"Um, sure. A demon. I saw a demon."

David strove to maintain the therapeutic context, but at the same time was acutely aware of his own reaction to the flashes, but what he'd seen had hardly been a demon.

"You want to ask me something, Doctor. Go ahead."

Mack was certainly perceptive. "What do you know about the flashes?"

"They're making an ORME, and that's pretty d.a.m.n disturbing."

"An ORME?"

"An orbitally rearranged monatomic element. Gold, would be my guess. The legendary philosopher's stone."

Those two words, "philosopher's stone," would ordinarily have evoked in him the quiet contempt of the scientist dealing with an ignorant member of the public who was silly enough to believe such twaddle.

That was not how he reacted now. "Go on."

"It's being made in their arc furnace. The 'kiln.' Look inside sometime."

"I have. It looks like a kiln."

"Not at night, Doc. That's when they install their tungsten filament, and you're looking at three thousand degrees sustained."

"Isn't that rather a high temperature?"

"Not for them. And this new lady, she's their leader, I think. I think things are going into overdrive. She, um-G.o.d, you know, I've forgotten her name."

"Caroline."

"Haven't we done this? Maybe the flashes erased my memory. I mean her last name. Is it Acton?"

David remained impa.s.sive.

"Is it Light, then? Is she a member of the Light family?"

Mack was fishing hard-too hard, David thought. He would not forget this. "Let's get back to ORME," he said. "It's what?"

"An orbitally rearranged monatomic element is an element that's not entirely confined to three-dimensional s.p.a.ce. It's torsioned into hypers.p.a.ce. You eat it, and you extend into hypers.p.a.ce, too."

The philospher's stone ... they'd been taught about it in cla.s.s. "It's not just for philosophers and it's not a stone, it's a white powder." "It's not just for philosophers and it's not a stone, it's a white powder."

"And extending into hypers.p.a.ce gets you what?"

"You're outside of s.p.a.ce and time. So you can see the past and the future. You can ... maybe escape. Move around time or through it faster. Except, of course, for the problem."

"Which is?"

"It's total bulls.h.i.t. All ingesting a heavy metal is gonna do is screw with your kidneys."

"That would be my best guess, too."

If a man's stare could express the hunger of a tiger, Mack the Cat's poisoned eyes expressed it now. At that moment, the session bell chimed softly and he leaped to attention and saluted. "Hup!"

David recalled Katie's comment that Mack alternated between incipient serial killer and charming boy.

After he left, David slid aside the wall of book backs that concealed his electronics from patients. He keyed in Mack's code, F-0188, and the system began following his transponder. David watched him go down the wide hallway past Katie's office, then down two flights of stairs, the system automatically shifting from one camera to the next as it followed him.

He went into the art room where a number of other patients were painting and one was sculpting.

David closed the monitors. This was the very picture of a compliant patient.

He had fifteen minutes before his next appointment, which was Linda Fairbrother.

He pressed his intercom and said to Katie, "I'm going down to the art room to observe Mack. I'll be back in time for Fairbrother."

As he was closing his monitoring system, he saw Caroline Light sitting at an easel in the art room. Again, he pressed the intercom. "I see that Caroline is in the population."

"Dr. Hunt said to release her."

He went into the outer office. "But she's under constant supervision?"

She gestured toward her bank of screens. "Absolutely. Sam's on the job, watching her and Mack and keeping them apart."

"Oh?"

"Mack has expressed interest in her."

He was tempted to issue Sam a real gun and live rounds. He would immediately reinforce to Sam that he thought that Mack was potentially quite dangerous to her.

"Let Marian know that I'll expect to discuss Caroline's progress toward the end of the day. We'll need to make a decision about where she sleeps tonight."

Frankly, he hoped that she would fake more evidence of disturbance and justify another night under confinement-not that it helped, given her hidden power to apparently come and go as she pleased. He'd a.s.sumed that she'd had help from the staff-probably Fleigler-but now who knew, maybe she'd just walked through the walls.

This substance they were making-even the process of creating it affected the mind profoundly, and look what had happened to him when he drew close. He'd been somehow-was the right word "overcome"?-yes, overcome, and what had taken place next? He thought that they had probably carried him to his room.

But the state he had been in was not sleep, it was darker and deeper than sleep. Had he been outside of time, somehow? Was such a thing truly possible?

In any case, if just the manufacturing process was that disorienting, perhaps the substance was potent indeed. He could certainly understand why the group making it had been wearing welder's masks.

White powder gold ... it had been discussed in cla.s.s-discussed a lot. He could see Mr. Light sitting on the edge of his desk speaking about it. Could see but not hear.

G.o.d, but the fog of amnesia was maddening. Maybe Katie knew more than she was saying. Maybe there would be some trigger to memory if he just talked about it all. "Katie, what's your impression of what happened last night? Please be frank."

"You were overwrought. It could happen to anybody."

Not helpful. "Did I go out? Were you aware of that?"

She was silent. Then she reached out, her hand tentative. For a moment, he still hesitated, but when she began to withdraw it, he took it. They remained like that for a moment, and he felt that her hand was warm and small and very soft.

