The Institute

1

On a cool October morning some three months later, Tim Jamieson strolled down the driveway from what was known as Catawba Hill Farm to South Carolina State Road 12-A. The walk took awhile; the driveway was almost half a mile long. Any longer, he liked to joke to Wendy, and they could have named it South Carolina State Road 12-B. He was wearing faded jeans, dirty Georgia Giant workshoes, and a sweatshirt so big it came down to his upper thighs. It was a present from Luke, ordered on the Internet. Written across the front were two words in gold: THE AVESTER. Tim had never met Avery Dixon, but he was glad to wear the shirt. His face was deeply tanned. Catawba hadn’t been a real farm for ten years, but there was still an acre of garden behind the barn, and this was harvest season.

He reached the mailbox, opened it, started to paw out the usual junk (nobody got real mail these days, it seemed), then froze. His stomach, which had been fine on the walk down here, seemed to contract. A car was coming, slowing down and pulling over. There was nothing special about it, just a Chevy Malibu smudged with reddish dust and with the usual budget of bugs smashed into the grill. It wasn’t a neighbor, he knew all their cars, but it could have been a salesman, or somebody lost and needing directions. Only it wasn’t. Tim didn’t know who the man behind the wheel was, only that he, Tim, had been waiting for him. Now here he was.

Tim closed the mailbox and put one hand behind him, as if to give his belt a tug. His belt was in place and so was the gun, a Glock which had once been the property of a redheaded sheriff’s deputy named Taggart Faraday.

The man turned off the engine and got out. He was dressed in jeans much newer than Tim’s—they still had the store creases—and a white shirt buttoned to the neck. His face was both handsome and nondescript, a contradiction that might have seemed impossible until you saw a guy like this. His eyes were blue, his hair that Nordic shade of blond that looks almost white. He looked, in fact, much as the late Julia Sigsby had imagined him. He wished Tim a good morning, and Tim returned the greeting with his hand still behind his back.

“You’re Tim Jamieson.” The visitor held out his hand.

Tim looked at it, but didn’t shake it. “I am. And who might you be?”

The blond man smiled. “Let’s say I’m William Smith. That’s the name on my driver’s license.” Smith was okay, so was driver’s, but license was lithenth. A lisp, but a slight one. “Call me Bill.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Smith?”

The man calling himself Bill Smith—a name as anonymous as his sedan—squinted up into the early sunshine, smiling slightly, as if he were debating several possible answers to this question, all of them pleasant. Then he looked back at Tim. The smile was still on his mouth, but his eyes weren’t smiling.

“We could dance around this, but I’m sure you’ve got a busy day ahead of you, so I won’t take up any more of your time than I have to. Let me start by assuring you that I’m not here to cause you any trouble, so if it’s a gun you’ve got back there instead of just an itch, you can leave it where it is. I think we can agree there’s been enough shooting in this part of the world for one year.”

Tim thought of asking how Mr. Smith had found him, but why bother? It couldn’t have been hard. Catawba Farm belonged to Harry and Rita Gullickson, now living in Florida. Their daughter had been keeping an eye on the old home place for the last three years. Who better than a sheriff’s deputy?

Well, she had been a deputy, and still drew a county salary, at least for the time being, but it was hard to tell just what her remit was nowadays. Ronnie Gibson, absent on the night Mrs. Sigsby’s posse had invaded, was now the acting Fairlee County Sheriff, but how long that would last was anyone’s guess; there was talk of moving the sheriff’s station to the nearby town of Dunning. And Wendy had never been cut out for boots-on-the-ground law enforcement in the first place.

“Where is Officer Wendy?” Smith asked. “Up at the house, maybe?”

“Where’s Stackhouse?” Tim countered. “You must have got that Officer Wendy thing from him, because the Sigsby woman’s dead.”

Smith shrugged, stuck his hands in the back pockets of his new jeans, rocked on his heels, and looked around. “Boy, it’s nice here, isn’t it?” Nice came out niyth, but the lisp really was very light, mostly not there at all.

