TESS ARRIVED BACK at the meeting place to find Jackson pacing, as if he expected she wouldn’t show up. She was actually ten minutes early.
He’d bought maple taffy from the confectioner and a gothic novel he “just happened to see in a window.” She took both without comment and squelched a pang of guilt. He’d gone out of his way to find things that might cheer her up. The problem was, given the way he’d talked earlier, she felt less flattered than manipulated, as if he thought her such a silly girl that candies and paperback novels would erase any ill will between them.
She moved the conversation directly onto the safer terrain of their investigation, and they spent the next couple of hours piecing together what they’d learned. They concluded that it seemed as if the work in Sainte-Suzanne might have been a step between Dr. Hebb’s work and Dr. Cameron’s experiments. Hebb had studied sensory deprivation as humanely as possible, with willing and mentally sound subjects. Cameron seemed to have used mentally ill subjects who, while still volunteers, would be less able to grant objective permission, and judging from the scene Tess had witnessed, there’d been psychological coercion involved.
The Sainte-Suzanne study used mental patients, primarily those suffering from depression. It employed methods of sensory deprivation much less humane than Hebb’s, while adding sedatives in an attempt to counteract the negative impact. Compared to Hebb’s—and presumably Cameron’s—methods, the ones at Sainte-Suzanne seemed almost primitively brutal.
“Maybe they’re supposed to be,” Tess said as Jackson commented on that. “Primitive so they can be reproduced easily, outside a laboratory. Brutal because they’re not intended to be used on willing subjects.”
Jackson shook his head. “You can’t do that, Te—Thérèse. Like I said, there are rules. Codes of ethics that apply to all research, and the only point of doing research is to test legal drugs or therapeutic methods or get published, meaning there’s no point ducking the codes.”
“What if the application is for someone who doesn’t have any rights?”
“Everyone has rights.”
“Even prisoners of war?”
He stopped and looked at her. Confused at first. Then excitement lit his gray eyes, and Tess’s gut clenched with a pang of grief for something she’d had and lost.
She barely knew him. That’s what she’d been telling herself, sitting in her dorm room for the last two hours. She’d met him three days ago. A passing acquaintance. If they’d parted ways after their fight, perhaps in a few years she would be unable to picture him. In a decade, she might have forgotten his name. Someday, if she came back to Montreal, she might think, I knew a boy here once, didn’t I?
Except that wasn’t true at all. She wouldn’t forget what he looked like. Wouldn’t forget his name. Wouldn’t forget him. And that only made it so much worse. To meet someone who made an indelible impression and then lose him so quickly, realizing she’d never really known him at all, that he’d used her, she really wished she could forget he’d ever existed.
Tess swallowed, dropped her gaze and busied herself making a meaningless note in her book as she said casually, “It’s a possibility then?”
“It’s the missing piece, Tess. Hebb’s work was funded by defense, ostensibly to study brainwashing because they feared what it did to their soldiers. And Cameron, who by his own admission was influenced by Hebb, seems to be working for the CIA. The CIA has been trying to perfect brainwashing for years. They fostered the large-scale production of LSD, and they led the expedition that discovered magic mushrooms. They thought those drugs were the key to manipulating behavior.”
As he talked, his face lit up and his eyes glowed, and she saw again that brilliant, intense and complex boy. At first glance dark and cold but, filled with tamped-down energy just waiting for a spark to ignite it, and then blazing so brightly she couldn’t look away.
“We still have lots of work to do confirming this,” he said. “But as a theory, it’s perfect. Whoever was in charge at Sainte-Suzanne was building on Hebb’s work in a less-than-ethical way. That’s why the experiments weren’t conducted here at McGill. No one would give permission to put mentally ill subjects in boxes, padded or not. But if you wanted a cheap and easily replicated method of inducing sensory deprivation, that works. Sedate the subjects enough that they don’t struggle but not so much that they’re unaware of their surroundings. Those scratches we saw and the voices you heard were the result of attempts to find the right dosage, which would vary with each patient.”
He settled back, smiling now. “There we have it. A working theory. Thanks to you.”
“The question then is, how does it connect to us? You said your mother suffered from postpartum depression. We know the house at Sainte-Suzanne opened before you were born and was still operating a couple of years afterward, so…”
She trailed off then, seeing his expression. The grin had fallen away, replaced by a dawning horror and then shame.
