The Home

TWENTY-FOUR

Kracowski glanced at the computer screen, then checked his meter. "A hundred-and-twelve milliGuass," he said.

Paula, standing behind his chair, rubbed his shoulders. "It's only numbers, honey."

Kracowski knew he might as well be talking to the wall as talking to Paula, but he'd talked to walls too often lately. "These anomalies are not what I expected. Synaptic Synergy Therapy is designed to heal my patients, not cause them to have subjective experiences."

"Well, the ESP data is strong enough to convince even the biggest skeptics. And everything's subjective, honey."

"Except the truth."

He cleared the meter, changed its coordinates so that it detected another area of the basement. "Look at these spikes. The electromagnetic fields created by my equipment should be consistent. These are all over the place."

"So? If it bothers you, just ignore it."

"I can't ignore it. These readings aren't consistent with my theory."

"Change your theory, then."

Kracowski pushed away from his desk. "I was so sure I was right."

"You are right, Richard. You just found more than you bargained for."

He went to the two-way mirror and looked into the darkened space of Room Thirteen. He had helped those children. He had aligned their minds into harmonious states. He had restored them, made mem whole, healed what the religious-minded such as Bondurant called their "souls."

But souls didn't exist. The human body was a complex bag of chemicals, mostly water. The brain was nothing but a series of electromagnetic impulses. Thoughts and dreams were merely a random alignment of those impulses. Things like wishes and hopes and love and fear were specific patterns of neural activity, a battery of switches thrown on or off. Never mind that the number of possibilities were nearly limitless. "Nearly" was the key word. Everything had its limits.

Money.

It didn't buy happiness, and Kracowski knew this truth better than most.

Love.

That heralded and holy set of specific mental disorders, praised by poets throughout human history, chased by the weak who expected a miracle cure for their individual shortcomings, embraced by the masses as something worthy of sacrifice. If only they knew that Kracowski could create a series of electromagnetic wavelengths that aligned the synapses so that the subject experienced all those physical and emotional sensations: quickening of pulse, widening of pupils, flushing of skin, racing of blood to erogenous zones.

Fools fall in love, indeed. Research had already shown that those newly in love displayed the same synaptic patterns as those diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. A rose by any other name.

Faith.

Faith had its own built-in limit. Faith was the answer to its own question, a circular logic that satisfied simpletons around the world. No matter whether they called it God or Buddha or Allah or Moon or Krishna. No matter whether you met it on your knees or from the heights of a Himalayan monastery or in any of the modern brainwashing facilities they called temples, churches, and synagogues. All religious faith was selfish because all believers ultimately sought to save themselves, not others.

Science.

Ah, that was the one that might not have limits. Or the one discipline that might impose them. Truth. Knowledge. Facts. Hard evidence and data. That was almost something worthy of worship.

Except when the facts suggested that the entire truth would never be understood. Which was happening right now.

Telepathy and clairvoyance were theoretically possible, if one believed that the brain's electrical impulses weren't confined to the flesh. He could accept a world of mind intersecting with the world of space and time. But the existence of a soul separate from the body smacked far too much of metaphysical idiocy.

He'd been given a starting point, the abstracts and data that McDonald's people had compiled over the previous decade, the backlog of Dr. Kenneth Mills' experiments. ESP was producible as an innate ability that could be induced with a balance of force fields and systemic shock. But these latest experiments had skewed toward the spiritual, the unprovable, the unbelievable. That bothered him. That scrambled the harmony of his own synapses. It misaligned his neural patterns and disturbed his sure vision of the universe. It pissed him off.

"What are you thinking about?" Paula said.

He tapped his forehead against the mirror a couple of times. "I'm thinking of you, dear. What else?"

"I love it when you talk that way."

Her perfume cloyed the air. If only she knew that the natural pheromones in her perspiration were far more sexually alluring to the human male than perfume's scent. Still, she satisfied a need, and she was only temporary. He could always air out his office after she left.

"Hey, what's this?" she said.

