Glen's eyes told him that he understood. The workers at the kiln would be carefully guarded.

"And nurses, if you have patients missing from any confined setting at any time, I am to be informed personally and at once. Is that clear?"

n.o.body spoke. Finally, Claire said, "Well, I think we have our marching orders."

As far as they were concerned, he'd gone too far. Never challenge a nurse's professionalism, not if you expect peace in your hospital. He tried a little diplomacy.

"Obviously, circ.u.mstances are presently working against us, so I want us all to stay as focused as we can on our mission, which is to keep this inst.i.tution running, which means working together as best we can. But, if I am going to manage this place, I am asking you, please, to cooperate with me. We have a terribly hard time ahead, and we also have this security issue, given what happened to Mrs. Denman."

"Here," Katie asked, genuine surprise in her voice, "a security issue in the clinic?"

"With the town," he explained hastily.

"Well," Katie said, "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm doing my best."

"We all are, and we're certainly willing to carry out your policies," Marian Hunt added.

"And the kiln is just a kiln," Osterman muttered.

The meeting concluded on what he could only see as a sour note. But why wouldn't they be sour? There was nothing positive here, it was all supply problems, security problems, and, because of the subterfuge he'd had to engage in, a lack of faith in their new boss. But any opponent in this room would have to see him as being nothing more than what he appeared to be-an inexperienced and overbearing supervisor.

Marian lingered at the door. Their eyes met and he nodded, and she returned.

She said, "David, we need to talk about some additional matters."

"Don't resign, Marian. Remember that I didn't pick me, Mrs. Denman did."

She sat down before the dark fireplace.

"If it's all the same to you, David, I won't dignify that with a response."

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Don't say you're sorry. You say that too much. It makes you look weak." She smiled a little. "Do you know that T-shirt? I think Mack wears it from time to time. " 'Graham Mining, Where the Weak are Killed and Eaten.' Do you know that?"

"I haven't seen it."

"He's in the art room now," Katie said. "He's got it on."

Marian waved her hand. "The point is, if you appear weak, Acton will devour you."

"Is that what happened to Dr. Ullman?"

"As far as we know, the fire was set by townies."

"And yet one day later you put Mack under confinement and gave him an armed guard."

"I did that because he's potentially violent."

"Not because he killed Dr. Ullman and you know it perfectly well?"

"I do not know it. It could've been the police themselves, or even the firemen. We are hated here."

"I've noticed."

"Understand it. Live it. It is the central reality of all our lives. This is the palace, still splendid in the middle of a ruined and starving world."

What was her point? And speaking of Mack, he was due here for a session in a few minutes.

She continued, "I want to agree with you to an extent, David. Oh, not about the conspiracy business. You saw lightning, or some sort of static effect. Who knows these days what nature might toss at us? And patients go downstairs at all hours." She held up a hand. "I know it's against the rules, but you don't tell people like this to follow your rules. You ask them."

"But they-"

"I'm sorry, but I'm not even interested in what they were doing. They do all sorts of odd things. Most of them are geniuses, which I'm sure you've noticed. Or have you?"

"Don't patronize me, Marian."

"Trust them, David! What they are doing here, even who they really are, most of them-well, we're not sure, none of us. But we serve their needs. We feed them and protect them and give them shelter and psychiatric support. They're far, far beyond most mortals, including you and me. Did you know that most of them can learn a new language in a couple of hours? And ask them to recite something for you sometime. Anything worth reciting. They'll know it, almost certainly. Give them something to read, then ask them to repeat it a couple of days later. It'll come back verbatim. Engage them on the most complex topics, you'll be amazed."

"Like what-Aztec culture?"

"Most of these people are as interested as anybody in ancient Mesoamerica. The difference is, they understand things like the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, and their philosophy, and Mayan mathematics."

His mind went to Acton's list sitting right now locked in one of the drawers of his desk. He did not want to feel as if he was drowning, but that was exactly how he felt. He knew that Marian was not an insider, Aubrey Denman had told him. So he would not open up to her, no matter how familiar with the situation she seemed.

Mack Graham was on his way, and there wasn't time to continue this. All he could do was to tell the truth of his feelings.

"Marian, I'm moved, I have to admit, by your loyalty to the patients."

"David, in this place nothing is as it seems."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that you may never fully understand them or what they're doing. But trust it, David. We all do, we just trust it." She came to her feet. "I have patients, too," she said. "Linda Fairbrother had a very difficult night. A painful interruption, as I understand it. She has a compulsive need to play every note in precise sequence." Her voice rose a little. "But some insensitive fool touched her hand-touched it-and disturbed the flow of her music and that has injured her."

