn't bliss.'
        'Besides,' Alex said, taking a less philosophical approach, 'it's too late for us to walk away from this. They won't let us. We've learned too much.'
        Joanna looked skeptical. 'You think they might try to kill us?'
        'Or worse.'
        'What's worse?'
        Alex got up, went to the small window, and stood with his back to them, staring at the Gion and the dark city beyond. 'Maybe one day we'll all wake up in other parts of the world with new names, new pasts, new sets of memories, troubled by nightmares but unaware that we were once Joanna Rand, Mariko Inamura, and Alex Hunter.'
        Mariko saw Joanna turn sickly white, as if pale moonlight had pierced the window and lit nothing in the room but her face.
        'Would they really do it again?' Mariko asked.
        Alex turned from the window. 'Why not? It's an effective way of silencing us - without leaving behind any dead bodies to excite the police.'
        'No,' Joanna said, and she looked haunted. 'Everything that's happened to me in Japan, everything I am and want to become - all of it wiped out of my mind? No.'
        Mariko shuddered at the thought of being erased, remade, so utterly controlled.
        'But why? ' Joanna demanded. In frustration she slammed one fist onto the table, rattling the teacups and saucers. 'Why did all of this happen? It's insane. It makes no sense.'
        'It makes perfect sense to the people who did it,' Alex said.
        'And it would make sense to us too, if we knew what they know,' Mariko added.
        Alex nodded. 'Right. And we won't be safe until we do know what they know. As soon as we understand what motivated the Lisa-Joanna switch, we can go public, make headlines. When all the secrets are out in the open, the people behind this won't have any reason either to kill us or brainwash us.'
        'No reason except revenge,' Joanna said.
        'There's that; he admitted. 'But maybe it won't matter to them once the game is over.'
        'All right. Then what's next?' Joanna asked.
        Alex said, 'Mariko-san, you have an uncle who's a psychiatrist. Sometimes does he use hypnotic regression to help his patients?'
        'Yes.' For years Mariko had tried to persuade Joanna to see Uncle Omi, but always without success.
        To Joanna, Alex said, 'He can pry open the memory block and help you recall things we need to know.'
        Joanna was skeptical. 'Yeah? Like what?'
        'Like the name of the man with the mechanical hand.'
        Joanna bit her lip, scowled. 'Him? But what's it matter. He's just a man in a nightmare.'
        'Oh? Don't you remember what you said about him on Wednesday?'
        Joanna shifted uneasily in her chair, glanced at Mariko, looked down at the table, and focused on her own