Night Chills

PART ONE: Conspiracy

Saturday, August 13, 1977

WHEN HE DROVE AROUND THE CURVE, into the small valley, Paul Annendale felt a change come over him. After five hours behind the wheel yesterday and five more today, he was weary and tense — but suddenly his neck stopped aching and his shoulders unknotted. He felt at peace, as if nothing could go wrong in this place, as if he were Hugh Conway in Lost Horizon and had just entered Shangri-La.

Of course, Black River was not Shangri-La, not by any stretch of the imagination. It existed and maintained its population of four hundred solely as an adjunct of the mill. For a company town it was quite clean and attractive. The main street was lined with tall oak and birch trees. The houses were New England colonials, white frame and brick saltboxes. Paul supposed he responded to it so positively because he had no bad memories to associate with it, only good ones; and that could not be said of many places in a man’s life.

“There’s Edison’s store! There’s Edison’s!” Mark Annendale leaned over from the back seat, pointing through the windshield.

Smiling, Paul said, “Thank you, Coonskin Pete, scout of the north.”

Rya was as excited as her brother, for Sam Edison was like a grandfather to them. But she was more dignified than Mark.

At eleven she yearned for the womanhood that was still years ahead of her. She sat up straight in her safety harness beside Paul on the front seat. She said, “Mark, sometimes I think you’re five years old instead of nine.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, sometimes I think you’re sixty instead of eleven!”

“Touché,” Paul said.

Mark grinned. Usually, he was no match for his sister. This sort of quick response was not his style.

Paul glanced sideways at Rya and saw that she was blushing. He winked to let her know that he wasn’t laughing at her.

Smiling, sure of herself again, she settled back in her seat. She could have topped Mark’s line with a better one and left him mumbling. But she was capable of generosity, not a particularly common quality in children her age.

The instant the station wagon stopped at the curb, Mark was out on the pavement He bounded up the three concrete steps, raced across the wide roofed veranda, and disappeared into the store. The screen door slammed shut behind him just as Paul switched off the, engine.

Rya was determined not to make a spectacle of herself, as Mark had done. She took her time getting out of the car, stretched and yawned, smoothed the knees of her jeans, straightened the collar of her dark blue blouse, patted her long brown hair, closed the car door, and went up the steps. By the time she reached the porch, however, she too had begun to run.

Edison’s General Store was an entire shopping center in three thousand square feet. There was one room, a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with an ancient pegged pine floor. The east end of the store was a grocery. The west end held dry goods and sundries as well as a gleaming, modem drug counter.

As his father had been before him, Sam Edison was the town’s only licensed pharmacist.

In the center of the room, three tables and twelve oak chairs were grouped in front of a wood-burning country stove. Ordinarily, you could find elderly men playing cards at one of

those tables, but at the moment the chairs were empty. Edison's store was not just a grocery and pharmacy; it was also Black River’s community center.

Paul opened the heavy lid on the soda cooler and plucked a bottle of Pepsi from the icy water. He sat down at one of the tables.

Rya and Mark were standing at an old-fashioned glass-fronted candy counter, giggling at one of Sam’s jokes. He gave them sweets and sent them to the paperback and comic book racks to choose presents for themselves; then he came over and sat with his back to the cold stove.

They shook hands across the table.

At a glance, Paul thought, Sam looked hard and mean. He was very solidly built, five eight, one hundred sixty pounds, broad in the chest and shoulders. His short-sleeved shirt revealed powerful forearms and biceps. His face was tanned and creased, and his eyes were like chips of gray slate. Even with his thick white hair and beard, he looked more dangerous than grandfatherly, and he could have passed as a decade younger than his fifty-five years.

But that forbidding exterior was misleading. He was a warm and gentle man, a push-over for children. Most likely, he gave away more candy than he sold. Paul had never seen him angry, had never heard him raise his voice.

“When did you get in town?”

“This is our first stop.”

“You didn’t say in your letter how long you’d be staying this year. Four weeks?”

“Six, I think.”

“Wonderful!” His gray eyes glittered merrily; but in that very craggy face, the expression might have appeared to be malice to anyone who didn’t know him well. “You’re staying the night with us, as planned? You aren’t going up into the mountains today?”

Paul shook his head: no. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. We’ve been on the road since nine this morning. I don’t have strength to pitch camp this afternoon.”

“You’re looking good, though.”

“I’m feeling good now that I’m in Black River.”

“Needed this vacation, did you?”

“God, yes.” Paul drank some of the Pepsi. “I’m sick to death of hypertense poodles and Siamese cats with ringworms.”

Sam smiled. “I’ve told you a hundred times. Haven’t I? You can’t expect to be an honest veterinarian when you set up shop in the suburbs of Boston. Down there you’re a nursemaid for neurotic house pets — and their neurotic owners. Get out into the country, Paul.”

“You mean I ought to involve myself with cows calving and mares foaling?”

“Exactly.”

Paul sighed. “Maybe I will one day.”

“You should get those kids out of the suburbs, out where the air is clean and the water drinkable.”

“Maybe I will.” He looked toward the rear of the store, toward a curtained doorway. “Is Jenny here?”

“I spent all morning filling prescriptions, and now she’s out delivering them. I think I’ve sold more drugs in the past four days than I usually sell in four weeks.”

“Epidemic?”

“Yeah. Flu, grippe, whatever you want to call it.”

“What does Doe Troutman call it?”

Sam shrugged. “He’s not really sure. Some new breed of flu, he thinks.”

“W/hat’s he prescribing?”

“A general purpose antibiotic. Tetracycline.”

“That’s not particularly strong.”

“Yes, but this flu isn’t all that devastating.”

“Is the tetracycline helping?”

“It’s too soon to tell.”

Paul glanced at Rya and Mark.

“They’re safer here than anywhere else in town,” Sam said. “Jenny and I are about the only people in Black River who haven’t come down with it.”

“If I get up there in the mountains and find I’ve got two sick kids on my hands, what should I expect? Nausea? Fever?”

“None of that. Just night chills.”

Paul tilted his head quizzically.

“Damned scary, as I understand it.” Sam’s eyebrows drew together in one bushy white bar. “You wake up in the middle of the night, as if you’ve just had a terrible dream. You shake so hard you can’t hold on to anything. You can barely walk. Your heart is racing. You’re pouring sweat — and I mean sweating pints — like you’ve got awfully high blood pressure. It lasts as much as an hour, then it goes away as if it never was. Leaves you weak most of the next day.”

Frowning, Paul said, “Doesn’t sound like flu.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of anything. But it scares hell out of people. Some of them got sick Tuesday night, and most of the others joined in on Wednesday. Every night they wake up shaking, and every day they’re weak, a bit tired. Damned few people around here have had a good night’s sleep this week.”

“Has Doe Troutman gotten a second opinion on any of these cases?”

“Nearest other doctor is sixty miles away,” Sam said. “He did call the State Health Authority yesterday afternoon, asked for one of their field men to come up and have a look. But they can’t send anyone until Monday. I guess they can’t get very excited about an epidemic of night chills.”

“The chills could be the tip of an iceberg.”

“Could be. But you know bureaucrats.” When he saw Paul glance at Rya and Mark again, Sam said, “Look, don’t worry about it. We’ll keep the kids away from everyone who’s sick.”

“I was supposed to take Jenny up the street to Ultman’s Cafe. We were going to have a nice quiet dinner together.”

“If you catch the flu from a waitress or another customer, you’ll pass it on to the kids. Skip the cafe. Have dinner here. You know I’m the best cook in Black River.”

Paul hesitated.

Laughing softly, stroking his beard with one hand, Sam said, “We’ll have an early dinner. Six o’clock. That’ll give you and Jenny plenty of time together. You can go for a ride later. Or

I’ll keep myself and the kids out of the den if you’d rather just stay home.”

Paul smiled. “What’s on the menu?”

“Manicotti.”

“Who needs Ultman’s Cafe?”

Sam nodded agreement. “Only the Ultmans.”

Rya and Mark hurried over to get Sam’s approval of the gifts they had chosen for themselves. Mark had two dollars’ worth of comic books, and Rya had two paperbacks. Each of them had small bags of candy.

Rya’s blue eyes seemed especially bright to Paul, as if there were lights behind them. She grinned and said, “Daddy, this is going to be the best vacation we’ve ever had!”

Thirty-one Months Earlier:

Friday, January 10, 1975

OGDEN SALSBURY ARRIVED ten minutes early for his three o’clock appointment. That was characteristic of him.

H. Leonard Dawson, president and principal stockholder of Futurex International, did not at once welcome Salsbury into his office. In fact Dawson kept him waiting until three fifteen. That was characteristic of him. He never allowed his associates to forget that his time was inestimably more valuable than theirs.

When Dawson’s secretary finally ushered Salsbury into the great man’s chambers, it was as if she were showing him to the altar in a hushed cathedral. Her attitude was reverent. The outer office had Muzak, but the inner office had pure silence. The room was sparsely furnished: a deep blue carpet, two somber oil paintings on the white walls, two chairs on this side of the desk, one chair on the other side of it, a coffee table, rich blue velvet drapes drawn back from seven hundred square feet of lightly tinted glass that overlooked midtown Manhattan. The secretary bowed out almost like an altar boy retreating from the sanctuary.

“How are you, Ogden?” He reached out to shake hands.

“Fine. Just fine — Leonard.”

Dawson’s hand was hard and dry; Salsbury’s was damp.

“How’s Miriam?” He noticed Salsbury’s hesitation. “Not ill?”

“We were divorced,” Salsbury said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Was there a trace of disapproval in Dawson’s voice? Salsbury wondered. And why the hell should I care if there is?

“When did you split up?” Dawson asked.

“Twenty-five years ago — Leonard.” Salsbury felt as if he ought to use the other man’s last name rather than his first, but he was determined not to be intimidated by Dawson as he had been when they were both young men.

“It has been a long time since we’ve talked,” Dawson said. “That’s a shame. We had so many great times together.”

They had been fraternity brothers at Harvard and casual friends for a few years after they left the university. Salsbury could not remember a single “great” time they might have shared. Indeed, he had always thought of the name H. Leonard Dawson as a synonym for both prudery and boredom.

“Have you remarried?” Dawson asked.

Dawson frowned. “Marriage is essential to an ordered life. It gives a man stability.”

“You’re right,” Salsbury said, although he didn’t believe it. “I’ve been the worse for bachelorhood.”

Dawson had always made him uneasy. Today was no exception.

He felt ill at ease partly because they were so different from each other. Dawson was six feet two, broad in the shoulders, narrow at the hips, athletic. Salsbury was five feet nine, slope-shouldered, and twenty pounds overweight. Dawson had thick graying hair, a deep tan, clear black eyes, and matinee-idol features; whereas Salsbury was pale with receding hair and myopic brown eyes that required thick glasses. They were both fifty-four. Of the two, Dawson had weathered the years far better.

Then again, Salsbury thought, he began with better looks than I did. With better looks, more advantages, more money…

If Dawson radiated authority, Salsbury radiated servility. In

the laboratory on his own familiar turf, Ogden was as impressive as Dawson. They were not in the laboratory now, however, and he felt out of place, out of his class, inferior.

“How is Mrs. Dawson?”

The other man smiled broadly. “Wonderful! Just wonderful. I’ve made thousands of good decisions in my life, Ogden. But she was the best of them.” His voice grew deeper and more solemn; it was almost theatrical in effect. “She’s a good, God-fearing, church-loving woman.”

You’re still a Bible thumper, Salsbury thought. He suspected that this might help him achieve what he had come here to do.

They stared at each other, unable to think of any more small talk.

“Sit down,” Dawson said. He went behind the desk while Salsbury settled in front of it. The four feet of polished oak between them further established Dawson’s dominance.

Sitting stiffly, briefcase on his knees, Salsbury looked like the corporate equivalent of a lap dog. He knew he should relax, that it was dangerous to let Dawson see how easily he could be intimidated. Nevertheless, knowing this, he could only pretend relaxation by folding his hands atop his briefcase.

“This letter. -.“ Dawson looked at the paper on his blotter.

Salsbury had written the letter, and he knew it by heart.

Dear Leonard:

Since we left Harvard, you’ve made more money than I have. However, I haven’t wasted my life. After decades of study and experimentation, I have nearly perfected a process that is priceless. The proceeds in a single year could exceed your accumulated wealth. I am entirely serious.

Could I have an appointment at your convenience? You won’t regret having given it to me.

Make the appointment for “Robert Stanley,” a subterfuge to keep my name out of your date book. As you can see from the letterhead on this stationery, I direct operations at the main biochem research laboratory for Creative Development Associates, a subsidiary of Futurex International. If you know the nature of CDA’s business, you will understand the need for circumspection.

As ever, Ogden Salsbury

He had expected to get a quick response with that letter, and his expectations had been met. At Harvard, Leonard had been guided by two shining principles: money and God. Salsbury had supposed, and rightly, that Dawson hadn’t changed. The letter was mailed on Tuesday. Late Wednesday Dawson’s secretary called to make the appointment.

“I don’t ordinarily sign for registered letters,” Dawson said sternly. “I accepted it only because your name was on it. After I read it I very nearly threw it in the trash.”

Salsbury winced.

“Had it been from anyone else, I would have thrown it away. But at Harvard you were no braggart. Have you overstated your case?”

“You’ve discovered something you think is worth millions?”

“Yes. And more.” His mouth was dry.

Dawson took a manila folder from the center desk drawer. “Creative Development Associates. We bought that company seven years ago. You were with it when we made the acquisition.”

“Yes, sir. Leonard.”

As if he had not noticed Salsbury’s slip of the tongue, Dawson said, “CDA produces computer programs for universities and government bureaus involved in sociological and psychological studies.” He didn’t bother to page through the report. He seemed to have memorized it. “CDA also does research for government and industry. It operates seven laboratories that are examining the biological, chemical, and biochemical causes of certain sociological and psychological phenomena. You’re in charge of the Brockert Institute in Connecticut.” He frowned. “The entire Connecticut facility is devoted to top secret work for the Defense Department.” His black eyes were exception-

ally sharp and clear. “So secret, in fact, that even I couldn’t find out what you’re doing up there. Just that it’s in the general field of behavior modification.”

Clearing his throat nervously, Salsbury wondered if Dawson was broadminded enough to grasp the value of what he was about to be told. “Are you familiar with the term ‘subliminal perception’?”

“It has to do with the subconscious mind.”

“That’s right — as far as it goes. I’m afraid I’m going to sound rather pedantic, but a lecture is in order.”

Dawson leaned back as Salsbury leaned forward. “By all means.”

Extracting two eight-by-ten photographs from the briefcase, Salsbury said, “Do you see any difference between photo A and photo B?”

Dawson examined them closely. They were black and white studies of Salsbury’s face. “They’re identical.”

“On the surface, yes. They’re prints of the same photograph.”

“What’s the point?”

“I’ll explain later. Hold on to them for now.”

Dawson stared suspiciously at the pictures. Was this some sort of game? He didn’t like games. They were a waste of time. While you were playing a game, you could just as easily be earning money.

“The human mind,” Salsbury said, “has two primary monitors for data input: the conscious and the subconscious.”

“My church recognizes the subconscious,” Dawson said affably. “Not all churches will admit it exists.”

Unable to see the point of that, Salsbury ignored it. “These monitors observe and store two different sets of data. In a manner of speaking, the conscious mind is aware only of what happens in its direct line of sight, while the subconscious has peripheral vision. These two halves of the mind operate independently of each other, and often in opposition to each other-”

“Only in the abnormal mind,” Dawson said.

“No, no. In everyone’s mind. Yours and mine included.”

Disturbed that anyone should think his mind performed in any state other than perfect harmony with itself, Dawson started to speak.

“For example,” Salsbury said quickly, “a man is sitting at a bar. A beautiful woman takes the stool next to his. With conscious intent he tries to seduce her. At the same time, however, without being consciously aware of it, he may be terrified of sexual involvement. He may be afraid of rejection, failure, or impotency. With his conscious mind he performs as society expects him to perform in the company of a sexy woman. But his subconscious works effectively against his conscious. Therefore, he alienates the woman. He talks too loudly and brashly. Although he’s ordinarily an interesting fellow, he bores her with stock market reports. He spills his drink on her. That behavior is the product of his subconscious fear. His outer mind says ‘Go’ even as his inner mind shouts ‘Stop.’”

Dawson’s expression was sour. He didn’t appreciate the nature of the example. Nevertheless, he said, “Go on.”

“The subconscious is the dominant mind. The conscious sleeps, but the subconscious never does. The conscious has no access to the data in the subconscious, but the subconscious knows everything that transpires in the conscious mind. The conscious is essentially nothing more than a computer, while the subconscious is the computer programmer.

“The data stored in the different halves of the mind are collected in the same way: through the five known senses. But the subconscious sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels far more than does the outer mind. It apprehends everything that passes too quickly or too subtly to impress the conscious mind. For our purposes, in fact, that is the definition of ‘subliminal’: anything that happens too quickly or too subtly to make an impression on the conscious mind. More than ninety percent of the stimuli that we observe through our five senses is subliminal input.”

“Ninety percent?” Dawson said. “You mean I see, feel, smell, taste, and hear ten times more than I think I do? An example?”

Salsbury had one ready. “The human eye fixates on objects

at least one hundred thousand times a day. A fixation lasts from a fraction of a second to a third of a minute. However, if you tried to list the hundred thousand things you had looked at today, you wouldn’t be able to recall more than a few hundred of them. The rest of those stimuli were observed by and stored in the subconscious — as were the additional two million stimuli reported to the brain by the other four senses.”

Closing his eyes as if to block out all of those sights he wasn’t aware of seeing, Dawson said, “You’ve made three points.” He ticked them off on his manicured fingers. “One, the subconscious is the dominant half of the mind. Two, we don’t know what our subconscious minds have observed and remembered. We can’t recall that data at will. Three, subliminal perception is nothing strange or occult; it is an integral part of our lives.”

“Perhaps the major part of our lives.”

“And you’ve discovered a commercial use for subliminal perception.”

Salsbury’s hands were shaking. He was close to the core of his proposition, and he didn’t know whether Dawson would be fascinated or outraged by it. “For two decades, advertisers of consumer products have been able to reach the subconscious minds of potential customers by the use of subliminal perception. The ad agencies refer to these techniques by several other names. Subliminal reception. Threshold regulation. Unconscious perception. Subception. Are you aware of this? Have you heard of it?”

Still enviably relaxed, Dawson said, “There were several experiments conducted in movie theaters — fifteen — maybe twenty years ago. I remember reading about them in the newspapers.”

Salsbury nodded rapidly. “Yes. The first was in 1957.”

“During an ordinary showing of some film, a special message was superimposed on the screen. ‘You are thirsty,’ or something of that sort. It was flashed off and on so fast that no one realized it was there. After it had been flashed — what, a thousand times? nearly everyone in the theater went to the lobby and bought soft drinks.”

In those first crude experiments, which were carefully regulated by motivation researchers, subliminal messages had been delivered to the audience with a tachistoscope, a machine patented by a New Orleans company, Precon Process and Equipment Corporation, in October of 1962. The tachistoscope was a standard film projector with a high-speed shutter. It could flash a message twelve times a minute at of a second. The image appeared on the screen for too short a time to be perceived by the conscious mind, but the subconscious was fully aware of it. During a six-week test of the tachistoscope, forty-five thousand theater-goers were subjected to two messages:

“Drink Coca-Cola” and “Hungry? Eat Popcorn.” The results of these experiments left no doubt about the effectiveness of subliminal advertisement. Popcorn sales rose sixty percent, and Coco-Cola sales rose nearly twenty percent.

The subliminals apparently had influenced people to buy these products even though they were not hungry or thirsty.

“You see,” Salsbury said, “the subconscious mind believes everything it is told. Even though it constructs behavioral sets based on the information it receives, and although those sets guide the conscious mind — it can’t distinguish between truth and falsehood! The behavior that it programs into the conscious mind is often based on misconceptions.”

“But if that were correct, we’d all behave irrationally.”

“And we all do,” Salsbury said, “in one way or another. Don’t forget, the subconscious doesn’t always construct programs based on wrong-headed ideas. Just sometimes. This explains why intelligent men, paragons of reason in most things, harbor at least a few irrational attitudes.” Like your religious fanaticism, he thought. He said: “Racial and religious bigotry, for instance. Xenophobia, claustrophobia, acrophobia. If a man can be made to analyze one of these fears on a conscious level, he’ll reject it. But the conscious resists analysis. Meanwhile, the inner half of the mind continues to misguide the outer half.”

“These messages on the movie screen — the conscious mind wasn’t aware of them; therefore, it couldn’t reject them.”

Salsbury sighed. “Yes. That’s the essence of it. The subconscious saw the messages and caused the outer mind to act on them.”

Dawson was growing more interested by the minute. “But why did the subliminals sell more popcorn than soda?”

“The first message—’Drink Coca-Cola’—was a declarative sentence,” Salsbury said, “a direct order. Sometimes the subconscious obeys an order that’s delivered subliminally — and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Why is that?”