Tim decided not to pursue the Stackhouse question. It was obvious he wouldn’t get anywhere with it, and besides, Stackhouse was old news. He might be in Brazil; he might be in Argentina or Australia; he might be dead. It made no difference to Tim where he was. And the man with the lisp was right; there was no point in dancing.

“Deputy Gullickson is in Columbia, at a closed hearing about the shoot-out that happened last summer.”

“I assume she has a story those committee folks will buy.”

Tim had no interest in confirming this assumption. “She’ll also attend some meetings where the future of law enforcement here in Fairlee County will be discussed, since the goons you sent wiped most of it out.”

Smith spread his hands. “I and the people I work with had nothing to do with that. Mrs. Sigsby acted entirely on her own.”

Maybe true but also not true, Tim could have said. She acted because she was afraid of you and the people you work with.

“I understand that George Iles and Helen Simms are gone,” Mr. Smith said. Simms came out Simmth. “Young Mr. Iles to an uncle in California, Miss Simms to her grandparents in Delaware.”

Tim didn’t know where the lisping man was getting his information—Norbert Hollister was long gone, the DuPray Motel closed with a FOR SALE sign out front that would probably stay there for a long time—but it was good information. Tim had never expected to go unnoticed, that would have been naïve, but he didn’t like the depth of Mr. Smith’s knowledge about the kids.

“That means that Nicholas Wilholm and Kalisha Benson are still here. And Luke Ellis, of course.” The smile reappeared, thinner now. “The author of all our misery.”

“What do you want, Mr. Smith?”

“Very little, actually. We’ll get to it. Meanwhile, let me compliment you. Not just on your bravery, which was apparent on the night you stormed the Institute pretty much single-handed, but on the care you and Officer Wendy have shown in the aftermath. You’ve been parceling them out, haven’t you? Iles first, about a month after returning to South Carolina. The Simms girl two weeks after him. Both with stories about being kidnapped for unknown reasons, held for an unknown length of time at an unknown location, then set free… also for unknown reasons. You and Officer Wendy managed to arrange all that while you must have been under some scrutiny yourselves.”

“How do you know all this?”

It was the lisping man’s turn not to answer, but that was all right. Tim guessed at least some of his information had come direct from the newspapers and the Internet. The return of kidnapped children was always news. “When do Wilholm and Benson go?”

Tim considered this and decided to answer. “Nicky leaves this Friday. To his uncle and aunt in Nevada. His brother is already there. Nick’s not crazy about going, but he understands he can’t stay here. Kalisha will stay another week or two. She has a sister, twelve years older, in Houston. Kalisha is eager to reconnect with her.” This was both true and not true. Like the others, Kalisha was suffering from PTSD.

“And their stories will also stand up to police scrutiny?”

“Yes. The stories are simple enough, and of course they’re all afraid of what might happen to them if they told the truth.” Tim paused. “Not that they’d be believed.”

“And young Mr. Ellis? What about him?”

“Luke stays with me. He has no close family and nowhere to go. He’s already returned to his studies. They soothe him. The boy is grieving, Mr. Smith. Grieving for his parents, grieving for his friends.” He paused, looking hard at the blond man. “I suspect he’s also grieving for the childhood your people stole from him.”

He waited for Smith to respond to this. Smith did not, so Tim went on.

“Eventually, if we can work out a story that’s reasonably watertight, he’ll pick up where he left off. Double enrollment at Emerson College and MIT. He’s a very smart boy.” As you well know, he didn’t need to add. “Mr. Smith… do you even care?”

“Not much,” Smith said. He took a pack of American Spirits from his breast pocket. “Smoke?”

Tim shook his head.

“I rarely do myself,” Mr. Smith said, “but I’ve been in speech therapy for my lisp, and I allow myself one as a reward when I am able to control it in conversation, especially a long and rather intense one, such as we are having. Did you notice that I lisp?”

“It’s very faint.”

Mr. Smith nodded, seemingly pleased, and lit up. The smell on the cool morning air was sweet and fragrant. A smell that seemed made for tobacco country, which this still was… although not at Catawba Farm since the nineteen-eighties.

