The Key to Midnight

beyond Japan's borders, she would become nauseous and extremely disoriented. Any attempt to escape from the prison to which she was assigned would end in an attack of blind terror and hysteria. Her faceless masters had boxed her up every way that they could: emotionally, intellectually, psychologically, chronologically, and now even geographically. Omi Inamura relieved her of that last restriction.
        Alex was impressed by the cleverness with which Herr Doktor had programmed Joanna. Whoever and whatever else he might be, the man was a genius in his field.
        When Inamura was positive that Joanna could not remember any more about what Herr Doktor had done to her, he took the session in a new direction. He urged her to move further into her past.
        She squirmed in the chair. 'But there's nowhere to go.'
        'Of course there is. You weren't born in that room, Joanna.'
        'Nowhere to go.'
        'Listen carefully,' Inamura said. 'You're strapped in that bed. There's one window. Outside there's a mansard roof against a blue sky. Are you there?'
        'Yes,' she said, more relaxed in this trance than she had been in any of the previous sessions. 'Big black birds are sitting on the chimneys. A dozen big black birds.'
        'You're approximately twenty years old,' Inamura said. 'But now you're growing younger. Minute by minute, you're growing younger. You have not been in that room for a long time. In fact you've just come there, and you haven't yet even met the man with the mechanical hand. You haven't yet undergone a treatment. You're drifting back, back in time. You have just come awake in that room. And now time is running backward even faster… back beyond the moment you were brought into that room… hours slipping away… faster, faster… now days instead of hours… backward in time, flowing like a great river… carrying you back, back, back… Where are you now, Joanna?'
        She didn't respond.
        Inamura repeated the question.
        'Nowhere,' she said hollowly.
        'Look around you.'
        'Nothing:
        'What is your name?'
        She didn't reply.
        'Are you Joanna Rand?'
        'Who?' she asked.
        'Are you Lisa Chelgrin?'
        'Who's she? Do I know her?'
        'What's your name?'
        'I… I don't have a name.'
        'Who are you?'
        'Nobody.'
        'You must be somebody.'
        'I'm waiting to become.'
        'To become Joanna Rand?'
        'I'm waiting,' she said simply.
        'Concentrate for me.'
        'I'm so cold. Freezing.'
        'Where are you?'
        'Nowhere.'
        'What do you see?'
        'Nothing,' she insisted.
        'What do you feel?'
        'Dead.'
        Alex said, 'Jesus.'
        Inamura stared thoughtfully at her. After a while he said, 'I'll tell you where you are, Joanna.'
        'Okay.'
        'You are standing in front of a door. An iron door. Very imposing. Like the door to a fortress. Do you see it?'
        'No.'
        'Try to visualize it,' Inamura said. 'Look closely. You really cannot miss it. The door is huge, absolutely massive. Solid iron. If you could see through to the far side of it, you would find four large hinges, each as thick as your wrist. The iron is pitted and spotted with rust, but the door nevertheless appears impregnable. It's five feet wide, nine feet high, rounded at the top, set in an arch in the middle of a great stone wall.'
         What the devil's he doing? Alex wondered.
        'You see the door now, I'm sure,' Inamura said.
        'Yes,' Joanna agreed.
        'Touch it.'
        Lying in her chair but obviously believing herself to be in front of the door, Joanna raised one hand and tested the empty air.
        'What does the door feel like?' Inamura asked.
        'Cold and rough,' she said.
        'Rap your knuckles on it.'
        She rapped silently on nothing.
        'What do you hear, Joanna?'
        'A dull ringing sound. It's a very thick door.'
        'Yes, it is,' Inamura said. 'And it's locked.'
        Resting in the reclining chair but simultaneously existing in another time and place, Joanna tried the door that only she could see. 'Yeah. Locked.'
        'But you've got to open it,' Inamura said.
        'Why?'
        'Because beyond it lies twenty years of your life. The first twenty years. That's why you can't remember any of it. They've put it behind the door. They've