Salsbury shrugged. “We don’t know. But you see, the second subliminal was not entirely a direct order. It was more sophisticated. It began with a question: ‘Hungry?’ The question was designed to cause anxiety in the subconscious. It helped to generate a need. It established a ‘motivational equation.’ The need, the anxiety, is on the left side of the equals sign. To fill the right side, to balance the equation, the subconscious programs the conscious to buy the popcorn. One side cancels out the other. The buying of the popcorn cancels out the anxiety.”

“The method is similar to posthypnotic suggestion. But I’ve. heard that a man can’t be hypnotized and made to do something he finds morally unacceptable. In other words, if he isn’t a killer by nature, he can’t be made to kill while under hypnosis.”

“That’s not true,” Salsbury said. “Anyone can be made to do anything under hypnosis. The inner mind can be manipulated so easily. For example, if I hypnotized you and told you to kill your wife, you wouldn’t obey me.”

“Of course I wouldn’t!” Dawson said indignantly.

“You love your wife.”

“I certainly do!”

“You have no reason to kill her.”

“None whatsoever.”

Judging by Dawson’s emphatic denials, Salsbury thought the man’s subconscious must be brimming with repressed hostility toward his God-fearing, church-loving wife. He didn’t dare say as much. Dawson would have denied it — and might have tossed him out of the office. “However, if I hypnotized you and told

you that your wife was having an affair with your best friend and that she was plotting to kill you in order to inherit your estate, you would believe me and—”

“I would not. Julia would be incapable of such a thing.”

Salsbury nodded patiently. “Your conscious mind would reject my story. It can reason. But after I’d hypnotized you, I’d be speaking to your subconscious — which can’t distinguish between lies and truth.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Your subconscious won’t act on a direct order to kill because a direct order doesn’t establish a motivational equation. But it will believe my warning that she intends to kill you. And so believing, it will construct a new behavioral set based on the lies — and it will program your conscious mind for murder. Picture the equation, Leonard. On the left of the equals sign there is anxiety generated by the ‘knowledge’ that your wife intends to do away with you. On the right side, to balance the equation, to banish the anxiety, you need the death of your wife. If your subconscious was convinced that she was going to kill you in your sleep tonight, it would cause you to murder her before you ever went to bed.”

“Why wouldn’t I just go to the police?”

Smiling, more sure of himself than he had been when he entered the office, Salsbury said, “The hypnotist could guard against that by telling your subconscious that your wife would make it look like an accident, that she was so clever the police would never prove anything against her.”

Raising one hand, Dawson waved at the air as if he were shooing away flies. “This is all very interesting,” he said in a slightly bored tone of voice. “But it seems academic to me.”

Ogden’s self-confidence was fragile. He began to tremble again. “Academic?”

“Subliminal advertising has been outlawed. There was quite a to-do at the time.”

“Oh, yes,” Salsbury said, relieved. “There were hundreds of newspaper and magazine editorials. Newsday called it the most alarming invention since the atomic bomb. The Saturday Re-

view said that the subconscious mind was the most delicate apparatus in the universe and that it must never be sullied or twisted to boost the sales of popcorn or anything else.

“In the late 1950s, when the experiments with the tachistoscope were publicized, nearly everyone agreed that subliminal advertising was an invasion of privacy. Congressman James Wright of Texas sponsored a bill to outlaw any device, film, photograph, or recording ‘designed to advertise a product or indoctrinate the public by means of making an impression on the subconscious mind. Other congressmen and senators drafted legislation to deal with the menace, but none of the bills got out of committee. No law was passed restricting or forbidding subliminal advertising.”

Dawson raised his eyebrows. “Do politicians use it?”

“Most of them don’t understand the potential. And the advertising agencies would just as soon keep them ignorant. Every major agency in the U.S. has a staff of media and behavioral scientists to develop subliminals for magazine and television ads. Virtually every consumer item produced by Futurex and its subsidiaries is sold with subliminal advertising.”

“I don’t believe it,” Dawson said. “I would know about it.”

“Not unless you wanted to know and made an effort to learn. Thirty years ago, when you were starting out, this sort of thing didn’t exist. By the time it came into use, you were no longer closely tied to the sales end of your businesses. You were more concerned with stock issues, mergers — wheeling and dealing. In a conglomerate of this size, the president can’t possibly pass approval on every ad for every product of every subsidiary.”

Leaning forward in his chair, a look of distaste on his handsome face, Dawson said, “But I find it rather — repulsive.”

“If you accept the fact that a man’s mind can be programmed without his knowledge, you’re rejecting the notion that every man is at all times captain of his fate. It scares hell out of people.

“For two decades Americans have refused to face the unpleasant truth about subliminal advertising. Opinion polls indicate that, of those who have heard of subliminal advertising,

ninety percent are certain it has been outlawed. They have no facts to support this opinion, but they don’t want to believe anything else. Furthermore, between fifty and seventy percent of those polled say they don’t believe subliminals work. They are so revolted by the thought of being controlled and manipulated that they reject the possibility out of hand. Rather than educate themselves about the actuality of subliminal advertising, rather than rise up and rage against it, they dismiss it as a fantasy, as science fiction.”

Dawson shifted uneasily in his chair. Finally, he got up, went to the huge windows and stared out at Manhattan.

Snow had begun to fall. There was very little light in the sky. Wind, like the voice of the city, moaned on the far side of the glass.

Turning back to Salsbury, Dawson said, “One of our subsidiaries is an ad agency. Woolring and Messner. You mean every time they make a television commercial, they build into it a series of subliminally flashed messages with a tachistoscope?”

“The advertiser has to request subliminals,” Salsbury said. “The service costs extra. But to answer your question — no, the tachistoscope is out of date.

“The science of subliminal behavior modification developed so rapidly that the tachistoscope was obsolete soon after it was patented. By the mid-1960s, most subliminals in television commercials were implanted with rheostatic photography. Everyone has seen a rheostatic control for a lamp or overhead light: by turning it, one can make the light dimmer or brighter. The same principle can be used in motion picture photography. First, the commercial is shot and edited to sixty seconds in the conventional manner. This is the half of the advertisement that registers with the conscious mind. Another minute of film, containing the subliminal message, is shot with minimal light intensity, with the rheostat turned all the way down. The resultant image is too dim to register with the conscious mind. When it is projected on a screen, the screen appears to be blank. However, the subconscious sees and absorbs it. These

two films are projected simultaneously and printed on a third length of film. It is this composite version that is used on television. While the audience watches the commercial, the subconscious mind watches — and obeys, to one degree or another

— the subliminal directive.

“And that’s only the basic technique,” Salsbury said. “The refinements are even more clever.”

Dawson paced. He wasn’t nervous. He was just — excited.

He’s beginning to see the value, Salsbury thought happily.

“I see how subliminals could be hidden in a piece of film that’s full of motion, light and shadow,” Dawson said. “But magazine ads? That’s a static medium. One image, no movement. How could a subliminal be concealed on one page?”

Pointing to the photographs he had given Dawson earlier, Salsbury said, “For that picture I kept my face expressionless. Two copies were made from the same negative. Copy A was printed over a vague image of the word ‘anger.’ And B was printed over the word ‘joy.’”

Comparing the photos, Dawson said, “I don’t see either word.”

“I’d be displeased if you did. They aren’t meant to be seen.”

“What was the purpose?”

“One hundred students at Columbia were given photo A and asked to identify the emotion expressed by the face. Ten students had no opinion. Eight said ‘displeasure’ and eighty-two said ‘anger.’ A different group studied photo B. Eight expressed no opinion. Twenty-one said ‘happiness’ and seventy-one said ‘joy.’”

“I see,” Dawson said thoughtfully.

Salsbury said, “But that’s as crude as the tachistoscope. Let me show you some sophisticated subliminal ads.” He plucked a sheet of paper from his briefcase. It was a page from Time magazine. He put the page on Dawson’s blotter.

“It’s an ad for Gilbey’s Gin,” Dawson said.

At a glance it was a simple liquor advertisement. A five-word headline stood at the top of the page: BREAK OUT THE FROSTY BOTTLE. The only other copy was toward the lower right-hand corner: AND KEEP YOUR TONICS DRY! The accompanying illustration held three items. The most prominent of these was a bottle of gin which glistened with water droplets and frost. The cap of the bottle lay at the bottom of the page. Beside the bottle was a tall glass filled with ice cubes, a lime slice, a swizzle stick and, presumably, gin. The background was green, cool, pleasant.

The message intended for the conscious mind was clear:

This gin is refreshing and offers an escape from everyday cares.

‘What the page had to say to the subconscious mind was far more interesting. Salsbury explained that most of the subliminal content was buried beneath the threshold of conscious recognition, but that some of it could be seen and analyzed, although only with an open mind and perseverance. The subliminal that the conscious could most easily comprehend was hidden in the ice cubes. There were four ice cubes stacked one atop the other. The second cube from the top and the lime slice formed a vague letter S which the conscious mind could see when prompted. The third cube held a very evident letter E in the area of light and shadow that comprised the cube itself. The fourth chunk of ice contained the subtle but unmistakable outline of the letter X: S-E-X.

Salsbury had come around behind Dawson’s desk and had carefully traced these three letters with his forefinger. “Do you see it?”

Scowling, Dawson said, “I saw the E immediately and the other two without much trouble. But I’m finding it hard to believe they were put there on purpose. It could be an accident of shading.”

“Ice cubes usually don’t photograph well,” Salsbury said. “When you see them in an advertisement, they’ve nearly always been drawn by an artist. In fact, this entire ad has been painted over a photograph. But there’s more than the word in the ice.”

Squinting at the page, Dawson said, “What else?”

“The bottle and glass are on a reflective surface.” Salsbury circled that area of the reflection that dealt with the bottle

and the cap. “Without stretching your imagination too far, can you see that the reflection of the bottle is divided in two, forming what might be taken to be a pair of legs? Do you see, also, that the reflected bottle cap resembles a penis thrusting out from between those legs?”

Dawson bristled. “I can see it,” he said coldly.

Too interested in his own lecture to notice Dawson’s uneasiness, Salsbury said, “Of course, the melting ice on the bottle cap could be semen. That image was never meant to be entirely subliminal. The conscious mind might recognize the intent here. But it would not recognize the reflection in that table unless it was guided to the recognition.” He pointed to another spot on the page. “Would it be going too far to say these shadows between the reflections of the bottle and the glass form vaginal lips? And that this drop of water on the table is positioned on the shadows precisely where the clitoris would be on a vagina?”

When he perceived the subliminal sex organ, its lips parted, Dawson blushed. “I see it. Or I think I do.”

Salsbury reached in his briefcase. “I’ve got other examples.” One of them was a two-page subscription solicitation that had appeared shortly before Christmas several years before, in Playboy. On the right-hand page, Playmate Liv Lindeland, a busty blonde, knelt on a white carpet. On the left-hand page stood an enormous walnut wreath. She was tying a red bow to the top of the wreath.

In one test, Salsbury explained, a hundred subjects spent an hour studying two hundred advertisements, including this one. When the hour ended they were asked to list the first ten of those items that they could remember. Eighty-five percent listed the Playboy ad. In describing it, all but two subjects mentioned the wreath. Only five of them mentioned the girl. When questioned further, they had trouble recalling if she was a blonde, brunette, or redhead. They remembered that her breasts were uncovered, but they couldn’t say for sure whether she was wearing a hat or was clothed from the waist down. (She had no hat and was nude.) None of them had trouble describing the

wreath, for it was there that the subconscious had been riveted.

“Do you see why?” Salsbury asked. “There’s not a walnut in that ‘walnut’ wreath. It’s composed of objects that resemble the heads of penises and vaginal slits.”

Unable to speak, Dawson leafed through the other advertisements without asking Salsbury to explain them. Finally he said, “Camel cigarettes, Seagram’s, Sprite, Bacardi Rum Some of the most prominent companies in the country are using subliminals to sell their products.”

“Why shouldn’t they? It’s legal. If the competition uses them, what choice does even the most morally uplifted company really have? Everyone has to stay competitive. In short, there are no individual villains. The whole system is the villain.”

Dawson returned to his executive chair, his face a book of his thoughts. One could read there that he disliked any talk against “the system” and that he was nonetheless shocked by what he had been shown. He was also trying to see how he could make a profit from it. He operated with the conviction that God wanted him to sit in an executive chair at the pinnacle of a billion-dollar corporation; and he was certain that the Lord would help him to see that, although subliminal advertising had a cheap and possibly immoral side to it, there was also an aspect of it that could aid him in his divine mission. As he saw it, his mission was to pile up profits for the Lord; when he and Julia were dead, the Dawson holdings would belong to the church.

Salsbury returned to his seat in front of the desk. The litter of magazine pages on the blotter and bare oak seemed like a collection of pornography. He felt as if he had been trying to titillate Dawson. Irrationally, he was embarrassed.

“You’ve shown me that a great deal of creative effort and money goes into subliminal commercials and ads,” Dawson said. “Evidently, there’s a generally held theory that subconscious sexual stimulation sells goods. But does it? Enough to be worth the expense?”

“Unquestionably! Psychological studies have proved that most Americans react to sexual stimuli with subconscious anxiety and tension. So if the subliminal half of a television commercial for

XYZ soda shows a couple having intercourse, the viewer’s subconscious starts bubbling with anxiety — and that establishes a motivational equation. On the left side of the equals sign, there’s anxiety and tension. To complete the equation and cancel out these bad feelings, the viewer buys the product, a bottle or a case of XYZ. The equation is finished, the blackboard wiped clean.”

Dawson was surprised. “Then he doesn’t buy the product because he believes it will give him a better sex life?”

“Just the opposite,” Salsbury said. “He buys it to escape from sex. The ad fills him with desire on a subconscious level, and by buying that product he is able to satisfy the desire without risking rejection, impotence, humiliation, or some other unsatisfactory experience with a woman. Or if the viewer is a woman, she buys the product to satisfy desire and thus avoids an unhappy affair with a man. For both men and women, the desire is well relieved if the product has an oral aspect. Like food or soda.”

“Or cigarettes,” Dawson said. “Could that explain why so many people have trouble giving up cigarettes?”

“Nicotine is addictive,” Salsbury said. “But there’s no question that subliminals in cigarette ads reinforce the habit in most people.”

Scratching his square chin, Dawson said, “If these are so effective, why don’t I smoke? I’ve seen the ads before.”

“The science hasn’t been perfected yet,” Salsbury said. “If you think smoking is a disgusting habit, if you’ve decided never to smoke, subliminals can’t change your mind. On the other hand, if you’re young, just entering the cigarette market, and have no real opinions about the habit, subliminals can influence you to pick it up. Or if you were once a heavy smoker but kicked the habit, subliminals can persuade you to resume smoking. Subliminals also affect people who have no strong brand preferences. For example, if you don’t drink gin or don’t like to drink at all, subliminals in the Gilbey’s ad won’t make you run out to the liquor store. If you do drink, and if you do like gin, and if you don’t care which brand of gin you drink, these ads could establish a brand preference for you. They work,

Leonard. Subliminals sell hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods every year, a substantial percentage of which the public might never buy if it were not subliminally manipulated.”

Dawson said, “You’ve been working on subliminal perception up there in Connecticut for the last ten years?”

“Yes.”

“Perfecting the science?”

“That’s correct.”

“The Pentagon sees a weapon in it?”

“Definitely. Don’t you see it?”

Quietly, reverently, Dawson said, “If you’ve perfected the science. you’re talking about total mind control. Not just behavior modification, but absolute, ironlike control.”

For a moment neither of them could speak. “Whatever you’ve discovered,” Dawson said, “you apparently want to keep it from the Defense Department. They might call that treason.”

“I don’t care what they call it,” Salsbury said sharply. “With your money and my knowledge, we don’t need the Defense Department — or anyone else. We’re more powerful than all the world’s governments combined.”

Dawson couldn’t conceal his excitement. “What is it? What have you got?”

Salsbury went to the windows and watched the snow spiraling down on the city. He felt as if he had taken hold of a live wire. A current buzzed through him. Shaking with it, almost able to imagine that the snowflakes were sparks exploding from him, feeling himself to be at the vortex of a God-like power, he told Dawson what he had found and what role Dawson could play in his scenario of conquest.

Half an hour later, when Ogden finished, Dawson — who had never before been humble anywhere but in church — said, “Dear God.” He stared at Salsbury as a devout Catholic might have gazed upon the vision at Fatima. “Ogden, the two of us are going to — inherit the earth?” His face was suddenly split by an utterly humorless smile.

Saturday, August 13, 1977

IN ONE OF THE THIRD-FLOOR GUEST BEDROOMS of the Edison house, Paul Annendale arranged his shaving gear on top of the dresser. From left to right: a can of foam, a mug containing a lather brush, a straight razor in a plastic safety case, a dispenser full of razor blades, a styptic pencil, a bottle of skin conditioner, and a bottle of after-shave lotion. Those seven items had been arranged in such an orderly fashion that they looked as if they belonged in one of those animated cartoons in which everyday items come to life and march around like soldiers.

He turned from the dresser and went to one of the two large windows. In the distance the mountains rose above the valley walls, majestic and green, mottled by purple shadows from a few passing clouds. The nearer ridges — decorated with stands of pines, scattered elms, and meadows — sloped gently toward the town. On the far side of Main Street, birch trees rustled in the breeze. Men in short-sleeved shirts and women in crisp summer dresses strolled along the sidewalk. The veranda roof and the sign for Edison’s store were directly below the window.

As his gaze moved back and back from the distant mountains, Paul became aware of his own reflection in the window glass. At five ten and one hundred fifty pounds, he was neither tall nor short, heavy nor thin. In some ways he looked older than thirty-eight, and in other ways he looked younger. His Crinkly, almost frizzy light brown hair was worn full on the

sides but not long. It was a hair style more suited to a younger man, but it looked good on him. His eyes were so blue that they might have been chips of mirrors reflecting the sky above. The expression of pain and loss lying beneath the surface brightness of those eyes belonged to a much older man. His features were narrow, somewhat aristocratic; but a deep tan softened the sharp angles of his face and saved him from a haughty look. He appeared to be a man who would feel at ease both in an elegant drawing room and in a waterfront bar.

He was wearing a blue workshirt, blue jeans, and black square-toed boots; however, he did not seem to be casually dressed. Indeed, in spite of the jeans, there was an air of formality about his outfit. He wore those clothes better than most men wore tuxedos. The sleeves of his shirt had been carefully pressed and creased. His opened collar stood up straight and stiff, as if it had been starched. The silvery buckle on his belt had been carefully polished. Like his shirt, his jeans seemed to have been tailored. His low-heeled boots shone almost like patent leather.

He had always been compulsively neat. He couldn’t remember a time when his friends hadn’t kidded him about it. As a child he had kept his toy box in better order than his mother had kept the china closet.

Three and a half years ago, after Annie died and left him with the children, his need for order and neatness had become almost neurotic. On a Wednesday afternoon, ten months after the funeral, when he caught himself rearranging the contents of a cabinet in his veterinary clinic for the seventh time in two hours, he realized that his compulsion for neatness could become a refuge from life and especially from grief. Alone in the clinic, standing before an array of instruments — forceps, syringes, scalpels — he cried for the first time since he learned Annie was dead. Under the misguided belief that he had to hide his grief from the children in order to provide them with an example of strength, he had never given vent to the powerful emotions that the loss of his wife had engendered. Now he cried, shook, and raged at the cruelty of it. He rarely used foul language, but now he strung together all the vile words and phrases

that he knew, cursing God and the universe and life — and himself. After that, his compulsive neatness ceased to be a neurosis and became, again, just another facet of his character, which frustrated some people and charmed others.

Someone knocked on the bedroom door.

He turned away from the window. “Come in.”

Rya opened the door. “It’s seven o’clock, Daddy. Suppertime.”

In faded red jeans and a short-sleeved white sweater, with her dark hair falling past her shoulders, she looked startlingly like her mother. She tilted her head to one side, just as Annie use to do, as if trying to guess what he was thinking.

“Is Mark ready?”

“Oh,” she said, “he was ready an hour ago. He’s in the kitchen, getting in Sam’s way.”

“Then we’d better get down there. Knowing Mark’s appetite, I’d say he has half the food eaten already.”

As he came toward her, she stepped back a pace. “You look absolutely marvelous, Daddy.”

He smiled at her and lightly pinched her cheek. If she had been complimenting Mark, she would have said that he looked “super,” but she wanted him to know that she was judging him by grown-up standards, and she had used grown-up language.

“You really think so?” he asked.

“Jenny won’t be able to resist you,” she said.

He made a face at her.

“It’s true,” Rya said.

“What makes you think I care whether or not Jenny can resist me?”

Her expression said he should stop treating her as a child. “When Jenny came down to Boston in March, you were altogether different.”

“Different from what?”

“Different from the way you usually are. For two whole weeks,” she said, “when you came home from the clinic, you didn’t once grump about sick poodles and Siamese cats.”

“Well, that’s because the only patients I had for those two weeks were elephants and giraffes.”

“Oh, daddy.”

“And a pregnant kangaroo.”