“I hope you’re sure they will keep shtum, as the saying is. If any one of them talks, there would be consequences for all five. In spite of the flash drive you supposedly have. Not all of my… people… believe that actually exists.”

Tim smiled without showing his teeth. “It would be unwise for your… people… to test that idea.”

“I take your point. It would still be a very bad idea for those children to talk about their adventures in the Maine woods. If you’re in communication with Mr. Iles and Miss Simms, you might want to pass that along. Or perhaps Wilholm, Benson, and Ellis can get in touch with them by other means.”

“Are you talking about telepathy? I wouldn’t count on that. It’s reverting to what it was before your people took them. Same with the telekinesis.” He was telling Smith what the children had told him, but Tim wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. All he knew for certain was that awful hum had never come back. “How did you cover it up, Smith? I’m curious.”

“And so you shall remain,” the blond man said. “But I will tell you that it wathn’t just the installation in Maine that needed our attention. There were twenty other Institutes in other parts of the world, and none remain operational. Two of them—in countries where obedience is inculcated in children almost from birth—hung on for six weeks or so, and then there were mass suicides at both.” The word came out thooithides.

Mass suicides or mass murder? Tim wondered, but that wasn’t a topic he intended to raise. The sooner he was rid of this man, the better.

“The Ellis boy—with your help, very much with your help—has ruined us. That undoubtedly sounds melodramatic, but it’s the truth.”

“Do you think I care?” Tim asked. “You were killing children. If there’s a hell, you’ll go there.”

“While you, Mr. Jamieson, undoubtedly believe you’ll go to heaven, assuming there is such a place. And who knows, you might be right. What God could turn away a man who rides to the rescue of defenseless youngsters? If I may crib from Christ on the cross, you will be forgiven because you know not what you did.” He cast his cigarette aside. “But I am going to tell you. It’s what I came for, with the consent of my associates. Thanks to you and Ellis, the world is now on suicide watch.” This time the word came out clean.

Tim said nothing, just waited.

“The first Institute, although not by that name, was in Nazi Germany.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Tim said.

“And why be so judgmental? The Nazis were onto nuclear fission before America. They created antibiotics that are still used today. They more or less invented modern rocketry. And certain German scientists were running ESP experiments, with Hitler’s enthusiastic support. They discovered, almost by accident, that groups of gifted children could cause certain troublesome people—roadblocks to progress, you might say—to cease being troublesome. These children were used up by 1944, because there was no sure method, no scientific method, of finding replacements after they became, in Institute argot, gorks. The most useful test for latent psychic ability came later. Do you know what that test was?”

“BDNF. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Luke said that was the marker.”

“Yes, he’s a smart boy, all right. Very smart. Everyone involved now wishes they’d left him alone. His BDNF wasn’t even that high.”

“I imagine Luke also wishes you’d left him alone. And his parents. Now why don’t you go ahead and say your piece.”

“All right. There were conferences both before and after the Second World War ended. If you remember any of your twentieth-century history, you’ll know about some of them.”

“I know about Yalta,” Tim said. “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin got together to basically carve up the world.”

“Yes, that’s the famous one, but the most important meeting took place in Rio de Janeiro, and no government was involved… unless you want to call the group that met—and their successors down through the years—a kind of shadow government. They—we—knew about the German children, and set about finding more. By 1950 we understood the usefulness of BDNF. Institutes were set up, one by one, in isolated locations. Techniques were refined. They have been in place for over seventy years, and by our count, they have saved the world from nuclear holocaust over five hundred times.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Tim said harshly. “A joke.”

“It’s not. Let me give you one example. At the time that the children revolted at the Institute in Maine—a revolt that spread like a virus to all the other Institutes—they had begun working to cause the suicide of an evangelist named Paul Westin. Thanks to Luke Ellis, that man still lives. Ten years from now, he will become a close associate of a Christian gentleman who will become America’s Secretary of Defense. Westin will convince the Secretary that war is imminent, the Secretary will convince the President, and that will eventually result in a preemptive nuclear strike. Only a single missile, but it could start all the dominoes falling. That part is outside our range of prediction.”

