That's why he avoided the politics of fundraising and left the handshaking to Bondurant. Kracowski put on the show, Bondurant sold the tickets.
And McDonald? The man stood quietly apart, a faint smile the only crack on the stolid face. Physically, he was as blunt as a toad and his head sat on his shoulders as if pressed into clay. His dark eyes seemed to soak light from the room, and the colors of the computerized charts reflected off McDonald's forehead.
Kracowski let Brooks's question linger for a few moments more, tapping the keyboard as the printer spat its data and the zip drive backed up the programming. The computer drives were encased in a ceramic-and-lead-lined box, and a counter electrostatic field had been created to protect the drives from the erasing capabilities of stray magnetism.
'I still have to hone a few details, but soon you'll be reading about it in the Journal of Psychology,'? Kracowski said.
'It's been very successful in early clinical trials,' Bondurant cut in. 'We'll all be proud to have it associated with the good name of Wendover Home. And, of course, associated with you gentlemen as well.'
The boy on the other side of the mirror gazed at them, unseeing.
Brooks tugged at his tie, his jowls straining against the tightness of his collar. 'That didn't look entirely healthy to me. What do you call this business again?'
Kracowski swallowed a sigh. 'Synaptic Synergy Therapy. The principles are very simple. The brain operates on a series of electrical impulses and relays. You're no doubt aware of electroconvulsive therapy, which was popular in the middle of the last century.'
'Shock treatment, you mean? Like in that Jack Nicholson movie, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest?'
'Hollywood and the mental health field are both built on illusion, Mr. Brooks. Electroshock still has supporters, and its effectiveness in treating some cases of depression is well documented. Some patients report short-term memory loss and depersonalization. Of course, the treatment can be taken to extremes, as happened in the 'Deep Sleep' controversy in Australia, where patients in drug-induced comas were given multiple and frequent shocks over the course of several weeks.'
'That was legal?' McKaye asked.
'An acceptable risk. On the bright side, of the sixty percent who survived Deep Sleep, nearly a third escaped without permanent brain damage.'
'That doesn't sound like smart money,' McKaye said.
'The true test of any experiment is the outcome.' Kracowski leaned back from the computer monitor and let the others see the numbers and various formulae scrolling across the screen. He knew it meant nothing to them, yet it conferred power to him. The witch doctors of the twenty-first century needed fast processing speeds and obscenely large hard drives.
'I'm feeling very much better,' said the boy in Thirteen.
'Praise the Lord,' Bondurant said.
'It's really a basic procedure,' Kracowski said, before Bondurant could finish turning science into a miracle.
The doctor tapped some keys, brought up a three-dimensional model of the boy's brain, and zoomed the image until various folds and crenulations could be seen. 'The brain contains a hundred billion neurons. Each neuron communicates with ten thousand others through connections called synapses, which relay a series of electrical events that in turn create chemical changes in the brain. The number of possible combinations of neurotransmitter connections is greater than the number of atoms in the universe.'
Kracowski paused in his lecture. The men's eyes had glazed over, except for McDonald's, which gleamed with an unhealthy hunger. 'Simply put,' Kracowski said 'the brain is a universe unto itself.'
Beyond the mirror, the subject was studying the ceiling. Freeman wouldn't be able to see the giant electromagnetic field generators that hung above the tiles, nor could he know that the bed he was sitting on was wired to deliver small voltage doses. A PET scanner was built into the base of the cot, highly advanced equipment hidden by a dull sheet metal grid. In the basement, superconducting magnets were sealed inside tanks of liquid nitrogen, which were themselves sealed inside tanks of liquid helium.
Kracowski had spent years designing his treatment rooms, each with slightly different specifications. Thirteen was the best of them, but Eighteen wasn't bad. Still, until McDonald and the Trust had moved in with some serious support and technology, as well as the exorbitantly expensive liquid forms of the gases, SST had been little more than a theory. Now it was the tool that would take quantum mechanics into the human mind. Quantum psychology.
'Didn't Dr. Kenneth Mills have a similar theory?' McDonald said. The others seemed to notice McDonald for the first time, with Bondurant wearing an expression of dislike. McDonald winked at Kracowski, knowing he'd lobbed him a softball over the heart of the plate.
'Mills had some primitive notions along these lines,' Kracowski said. 'But his research was too incomprehensible and random.'
'As far as you know,' McDonald said. 'Professional jealousy, perhaps?'
Kracowski spoke to Brooks and McKaye. 'SST sends electric currents to the brain, while at the same time realigning the impaired electromagnetic fields, or EMF, that govern emotion,' Kracowski told the group. 'Recent research has shown that magnetism can increase blood flow. This treatment sends a carefully controlled set of wavelengths into the patient's brain, all operating at nonionizing radiation levels. You may have read about the alleged link between electromagnetic fields and alien visitation?'
McKaye started to protest, but Kracowski held up a hand. 'No, I don't believe in aliens, Mr. McKaye. But true believers say that's why people can't remember being kidnapped and taken away, because of the intense EMF. And there are suggested links between EMF and cancer caused by exposure to cell phones or from living near high- voltage power lines. The research has been limited so far, and mostly designed to absolve the communications and utilities industries. There's so much we don't understand, but my work is showing the positive potential of appropriately harnessing the fields. If the brain is a universe, all I'm doing is putting the planetary orbits in order.'
Bondurant nodded and said to McKaye, 'From a religious perspective, he's restoring these children's faith in themselves, so that they might be worthy of the Lord. It's just another of His mysterious ways. Isn't that right, Doctor?'
'It's all harmony.' Kracowski grimaced and looked at his computer. The boy's magnetic resonance scan was flickering, a disco lamp of green, red, and magenta.
Brooks pointed to the screen. 'What in the devil is that?'
The boy's cerebral cortex was displaying an anomalous reading. Kracowski checked the EEG. The graph twitched upward in a rapid-cycling peak, as if the circuits of the boy's brain had fused together and his synapses were overloading. The boy was having a seizure.
'That's impossible,' Kracowski said.
In Thirteen, Freeman trembled, his teeth clenched, and his eyes rolled up inside his skull. His head flopped, knocking against the thin mattress so hard that Kracowski could hear it through the microphone.
'What's going on?' Brooks shouted.
'Better call an ambulance,' McKaye said. McDonald said nothing, folded his arms, and watched the boy.
Kracowski met Bondurant's look of panic with a concerned but calm smile. 'That won't be necessary, gentlemen. It's only part of the procedure. This boy's fields must be in particular disharmony to cause such distress.'
'Is he breathing?' Brooks asked, straining to peer through the glass.
The boy twitched and writhed. Kracowski was relieved to note that the boy's tongue protruded between his lips, so at least he wasn't suffocating himself. The doctor clicked up another screen and checked the data. The treatment should be winding down now, a current in millivolts running through the boy's skin and bones. The electromagnetic pulses were running in a programmed and syncopated sequence, massaging the boy's emotional trouble spots.
'What's his diagnosis?' Kracowski asked Bondurant, even though he was familiar with the case file. He simply wanted Bondurant to run down the laundry list in order to make the resultant healing even more impressive.
'Rapid-cycle manic depression,' Bondurant said. 'Suicidal tendencies, kleptomania, antisocial behavior,
