He picked up his pen and began to write:

Hypnotic Regression: Clinical Therapy Trials

Subject 224 Joanna Clifford 2nd year arts (English)

Age: 19

Attitude:

He chewed the end of the pen and glanced at her again. Then he put “enthusiastic but open minded” in the column.

Historical aptitude:

Again he paused. She had shrugged when they asked her the routine questions to determine roughly her predisposition to accurate invention.

“Average, I suppose,” she had replied with a smile. “O-level history. Boring old Disraeli and people like that. Not much else. It’s the present I’m interested in, not the past.”

He eyed her sweater and figure-hugging jeans and wrote as he had written on so many other record sheets: Probably average.

Professor Cohen had finished his preliminary tests. He turned to Sam. “The girl’s a good subject. There’s a deep trance established already. I shall begin regressing her now.”

Sam turned back to the window. At the beginning of the series of tests he had waited expectantly at this stage, wondering what would be revealed. Some subjects produced nothing, no memories, no inventions; some emerged as colorful characters who enthralled and amazed him. But for days now they had been working with routine ill-defined personalities who replied in dull monosyllables to all the questions put to them and who did little to further their research. The only different thing about this girl-as far as he knew-were her looks: those put her in a class by herself.

The snow was thickening, whirling sideways, blotting out the buildings on the far side of the street, muffling the sound of the car tires moving north toward the city. He did not bother to listen to the girl’s words. Her soft English voice sounded tired and blurred under hypnosis, and he would have to listen again and again to the tape anyway as Cohen transcribed it and tried to fathom where her comments, if there were any, came from.