Ronnie suppressed a sob. "No, Daddy, don't let them take away my brain. Please—" Dad stood very tall and very stiff, not even looking at him. "They won't take your brain, just your memory for the past two years."
A corner of Mom's mouth twitched. "David, I didn't want anything like this. I thought maybe Ronnie could have a few private psychiatric treatments. They can do wonderful things now—permi-hypnosis, creations of artificial psychic blocks. A memory-wash would mean that Ronnie'd have the mind of a six-year-old child again. He'd have to start to school all over again."
Dad returned to his chair. He buried his face in trembling hands, and some of his anger seemed replaced by despair. "Lord, Edith, I don't know what to do."
He looked up abruptly, as if struck by a chilling new thought. "You can't keep a two-year memory-wash a secret. I never thought of that before. Why, that alone would mean the end of my promotions."
Silence settled over the room, punctuated only by the ticking of the antique clock. All movement seemed frozen, as if the room lay at the bottom of a cold, thick sea.
"David," Mom finally said.
"Yes?"
"There's only one solution. We can't destroy two years of Ronnie's memory—you said that yourself. So we'll have to take him to a psychiatrist or maybe a psychoneurologist. A few short treatments—"
Dad interrupted: "But he'd still remember how to read, unconsciously anyway. Even permi-hypnosis would wear off in time. The boy can't keep going to psychiatrists for the rest of his life."
Thoughtfully he laced his fingers together. "Edith, what kind of a book was he reading?"
A tremor passed through Mom's slender body. "There were three books on his bed. I'm not sure which one he was actually reading."
Dad groaned. "Three of them. Did you burn them?"
"No, dear, not yet."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. Ronnie seemed to like them so much. I thought that maybe tonight, after you d seen them—"
"Get them, damn it. Let's burn the filthy things."
Mom went to a mahogany chest in the dining room, produced three faded volumes. She put them on the hassock at Dad's feet.
Dad gingerly turned a cover. His lips curled in disgust as if he were touching a rotting corpse.
"Old," he mused, "—so very old. Ironic, isn't it? Our lives are being wrecked by things that should have been destroyed and forgotten a hundred years ago."
A sudden frown contorted his dark features.
Tick-de-tock, tick-de-tock, said the antique clock.
"A hundred years old," he repeated. Hi............