“I…I wasn’t thinking of that,” Jackson said. “The connection. The victims. Obviously, I shouldn’t be gloating over finding a possible answer when my own mother…”
Tess wanted to reach out for him then. Put a hand on his arm. She settled for softening her voice and saying, “I’m also happy we might be on the same track. It doesn’t mean we’re okay with what happened. Or that we forget who it happened to.”
He nodded, his gaze still lowered. “You’re right though. My mother must have been one of the subjects. She went for help and ended up there and…” He swallowed. “Killed herself. During or after, it doesn’t matter. Obviously, they didn’t cure her. They may have made her worse.” A few minutes passed before he looked up sharply, cursing as he did. “Your—I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be…I’m not the only orphan set on this trail, which means I’m not the only person affected. Your mother…or your father…”
“One must have also been a subject. Maybe my mother for the same thing. Depression after she had me.”
“Or because of your power. Retrocognition. That has to come from somewhere. If you thought it might be a sign of mental illness, there’s a good chance whoever in your family had it thought the same. That would be a reason to seek help, and then possibly end up in an experiment like this.”
“I guess so.”
“We need to find out exactly what was going on at Sainte-Suzanne. It seems as if it wasn’t a school-funded experiment, but the people involved did have a connection to McGill. If it’s only been sixteen years, they should still be alive to answer questions once we have proof. We can make them answer. My parents will help with that. For now, I’ll start asking around—”
“No,” she blurted out. “You have to be careful. If this wasn’t a sanctioned experiment, then you can’t go asking people about it. You saw how that research assistant acted.”
“I don’t mean I’d go surveying the psych department, Tess. I’ll be careful, and I promise I won’t bring your name into it. I’d never put you in danger like that.”
“Then don’t put yourself in it either. Please.”
He glanced over at her then, and there was an odd look in his eyes, almost hopeful. She realized her words could be interpreted as I’ve moved past all that other stuff, so she hurried on. “Just because I’m upset over what you did doesn’t mean I’d ever want anything to happen to you.”
That hopeful look vanished, replaced by such sharp disappointment that she cursed under her breath. Where was the middle ground here?
“Let’s just get back to this,” she said. “There’s no reason we can’t work together civilly. Maybe we’re not adults, but we can act like it, right?” She smiled a little when she said that, trying to lighten the mood, but his gaze only shunted away, his mouth tightening.
“I don’t want to work together civilly, Tess. I want to know what I can do to make you forgive me.”
“I—”
“I like you.” A flash of something like mortification in his eyes. “I don’t mean I like—of course, I like…” He seemed to get tangled in his words and slowed down. “I think you’re great. You’re…” He struggled for a word. “Interesting.” His face flushed. “That sounds stupid. You’re lots of things, and I like that. You’re pretty and—” Another look of horror. “I shouldn’t start with that. Obviously you’re pretty, but it’s not the most important thing, but you’re also smart, and you’re funny, and—” He took a deep breath. “Let’s just go back to the beginning. I like you.”
He met her gaze and waited.
“All right…” she said.
“That means I don’t want to be business partners, Tess. I want to keep getting to know you. I want to be friends and maybe if…” He trailed off. “I like you.”
“Is that what you think I want?”
His face screwed up. “What?”
“You’re trying to figure out how to get me to forgive you. You think that’s how to do it. Tell me nice things. Say you like me. Because I’m a girl, and you’re a boy, and you’re cute, so naturally, that’s what I’d want to hear.”
“I’m not—”
“Can we drop it? I’m allowed to be upset by what you did, Jackson. Pretending you like me is only going to make it worse.”
He shot to his feet so fast it startled her. He walked three steps. Then he turned and threw up his hands. “I can’t win here. I just can’t win. Do you really think I’m the kind of guy who’d lie about liking you? If I was, wouldn’t I be a little better at it?”
“I’m not trying to fight, Jackson. I just want to drop this and get some work done.”
“We’ve done enough for today. If you want to do more, see if there’s anything you can dig up in the library before it closes. I’m going to do some research of my own—figure out who at McGill might be connected to Hebb and Cameron. Is that good? Is that civil enough for you, Thérèse?”
His eyes blazed, but she answered calmly, “Yes. Should we meet up in the morning? Breakfast?”
He glowered, turned on his heel and stomped to the end of the walkway, but he couldn’t quite do it, and he paused for a few seconds before growling, “Seven thirty. At your dorm,” and then he stormed off.