“You couldn’t possibly know a thing like that.”

“How do you think we picked our targets, Mr. Jamieson? Out of a hat?”

“Telepathy, I suppose.”

Mr. Smith looked like a patient teacher with a slow pupil. “TKs move objects and TPs read thoughts, but neither of them are able to read the future.” He drew out his cigarettes again. “Sure you won’t have one?”

Tim shook his head.

Smith lit up. “Children such as Luke Ellis and Kalisha Benson are rare, but there are other people who are rarer still. More precious than the most precious metal. And the best thing about them? Their talents don’t fade with age or destroy the minds of the users.”

Tim caught movement in the corner of his eye, and turned. Luke had come down the driveway. Further up the hill, Annie Ledoux was standing with a shotgun broken open over her arm. Flanking her were Kalisha and Nicky. Smith didn’t see any of them yet; he was gazing out over the hazy distance to the small town of DuPray and the glittering railroad tracks that ran through it.

Annie now spent much of her time at Catawba Hill. She was fascinated by the children, and they seemed to enjoy her. Tim pointed at her, then patted the air with his hand: hold your position. She nodded and stood where she was, watching. Smith was still admiring the view, which really was very fine.

“Let’s say there’s another Institute—a very small one, a very special one, where everything is first class and state of the art. No outdated computers or crumbling infrastructure there. It’s located in a completely safe place. Other Institutes exist in what we thought of as hostile territory, but not this one. There are no Tasers, no injections, no punishments. There is no need of subjecting the residents of this special Institute to near-death experiences such as the immersion tank to help open them to their deeper abilities.

“Let’s say it’s in Switzerland. It might not be, but it will do. It is on neutral ground, because many nations have an interest in its upkeep and continued smooth operation. A great many. There are currently six very special guests in this place. They are not children anymore; unlike the TPs and TKs in the various Institutes, their talents do not thin and disappear in their late teens and early twenties. Two of these people are actually quite old. Their BDNF levels do not correlate with their very special talents; they are unique in that way, and thus very hard to find. We were searching constantly for replacements, but now that search has been suspended, because it hardly seems there’s any point.”

“What are these people?”

“Precogs,” Luke said.

Smith wheeled around, startled. “Why, hello, Luke.” He smiled, but at the same time drew back a step. Was he afraid? Tim thought he was. “Precogs, that’s exactly right.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Tim asked.

“Precognition,” Luke said. “People who can see into the future.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not and he’s not,” Smith said. “You could call those six our DEW line—a defunct Cold War acronym meaning Distant Early Warning. Or, if you’d like to be more up to date, they are our drones, flying into the future and marking out places where great conflagrations will start. We only concentrate on stopping the big ones. The world has survived because we’ve been able to take these proactive measures. Thousands of children have died in this process, but billions of children have been saved.” He turned to Luke and smiled. “Of course you understood—it’s a simple enough deduction. I understand you’re also quite the math whiz, and I’m sure you see the cost-to-benefit ratio. You may not like it, but you see it.”

Annie and her two young charges had started down the hill again, but this time Tim didn’t bother motioning them back. He was too stunned by what he was hearing.

“I can buy telepathy, and I can buy telekinesis, but precognition? That’s not science, that’s carnival bullshit!”

“I assure you it’s not,” Smith said. “Our precogs found the targets. The TKs and TPs, working in groups to increase their power, eliminated them.”

“Precognition exists, Tim,” Luke said quietly. “I knew even before I escaped the Institute it had to be that. I’m pretty sure Avery did, too. Nothing else made sense. I’ve been reading up on it since we got here, everything I could find. The stats are pretty much irrefutable.”

Kalisha and Nicky joined Luke. They looked curiously at the blond man who called himself Bill Smith, but neither spoke. Annie stood behind them. She was wearing her serape, although the day was warm, and looked more like a Mexican gunslinger than ever. Her eyes were bright and aware. The children had changed her. Tim didn’t think it was their power; in the long term, that caused the opposite of improvement. He thought it was just the association, or maybe the fact that the kids accepted her exactly as she was. Whatever the reason, he was happy for her.

