Bondurant's playing around down there, probably half-drunk or worse, was a disaster waiting to happen. He was already disrupting the careful alignment of the fields. The man might have iron or steel items in his pockets that could destroy valuable equipment. If the liquid helium or liquid nitrogen tanks were pierced, the basement would go into an instantaneous, though brief, deep freeze.
Kracowski opened his desk drawer and got a key and his flashlight. There were three ways to access the basement from inside the building. One was from Bondurant's office, another via a locked door in the main hallway labeled Custodial Staff Only.
Kracowski went to his bookshelf and removed his copy of H.G. Wells's A Short History of the World. He reached into the space on the shelf and fumbled for the hidden button. What had seemed clever when McDonald's people were installing it now seemed like a spy movie trick, unnecessary and overdone. He pressed the button and an adjacent bookshelf swung forward, revealing the metal door and the third way downstairs.
"Hey, that's cool, Richard."
Leave it to Paula to be impressed by extravagance. He unlocked the door and switched on the flashlight, playing its beam down the dark stairwell. Cobwebs draped the doorway, and he brushed them aside as he headed into the gloom. The stench of must and mildew rose from the dank basement. He glanced back once and saw Paula waiting at the door, her silhouette stooped with tension and excitement.
Kracowski slipped down the stairs to the narrow hallway that branched off from the main basement corridor. He splashed his beam into one of the cramped cells. The cells were a hellish testament to the mental health field of the 1940s, when terror and pain were more common psychiatric tools than nurturing and synergizing. Frontal lobotomies, pharmaceuticals, insulin-induced comas, and electroshock were the glorious toys of those spearheading the charge into a brave new world of the mind. Too bad the psychiatrists hadn't recognized and dealt with their own delusions of grandeur.
Too bad they weren't as flawless as Kracowski.
He heard shuffling in the darkness of the main corridor. He switched off his light and listened. He recognized Starlene's voice immediately.
"Hello? Who's there?" she called from the darkness.
He should have figured Starlene would start snooping around. She'd already asked far too many questions about his experimental treatments. With her simple religious faith, she automatically assumed that all cures that weren't divine in origin were the result of unspeakable dark powers. That's why he wanted her to submit to the treatments herself, so she might understand what he was trying to accomplish.
And perhaps she could be "cured" of the need to submit to an invisible authority and beg forgiveness for imagined sins. If not cured, perhaps she'd be frightened enough to keep her mouth shut. If worse came to worse, her memory could be erased.
"Come out where I can see you," Starlene said. Her voice echoed down the corridor. Bondurant must have fled the basement, because Starlene's footsteps were the only sound besides the hum of the equipment.
Kracowski eased down the hallway and waited. The air was thick with the stirring of ancient dust and he fought back a sneeze. That's when he saw her.
At first he thought it was Starlene coming down the hall toward him. Then he realized the woman wore no clothes.
She carried her own light with her. No, not with her, within her. She drifted toward him like dawn's smoke on a meadow, then, before he could discern what was wrong with her face, she was gone.
But not before putting words in Kracowski's head: You can see the truth if you look through my eyes.
Kracowski nearly dropped his flashlight. He looked around to see who had spoken, to see where the woman had gone. Translucent women didn't exist, and women who didn't exist couldn't appear out of nowhere. A mind could not live separately from the body. Kracowski flipped on the light again and swept the beam across the hall and into me nearby cells.
"Where did she go?" Starlene said, approaching from the shadows.
"Access to the basement is limited to authorized personnel only, Miss Rogers," Kracowski said.
"Was she authorized?"
"You should be concerned with your own violations, Miss Rogers. This early in your career, you'd better keep your record spotless."
"I can't pretend I didn't see her."
"Saw whom?"
"Don't pull that with me. Mr. Bondurant saw it, too." Starlene waved into the darkness behind her. "I believe he ran away."
"I'm not sure what sort of manifestation or illusion you thought you saw. My Synaptic Synergy Therapy and the resultant electromagnetic fields might have uncertain effects. I'm still studying how it changes neural patterns. It's possible that you may have been exposed to a high field fluctuation. That may lead to hallucinations."
"She called herself the 'Miracle Woman.' Except she didn't talk at all, just put words right in my head."
Miracle Woman. That was all Kracowski needed, more religious hysteria among the staff. At least that could be a good cover story if Starlene made some sort of report to the state board. He could say she was suffering from delusions. By the time Kracowski was through, he'd have them wondering whether Starlene should be receiving help instead of giving it.
He shined the light in her face so that she blinked. "Why are you down here?"
"Bondurant. He-" She seemed to change her mind about what she wanted to say. "I'm trying to figure out how your gizmos down here work. And how it's supposed to heal these kids."
"You believe in the power of talk, the power of suggestion. Nurturing, compassionate attention. But you're trying to pour love into cracked vessels. I not only patch the cracks, I reshape the vessel."
"Freeman said he 'heard' people down here. He claims to be able to read minds."
"A rare but reported delusion among those with bipolar disorder, at least during a manic episode. And he's a rapid cycler, isn't he?"
"I've observed him swinging from up to down in the course of minutes. But he's hearing voices, and I'm hearing voices, and I'm seeing people that I don't want to believe are real."
"I can assure you they are not real. Like I told you before, I've heard plenty of ghost stories about Wendover, and I've not seen a ghost yet."
"You didn't see the Miracle Woman?"
"You saw nothing." Kracowski took the beam from Starlene's face and played it down the hall. "If it's not there, it can't be quantified. If it can't be quantified, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, then I'm not interested."
"If you're so brave, then why don't you give me the flashlight and you can stay down here in the dark?"
Kracowski tilted the light under his chin, knowing it made sinister shadows on his face. "Maybe the crazies are standing right in front of you."
"That doesn't sound like something a rational man of science would say."
"If I scare you away, maybe you'll leave my equipment alone."
"I wouldn't dream of interfering with your research. After all, you have the whole world to save, right? Lots of troubled, lowly humans to heal. The masses. Those who aren't perfect like you."
She headed for the main corridor, into the thick stretch of black, her shadow bobbing along the wall like oil in a sick ocean.
"You saw nothing," Kracowski said.
"Like I didn't see that man at the lake," she said without slowing. "And those wet footprints in the hall. I'm seeing a lot of things I'm not seeing lately."
"They don't exist until I say so."
Starlene paused at the edge of the corridor. "God is the one who makes those decisions."