“We never met, Obie Cox, and you know it. You simply eavesdropped on me and Matt when you had the chance.”
Obie smiled genially and led her inside the colonial house. “I think you’ll find our accommodations adequate, Doctor. If you desire anything, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We wish you to be entirely comfortable during your visit.”
“You realize that I plan to charge you with kidnapping,” Winifred said pleasantly, following Obie into a long, dim, cool room that had couches and comfortable chairs in it. There were two men in the room. They both stood when she entered.
“Dr. Harvey, may I present my colleagues, Mr. Merton and Dr. Mueller.”
“Robbie Mueller!” Winifred ignored the outstretched hand of the other psychiatrist. She looked him up and down. “So this is what happened to you? I wondered. Deacon in charge of the brainwashing division?”
Rober Mueller had been her pupil twenty years ago, a brilliant, exciting, original intellect, mixed with emotional immaturity that had been a constant source of irritation. He was forty, good-looking now, and poised, where he had been rawboned and gauche, fresh from the back country of Minnesota, awkward and unsure of his manners, ignorant of the niceties of what to order in restaurants, what the different drinks contained, what to wear, how to comb his hair. None of that showed now.
“Dr. Harvey, a pleasure,” he murmured at her. She grinned at him suddenly, and laughed aloud when a flush spread across his ,cheeks and his face suddenly looked heavy, and he was very out of place in the expensively furnished room of antiques.
Winifred turned to Obie and said, “Okay, you can get from me what you want, but you’ll be disappointed. I don’t know from nothing.”
“We’ll see,” the third man said then. Merton, he’d been introduced as Mr. Merton. Winifred studied him briefly. He was the organizer here, she decided quickly. This was his baby.
“Winifred…. May I?” Robbie Mueller looked at her and waited for her shrug before he continued. “You do know certain things that we need to know. I won’t harm you. I think you know that I can find out what we want without doing you any damage at all, but if you are recalcitrant, then there are things I can do to you…. We really do want your cooperation.”
She simply waited.
“One, Blake Daniels. We want to find him. And Derek too. We know about Matt and Lisa, that you put them to sleep, but we’d like to know for how long and what their official numbers are so that we can check what you tell us.”
“One,” she said, “I don’t know. Two, I don’t know. Three, ten years. Four, I don’t know. Okay? Now I can go?”
So they took her to the hospital on the grounds and Robbie Mueller apologized as he administered the injection personally, and after several days, or weeks, she never did find out how long it was, she woke up is a wide, luxuriant bed, to see soft cream-colored drapes rippling in the breeze dimming the sunlight, and a slender girl sitting by the bed watching her anxiously. The girl had large brown eyes that were like the eyes of a fawn, Winifred thought as she struggled to wake up completely. The girl arose and came to her. “Would you like to get up now?” she asked. “May I help you?”
Winifred found that she needed help. A tray was brought in and she had coffee, the first she’d had in months, and a cigarette with good tobacco, and when she finished with both, there was food, and a bath and fresh clothing. The girl smiled charmingly when she asked what day it was. When Winifred was dressed once more the girl led her from the room to an office where Mueller was waiting for her.
He looked tired, Winifred thought, and she smiled. It was harder on the one doing it than the one to whom it was done. “And so?” she prompted when he hesitated.
“You know,” he said. “You know what you had to tell us. So we keep looking.” He toyed with a pen. “We can’t let you go, you know.”
“I suspected,” she said dryly.
“We would like to enlist your help,” Robbie said after another pause. “You talked about Johnny, the Star Child, you know. I was curious about how you felt about him. About your relationship with him.”
“Robbie, come out with it. What do you want?”
“You have a choice. You can voluntarily help us with Johnny. Or you can enter the hospital as a patient.” He said it fast, glanced about guiltily, and put a finger to his lips. “I know from what you told me that you are very fond of him, and that he trusts you implicitly. Probably you are the only person he does trust. He’s coming here soon, and I believe it would be good for him to find you here ready to greet him, make him feel at home.”
Winifred remained silent thinking furiously. Robbie was feeling pangs of guilt. Why? What had he done? Or was this it? Did they know that it was she who had told Johnny, falsely, that he was the Star Child, the alien? Did it matter? She put a hand to her forehead and Robbie leaned forward.
“Are you ill? Put your head down….”
She took the out he offered and in a few moments was being led from the office by the solicitous girl, and was taken back to her room where she lay down and tried to decide what she should do. Not that, she had much choice actually, and wasn’t this what she had counted on when she realized Obie’s men were closing in on her? But why was Robbie Mueller looking guilty as hell about it? What was the catch? She was tired then, but sleep eluded her, and as she drifted half awake, half asleep, she knew the answer. This was a reprieve only. As soon as they had Johnny ensconced and feeling safe through her efforts, then she would be… sent to the hospital, whatever it was that they planned for her. The thought resolved her indecision and she fell asleep. The next day she accepted the offer and started to plot her escape.
No one could make it down the mountain through the forests, this was accepted as true, perhaps was true. No one lived in the forests, and there was wild life there: bears, snakes, wild boars. There were bogs of quicksand, but more than that, there was no food, no trail, no way to find civilization once more if one became lost in the gloomy depths. They all believed it, and acted on their belief. There were no men posted to keep anyone out of the forests. The road that wound back down the mountain was heavily guarded, with electronic monitoring equipment spaced along its entire length. Winifred didn’t press the point but she did wonder how they knew that no one could make it out through the woods. Or was it a myth, like the myth told to children that the floor around the bed was covered with monsters that would grab them if they didn’t stay under the covers. That one usually worked too. Were the monsters now in the woods? She found it a curious thought, one that she reflected on at length.
Or, and it seemed more probable that this was the real reason for the lack of concern about the forests, were all the towns on the edges of the forest in the hands of the faithful? If that were so, then there was no escape possible. It made her angry to think of the smirks on their faces: after pushing through the woods for weeks, sore, muddy, gaunt, to be picked up in the first town and brought back, exhibited as proof of the simple words: no escape.
Her duties were light. She was not allowed inside the hospital at all, but occasionally she was consulted by Robbie Mueller, and it was he who passed on the instructions to her from Obie, or more likely, Merton. Winifred got the impression more and more strongly that it was Merton who was running the show, and another curious fact that she stored for future consideration was that none of the people around her seemed to realize this.
Her instructions were simple. She was to write a full report of the years she had spent with the Star Child. Period. Busy work? She wasn’t sure. Silently she started it.