Unchained Memory (The Interstellar Rescue Series Book 1) Read online

  “I’m afraid we may not have enough time. She seems . . . fragile.”

  “Asia Burdette? Surely you aren’t suggesting she’s suicidal? That woman’s a survivor if I’ve ever seen one.”

  Ethan turned to look at him. “No, not suicidal. Just . . . stretched thin. To the point where something has to give.”

  “Stretched thin—I’ll have to review my medical journals for that new clinical term.”

  “It may not be precise, but I imagine you know what I mean.”

  “And if she is at the point where something has to give, isn’t that the best time to intervene with therapy?”

  He said nothing. His friend was right, of course. Why did he feel so strongly that there was something else at work in Asia’s case?

  After a moment, Claussen exhaled a paternal “humpf.” “Have you had any luck getting her to open up about herself? What she does with her free time, for example? Boyfriends, sex, that kind of thing?”

  Ethan immediately flushed hot with a reaction that was both primal and totally inappropriate. Hell, no, he hadn’t asked her about any boyfriends. His muscles clenched to think of her with someone . . . else. Jesus Christ! Was he actually feeling possessive? He resented the fact that Claussen had even asked the question.

  Horrified, he stumbled over an answer. “We’ve, uh, the sessions so far have been focused on the night of the fire.”

  Claussen pushed himself up from his position on the couch. He laid a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “You know what I think? I think you’re a lonely young man who is letting an attractive woman with a compelling problem interfere with his professional detachment. Perhaps this was a mistake. Maybe I should take her case back and try to resolve it myself.”

  Ethan struggled to recover his composure. He responded with a grin he hoped didn’t look too forced.

  “Not on your life, old man. This is the most interesting case you’ve sent me in months. And I’m just starting to establish a rapport.”

  The hand on his shoulder tightened slightly. “All right. But be careful, Doctor. Avoiding emotional attachment—”

  “—is the most imperative rule of psychotherapy,” Ethan finished for him, his anger subsiding into mere irritation. “Didn’t I read that on a wall plaque somewhere?”

  The mentor seemed unaware of the depth of his protégé’s turmoil. “You were the best research assistant I ever had at the Institute, Ethan. I would give a lot to have you back, even now. Despite your mule-headed obstinacy.” He patted Ethan’s shoulder in dismissal and moved toward the front door.

  Ethan ignored Claussen’s clumsy enticement to take up his old position at the Psychogenesis Institute. Any response usually led to the same long, fruitless discussion they’d had many times before. He simply walked the doctor to the door and followed him out onto the porch. The rain dripped rhythmically off the eaves and onto the boxwood under the windows. He shivered in the chilly air.

  “A pleasure to see you as always, Dr. Claussen.” He smiled. “Despite the insults.”

  “No, it is my pleasure, Dr. Roberts.” The old man smirked. “Insults included.”

  Claussen clumped down the steps and got behind the wheel of his late-model Cadillac. No skimping on luxuries there, Ethan thought. The man who actually had been a college professor in the 1960s now showed little sign of it. Instead, he looked more like the successful doctor in private practice that he had been for thirty years. Ethan saw quite clearly the path the doctor had tried to lay out for his protégé.

  The only question was why he couldn’t bring himself to walk it.

  It was a slow day at the Music Rowe office.

  JW Rowe himself was in L.A., trying to wrangle a crossover deal for one of his better performers. The wannabe country stars that normally haunted the office had been made aware of the great man’s absence and were away pacing the floors of their apartments or practicing their guitar pickin’, awaiting his return. Rita and I had the place to ourselves.

  “Now here’s a story for you.” Rita grinned at the newspaper she’d spread across the desk. “‘Taken for a Ride? Locals Claim Alien Abduction.’”

  I laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “‘Brentwood resident Myrna Hofstetter woke up one night last year to see a half-dozen small, gray beings with enormous black eyes standing around her bed,’” Rita read. “‘She tried to scream, but found she was unable to move or make a sound. “I knew they were aliens,” Hofstetter said. “It was real. It wasn’t a dream. I was desperate to get away, but I couldn’t do a thing.” The beings took her to their ship, Hofstetter claims, where they conducted experiments on her.’”