“You see?” Smith said. “It’s been confirmed by your resident genius. Our six precogs—for awhile there were eight, and once, in the seventies, we were down to just four, a very scary time—constantly search for certain individuals we call hinges. They’re the pivot-points on which the door of human extinction may turn. Hinges aren’t agents of destruction, but vectors of destruction. Westin was one such hinge. Once they’re discovered, we investigate them, background them, surveil them, video them. Eventually they’re turned over to the children of the various Institutes, who eliminate them, one way or another.”

Tim was shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”

“As Luke has said, the statistics—”

“Statistics can prove anything. Nobody can see the future. If you and your associates really believe that, you’re not an organization, you’re a cult.”

“I had a auntie who could see the future,” Annie said suddenly. “She made her boys stay away one night when they wanted to go out to a juke joint, and there was a propane explosion. Twenty people got burnt up like mice in a chimbly, but her boys were safe at home.” She paused, then added, as an afterthought, “She also knew Truman was going to get elected president, and nobody believed that shit.”

“Did she know about Trump?” Kalisha asked.

“Oh, she was long dead before that big city dumbshit turned up,” Annie said, and when Kalisha held up an open palm, Annie slapped it smartly.

Smith ignored the interruption. “The world is still here, Tim. That’s not a statistic, it’s a fact. Seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by atomic bombs, the world is still here even though many nations have atomic weapons, even though primitive human emotions still hold sway over rational thought and superstition masquerading as religion still guides the course of human politics. Why is that? Because we have protected it, and now that protection is gone. That’s what Luke Ellis did, and what you participated in.”

Tim looked at Luke. “Are you buying this?”

“No,” Luke said. “And neither is he, at least not completely.”

Although Tim didn’t know it, Luke was thinking of the girl who’d asked him about the SAT math problem, the one having to do with Aaron’s hotel room rate. She’d gotten the answer wrong, and this was the same thing, only on a much grander scale; a bad answer derived from a faulty equation.

“I’m sure you’d like to believe that,” Smith said.

“Annie’s right,” Luke said. “There really are people who have precognitive flashes, and her aunt may have been one of them. Despite what this guy says, and may actually believe, they’re not even that rare. You may even have had one or two yourself, Tim, but you probably call them something else. Instinct, maybe.”

“Or hunches,” Nicky said. “On the TV programs, cops are always getting hunches.”

“TV shows are not life,” Tim said, but he was also thinking of something from the past: suddenly deciding, for no real reason, to get off an airplane and hitchhike north instead.

“Which is too bad,” Kalisha said. “I love Riverdale.”

“The word flash is used over and over in the stories about these things,” Luke said, “because that seems to be what it is, something like a lightning-strike. I believe in it, and I believe there may be people who can harness it.”

Smith raised his hands in a there-you-have-it gesture. “Exactly what I’m saying.” Only saying came out thaying. His lisp had resurfaced. Tim found this interesting.

“Only there’s something he’s not telling you,” Luke said. “Probably because he doesn’t like to tell himself. None of them do. The way our generals didn’t like to tell themselves there was no way to win the Vietnam War, even after it became apparent.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Smith said.

“You do,” Kalisha said.

“He does,” Nicky said.

“You better own up, mister,” Orphan Annie said. “These chirrun are reading your mind. Tickles, don’t it?”

Luke turned to Tim. “Once I was sure it had to be precognition driving this, and I got access to a real computer—”

“One you didn’t need tokens to use is what he means,” Kalisha put in.

Luke poked her. “Shut up a minute, will you?”

Nicky grinned. “Watch out, Sha, Lukey’s gettin mad.”

She laughed. Smith did not. His control over this conversation had been lost with the arrival of Luke and his friends, and his expression—tight mouth, drawn-together brows—said that he wasn’t used to it.