Rya sat on the bed. “Are you going to ask her to marry you?”

“The kangaroo?”

She grinned, partly at the joke and partly at the way he was trying to evade the question. “I’m not sure I’d like a kangaroo for a mother,” she said. “But if the baby is yours, you’re going to have to marry her if you want to do the right thing.”

“I swear it’s not mine,” he said. “I’m not romantically inclined toward kangaroos.”

“Toward Jenny?” she asked.

“Whether or nor I’m attracted to her, the important question is whether Jenny likes me.”

“You don’t know?” Rya asked. “Well. I’ll find out for you.”

Teasing her, he said, “How will you do that?”

“Ask her.”

“And make me look like Miles Standish?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll be subtle about it.” She got up from the bed and went to the door. “Mark must have eaten three-fourths of the food by now.”

“Rya?”

She looked back at him.

“Do you like Jenny?”

She grinned. “Oh, very much.”

For seven years, since Mark was two and Rya four, the Annendales had been taking their summer vacation in the mountains above Black River. Paul wanted to communicate to his children his own love of wild places and wild things. During these four- and six-week vacations, he educated them in the ways of nature so that they might know the satisfaction of being in harmony with it. This was a joyous education, and they looked forward to each outing.

The year that Annie died, he almost canceled the trip. At

first it had seemed to him that going without her would only make their loss more evident. Rya had convinced him otherwise. “It’s like Mommy is still in this house,” Rya had said. “When I go from one room to another, I expect to find her there, all pale and drawn like she was near the end. If we go camping up beyond Black River, I guess maybe I’ll expect to see her in the woods too, but at least I won’t expect to see her pale and drawn. When we went to Black River, she was so pretty and healthy. And she was always so happy when we were out in the forest.” Because of Rya, they took their vacation as usual that year, and it proved to be the best thing they could have done.

The first year that he and Annie took the children to Black River, they bought their dry goods and supplies at Edison’s General Store. Mark and Rya had fallen in love with Sam Edison the day they met him. Annie and Paul came under his spell nearly as quickly. By the end of their four-week vacation, they had come down from the mountain twice to have dinner at Edison’s, and when they left for home they had promised to keep in touch with an occasional letter. The following year, Sam told them that they were not to go up into the mountains to set up camp after the long tiring drive from Boston. Instead, he insisted they spend the night at his place and get a fresh start in the morning. That first-night stop-over had become their yearly routine. By now Sam was like a grandfather to Rya and Mark. For the past two years, Paul had brought the children north to spend Christmas week at Edison’s.

Paul had met Jenny Edison just last year. Of course, Sam fiad mentioned his daughter many times. She had gone to Columbia and majored in music. In her senior year she married a musician and moved to California where he was playing in a band. But after more than seven years, the marriage had turned sour, and she had come home to get her wits about her and to decide what she wanted to do next. As proud a father as he had been, Sam had never shown pictures of her. That was not his style. On his first day in Black River last year, walking into Edison’s where she was waiting on children at the candy

counter — and catching sight of her — Paul had for a moment been unable to get his breath.

It happened that quickly between them. Not love at first sight. Something more fundamental than love. Something more basic that had to come first, before love could develop. Instinctively, intuitively, even though he had been certain there could be no one after Annie, he had known that she was right for him. Jenny felt the attraction too, powerfully, immediately — but almost unwillingly.

If he had told all of this to Rya, she would have said, “So why aren’t you married?” If life were only that simple.

After dinner, while Sam and the children washed the dishes, Paul and Jenny retired to the den. They propped their feet up on an antique woodcarver’s bench, and he put his arm around her shoulder. Their conversation had been free and easy at the table, but now it was stilted. She was hard and angular under his arm, tense. Twice, he leaned over and kissed her gently on the corner of the mouth, but she remained stiff and cool. He decided that she was inhibited by the possibility that Rya or Mark or her father might walk into the room at any moment, and he suggested they take a drive.

“I don’t know.

He stood up. “Come on. Some fresh night air will be good for you.”

Outside, the night was chilly. As they got in the car, she said, “We almost need the heater.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Just snuggle up and share body heat.” He grinned at her. “Where to?”

“I know a nice quiet little bar in Bexford.”

“I thought we were staying out of public places?”

“They don’t have the flu in Bexford," she said.

“They don’t? It’s only thirty miles down the road.”

She shrugged. “That’s just one of the curiosities of this plague.”

He put the car in gear and drove out into the street. “So be it. A quiet little bar in Bexford.”

She found an all-night Canadian radio station playing American swing music from the 1940s. “No more talk for a while,” she said. She sat close to him with her head against his shoulder.

The drive from Black River to Bexford was a pleasant one. The narrow black-top road rose and fell and twisted gracefully through the lightless, leafy countryside. For miles at a time, trees arched across the roadway, forming a tunnel of cool night air. After a while, in spite of the Benny Goodman music, Paul felt that they were the only two people in the world — and that was a surprisingly agreeable thought.

She was even lovelier than the mountain night, and as mysterious in her silence as some of the deep, unsettled northern hollows through which they passed. For such a slender woman, she had great presence. She took up very little space on the seat, and yet she seemed to dominate the car and overwhelm him. Her eyes, so large and dark, were closed, yet he felt as if she were watching him. Her face — too beautiful to appear in Vogue: she would have made the other models in the magazine look like horses — was in repose. Her full lips were slightly parted as she sang softly with the music; and this bit of animation, this parting of the lips had more sensual impact than a heavy-eyed, full-faced leer from Elizabeth Taylor. As she leaned against him, her dark hair fanned across his shoulder, and her scent — clean and soapy — rose to him.

In Bexford, he parked across the street from the tavern.

She switched off the radio and kissed him once, quickly, as a sister might. “You’re a nice man.”

“What did I do?”

“I didn’t want to talk, and you didn’t make me.”

“It wasn’t any hardship,” he said. “You and me. we communicate with silence as well as with words. Hadn’t you noticed?”

She smiled. “I’ve noticed.”

“But maybe you don’t put enough value on that. Not as much as you should.”

“I put a great deal of value on it,” she said.

“Jenny, what we have is—”

She put one hand on his lips. “I didn’t mean for the conversation to take such a serious turn,” she said.

“But I think we should talk seriously. We’re long overdue for that.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about us, not seriously. And because you’re such a nice man, you’re going to do what I want.” She kissed him again, opened her door, and got out of the car.

The tavern was a warm, cozy place. There was a rustic bar along the left-hand wall, about fifteen tables in the center of the room, and a row of maroon leatherette booths along the right wall. The shelves behind the bar were lit with soft blue bulbs. Each of the tables in the center of the room held a tall candle in a red glass lantern, and an imitation stained-glass Tiffany lamp hung over each of the booths. The jukebox was playing a soulful country ballad by Charlie Rich. The bartender, a heavyset man with a walrus mustache, joked continuously with the customers. Without trying for it, without being aware of it, he sounded like W. C. Fields. There were four men at the bar, half a dozen couples at the tables, and other couples in the booths. The last booth was open, and they took it.

When they had ordered and received their drinks from a perky red-headed waitress — Scotch for him and a dry vodka martini for her — Paul said, “Why don’t you come up and spend a few days with us at camp? We have an extra sleeping bag.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

“When?”

“Maybe next week.”

“I’ll tell the kids. Once they’re expecting you, you won’t be able to back out of it.”

She laughed. “Those two are something else,” she said.

“How true.”

“Do you know what Rya said to me when she was helping me pour the coffee after dinner?” Jenny took a sip of her drink. “She asked if I had divorced my first husband because he was a lousy lover.”

“Oh, no! She didn’t really.”

“Oh, yes, she did.”

“I know that girl’s only eleven. But sometimes I wonder..

“Reincarnation?” Jenny asked.

“Maybe that’s it. She’s only eleven years old in this life, but maybe she lived to be seventy in another life. What did you say to her when she asked?”

Jenny shook her head as if she were amazed at her gullibility. Her black hair swung away from her face. “Well, when she saw that I was about to tell her it was none of her business whether or not my first husband was a lousy lover, she told me I mustn’t be cross with her. She said she wasn’t just being nosy. She said she was just a growing girl, a bit mature for her age, who had a perfectly understandable curiosity about adults, love and marriage. Then she really began to con me.”

Paul grimaced. “I can tell you the line she used: Poor little orphan girl. Confused by her own pubescence. Bewildered by a new set of emotions and body chemistry.”

“So she’s used it on you.”

“Many times.”

“And you fell for it?”

“Everyone falls for it.”

“I sure did. I felt so sorry for her. She had a hundred questions—”

“All of them intimate,” Paul said.

“—and I answered all of them. And then I found out the whole conversation was meant to lead up to one line. After she had learned more about my husband than she could ever want to know, she told me that she and her mother had had long talks a year or so before Annie died, and that her mother told her you were just a fantastic lover.”

Paul groaned.

“I said to her, ‘Rya, I believe you’re trying to sell your father to me.’ She got indignant and said that was a terrible thing to think. I said, ‘Well, I can’t believe that your mother ever said anything of the sort to you. How old would you have been then? Six?’ And she said, ‘Six, that’s right. But even when I was six, I was very mature for my age.’”

\Vhen he was done laughing, Paul said, “Well, you can’t

blame her. She’s only playing the matchmaker because she likes you. So does Mark.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice slightly. “So do I.”

She looked down at her drink. “Read any good books lately?” He stirred his Scotch and sighed. “Since I’m such a nice man, I’m supposed to let you change the subject that easily.”

“That’s right.”

Jenny Leigh Edison distrusted romance and feared marriage. Her ex-husband, whose name she had gladly surrendered, was one of those men who despise education, work, and sacrifice, but who nonetheless think they deserve fame and fortune. Because, year after year, he achieved neither goal, he needed some excuse for failure. She made a good one. He said he hadn’t been able to put together a successful band because of her. He hadn’t been able to get a recording contract with a major company because of her. She was holding him back, he said. She was getting in his way, he said. After seven years of supporting him by playing cocktail-bar piano, she suggested that they would both be happier if the marriage were dissolved. At first, he accused her of deserting him, and then he threatened to kill her if she left. She divorced him. “Love and romance aren’t enough to make a marriage work,” she had once told Paul. “You need something else. Maybe it’s respect. Until I do know what it is, I’m in no hurry to get back to the altar.”

Like the nice man that he was, he had changed the subject at her request. They were talking about music when Bob and Emma Thorp came over to the booth and said hello.

Bob Thorp was chief of the four-man police force in Black River. Ordinarily, a town so small would have boasted no more than a single constable. But in Black River, more than a constable was needed to maintain order when the logging camp men came into town for some relaxation; therefore, Big Union Supply Company paid for the four-man force. Bob was a six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound ex-MP with martial arts training. With his square face, deep-set eyes, and low forehead, he looked both dangerous and dim-witted. He could be dangerous, but he was not stupid. He wrote an amusing column for Black River’s weekly newspaper, and the quality of thought and language in those pieces would have been a credit to any big city newspaper's editorial page. This combination of brute strength and unexpected intelligence made Bob a match even for lumbermen much bigger than he was.

At thirty-five Emma Thorp was still the prettiest woman in Black River. She was a green-eyed blonde with a spectacular figure, a combination of beauty and sex appeal that had gotten her into the finals of the Miss U.S.A. Contest ten years ago. That achievement made her Black River’s only genuine celebrity. Her son, Jeremy, was the same age as Mark. Jeremy stayed at the Annendale camp for a few days every year. Mark valued him as a playmate — but valued him more because his mother was Emma. Mark was deeply in puppy love with Emma and mooned around her every chance he got.

“Are you here on vacation?” Bob asked.

“Just got in this afternoon.”

Jenny said, “We’d ask you to sit down, but Paul’s trying to keep an arm’s length from everyone who has the flu. If he picked it up, he’d just pass it on to the kids.”

“It’s nothing serious,” Bob said. “Not the flu, really. Just night chills.”

“Maybe you can live with them,” Emma said. “But I think they’re pretty serious. I haven’t had a good sleep all week. They aren’t just night chills. I tried to take a nap this afternoon, and I woke up shaking and sweating.”

Paul said, “You both look very good.”

“I tell you,” Bob said, “it’s nothing serious. Night chills. My grandmother used to complain of them.”

“Your grandmother complained of everything,” Emma said. “Night chills, rheumatiz, the ague, hot flashes.

Paul hesitated, smiled, and said, “Oh hell, sit down. Let me buy you a drink.”

Glancing at his watch, Bob said, “Thanks, but we really can’t. They have a poker game in the back room here every Saturday night. Emma and I usually play. They’re expecting us.”

“You play, Emma?” Jenny asked.

“Better than Bob does,” Emma said. “Last time, he lost fifteen dollars, and I won thirty-two.”

Bob grinned at his wife and said, “Tell the truth now. It’s not so much skill. It’s just that when you’re playing, most of the men don’t spend enough time looking at their cards.”

Emma touched the low-cut neckline of her sweater. “Well, bluffing is an important part of good poker playing. If the damn fools can be bluffed by some cleavage, then they just don’t play as well as I do.”

On the way home, ten miles out of Bexford, Paul started to turn off the blacktop road onto a scenic overlook that was a favorite lovers’ lane.

“Please, don’t stop,” Jenny said.

“Why not?”

“I want you.”

He put the car in park, half on the road, half off. “And that’s a reason not to stop?”

She avoided looking at him. “I want you, but you aren’t the kind of man that can be satisfied with just the sex. You want something more from me. It’s got to be a deeper commitment with you — love, emotion, caring. I’m not up to that part of it.”

Cupping her chin in his hand, he gently turned her face to him. “When you were down to Boston in March, you were very changeable. One moment you thought we could make it together, and the next moment you thought we couldn’t. But then, the last few days, just before you went home, you seemed to have made up your mind. You said that we were right for each other, that you just needed a little more time.” He had proposed to her last Christmas. Ever since, in bed and out, he had been trying to convince her that they were two halves of an organism, that neither of them could be whole without the other. In March, he thought he had made some headway. “Now,” he said, “you’ve changed your mind again.”

She took his hand from her chin, and kissed the palm. “I’ve got to be sure.”

“I’m not like your husband,” he said.

“I know you’re not. You’re a—”

“Very nice man?” he asked.

“I need more time.”

“How much more?”

“I don’t know.”

He studied her for a moment, then put the car in gear and drove back onto the blacktop. He switched on the radio.

A few minutes later she said, “Are you angry?”

“No. Just disappointed.”

“You’re too positive about us,” she said. “You should be more careful. You should have some doubts like I do.”

“I have no doubts,” he said. “We’re right for each other.”

“But you should have doubts,” she said. “For instance, doesn’t it seem odd to you that I’m such a physical match for your first wife, for Annie? She was the same build as I am, the same size. She had the same color hair, the same eyes. I’ve seen those photographs of her.”

He was a little upset by that. “Do you think I’ve fallen for you only because you remind me of her?”

“You loved her a great deal.”

“That has nothing to do with us. I just like sexy, dark women.” He smiled, trying to make a joke of it — both to convince her and to stop himself from wondering if she was at least partly right.

She said, “Maybe.”

“Dammit, there’s no maybe about it. I love you because you’re you, not because you’re like anyone else.”

They rode in silence.

The eyes of several deer glittered in the brush at the side of the road. When the car passed, the herd moved. Paul caught a glimpse of them in the rearview mirror — graceful, ghostly figures — as they crossed the pavement.

At last Jenny said, “You’re so sure we’re meant for each other. Maybe we are — under the right circumstances. But Paul, all We’ve ever shared is good times. We’ve never known adversity together. We’ve never shared a painful experience. Marriage is

full of big and little crises. My husband and I were fairly good together too, until the crises came. Then we were at each other’s throats. I just can’t. I won’t gamble my future on a relationship that has never been tested with hard times.”

“Should I start praying for sickness, financial ruin, and bad luck?”

She sighed and leaned against him. “You make me sound foolish.”

“I don’t mean to.”

“I know.”

Back in Black River, they shared one kiss and went to separate rooms to lie awake most of the night.

Twenty-eight Months Earlier:

Saturday, April 12, 1975

THE HELICOPTER — A PLUSH, luxuriously appointed Bell JetRanger TI — chopped up the dry Nevada air and flung it down at the Las Vegas Strip. The pilot gingerly approached the landing pad on the roof of the Fortunata Hotel, hovered over the red target circle for a moment, then put down with consummate skill.

As the rotors stopped churning overhead, Ogden Salsbury slid open his door and stepped out onto the hotel roof. For a few seconds he was disoriented. The cabin of the JetRanger had been air-conditioned. Out here, the air was like a parching gust from a furnace. A Frank Sinatra album was playing on a stereo, blasting forth from speakers mounted on six-foot-high poles. Sunlight reflected from the rippling water in the roof-top pool, and Salsbury was partially blinded in spite of his sunglasses. Somehow, he had expected the roof to bobble and sway under him as the helicopter had done; and when it did not, he staggered slightly.

The swimming pool and the glass-walled recreation room beside it were adjuncts of the enormous thirtieth-floor presidential suite of the Fortunata Hotel. This afternoon there were only two people using it: a pair of voluptuous young women in skimpy white string bikinis. They were sitting on the edge of the pool, near the deep end, dangling their legs in the water.

A squat, powerfully built man in gray slacks and a short-sleeved white silk shirt: was hunkered down beside them, talking to them. All three had the perfect nonchalance that, Ogden thought, came only with power or money. They appeared not even to have noticed the arrival of the helicopter.

Salsbury crossed the roof to them. “General Klinger?”

The squat man looked up at him.

The girls didn’t seem to know that he existed. The blonde had begun to lather the brunette with tanning lotion. Her hands lingered on the other girl’s calves and knees, then inched lovingly along her taut brown thighs. Obviously, they were more than just good friends.

“My name’s Salsbury.”

Klinger stood up. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “I’ve got one suitcase. Be with you in a minute.” He walked back toward the glass-walled recreation room.

Salsbury stared at the girls. They had the longest, loveliest legs he had ever seen. He cleared his throat and said, “I’ll bet you’re in show business.”

Neither of them looked at him. The blonde squeezed lotion into her left hand and massaged the swelling tops of the brunette's large breasts. Her fingers trailed under the bikini bra, flicked across the hidden nipples.

Salsbury felt like a fool — as he always had around beautiful women. He was certain that they were making fun of him. You stinking bitches! he thought viciously. Some day I’ll have any of you I want. Some day I’ll tell you what I want, and you’ll do it, and you’ll love it because I’ll tell you to love it.

Klinger returned, carrying one large suitcase. He had put on a two-hundred-dollar, blue-and-gray-plaid sport coat.

Looks like a gorilla dressed up for a circus act, Salsbury thought.

In the passengers’ compartment of the helicopter, as they lifted away from the roof, Klinger pressed his face to the window and watched the girls dwindle into sexless specks. Then he sighed and sat back and said, “Your boss knows how to arrange a man’s vacation.”

Salsbury blinked in confusion. “My boss?”

Glancing at him, Klinger said, “Dawson.” He took a packet of cheroots from an inside coat pocket. He fished one out and lit it for himself without offering one to Salsbury. “What did you think of Crystal and Daisy?”

Salsbury took off his sunglasses. “What?”

“Crystal and Daisy. The girls at the pool.”

“Nice. Very nice.”

Pausing for a long drag of his cheroot, Klinger blew out smoke and said, “You wouldn’t believe what those girls can do.”

“I thought they were dancers,” Salsbury said.

Klinger looked at him disbelievingly, and then threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, they are! They dance their little asses off every night in the Fortunata’s main showroom. But they’ve also been performing in the penthouse suite. And let me tell you, dancing is the least of their talents.”

Salsbury was perspiring even though the cabin of the Jet-Ranger was cool. Women . He feared them — and wanted them desperately. To Dawson, mind control meant unlimited wealth, a financial stranglehold on the entire world. To Klinger it might mean unrestricted power, the satisfaction of unquestioned command. But to Salsbury, it meant having sex as often as he wanted it, in as many ways as he wanted it, with any woman he desired.

Blowing smoke at the cabin ceiling, Klinger said, “I’ll bet you’d like having those two in your bed, shoving it in them, one after the other. Would you like that?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“They’re hard on a man,” Klinger said, chuckling. “Takes a man with real stamina to keep them happy. You think you could handle both Crystal and Daisy?”

“I could give it a good try.”

Klinger laughed loudly.

Salsbury hated him for that.

This crude bastard was nothing more than an influence peddler, Ogden thought. He could be bought — and his price was cheap. In one way or another, he helped Futurex International

in its competitive bidding for Pentagon contracts. In return, he took free vacations in Las Vegas, and some sort of stipend was paid into a Swiss bank account. There was only one element of this arrangement that Salsbury was unable to reconcile with Leonard Dawson’s personal philosophy. He said to Klinger:

“Does Leonard pay for the girls too?”

