'I've had other tilings on my mind. Like being a ghost.'
'Try again,' Isaac said.
Freeman shut out the sound of the water dripping behind the walls, forgot the fear of death that tickled his skin like knife tips, ignored his heart pounding as if trying to hammer its way through his rib cage, blocked whatever thoughts were racing through the minds of Starlene and Dipes and Isaac.
He sent his mind out, in that process that was still freaky even though he'd done it hundreds of times. Triptrapping, walking across that mental bridge. He concentrated picturing Vicky's face, the lips that said such kind words, the pretty eyes that looked all the way through him…
He had to back up because he was getting distracted. He couldn't afford to think of that other stuff, that mushy, kissy lovey-dovey crap. Clint Eastwood didn't have time for it, except in his worst movies, and neither did Freeman.
He triptrapped again, concentrating harder this time. He was rapid cycling like crazy, going from manic to depressed, up to down, white-hot to blue, throbbing like a police car's lights. Something weird was going on, the erratic electromagnetic pulses were scrambling his synapses. He was swinging from mania to depression so fast that the two almost merged into a bizarre new emotional state.
You've been here before. Maybe it's just your imagination, though, but that's the kind of obsessive thought you have while depressed, or maybe you 're up and you think this is some kind of holy gift.
Maybe you 're supposed to use this power to be a Protector of the Innocent. Don't be a damned fool. Nobody's innocent, and nobody's worth protecting. Or is that just depression talking?
You 're innocent. You didn't kill her.
If you try hard enough, you can make the world stop. You can make your brain go away. You 're bigger than God.
Forget about all that and CONCENTRATE. This is about saving Vicky, not you. For once in your sorry life, it's NOT ABOUT YOU.
And then he broke through, bridged with her as she was trying to reach him, and for the most beautiful, terrible moment they were linked, their sentences cramming together and overflowing like two glasses of water poured into a third, thoughts circling and dancing and taking on meanings beyond words.
Then Freeman saw what Vicky was seeing, and wished that the gift had stayed in the hands of God or Satan or Dad or whatever else cruel bastard had given it to him. Because Vicky was in the deadscape, big time.
FORTY-TWO
'You have to get right to the source,' Kenneth Mills said. His voice rose as the power to the superconductors increased. Kracowski looked at the rows of specially built fuse boxes that were stacked on the wall behind the tanks. He didn't know what would happen if the whole operation shorted out, but that might be preferable to observing the results of Mills's mind games.
The girl pounded on the door again. 'You better come
McDonald approached the door, hesitated then asked Mills, 'Should I open it?'
Mills cracked a grin that resembled that of a sadistic clown's. 'Sure, step right on in. Let's see what the treatment does to you.' Mills's eyes were closed, and he leaned back from the computer keyboard like Captain Nemo playing a demented organ melody.
'Ah, I can see it,' Mills said. 'I knew I could do it. See, McDonald you and your Trust thought I was wrong, that 1 was used up and broken. You were ready to throw me away, but you need me. I'm the only one who can make it happen.'
'Don't keep me in the dark on this thing,' McDonald said. 'Kracowski made tons of notes. Why do we have to keep guessing with you?'
'Kracowski wants other people to know what a genius he is. All I want is to find out for myself.'
Mills opened his eyes as if finishing a prayer, then altered the programming. 'See, Kracowski, you don't need to shock them if you want to kill them. Kill them and let their hearts keep beating. That's the way to get inside the dead.'
Kracowski had administered death in doses that lasted for fractions of seconds. Mills appeared capable of killing millions without hesitation. After what he'd done to his own wife and son, Kracowski wouldn't be surprised if the man would wipe out the entire human race just to prove himself right. Mills would even kill God if he had the means and opportunity. He already had the motive.
'Take a look for yourself,' Mills said. 'It's beautiful. Dead is beautiful.'
Kracowski looked at the readings on the computer screen. The amplitude was erratic, scrambled into a wave pattern he'd never seen before. Not even the radical physicists, those who linked electromagnetism with UFOs and world war and brain cancer and killer viruses, had directly connected the silent radiation with the human spirit. Mills was pushing it with no idea what the result would be, playing a guessing game that might be far more tragic than the splitting of an atom.
Even nuclear reactions obeyed the laws of nature, and Mills was playing in the field beyond nature.
Kracowski cursed himself for not being able to look away. He was just as curious as Mills.
'Open the door,' he heard himself saying.
McDonald put a hand on the thick handle of the slide lock. He eased the lock free and winced, as if expecting the walls to fly loose from the floor. When nothing happened, he took hold of the door handle. He paused, then knelt to the slot in the door, pulling the rusty mechanism where food had long ago been shoved to the cell's inhabitants.
Vicky's voice came from the slot, louder than before. 'They're eating the light,' she said, the words made even more haunting by her calmness.
Mills laughed. 'Dark tastes better. Less filling. Don't have to make yourself vomit after.'
McDonald said 'What the hell's going on in there?'
Mills traced a strange pattern in the air with the tip of his finger. Painting an invisible Picasso, or maybe conducting a frenzied Phillip Glass piece for full orchestra. Communing with fleshless things. Or stroking the molecules of heaven.
'Damn you,' McDonald said to Mills. 'Talk to me, or I'll have your ass stuck back in the loony bin.'
The agent worked the lever on the food slot and peered inside the cell. Kracowski wondered if McDonald would be able to see anything because of the darkness. McDonald shook his head as if trying to clear his vision, then pressed his head closer to the slot. He squealed in sudden pain, as if acid had been dashed in his eyes, and rolled to the floor.
McDonald huddled with his knees against his chest and moaned unintelligible syllables. He shuddered, eyes fixed open, staring past Mills and Kracowski. Mills hurried around the computer table and grabbed the man by the jacket, shaking him. 'Help me get him away from the fields,' he said to Kracowski.
Kracowski glanced at the computer screen, where the resonance image of Vicky's brain flashed in bright purple, green, and gold, the colors one saw when pressing fingers against closed eyelids. An infrared video camera depicted an aurora surrounding her body. Other cloudlike shapes flickered against the darkness, clusters of energy that weren't connected to the girl's physical form.
'What did you see?' Mills shouted at McDonald spittle flying into the dazed man's face.
'Nuh-nuh-nuh,' he grunted in reply.
Mills pushed McDonald to the floor. He shouted at Kracowski, 'Don't touch anything. I'm going in.'
Mills yanked the cell door open. But he didn't go in. He couldn't. -
The room was gone.
Kracowski forgot the computer, the straining machinery, the burning fear in his stomach, the hopeless sense that everything was too far out of his control, because none of that mattered. In the face of a miracle, even the extraordinary was meaningless.