“Once I got access to a real computer,” Luke resumed, “I did a Bernoulli distribution. Do you know what that is, Mr. Smith?”

The blond man shook his head.

“He does, though,” Kalisha said. Her eyes were merry.

“Right,” Nicky agreed. “And doesn’t like it. The Whatzis distribution is not his friend.”

“The Bernoulli is an accurate way of expressing probability,” Luke said. “It’s based on the idea that there are two possible outcomes to certain empiric events, like coin flips or the winners of football games. The outcomes can be expressed as p for positive result and n for negative result. I won’t bore you with the details, but you end up with a boolean-valued outcome that clearly expresses the difference between random and non-random events.”

“Yeah, don’t bore us with the easy stuff,” Nicky said, “just cut to the chase.”

“Coin flips are random. Football scores appear random if you take a small sample, but if you take a bigger one, it becomes clear that they’re not, because other factors come into play. Then it becomes a probability situation, and if the probability of A is greater than the probability of B, then in most cases, A will happen. You know that if you’ve ever bet on a sporting event, right?”

“Sure,” Tim said. “You can find the odds and the likely point-spread in the daily paper.”

Luke nodded. “It’s pretty simple, really, and when you apply Bernoulli to precognition statistics, an interesting trend emerges. Annie, how soon was the fire after your aunt had her brainwave about keeping her sons home?”

“That very night,” Annie said.

Luke looked pleased. “Which makes it a perfect example. The Bernoulli distribution I ran shows that precognitive flashes—or visions, if you like that word better—tend to be most accurate when the predicted event is only hours away. When the time between the prediction and the event predicted becomes longer, the probability of the prediction coming true begins to decline. Once it becomes a matter of weeks, it pretty much falls off the table and p becomes n.”

He turned his attention to the blond man.

“You know this, and the people you work with know it. They’ve known it for years. For decades, in fact. They must have. Any math wonk with a computer can run a Bernoulli distribution. It might not have been clear when you started this thing in the late forties or early fifties, but by the eighties you had to know. Probably by the sixties.”

Smith shook his head. “You’re very bright, Luke, but you’re still just a child, and children indulge in magical thinking—they bend the truth until it conforms to what they wish were true. Do you think we haven’t run tests to prove the precognitive capabilities of our group?”

His lisp was growing steadily worse.

“We run new tests every time we add a new precog. They’re tasked with predicting a series of random events such as the late arrivals of certain planes… news events such as the death of Tom Petty… the Brexit vote… vehicles passing through certain intersections, even. This is a record of successes—recorded successes—going back almost three quarters of a century!”

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.

“It’s not on you. It’s not on any of you. That man didn’t come to warn you to be quiet, he came to poison your life. Don’t let him do it, Kalisha. Don’t any of you let him do it. As a species, we’re built to do one thing above all others, and you kids did it.”

He reached out with both hands and wiped the tears from Kalisha’s cheeks.

“You survived. You used your love and your wits, and you survived. Now let’s have some cake.”

3

Friday came, and it was Nick’s turn to go.

Tim and Wendy stood with Luke, watching as Nicky and Kalisha walked down the driveway with their arms around each other. Wendy would drive him to the bus station in Brunswick, but the three up here understood that those two needed—and deserved—a little time together first. To say goodbye.

“Let’s go over it again,” Tim had said an hour earlier, after a lunch neither Nicky nor Kalisha did much with. Tim and Nicky had gone out on the back stoop while Luke and Kalisha did up the few dishes.

“No need,” Nicky said. “I got it, man. Really.”

“Just the same,” Tim said. “It’s important. Brunswick to Chicago, right?”

“Right. The bus leaves at seven-fifteen tonight.”

“Who do you talk to on the bus?”

“Nobody. Draw no attention.”

“And when you get there?”

“I call my Uncle Fred from the Navy Pier. Because that’s where the kidnappers dropped me off. Same place they dropped George and Helen off.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you know George and Helen?”

“Never heard of them.”

“And who are the people who took you?”

“Don’t know.”

“What did they want?”

