"NOOO!" Sarah grabbed his arm, forcing it skyward.

His hand was holding a gun.

Nate was there in an instant, but Sarah already had Farmer in a very painful armhold, and with a skillful judo move she threw him to the ground. In less than a second, Farmer was looking up into the barrel of his own gun, now in Sarah's hand.

Nate smiled and gave a little nod. He never doubted.

"I've had someone pull a gun on me before," Sarah told Farmer, "and that's what it looked like."

Nate caught a movement out of the corner of his eye.

The little man was gone; the bush at the corner of the cabin was still wiggling where he'd pa.s.sed.

"Be right back." Nate took off after him. He cleared the corner of the cabin and saw the man disappearing around the front. Close enough to catch, Nate figured, pouring on the speed. He heard a cry of pain and a scuffle as he came around the front of the cabin, then came face-to-face with four big guys in green jackets with big yellow letters on the front: U.S. MARSHAL. The little man was dangling from their strong arms.

Sarah thought the marines had arrived. More deputy marshals began flooding the backyard, guns ready. "Sarah Springfield?" asked one.

"Yes."

"Sorry we're late."

They had Farmer. She handed over Farmer's gun.

"He was going to kill you just as he killed Alvin Rogers," said a familiar voice coming around the cabin, "which would have repaired the breach in secrecy-except for the children, of course." It was Morgan, walking with Nate. "Your little hotel clerk was simply a decoy to lure you here."

"To a secluded place with no witnesses," said Nate.

"Exactly. You would have disappeared without a trace. h.e.l.lo, Sarah. As for your red-headed woman, she is actually a Ms. Marian Winger, a longtime confidante and a.s.sociate of Mr. Farmer there. Once cornered, she was very cooperative, and warned us that Mr. Farmer was following you. Since we knew where you were, we knew where Mr. Farmer would be." They strode right up to Farmer, now on his stomach as a marshal handcuffed him. Morgan spoke to Nate, but also for Farmer's benefit. "He's been taking advantage of a sacred trust: using his position and the files at the Bureau for Missing Children to screen and recruit runaways for experimentation. Ms. Winger was acting as his field agent, and she gave us all the details." Morgan knelt beside the handcuffed Farmer. "And now, Mr. Farmer, you will tell us exactly where the children are."

The perfect, heavenly Elisha leaned forward, her eyes intense. "It doesn't mean you can't believe something. No, it's even better than that: You can believe anything, anything you want, because if you believe it, that makes it true."

Elijah could only rest his head on the pillow and close his eyes as his sister went on and on.

"... I love being able to create my own reality. I can be what I want, do what I want, believe what I want, and I don't have to worry about what G.o.d thinks ..."

He was disappointed. After all he'd been through, he was actually hoping this was heaven. He was even hoping this was really his sister. Now his jumbled mind was beginning to put a few pieces together: If there was no reality, then he certainly couldn't count on there being a heaven; if nothing was really true, then even what this girl was saying wasn't true; if this girl really believed what she was saying, she wasn't his sister. All this left him with a discouraging conclusion: He was still in the middle of a waking nightmare and he was probably going crazy.

Tap, tap, tatap, tap tap ...

What was that sound? He cracked one eye open. The pretty girl was still talking, her eyes focused somewhere across the room and not on him. His eye was drawn to her right hand, rest ing on the arm of the chair. Her fingers were drumming out a little rhythm, over and over again.

Elisha watched the big screen on the wall, trying to look as amazed and distraught as before as she drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. G.o.d was answering her prayer: The other Elisha, while droning on and on about there being no truth, was drumming her fingers the very same way. The computer had picked it up as just a mannerism and sent it through to the phony image.

Mr. Bingham's eyes were glued to the big screen, and his voice squeaked a little with nervous antic.i.p.ation. "Theoretically, his mind should be adequately erased by this point, ready to receive the input from what he thinks is his sister. If this works, we will have broken the last barrier to global control."

A man in the audience asked, "And what if it doesn't work?"

Mr. Bingham kept watching the screen as he answered. "That would be unthinkable. If it is the truth that sets people free, then we can't allow people to have it or even believe in it. They must follow, do, and believe what we say, or we cannot enslave them."