  “Oh, for chrissake.” I made no secret of my opinion. “Where do they find these nuts?”

  “Oh, but wait—there’s more! ‘Austin Green—sounds like one of our clients, doesn’t he?—a carpenter from Bowling Green, Kentucky, says the aliens took him right up out of his truck on a lonely country road last summer.’” Rita affected a heavy country accent. “‘My radio got all screwed up. Then my truck just stalled out. Next thing I know I’m riding this big beam of light up to their ship,’ Green said.’”

  Rita kept reading, but I was no longer listening. The blood had drained from my head into my feet, leaving me cold and shaking. A truck. A lonely country road. Then something unexplainable. Austin Green might have been crazy, but I knew that feeling. Deep in my gut I could feel his disorientation, his terror, his disbelief. What was happening to him—what had happened to him—made no rational sense. I suspected that even now, months later, Austin Green didn’t understand what had happened that night. His explanation was aliens. It could just as well have been pixie dust or time travel or a rift in the space-time continuum. Nothing could explain it, really. Austin Green’s life had been changed forever, just as mine had, and there was no explanation.

  “Hey! What was the name of that doctor you’re seeing?” Rita said. “Isn’t it Roberts?”

  “What?” I had to force myself back into the present.

  “Your shrink—the new guy you’ve been seeing.” Rita looked up and demanded my attention. “His name is Roberts, right?”

  “Yeah. Ethan Roberts. Why?”

  Rita studied the newspaper. “Says here, ‘Nashville psychiatrist Dr. Ethan Roberts specializes in treating the victims of these so-called abductions. He is neutral on the subject of whether the abductions are real. “The people I see are unhappy. Their lives have been disrupted, sometimes profoundly. Whether or not the experience they believe they’ve had is real, their suffering certainly is. It’s my job to help them through that.”’” Rita looked up again from the desk. “Sounds like a sensible approach.”

  I was well aware there was a question behind Rita’s comment, but I wasn’t inclined to answer it. I shrugged.

  “I suppose.”

  “Don’t guess you’ve been seeing any little gray men lately?”

  I laughed shortly. “Girl, I haven’t been seeing men of any description lately. And just because Dr. Roberts has some wacko patients doesn’t mean he can’t help me. He is a psychiatrist, after all. If his patients were normal we wouldn’t need to be seeing him.”

  “All right, all right.” Rita tried to placate me. “But it does say here that Roberts’s colleagues think he’s a little eccentric himself. Guess it’s not the best thing to be seen as an expert in treating alien abductees. What do you think of him?”

  I didn’t have to think long. “I trust him. I don’t know yet whether he can help me, but I think I’m ready to let him try. I don’t think I care that other folks consider him odd.”

  “Um-hmm.” Rita smiled before returning to her newspaper.

  The warmth that had kindled in my chest in response to Ethan’s name rose to inflame my cheeks. There was no use denying what Rita obviously assumed. As inappropriate as it was, I was attracted to Ethan Roberts. That could be a positive thing—it might keep me going back to him long enough for him to do me some good. After all, if he could
help the Myrna Hofstetters and Austin Greens of the world, he ought to be able to help me. I wasn’t anywhere near that crazy.

  “What the hell is that?”

  I stopped short as I entered Ethan’s office. An element of cold, hard technology had been introduced into the cozy room. The machine on his desk was no bigger than a desktop computer and looked harmless enough. But for reasons I could not identify, it filled me with foreboding.

  The doctor laid an affectionate hand on the top of the machine. “It’s an alpha wave synchronizer, but I just call it AL.”

  I dredged up a smile, but I stayed where I was. “Is that for me?”

  “Yes. It’s part of the therapeutic regimen. Does it bother you?”

  I knew he could see that it did. Still, I couldn’t explain my reaction, even to myself. I made an effort to lighten up.

  “What are you going to do—scan me for alien implants?”

  Ethan flashed me an embarrassed grin. My stomach fluttered in response.

