Benjamin said nothing, just stared at the terrified girl with the
sprinkling of freckles. At long last, in a dreamy voice, Benjamin said,
“I’ve thought of having Burnofsky wire me.”
“What?”
“But it wouldn’t work, would it. Do you know, Charles? Because
when you wire a brain, you can only connect those things that are
already there. What is there in my brain, in my memory, that could be
tapped for happiness? For joy? When that evil girl, that spawn of Grey
McLure, was in my brain, what was she wiring together? Old hates
and new. Old pain and new pain. Emptiness, brother, you know it’s
true, emptiness. That’s what she made me face. That’s what I couldn’t
pretend away. Wherever she stuck a pin she hit sadness and rage and
pain. And nowhere happiness.”
“There were good times,” Charles said weakly.
Benjamin made a small laugh. “Do you know what memory she
tapped into? Certainly not what she had hoped, but there it was, the
memory of that day, that morning, when Sylvie and Sophie Morgenstein awoke.”
Charles bit his lip and closed his eyes, remembering now as
well.
“How they screamed,” Benjamin said. “Not because they saw us, but because we had made them into us. Pretty twins sewn together. They saw the horror of the rest of their lives stretching out before
them. They saw the horror of being us.”
“They were in pain,” Charles said. “They were startled.” “I was never so happy again as at that moment,” Benjamin said. Charles remained silent. How could he argue? The memory was
clear to him as well. The feeling of …what? Revenge? Yes, revenge.
Not just on the Morgenstein twins, but on everyone who had ever
sneered or mocked or shrieked.
Revenge.
The word must have filtered into Benjamin’s brain because now
he took it up. “Revenge on all of them. On our father and mother. On
life. On God.”
Then Charles swallowed in a dry throat. “Those tactics are no