Vogel scribbled on the control sheet, taking down — Lash knew — his remarks verbatim. “Very good,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go on to the next one. What might this be?”
Lash worked his way through the cards, fighting a growing weariness, trying always to make the responses his own rather than what he knew to be common replies. By one o’clock, Vogel had finished both the response and inquiry phases of the test, and Lash’s headache had grown worse. As he watched Vogel put the cards away, he found himself wondering about all the other applicants who had streamed into the building this morning: were they all squirreled away somewhere on this floor, in their own little testing suites? Had Lewis Thorpe felt as exhausted as he himself did now, as tired of staring at the blank white walls?
“You must be hungry, Dr. Lash,” Vogel said as he closed the box. “Come on. Your lunch is waiting.”
Though he felt no hungrier now than before the inkblots, Lash followed him across the small central space to one of the doors in the far wall. Vogel swiped his card through the reader, and the door sprang open to reveal yet another white room. This, however, had prints on three of its walls. They were simple, well-framed photographs of forests and seacoasts, bereft of people or wildlife, yet Lash’s gaze rested hungrily on them after the sterile emptiness of the morning.
His lunch was laid out on a crisp linen tablecloth: cold poached salmon with dill sauce, wild rice, a sourdough roll, and coffee — decaffeinated, of course. As he ate, Lash felt his appetite return and the headache recede. Vogel, who had left him to dine in peace, returned twenty minutes later.
“What next?” Lash asked, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. He held out little hope his question would be answered, but Vogel surprised him.
“Just two more items,” Vogel said. “The physical examination and the psychological interview. If you’ve finished, we can proceed immediately.”
Lash laid the napkin aside and rose, thinking back again to what the man in the class reunion had said about his own day of testing. So far it had been tiring, even enervating, but nothing worse. A physical exam he could handle. And he’d given enough psychological interviews to know what to expect.
“Lead on,” he said.
Vogel ushered Lash back out into the central space and pointed at one of the two blank doors not yet opened. Vogel swiped his card through the reader, then began scratching something into his palm device with the plastic stylus. “You may proceed, Dr. Lash. Please remove your clothes and put on the hospital gown you’ll find inside. You can hang your things on the door hook.”
Lash entered the new room, closed the door, and looked around as he began undressing. It was an examination room, small but remarkably well equipped for its size. Unlike the previous rooms, there were plenty of items here, but most were of a kind Lash would have preferred not to see: probes, curette and syringe packets, sterile pads. A faint smell of antiseptic hung in the air.
Lash had no sooner donned the gown before the door opened again and a man stepped in. He was short and dark-complexioned, with thinning hair and a bottle-brush moustache. A stethoscope hung from the side pocket of his white coat.
“Let’s see,” he said, examining a folder in his hand. “Dr. Lash. Medical doctor, by chance?”
“No. Doctorate in psychology.”
“Very good, very good,” the doctor said, putting the folder aside and pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Now just relax, Dr. Lash. This shouldn’t take more than an hour.”
“An hour?” Lash said, but fell silent when he saw the doctor poking his finger into a jar of petroleum jelly. Maybe $100,000 isn’t such an outrageous fee, after all, he thought to himself.
The doctor’s estimate proved correct. Over the next sixty minutes, Lash endured a more comprehensive and painstaking physical examination than he’d ever thought possible. EKG and EEG; echocardiogram; samples of urine, stool, mucus membranes, and the epithelial lining of his mouth; an extensive background medical history of both himself and two generations of forebears; checks of reflexes and vision; neurological testing and fine motor control; an exhaustive dermatological examination. There was even a point when the doctor gave him a glass beaker and, leaving the room, asked for a sample of Lash’s ejaculate. As the door closed, Lash stared at the tube — chill in his fingers — and felt a sense of unreality creep over him. Makes sense, a small voice said in his head. Infertility or impotence would be an important concern.
Some time later, he told the doctor he could come in again, and the examination resumed.
“Just the blood work now,” the doctor said at last, arranging a tray containing at least two dozen small glass tubes, currently empty. “Please lean back on the examining table.”
Lash did so, closing his eyes as he felt a rubber tube tightening above his elbow. There was a cold swab of Betadine, a brief probing fingertip, then the sting of a needle sliding home.
“Make a fist, please,” the doctor said. Lash did so, waiting stoically while at least half a pint of blood was drawn. At last, he felt the tension of the rubber release. The doctor slipped out the needle and applied a small bandage in one smooth motion. Then he helped Lash into a sitting position. “How do you feel?”
“I’m okay.”
“Very well. You may proceed to the next room.”
“But my clothes—”
“They’ll be waiting here for you at the close of the interview.”
Lash blinked, digesting this a moment. And then he turned away, toward the central cubicle.
Vogel was there, once again scribbling something on his digital device. He looked up as Lash emerged from the examination room. The normally unflappable face now held an expression Lash couldn’t quite read.
“Dr. Lash,” Vogel said as he slipped the device back into his lab coat. “This way, if you please.” But Lash needed little guidance: there was only one door in the suite that had not yet been opened, and he could guess where the final interview would take place.
When he turned toward it, he found the door already ajar. And the room beyond was unlike any of the others he had seen that day.
THIRTEEN
Lash hesitated in the doorway. Ahead lay a room almost as small as the others, simply furnished: a chair in the center with unusually long armrests; a metal cabinet beside it; a table with a laptop near the rear wall. But Lash’s attention was drawn immediately to the leads that snaked away from the chair to the laptop. He’d sat in on enough interrogations to recognize the setup as a lie detector.
A man was seated behind the table, reading from a folder. Seeing Lash, he stood and came around the table. He was tall and cadaverously thin, his head covered with iron-gray hair, closely cropped. “Thank you, Robert,” the man said to the hovering Vogel. Then he closed the door and wordlessly motioned Lash toward the center chair.
Lash complied, feeling disbelief as the man attached clips to his fingertips, fitted a blood pressure cuff to his wrist.
The man moved out of Lash’s vision for a moment. When he returned, he was holding a red cap in one hand. A long, rainbow-hued ribbon cable was affixed to one side. Dozens of clear plastic discs, each about the size of a dime, had been sewn into the cloth. Two dozen, to be exact, Lash thought grimly. He recognized it as a “red cap,” adult headgear for the Quantitative EEG test, or QEEG, which monitored the frequencies of brain activity. It was usually used for neurological disorders, dissociation, head trauma, and so forth.