She pointed to one of the video screens that monitored the equipment in the basement. The picture was greenish and fuzzy. The Trust had coughed up a fortune for the remote electromagnetic resonance system, spending millions on superconducting magnets and advanced circuitry, but the infrared video system was low budget. All Kracowski made out on me screen was a soft blur of movement.

"No one's supposed to have access to the basement," Kracowski said. "That equipment is delicate."

"I thought McDonald had some guards down there."

"They're under orders to stay away from the equipment." Even as he spoke, he remembered McDonald's words as the equipment was being installed. Orders change, McDonald had said, ex-Army bastard that he was. Kracowski peered at the screen. One of the figures separated from the green dimness and backed away.

"Bondurant."

"What's he doing down there?" Paula asked.

"He's the only one on staff with a key."

"Look. There's somebody else down there."

Kracowski cursed a god he didn't believe in. The magnetic pull of a regular MRI scanner was about 20,000 times the force of the earth's magnetic fields. It was strong enough to rip a pacemaker right out of a patient's chest, which was why MRI patients got a thorough going-over before being slid into the tube.

The equipment in the basement generated a field a hundred times stronger than that, at least in certain localized points. The magnetic field was strong enough to hum and created static electricity and microshocks. If the anomalous fluctuations continued, they could create a serious danger by pulling hardware from the walls. A loose piece of metal might fly across the room and pierce one of the tanks of liquid helium. The helium wasn't explosive, but an accident could set Kracowski's work back by several months, not to mention drawing the interest of a lot of busybodies in the state Social Services Department and the county planning department.

Bondurant's playing around down there, probably half-drunk or worse, was a disaster waiting to happen. He was already disrupting the careful alignment of the fields. The man might have iron or steel items in his pockets that could destroy valuable equipment. If the liquid helium or liquid nitrogen tanks were pierced, the basement would go into an instantaneous, though brief, deep freeze.

Kracowski opened his desk drawer and got a key and his flashlight. There were three ways to access the basement from inside the building. One was from Bondurant's office, another via a locked door in the main hallway labeled Custodial Staff Only.

Kracowski went to his bookshelf and removed his copy of H.G. Wells's A Short History of the World. He reached into the space on the shelf and fumbled for the hidden button. What had seemed clever when McDonald's people were installing it now seemed like a spy movie trick, unnecessary and overdone. He pressed the button and an adjacent bookshelf swung forward, revealing the metal door and the third way downstairs.

"Hey, that's cool, Richard."

Leave it to Paula to be impressed by extravagance. He unlocked the door and switched on the flashlight, playing its beam down the dark stairwell. Cobwebs draped the doorway, and he brushed them aside as he headed into the gloom. The stench of must and mildew rose from the dank basement. He glanced back once and saw Paula waiting at the door, her silhouette stooped with tension and excitement.

Kracowski slipped down the stairs to the narrow hallway that branched off from the main basement corridor. He splashed his beam into one of the cramped cells. The cells were a hellish testament to the mental health field of the 1940s, when terror and pain were more common psychiatric tools than nurturing and synergizing. Frontal lobotomies, pharmaceuticals, insulin-induced comas, and electroshock were the glorious toys of those spearheading the charge into a brave new world of the mind. Too bad the psychiatrists hadn't recognized and dealt with their own delusions of grandeur.

Too bad they weren't as flawless as Kracowski.

He heard shuffling in the darkness of the main corridor. He switched off his light and listened. He recognized Starlene's voice immediately.

"Hello? Who's there?" she called from the darkness.

He should have figured Starlene would start snooping around. She'd already asked far too many questions about his experimental treatments. With her simple religious faith, she automatically assumed that all cures that weren't divine in origin were the result of unspeakable dark powers. That's why he wanted her to submit to the treatments herself, so she might understand what he was trying to accomplish.

And perhaps she could be "cured" of the need to submit to an invisible authority and beg forgiveness for imagined sins. If not cured, perhaps she'd be frightened enough to keep her mouth shut. If worse came to worse, her memory could be erased.

