"Who?" Starlene asked.
"Her." He pointed at the naked woman, whose long, dark hair flowed over her shoulders. She looked like one of those Venus on the Half-shell drawings done by some acid burnout from the Sixties. Except for the part about the bloody eye sockets. Not even a drug overdose victim could have imagined those.
"I don't see nothing," Dipes said.
"Not even the future?" Isaac asked. "Well, I see Kracowski and that new guy, the crazy one. And the weird guy flopping around on his stomach like a beached fish."
"You don't see the ghosts?" Freeman asked. The Miracle Woman floated closer, her hands closed. Freeman hoped she wouldn't open her palms and look at him. He couldn't handle that right now. All he wanted was to reach Vicky.
"We can save her," the Miracle Woman said. "Follow me."
Freeman froze. She drifted closer, skin fluttering like psychedelic rags, her torn face wearing a faint smile. "Trust me," she said.
Freeman clamped his hands over his ears. "No. Get out. You're not here. You're not real."
"Trust me, Freeman."
"No. You can't triptrap a dead person. That wasn't part of the experiment. That wasn't what he turned me into."
"Your father hurt you. But he also made you. See, he gave you a gift. It doesn't matter what his intentions were. Now it's yours, and you're the one who has to use it."
"I don't want it."
"Do you want to save Vicky?"
Damn her. Why couldn't she just stay dead? Why couldn't she leave him alone? She was just like all the others.
'Trust me," she said, and a soft tickle caressed his cheek. He thought it was her finger, and he opened his eyes.
It wasn't her finger, it was his tears.
"Trust me," she repeated. "Starlene said God doesn't send you anything you can't handle."
"Why do you want to help?" he said, this time aloud instead of through his thoughts.
She flashed a triptrap of her own, and he saw the past through her eyes, the old man from the lake standing over her, she was strapped in Thirteen, helpless, and the old man applied the electrodes and Freeman twisted in agony as the electricity sliced through their mutual nerve endings, the old man wearing a lab coat now, a tie, taking notes, serious, concerned injecting her with something that made Freeman's brain cloud, the old man and an orderly leading her into the basement, only it was cleaner back then, though still dark. She was put in a cell, the same one in which Vicky was now trapped, and at last Freeman knew.
The Miracle Woman had died in the cell. She had torn her own eyes out, not wanting to witness any more of the doctor's treatments. She bled to death in silence, able to weep only blood. As Freeman felt her blood pour down his own face, as the hot pain smothered like a molten mask, as she bit her tongue to keep from crying out and drawing the attention of the orderlies, who might save her for yet more misery, Freeman understood that he didn't have an exclusive hold on suffering.
She freed him from her memories and Freeman clutched his head dazed.
"Are you okay?" Starlene asked.
"Yeah." He wiped his cheek before the others noticed. "But I've got to do this alone. She told me so."
"He's right," Dipes said. "That's the way I saw it happen. We're supposed to go over there, into that room. Freeman goes on alone."
Starlene paused a moment, squeezed Freeman's shoulder, then said, "Okay. But we won't be far away."
Freeman waited while the three hid in the nearby cell. The triptrap with the Miracle Woman seemed to have taken hours, but the milieu before him in the basement had not changed. Dad stood by the open door to Vicky's cell, mumbling in his crazed voice about validity and breakthroughs and control. Kracowski hung back near the large holding tanks as if wanting to hide in their shadows.
The Miracle Woman had disappeared, and Freeman knew she was in Vicky's cell, keeping her company, or driving her insane. Because, when you triptrapped a crazy person, then you got crazy, too. Freeman couldn't reach Vicky, at least with his mind. So he would have to reach her the normal, old-fashioned way.
He swallowed hard and stepped out into the open area of the basement. "Hey, Dad!" he shouted.
Dad turned, his eyes growing even wider, the grin changing into something sharp and sinister. "Well, this is just perfect. A family reunion, right when I'm about to become the most brilliant person in the universe."
"What do you want a stupid girl for? She doesn't know anything about the power of the brain."
"She was available," Dad said. "Didn't I teach you about test runs?"
"You taught me plenty, Dad. No pain, no gain, right?" He pointed toward Kracowski. "He had the crazy idea that you need to control things, put limits on it. But we know better, don't we, Dad?"
"That's the old Trooper. Pedal to the metal, wide open, full speed ahead. What do you think of this one?" Dad passed his hand through the soft skull of one of the ghosts. "Can you see his thoughts? He put tin foil in his ears to block out the radio signals being broadcast by secret government agencies. Seems like that's the kind of message you'd want to receive, isn't that right, McDonald?"
McDonald groaned from the floor, then tried unsuccessfully to rise.
Kracowski emerged from the shadows, bolted to the computer, and tapped some keys. Dad screamed at him. "Leave it alone, you idiot. Don't you want to be part of the breakthrough?"
"Not your breakthrough," Kracowski said. "This isn't the experiment."
Dad jumped at Kracowski, shoving him away from the computer. Kracowski threw a weak punch and missed. Dad knocked Kracowski down and checked the readings, then began frantically working the keyboard.
"You screwed up my ratios, damn you," he said.
Kracowski, wiping blood from his mouth, said, "I had to have an override. Once the Trust got too far involved, I figured things might go bad."
Dad's twisted face was green in the glow of the screen's phosphor. "Bad? Bad? I'll show you goddamned BAD"
The whine of the machinery intensified, and Freeman knew it was time to make a move, while Dad was distracted. He raced toward Vicky's cell, wading through the ghosts whose cold flesh had grown more solid. The field throbbed as it gained in strength, the walls vibrated the cell doors clanged against stone, the ghosts' thoughts slipped across Freeman's mind. He wondered if this was what it was like to hear voices, to be a full-blown schizophrenic.
Maybe schizophrenia was more than a condition of the mind, an imbalance in brain chemistry. Maybe it was a reality for some people. Maybe the voices weren't imaginary.
"Where are you going, you little shit?" Dad yelled at Freeman.
But Freeman was past him, running through the door into Vicky's cell, diving into the dark, endless void, screaming as he fell upward and downward and sideways all at the same time. The door slammed closed beyond him with a metallic finality.
FORTY-SIX
"Vicky?"
Freeman reached out for her, both with his hands and his mind. The darkness crawled down his throat, solid as a snake. It blinded him and clogged his ears, surrounded him like a second skin.
The fields shifted again, and from the way the world beyond the darkness shook and trembled, his outside reality was going to break into fragments any second now. If that happened, if everything he'd known and hated and feared and tasted was going to disappear forever, he wanted to be with Vicky when it happened. Inside her.
Her words came from the bleak black beyond: "Because you don't want to be alone."
"No, it's more than that." The triptrap worked, and the bridge between them threw off a faint light. She stood at the far end, glowing and pale, scared, ten million miles away.
"They're breaking it down."
"I know. Once Dad got involved, it was bound to get screwed up."
"Come to me. I'm losing you."