Part 22 (1/2)
”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 rus.h.i.+ng, rus.h.i.+ng, rus.h.i.+ng 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, bas.h.i.+ng, 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.”