“Well, I don’t. I’ve never had to pay for it.” He stared hard at Salsbury, until he was convinced that the scientist believed him. “The hotel picks up the tab. That’s one of Futurex’s subsidiaries. But both Leonard and I pretend he doesn’t know about the girls. Whenever he asks me how I enjoyed a vacation, he acts as if all I’ve done is sit around the pool, by myself, reading the latest books.” He was amused. He sucked on his cheroot. “Leonard is a Puritan, but he knows better than to let his personal feelings interfere with business.” He shook his head. “Your boss is some man.”

“He’s not my boss,” Salsbury said.

Klinger didn’t seem to have heard him.

“Leonard and I are partners,” Salsbury said. Klinger looked him up and down. “Partners.” “That’s right.”

Their eyes met.

Reluctantly, after a few seconds, Salsbury looked away.

“Partners,” Klinger said. He didn’t believe it.

We are partners, Salsbury thought. Dawson may own this helicopter, the Fortunata Hotel, Crystal, Daisy, and you. But he doesn’t own me, and he never will. Never.

At the Las Vegas airport, the helicopter put down thirty yards from a dazzling, white Grumman Gulf Stream jet. Red letters on the fuselage spelled FUTUREX INTERNATIONAL.

Fifteen minutes later they were airborne, on their way to an exclusive landing strip near Lake Tahoe.

Klinger unbuckled his seat belt and said, “I understand you’re to give me a briefing.”

“That’s right. We’ve got two hours for it.” He put his briefcase on his lap. “Have you ever heard of subliminal—”

“Before we get going, I’d like a Scotch on the rocks.”

“I believe there’s a bar aboard.” “Fine. Just fine.”

“It’s back there.” Salsbury gestured over his shoulder.

Klinger said, “Make mine four ounces of Scotch and four ice cubes in an eight-ounce glass.”

At first Salsbury gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got it: generals didn’t mix their own drinks. Don’t let him intimidate you, he thought. Against his will, however, he found himself getting up and moving toward the back of the plane. It was as if he were not in control of his body. When he returned with the drink, Klinger didn’t even thank him.

“You say you’re one of Leonard’s partners?”

Salsbury realized that, by acting more like a waiter than like a host, he had only reinforced the general’s conviction that the word “partner” did not fit him. The bastard had been testing him.

He began to wonder if Dawson and Klinger were too much for him. Was he a bantam in a ring with heavyweights? He might be setting himself up for a knockout punch.

He quickly dismissed that thought. Without Dawson and the general, he could not keep his discoveries from the government, which had financed them and owned them and would be jealous of them if it knew that they existed. He had no choice but to associate with these people; and he knew he would have to be cautious, suspicious, and watchful. But a man could safely make his bed with the devil so long as he slept with a loaded gun under his pillow.

Couldn’t he?

Pine House, the twenty-five-room Dawson mansion that overlooked Lake Tahoe, Nevada, had won two design awards for its architect and been featured in House Beautiful. It stood at the water’s edge on a five-acre estate, with a backdrop of more than one hundred towering pine trees; and it seemed to rise naturally from the landscape rather than intrude upon it, even though its lines were quite modern. The first level was large, circular, of stone and without windows. The second story — a

circle the same size as but not concentric to the first level— was a step up from the ground floor. Lakeside, at the back of the house, the second story overhung the first, sheltering a small boat dock; and here there was a twelve-foot-long window that provided a magnificent view of the water and the distant pine-covered slopes. The dome-shaped, black slate roof was crowned with a slender, needlelike eight-foot spire.

When he first saw the place, Salsbury thought that it was a cousin to those futuristic churches that had been rising in wealthy and progressive parishes over the last ten or fifteen years. Without a thought for tact, he had said as much — and Leonard had taken the comment as a compliment. Having been refamiliarized with his host’s eccentricities during their weekly meetings over the past three months, Ogden was fairly certain that the house was supposed to resemble a church, that Dawson meant for it to be a temple, a holy monument to wealth and power.

Pine House had cost nearly as much as a church: one and a half million dollars, including the price of the land. Nevertheless, it was only one of five houses and three large apartments that Dawson and his wife maintained in the United States, Jamaica, England, and Europe.

After dinner the three men reclined in easy chairs in the living room, a few feet from the picture window. Tahoe, one of the highest and deepest lakes in the world, shimmered with light and shadow as the last rays of the sun, already gone behind the mountains, drained from the sky. In the morning the water had a clear, greenish cast. By afternoon it was a pure, crystalline blue. Now, soon to be as black as a vast spill of oil, it was like purple velvet folded softly against the shoreline. For five or ten minutes they enjoyed the view, speaking only to remark on the meal they had just finished and on the brandy they were sipping.

At last Dawson turned to the general and said, “Ernst, what do you think of subliminal advertising?”

The general had anticipated this abrupt shift from relaxation to business. “Fascinating stuff.”

“You have no doubts?”

“That it exists? None whatsoever. Your man here has the

proof. But he didn’t explain what subliminal advertising has to do with me.”

Sipping brandy, savoring it, Dawson nodded toward Salsbury. Putting down his own drink, angry with Klinger for referring to him as Dawson’s man and angry with Dawson for not correcting the general, reminding himself not to address Klinger by his military title, Ogden said, “Ernst, we never met until this morning. I’ve never told you where I work — but I’m sure you know.”

“The Brockert Institute,” Klinger said without hesitation.

General Ernst Klinger supervised a division of the Pentagon’s vitally important Department of Security for Weapons Research. His authority within the department extended to the states of Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. It was his responsibility to choose, oversee the installation of, and regularly inspect the traditional and electronic systems that protected all laboratories, factories, and test sites where weapons research was conducted within those fourteen states. Several laboratories belonging to Creative Development Associates, including the Brockert facility in Connecticut, came under his jurisdiction; and Salsbury would have been surprised if the general had not known the name of the scientist in charge of the work at Brockert.

“Do you know what sort of research we’re conducting up there?” Salsbury asked.

“I’m responsible for the security, not the research,” Klinger said. “I only know what I need to know. Like the backgrounds of the people who work there, the layout of the buildings, and the nature of the surrounding countryside. I don’t need to know about your work.”

“It has to do with subliminals.”

Stiffening as if he had sensed stealthy movement behind him, Some of the brandy-inspired color seeping from his face, Klinger said, “I believe you’ve signed a secrecy pledge like everyone else at Brockert.”

“Yes, I have.”

“You just now violated it.”

“I am aware of that.”

“Are you aware of the penalty?” “Yes. But I’ll never suffer it.”

“You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Damned sure,” Salsbury said.

“It makes no difference, you know, that I’m a general in the United States Army or that Leonard is a loyal and trusted citizen. You’ve still broken the pledge. Maybe they can’t put you away for treason when you’ve only talked to the likes of us— but they can at least give you eighteen months for declassifying information without the authority to do so.”

Salsbury glanced at Dawson.

Leaning forward in his chair, Dawson patted the general’s knee. “Let Ogden finish.”

Klinger said, “This could be a setup.”

“A what?”

“A setup. A trap.”

“To get you?” Dawson asked.

“Could be.”

“Why would I want to set you up?” Dawson asked. He seemed genuinely hurt by the suggestion.

In spite of the fact, Salsbury thought, that he has probably set up and destroyed hundreds of men over the last thirty years.

Klinger seemed to be thinking the same thing, although he shrugged and pretended that he had no answer to Dawson’s question.

“That’s not the way I operate,” Dawson said, either unable or unwilling to conceal his bruised pride. “You know me better than that. My whole career, my whole life, is based on Christian principles.”

“I don’t know anyone well enough to risk a charge of treason,” the general said gruffly.

Feigning exasperation — it was a bit too obvious to be real— Dawson said, “Old friend, we’ve made a great deal of money together. But all of it amounts to pocket change when compared to the money we can make if we cooperate with Ogden.

There is literally unlimited wealth here — for all of us.” He watched the general for a moment, and when he could get no reaction he said, “Ernst, I have never misled you. Never. Not once.”

Unconvinced, Klinger said, “All you ever did before was pay me for advice—”

“For your influence.”

“For my advice,” Klinger insisted. “And even if I did sell my influence — which I didn’t — that’s a long way from treason.”

They stared at each other.

Salsbury felt as if he were not in the room with them, as if he were watching them from the eyepiece of a mile-long telescope.

With less of an edge to his voice than there had been a minute ago, Klinger finally said, “Leonard, I suppose you realize that I could be setting you up.”

“Of course.”

“I could agree to hear your man out, listen to everything he has to say — only to get evidence against you and him.”

“String us along.”

“Give you enough rope to hang yourselves,” Klinger said. “I only warn you because you’re a friend. I like you. I don’t want to see you in trouble.”

Dawson settled back in his chair. “Well, I’ve an offer to make you, and I need your cooperation. So I’ll just have to take that risk, won’t I?”

“That’s your choice.”

Smiling, apparently pleased with the general, Dawson raised his brandy glass and silently proposed a toast.

Grinning broadly, Klinger raised his own glass.

What in the hell is going on here? Salsbury wondered.

When he had sniffed and sipped his brandy, Dawson looked at Salsbury for the first time in several minutes and said, “You may proceed, Ogden.”

Suddenly, Salsbury grasped the underlying purpose of the conversation to which he had just listened. In the unlikely event that Dawson actually was setting a trap for an old friend,

on the off chance that the meeting was being taped, Klinger had deftly provided himself with at least some protection against successful prosecution. He was now on record as having warned Dawson about the consequences of his actions. In court or before a military review board, the general could argue that he had only been playing along with them in order to collect evidence against them; and even if no one believed him, he more than likely would manage to retain both his freedom and his rank.

Ogden got up, leaving his brandy glass behind him, went to the window and stood with his back to the darkening lake. He was too nervous to sit still while he talked. Indeed, for a few seconds he was too nervous to speak at all.

Like a pair of lizards perched half in warm sunlight and half in chilly shadows, waiting for the light balance to change enough to warrant movement, Dawson and Klinger watched him. They were sitting in identical high-backed black leather easy chairs with burnished silvery buttons and studs. A small round cocktail table with a dark oak top stood between them. The only light in the richly furnished room came from two floor lamps that flanked the fireplace, twenty feet away. The right side of each man’s face was softened and somewhat concealed by shadows, while the left side was starkly detailed by amber light; and their eyes blinked with saurian patience.

Whether or not the scheme was a success, Salsbury thought, both Dawson and Klinger would come through it unscathed. They both wore effective armor: Dawson his wealth; Klinger his ruthlessness, cleverness, and experience.

However, Salsbury didn’t possess any armor of his own. He hadn’t even realized — as Klinger had when he protected himself with that spiel about secrecy pledges and treason — that he might need it. He had assumed that his discovery would generate enough money and power to satisfy all three of them, but he had just begun to understand that greed could not be sated as easily as a hearty appetite or a demanding thirst. If he had any defensive weapon at all, it was his intelligence, his lightning quick mind; but his intellect had been directed for so long into narrow channels of specialized scientific inquiry that it now served him far less well in the common matters of life than it did in the laboratory.

Be cautious, suspicious, and watchful, he reminded himself for the second time that day. With men as aggressive as these, caution was a damned thin armor, but it was the only one he had.

He said, “For ten years the Brockert Institute has been fully devoted to a Pentagon study of subliminal advertising. We haven’t been interested in the technical, theoretical, or sociological aspects of it; that work is being done elsewhere. We’ve been concerned solely with the biological mechanisms of subliminal perception. From the start we have been trying to develop a drug that will ‘prime’ the brain for subception, a drug that will make a man obey without question every subliminal directive that’s given to him.” Scientists at another CDA laboratory in northern California were trying to engineer a viral or bacterial agent for the same purpose. But they were on the wrong track. He knew that for a fact because he was on the right one. “Currently, it’s possible to use subliminals to influence people who have no unshakable opinions about a particular subject or product. But the Pentagon wants to be able to use subliminal messages to alter the fundamental attitudes of people who do have very strong, stubbornly held opinions.”

“Mind control,” Klinger said matter-of-factly.

Dawson took another sip from his brandy glass.

“If such a drug can be synthesized,” Salsbury said, “it will change the course of history. That’s no exaggeration. For one thing, there will never again be war, not in the traditional sense. We will simply contaminate our enemies’ water supplies with the drug, then inundate them, through their own. media — television, radio, motion pictures, newspapers, and magazines— with a continuing series of carefully structured subliminals that will convince them to see things our way. Gradually, subtly, we can transform our enemies into our allies — and let them think that the transformation was their own idea.”

They were silent for perhaps a minute, thinking about it.

Klinger lit a cheroot. Then he said, “There would also be a number of domestic uses for a drug like that.”

“Of course,” Salsbury said.

“At long last,” Dawson said almost wistfully, “we could achieve national unity, put an end to all the bickering and protest and disagreement that’s holding back this great country.”

Ogden turned away from them and stared through the window. Night had fully claimed the lake. He could hear the water lapping at the boat dock pilings a few feet below him, just beyond the glass. He listened and allowed the rhythmic sound to calm him. He was certain now that Klinger would cooperate, and he saw the incredible future that lay before him, and he was so excited by the vision that he did not trust himself to speak.

To his back Klinger said, “You’re primarily the director of research at Brockert. But apparently you’re not just a desk man.”

“There are certain lines of study I’ve reserved for myself,” Salsbury admitted.

“And you’ve discovered a drug that works, a drug that primes the brain for subception.”

“Three months ago,” Ogden said to the glass.

“Who knows about it?”

“The three of us.”

“No one at Brockert?”

“No one.”

“Even if you have, as you say, reserved some lines of study for yourself, you must have a lab assistant.”

“He’s not all that bright,” Salsbury said. “That’s why I chose him. Six years ago.”

Klinger said, “You were thinking about taking the discovery for yourself all that long ago?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve doctored your daily work record? The forms that go to Washington at the end of every week?”

“I only had to falsify them for a few days. As soon as I saw

what I had come upon, I stopped working on it at once and changed the entire direction of my research.”

“And your assistant didn’t figure the switch?”

“He thought I’d given up on that avenue of research and was ready to try another. I told you, he’s not terribly clever.”

Dawson said, “Ogden hasn’t perfected this drug of his, Ernst. There’s still a great deal of work to be done.”

“How much work?” the general asked.

Turning from the window, Salsbury said, “I’m not absolutely certain. Perhaps as little as six months — or as much as a year and a half.”

“He can’t work on it at Brockert,” Dawson said. “He couldn’t possibly get away with falsifying his records for such a length of time. Therefore, I’m putting together a completely equipped laboratory for him in my house in Greenwich, forty minutes from the Brockert Institute.”

Raising his eyebrows, Klinger said, “You’ve got a house so big you can turn it into a lab?”

“Ogden doesn’t need a great deal of room, really. A thousand square feet. Eleven hundred at the outside. And most of that will be taken up with computers. Hideously expensive computers, I might add. I’m backing Ogden with nearly two million of my own money, Ernst. That’s an indication of the tremendous faith I have in him.”

“You really think he can develop, test, and perfect this drug in a jerry-built lab?”

“Two million is hardly jerry-built,” Dawson said. “And don’t forget that billions of dollars’ worth of preliminary research has already been paid for by the government. I’m financing just the final stage.”

“How can you possibly maintain secrecy?”

“There are thousands of uses for the computer system. We won’t be incriminating ourselves just by purchasing it. Furthermore, we’ll arrange for it through one of Futurex’s subsidiaries. There won’t be any record that it was sold to us. There won’t be any questions asked,” Dawson said.

“You’ll need lab technicians, assistants, clerks—”

“No,” Dawson said. “So long as Ogden has the computer— and a complete data file of his past research — he can handle everything himself. For ten years he’s had a full lab staff to do the drudgery; but most of that kind of work is behind him now.,’

“If he quits at Brockert,” Klinger said, “there will be an exhaustive security investigation. They’ll want to know why he quit — and they’ll find out.”

They were talking about Salsbury as if he were somewhere else and unable to hear them, and he didn’t like that. He moved away from the window, took two steps toward the general and said, “I’m not leaving my position at Brockert. I’ll report for work as usual, five days a week, from nine to four. While I’m there I’ll labor diligently on a useless research project.”

“When will you find time to work at this lab Leonard’s setting up for you?”

“In the evenings,” Salsbury said. “And on weekends. Besides that, I’ve accumulated a lot of sick leave and vacation time. I’ll take most of it — but I’ll spread it out evenly over the next year or so.”

Klinger stood up and went to the elegant copper and glass bar cart that a servant had left a few feet from the easy chairs. His thick and hairy arms made the crystal decanters look more delicate than they actually were. As he poured another double shot of brandy for himself, he said, “And what role do you see me playing in all of this?”

Salsbury said, “Leonard can get the computer system I need. But he can’t provide me with a magnetic tape file of all the research I’ve done for CDA or a set of master program tapes designed for my research. I’ll need both of those before Leonard’s computers are worth a penny to me. Now, given three or four weeks, I could make duplicates of those tapes at Brockert without much risk of being caught. But once I’ve got eighty or ninety cumbersome mag tapes and five-hundred-yard print-outs, how do I get them out of Brockert? There’s just no way. Security procedures, entering and leaving, are tight, too tight for my purpose. Unless.

“I see,” Klinger said. He returned to his chair and sipped at his brandy.

Sliding forward to the edge of his seat, Dawson said, “Ernst, you’re the ultimate authority for security at Brockert. You know more about that system than anyone else. If there’s a weak spot in their security, you’re the man to find it — or make it.”

Studying Salsbury as if he were assessing the danger and questioning the wisdom of being associated with someone of such obviously inferior character, Klinger said, “I’m supposed to let you smuggle out nearly one hundred magnetic tapes full of top-secret data and sophisticated computer programs?”

Ogden nodded slowly.

“Can you do it?” Dawson asked.

“Probably.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“There’s a better than even chance it can be done.”

“That’s not sufficient, Ernst.”

“All right,” Klinger said, slightly exasperated. “I can do it. I can find a way.”

Smiling, Dawson said, “I knew you could.”

“But if I did find a way and was caught either during or after the operation — I’d be dumped into Leavenworth and left to rot. Earlier, when I used the word ‘treason,’ I wasn’t tossing it around lightly.”

“I didn’t suppose you were,” Dawson said. “But you wouldn’t be required ever to see these mag tapes, let alone touch them. That would be a risk that only Ogden would have to take. They could convict you of nothing more serious than negligence for permitting or overlooking the gap in security.”

“Even so, I’d be forced into early retirement or drummed out of the service with only a partial pension.”

Amazed, Dawson shook his head and said, “I’m offering him one-third of a partnership that will earn millions, and Ernst is worrying about a government pension.”

Salsbury was perspiring heavily. The back of his shirt was soaked and felt like a cold compress against his skin. To Klinger

he said, “You’ve told us that you can do it. But the big question is whether you will do it.”

Klinger stared into his brandy glass for a while, then finally looked up at Salsbury and said, “Once you’ve perfected the drug — what’s our first step?”

Getting to his feet, Dawson said, “We’ll establish a front corporation in Liechtenstein.”

“Why there?”

Liechtenstein did not require that a corporation list its true owners. Dawson could hire lawyers in Vaduz and appoint them as corporate officers — and they could not be forced by law to reveal the identities of their clients.

“Furthermore,” Dawson said, “I will acquire for each of us a set of forged papers, complete with passports, so that we can travel and do business under assumed names. If the lawyers in Vadnz are forced by extralegal means to reveal the names of their clients, they still won’t endanger us because they won’t know our real names.”

Dawson’s caution was not excessive. The corporation would quite rapidly become an incredibly successful venture, so successful that a great many powerful people in both business and government would eventually be prying at it quietly, trying to find out who lay behind the phony officers in Vaduz. With Salsbury’s drug and extensive programs of carefully structured subliminals, the three of them could establish a hundred different businesses and literally demand that customers, associates, and even rivals produce a substantial profit for them. Every dollar they earned would seem to be spotlessly clean, produced by a legitimate form of commerce. But, of course, a great many people would feel that it was not at all legitimate to manipulate the competition and the buying public by means of a powerful new drug. In the event that the corporation got caught using the drug — stolen, as it was, from a U.S. weapons research project — what had once appeared to be excessive caution might well prove no more than adequate.

“And once we’ve got the corporation?” Klinger asked.

Money and business arrangements were Dawson’s vocation and his avocation. He began to declaim almost in the manner of a Baptist preacher, full of vigor and fierce intent, thoroughly enjoying himself. “The corporation will purchase a walled estate somewhere in Germany or France. At least one hundred acres. On the surface it will appear to be an executive retreat. But in reality it will be used for the indoctrination of mercenary soldiers.”

“Mercenaries?” Klinger’s hard, broad face expressed the institutional soldier’s disdain for the free-lancer.

The corporation, Dawson explained, would hire perhaps a dozen of the very best mercenaries available, men who had fought in Asia and Africa. They would be brought to the company estate, ostensibly to be briefed on their assignments and to meet their superiors. The water supply and all bottled beverages on the estate would be used as media for the drug. Twenty-four hours after the mercenaries had taken their first few drinks, when they were primed for total subliminal brainwashing, they would be shown four hours of films on each of three successive days — travelogues, industrial studies, and technical documentaries detailing the use of a variety of weapons and electronic devices — which would be presented as essential background material for their assignments. Unknowingly, of course, they would be watching twelve hours of sophisticated subliminals telling them to obey without question any order prefaced by a certain code phrase; and when those three days had passed, all twelve men would cease to be merely hired hands and would become something quite like programmed robots.