  “Oh, you heard about that, did you? My not-so-secret life as an alien buster.” He came from behind his desk to steer me to the couch with a gentle touch at my elbow. More fluttering. I sat, trying to control my breath; he took the armchair beside me.

  “I try to avoid talking to reporters, but every time they do one of these stories they come looking for me.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “They make it seem like I’m the only psychiatrist in the world who has delusional patients.”

  “So you don’t believe these people have really been abducted by aliens?” I wasn’t sure whether I was teasing him or testing him. Maybe it was a little of both.

  He lifted his shoulders. “Who am I to say? They’re certainly convinced of it when they come in here. But ninety-nine percent of them no longer believe it when they leave.”

  I grinned. “What about the other one percent?”

  “Oh, they really have been abducted by aliens.” He laughed. “No doubt about it.”

  “And this machine”—I examined it with renewed distaste—“I suppose it’s been reverse-engineered from a UFO?”

  The doctor seemed relieved to be back on therapeutic ground. “Actually, it started life as a fairly common psychiatric tool. You’ve heard of biofeedback?”

  “They use it to teach people how to control headaches.”

  He nodded. “Or anxiety or anger. Lots of things. Dr. Claussen and some of his colleagues took a simple biofeedback machine and made some modifications. The machine identifies and amplifies alpha waves—it essentially puts you in an enhanced alpha state. You feel good, you’re calm and relaxed, but you’re also alert and highly aware of what’s going on in your mind. What we’re looking for is a kind of conscious hypnosis in which it will be easier to gain access to any thoughts or feelings you’ve been repressing.”

  My heart began to thud dully in my chest. “What if I haven’t been repressing anything?”

  “Then we’ll have to think of another approach. In any case, you’ll still get the benefits of the relaxation.” He was responding to my discomfort with a big dose of matter-of-fact calm, his entire demeanor communicating, Relax. This is no big deal.

  It wasn’t working, but I had to give him credit for the effort. “I think I saw this once on a Star Trek episode. It didn’t end well.”

  He laughed again. “Don’t worry. I can’t wipe your mind clean or reproduce your personality in an android or mindmeld with you—it’s nothing like that.” He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands open and expressive. “Your mind seals off painful memories and emotions as a way of giving you time to deal with them. In a crisis it’s a useful mechanism—otherwise these things might overwhelm and paralyze you. But over time those sealed packages can cause trouble. We have to open them back up and examine their contents. The synchronizer just convinces the mind that it’s safe to do that.”

  “You’re assuming I’m hiding something about that night.” My anxiety was honing itself to an angry edge.

  “Not consciously.”

  “Unconsciously, then.”

  “That’s what the procedure will tell us.”

  “And what if there’s nothing to find?” Suddenly I was trembling like that rabbit again, trying desperately to decide whether to freeze into invisibility or run like hell for the safety of the warren. I wanted to walk out and never come back. I wanted to take the damn machine and throw it through the window. Only the barest scrap of rational thought kept me in my seat.

  “Like I said—then we take another approach.” He looked at me closely. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re afraid we won’t find an explanation.”

  I met his eyes briefly—he’d hit on it, all right—then I exhaled a tight laugh. “You know, when I read about your other clients, I almost envied them. At least they have an explanation for what happened to them. It may be crazy, but it’s an explanation.” I looked at him again and this time did not look away. “How do they feel when you take that away from them?”

  “Relieved.” He said it as though he believed it, but there was something in his eyes. Could it be the doctor had his own doubts? “Asia, explaining what happened is not the same as understanding it. Explanation is intellectual. Understanding is emotional. An understanding that encompasses acceptance is much more satisfying in the long run.”

  Acceptance. How can I accept it? Three hours are gone and my kids are dead. How is that acceptable?

  “Look, why don’t we just give AL a try? Maybe you’ll see what I mean.”

  I thought about it a moment longer, then I lifted my chin. “All right. Let’s get on with it.”

  “Good.” He got up to retrieve a pillow from the foot of the couch. “You’ll be more comfortable if you lie down. Is that okay?”

