'What do you want a stupid girl for? She doesn't know anything about the power of the brain.'
'She was available,' Dad said. 'Didn't I teach you about test runs?'
'You taught me plenty, Dad. No pain, no gain, right?' He pointed toward Kracowski. 'He had the crazy idea that you need to control things, put limits on it. But we know better, don't we, Dad?'
'That's the old Trooper. Pedal to the metal, wide open, full speed ahead. What do you think of this one?' Dad passed his hand through the soft skull of one of the ghosts. 'Can you see his thoughts? He put tin foil in his ears to block out the radio signals being broadcast by secret government agencies. Seems like that's the kind of message you'd want to receive, isn't that right, McDonald?'
McDonald groaned from the floor, then tried unsuccessfully to rise.
Kracowski emerged from the shadows, bolted to the computer, and tapped some keys. Dad screamed at him. 'Leave it alone, you idiot. Don't you want to be part of the breakthrough?'
'Not your breakthrough,' Kracowski said. 'This isn't the experiment.'
Dad jumped at Kracowski, shoving him away from the computer. Kracowski threw a weak punch and missed. Dad knocked Kracowski down and checked the readings, then began frantically working the keyboard.
'You screwed up my ratios, damn you,' he said.
Kracowski, wiping blood from his mouth, said, 'I had to have an override. Once the Trust got too far involved, I figured things might go bad.'
Dad's twisted face was green in the glow of the screen's phosphor. 'Bad? Bad? I'll show you goddamned BAD'
The whine of the machinery intensified, and Freeman knew it was time to make a move, while Dad was distracted. He raced toward Vicky's cell, wading through the ghosts whose cold flesh had grown more solid. The field throbbed as it gained in strength, the walls vibrated the cell doors clanged against stone, the ghosts' thoughts slipped across Freeman's mind. He wondered if this was what it was like to hear voices, to be a full-blown schizophrenic.
Maybe schizophrenia was more than a condition of the mind, an imbalance in brain chemistry. Maybe it was a reality for some people. Maybe the voices weren't imaginary.
'Where are you going, you little shit?' Dad yelled at Freeman.
But Freeman was past him, running through the door into Vicky's cell, diving into the dark, endless void, screaming as he fell upward and downward and sideways all at the same time. The door slammed closed beyond him with a metallic finality.
FORTY-SIX
'Vicky?'
Freeman reached out for her, both with his hands and his mind. The darkness crawled down his throat, solid as a snake. It blinded him and clogged his ears, surrounded him like a second skin.
The fields shifted again, and from the way the world beyond the darkness shook and trembled, his outside reality was going to break into fragments any second now. If that happened, if everything he'd known and hated and feared and tasted was going to disappear forever, he wanted to be with Vicky when it happened. Inside her.
Her words came from the bleak black beyond: 'Because you don't want to be alone.'
'No, it's more than that.' The triptrap worked, and the bridge between them threw off a faint light. She stood at the far end, glowing and pale, scared, ten million miles away.
'They're breaking it down.'
'I know. Once Dad got involved, it was bound to get screwed up.'
'Come to me. I'm losing you.'
Freeman's heart pounded like a funeral drum near the end of a dirge. If there was a reason for this gift, if it was ever going to do anything for him besides cause him trouble, this was the time. He needed it, whether he was manic or depressed or insane or just a scared little boy. He wanted to touch and know one person before his whole universe blew apart. Who cared what Clint would do? Clint Eastwood had his own life, and no matter what happened to the character in the fantasy world of film, the actor Clint moved on after the final credits.
Freeman didn't think he'd be so lucky.
Desperation drove him, excited him, juiced his brain more than any machine ever had. He was on an up like nobody's business.
The bridge got a little bit brighter, and Vicky was now only a million miles away. He could see her clearly in his mind: blond and pale with fervid eyes, more beautiful than ever because she was reaching back to him, and this time he didn't have to build the bridge alone.
The light from the bridge pushed back the darkness, and they moved closer together.
'Come to me, Freeman,' she triptrapped.
Freeman focused on the image of her face, and that brought her more fully into him; he tasted her past, and walked through her pain, and knelt with her as she forced herself to vomit. He absorbed the simultaneous emotions of love and hatred of her father, the man she wanted so desperately to please that she was willing to make herself disappear.
As he felt that soul-deep sorrow, the bridge dimmed, and she faded back into the darkness at the far end. He was losing her. She'd wanted to disappear, and this was her chance.
'No, that's wrong,' he said.
'Don't tell me what to feel.'
'You don't have to go away. It's not your fault. And you're not fat.'
'Freeman Mills, you're starting to sound like a shrink again.'
'It's in the genes. I know what I'm talking about. Hold on.'
'But it would be so easy. Nothing but nice, safe dark. Just slip under like a stupid old whale and let all the problems be gone. Instant weight loss.'
'Remember when you gave me hell about feeling sorry for myself? Well, that's what you're doing now. You're being selfish. Believe me. I've been there.'
He triptrapped a memory toward her, the one where he found the razor in the bathroom at Durham Academy, left there by a careless counselor, and he twisted the blade free and put it to his wrist without a single thought except escape.
He felt her shudder as the metal sliced and the blood spurted as Freeman looked down at the wound and realized this wasn't the way he wanted to go, not as the edges of the world went gray and his thoughts slipped to the floor, not this way, not like Mom He froze, his thoughts hanging like icicles. He'd opened that dark space under the bridge, the place where he'd hidden the bad things.
But Vicky had seen a glimpse through that brief crack, and now she probed her curiosity making the connection stronger.
' 'Not like Mom' what?' she asked.
'Don't even think about it,' he said. 'Don't even try.'
'Look, a second ago, or whatever passes for time in here, you were wanting me to share everything, get inside, do the one-mind thing. You get my blubber and I get your scars. And now, when things get a little too personal, you back off. What's it going to be, boy?'
The bridge grew dimmer. He was losing her, shutting her off, crawling back inside himself. Where he would be alone. With the memories.
Then he knew what hell was like. It wasn't a hot place where a pointy-tailed beast poked you with a pitchfork. Hell was inside your own head, where the doors were closed, where hope never knocked, where darkness and pain and self-pity were the only companions. Forever. And, as the crazy dead folks could tell him, forever lasted a long time.
He reached for her again, triptrapped until his brain burned, rode the up, and this time the glow radiated from his head and through his nervous system, warming him, bringing him more fully alive than he'd ever been.
He wanted this. More than he'd ever wanted anything.