Outwardly, they would not appear to have changed. They would look and behave as they always had done. Nevertheless, they would obey any order to lie, steal, or kill anyone, obey without hesitation, so long as that order was preceded by the proper code phrase.

“As mercenary soldiers, they would be professional killers to begin with,” Klinger said.

“That’s true,” Dawson said. “But the glory lies in their unconditional, unquestioning obedience. As hired mercenaries, they would be able to reject any order or assignment that they

didn’t like. But as our programmed staff, they will do precisely what they are told to do.”

“There are other advantages, too,” Salsbury said, not unaware that Dawson, now that he was in a proselytizing mood, resented being nudged from the pulpit. “For one thing, you can order a man to kill and then to erase all memory of the murder from both his conscious and subconscious mind. He would never be able to testify against the corporation or against us; and he would pass any polygraph examination.”

Klinger’s Neanderthal face brightened a bit. He appreciated the importance of what Salsbury had said. “Even if they used pentothal or hypnotic regression — he still couldn’t remember?”

“Sodium pentothal is much overrated as a truth serum,” Salsbury said. “As for the other. — Well, they could put him in a trance and regress him to the time of the murder. But he would only draw a blank. Once he has been told to erase the event from his mind, it is beyond his recall just as surely as obsolete data is beyond the recall of a computer that has had its memory banks wiped clean.”

Having finished his second brandy, Klinger returned to the bar cart. This time he filled a twelve-ounce tumbler with ice and Seven-Up.

Salsbury thought, He’s right about that: any man who doesn’t keep a clear head here, tonight, is plainly suicidal.

To Dawson, Klinger said, “Once we’ve got these twelve ‘robots’ what do we do with them?”

Because he had spent the last three months thinking about that while he and Saisbury worked out the details of their approach to the general, Dawson had a quick answer. “We can do anything we want with them. Anything at all. But as a first step — I thought we might use them to introduce the drug into the water supplies of every major city in Kuwait. Then we could saturate that country with a multimedia subliminal campaign specially structured for the Arab psyche, and within a month we could quietly seize control without anyone, even the government of Kuwait, knowing what we’ve done.”

“Take over an entire country as a first step?” Klinger asked incredulously.

Preaching again, striding back and forth between Salsbury and the general, gesturing expansively, Dawson said, “The population of Kuwait is less than eight hundred thousand. The greatest part of that is concentrated in a few urban areas, chiefly in Hawaii and the capital city. Furthermore, all of the members of the government and virtually all of the wealthy reside in those metropolitan centers. The handful of super-rich families who own desert enclaves get their water by truck from the cities. In short, we could take control of everyone of influence within the country — giving us a behind-the-scenes managerial dictatorship over the Kuwait oil reserves, which compose twenty percent of the entire world supply. That done, Kuwait would become our base of operations, from which we could subvert Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Yemen, and every other oil-exporting nation in the Mid-East.”

“We could smash the OPEC cartel,” Klinger said thoughtfully.

“Or strengthen it,” Dawson said. “Or alternately weaken and strengthen it in order to cause major fluctuations in the value of oil stocks. Indeed, we could affect the entire stock market. And because we’d know about each fluctuation well in advance, we could take rare advantage of it. Within a year of assuming control of a half-dozen Mid-Eastern countries, we should be able to siphon one and a half billion dollars into the corporation in Liechtenstein. Thereafter, it will be a matter of no more than five or six years until everything, quite literally everything, is ours.”

“It sounds — crazy, mad,” Klinger said.

Dawson frowned. “Mad?”

“Incredible, unbelievable, impossible,” the general said, clarifying his first statement when he saw that it disturbed Dawson.

“There was a time when heavier-than-air flight seemed impossible,” Salsbury said. “The nuclear bomb seemed incredible to many people even after it was dropped on Japan. And in 1961, when Kennedy launched the Apollo Space Program, very few Americans believed that a man would ever walk on the moon.”

They stared at one another.

The silence in the room was so perfect that each tiny wave breaking against the boat dock, although it was little more than a gentle ripple and was muffled by the window, sounded like an ocean surf. At least it did to Salsbury; it reverberated within his nearly fevered mind.

Finally Dawson said, “Ernst? Will you help us get those magnetic tapes?”

Klinger looked at Dawson for a long moment, then at Salsbury. A shudder either of fear or pleasure; Ogden could not be certain which — passed through him. He said, “I’ll help.”

Ogden sighed.

“Champagne?” Dawson asked. “It’s a bit crude after brandy. But I believe that we should raise a toast to one another and to the project.”

Fifteen minutes later, after a servant had brought a chilled bottle of Moët et Chandon and he had uncorked it, after the three of them had toasted success, Klinger smiled at Dawson and said, “What if I’d been terrified of this drug? What if I’d thought your offer was more than I could handle?”

“I know you well, Ernst,” Dawson said. “Perhaps better than you think I do. I’d be surprised if there was anything that you couldn’t handle.”

“But suppose I’d balked, for whatever reason. Suppose I hadn’t wanted to come in with you.”

Dawson rolled some champagne over his tongue, swallowed, inhaled through his mouth to savor the aftertaste, and said, “Then you wouldn’t have left this estate alive, Ernst. I’m afraid you’d have had an accident.”

“Which you arranged for a week ago.” “Nearly that.”

“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

“You came with a gun?” Dawson asked. “A thirty-two automatic.”

“It doesn’t show.”

“It’s taped to the small of my back.”

“You’ve practiced drawing it?”

“I can have it in my hand in less than five seconds.”

Dawson nodded approval. “And you would have used me as a shield to get off the estate.”

“I would have tried.”

They both laughed and regarded each other with something very near to affection. They were delighted with themselves.

Jesus Christ! Salsbury thought. He nervously sipped his champagne.

Friday, August 19, 1977

PAUL AND MARK SAT cross-legged, side by side on the dew-damp mountain grass. They were as still as stones. Even Mark, who loathed inactivity and to whom patience was an irritant rather than a virtue, did no more than blink his eyes.

Around them lay a breath-taking panorama of virtually unspoiled land. On three sides of their clearing, a dense, purple-green, almost primeval forest rose like walls. To their right the clearing opened at the head of a narrow valley; and the town of Black River, two miles away, shimmered like a patch of opalescent fungus on the emerald quilt of the wild land. The only other scar of civilization was the Big Union mill, which was barely visible, three miles on the other side of Black River. Even so, from this distance the huge buildings did not resemble millworks so much as they did the ramparts, gates, and towers of castles. The planned forests that supplied Big Union, and which were less attractive than the natural woods, were out of sight beyond the next mountain. Blue sky and fast-moving white clouds overhung what could have passed for a scene of Eden in a biblical film.

Paul and Mark were not interested in the scenery. Their attention was fixed on a small, red-brown squirrel.

For the past five days they had been putting out food for the squirrel — dry roasted peanuts and sectioned apples — hoping to make friends with it and gradually to domesticate it. Day by

day it crept closer to the food, and yesterday it took a few bites before succumbing to fear and scampering away.

Now, as they watched, it came forth from the perimeter of the woods, three or four quick yet cautious steps at a time, pausing again and again to study the man and boy. When it finally reached the food, it picked up a piece of the apple in its tiny forepaws and, sitting back on its haunches, began to eat.

When the animal finished the first slice and picked up another, Mark said, “He won’t take his eyes off us. Not even for a second.”

As the boy spoke the squirrel became suddenly as still as they were. It cocked its head and fixed them with one large brown eye.

Paul had said they could whisper, breaking their rule of silence, if the squirrel had gained courage since yesterday and managed to stay at the food for more than a few seconds. If they were to domesticate it, the animal would have to become accustomed to their voices.

“Please don’t be scared,” Mark said softly. Paul had promised that, if the squirrel could be tamed, Mark would be allowed to take it home and make a pet of it. “Please, don’t run away.”

Not yet prepared to trust them, it dropped the slice of apple, turned, bounded into the forest, and scrambled to the upper branches of a maple tree.

Mark jumped up. “Ah, heck! We wouldn’t have hurt you, you dumb squirrel!” Disappointment lined his face.

“Stay calm. He’ll be back again tomorrow,” Paul said. He stood and stretched his stiff muscles.

“He’ll never trust us.”

“Yes, he will. Little by little.”

“We'll never tame him.”

“Little by little,” Paul said. “He can’t be converted in one week. You’ve got to be patient.”

“I’m not very good at being patient.”

“I know. But you’ll learn.”

“Little by little?”

“That’s right,” Paul said. He bent over, picked up the apple slices and peanuts, and dropped them into a plastic bag.

“Hey,” Mark said, “maybe he’s mad at us because we always take the food when we leave.”

Paul laughed. “Maybe so. But if he got in the habit of sneaking back and eating after we’ve gone, he wouldn’t have any reason to come out while we’re here.”

As they started back toward camp, which lay at the far end of the two-hundred-yard-long mountain meadow, Paul gradually became aware again of the beautiful day as if it were a mosaic for all the senses, falling into place around him, piece by piece. The warm summer breeze. White daisies gleaming in the grass, and here and there a buttercup. The odor of grass and earth and wild flowers. The constant rustle of leaves and the gentle soughing of the breeze in the pine boughs. The trilling of birds. The solemn shadows of the forest. High above, a hawk wheeled into sight, the last piece of the mosaic; its shrill cry seemed filled with pride, as if it knew that it had capped the scene, as if it thought it had pulled down the sky with its wings.

The time had come for their weekly trip into town to replenish their supply of perishable goods — but for a moment he didn’t want to leave the mountain. Even Black River — small, nearly isolated from the modem world, singularly peaceful— would seem raucous when compared to the serenity of the forest.

But of course Black River offered more than fresh eggs, milk, butter, and other groceries: Jenny was there.

As they drew near the camp, Mark ran ahead. He pushed aside a pair of yellow canvas flaps and peered into the large tent that they had erected in the shadow of several eighty-foot hemlocks and firs. A second later he turned away from the tent, cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, “Rya! Hey, Rya!”

“Here,” she said, coming out from behind the tent.

For an instant Paul couldn’t believe what he saw: a small young squirrel perched on her right arm, its claws hooked

through the sleeve of her corduroy jacket. It was chewing on a piece of apple, and she was petting it gently.

“How did you do it?” he asked.

“Chocolate.”

“Chocolate?”

She grinned. “I started out trying to lure it with the same bait you and Mark have been using. But then I figured that a squirrel can probably get nuts and apples on his own. But he can’t get chocolate. I figured the smell would be irresistible— and it was! He was eating out of my hand by Wednesday, but I didn’t want you to know about him until I was sure he’d gotten over the worst of his fear of humans.”

“He’s not eating chocolate now.”

“Too much of it wouldn’t be good for him.”

The squirrel raised its head and looked quizzically at Paul. Then it continued gnawing on the piece of apple in its forepaws.

“Do you like him, Mark?” Rya asked. As she spoke her grin melted into a frown.

Paul saw why: the boy was close to tears. He wanted a squirrel of his own — but he knew they couldn’t take two of the animals home with them. His lower lip quivered; however, he was determined not to cry.

Rya recovered quickly. Smiling, she said, “Well, Mark? Do you like him? I’ll be upset if you don’t. I went to an awful lot of trouble to get him for you.”

You little sweetheart, Paul thought.

Blinking back tears, Mark said, “For me?”

“Of course,” she said.

“You mean you’re giving him to me?”

She feigned surprise. “Who else?”

I thought he was yours.”.

Now what would I want with a pet squirrel? she asked. “He’ll be a good pet for a boy. But he would be all wrong for a girl.” She put the animal on the ground and hunkered down beside it. Fishing a piece of candy from a pocket, she said, “Come on. You’ve got to feed him some chocolate if you really want to make friends with him.”

The squirrel plucked the candy from Mark’s hand and nibbled it with obvious pleasure. The boy was also in ecstasy as he gently stroked its flanks and long tail. When the chocolate was gone, the animal sniffed first at Mark and then at Rya; and when it realized there would be no more treats today, it slipped out from between them and dashed toward the trees.

“Hey!” Mark said. He ran after it until he saw that it was much faster than he.

“Don’t worry,” Rya said. “He’ll come back tomorrow, so long as we have some chocolate for him.”

“If we tame him,” Mark said, “can I take him into town next week?”

“We’ll see,” Paul said. He looked at his watch. “If we’re going to spend today in town, we’d better get moving.”

The station wagon was parked half a mile away, at the end of a weed-choked dirt lane that was used by hunters in late autumn and early winter.

True to form, Mark shouted, “Last one to the ear’s a dope!” He ran ahead along the path that snaked down through the woods, and in a few seconds he was out of sight.

Rya walked at Paul’s side.

“That was a very nice thing you did,” he said.

She pretended not to know what he meant. “Getting the squirrel for Mark? It was fun.”

“You didn’t get it for Mark.”

“Sure I did. Who else would I get it for?”

“Yourself,” Paul said. “But when you saw how much it meant to him to have a squirrel of his own, you gave it up.”

She grimaced. “You must think I’m a saint or something! If I’d really wanted that squirrel, I wouldn’t have given him away. Not in a million years.”

“You’re not a good liar,” he said affectionately.

Exasperated, she said, “Fathers!” Hoping he wouldn’t notice her embarrassment, she ran ahead, shouting to Mark, and was soon out of sight beyond a dense patch of mountain laurel.

“Children!” he said aloud. But there was no exasperation in his voice, only love.

Since Annie’s death he had spent more time with the children than he might have done if she had lived — partly because there was something of her in Mark and Rya, and he felt that he was keeping in touch with her through them. He had learned that each of them was quite different from the other, each with his unique outlook and abilities, and he cherished their individuality. Rya would always know more about life, people, and the rules of the game than Mark would. Curious, probing, patient, seeking knowledge, she would enjoy life from an intellectual vantage point. She would know that especially intense passion — sexual, emotional, mental — which none but the very bright ever experience. On the other hand, although Mark would face life with far less understanding than Rya, he was not to be pitied. Not for a moment! Brimming with enthusiasm, quick to laugh, overwhelmingly optimistic, he would live every one of his days with gusto. If he was denied complex pleasures and satisfactions — well, to compensate for that, he would ever be in tune with the simple joys of life in which Rya, while understanding them, would never be able to indulge herself fully without some self-consciousness. Paul knew that, in days to come, each of his children would bring him a special kind of happiness and pride — unless death took them from him.

As if he had walked into an invisible barrier, he stopped in the middle of the trail and swayed slightly from side to side.

That last thought had taken him completely by surprise. When he lost Annie, he had thought for a time that he had lost all that was worth having. Her death made him painfully aware that everything — even deeply felt, strong personal relationships that nothing in life could twist or destroy — was temporary, pawned to the grave. For the past three and a half years, in the back of his mind, a small voice had been telling him to be prepared for death, to expect it, and not to let the loss of Mark or Rya or anyone else, if it came, shatter him as Annie’s death had nearly done. But until now the voice had been almost subconscious, an urgent counsel of which he was only vaguely aware. This was the first time that he had let it pop loose from the subconscious. As it rose to the surface, it startled

him. A shiver passed through him from head to foot. He had an eerie sense of precognition. Then it was gone as quickly as it had come.

An animal moved in the underbrush.

Overhead, above the canopy of trees, a hawk screamed.

Suddenly the summer forest seemed much too dark, too dense, too wild: sinister.

You’re being foolish, he thought. You’re no fortune teller. You’re no clairvoyant.

Nevertheless, he hurried along the winding path, anxious to catch up with Mark and Rya.

At 11:15 that morning, Dr. Walter Troutman was at the big mahogany desk in his surgery. He was eating an early lunch— two roast beef sandwiches, an orange, a banana, an apple, a cup of butterscotch pudding, and several glasses of iced tea— and reading a medical journal.

As the only physician in Black River, he felt that he had two primary responsibilities to the people in the area. The first was to be certain that, in the event of a catastrophe at the mill or some other medical crisis, he would never find himself undernourished and in want of energy to fulfill his duties. The second was to be aware of all developments in medical techniques and theory, so that the people who came to him would receive the most modern treatment available. Scores of satisfied patients— and the reverence and affection with which the whole town regarded him — testified to his success in meeting his second responsibility. As for the first, he stood five eleven and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds.

When an overweight patient, in the middle of one of the doctor’s lectures, had the temerity to mention Troutman’s own excess poundage, he was always countered with the same joke. “Obese? Me?” Troutman would ask, clearly astonished. “This isn’t fat I’m carrying. It’s stored energy, ready to be tapped if there’s ever a catastrophe up at the mill.” Then he would continue his lecture.

In truth, of course, he was an almost compulsive eater and had been all of his life. By the time he was thirty, he had given

up dieting and psychotherapy as truly lost causes. The same year, having been guaranteed a handsome stipend by the Big Union Supply Company, he had come to Black River where the people were so pleased to have a doctor of their own that they didn’t care if he was fat, thin, white, black, or green. For twenty years now, he had been accommodating his compulsion, stuffing himself with cakes and cookies and pies and five square meals a day; and in sum he felt that his life held more enjoyment than that of any other man he knew.

As he was about to enjoy it even more, as he was picking up the second roast beef sandwich, the telephone rang. He considered not answering it. But he was the kind of doctor who went out on house calls at any hour of the day or night. Even lunch had to be put aside if a patient needed help. He picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Dr. Troutman?”

“Yes.”

The voice on the other end of the line was cold and sharp. “I am the key, Dr. Troutman.”

“I am the lock,” Troutman said without hesitation.

“Are you alone in the house?”

“Yes.”

“Where is your nurse, Miss MacDonald?”

“I don’t know. At home, I suppose.”

“When will she be coming to work?”

“Half an hour before the office opens.”

“And the office opens at one thirty?”

“That’s correct,” Troutman said.

“Are you expecting anyone else before one o’clock?”

“No. No one.”

The stranger was silent for a moment.

Troutman listened to his desk clock ticking. He glanced at the food laid out on a linen napkin in front of him, picked a Sliver of roast beef from the sandwich, and ate it quickly like a fish taking a fly.

When the man on the other end of the line had decided on his approach, he said, “I’m going to ask you a number of important questions, doctor. You will give me complete answers to the best of your ability.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Have you recently had an epidemic of any sort in Black River?”

“Yes, we have.”

“Of what?”

“Night chills.”

“Explain what you mean by that term, doctor.”

“Severe chills, cold sweats, nausea but without vomiting-and the resultant insomnia.”

“When were the first cases reported to you?”

“Wednesday, the tenth of this month. Nine days ago.”

“Did any of your patients mention nightmares?”

“Every one of them said he’d been awakened by a terrible dream.”

“Could any of them remember what it was?”

“No. None of them.”

“What treatment did you provide?”

“I gave placebos to the first few. But when I suffered the chills myself on Wednesday night, and when there were scores of new cases on Thursday, I began to prescribe a low-grade antibiotic.”

“That had no effect, of course.”

“None whatsoever.”

“Did you refer any patients to another physician?”

“No. The nearest other doctor is sixty miles away — and he’s in his late seventies. However, I did request an investigation by the State Health Authority.”

The stranger was silent for a moment. Then: “You did that merely because there was an epidemic of rather mild influenza?”

“It was mild,” Troutman said, “but decidedly unusual. No fever. No swelling of the glands. And yet, for as mild as it was, it spread throughout the town and the mill within twenty-four hours. Everyone had it. Of course I wondered if it might not be influenza at all but some sort of poisoning.”

“Poisoning?”

“Yes. Of a common food or water supply.”

“When did you contact the Health Authority?”

“Friday the twelfth, late in the afternoon.”

“And they sent a man?”

“Not until Monday.”

“Was there still an epidemic at that time?”

“No,” Troutman said. “Everyone in town had the chills, the cold sweats, and the nausea again Saturday night. But no one was ill Sunday night. Whatever it was, it disappeared even more suddenly than it came.”

“Did the State Health Authority still run an investigation?” Intently studying the food on the napkin, Troutman shifted in his chair and said, “Oh, yes. Dr. Evans, one of their junior field men, spent all of Monday and most of Tuesday interviewing people and taking tests.”

“Tests? You mean of food and water?”

“Yes. Blood and urine samples too.”

“Did he take water samples from the reservoir?”

“Yes. He filled at least twenty vials and bottles.”

“Has he filed his report yet?”

Troutman licked his lips and said, “Yes. He called me last evening to give me the results of the tests.”

“I suppose he found nothing?”

“That’s correct. All the tests were negative.”

“Does he have any theories?” the stranger asked, a vague trace of anxiety in his voice.

That bothered Troutman. The key should not be anxious. The key had all the answers. “He believes that we’ve experienced a rare case of mass psychological illness.”

“An epidemic of formulated hysteria?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Then he’s making no recommendations?”

“None that I know of.”

“He has terminated the investigation?”

“That’s what he told me.”