“Don’t know. It’s a mystery. They didn’t molest me, they didn’t ask me questions, I didn’t hear any other kids, I don’t know jack. When the police question me, I don’t add anything.”

“That’s right.”

“Eventually the cops give up and I go on to Nevada and live happily ever after with my aunt and uncle and Bobby.” Bobby being Nick’s brother, who had been at a sleepover on the night Nick was taken.

“And when you find out your parents are dead?”

“News to me. And don’t worry, I’ll cry. It won’t be hard. And it won’t be fake. Trust me on that. Can we be done?”

“Almost. First unball your fists a little. The ones at the ends of your arms and the ones in your head. Give happily ever after a chance.”

“Not easy, man.” Nicky’s eyes gleamed with tears. “Not fucking easy.”

“I know,” Tim said, and risked a hug.

Nick allowed it passively at first, then hugged back. Hard. Tim thought it was a start, and he thought the boy would be fine no matter how many questions the police threw at him, no matter how many times they told him it didn’t make any sense.

George Iles was the one Tim worried about when it came to adding stuff; the kid was an old-school motormouth and a born embellisher. Tim thought, however—hoped—that he had finally gotten the point across to George: what you didn’t know kept you safe. What you added could trip you up.

Now Nick and Kalisha were embracing by the mailbox at the foot of the driveway, where Mr. Smith had laid blame in his lisping voice, trying to sow guilt in children who had only wanted to stay alive.

“He really loves her,” Luke said.

Yes, Tim thought, and so do you.

But Luke wasn’t the first boy to find himself odd man out in a lovers’ triangle, and he wouldn’t be the last. And was lovers the right word? Luke was brilliant, but he was also twelve. His feelings for Kalisha would pass like a fever, although it would be useless to tell him that. He would remember, though, just as Tim remembered the girl he’d been crazy about at twelve (she had been sixteen, and light-years beyond him). Just as Kalisha would remember Nicky, the handsome one who had fought.

“She loves you, too,” Wendy said softly, and put a light squeeze on the back of Luke’s sunburned neck.

“Not the same way,” Luke said glumly, but then he smiled. “What the hell, life goes on.”

“You better get the car,” Tim said to Wendy. “That bus won’t wait.”

She got the car. Luke rode down to the mailbox with her, then stood with Kalisha. They waved as the car pulled away. Nicky’s hand came out the window and waved back. Then they were gone. In Nick’s right front pocket—the one that was hardest for some bus station sharpie to pick—was seventy dollars in cash and a phone card. In his shoe was a key.

Luke and Kalisha walked up the driveway together. Halfway there, Kalisha put her hands to her face and started to cry. Tim started to go down, then thought better of it. This was Luke’s job. And he did it, putting his arms around her. Because she was taller, she rested her head on his head, rather than on his shoulder.

Tim heard the hum, now nothing but a low whisper. They were talking, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying, and that was all right. It wasn’t for him.

4

Two weeks later, it was Kalisha’s turn to go, not to the bus station in Brunswick but the one in Greenville. She would arrive in Chicago late the following day, and call her sister in Houston from the Navy Pier. Wendy had gifted her with a small beaded purse. In it was seventy dollars and a phone card. There was a key, identical to Nicky’s, in one of her sneakers. The money and phone card could be stolen; the key, never.

She hugged Tim hard. “That’s not enough thanks for what you did, but I don’t have anything else.”

“It’s enough,” Tim said.

“I hope the world doesn’t end because of us.”

“I’m going to tell you this one last time, Sha—if someone pushes the big red button, it won’t be you.”

She smiled wanly. “When we were together at the end, we had a big red button to end all big red buttons. And it felt good to push it. That’s what haunts me. How good it felt.”

“But that’s over.”

“Yes. It’s all going away, and I’m glad. No one should have power like that, especially not kids.”

Tim thought that some of the people who could push the big red button were kids, in mind if not in body, but didn’t say so. She was facing an unknown and uncertain future, and that was scary enough.

Kalisha turned to Luke and reached into her new purse. “I’ve got something for you. I had it in my pocket when we left the Institute, and didn’t realize it. I want you to have it.”

