The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

didn't much like it. 'Why won't he talk?'

Carling shook his head. 'That's not a useful question at this point. We don't really know whether he won't talk, can't talk, or doesn't comprehend nearly as much as we think he does at the moment. I tried to get him to communicate by blinking his eyes, but I didn't get anywhere. He didn't ask me for solid food; I brought it to him, and he ate it. Right now, all we know for certain is that he can move, he can feed himself, and that he constantly listens to the tapes you brought him. Don't assume anything more. Remember that your brother was poisoned with a substance having properties we know virtually nothing about when it is ingested. Garth is obviously better, but he's a long way from being well.'

'I understand that, but-'

'You may not understand it as well as you think you do,' Tommy Carling interrupted gently. 'Understandably, you're also dealing with a lot of emotion. Everything we know about the short- and long-term effects from this drug we're learning now, minute by minute and day by day, as we observe Garth. His EEG has never shown any signs of brain damage, so now we may be looking at just another stage of a chemically induced psychosis. It's quite possible he would have come out of his catatonic state-perhaps last night-even without the music. We can't be certain one way or the other. We can't be certain he recognizes us, understands anything we're saying, or even hears the same thing we'd hear if we were listening to the tapes.'

'He hears the same thing,' I said, looking hard at Garth. Saw the same images, had the same associations.

Carling shrugged again. 'You can never be sure what's going on in the mind of a psychotic, and Garth is still psychotic. Incidentally, I heard that Dr. Slycke was really upset when he found you here last night.'

'Oh, yeah. And then some.'

The first side of the tape had run out. Garth sat up, unhurriedly flipped the cassette, turned the player back on. Then he lay back, put his hands behind his head, and resumed his careful scrutiny of the square meter of ceiling directly above him. He didn't appear to me to be psychotic or disoriented, but like a man who was simply very, very deep in thought. Try as hard as I might, I couldn't shake my feelings of hurt and betrayal. Garth, I thought, was just being Goddamn. . rude.

'You're taking Garth's behavior much too personally, Mongo,' Tommy Carling said, as if he had been reading my thoughts. 'You can't do that. Your brother is still a very sick man, perhaps just as sick as when he was catatonic; catatonia is just one symptom of psychosis, not the psychosis itself.'

'Garth can speak,' my brother said evenly.

The words, delivered as they were in a casual, matter-of-fact tone as he continued to stare at the ceiling, startled both Carling and me, and I found his speech almost as chilling as his previous muteness.

'Garth?' I said tentatively, leaning over him. There was no response, and my brother didn't even look at me. I could hear the Magic Fire Music motif leaking from the earphones. 'Garth, talk to me, for Christ's sake. What are you feeling? Do you know who I am?'

I waited; although Garth's eyes were clear and in focus, he didn't look away from the ceiling. I felt Carling's hand gently touch my shoulder.

'You have to be patient, Mongo.'

Suddenly the pale blue telephone mounted on the wall next to the door rang. Carling answered, listened for a few moments; he mentioned my name and the fact that I was there, listened some more, then hung up.

'Dr. Slycke is waiting in the infirmary with an internist and a neurologist,' the nurse said to me quietly. 'He wants me to bring Garth there now; he's got a battery of tests lined up. They'll probably take all day.' He paused, sighed softly, dropped his gaze. 'He doesn't want you there, Mongo. That's a medical decision-his right to make. I'm sorry I can't invite you to come along.'

I grimaced with frustration and irritation, kept my anger to myself. 'It's all right; I'm scheduled to teach today, anyway. As I keep saying, I'm not interested in telling Slycke his business, or getting in his way. I'm just sorry this whole thing has become so confrontational.'

'He's suspicious of you; he doesn't care much for the Director of the D.I.A., and he thinks the man may be out to get him by sending you here as a spy-notwithstanding the fact, of course, that Garth is here legitimately.'

'So Slycke told me.'

'Anything to it, Mongo?' he asked in a disarmingly casual tone of voice.

'You've got to be kidding me, Tommy.'

'There's word on the grapevine that you, Garth, and the Director are old friends who go back a long way together.'

'I haven't even been in touch with Mr. Lippitt since I got here.'

'It's all wrong,' Garth said to the ceiling. Once again, tears were streaming from his eyes.

'Garth?' I said, again leaning over him. 'What's all wrong?'

There was no reply; but then, I knew the answer.

'Garth,' Tommy Carling said as he walked around to the other side of the bed, 'we have to take you to the infirmary so the doctors can run some tests on you. Can you walk there, or would you prefer that I get a wheelchair?'

Garth gave no indication that he had heard. Carling started toward the telephone, then stopped and turned back when Garth abruptly sat up and got out of bed. He picked up the leather bag filled with tapes and batteries, walked the length of the room and stood waiting by the door. Carling took slippers and a woolen robe from a wardrobe in the corner, slipped the robe over Garth's shoulders. My brother put his feet into the slippers.

'Why don't we leave the tapes and the player here?' Carling continued quietly as he gently slipped the earphones from my brother's head and took the Walkman from his hand. 'You won't need them where you're going, and they'll probably get in the doctors' way. I'll hang on to everything myself, so you know they'll be here when you get back.'

Garth didn't seem to think much of the idea; he turned, took back the Walkman, put the earphones on his head and the player in the pocket of his robe. I almost smiled.

Carling looked at me, shrugged. 'He'll be back around dinnertime, Mongo-six, probably seven at the very latest. You want me to order you up a tray?'

'Order me up some time with Dr. Slycke, Tommy,' I said, staring at Garth's back. 'At his convenience, when all the tests are done.'

'I'll tell him-and I will order you a tray. It's roast beef tonight, and it'll be good.'

'See you later, Garth,' I said loudly.

Garth did not reply. Carling put his hand on my brother's arm, and without any further prompting Garth walked from the room.

The big news on the cottage sheets was that Dane Potter had somehow escaped from the locked facility during the night.

Having a psychotic, potentially murderous teenager on the loose in the county wasn't anyone's idea of a happy event; the local police had been notified; and a search was in progress. RCPC wasn't exactly Folsom prison, and kids sometimes ran away-but usually when they were outside on the grounds. Potter wasn't allowed outside, and no one was sure how he had managed to get away. There was some speculation that the boy had stolen a staff member's keys, or that a door had inadvertently been left unlocked. Whatever had happened, Dane Potter was long gone.

Tense and anxious, wondering if I had done the right thing in exposing Garth to the Ring with all of its attendant emotional shocks and associations, I didn't have a particularly good day at the school. I was moody and snappish, and probably hurt the feelings of a number of kids who'd come to look for fun and games from me in addition to their lessons. It wasn't a performance that would win me a nomination for Mental Health Worker of the Year, and I tried to make amends by staying after school and going back to visit with some of the children in their cottages on the two floors at the rear of the building. I talked with Kim Trainor, Chris Yardley, and a few other older adolescents who were walking by the reservoir, and then played checkers with an eight-year-old boy by the name of Steven Wallis.

Steven, with his doe eyes and dark, silky hair, was a beautiful child who, for some years, had been the object of sexual abuse by both his father and his uncle. He had managed to tolerate the abuse until he entered the third grade, when his marks had begun to fall precipitously. A bright boy, Steven had been able to function in his