Death Match

“No, I didn’t. If it’s a problem—”

“Oh, no. Everything else checks out.” The man recovered quickly. “You do understand, of course, that you won’t be formally accepted as a candidate until after today’s evaluation?”

“Yes.”

“And that if you are not accepted, your application fee of $1,000 is nonrefundable?”

“Yes.” There had been no application fee, of course, but the man didn’t have to know everything. Lash was relieved: clearly, Vogel didn’t know his real purpose in being here. Lash had told Mauchly emphatically that he wanted to be treated as a real candidate, see everything the Thorpes and the Wilners had seen.

“Any questions before we begin?” When Lash shook his head, Vogel drew a card from around his neck, strung on a long black cord. Lash looked at it curiously: it was pewter-colored, with an iridescence that did not completely hide the gold-green of microprocessing inside. Eden’s infinity logo was embossed on one side. Vogel ran the card through the reader by the nearest door, and it sprang open with a click.

The room beyond seemed little wider than the hallway. There was a digital camera on a tripod inside, and a painted X on the floor beyond the camera.

“Please stand on the cross and look at the lens. I’m going to ask you two questions. Answer them as completely and as truthfully as you can.” And Vogel took up position behind the camera. Almost immediately, a tiny red light glowed on its upper housing.

“Why are you here?” Vogel asked.

Lash hesitated for just a moment, remembering the tapes he’d watched in the Flagstaff house. If I’m going to do this at all, he thought, I should do it right. And that meant honesty, avoiding easy or cynical answers.

“I’m here because I’m searching for something,” he replied. “For an answer.”

“Describe one thing you did this morning, and why you think we should know about it.”

Lash thought. “I caused a traffic jam.”

Vogel said nothing, and Lash went on.

“I was on I-95, coming into the city. I’ve got an E-ZPass unit for the windshield so I don’t have to pay cash at the tu

He stopped, wondering why this of all things had come to mind. Then he realized it was, in fact, in character. If he’d been here for himself, for real, he’d have said something equally mundane. It wasn’t like him to cough up a teary-eyed story about how he’d embarked on a quest for the woman of his dreams.

“I guess I mention this because it reminds me of my father,” Lash went on. “He was very combative over the little things, as if it was a personal grudge match between him and life. Maybe I’m more like him than I realized.”

He fell silent, and after a moment the red light went out.

“Thank you, Dr. Lash,” Vogel said. He stepped away from the camera. “And now, if you’d follow me, please?”

They returned to the small central hallway, and Vogel swiped his card through the reader of the adjoining door. The room beyond was larger than the first. It contained a chair and a desk, on which sat a small Lucite cube holding sharpened pencils. Once again, the room was unrelievedly white. The ceiling was entirely covered in squares of frosted plastic. All these little rooms, identical in color and lack of decoration, each being used for a single purpose: they seemed to Lash almost like a genteel version of an interrogation suite.

Vogel motioned Lash to sit down. “Our tests run on a clock, but only to make sure that you complete the necessary battery by the end of the day. You have one hour, and I think you’ll find it plenty of time. There are no right or wrong answers. If you have any questions, I’ll be just outside.” He laid a large white envelope on the desk, then left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

There was no clock, so Lash removed his watch and laid it on the table. He picked up the envelope, upended it into his hand. Inside was a thin test manual and a blank score sheet:

Lash sca

He became aware of the ticking of his watch. With a sigh, he took one of the pencils from the Lucite cube and turned to the first question.

1. I enjoy watching large parades.

Lash did, so he shaded in the o in the “agree” column.

2. I sometimes hear voices other people claim not to hear.

A smoking gun if ever he’d seen one. No right or wrong answers — yeah, sure. If he answered in the positive, the ranking on his schizophrenia scale would increase. He shaded in the “strongly disagree” o.

3. I never lose my temper.

Lash recognized this question type by its use of the word “never.” All personality tests contained so-called validity scales: questions that could indicate whether the test-taker was lying, or exaggerating, or faking something like bravery (for police department applicants) or mental illness (for disability compensation). Lash knew that if you claimed too often never to feel fear, never to have told a fib, never to be moody, your lie scale would become elevated and your test thrown out as invalid. He shaded in the “disagree” o.

4. Most people tell me I’m an outgoing person.

This question skewed toward the extrovert/introvert scale. In such tests, extroversion was looked upon as a favorable trait. But Lash preferred his privacy. He again shaded the “disagree” oval.

The pencil point snapped and he cursed under his breath. Five minutes had already passed. If he was going to do this, he’d have to take the test like a typical person, filling in the answers instinctively rather than analyzing each one. He reached for a fresh pencil and reapplied himself to the task.

By ten o’clock, he had completed the battery of questions and been given a five-minute break. Then Vogel seated him again at the desk, left for a moment, and returned with another white envelope and the coffee Lash had requested: decaffeinated, the only kind offered. Lash opened the new envelope and found it contained a battery of cognitive intelligence tests: verbal comprehension; visual-spatial; a memory battery. Once again, the tests were longer and more thorough than he’d experienced before, and by the time he was done it was nearly eleven.