What she gave him was a crumpled cigarette box. On the front was a cowboy twirling a lariat. Above him was the brand, ROUND-UP CANDY CIGARETTES. Below him was SMOKE JUST LIKE DADDY!

“There’s only some pieces left,” she said. “Busted up and probably stale, too, but—”

Luke began to cry. This time it was Kalisha who put her arms around him.

“Don’t, honey,” she said. “Don’t. Please. You want to break my heart?”

5

When Kalisha and Wendy were gone, Tim asked Luke if he wanted to play chess. The boy shook his head. “I think I might just go out back for awhile, and sit under that big tree. I feel empty inside. I never felt so empty.”

Tim nodded. “You’ll fill up again. Trust me.”

“I guess I’ll have to. Tim, do you think any of them will have to use those keys?”

“No.”

The keys would open a safety deposit box in a Charleston bank. What Maureen Alvorson had given Luke was inside. If anything happened to any of the kids who had now left Catawba Farm—or to Luke, Wendy, or Tim—one of them would come to Charleston and open the box. Maybe all of them would come, if any of the bond forged in the Institute remained.

“Would anyone believe what’s on the flash drive?”

“Annie certainly would,” Tim said, smiling. “She believes in ghosts, UFOs, walk-ins, you name it.”

Luke didn’t smile back. “Yeah, but she’s a little… you know, woo-woo. Although she’s better now that she’s seeing so much of Mr. Denton.”

Tim’s eyebrows went up. “Drummer? What are you telling me, that they’re dating?”

“I guess so, if that’s what you still call it when the people doing it are old.”

“You read this in her mind?”

Luke smiled a little. “No. I’m back to moving pizza pans and fluttering book pages. She told me.” Luke considered. “And I guess it’s all right that I told you. It’s not like she swore me to secrecy, or anything.”

“I’ll be damned. As to the flash drive… you know how you can pull on a loose thread and unravel an entire sweater? I think the flash drive might be like that. There are kids on it people would recognize. A lot of them. It would start an investigation, and any hopes that lisping guy’s organization might have of re-starting their program would go out the window.”

“I don’t think they can do that, anyway. He might think so, but it’s just more magical thinking. The world has changed a lot since the nineteen-fifties. Listen, I’m going to…” He gestured vaguely toward the house and the garden.

“Sure, you go on.”

Luke started away, not walking, exactly, but trudging with his head down.

Tim almost let him go, then changed his mind. He caught up with Luke and took him by the shoulder. When the boy turned, Tim hugged him. He had hugged Nicky—hell, he had hugged them all, sometimes after they awoke from bad dreams—but this one meant more. This one meant the world, at least to Tim. He wanted to tell Luke that he was brave, maybe the bravest kid ever outside of a boys’ adventure book. He wanted to tell Luke that he was strong and decent and his folks would be proud of him. He wanted to tell Luke that he loved him. But there were no words, and maybe no need of them. Or telepathy.

Sometimes a hug was telepathy.

6

Out back, between the stoop and the garden, was a fine old pin oak. Luke Ellis—once of Minneapolis, Minnesota, once loved by Herb and Eileen Ellis, once a friend of Maureen Alvorson, and Kalisha Benson, and Nick Wilholm, and George Iles—sat down beneath it. He put his forearms on his drawn-up knees and looked out toward what Officer Wendy called the Rollercoaster Hills.

Also once a friend of Avery, he thought. Avery was the one who really got them out. If there was a hero, it wasn’t me. It was the Avester.

Luke took the crumpled cigarette box from his pocket and fished out one of the pieces. He thought about seeing Kalisha for the first time, sitting on the floor with one of these in her mouth. Want one? she had asked. A little sugar might help your state of mind. It always helps mine.

“What do you think, Avester? Will it help my state of mind?”

Luke crunched up the piece of candy. It did help, although he had no idea why; there was certainly nothing scientific about it. He peered into the pack and saw two or three more pieces. He could eat them now, but it might be better to wait.

Better to save some for later.