"Unthinkable," the man in the audience agreed.

Now everyone watched the screen with all the more interest and anxiety.

And Elisha kept tapping away, sending the same message.

"Truth is just what you make it, whatever you want it to be, and no matter what you choose, it isn't wrong if you sincerely feel it..."

Elijah closed his eyes and tried to block out the girl's endless ramblings. He was listening to those finger taps, the only thing that made sense.

It was code. Springfield code: 0 R 6 0 C L 0 C K ... P R 0 JECTOR6OCLOCK...PROJE...

Then again, maybe it wasn't code. Maybe it was just silly rhythms that he was making into code in his poor, tired mind.

But the letters kept repeating, like an endless loop, the same number of seconds every time.

Same number of seconds. Same length of time. Repeating pattern. A rhythm, a beat, a pulse.

Whoa, hold on, hold on.

He knew this pulse, this beat. For the past eternity of chaos, he'd been living in it. It was everywhere. The rushing, rushing, rushing of the wind, the throbbing, throbbing, throbbing of the ground, the swaying, swaying, swaying of the trees, the rhythm of the rooms, the halls, the colors. It all kept time to this beat, like a big clock ticking, like a machine running, around and around, over and over. He could feel it like the beating of his own heart, like it was a part of him.

"They're at the gate!" shouted Easley, switching one of the monitor screens to a shot of the big iron gate.

Everyone in the room gasped, leaned forward, watched in awe.

Almost every kid on the campus was there, an angry mob of nearly fifty, armed with axes, picks, rakes, shovels, banging, prying, bashing, digging away at the gate.

Bingham was impressed. "Nearly all of them, and so early in the morning!" He turned to the audience. "You see? After four years of research, we can now choose our raw materials, create the right circ.u.mstances, and in less than two weeks produce a dictator and his followers!"

The audience applauded. It was apparently a great moment.

Bingham mused to himself, "This 'Alexander' could have done very well as a global dictator." He laughed. "And I think he knows it, too. Why else would he choose such a name?"

"How long do we keep them there?" asked a technician.

"Stand by for closing procedure," Bingham answered. He turned to the thin guy in black. "Begin shutdown and evacuation." The man hurried from the room. Red lights began to flash overhead. Bingham turned to the audience. "We are reaching the end of the experiment. Please prepare to evacuate at any moment."

The audience began to stir around in the dark, shuffling papers, opening and closing briefcases, grabbing coats.

Elisha was watching her image. Her entire message wasn't getting through, only the little part about the projector, repeating over and over. The computer must have hit a glitch or something. Her plan wasn't working. "Mr. Bingham!"

He was quite occupied. Teachers and technicians were starting to scramble everywhere. Some of the equipment was closing down, the red and amber lights blinking out, the whirring of the processors going silent. At the far end of the room, a door slid open and the audience, faces still in the dark, began heading for it.

"Mr. Bingham! When are you going to let my brother out of there?"

Bingham watched the screen, then said over his shoulder, "When I know what I want to know, of course."

"You mean, when you can know, and he can't!"

Bingham actually smiled at her. "Brilliant!"

Elijah was counting seconds. One, two, three . . . up to six. Every time, six seconds. The loop, the pulse, the wave, was six seconds. When he closed his eyes and listened to the room, he could even hear the sound of the air recycle every six seconds. The girl, still talking, seemed to take a little breath every six seconds. Wow. In all this mess, he could know something, a sweet six seconds.

So what about the code those fingers kept tapping out? Maybe he could know that, too. CKPROJECTOR6OCLO . . . JECTOR60CLOCK ... PROJECTOR 6 OCLOCK.

Six o'clock. Did she mean, behind him? Projector behind him? He opened his eyes and looked toward the ceiling, then over the back of the couch.

He didn't see anything. Not yet.

Teachers and techs were wheeling large cases of equipment and data on hand trucks, moving it all out that open door at the end of the room. It was all going like clockwork, well rehea.r.s.ed. The audience remained in the shadows by the door, watching the final seconds of the great experiment on the big screens.

"All right," said Bingham, "let them in."

