McDonald crossed the room and yanked at Mills's shirt. "Tell me what's going on, damn you."
"It's better than I ever dreamed" Mills said.
Kracowski stepped into the hall and looked toward the row of circuit boards and the holding tanks. The boards lit up in random splashes of green, red, and yellow. The main dynamo whined like an animal caught in a steel trap. The air was warm and the smell of hot copper filled the basement.
"She's the ghost in the machine," Mills said. "Remember that old album by The Police? Spirits in the material world. Eee-yo-oh. Eee-yo-oh."
McDonald grabbed Mills by the shirt and pulled him from the cell. The agent shoved Mills against a wall and pressed the flashlight under his chin. The strange angle of the light made Mills's eyes look even more bulging and deranged.
"Tell me what's going on," McDonald shouted above the roar of the machines.
"She's taken over," Mills said. "Didn't you read my paper on mechanical anomalies?"
Kracowski recalled some talk years ago of studies conducted at Princeton University, of how random number generators could be influenced by telepathy. Back then, he had ridiculed the notion along with the rest of the professional establishment. Such nonsense had been the realm of the Rhine Research Center and other New Age illusionists. Now, the nonsense was real and crawling up his spine.
Kracowski felt a faint pull against him and realized the intense magnetic field was tugging at the metal in his zipper, his belt buckle, the pen in his pocket, and the eyelets of his shoes.
"She's here," Mills said.
Kracowski looked down the hall toward the black heart of the basement. Nothing stirred, though the shadows had an undulating, liquid quality. What had Freeman and the others seen in that darkness?
"Suffering," Mills said. "I never knew it would taste so sweet. Freeman's misery was a joy, but this…"
McDonald shoved Mills. The deranged doctor shook off the blow and smiled. "Ordinary pain. You can't touch me with ordinary pain."
Kracowski stopped McDonald from delivering another blow, this one to Mills's face. "It won't do any good."
McDonald looked toward the equipment, face wrinkled with worry. "We can't replace this stuff if it melts down."
Kracowski checked the meters on the closest amperage box. The needle flickered in the red zone, but the flux was erratic, not the way electricity behaved under normal circumstances.
"It's the Miracle Woman," Mills said.
McDonald looked at Kracowski. Kracowski shook his head. Mills was done, cooked. Whatever secret agency McDonald worked for, it had made a mistake by bringing the doctor out of the institution. Or maybe the mistake had been made years ago, when Mills first decided that the mind could be mapped and directed, and from there, believed that the spirit could be enslaved.
Kracowski felt a sudden rush of shame for his own foolish ambition. Even if God didn't exist, there was a domain that was off limits to those who lived and breathed. That domain had been invaded with all the carelessness and brute force exhibited by Attila's hordes, Hitler's tanks, and Stalin's KGB.
McDonald pressed his face close to Mills's. "Talk to me. Tell me what's going on or your ass will be in a strait jacket so fast and so tight you'll shit your pants before the Thorazine kicks in."
"Don't you know what this is all about?" Mills shouted. "I'm with her. I'm inside her. She's dead and I'm reading her mind."
His cackle ran through Kracowski's ears and into his bones, where it settled with a chill as deep as the grave's.
"Okay. Fine." McDonald's face was blank, as if he were used to Mills's maniacal spells. "Let's start with the Barnwell girl."
THIRTY-EIGHT
"Dr. Kracowski asked me to get him," Starlene said to Randy.
"I'm sorry, honey, I can't let you do that," Randy said "I can't release Freeman to anybody but the doctor himself."
"You can't keep him locked up all day."
"He's got some books. Besides, these brats keep themselves amused with their own little mind games."
"Randy." She looked into his eyes, but none of the former passion burned there. "Tell me what's going on. Please."
"You know more than I do. You're the one who keeps having visions."
"Don't be like that."
"Look, everything's gotten too complicated. I shouldn't have been interested in you in the first place."
She pretended to be hurt, and bit her lower lip while gazing past him to the door of the Blue Room. One keyed lock and one operated by an electronic combination. Randy wore a ring of keys on his belt, but how could she trick him into revealing the pad's combination?
"You know about Room Thirteen," she said.
"You lived through it, didn't you?" He looked down the hall toward Kracowski's labs, which were around the corner.
"Did Dr. Kracowski make you have a treatment?" She touched her head as if suffering a migraine.
"That's none of your business."
"Dr. Kracowski's hiding things from you. You can't trust him. Did you know about the ESP?"
"Now you're getting paranoid. Maybe you need to take a few days off."
"In case you haven't noticed Wendover has turned into a concentration camp. Barbed wire and armed guards."
"They're not armed."
"Not that you can see. But Kracowski does compare unfavorably closely with Josef Mengele, wouldn't you say?"
"Kracowski never hurt anybody. He heals the kids. Improves them. I've seen it with my own eyes, many times. This work is important, and it doesn't help that you're sticking your nose into everything."
"Sure, he healed me, all right, when I had the SST. Do you want to know what I saw?"
Randy swallowed hard. "I…"
"Or can you read my mind?"
"Wait a second. I said I never had a treatment."
"I almost believe you. How many treatments does it take before you can read minds outside of Thirteen? I could only do it for a few minutes, then the effect faded. But I saw a whole hell of a lot while the juice was running through me."
"I don't believe that stuff. Ghosts aren't real. God would never allow such a thing."
"Yet He allows people to read each other's minds?"
Someone was coming down the hall, the footsteps of hard shoes echoing in the next wing. A door opened and the steps trailed off up the stairs.
Starlene lowered her voice. "I never believed in ESP and I only believed in one sort of life after death. I didn't ask for any of this. All I wanted was to help the children."
"You can help Freeman by leaving him alone. Dr. Kracowski knows what's best. This is bigger than any of us."
"Are you sure you haven't been through some brainwashing? Whatever Dr. Kracowski's up to, I'd bet that turning you into a zombie would be child's play. Maybe ESP can be manipulated to work like a one-way street, put thoughts in there but not let them out."
Randy grabbed her arm. "I'm serving the Lord, too, the same as you. You spread His glory through love and understanding and I do it by helping our mission of improving the human soul."
"You were handpicked by Bondurant, no doubt. That's his brand of salvation."
"God made Jesus suffer."
"Oh, so you think you're God too? Or is Kracowski the real God and you're just one of the prophets?"
The small walkie-talkie on Randy's hip hissed. He pulled it from his belt and turned away from Starlene. He spoke in low tones, then took several steps down the hall so she couldn't overhear. Starlene took me opportunity to make a closer examination of the lock.
Randy put away the walkie-talkie and stuck his key in the Blue Room door. His hand flew over the electronic lock's keypad too quickly for Starlene to memorize me sequence. "You'd better go now," he said.