"I'm sorry," David said.

"Yes," she responded, "you are." And she left.

David fought the pain that her sarcasm brought. He should not have interrupted the patient. It had been insensitive, even unprofessional. You empathized, you did not control ... unless, of course, you were a kid who was just plain out of his depth.

To regain his composure, what he needed was information. If he just understood the basic realities of this place better, he could be more useful. Or, frankly, begin to be useful at all. He looked to Katie, who remained as still as a wary bird.

"Katie, you've been here for, um-"

"Four years."

"As a psychiatric nurse who has been working with Dr. Hunt for that time, what do you make of this conversation?"

"Are you putting me on the spot, here?"

"I'm asking for your professional opinion."

"As a nurse, my opinion of her is that she's a conscientious and effective doctor."

"And me? How am I doing?"

"David, to be completely frank, you're taking longer figuring things out than I would have thought."

"I can't figure anything out!"

"You can figure out what you need to figure out, which is how to support these patients. Just concentrate on their needs, David! Who knows what they're doing doing? We can't understand, we don't have the minds for it. What we can do is provide a hug or a pill when needed, and a sounding board. Let them go where they want to go, be there to catch them when they trip. That's all we can do."

His buzzer rang, and at the Acton Clinic, you did not keep patients waiting.

9.

ORME.

Mack appeared in a silk jacket and trousers, moving with that curious precision of his. As he slid into the patient's chair in the nook that David had reserved for these sessions, David thought that he looked not like a mental patient with a severely distorted grasp of reality, but like some sort of vaudeville performer.

"We could become cannibals," Mack said.

That certainly sounded like symptomatic production. He settled in for a real session with a real psychiatric patient ... for once.

"What makes you say that?"

"No eggs at breakfast, therefore Acton is having supply problems. We could send raiding parties into the town."

"Do you think cannibalism is a good idea?"

"I'm crazy, so of course I do. I want to know about the new intake."

"You'll meet her in the common areas."

"Social Register?"

"I wouldn't know, Mack."

"Let me tell you about her. She's at least thirty. She's a self-commit who's been having very serious second thoughts. And last night, when she was screaming in that so very pleasant padded cell of yours, and you went to observe her, you got, shall we say, sidetracked."

What was this? Had this patient overheard something? Or had he been behind one of those welder's masks, perhaps-another confinement patient being let out at night?

"Expand on that."

"I think there are lots of surprises in the Acton Clinic. Right answer?"

"Therapeutic interaction isn't about right answers. It's about opening doors."

"You see the sun this morning?"

"Have you seen the sun?"

"My point is that it looks like it's had a bite taken out of it. The sunspot is gigantic."

"What does that mean to you?"

"To me? That I won't be alive in six months. Like you. Like everybody."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Incidentally, the new intake-what's her surname? Where's she from?"

"We're back to the new patient?"

"I just like to know who's here. Who I might be dealing with. The world of the obscenely rich is not a large one. She and I might have played doctor as kids. If so, I'd like to renew the acquaintance."

"Being in the CIA makes you rich?"

"Being the heir to Graham Mining makes you rich. I served my country for a dollar a year. And I was retired mental, okay? Is that what you want me to admit? That I was humiliated and ended up in this idiotic place, spilling my innermost secrets to a kid? Dr. Ford, I want just two things from you. First, I want to know the name of the new intake. I want to know who I'm living with. Second, I would like you to review my file and see if I really need to be on confinement."

"You don't think you should be?"

"Of course not! I don't understand it at all."

"Dr. Hunt did it because you have anger issues. Your daytime rights aren't affected."

"Except I have a G.o.dd.a.m.n armed guard when I go outside!"

"Armed with a tranquilizer gun. After Dr. Ullman pa.s.sed away, you were very, very angry." He did not bring up the fact that Mack had been AWOL at the time of the fire.

"Something was wrong that night, Doctor. And something was wrong last night, is wrong now, and has been wrong for weeks. And I don't mean the sun or the economy or any of that c.r.a.p. I mean that something is wrong here. here. Something is happening to this place, and yes, it scares me and when I am afraid, yes, I have an anger problem. Like those flashes last night? What was Something is happening to this place, and yes, it scares me and when I am afraid, yes, I have an anger problem. Like those flashes last night? What was that that? I had-" He stopped, shook his head.

"You had?"

"I don't know. A dream. Not pretty."

"You think the flashes were a dream?"

"h.e.l.l no, but they triggered something."

"Can you describe it, Mack?"