The stranger sighed softly. “Doctor, earlier you told me that

everyone in town and at the mill had experienced the night chills. Were you speaking figuratively or literally?”

“Figuratively,” Troutman said. “There were exceptions. Perhaps twenty children, all under eight years of age. And two adults. Sam Edison and his daughter, Jenny.”

“The people who run the general store?” “That’s correct.”

“They didn’t suffer from the chills at all?” “Not at all.”

“Are they connected to the town’s water supply?”

“Everyone in town is.”

“All right. What about the lumbermen who work in the planned forests beyond the mill? Some of them virtually live out there. Were they all affected?”

“Yes. That was something Dr. Evans wanted to know too,” Troutman said. “He interviewed all of them.”

The stranger said, “I’ve no more questions, Dr. Troutman, but I do have some orders for you. When you hang up your receiver, you will instantly wipe all memory of our conversation from your mind. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Perfectly.”

“You’ll forget every word we’ve exchanged. You’ll erase this memory from both your conscious and subconscious, so that it can never be recalled no matter how much you might wish to recall it. Understood?”

Troutman nodded somberly. “Yes.”

“When you hang up your receiver, you will remember only that the phone rang — and that it was a wrong number. Is that clear?”

“A wrong number. Yes, that’s clear.”

“Very well. Hang up, doctor.”

Carelessness, Troutman thought, a bit irritably, as he put down the receiver. If people paid attention to what they were doing, they wouldn’t dial so many wrong numbers or make one tenth of the other mistakes that peppered their lives. How many patients, badly cut or burned, had he treated who had been injured only because they were inattentive, careless?

Scores. Hundreds. Thousands! Sometimes, when he opened the door of his waiting room and peered inside, he had the feeling that he had just pulled a pan from the oven and was staring not at people but at a row of wall-eyed trout with gaping mouths. And now, tying up a doctor’s line with a wrong number, even for half a minute or so — well, that could be damned serious.

He shook his head, dismayed by the ineptitude and inefficiency of his fellow citizens.

Then he grabbed the roast beef sandwich and took an enormous bite from it.

At 11:45 Paul Annendale stepped into Sam Edison’s study on the second floor of the house, just above the general store. “Squire Edison, I wish to arrange to take your daughter to lunch.”

Sam was standing in front of a bookcase. A large volume lay open in his left hand, and he was paging through it with his right. “Sit down, vassal,” he said without looking up. “The squire will be with you in just a minute.”

If Sam had chosen to refer to this place as his library rather than his study, he would have been justified. Two lushly cushioned, somewhat tattered armchairs and two matching footstools stood in the center of the room, facing the only window. Two yellow-shaded floor lamps, one behind each chair, provided adequate but restful light, and a small rectangular table lay between the chairs. A pipe was turned upside down in a large ash tray on the table, and the air was redolent with the cherry scent of Sam’s tobacco. The room was only twelve feet by fifteen feet; but two entire walls, from floor to ceiling, were lined with thousands of books and hundreds of issues of various psychology journals.

Paul sat down and put his feet up on a stool.

He didn’t know the title of the volume that the other man was looking through, but he did know that ninety percent of these books dealt with Hitler, Nazism, and anything else that was even remotely related to that philosophical-political night-

mare. Sam’s interest in the subject had been unwavering for thirty-two years.

In April of 1945, as a member of an American intelligence unit, Sam went into Berlin less than twenty-four hours behind the first Allied troops. He was shocked by the extent of the destruction. In addition to the ruin caused by Allied bombers, mortars, and tank fire, there was damage directly attributable to the Führer’s scorch-the-earth policy. In the final days of the war, the madman had decreed that the victors must be allowed to seize nothing of value, that Germany must be transformed into a barren plain of rubble, that not even one house could be left standing to come under foreign domination. Of course, most Germans were not prepared to take this final step into oblivion — although many of them were. It seemed to Sam that the Germans he saw in the devastated streets were survivors not merely of the war but also of the frenzied suicide of an entire nation.

On May 8, 1945, he was transferred to an intelligence unit that was collecting data on the Nazi death camps. As the full story of the holocaust became known, as it was discovered that millions of men and women and children had passed through the gas chambers and that hundreds of thousands of others had been shot in the back and buried in trenches, Sam Edison, a young man from the backwoods of Maine, found nothing within his experience to explain such mind-numbing horror. Why had so many once-rational, basically good people committed themselves to fulfilling the evil fantasies of an obvious lunatic and a handful of subordinate madmen? Why had one of the most professional armies in the world disgraced itself by fighting to protect the SS murderers? Why had millions of people gone with so little protest to the concentration camps and gas chambers? What did Adolf Hitler know about the psychology of the masses that had helped him to achieve such absolute power? The ruin of the German cities and the death camp data raised all of these questions but provided answers to none of them.

He was sent back to the States and mustered out of the ser

vice in October of 1945, and as soon as he was home he began to buy books about Hitler, the Nazis, and the war. He read everything of value that he could find. Bits and pieces of explanations, theories and arguments seemed valid to him. But the complete answer that he sought eluded him; therefore, he extended his area of study and began collecting books on totalitarianism, militarism, war games, battle strategy, German history, German philosophy, bigotry, racism, paranoia, mob psychology, behavior modification, and mind control. His undiminishable fascination with Hitler did not have its roots in morbid curiosity, but came instead from a fearful certainty that the German people were not at all unique and that his own neighbors in Maine, given the right set of circumstances, would be capable of the same atrocities.

Sam suddenly closed the book through which he’d been paging for the past few minutes and returned it to the shelf. “Dam-mit, I know they’re here somewhere.”

From his armchair Paul said, “What are you looking for?”

His head tilted slightly to the right, Sam continued to read the titles on the bindings. “We’ve got a sociologist doing research in town. I know I’ve got several of his articles in my collection, but I’ll be damned if I can find them.”

“Sociologist? What sort of research?”

“I don’t know exactly. He came into the store early this morning. Had dozens of questions to ask. Said he was a sociologist, come all the way up from Washington, and was making a study of Black River. Said he’d rented a room at Pauline Vicker’s place and would be here for three weeks or so. According to him, Black River’s pretty special.”

“In what way?”

“For one thing, it’s a prosperous company town in an age when company towns have supposedly fallen into decay or vanished altogether. And because we’re geographically isolated, it’ll be easier for him to analyze the effects of television on our social patterns. Oh, he had at least half a dozen good reasons why we’re ripe material for sociological research, but I don’t think he got around to explaining his main thesis, whatever it

is he’s trying to prove or disprove.” He took another book from the shelf, opened it to the table of contents, closed it almost at once, and put it back where he’d gotten it.

“Do you know his name?”

“Introduced himself as Albert Deighton,” Sam said. “The name didn’t ring a bell. But the face did. Meek-looking man. Thin lips. Receding hairline. Glasses as thick as the lenses on a telescope. Those glasses make his eyes look like they’re popping right out of his head. I know I’ve seen his picture several times in books or magazines, alongside articles he’s written.” He sighed and turned away from the bookshelves for the first time since Paul came into the room. With one hand he smoothed his white beard. “I can spend all evening up here picking through these books. Right now you want me to take over the counter downstairs so you can escort my daughter to the elegant, incomparable Ultman’s Cafe for lunch.”

Paul laughed. “Jenny tells me there’s no more flu in town. So the worst we can get at Ultman’s is food poisoning.”

“What about the kids?”

“Mark’s spending the afternoon with Bob Thorp’s boy. He’s been invited to lunch, and he’ll spend it mooning over Emma.”

“Still has a crush on her, does he?”

“He thinks he’s in love, but he’d never admit it.”

Sam’s craggy face was softened by a smile. “And Rya?”

“Emma asked her to come along with Mark. But if you don’t mind looking after her, she’d rather stay here with you.”

“Mind? Don’t be ridiculous.”

As he got up from the armchair, Paul said, “Why don’t you put her to work after lunch? She could come up here and pore through these books until she found Deighton’s name on a table of contents.”

“What a dull bit of work for a peppy girl like her!”

“Rya wouldn’t be bored,” Paul said. “It’s right down her alley. She likes working with books — and she’d enjoy doing you a favor.”

Sam hesitated, then shrugged and said, “Maybe I’ll ask her. When I’ve read what Deighton’s written, I’ll know where his

interests lie, and I’ll have a better idea of what he’s up to now. You know me — as curious as the day is long. Once I’ve got a bee in my bonnet, I’ve just got to take it out and see whether it’s a worker, drone, queen, or maybe even a wasp.”

Ultman’s Cafe stood on the southwest corner of the town square, shaded by a pair of enormous black oak trees. The restaurant was eighty feet long, an aluminum and glass structure meant to look like an old-fashioned railroad passenger car. It bad one narrow window row that ran around three sides; and tacked on the front was an entrance foyer that spoiled the railroad-car effect.

Inside, booths upholstered in blue plastic stood beside the windows. The table at each booth held an ash tray, a cylindrical glass sugar dispenser, salt and pepper shakers, a napkin dispenser, and a selector for the jukebox. An aisle separated the booths from the counter that ran the length of the restaurant.

Ogden Salsbury was in the corner booth at the north end of the cafe. He was drinking a second cup of coffee and watching the other customers.

At 1:50 in the afternoon, most of the lunch-hour rush had passed. Ultman’s was nearly deserted. In a booth near the door, an elderly couple was reading the weekly newspaper, eating roast beef and French fries, and quietly arguing politics. The chief of police, Bob Thorp, was on a stool at the counter, finishing his lunch and joking with the gray-haired waitress named Bess. At the far end of the room, Jenny Edison was in the other corner booth with a good-looking man in his late thirties; Salsbury didn’t know him but assumed he worked at the mill or in the logging camp.

Of the five other customers, Jenny was of the greatest interest to Salsbury. A few hours ago, when he talked to Dr. Troutman, he learned that neither Jenny nor her father had complained of the night chills. The fact that a number of children had also escaped them did not disturb him. The effect of the subliminals was, in part, directly proportionate to the subject’s language skills and reading ability; and he had expected that some children would be unaffected. But Sam and Jenny were adults, and they should not have gone untouched.

Possibly they hadn’t consumed any of the drug. If that was true, then they hadn’t drunk any water from the town system, hadn’t used it to make ice cubes, and hadn’t cooked with it. That was marginally possible, he supposed. Marginally. However, the drug had also been introduced into fourteen products at a food wholesaler’s warehouse in Bangor before those products were shipped to Black River, and it was difficult for him to believe that they could have been so fortunate as to have avoided, by chance, every contaminated substance.

There was a second possibility. It was conceivable, although highly improbable, that the Edisons had taken the drug but hadn’t come into contact with any of the sophisticated subliminal programming that had been designed with such care for the Black River experiment and that had inundated the town through half a dozen forms of print and electronic media for a period of seven days.

Salsbury was nearly certain that neither of these explanations was correct, and that the truth was both complex and technical. Even the most beneficial drugs did not have a benign effect on everyone; any drug could be counted upon to sicken or kill at least a tiny percentage of those people to whom it was administered. Moreover, for virtually every drug, there were some people, another extremely small group, who were either minimally affected or utterly untouched by it, owing to differences in metabolisms, variances in body chemistries, and unknown factors. More likely than not, Jenny and Sam Edison had taken the subliminal primer in water or food but hadn’t been altered by it — either not at all or not as they should have been — and subsequently were unimpressed by the subliminals because they hadn’t been made ready for them.

Eventually he would have to give the two of them a series of examinations and tests at a fully equipped medical clinic, with the hope that he could find what it was that made them impervious to the drug. But that could wait. During the next three weeks he would be quietly recording and studying the effects that the drug and subliminals produced in the other people of Black River.

Although Salsbury was more interested in Jenny than in any of the other customers, most of the time his attention was focused on the younger of Ultman’s two waitresses. She was a lean, lithe brunette with dark eyes and a honey complexion. Perhaps twenty-five years old. A captivating smile. A rich, throaty voice perfect for the bedroom. To Salsbury, her every movement was filled with sexual innuendo and an all but open invitation to violation.

More important, however, the waitress reminded him of Miriam, the wife he had divorced twenty-seven years ago. Like Miriam, she had small, high-set breasts and very beautiful, supple legs. Her throaty voice resembled Miriam’s. And she had Miriam’s walk: an unstudied grace in every step, an unconscious and sinuous rolling of the hips that took his breath away.

He wanted her.

But he would never take her because she reminded him too much of Miriam, reminded him of the frustrations, angers, and disappointments of that awful five-year marriage. She stirred his lust — but she also stirred his somewhat suppressed, long-nurtured hatred of Miriam and, by extension, of women in general. He knew that, in the act, as he achieved penetration and began to move, her resemblance to Miriam would leave him impotent.

When she brought the check for his lunch, flashing that dazzling smile that had begun to seem smug and superior to him, he said, “I am the key.”

He was taking an unwarranted risk. He couldn’t defend it even to himself. Until he was certain that everyone in town, other than the Edisons and a handful of children, was properly programmed, he should restrict the use of the command phrase to telephone conversations, as with Troutman, and to situations wherein he was alone with the subject and free from fear of interruption. Only after three weeks of observation and individual Contact could he even begin to assume there was no risk involved; and now, on one level, he was a bit disturbed that he

was conducting himself irresponsibly on his first day in town. He didn’t particularly mind if absolute power corrupted him absolutely — just so it didn’t make him overconfident and careless. On the other hand, so long as they kept their voices low, there was little chance that they would be overheard. The elderly couple in the booth by the door was nearer to Salsbury than anyone else in the cafe, and they were half a room away. Besides, unwarranted risk or not, he couldn’t resist taking control of this woman. His emotions had unseated his reason, and he was riding with them.

“I am the lock,” she said.

“Keep your voice low.” “Yes, sir.”

“What’s your name?” “Alice.”

“How old are you?” “Twenty-six.”

“You’re lovely,” he said.

She said nothing.

“Smile for me, Alice.”

She smiled. She didn’t look the least bit dazed. Even her big, dark eyes held no hint of a trance. Yet she was unhesitatingly obedient.

He said, “You’ve got a nice body.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you like sex?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like it very much?”

“Yeah. I like it.”

“When you’re in bed with a man, is there anything you won’t let him do to you?”

“Yeah. Greek.”

“You won’t let him take you in the ass?”

She blushed and said, “Yeah. I don’t like that.”

“If I wanted you, I could have you.”

She stared at him.

“Couldn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“If I wanted you, I could have you right now, right here, on top of this table.”

“Yeah.”

“If I wanted to take you Greek-style, I could.”

She resisted the idea but finally said, “Is that what you want?”

“If I did want it, I could have it. You’d let me.”

“Yeah.”

It was his turn to smile. He glanced around the cafe. No one was looking at them; no one had heard. “Are you married, Alice?”

“No. Divorced.”

“Why did you get a divorce?”

“He couldn’t hold a job.”

“Your husband couldn’t?”

“Yeah, him.”

“Was he good in bed?”

“Not very.”

She was even more like Miriam than he had thought. After all these years he could still remember what Miriam had said to him the day she left. You’re not just bad in bed, Ogden. You’re terrible. And you’ve no inclination to learn. But you know, I could live with that if there were compensations. If you had money and could buy me things, maybe I could live with your fumbling sex. When I said I’d marry you, I thought you were going to make lots of money. Jesus Christ, you were at the top of your class at Harvard! When you completed your doctorate, everyone wanted to hire you. If you had any ambition whatsoever, you’d have already gotten your hands on a decent piece of money. You know what, Ogden? I think you’re as inept and unimaginative in your research as you are in bed. You’re never going to get anywhere, but I am. I’m getting out. What a bitch she had been. Just thinking about her, he began to tremble and perspire.

Alice was still smiling at him.

“Stop smiling,” he said softly. “I don’t like it.”

She did as she was told.

“What am I, Alice?”

“You’re the key.”

“And what are you?”

“The lock.”

“Now that I’ve opened you, you’ll do whatever I tell you to do. Isn’t that true?”

“Yeah.”

He took three one-dollar bills from his wallet and put them on top of the lunch check. “I’m going to test you, Alice. I’m going to see just how obedient you are.”

She waited docilely.

“When you leave this table,” he said, “you’ll take the check and money to the cash register. You’ll ring up the sale and take your tip from whatever’s left of the three dollars. Is that clear?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you will go to the kitchen. Is there anyone back there?”

“No. Randy went to the bank.”

“Randy Ultman?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good,” Salsbury said. “Now, when you go to the kitchen, you’ll pick up a meat fork, a cook’s fork. One of those big, two-pronged forks. Is there one of those in the kitchen?”

“Yeah. Several.”

“You’ll pick one of them up and stab yourself with it, run it all the way through your left hand.”

She didn’t even blink.

“Is that understood, Alice?”

“Yeah. I understand.”

“When you turn away from this table, you’ll forget everything we’ve said to each other. Understood?”

“Yeah.”

“When you run the fork through your hand, you’ll think it was an accident. A freak accident. Won’t you, Alice?”

“Sure. An accident.”

“Go away, then.”

She turned and walked to the half-door at the end of the

lunch counter, her smooth hips rolling provocatively.

When she reached the cash register and began to ring up the sale, Salsbury slid out of the booth and started toward the door.

She dropped her tip into a pocket of her uniform, closed the cash register drawer, and went into the kitchen.

At the entrance Salsbury stopped and put a quarter in the newspaper vending machine.

Bob Thorp laughed loudly at some joke, and the waitress named Bess giggled like a young girl.

Salsbury took a copy of the Black River Bulletin from the wire rack, folded it, put it under his arm, and opened the door to the foyer. He stepped across the sill and began to pull the door shut behind him, thinking all the while: Come on, you bitch, come on! His heart was pounding, and he felt slightly dizzy.

Alice began to scream.

Grinning, Salsbury closed the first door, pushed through the outer door, went down the steps, and walked east on Main Street, as if he were unaware of the uproar in the cafe.

The day was bright and warm. The sky was cloudless.

He had never been happier.

Paul shouldered past Bob Thorp and stepped into the kitchen. The young waitress was standing at a counter that lay between two upright food freezers. Her left hand was palm down on a wooden cutting board. With her right hand she gripped an eighteen-inch-long meat fork. The two wickedly sharp prongs appeared to have been driven all the way through her left hand and into the wood beneath. Blood spotted her light blue uniform, glistened on the cutting board, and dripped from the edge of the Formica-topped counter. She was screaming and gasping for breath between the screams and shaking and trying to wrench the fork loose.

Turning back to Bob Thorp, who stood transfixed in the doorway, Paul said, “Get Doc Troutman.”

Thorp didn’t have to be told again. He hurried away.

Taking hold of the woman’s right hand, Paul said, “Let go

of the fork. I want you to let go of the fork. You’re doing more harm than good.”

She raised her head and seemed to look straight through him. Her face was chalky beneath her dark complexion; she was obviously in shock. She couldn’t stop screaming — an ululating wail more animal than human — and she probably didn’t even know that he had spoken to her.

He had to pry her fingers from the handle of the fork.

At his side Jenny said, “Oh, my God!”

“Hold her for me,” he said. “Don’t let her grab the fork.”

Jenny gripped the woman’s right wrist. She said, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Paul wouldn’t have blamed her if she had been just that. In the tiny restaurant kitchen, with the ceiling only a few inches above their heads, the screams were deafening. The sight of that slender hand with the fork embedded in it was horrifying, the stuff of nightmares. The air was thick with the stale odors of baked ham, roast beef, fried onions, grease — and the fresh, metallic tang of blood. It was enough to nauseate anyone. But he said, “You won’t be sick. You’re a tough lady.”

She bit her lower lip and nodded.

Quickly, as if he had been prepared and waiting for exactly this emergency, Paul took a dishcloth from the towel rack and tore it into two strips. He threw one of these aside. With the other length of cloth and a long wooden tasting spoon, he fashioned a tourniquet for the waitress’s left arm. He twisted the wooden spoon with his right hand and covered the handle of the meat fork with his left. To Jenny he said, “Come around here and take the tourniquet.”

As soon as her right hand was free, the waitress tried to get to the handle of the fork. She clawed at Paul’s fist.

Jenny took hold of the spoon.

Pressing down on the waitress’s wounded hand, Paul jerked up on the fork, which was sunk into the wood perhaps half an inch past her flesh, and pulled the tines from her in one sudden, clean movement. He dropped the fork and slipped an arm

around her waist to keep her from falling. Her knees had begun to buckle; he had thought they might.

As he stretched the woman out on the floor, Jenny said, “She must be in awful pain.”

Those words seemed to shatter the waitress’s terror. She stopped screaming and began to cry.

“I don’t see how she did it,” Paul said as he tended to her. “She put that fork through her hand with incredible force. She was pinned to the board.”

Weeping, trembling, the waitress said, “Accident.” She gasped and groaned and shook her head. “Terrible. accident.”

Fourteen Months Earlier:

Thursday, June 10, 1976

NAKED, THE DEAD MAN lay on his back in the center of the slightly tilted autopsy table, framed by blood gutters on all sides.

“Who was he?” Klinger asked.

Salsbury said, “He worked for Leonard.”

