of the cardboard boxes, which served as the room’s walls.
“This is a nice spot,” she said. “I think there’s some clothes in these boxes by the door. Water’s pretty scarce. If you have to piss or something, go into the cave behind the blue curtain out there and follow that all the way until it dead ends. Actually, you’ll probably want to stop before you get to the very end. You know.”
“Thanks,” Ruppert said.
She lingered, studying his face.
“What is it?” he asked.
“When did they get to you?” Lucia asked.
“Who?”
“Terror,” she said. “I can tell. How long did they keep you?”
“I don’t…I’m not…” Ruppert was so tired he could barely think. He did not know how to handle the question: Lie? Confess? Somewhere in between?
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We can talk later.”
“Thanks.”
She stepped away from him, then slid the paper screen back into place.
The cot creaked as Ruppert lay down on it. He doubted he could rest well in such a strange location, but he was asleep before his eyes were fully closed. His dreams were dark, and he sweated in his sleep.
NINETEEN
Ruppert awoke to the scratchy, hiss-filled melody of Billie Holiday singing “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?” on the record player. He nudged aside the paper screen and joined Lucia and Dr. Smith in the living room area, where Lucia was eating spinach from a can. Smith sat in a threadbare recliner and tinkering with the back of a bulky screen mounted atop an easel.
“More water, more batteries,” Smith was saying. “I can’t have too much of either.”
“I’ll let someone know,” Lucia said. “What about food?”
“I’ve got more than enough to last the rest of my life.” Smith scratched at his beard and looked at Ruppert. “How’s my patient? Swelling? Discomfort?”
“I feel fine,” Ruppert said. “Actually, I haven’t slept that well in years.”
“Have some breakfast.” Lucia handed him a rectangle of metal fitted with a pull tab.
“Sardines?” Ruppert asked. He peeled back the lid to see a dark orange mass under a layer of thick oil.
“Tinned cheese,” Lucia said.
“Can they do that with cheese?”
“They did it. Dig in.” She handed him a spoon.
Ruppert scooped out some of the mushy cheese material, but before he put it in his mouth, he tilted the spoon to let the oil spill back into the tin. The cheese tasted rank and had a slimy texture-it seemed to wriggle around his teeth as he tried to chew it.
“Good?” Lucia asked.
Ruppert forced himself to swallow. “Sure. Thanks.”
She shook her head. “It’s foul.”
“Then why do you get spinach?” Ruppert asked.
'You think it's any better?'
“Don’t tell me you hate the cheese, too.” Dr. Smith leaned over, scooped out some of the cheese with his own spoon, slurped it down. “What’s wrong with that?”
Ruppert slid the tin across the table, closer to Dr. Smith.
“What are you doing here?” Ruppert nodded at the bulky easel screen.
“It’s just a focusing device,” Smith said. “You may not be out of Terror’s pocket yet. We’ll need to check you for programming.”
“You think I'm a computer?'
“Your brain is,” Lucia said. “And they know how to install controls. And if they took you long enough to put in a tracking device…”
“We’re not blaming you if they did,” Smith added. “It’s a necessary precaution on our part. Terror runs all kinds of strange games, and we have to be careful.”
Ruppert looked at the blank screen. “You told me you were involved in creating the PSYCOM.”
“I was one of the first psychos,” Smith said. “That’s what we called ourselves.”
“Why did you change your mind?” Ruppert asked.
“You mean, why did I abandon wealth, influence, and an intimate knowledge of the world’s greatest secrets in exchange for a hole in the ground?”
“Seems like a reasonable question,” Ruppert said.
“Only the poor and the animals are free. George Orwell,' Smith said. 'My old life involved power, duty, secrecy. Now I am free.'
“What changed your mind?” Ruppert asked.
“When I saw our designs unfolding in the real world,” Smith said. “Prior to that, it felt like an abstract intellectual exercise-how to theoretically attain full-spectrum psychological dominion…if one wanted. After Columbus, I watched things we had discussed in comfortable chairs at a conference table begin to unfold, the whole architecture imposed from the top down-the Emergency Detention Centers, the Department of Faith, and of course Terror. When those awful Freedom Brigades began their rampages, burning down neighborhoods and shooting people in the streets, that’s when I left.”
“You just quit?”
“I wish I could have.” Smith chuckled. “No, death was the only way out for me. So I engineered that. Or an illusion of it, as you can see.' Smith glanced down to the cheese tin. He had eaten most of the contents. “I apologize. Have the last piece.”
“It’s all yours,” Ruppert said.
“I like it better here,” Smith said. “I can grow out my hair like some kind of radical. And there’s time to read. I never had that before. I’m even writing a book on PSYCOM and its programs, so maybe that will be of some service to the country. It won’t be available in bookstores, naturally.”
“There are plenty of ways to get information around,” Lucia said.
“Which brings us back to Mr. Ruppert’s purpose here.” Smith tilted the easel screen so that it faced Ruppert directly. “I will need to place you into a hypnotic trance. If I were still a psycho, I would use drugs to help things along, but I would rather you remember this as clearly as possible. My only purpose is to seek out any secret instructions and to help you remove them.”
“I did receive secret instructions,” Ruppert said.
“Excuse me?” Smith asked.
Ruppert told them about his capture and detention by Terror. “They wanted me to go looking for this guy, this crazy neo-Nazi guy, named Hollis Westerly-”
“Shit,” Lucia said.
Smith held up his hand. “Go on.”
“-they said Sully’s friend might lead me to him for some reason. They wanted me to contact them as soon as I had the guy’s location.”
“This is blown,” Lucia said. A knife with a black, glassy blade appeared in her hand-Ruppert could not tell where it had been sheathed. She sprang from her chair, the blade high. Ruppert drew back and put up his hands, ready to fend her off.
“Wait.” Smith touched her arm, and she relaxed, but remained standing. Her mouth was a hard, flat line, and her black eyes burned at Ruppert.
“How were you to contact Terror?” Smith asked him.
“My wallet.” Smith touched his empty pocket. “Which I left on the front steps of my house.”
“He’s a spy,” Lucia said. “I should cut his throat and bury his body in the desert. I’ve been wanting to do it for