  “I guess.” The thought of lying down on his couch had my mind moving in entirely the wrong direction. I squelched that line of thinking and stretched out as he placed the pillow under my head. The act was strangely comforting; it touched me that he was trying so hard to put me at ease.

  I stared at the ceiling—the plaster was veined with tiny cracks—while he puttered around in the room behind me. I heard the soft snick of electronic equipment being turned on, then the room filled with the sound of wind chimes and curtains blowing in a gentle breeze. I felt him moving behind and above me, and a warm, moist cloth appeared to cover my eyes. It smelled deliciously of something I could not identify.

  “My grandmother was Cree, from upstate New York.” His voice was quiet, soothing. “She had an herbal answer for anything that ailed you. Do you like the smell?”

  I murmured assent, too relaxed for words.

  “One of her mixtures. I could tell you the scientific names for what’s in it, but the Indian names are much more colorful.” There was gentle amusement, even fondness, in his voice. I thought I’d have to ask him about his grandmother someday. Right now I didn’t seem to have the energy.

  “In a minute I’ll have to attach some electrodes to your temples and the back of your head. I’m just going to massage those areas a little first, okay?”

  The mention of electrodes sent a spike of apprehension through my chest, but I nodded anyway. I’d agreed to do this; I was determined to see it through.

  At the touch of his fingers at my temples, my fear receded into the back of my mind. His hands were warm with something more than the warmth of circulating blood. It was as if there was a mild current flowing through them, an energy that worked to erase the lines of tension between my eyes and around my mouth. I felt that energy at my temples even after his hands moved behind my head to stimulate twin spots at the base of my skull. Something let go in the muscles of my neck, releasing a long-held tightness.

  Forget the damn machine, I thought, drifting. This is all the therapy I need.

  Just as I was about to suggest to Ethan that he’d missed his true calling, his fingers withdrew, leaving behind only a residual tingling. Then a drop of something cool and gelatinous hit my skin,
just before an electrode was pressed to each spot.

  “We’re all set. Are you ready?”

  I murmured agreement.

  “I’m switching the machine on now. You shouldn’t feel any discomfort.”

  I could barely perceive a low hum as he turned on the machine. I felt no pain, no physical effect at all. I lay and listened to the wind chimes turn in the breeze. I let the sound and the smell of Grandmother’s herbs loosen the knots in my shoulders. I waited without anticipation for the next step.

  After a moment, Ethan spoke. His question wasn’t what I’d expected, but it made perfect sense. His lips close to my ear, his voice intimate and compelling, he asked, and I knew I’d answer without hesitation: “Tell me about your dreams, Asia.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A cold sun rose through a sooty yellow haze, bringing unwelcome dawn. Its reluctant light advanced across the hunched shoulders of the jagged hills, and slowly the naked flanks of rock lifted out of the murky shadows below. In the camp at the base of the ridge, darkness lingered, untouched by the promise of day.

  As she stood in line to receive food, 1408 stamped her feet in the gray dust and shivered. The single layer of the jumpsuit she wore was not enough to keep out the cold, even in the shelter of the barracks. Here on the open ground of the quadrangle, the rough cloth was like a tattered rag fluttering on the stick of her body. She folded in on herself and endured, shuffling forward with the rest toward the warm bowl of sticky, colorless gruel, and the chance to huddle in the lee of the cook shack.

  Fourteen-oh-eight spoke to no one in the line. She had no energy for talk. Food was what she wanted, only that. Until she had it, nothing else interested her. She followed the broad back of the woman in front of her, a woman from her barracks she knew only as the number on the back of her jumpsuit, 6320. Behind her, 4216 kicked dust on her heels with every step, but 1408 did not turn to glare at her. She put her head down and moved on.

  At the cook shack, the wet-dog smell of the boiling grain rode a wave of warmth out of the serving window. If it had not been for the aching emptiness in her stomach, this would have been 1408’s favorite section of the line. She craned her neck to feel the brief heat on her face while she waited to receive the bowl in her reaching hands.