The room in which the three men stood was illuminated only in the center by two hooded lamps above the autopsy table. Three walls were lined with computer housings, consoles, and monitor boards; and the tiny systems bulbs and glowing scopes made ghostly patches of green, blue, yellow, and pale red light in the surrounding shadows. Nine TV display screens — cathode-ray tubes — were set high on three walls, and four other screens were suspended from the ceiling; and all of them emitted a thin bluish-green light.

In that eerie glow the corpse looked less like a real body than like a prop in a horror film.

Somber, almost reverent, Dawson said, “His name was Brian Kingman. He was on my personal staff.”

“For very long?” Klinger asked.

“Five years.”

The dead man had been in his late twenties and in good condition. Now, circulation having ceased seven hours ago, lividity had set in; the blood had settled into his calves, the backs of

his thighs, his buttocks, and his lower back, and in these places the flesh was purple and a bit distended. His face was white and deeply lined. His hands were at his sides, his palms up, the fingers curled.

“Was he married?” Klinger asked.

Dawson shook his head: no.

“Family?”

“Grandparents dead. No brother or sisters. His mother died when he was born, and his father was killed in an auto accident last year.”

“Aunts and uncles?”

“None close.”

“Girl friends?”

“None that he was serious about or that were serious about him,” Dawson said. “That’s why we chose him. If he disappears, there’s no one to waste a lot of time and energy looking for him.”

Klinger considered that for a few seconds. Then he said, “You expected the experiment to kill him?”

“We thought there was a chance of it,” Ogden said.

Smiling grimly, Klinger said, “You were right.”

Something about the general’s tone angered Salsbury. “You knew the stakes when you came in with Leonard and me.”

“Of course I did,” Klinger said.

“Then don’t act as if Kingman’s death is entirely my fault. The blame belongs to all of us.”

Frowning, the general said, “Ogden, you misunderstand me. I don’t believe that you and Leonard and I are to blame for anything. This man was a machine that broke down. Nothing more. We can always get another machine. You’re too sensitive, Ogden.”

“Poor boy,” Dawson said, regarding the corpse sadly. “He would have done anything for me.”

“He did,” the general said. He stared thoughtfully at the dead man. “Leonard, you’ve got seven servants in this house. Did any of them know Kingman was here?”

“That’s highly unlikely. We brought him in secretly.”

For thirteen months, this wing of the Greenwich house had been sealed off from the other twenty rooms. It had been provided with a new private entrance, and all of the locks had been changed. The servants were told that experiments, none of them dangerous, were being conducted for a subsidiary of Futurex, and that the security precautions were needed to protect the operation’s files and discoveries from industrial espionage.

“Is the household staff still curious about what goes on here?” Klinger asked.

“No,” Dawson said. “So far as they can see, nothing’s happened in the past year. The sealed wing has lost its mystery.”

“Then I think we can bury Kingman on the estate without too much risk.” He faced Salsbury. “What happened? How did he die?”

Salsbury sat on a high, white stool at the head of the autopsy table, hooked his heels around one of its rungs, and spoke to them across the corpse. “We brought Kingman here for the first time in early February. He thought he was helping us with some sociological research that had important business applications for Futurex. During forty hours of interviews with him, I learned everything I wanted to know about the man’s likes, dislikes, prejudices, personality quirks, desires, and basic thought processes. Later, at the end of February, I went through the transcripts of those interviews and selected five test points, five of Kingman’s attitudes and/or opinions that I would try to reverse with a series of subliminals.”

He had chosen three simple test points and two complex ones. Kingman craved chocolate candy, chocolate cake, chocolate in every form; and Salsbury wanted to make him ill at the first taste of chocolate. He couldn’t and wouldn’t eat broccoli; but Salsbury wanted to make him like it. Kingman had an ingrained fear of dogs; an attempt to transform that fear into affection would constitute the third of the simple test points. The remaining two indices presented Salsbury with a far greater chance of failure, for to deal with them he would have to design subliminal commands that bored especially deeply into King-

man’s psyche. First of all, Kingman was an atheist, a fact he had hidden successfully from Dawson for five years. Secondly, he was extremely prejudiced against blacks. Making him over into a God-loving, prayer-saying champion of the Negro would be far more difficult than twisting his taste for chocolate into a loathing of it.

By the second week of April, Salsbury completed the subliminal program.

Kingman was brought back to the Greenwich house on the fifteenth of that month — ostensibly to participate in additional sociological research for Futurex. Although he wasn’t aware of it, he was fed the subliminal primer, the drug, on April 15. Salsbury put him under close medical observation and ran tests on him for three days, but he could find no indications of a temporary toxic state, permanent tissue damage, a change in blood chemistry, noticeable psychological damage, or any other deleterious side-effects attributable to the drug.

At the end of those three days, on April 19, still in excellent health, Kingman took part in what he thought was an experiment in visual perception. He was shown two feature-length motion pictures in one afternoon, and at the conclusion of each film he was required to answer a hundred questions that dealt with what he had just seen. His answers were unimportant, and they were filed only because Salsbury habitually filed every scrap of paper in his laboratory. The experiment actually had only one purpose: while Kingman was watching the films, he was also unwittingly absorbing three hours of subliminal programming that was meant to change five of his attitudes.

The events of the following day, April 20, proved the effectiveness of Salsbury’s drug and subliminal programs. At breakfast, Kingman tried to eat a chocolate doughnut, dropped it after one bite, quickly excused himself from the table, went to the nearest bathroom, and threw up. At lunch he ate four portions of broccoli in butter sauce with his pork chops. That afternoon, when Dawson took him on a tour of the estate, Kingman spent fifteen minutes playing with several of the guard dogs in the kennel. After dinner, when Ogden and Dawson

began to discuss the continuing efforts to integrate the public schools in the North, Kingman came on like a life-long liberal, an ardent advocate of equal rights. And finally, unaware of the two videotape cameras that monitored his bedroom in the sealed wing, he had said his prayers before going to sleep.

Standing now beside the corpse, smiling beatifically, Dawson said to Klinger, “You should have seen it, Ernst! It was terribly inspiring. Ogden took an atheist, a soul condemned to burn in Hell, and converted him into a faithful disciple of Jesus. And all on one day!”

Salsbury was uneasy. He shifted on the stool. Ignoring Dawson, staring at the middle of the general’s forehead, he said, “Kingman left the estate on April twenty-first. I set to work immediately to design the ultimate series of subliminals, the one we three have discussed a hundred times, the program that would give me total and permanent control of the subject’s mind through the use of a code phrase. I finished it on the fifth of June. We brought Kingman back here on the eighth, two days ago.”

“He wasn’t suspicious?” Klinger asked. “Or upset about all of this travel he was asked to do?”

“To the contrary,” Dawson said. “He was pleased that I was using him for such a special project, even if he didn’t fully understand what it was. He saw it as a sign of my faith in him. And he thought that, if he made himself available for Ogden’s work, he would be promoted much sooner than he might have been otherwise. His behavior wasn’t peculiar. I’ve seen it in every ambitious young executive and management trainee I’ve ever known.”

Tired of standing, the general went to the nearest computer console, swiveled the command chair away from the keyboard, and sat down. He was almost entirely in the shadows. Green light from a display screen washed across his right shoulder and that side of his brutal face. He looked like a troll. “Okay. You finished the program on the fifth. Kingman came up here again on the eighth. You fed him the primer—”

“No,” Salsbury said. “Once the drug has been administered

to a subject, there’s no need to give him a booster dose, not even years later. When Kingman arrived, I began at once with the subliminal program. I ran two films for him during the evening. That night, the night before last, he had a very bad dream. He woke up, sweating, chilled, shaking, dazed, and nauseated. He had trouble getting his breath. He vomited beside the bed.”

“Fever?” Klinger asked.

“Do you think he had a delayed reaction to the drug — a month and a half delayed?”

“Maybe,” Salsbury said. But he obviously didn’t think that was the case. He got off the stool, went to his desk in a dark corner of the room, and came back with a computer print-out. “This is a record of Kingman’s sleep patterns between one o’clock and three o’clock this morning. That’s the crucial period.” He handed it to Dawson. “Yesterday, I showed Kingman two more films. That completed the program. Last night — he died in bed.”

The general joined Dawson and Salsbury in the oval of light at the autopsy table and began to read the two-yard-long sheet of computer paper.

PARTIAL RECAPITULATION

MEDICAL MONITORING PROGRAM:

BK/OB REP 14

RECORDED: 6/10/76

THIS PRINT: 6/1O/76

PRINT

HOURS MIN SEC READING

0100 00 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 01 00 EEG-STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 02 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 03 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 04 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

Klinger said, “You had Kingman hooked up to a lot of machines while he slept?”

“Nearly every night he was here, right from the beginning,” Salsbury said. “The first few times there really wasn’t any reason for it. But by the time it was necessary for me to keep a close watch on him, he was accustomed to the machines and had learned to sleep tangled up with all those wires.”

Indicating the print-out, the general said, “I’m not quite sure what I’m reading here.”

“Likewise,” Dawson said.

Salsbury suppressed a smile. Months ago he had decided that his best defense against these two sharks was his highly specialized education. He never missed an opportunity to display it for them — and to impress them with the fact that, if they should dispose of him, neither of them could carry on his research and development or deal with an unexpected scientific crisis after the research and development was finished.

Pointing to the first several lines of the print-out, he said, “The fourth stage of sleep is the deepest. It tends to occur early in the night. Kingman went to bed at midnight and fell asleep at twenty minutes of one. As you can see here, he achieved the fourth level twenty-two minutes later.”

“What’s the importance of that?” Dawson asked.

“The fourth level is more like a coma than any other stage of sleep,” Salsbury said. “The electroencephalogram shows irregular large waves of just a few cycles per second. There is no bodily movement on the part of the sleeper. It’s in stage four, with the outer mind virtually comatose and with all sensory input shut down tight, that the inner mind becomes the only truly operative part of the mind. Remember, unlike the conscious mind, it never sleeps. But because there isn’t any sensory input, the subconscious can’t do anything during stage four sleep except play with itself. Now, Kingman’s subconscious had something unique to play with.”

The general said, “The key-lock program you implanted in him yesterday and the day before.”

“That’s right,” Salsbury said. “And look here, farther down the print-out.”

0100 08 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 09 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 10 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 11 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

“All night long,” Salsbury said, “we rise and fall and rise and fall through the stages of sleep. Almost without exception, we descend into deep sleep in Steps and ascend from it in steps as well, spending some time at each level along the way. In this case, however, Kingman soared straight up from deep sleep to light sleep — as if a noise in the bedroom had startled him.”

“Was there a noise?” Dawson asked.

“What’s this REM?” Klinger asked.

Salsbury said, “That means rapid eye movement is taking place under the eyelids — which is a highly reliable indication that Kingman was dreaming in stage one.”

“Dreaming?” Dawson asked. “About what?”

“There’s no way of telling.”

The general scratched the shadow of a beard that shaded his blunt chin even when he was freshly shaved. “But you think that the dream was caused by his subconscious playing around with the key-lock implant.”

“Yes.”

“And that the dream might have been about the subliminals.”

“Yes. I can’t come up with an explanation that makes more sense. Something about the key-lock program so shocked his subconscious that he was propelled straight up into a dream.”

“A nightmare?”

“At this point, just a dream. But over the next two hours his sleep patterns became increasingly unusual, erratic.”

0100 12 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 13 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0100 14 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

“The alpha waves mean Kingman was awake here for two minutes,” Salsbury said. “Not wide awake. His eyes were probably still closed. He was hovering on the edge of the first level of sleep.”

“The dream woke him,” Klinger said.

“Probably.”

0100 15 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 16 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP

0100 17 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP

0100 18 00 EEG-STAGE 2 SLEEP

0100 19 00 EEG — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0100 20 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 21 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 22 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 23 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 24 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 25 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 26 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 27 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 28 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 29 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 30 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

“The first time he entered deep sleep,” Salsbury said, “he stayed there for eight minutes. This time it lasted only six minutes. That’s the start of an interesting pattern.”

0100 31 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 32 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 33 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 34 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0100 35 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 36 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 37 00 EEG — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0100 38 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0100 39 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0100 40 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 41 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 42 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 43 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 44 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 45 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 46 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 47 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0100 48 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 49 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 50 00 EEC — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0100 51 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

“He was only in deep sleep three minutes that time,” Klinger said. “The cycle is accelerating, at least on the down side.”

Dawson said, “But why? Ernst apparently understands, but I’m not sure I do.”

“Something’s happening in his subconscious mind during deep sleep,” Salsbury said. “Something so unsettling that it causes him to leap up into stage one sleep and dream. That subconscious experience, whatever it may be, is getting ever more intense — or, if it isn’t getting mere intense, then his ability to withstand it is dwindling. Perhaps both. On each occasion, he’s able to tolerate it for a shorter period of time than he did before.”

“You mean he’s in pain in stage four?” Dawson asked.

“Pain is a condition of the flesh,” Salsbury said. “It’s not the right word for this situation.”

“What is the right word.”

“Anxiety, perhaps. Or fear.”

0100 52 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 53 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 54 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 55 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0100 56 00EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0100 57 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 58 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0100 59 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP/REM

0200 00 00 EEG — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 01 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 02 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 03 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 04 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 05 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 06 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 07 00 EEG — STAGE 4 SLEEP

0200 08 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

“One minute that time,” Klinger said.

“By now he’s extremely agitated,” Salsbury said, speaking of the dead man as if he were still alive. “The pattern becomes increasingly unusual and erratic. At two twenty he gets back to the third level. Look what happens to him after that:”

0200 20 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 21 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 22 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 23 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 24 00 EEG — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 25 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

Klinger was as fascinated by the print-out of Brian Kingman’s disintegration as he possibly could have been by the sight of the real event. “He didn’t even reach the fourth level that time before he popped up to stage one again.”

“He’s having an acute subconscious anxiety attack,” Salsbury said.

Dawson said, “Is there such a thing?”

“There is now. His mind is wildly turbulent at this point— yet in such a way that it doesn’t wake him up altogether. And it gets worse.”

0200 26 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 27 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 28 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0200 29 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 30 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0200 31 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 32 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 33 00 EEG — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 34 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 35 00 EEG — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 36 00 EEC — STAGE 3 SLEEP

0200 37 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

“He was frightened awake at two thirty-seven, wasn’t he?” Dawson asked.

Salsbury said, “That’s right. Not wide awake. But beyond the first level of sleep, into alpha wave territory. You’re learning to read it now.”

0200 38 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 39 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 40 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 41 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0200 42 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 43 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0200 44 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 45 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 46 00 EEG — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 47 00 EEC — STAGE 2 SLEEP

0200 46 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 49 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0200 50 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 51 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 52 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0200 53 00 EEC — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 54 00EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 55 00EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0200 56 00 EEG — STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM

0200 5? 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0200 55 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0200 59 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0300 00 00 EEG — ALPHA WAVES

0300 01 00 EEC — ALPHA WAVES

0300 02 00 EEG — NO READING

0300 03 00 EEC — NO READING

0300 04 00 EEC — NO READING

0300 05 00 EEC — NO READING

LIFE SIGNS NEGATIVE

LIFE SIGNS NEGATIVE

LIFE SIGNS NEGATIVE

PATIENT DECEASED

END PRINT

END PROGRAM::STOP::

Dawson let out his breath somewhat explosively, as if he had been holding it for the past minute. “He was a good man. May he rest in peace.”

“There at the end,” the general said, “there were five consecutive alpha wave readings. Does that mean he was fully awake for five minutes before he died?”

“Fully awake,” Salsbury said. “But not rational.”

“I thought you said he died in his sleep.”

“No. I said he died in bed.”

"What happened in those five minutes?”

“I’ll show you,” Salsbury said. He went to the nearest computer console and briefly used the keyboard.

All but two of the overhead scanners went dark. One of these was an ordinary television screen controlled by the computer on

a closed-circuit arrangement. The other was a cathode-ray readout tube.

Getting up from the keyboard, Salsbury said, “The screen on the right will run a videotape of the last six minutes of King-man’s life. The screen on the left will provide a synchronized read-out of some of his vital life signs, updating them every thirty seconds.”

Dawson and Klinger moved closer.

The right-hand screen flickered. A sharply focused black-and-white picture appeared on it: Brian Kingman lying atop his covers, on his back, twelve data-gathering patches cemented to his head and torso, wires trailing from the patches to two machines at the side of the bed. A sphygmomanometer was attached to his right arm and wired directly to the smaller of the machines. Kingman glistened with perspiration. He was trembling. Every few seconds one of his arms would jerk up defensively, or one of his legs would kick out at the air. In spite of this movement, his eyes were closed, and he was asleep.

“He’s in stage one now,” Salsbury said.

“Dreaming,” Dawson said.

“Obviously.”

At the top of the left-hand screen there was a digital clock that broke down the time count into hours, minutes, seconds, and tenths of seconds. On the soft green background below the clock, white computer-generated characters reported on four of Kingman’s most important life signs.

BK/OB REP 14, ONGOING, AS FOLLOWS:

TEST NORMAL FOR THIS SUBJECT VALUE

TEMPERATURE 98.6 98.6

RESPIRATION 18 PER MIN 22 PER MIN

PULSE 70 PER MIN 90 PER MIN

BLOOD PRESSURE

SYSTOLIC 100–120 110

DIASTOLIC 60–70 70

“He’s still asleep,” Salsbury said. “But his respiration and pulse have picked up approximately twenty-five percent. He appears to be having a bad dream. His thrashing about gets worse in just a moment. He’s ready to come out of it now. Ready to wake up. Watch closely. There!”

On the black-and-white screen, Kingman suddenly drew up his knees, kicked out with both feet, drew up his knees again, and kept them drawn up, almost to his chest. He gripped his head with both hands, rolled his eyes, opened his mouth.

“He’s screaming now,” Salsbury said. “I’m sorry there’s no audio.”

“What’s he screaming at?” Dawson asked. “He’s awake now. The nightmare’s over.”

“Wait,” Salsbury said.

“His respiration and pulse are soaring,” Klinger said.

Kingman screamed soundlessly.

0200 58 00

“Look how his chest is heaving,” Dawson said. “Good God, his lungs will burst!”

Writhing continuously but a degree less violently than he had been a moment ago, Kingman began to chew on his lower lip. In seconds his chin was covered with blood.

“An epileptic seizure?” the general asked.

Salsbury said, “No.”

At 2:59, the left-hand screen began a new line print from the top of the tube:

TEST NORMAL FOR THIS SUBJECT VALUE

TEMPERATURE 98.6 98.8

RESPIRATION 18 PER MIN 48 PER MIN

PULSE 70 PER MIN 190 PER MIN

BLOOD PRESSURE

SYSTOLIC CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL

CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL

On the black-and-white screen, Kingman convulsed and was almost perfectly still. His feet twitched, and his right hand

opened and closed, opened and closed; but otherwise he was motionless. Even his eyes had stopped rolling; they were squeezed tightly shut.

The read-out screen went blank, then an instant later flashed an emergency message.

0200 59 12

MASSIVE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION

MASSIVE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION

“Heart attack,” Salsbury said.

Kingman’s left arm was bent in a V across his chest and seemed to be paralyzed. His left hand was fisted and unmoving against his neck.

0300 00 00

PULSE IRREGULAR

RESPIRATION IRREGULAR

Kingman’s eyes were open now. He was staring at the ceiling.

“He’s screaming again,” Klinger said.

“Trying to scream,” Salsbury said. “I doubt if he could manage more than a croak in his present state.”

0300 01 00

PULSE ERRATIC

RESPIRATION ERRATIC

EEC WAVES DETERIORATING TO DELTA

Kingman’s feet stopped kicking. His right hand stopped opening and closing. He stopped trying to scream.

“It’s over,” Salsbury said. Simultaneously, the two screens went blank. Brian Kingman had died again.

“But what killed him?” Dawson’s handsome face was the Color of dusting powder. “The drug?”

“Not the drug,” Salsbury said. “Fear.”

Klinger returned to the autopsy table to have a look at the body. “Fear. I thought that’s what you were going to say.”

“Sudden, powerful fear can kill,” Salsbury said. “And in this case, that’s where all the evidence points. Of course, I’ll do a thorough autopsy. But I don’t believe I’ll find any physiological cause for the heart attack.”

Squeezing Saisbury’s shoulder, Dawson said, “Do you mean Brian realized, in his sleep, that we were on the verge of taking control of him? And that he was so terrified of being controlled that the thought killed him?”

“Something like that.”

“Then even if the drug works — the subliminals don’t.”

“Oh, they’ll work,” Salsbury said. “I’ve just got to refine the program.”

“Refine?”

“I’ll put it in lay terms as best I can. You see, to implant the key-lock subliminals, I’ve got to — to bore a hole through the id and the ego. Apparently, the first program was too crude. It didn’t just bore a hole. It shattered the id and ego altogether, or very nearly did. I’ve got to be more subtle the next time, preface the commands with some careful persuasion.” He pushed a wheeled instrument cart to the side of the autopsy table.

