Three quarterth of a thentury.
“But your tests always focus on events that are about to occur soon,” Kalisha said. “Don’t bother to deny it, it’s in your head like a neon sign. Also, it’s logical. What use is a test when you can’t grade the results for five or ten years?”
She took Nicky’s hand. Luke stepped back to them and took Kalisha’s. And now Tim could hear that humming again. It was low, but it was there.
“Representative Berkowitz was exactly where our precogs said he would be on the day he died,” Smith said, “and that prediction was made a full year before.”
“Okay,” Luke said, “but you’ve targeted people—Paul Westin, for one—based on predictions about what’s going to happen in ten, twenty, even twenty-five years. You know they’re unreliable, you know anything can happen to turn people and the events they’re part of in a different direction, something as trivial as a missed phone call can do it, but you go on, just the same.”
“Let’s say you have a point,” Smith said. “But isn’t it better to be safe rather than sorry?” Thafe. Thorry. “Think of the predictions that have proved out, then think of the possible consequences of doing nothing!”
Annie was back a turn, maybe even two. “How can you be sure the predictions will come true if you kill the people they’re about? I don’t get that.”
“He doesn’t get it, either,” Luke said, “but he can’t bear to think that all the killing they’ve done has been for no good reason. None of them can.”
“We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” Tim said. “Didn’t somebody say that about Vietnam?”
“If you’re suggesting that our precogs have been stringing us along, making things up—”
“Can you be sure they haven’t?” Luke countered. “Maybe not even consciously, but… it’s a good life they have there, isn’t it? Cushy. Not much like the ones we had in the Institute. And maybe their predictions are genuine at the time they’re made. It still doesn’t take random factors into consideration.”
“Or God,” Kalisha said suddenly.
Smith—who had been playing God for God knew how long—raised a sardonic smile at this.
Luke said, “You understand what I’m saying, I know you do. There are too many variables.”
Smith was silent for a moment, looking out at the view. Then he said, “Yes, we have math guys, and yes, the Bernoulli distribution has come up in reports and discussions. For years now, in fact. So let’s say you’re right. Let’s say our network of Institutes didn’t save the world from nuclear destruction five hundred times. Suppose it was only fifty? Or five? Wouldn’t it still be worth it?”
Very softly, Tim said, “No.”
Smith stared at him as if he were insane. “No? You say no?”
“Sane people don’t sacrifice children on the altar of probability. That’s not science, it’s superstition. And now I think it’s time you left.”
“We’ll rebuild,” Smith said. “If there’s time, that is, with the world running downhill like a kid’s jalopy with no hand to guide it. I also came to tell you that, and to warn you. No interviews. No articles. No threads posted on Facebook or Twitter. Such stories would be laughed at by most people, anyway, but they would be taken very seriously by us. If you want to insure your survival, keep quiet.”
The hum was growing louder, and when Smith removed his American Spirits from his shirt pocket, his hand was shaking. The man who had gotten out of the nondescript Chevy had been confident and in charge. Used to giving orders and having them carried out ASAP. The one standing here now, the one with the heavy lisp and the sweat-stains creeping out from the armpits of his shirt, was not that man.
“Think you better go, son,” Annie advised him, very softly. Maybe even kindly.
The cigarette pack dropped from Smith’s hand. When he bent to pick it up, it skittered away, although there was no wind.
“Smoking’s bad for you,” Luke said. “You don’t need a precog to tell you what’ll happen if you don’t stop.”
The Malibu’s windshield wipers started up. The lights came on.
“I’d go,” Tim said. “While you still can. You’re pissed about the way things have worked out, I get that, but you have no idea how pissed these kids are. They were on ground zero.”
Smith went to his car and opened the door. Then he pointed a finger at Luke. “You believe what you want to believe,” he said. “We all do, young Mr. Ellis. You’ll discover that for yourself in time. And to your sorrow.”
He drove away, the car’s rear tires throwing up a cloud of dust that rolled toward Tim and the others… and then veered away, as if blown by a puff of wind none of them could feel.
Luke smiled, thinking George couldn’t have done it better.
“Might have done better to get rid of him,” Annie said matter-of-factly. “Plenty of room for a body at t’far end of the garden.”
Luke sighed and shook his head. “There are others. He’s only the point man.”
“Besides,” Kalisha said, “then we’d be like them.”
“Still,” Nicky said dreamily. He said no more, but Tim didn’t have to be a mind-reader to get the rest of his thought: It would have been nice.
2
Tim expected Wendy back from Columbia for supper, but she called and said she had to stay over. Yet another meeting about the future of Fairlee County law enforcement had been scheduled for the following morning.
“Jesus, won’t this ever be over?” Tim asked.
“I’m pretty sure this will be the last one. It’s a complicated situation, you know, and bureaucracy makes everything worse. All okay there?”
“All fine,” Tim said, and hoped it was true.
He made a big pot of spaghetti for supper; Luke threw together a Bolognese sauce; Kalisha and Nicky collaborated on a salad. Annie had disappeared, as she often did.
They ate well. There was good talk, and a fair amount of laughter. Then, as Tim was bringing a Pepperidge Farm cake back from the fridge, holding it high like a comic opera waiter, he saw that Kalisha was crying. Nick and Luke had each put an arm around her, but spoke no comforting words (at least that Tim could hear). They looked thoughtful, introspective. With her, but not perhaps completely with her; perhaps lost in their own concerns.
Tim set the cake down. “What’s wrong, K? I’m sure they know, but I don’t. So help a brother out.”
“What if he’s right? What if that man is right and Luke is wrong? What if the world ends in three years… or three months… because we’re not there to protect it?”
“I’m not wrong,” Luke said. “They’ve got mathematicians, but I’m better. It’s not bragging if it’s the truth. And what he said about me? That magical thinking thing? It’s true of them, too. They can’t bear to think they’re wrong.”
“You’re not sure!” she cried. “I can hear it in your head, Lukey, you’re still not sure!”
Luke did not deny this, just stared down at his plate.
Kalisha looked up at Tim. “What if they’re only right once? Then it will be on us!”
Tim hesitated. He didn’t want to think that what he said next might have a major influence on how this girl lived the rest of her life, there was no way he wanted that responsibility, but he was afraid he had it, anyway. The boys were listening, too. Listening and waiting. He had no psychic powers, but there was one power he did have: he was the grownup. The adult. They wanted him to tell them there was no monster under the bed.