"What?"
"The boy, standing at the mirror."
"He was on the cot."
"A trick of the light, Mr. McKaye," Kracowski said.
Brooks pointed to the EEG reading. "That's normal, then?"
"The boy experienced some spikes. Epilepsy is a kind of short in the electrical wiring of the brain. We don't know what causes it, but I can assure you, everything is functioning properly now. The treatment has his synapses working better than they ever have."
"Is that trouble likely to happen again?" Brooks wiped his face with a handkerchief.
"Never," said the doctor.
"You're very sure of yourself, aren't you, Kracowski?" McKaye said.
"I have to be. These young children are entrusting me with their brains."
Kracowski watched the computer absorb and store the data. The energy field was winding down. The lights in the lab grew brighter. The treatment was over.
Kracowski pushed the mic button. "How are you feeling, Freeman?"
The boy lifted his head. He motioned with his finger as if wanting them to move closer, though he could only see his own reflection.
"What?" Kracowski said.
"You sure he's okay?" Brooks said. "He looks like he's g oing to throw up." "He's fine," Bondurant said.! "Doctor," Freeman said staring at the mirror. "You're cured son," Kracowski said. "Healed." "I'm very glad to hear that, sir." "Your brain and soul are in harmony." "You are a very good doctor." "Is there any pain?" "Pain?"
"While you were under, you had an episode." "Is that what you call it when you die a little?" Kracowski released the mic button.
"He's not supposed to know that, is he?" Bondurant said.
"He doesn't know anything. He's only a patient."
Freeman spoke, but his words didn't carry through the thick glass. Kracowski pushed the button.
"Neat little trick there, doctor. While I was dead, I saw a big ugly troll waiting under the bridge."
Kracowski flipped a switch, throwing Room Thirteen and Freeman into darkness. The green light of the computer screens and the colors of the magnetic resonance image of Freeman's brain intensified in the dimness.
"This exhibit is over, gentlemen," Kracowski said.
"I think we've seen more than we want to see," McKaye said. "We'd rather read about it in the journals."
Bondurant led Brooks and McKaye from the lab. Kracowski traced bis finger over the multi-colored image of Freeman's brain.
"The mind is a universe," he said to the walls. "My universe."
"Don't get too full of yourself," McDonald said. "You think Freeman Mills ended up here by accident? You're not the only one who gets to play God."
FIFTEEN
Freeman sat under the trees by the lake. The air tasted gray. He felt like those Vietnamese POWs who played Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter. The ones who lost, whose numbers came up, whose brains splattered across the room. Not like De Niro, who could take it, or even Christopher Walken, who wasn't so tough but made it out alive anyway, at least for a while.
On the lawn near the main building, kids were playing games, running, shrieking. From this distance, he couldn't triptrap anybody. Up close, they had nearly overwhelmed him, swarming across the mental bridge like invading armies, their thoughts like bullets and their emotions like bamboo slivers.
If he stayed by himself, maybe he could sort things out. He remembered going into Thirteen, talking with some shrink through a two-way mirror, then some more shrinks, then everything going fuzzy. He had walked a strange land where shimmery people rose up from the dark floor and spilled out of the walls. People whose mouths opened in soundless screams. Scary people.
Then the lights were on in the room and he was staring at the ceiling, his muscles sore, and the shrink was talking to him through the microphone. Dr. Kracowski, the shrink said his name was. Actually, Freeman realized, the man hadn't said anything. Freeman had walked into his mind and picked out that little nugget of information.
Freeman mined other ores from the doctor's brain, obscure formulas and theorems, properties of electricity and wavelengths and other stuff that would have been dull in a classroom but became gold when discovered inside another person's head. And there were other bits, a woman named Paula Swenson, skin business that would have made him blush if he'd understood more of it. And something about Dr. Kenneth Mills. Dear old Dad.
But before Freeman could dig in and get a really serious read, Starlene Rogers had knocked on the door to Thirteen, Kracowski had run from the laboratory to get her away, and then Freeman was in her head: sunshine and roses and a mobile home in Laurel Valley, Bible verses and boys in pick-up trucks, a cat named T.S. Eliot, Randy the house parent who might have too much chest hair for her taste but was otherwise an okay guy, college psychology textbooks, peach lip gloss, Lucille the hairdresser who had a way with a curling iron, the coming Gospel Jubilee at Beaulahville Baptist, a strange old man in a gray robe.
The same old man Freeman had seen in the hall and again in the dish room. Except, inside Starlene's head, the man was wet and left footprints that stopped in the middle of the floor.
And then Kracowski was at the door, saying "Excuse me, Miss Rogers, this room is off limits to unauthorized staff," and someone released the straps and Freeman sat up on the bed and then he was inside Bondurant's head, and Bondurant wasn't anywhere near the room. Bondurant's head was foggy, his thoughts not completing themselves before stumbling on to the next garbled batch. By that time, Starlene and the doctor were arguing and Freeman was wondering just how far and into how many minds at a time he could triptrap, and Paula and Randy showed up Something landed in his lap and pulled him back to the present, by the lakeside. He looked down and saw a shiny penny.
"For your thoughts," Vicky said.
"You couldn't afford them."
"Try me." She was pale in the sunlight, almost ethereal in her thinness. Her eyes were black storms in the calm of her face.
"Okay." Freeman looked across the water. Could he read the minds of fish?
"Of course you can't, silly. There's nothing there to read."
Freeman drew back as if she had drenched him with a bucket of the frigid lakewater.
"I mean, do you think they dream of worms or something? It's just 'swim, swim, swim.'" Vicky crossed her arms.
"You're not in here. Because I'm thinking that I want to see what you're thinking, but I can't."
"Because you think you're so freaking special. That you're the only one with problems, or with gifts."
"I wasn't thinking that."
"I wouldn't even have to read your mind to know that. It's written right across your face. 'Don't mess with big bad Freeman Mills, or there'll be hell to pay.' And this macho Clint Eastwood fixation is really pathetic."
"Why don't you dry up and blow away?" Freeman focused on the water until his tears made the surface appear to shimmer.
"Why don't you quit lying to yourself for a change?" Vicky turned and walked away, had reached the large rocks and was about to slip down the path between them when at last Freeman broke through her mental shield. At least a little.
"Keep moving, lard-ass," he shouted after her.
She froze, turned, and lowered her head.
"Your father called you 'lard-ass,' didn't he? When you were a little girl."
She knelt. Her shoulders trembled. Freeman wiped his own tears away, feeling guilty at the jab, yet pleased he'd been able to penetrate her shield. He thought if this were a movie, he would go to her now, hug her, show her he was strong and kind and understanding, like George Clooney in practically anything. Instead, he picked up the penny and held it to the sun.
"I'd almost forgotten that," Vicky said. "I think my first shrink got me to remember it, but the best things get buried deep. I guess you win."