A moment later, it was over, and she turned away and busied herself with her files. He went down to watch Caroline and Mack, and try to feel his way a little further down the dark pa.s.sage that was life at the Acton Clinic.

10.

MAYHEM.

Mack sat near Caroline Light, watching her paint the most strikingly realistic painting he had ever seen. She was just beginning, but it was really very odd. It wasn't photographic, it was beyond that. The light shimmering in the meadow, the glow of the tiny flowers and the green of the gra.s.s-it was just uncanny, and what a very mysterious thing for her to be doing. What would a painting have to do with anything, no matter how it appeared?

He had calculated every word uttered in his session with young David, controlling not only his own answers, but also the doctor's questions, until finally the truth had been revealed. At the instant that the young doctor's untrained body language-crossing his legs, glancing away-had revealed the correctness of his guess that this was Caroline Light, a bolt of pure fire had shot through him, forcing him to will his face to impa.s.sivity and idly straighten his tie while he was actually br.i.m.m.i.n.g with triumph inside.

It was Caroline Light, and my, but she had fooled them all, hadn't she? Rich, neurotic playgirl. And all that screaming and crying last night-she was an excellent actress.

No matter how good she was, though, in the end he was going to squeeze out every morsel of information she possessed, including how to make white powder gold that worked, and exactly what to do with it that would lead to escape from this h.e.l.l.

They might not be able to save all the people in all the redoubts, but they could certainly save the Blue Ridge, which would be enough to start mankind again on a far stronger footing. No more corrupt bloodlines, no more inferior people, not ever. A new world.

He was eager to get to his room and let General Wylie know she was here. He needed orders and support personnel. There must be no mistakes, and if there was resistance from the security guards when he took her-as he had to believe there would be-he had to be certain that they would not succeed in stopping him.

"Don't," she said.

Was she speaking to him? Surely not. He was thirty feet away, hardly looking at her.

She turned toward him and challenged him with a stare. "You. Don't."

"Excuse me?"

"Go away."

"I'm sorry. It's your painting. The life in it-"

"I don't think looking at pictures makes men drool like dogs, Mr. Dog."

Why did she care so much? Why was she so concerned about a picture picture?

He was so maddeningly in the dark.

"h.e.l.lo? Are you deaf?"

"I'm terribly sorry."

He got up from the chair and moved out into the larger recreation area. He strolled up to Sam.

"I guess that didn't work," he said, trying to sound affable.

"Not her type, Mack."

"Yeah, I was halfway across the room."

"You were staring pretty hard."

"Look, I'm going to take a little siesta. Wash her outa my hair."

Sam nodded.

"Um, would you do me a huge favor and not turn on my room." He tugged at his crotch.

"I hear you. I'll hang out in the hall. Monitor off."

They went together up the stairs to the living area. "You used to only be with me when I was outside. I feel kind of oppressed."

"Glen's orders. Supertight security from now on. Thank whoever did Dr. Ullman."

"Townies. Nothing to do with us nice, sweet patients."

"But you were out that night. Unfortunately for you."

He went into his room and closed the door. He couldn't lock it, of course. That could only be done from the outside.

Immediately, he went to his drawer and got out the radio. Using the keypad on the modified TV remote that controlled it, he tapped out a few words: first, "Caroline Light has come. Need immediate action."

He waited for the faint tone that would indicate that his message had been received. The set on the other end was monitored twenty-four hours a day. For security reasons, they had no set transmission times. He looked at his watch. The sixty-second window came and went. Still no acknowledgment. Following protocol, he transmitted a second time, then once again waited.

This had to work, it was too important not to. But the sun was awful today, maybe even the single sideband system they used was gone.

Again he transmitted, and again there was no response.

Okay, he was panicking now, feeling that same sense of being trapped that regularly woke this claustrophobe up nights. Angrily, he shut down his equipment. He told himself that it was a lot harder for his simple system to detect their signals than vice versa. So maybe they'd gotten the message. Maddening. But he had to take risks now, and one of them was to find a way out of this room after lockdown. It was urgent that he gain the freedom of this place as soon as possible.

Sure, he could enter the ductwork, but he needed that blueprint, which meant another excursion into town and a search of the building department's records.

Once he could get out of this room, cover would also require confusion, and he thought he knew how to cause it. The townies l.u.s.ted after this place. They stayed away because of the guards. He understood the system, though, and he could provide them with a plan. If they were desperate enough, they would come. There would be a battle, and he would use it as a cover to capture Light and wring the truth out of her. Maybe Ford, too. He'd been appointed supervisor of this place, so he had to be high up in the leadership, also.

He stepped out into the hall. Sam sat half asleep in a tipped-back chair in the nurse's station. Good, he would leave him behind right here and now.

"Hi, there," Sam said.

s.h.i.t! "Well, I think I'm looking at a walk."

"You want to go out in that? Have you seen the sky?"

"I'm crazy, remember."

Sam was not happy about it, but he stuck to his orders. Don't control the patient, follow the patient.