False Memory: pp. 376-413 (with additions)

As we last left Dusty and Martie, they had just heard Susan's message on the answering machine that her phantom rapist was none other than Dr. Ahriman, and realized that the clues were there all along. They call Dr. Closterman's office and leave a message with his answering service that they have a medical emergency.  They pass the time waiting for his call-back by putting the cassette with Susan's message into an envelope labeled "Susan," finding Dusty's trigger name in The Manchurian Candidate (Viola Narvilly), and each reading the trigger name and first line of haiku to the other, with frightening results.  When the phone rings, they fear it might be Ahriman, ready to take control, but it turns out to be Closterman.  He doesn't want to talk on the phone, but invites him to his house.  They decide to flee, pack their bags, bring along the gun, and take Valet the dog.

Closterman offers them a beer, but they take only coffee.  After a bit of dancing around, he tells them what he knows.  This is the part I discussed at the outset as the only part of the novel that could be taken as a serious attempt to refute the recovered memory movement.  Closterman says that when some preschool children claimed they had been sexually abused, Ahriman was assigned by the court to interview the children, and he was assigned to examine them for evidence of injury.  Ahriman came away with frightful tales of abuse, but Closterman found no physical evidence of it.  This is when he explains that hypno-regressive therapy is unreliable, especially in children.  Checking around, Closterman learned that something similar happened when Ahriman was practicing in Santa Fe, and that it culminated in a woman, mother of one of Ahriman's child patients, shot her whole family and killed herself.  Unfortunately for Ahriman, the woman's husband, though badly wounded, survived and swore he saw Ahriman at the window during the shootings, watching.  At this point, Ahriman skipped town.  Something similar happened in Scottsdale, Arizona, although with less detail, and Ahriman ended up skipping town there, too.  Dusty decides he wants a beer after all, and Closterman comments that talking about Ahriman does not promote sobriety.  (What is it with these people and alcohol?)


But Closterman did not come forward.  That was because two thugs threatened him.  And, Dusty recognizes, the thugs were not just cheap muscle; they reeked of authority.  Apparently Ahriman is not acting alone.  Someone powerful is behind him.  Closterman and his boyfriend (he is gay) give them all they know about Ahriman's past to investigate.  Dusty tells Closterman that he had an uneasy feeling about New Life Clinic, and Closterman tells him that Ahriman is part-owner.  Dusty and Martie race to the clinic to rescue Skeet.  Along the way, Martie has her worst panic attack yet, as Ahriman commanded.  Dusty uses the triggering name and haiku for the first time, to stop it.


Meanwhile, Ahriman has been doing three things:

1. Playing complex role-playing games without too much regard to the rules.  Ahriman apparently likes role-playing games which actually makes sense.  What he does with patients is, after all, just a giant role-playing game.  The way he mixes the battle of the Alamo up with Al Capone and the FBI is good for a laugh or two, but does nothing to advance the plot.
2. More preening and posturing about how evil he is.  Yeacch!
3. Providing genuinely valuable exposition.  Between the silly game and the annoying preening and posturing, he manages to reveal what the reader already suspects -- that he was the one who gave Martie  The Manchurian Candidate to make the game more exciting.  He is also aware that Dusty has been reading it, but not too concerned.  He also reveals that, as Dusty suspected, his ability to control Skeet after saying "Dr. Yen Lo" without going through the haiku is a malfunction.  In fact, Skeet's brain is so drug-addled that he malfunctions regularly.  Ahriman originally ordered him to commit suicide because he couldn't fully control him.  He heads for the clinic to once again order Skeet to kill himself, not trusting him to be fully controlled over the phone.

The bit about Skeet is useful in that it explains the biggest and most essential anomaly of the novel -- why is Dusty able to control Skeet without going through the proper haiku.  Needless to say, without that little episode, Dusty would never have been able to figure out what was going on.  What it miserably fails to explain is how Skeet was able to write the name "Dr. Yen Lo" every time he was called, for a total of 39 times.  Everyone in the novel, Skeet included, has always gone catatonic upon hearing their trigger name.  So how is Skeet able to keep writing it down?  Nor does it do any good to say that this is malfunction.  The strong implication is that Skeet malfunctions unpredictably.  This would require the same malfunction every time.  In short, unlike numerous other dangling clues, Skeet writing the name of his tormentor over and over is not only unexplained, if violates the whole premise of the story.  It is never explained.  It badly needs explaining.  

Skeet is not actually Ahriman's patient, so Ahriman goes to the clinic on the pretext of visiting one of his real patients there, an unnamed "famous actor."  Ahriman has taken the famous actor as a patient on behalf of his powerful higher-ups, and goes to the clinic to program him to bite the President's nose off as a warning that the President is Getting Too Close.  After programming the actor, Ahriman plans on casually dropping by Skeet and telling him to kill himself.  We also learn that, contrary to Dusty's earlier impression, the New Life Clinic is not staffed by brainwashed pod people.  In fact, "Although a mind-controlled workforce . . . would eliminate demands for increased wages and fringe benefits, the possible complications were not worth risking."  We are not told what those complications are.  Thinking it over, though, it would be difficult for Ahriman to take every employee at New Life Clinic aside for the three sessions, complete with IV stand, needed to establish control without attracting attention. And if clinic employees regularly started acting strangely after being along with Ahriman or receiving mysterious phone calls, that might also be noticed.  

Dusty and Martie show up in Skeet's room after visiting hours, saying his mother is sick.  This manages to create a fine mixture of humor and suspense as the nurse on staff, with the best intentions in the world, goes to warn Ahriman, while Skeet keeps finding one reason after another to delay leaving.  They have escaped by the back exit by the time Ahriman arrives.  He persuades the nurse to check the front while he goes out the back exit.  It is not clear what Ahriman intends to do when he finds them.  Shooting them dead would attract most unwelcome attention.  Ordering Dusty (who has a gun) to commit a double-murder-suicide, would be less suspicious, but reflect unfavorably on the clinic.  Taking control of all three at once is probably not doable.  Whatever he has in mind, we never find out because they take off at high speed before he can catch them.  Ahriman gets a good enough glimpse of Dusty to know that he knows.