The tech threw a switch, and with a loud creak and groan, the iron gate broke open. Alexander and his mob were jubilant, waving their tools in the air. "Let's go!" Alexander yelled, and the whole mob moved forward, through the gate and up the walk.

"Any stragglers?" Bingham asked.

Mrs. Meeks looked up from her console. "Warren's friends are hanging back. Warren is still in his room, not wanting to be seen. We still have Tom Cruise and his two friends hiding near the Dumpsters and a few kids hiding in the buildings."

"Let's contain them."

Meeks held down a talk switch and spoke into her headset. "Begin containment."

"Demolition? Report."

The third tech down the row reported, "Dozers in position, charges armed."

Bingham smiled-again. "I've grown to love this part!"

Overhead, there was a faint pounding. An image appeared on one of the big screens: the front door of the mansion. Alexander and the mob had reached it and were trying to break it in.

"Let them work at it a while. Let them have a feeling of accomplishment." He thought that last line was funny, and laughed.

"Mr. Bingham!" Easley shouted, pointing to the other screen.

Every eye in the place went to that screen. There were audible gasps.

Even Elisha gasped and her heart went sick.

Her brother Elijah had become a madman. He was singing, jumping, dancing around the room, hiding behind the chair where the phony Elisha sat, then jumping up, then hiding again, circling, ranting, and raving.

Bingham hurried closer to the screen. "More sound, please."

Easley reached for a k.n.o.b on his console and turned up the volume.

Elijah was singing, "I've got a brain, and you've got a brain, and it's so much pain! I've got a brain, and you've got a brain, and it's so much p.o.o.p!" Then he laughed and started ranting, "Gobbledee gobbledee gobbledee gobbledee gobbledee gook!

Gobbledee gobbledee gobbledee gobbledee gobbledee geek!" Then he rolled on the floor, kicking his feet in the air, then spun in sideways circles, pedaling against the floor with his feet.

Now Bingham roared with laughter, so much it made him wheeze.

Easley reached up and shook his hand. "Congratulations."

Booker came over and did the same. "Congratulations."

"Very good, very good!" said Bingham. "So these people can be broken after all! Make sure we get a full record of the data."

"My brother ... ," said Elisha, her spirit collapsing in sorrow. "My sweet brother ..."

"All right," said Bingham. "Open the door and let's be done with it." A tech threw another switch, and the front door of the mansion caved in. "Be sure they all go inside."

The screens combined into one big composite and switched to an interior shot of ... what in the world was it?

To Elisha, it looked like Alexander and his mob were pouring into a huge warehouse, a vast empty sh.e.l.l, and from the looks on their faces, they were as stunned and perplexed as she was. She strained to understand what she was seeing: bare, white walls, expansive concrete floor, high windows-yes, but no rooms, no stairs, no furniture, nothing!

The mansion on the hill, that huge, foreboding structure that had all the kids in awe; that mysterious citadel where power resided; that symbol of ultimate authority and rulership, was a fake.

An empty sh.e.l.l.

A big nothing.

"Everyone's inside," reported the tech.

"Seal them in," said Bingham.

The tech threw a switch, and on the screen, the front and side doors of the empty sh.e.l.l suddenly disappeared as huge panels slammed into place. The kids started screaming.

Bingham looked at Elisha and told his crew, "Throw her in with the others."

Chapter 15: Veritas.

armor wasn't smiling, but his arrogance showed clearly enough. He wasn't about to say anything.

"You have an amazing sense of loyalty, Mr. Farmer," said Morgan, turning away. "I wish you were working for us instead of them."

The hotel clerk was sitting on the wooden bench on the back porch, handcuffed to a bench leg, a federal marshal on either side of him. He didn't look nearly as arrogant or confident as Farmer did, and Nate noticed.

"So what's going to happen to Mr. Farmer?" Nate asked.

Morgan whistled at the thought of it. "Pretty serious charges. There are laws protecting schoolchildren from invasive psychological questioning or conditioning, and I would say Mr. Farmer has conspired with his friends to violate every one of them-not to mention his role in kidnapping the children, plus the murder of Alvin Rogers and the attempted murders of you and Sarah."

"Which doesn't look good for anyone who helped him."