"Come out where I can see you," Starlene said. Her voice echoed down the corridor. Bondurant must have fled the basement, because Starlene's footsteps were the only sound besides the hum of the equipment.

Kracowski eased down the hallway and waited. The air was thick with the stirring of ancient dust and he fought back a sneeze. That's when he saw her.

At first he thought it was Starlene coming down the hall toward him. Then he realized the woman wore no clothes.

She carried her own light with her. No, not with her, within her. She drifted toward him like dawn's smoke on a meadow, then, before he could discern what was wrong with her face, she was gone.

But not before putting words in Kracowski's head: You can see the truth if you look through my eyes.

Kracowski nearly dropped his flashlight. He looked around to see who had spoken, to see where the woman had gone. Translucent women didn't exist, and women who didn't exist couldn't appear out of nowhere. A mind could not live separately from the body. Kracowski flipped on the light again and swept the beam across the hall and into me nearby cells.

"Where did she go?" Starlene said, approaching from the shadows.

"Access to the basement is limited to authorized personnel only, Miss Rogers," Kracowski said.

"Was she authorized?"

"You should be concerned with your own violations, Miss Rogers. This early in your career, you'd better keep your record spotless."

"I can't pretend I didn't see her."

"Saw whom?"

"Don't pull that with me. Mr. Bondurant saw it, too." Starlene waved into the darkness behind her. "I believe he ran away."

"I'm not sure what sort of manifestation or illusion you thought you saw. My Synaptic Synergy Therapy and the resultant electromagnetic fields might have uncertain effects. I'm still studying how it changes neural patterns. It's possible that you may have been exposed to a high field fluctuation. That may lead to hallucinations."

"She called herself the 'Miracle Woman.' Except she didn't talk at all, just put words right in my head."

Miracle Woman. That was all Kracowski needed, more religious hysteria among the staff. At least that could be a good cover story if Starlene made some sort of report to the state board. He could say she was suffering from delusions. By the time Kracowski was through, he'd have them wondering whether Starlene should be receiving help instead of giving it.

He shined the light in her face so that she blinked. "Why are you down here?"

"Bondurant. He-" She seemed to change her mind about what she wanted to say. "I'm trying to figure out how your gizmos down here work. And how it's supposed to heal these kids."

"You believe in the power of talk, the power of suggestion. Nurturing, compassionate attention. But you're trying to pour love into cracked vessels. I not only patch the cracks, I reshape the vessel."

"Freeman said he 'heard' people down here. He claims to be able to read minds."

"A rare but reported delusion among those with bipolar disorder, at least during a manic episode. And he's a rapid cycler, isn't he?"

"I've observed him swinging from up to down in the course of minutes. But he's hearing voices, and I'm hearing voices, and I'm seeing people that I don't want to believe are real."

"I can assure you they are not real. Like I told you before, I've heard plenty of ghost stories about Wendover, and I've not seen a ghost yet."

"You didn't see the Miracle Woman?"

"You saw nothing." Kracowski took the beam from Starlene's face and played it down the hall. "If it's not there, it can't be quantified. If it can't be quantified, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, then I'm not interested."

"If you're so brave, then why don't you give me the flashlight and you can stay down here in the dark?"

Kracowski tilted the light under his chin, knowing it made sinister shadows on his face. "Maybe the crazies are standing right in front of you."

"That doesn't sound like something a rational man of science would say."

"If I scare you away, maybe you'll leave my equipment alone."

"I wouldn't dream of interfering with your research. After all, you have the whole world to save, right? Lots of troubled, lowly humans to heal. The masses. Those who aren't perfect like you."

She headed for the main corridor, into the thick stretch of black, her shadow bobbing along the wall like oil in a sick ocean.

"You saw nothing," Kracowski said.

"Like I didn't see that man at the lake," she said without slowing. "And those wet footprints in the hall. I'm seeing a lot of things I'm not seeing lately."

"They don't exist until I say so."

Starlene paused at the edge of the corridor. "God is the one who makes those decisions."

Then she was gone, into the black and across the blue where the hum of the machines carried suggestions of things beyond science.