Regina’s Song. David Eddings

in his office.

      In August of that year that I had an even more personal tragedy. My folks had visited the Greenleafs one Friday evening, and as they were on their way home, they encountered what the cops refer to as a “high-speed chase.” A local drunk who’d had his driver’s license revoked after repeated arrests for “driving while intoxicated” got himself all liquored up in a downtown bar, and the cops spotted his car wandering around on both sides of Colby Avenue, one of the main streets in Everett. When the lush heard the siren and saw the red light flashing behind him, he evidently remembered the judge’s warning when his license had been lifted. The prospect of twenty years in the slammer evidently scared the hell out of him, so he stomped on his gas pedal. The cops gave chase, of course, and it was estimated that the drunk was going about ninety when he ran a red light and plowed into my folks. All three of them died in the crash.

      I was completely out of it for a week or so, and Les Greenleaf took over making the funeral arrangements, attending to legal matters, and dealing with a couple of insurance companies.

      I’d already enrolled for my first quarter of grad school that fall, but I called Dr. Conrad and asked him to put me on hold until winter quarter. My dad had been shrewd enough to buy mortgage insurance, so our modest home in north Everett was now mine, free and clear, and the life insurance policies covering both of my parents gave me a chunk of cash. Les Greenleaf suggested some investments, and I suddenly became a capitalist. I don’t imagine that I made Bill Gates very nervous, but at least I’d be able to get through graduate school without working for a living at the same time.

      I’d have really preferred different circumstances, though.

      I kept my job at the door factory—not so much for the wages as for something to keep me busy. Sitting at home wallowing in grief wouldn’t have been a very good idea. I’ve noticed that guys who do that are liable to start hitting the bottle. After what’d happened in August, I wasn’t too fond of drunks, or eager to join the ranks of the perpetually sauced-up.

      I made fairly frequent trips to Seattle that fall. I didn’t want the university to slip into past tense in my mind, so I kept it right in front of me. As long as I was there anyway, I did a bit of preliminary work on my Melville-Milton theory. The more I dug into Paradise Regained, the more convinced I became that Billy Budd was derivative.

      It was in late November, I think, when Mr. and Mrs. Greenleaf and I actually got some good news for a change. Renata—we had agreed among ourselves by then that it almost certainly was Renata in that private sanitarium—woke up. She stopped talking exclusively in twin-speak and began answering questions in English.

      Our frequent contacts with Dr. Fallon, the chief of staff at the institution, had made us aware that twin-speak was common—so common, in fact, that it had a scientific name—”cryptolalia.” Dr. Fallon told us that it shows up in almost all cases of multiple births. The secret language of twins isn’t all that complicated, but a set of quintuplets can invent a language so complex that its grammar book would run to three volumes.

      When Renata stopped speaking in cryptolalia, though, her first question suggested that she wasn’t out of the woods yet. When a patient wakes up and says, “Who am I?” it usually gets the psychiatrist’s immediate attention.

      The private sanitarium where she was being treated was up at Lake Stevens, and I rode up with Les and Inga on a rainy Sunday afternoon to visit her.

      The rest home was several cuts above a state-supported mental hospital, which is usually built to resemble various other state institutions where people are confined. This one was back among the trees on about five acres near the lakeshore, and there was a long, curving drive leading to a large, enclosed interior court, complete with a gate and a guard. It was obviously an institution of some kind, but a polite one. It was a place where wealthy people could stash relatives whose continued appearance in public had become embarrassing.

      Dr. Wallace Fallon had an imposing office, and he was a slightly balding man in his midfifties. He cautioned us not to push Renata.

      “Sometimes all it takes to restore an amnesiac’s memory is a familiar face or a familiar turn of phrase. That’s why I’ve asked you three to stop by, but let’s be very, very careful. I’m fairly sure that Renata’s amnesia is a way to hide from the death of her sister. That’s something she’s not ready to face yet.”

      “She will recover, won’t she?” Inga demanded.

      “That’s impossible to say right now. I’m hoping that your visit will help her start regaining her memory—bits and pieces of it, anyway. I’m certain that she won’t remember what happened to her sister. That’s been totally blotted out. Let’s keep this visit fairly short, and we’ll want it light and general. I have her mildly sedated, and I’ll watch her very closely. If she starts getting agitated, we’ll have to cut the visit short.”

      “Would hypnotism bring her out of it?” I asked him.

      “Possibly, but I don’t think it’d be a good idea right now. Her amnesia’s a hiding place, and she needs that for the time being. There’s no way to know how long she’ll need it. There have been cases where an amnesiac never recovers his memory. He lives a normal life—except that he has no memory of his childhood. Sometimes, his memory’s selective. He remembers this, but doesn’t remember that. We’ll have to play it by ear and see just how far she’s ready to go.”

      “Let’s go see her,” Inga said abruptly.

      Dr. Fallon nodded and led us out of his office and down a hallway.

      Renata’s room was quite large and comfortable-looking. Everything about it was obviously designed to suggest a calm stateliness. The carpeting was deep and lush, the furniture was traditional, and the window drapes were a neutral blue. A hotel room in that class would probably cost a hundred dollars a night. Renata was sitting in a comfortable reclining chair by the window, placidly looking out at the rain writhing down to sweep the lake.

      “Renata,” Dr. Fallon said gently, “Your parents have come to visit you, and they’ve brought a friend.”

      She smiled rather vaguely. “That’s nice,” she replied in a fuzzy sort of voice. Dr. Fallon’s definition of “mildly sedated” might have differed from mine by quite a bit. It looked to me as if Renata was tranked to the eyeballs. She looked rather blankly at her parents with no sign of recognition.

      Then she saw me. “Markie!” she squealed. She scrambled to her feet and came running across the room to hurl herself into my arms, laughing and crying at the same time. “Where have you been?” she demanded, clinging to me desperately. “I’ve been lost here without you.” I held her while she cried, and I stared at her parents and Dr. Fallon in absolute bafflement. It was obvious from their expressions that they had no more idea of what was going on than I did.

FIRST MOVEMENT ADAGIO

       CHAPTER ONE

      “What’s happening here?” Les Greenleaf demanded, after Renata had been sedated into a peaceful slumber and we’d returned to Fallon’s office. “I thought you told us that she has total amnesia.”

      “Evidently, it’s not quite as total as we thought,” Fallon replied, grinning broadly. “I think this might be a major breakthrough.”

      “Why does she recognize Mark and not us?” Inga sounded offended.

      “I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Fallon confessed, “but the fact that she recognizes somebody is very significant. It means that her past isn’t a total blank.”

      “Then she’ll get her memory back?” Inga asked.

      “Some of it, at least. It’s too early to tell how much.”