Free Brain Child by John Saul Page B

human beings yet.”
    Marshall Lonsdale’s desperation was reflected in his eyes. “Raymond Torres knows more about the human brain than anybody else alive. And some of the reconstruction work he’s done is just this side of incredible. I’d say it
was
incredible if I hadn’t seen the results myself. I want him to work on Alex.”
    “Marsh—”
    But Marsh was on his feet, his eyes fixed on the pile of X rays, CAT scans, lab results, graphs, and other documentation pertaining to the damage his son’s brain had sustained. “He’s still alive, Frank,” he said. “And as long as he’s alive, I have to try to help him. I can’t just leave him alone—you can see what he’ll be like as well as I can. He’ll be a vegetable, Frank. My God, you told me so yourself just now. Nothing can hurt him anymore, Frank. All Torres can do is help. Call him for me. Tell him what’s happened, and that I want to talk to him. Just talk to him, that’s all. Just get me in to see him.”
    When Frank Mallory still hesitated, Marshall Lonsdale spoke once more. “Alex is all I have, Frank. I can’t just let him die.”
    When he was alone, Frank Mallory picked up the phone and dialed the number of Raymond Torres’s office in Palo Alto, twenty miles away. After talking to him for thirty minutes, he finally convinced Torres to see Marsh Lonsdale and look at Alex’s case.
    The doctor made no promises, but he agreed to talk, and to look.
    Privately, Frank half-hoped Torres would turn Marsh down.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Exhaustion was overtaking Marsh, and he was beginning to feel that the situation was hopeless. He’d been in Raymond Torres’s offices for most of the day, and for most of the day he’d been by himself. Not that it hadn’t been interesting; it had, despite the overriding fear for his son’s life that had never left his consciousness since the moment he had arrived that morning.
    He’d stared at the Institute through bleary eyes. The building itself was a bastard—it had obviously started out as a home, and an imposing one. But from the central core of the mansion—for a mansion it had been—two wings had spread, and no attempt had been made to make them architecturally compatible with the original structure. Instead, they were sleekly functional, in stark contrast with the Georgian massiveness of the core. The buildings were surrounded by a sprawling lawn dotted with trees, and only a neat brass plaque mounted on the face of a large rock near the street identified the structure: INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMAN BRAIN .
    Inside, a receptionist had led him immediately to Raymond Torres’s office, where he’d turned all of Alex’s records over to the surgeon himself, who, without so much as glancing at them, had given them to an assistant. When the assistant had disappeared, Torres had offered him a chair, then spent what Marsh thought was an unnecessarily long time lighting his pipe.
    It took Marsh only a few seconds to decide that there was nothing of Torres’s scientific reputation in either his manner or his bearing. He was tall, and his chiseled features were carefully framed by prematurely graying hair in a manner that seemed to Marsh more suitable for a movie star than a scientist. The star image was further enhanced by the perfectly cut tan silk suit Torres wore, and the cool casualness of his posture. For all his fine credentials, the first impression Raymond Torres gave his visitor was that of a society doctor more interested in the practice of golf than in the practice of medicine.
    Nor was Marsh’s instinctive dislike of the man alleviated by the fact that once the pipe was lit, the meeting had lasted only long enough for Torres to tell him that there would be no decision made until his staff had been able to analyze Alex’s case, and that the analysis would take most of the day.
    “I’ll wait,” Marsh had said. From behind his desk, Raymond Torres had shrugged with apparent disinterest. “As you wish, but I could