Part 3 (2/2)
”Your predecessor kept his here.”
”Ah. Is the whole library fake, then?”
”Hardly. There are some extraordinary texts here.”
She handed him a volume with a gold-embossed glyph on the spine. He opened it to magnificent color plates of glyphs, hundreds of them.
”It's entirely in ... what is this? Is it Mayan? Toltec?”
She looked at it. ”You'll have access to scholars.”
”Where?”
”Here. Among your cla.s.s.”
His only choice, he saw, was to just roll with this. There was no question in his mind that, as a child, he'd been to this house. Certainly, he had seen the downstairs. But what this cla.s.s was all about, and why the security, he could not imagine-or rather, he supposed, remember.
Or could he? There might be vague memories in the back of his mind of the names of the old G.o.ds. But it was also true that their names were everywhere these days. And yet, he recalled other children, and being happy here.
He remembered, also, that there had been an enormous security issue.
”We need to discuss Marian Hunt.”
”Yes. She's been a.s.sistant director here for what, ten years?”
”Since it opened.”
”Then surely she was the ideal choice for director.”
”She wasn't part of the cla.s.s. But she doesn't know that and cannot know it; so as far as she's concerned, she's been pa.s.sed over for a mere boy.”
”If the board doesn't have faith in her, perhaps she would've been better off leaving.”
”Where would she go?”
A question without an answer. Or no, it did have an answer: she would go nowhere.
”Let me show you the surveillance toys,” Mrs. Denman said. ”Every patient is available to total monitoring.” She pressed her finger against a discreet fingerprint reader embedded in the bookcase beside his desk. Two more shelves of fake books slid away to reveal a very large screen populated by dozens of small video images revealing what he felt sure would turn out to be every inch of the public s.p.a.ces in the facility, indoors and out.
She touched a b.u.t.ton and new rows of images appeared.
”These are the patient social areas,” she said. She tapped one of the images, which expanded to fill the screen.
For a moment, David did not understand what he was seeing. Then he did, and he was so shocked that he must have gasped aloud, because Aubrey Denman's bird head snapped toward him, and the expression of fear on her face was almost as appalling as the straitjacket confining the patient.
At Manhattan Central, he'd seen patients under restraint, of course, but not being kept in one of these things. If not illegal, it was certainly a spectacular medical failure.
”I can't allow that,” he said.
There were three patients in a sunny, pleasant room. Each one had a nurse in attendance, not surprising in a facility that offered the extreme level of care found at the Acton Clinic. But one of them was in this primitive restraint.
”He's unable to bear ... anything. At any moment he'll just lose himself.”
”Do you know him?”
Her eyes closed, she gave a slow nod, one that communicated a sense of the anguish that her work clearly caused her. ”There has been a great deal of sacrifice here, David. Lives sacrificed-the happiness of youth, David-all for the mission.”
”Which is what?”
”David,” she said, ”the future. The future future!”
She took his hand-s.n.a.t.c.hed it-grasping it as if it was a lifeline in a storm. And suddenly, there came a memory.
He was trying urgently to explain something to a tall man, and to emphasize his point, he had grabbed this man's hand.
”I told him I couldn't do it. I told him!”
”But you can, David.” She glanced at her watch. ”I'm out of time.”
He would have to keep his questions and his considerable doubts to himself. But he did not agree with her optimism, not at all. How could anybody save anything, given what was coming?
Well, perhaps he had a mentor in her. She was hardly the wealthy old fool she had initially seemed.
”You'll be back,” he said. It was not a question, and not intended to be one.
”Of course. And I'm always available on my cell.”
”I need to get to know my staff,” he said, ”and the cla.s.s. Who are my cla.s.smates?”
”There will be somebody coming to help you. Until they arrive, don't breathe a word about the cla.s.s, not a single word.”
”I'm sitting on top of an inst.i.tution full of people who've been spectacularly abused and I'm not supposed to even say say anything about it? I don't think so.” He gestured toward the screen. ”What about them, are they members of the cla.s.s?” anything about it? I don't think so.” He gestured toward the screen. ”What about them, are they members of the cla.s.s?”
”Two of them. The other is genuinely disturbed.”
”And you did this. It's appalling.”
”David, we did what we had to. Without security this deep the cla.s.s would have been found. That must not happen, David, it must not must not.”
”What's so important about them? I'm sorry if I sound callous, but I really need to know why, in a world where billions are dying, a small group of people would need to be so carefully protected?”
She closed the control center. ”Call a staff meeting, but I'd advise you to move carefully. After Marian, your next order of business will be to meet Katrina Starnes. Katie. She's your a.s.sistant.”
”Isn't it rather odd that she's not here now?”
She gestured toward the book backs that concealed the electronic wonders. ”She's not a member of the cla.s.s. She isn't allowed access to this system or to know anything about the inner meaning of this place.”
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