Not wholly satisfied with Salsbury’s explanation, Dawson said, “But what if you don’t refine it quite enough? ‘What if the next test subject dies? It’s conceivable that one member of my personal staff might walk off his job, vanish without a trace. But two? Or three? Impossible!”

Salsbury opened a drawer in the cart. He took out a thick white linen towel and spread it across the top of the cart. “We won’t use anyone from your staff for the second test.”

“Where else are we going to get a test subject?”

Salsbury took surgical instruments, one at a time, from the drawer and lined them up on the linen. “I think the time has come to put together that corporation in Liechtenstein. Hire three mercenaries, give them sets of forged papers, and bring them here from Europe under their new names.”

“To this house?” Dawson asked.

“That’s right. We won’t need the walled estate in Germany or France for some time yet. ‘We’ll give the drug to all three of

them the first day they’re here. The second day, I’ll start the new key-lock program with one of them. If it works with him, if it doesn’t kill him, then I’ll use it on the other two. Eventually, we’ll be running the field test in this country. ‘When the time comes for that, we’ll be happy to have two or three well-trained, submissive men so close at hand.”

Scowling, Dawson said, “Hiring lawyers in Vaduz, establishing the corporation, buying the forged papers, hiring the mercenaries, bringing them here. these are expenditures I didn’t want to make until we were certain the drug and subliminals will work as you say.”

“They will.”

“We aren’t yet certain.”

Holding a scalpel to the light, studying the silhouette of its razored edge, Salsbury said, “I’m sure the money won’t come out of your pocket, Leonard. You’ll find some way to squeeze it from the corporation.”

“It’s not is easy as all that, I assure you. Futurex isn’t a private game park, you know. It’s a public corporation. I can’t raid the treasury at will.”

“You’re supposed to be a billionaire,” Salsbury said. “In the great tradition of Onassis, Getty, Hughes. Futurex isn’t the only thing you’ve got your hand in. Somewhere, you found more than two million dollars to set up this lab. And every month you manage to come up with the eighty thousand dollars needed to maintain it. By comparison, this new expense is a trifle.”

“I agree,” the general said.

“It’s not your money that’s going down a rat hole,” Dawson said irritably.

“If you think the project’s a rat hole,” Salsbury said, “then we Should call it off right now.”

Dawson started to pace, stopped after a few steps, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and took them right out again. It’s these men that bother me.”

“What men?”

“These mercenaries.”

“What about them?”

“They’re nothing but killers.”

“Of course.”

“Professional killers. They earn their living by — by murdering people.”

“I’ve never had much of anything good to say about freelancers,” Klinger said. “But that’s a simplification, Leonard.”

“It’s essentially true.”

Impatiently, Salsbury said, “So what if it is?”

“Well, I don’t like the idea of having them in my home,” Dawson said. His tone was almost prissy.

You hypocritical ass, Salsbury thought. He didn’t have the nerve to say it. His confidence had increased over the past year

— but not enough to enable him to speak so frankly to Dawson. Klinger said, “Leonard, how in the hell do you think we’d

fare with the police and the courts if they found out how King-man died? Would they just pat us on the head and send us away with a scolding? Do you think that just because we didn’t strangle or shoot or stab him, they’d hesitate to call us killers? Do you think we’d get off scot-free because, although we’re killers, we don’t earn our living that way?”

For an instant Dawson’s black eyes, like onyx mirrors, caught the cold fluorescent light and gleamed unnaturally. Then he turned his head a fraction of an inch, and the effect was lost. However, something of the same frigid, alien quality remained in his voice. “I never touched Brian. I never laid a finger on him. I never said an unkind word to him.”

Neither Salsbury nor Klinger responded.

“I didn’t want him to die.”

They waited.

Dawson wiped one hand across his face. “Very well. I’ll move ahead in Liechtenstein. I’ll get those three mercenaries for you.”

“How Soon?” Salsbury asked.

“If I’m to maintain secrecy every step of the way — three months. Maybe four.”

Salsbury nodded and continued laying out surgical instruments for the autopsy.

Monday, August 22, 1977

AT NINE O'CLOCK Monday morning, Jenny came to visit the Annendale camp, and she brought with her a sturdy, yard-high canary cage.

Mark laughed when he saw her carrying it out of the woods. “What’s that for?”

“A guest should always bring a gift,” she said.

“What will we do with it?”

She put it in the boy’s hands as Paul kissed her on the cheek. Mark grinned at her through the slender, gilded bars. “You said you wanted to bring your squirrel to town this coming Friday. Well, you can’t let him loose in the car. This will be his travel cage.”

“He won’t like being penned up.”

“Not at first. But he’ll get used to it.”

“He’ll have to get used to it sooner or later if he’s going to be your pet,” Paul said.

Rya nudged her brother and said, “For God’s sake, Mark, aren’t you going to say thank you? Jenny probably looked all over town for that.”

The boy blushed. “Oh, sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Jenny.”

“Rya, you’ll notice there’s a small brown bag in the bottom of the cage. That’s for you.”

The girl tore open the bag and smiled when she saw the three paperback books. “Some of my favorite authors. And I don’t have any of these! Thanks, Jenny.”

Most eleven-year-old girls liked to read nurse novels, romances, perhaps Barbara Cartland or Mary Roberts Rinehart. But Jenny would have made a serious mistake if she had brought anything of that sort for Rya. Instead: one Louis L’Amour western, one collection of horror stories, and one adventure novel by Alistair MacLean. Rya wasn’t a classic tomboy — but she sure as hell wasn’t like most other eleven-year-old girls, either.

Both of these children were special. That was why, although she had no particular affection for children in general, she had fallen for them so quickly. She loved them every bit as much as she loved Paul.

Oh, yeah? she thought, catching herself in the admission. You’re just brimming with love for Paul, are you?

Enough of that.

Love, is it? Then why don’t you accept his proposal?

Enough.

Why won’t you marry him?

Well, because— She forced herself to stop arguing with herself. People who

indulged in extended interior dialogues, she thought, were candidates for schizophrenia.

For a while the four of them fed the squirrel, which Mark had named Buster, and watched its antics. The boy regaled them with his plans for training the animal. He intended to teach Buster to roll over and play dead, to heel when told, to beg for his supper, and to fetch a stick. No one had the heart to tell him how unlikely it was that a squirrel could ever be made to do any of those things. Jenny wanted to laugh and grab him and hug him — but she only nodded and agreed with him whenever he asked for her opinion.

Later they played a game of tag and several games of badminton.

At eleven o’clock Rya said, “I’ve got an announcement to make. Mark and I planned lunch. We’re going to do all of the cooking ourselves. And we really have some special dishes to make. Don’t we, Mark?”

“Yeah, we sure do. My favorite is—”

“Mark!” Rya said quickly. “It’s a surprise.”

“Yeah,” he said, as if he hadn’t almost given away everything. “That’s right. It’s a surprise.”

Tucking her long black hair behind her ears, Rya turned to her father and said, “Why don’t you and Jenny take a nice long walk up the mountain? There are lots and lots of easy deer trails. You should work up an appetite.”

“I’ve already worked one up by playing badminton,” Paul said.

Rya made a face. “I don’t want you to see what we’re cooking.”

“Okay. We’ll sit over there with our backs to you.” Rya shook her head: no. She was adamant. “You’ll still smell it cooking. There won’t be any surprise.”

“The wind isn’t blowing that way,” Paul said. “Cooking odors won’t carry far.”

Anxiously twisting her badminton racket in her hands, Rya glanced at Jenny.

What a lot of schemes and calculations are whirling around behind those innocent blue eyes of yours, Jenny thought. She was beginning to understand what the girl wanted.

With characteristic bluntness, Mark said, “You got to go for a walk with Jenny, Dad. We know the two of you want to be alone.”

“Mark, for God’s sake!” Rya was aghast.

“Well,” the boy said defensively, “that’s why we’re making lunch, isn’t it? To give them a chance to be alone?”

Jenny laughed.

“I’ll be damned,” Paul said.

Rya said, “I think I’ll cook squirrel for lunch.”

A look of horror passed across Mark’s face. “That’s a terrible, rotten thing to say!”

“I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s still rotten.”

“I apologize.”

Looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as if he were trying to assess her sincerity, Mark finally said, “Well, okay.”

Taking Paul’s hand, Jenny said, “If we don’t go for a walk, your daughter’s going to be very upset. And when your daughter is very upset, she’s a dangerous girl.”

Grinning, Rya said, “That’s true. I’m a terror.”

“Jenny and I are going for a walk,” Paul said. He leaned toward Rya. “But tonight I’ll tell you the shocking story of the hideous fate that befell a conniving child.”

“Oh, good!” Rya said. “I like bedtime stories. Lunch will be served at one o’clock.” She turned away and, as if she sensed Paul swinging his badminton racket at her backside, jumped to the left and ran into the tent.

The stream gushed noisily around a boulder, surged between banks lined with scrub birch and laurel, descended several rocky shelves, and formed a wide, deep pool at the end of the hollow before racing on to spill down the next step of the mountain. There were fish in the pool: darker shapes gliding in dark water. The surrounding clearing was sheltered by full-sized birches and one gargantuan oak with exposed and twisted roots, like tentacles, thrusting into the leaf mulch and black earth. The ground between the base of the oak and the pool was covered with moss so thick that it made a comfortable mattress for lovers.

Half an hour above the camp and the meadow where they had played badminton, they stopped beside the pool to rest. She stretched out on her back, her hands behind her head. He lay beside her.

She didn’t know quite how it had happened, but the conversation had eventually given way to a gentle exchange of kisses. Caresses. Murmurs. He held her to him, his hands on her buttocks, his face in her hair, and licked lightly at her earlobe.

Suddenly she became the bolder of the two. She rubbed one hand across the crotch of his jeans, felt him swelling beneath the denim.

“I want that,” she said.

“I want you.”

“Then we can both have what we want.”

When they were naked, he began to kiss her breasts. He licked her stiffening nipples.

“I want you now,” she said. “Quickly. We can take longer the second time.”

They responded to each other with a powerful, unique, and utterly unexpected sensitivity that neither of them had ever quite achieved before. The pleasure was more than intense. It was very nearly excruciating for her, and she could see that it was much the same for him. Perhaps this was because they had wanted each other so fiercely but had not been together for so long, since March. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, she thought, does it also make the genitals grow randier? Or perhaps this electrifying pleasure was a response to the setting, to the wild land’s sounds and odors and textures. Whatever the reason, he needed no lubrication to penetrate her. He slid deep with one fluid thrust and rocked in and out of her, down and down, filling her, tight within her, moving her. She was transfixed by the sight of his arms: the muscles bulged, each well defined, as he supported himself over her. She reached for his buttocks, hard as stone, and pulled him farther into her with each galvanizing stroke. Although she rapidly came into her climax, she coasted down from it so slowly that she wondered if there would be an end to it. Abruptly, when the sensations in her had subsided, he grew still, pinned by the power of his own orgasm. He softly said her name.

Shrinking within her, he kissed her breasts and lips and forehead. Then he rolled off her, onto his side.

She moved against him, belly to belly, and put her lips against the throbbing artery in his neck.

He held her, and she held him. The act that they had just Completed seemed to bind them; the memory of joy was an invisible umbilical.

For a few minutes she was not at all aware of the world beyond his shadow. She couldn’t hear anything except the beat of her own heart and the heavy drawing of breath from both of them. In time the voices of the mountain filtered back to her:

leaves rustling overhead, the stream splashing down the slope into the pool, birds calling to one another in the trees. Likewise, at first she couldn’t feel anything but the slight ache in her chest and Paul’s warm semen trickling out of her. Gradually,

however, she realized that the day was hot and humid, and that their embrace had become less romantic than sticky.

Reluctantly, she disentangled herself from him and rolled onto her back. A sheen of perspiration filmed her breasts and stomach.

She said, “Incredible.”

“Incredible.”

Neither of them was ready to say more than that.

The breeze had almost dried them when he finally raised up on one elbow and looked down at her. “You know something?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve never known another woman who was able to enjoy herself as thoroughly as you do.”

“Sex, you mean?”

“Sex, I mean.”

“Annie enjoyed it.”

“Sure. We had a fine marriage. But she didn’t enjoy it quite like you do. You put everything you’ve got into it. You’re not aware of anything but your body and mine when we make love. You’re consumed by it.”

“I can’t help it if I’m horny.”

“You’re more than horny.”

“Oversexed, then.”

“It’s not just sex,” he said.

“You’re not going to tell me that you like my mind too.”

“That’s precisely what I’m going to tell you. You enjoy everything. I’ve seen you savor a glass of water like some people do good wine.” He drew a finger down the line between her breasts. “You’ve got a lust for life.”

“Me and Van Gogh.”

“I’m serious.”

She thought about it. “A friend at college used to say the same thing.”

“You see?”

“If it’s true,” she said, “the credit belongs to my father.”

“Oh?”

“He gave me such a happy childhood.”

“Your mother died when you were a child.”

She nodded. “But she went in her sleep. A cerebral hemorrhage. One day she was there — gone the next. I never saw her in pain, and that makes a difference to a child.”

“You grieved. I’m sure you did.”

“For a while. But my father worked hard to bring me out of it. He was full of jokes and games and stories and presents, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He worked just like you did to make your kids forget Annie’s death.”

“If I could have been as successful at that as Sam evidently was with you—”

“Maybe he was too successful,” she said.

“How could that be?”

Sighing, she said, “Sometimes I think he should have spent less time making my childhood happy and more time preparing me for the real world.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Happiness is a rare commodity in this life. Don’t knock it. Grab every minute of it that’s offered to you, and don’t look back.”

She shook her head, unconvinced. “I was too naïve. A regular Pollyanna. Right up through my wedding day.”

“A bad marriage can happen to anybody, wise or innocent.”

“Certainly. But the wise aren’t shattered by it.”

His hand moved in lazy circles on her belly.

She liked the way he touched her. Already, she wanted him again.

He said, “If you can analyze yourself this way, you can overcome your hang-ups. You can forget the past.”

“Oh, I can forget him all right. My husband. No trouble, given time. And not much time at that.”

“Well then?”

“I’m not innocent anymore. God knows, I’m not. But naive? I’m not sure a person can become a cynic overnight. Or even a realist.”

“We’d be perfect together,” he said, touching her breasts. “I’m certain of it.”

“At times I’m certain of it too. And that’s what I distrust about it — the certainty.”

“Marry me,” he said.

“How did we get around to this again?”

“I asked you to marry me.”

“I don’t want to be set up for another fall.”

“I’m not setting you up.”

“Not intentionally.”

“You can’t live without taking risks.”

“I can try.”

“It’ll be a lonely life.”

She made a face at him. “Let’s not spoil the day.”

“It’s not spoiled for me.”

“Well, it will be for me soon; if we don’t change the subject.”

“What could we talk about that’s more important than this?” She grinned. “You seem fascinated with my tits. Want to talk about those?”

“Jenny, be serious.”

“I am being serious. I think my tits are fascinating. I could spend hours talking about them.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Okay, okay. If you don’t want to talk about my tits, we won’t talk about them, lovely as they are. Instead — we’ll talk about your prick.”

“Jenny—”

“I’d like to taste it.”

As she spoke the soft center of him swelled and grew hard.

“Defeated by biology,” she said. “You’re a minx.”

She laughed and started to sit up. He pushed her back.

“I want to taste it,” she said. “Later.”

“Now.”

“I want to get you off first.” “And do you always get your way?” “I will this time. I’m bigger than you.” “Male chauvinist.”

“If you say so.” He kissed her nipples, shoulders, hands, her

navel and thighs. He rubbed his nose gently back and forth in the crinkled hair at the base of her belly.

A shiver passed through her. She said, “You’re right. A woman should have her pleasure first.”

He lifted his head and smiled at her. He had a charming, almost boyish smile. His eyes were so clear, so blue, and so warm that she felt as if she were being absorbed by them.

What a delightful man you are, she thought as the voices of the mountain faded away and her heartbeat replaced them. So beautiful, so desirable, so tender for a man. So very tender.

The house was on Union Road, one block from the town square. A white frame bungalow. Nicely kept. Windows trimmed in green with matching shutters. Railed front porch with bench swing and glider and bright green floor. Latticework festooned with ivy at one end of the porch, a wall of lilac bushes at the other end. Brick walkway with borders of marigolds on each side. A white ceramic birdbath ringed with petunias. According to the sign that hung on a decorative lamppost at the end of the walk, the house belonged to “The Macklins.”

At one o’clock that afternoon, Salsbury climbed the three steps to the porch. He was carrying a clipboard with a dozen sheets of paper fixed to it. He rang the bell.

Bees hummed in the lilac leaves.

The woman who opened the door surprised him. Perhaps because of the flowers that had been planted everywhere and because of the pristine condition of the property that seemed the work of a singularly fussy person, he had expected the Macklins to be an elderly couple. A skinny pair who liked to putter in their gardens, who had no grandchildren to spend their time with, who would stare suspiciously at him over the rims of their bifocals. However, the woman who answered the bell was in her middle twenties, a slender blonde with the kind of face that looked good in magazine advertisements for cosmetics. She was tall, five eight or nine, not delicate but feminine, as leggy as a chorus girl. She was wearing dark blue shorts and a blue-and-

white polka-dot halter top. Even through the screen door, he could see that her body was well proportioned, firm, resilient, better than any he had ever touched.

As usual, confronted with a woman like one of those who had peopled his fantasies all of his adult life, he was unsettled. He stared at her and licked his lips and couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.

“Can I help you?”

He cleared his throat. “My name’s — Albert Deighton. I’ve been in town since last Friday. I don’t know if you heard.

I’m doing some research. Sociological research. I’ve been talking to people—”

“I know,” she said. “You were next door at the Solomans’ yesterday afternoon.”

“That’s right.” Although the sun was hot and the air heavy, he hadn’t perspired during any of the first three interviews of the day; but now he felt beads of sweat spring up on his forehead. “I’d like to talk with you and Mr. Mackin, if you can spare me the time. Half an hour ought to be enough. There are about a hundred questions—”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “My husband isn’t home. He works up at the mill on the day shift. He won’t be home till five thirty.”

He looked at his clipboard for something to do. “I can always catch him some other time. If I could interview you and the children now, get that out of the way—”

“Oh, we’ve only been married a year. We haven’t any kids.”

“Newlyweds.”

“Just about.” She smiled. She had dimples.

He felt as if he were being dragged along in a dangerous current, swept inexorably toward a decision that could destroy him. “Is there anyone else living here? A relative?”

“Just Richie and me.”

“Richie’s your husband?”

“That’s right.”

Last Friday, in Ultman’s Cafe, he had risked exposing the entire project by using the code phrase to play with that waitress who looked like Miriam. He had gotten away with it, but he

knew he was a fool to allow his emotions to overwhelm him like that. As penance for his behavior, he was far more cautious on Saturday and Sunday than he needed to be. He used the code phrase two dozen times, interviewing the subjects in detail, searching for weak spots in their obedient mode; but he never approached one of them if there was the slimmest chance of discovery. Some of the women had been attractive, and he could have used them any way he wanted. But he had restrained himself. Having tasted total dominance when he opened Alice, that bitch waitress, with the code, he was anxious to make one of them undress and get down on the floor before him. Damned anxious. And this one, standing there in shorts and halter, seemed to radiate heat that evaporated his will power and his caution. He wanted to believe that, unlike the episode at the café, this situation contained no threat; and wanting to believe was the first step toward convincing himself.

“I am the key.”

“I am the lock.”

Relieved, he wiped his brow. “Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

He began to tremble, not with fear but with excitement. “Are you expecting anyone?”

“No. No one.”

“Is anyone expecting you? Were you planning to go visiting?”

“No.”

“Let me in.”

She pushed open the screen door.

He stepped past her into the air-conditioned foyer. There was an oval mirror and accessory table on the right, a small painting of a storm-tossed sailing ship on his left. “Close the door. And lock it.”

She did as she was told.

A short corridor, containing two more paintings of sailing ships, led from the foyer to the kitchen.

On the left the living room opened to the hail through an archway. It was neatly furnished. An oriental carpet. Two Crushed velvet sofas and a slate-topped coffee table arranged to

form a conversation corner. Matching crushed-velvet drapes at the three windows. A magazine rack. A gun case. Two Stiffel lamps. To harmonize with the carpet, the paintings were of Western sailing ships docked in Chinese harbors.

“Draw the drapes,” he said.

She went from window to window, then came back to the center of the room. She stood with her hands at her sides, staring at him, a half-smile on her face.

She was waiting. ‘Waiting for orders. His orders. She was his puppet, his slave.

For more than a minute he stood in the archway, unable to move, unable to decide what he should do next. Immobilized by fear, anticipation, and the grip of lust that made his groin ache almost unpleasantly, he was nevertheless sweating as if he had just run the mile. She was his. Entirely his: her mouth, breasts, ass, legs, cunt, every inch and fold of her. Better than that, there was no need for him to worry about whether or not he pleased her. The only consideration was his own pleasure. If he told her that she loved it, she would love it. No complaints afterward. No recriminations. Just the act — and then to hell with her. Here, ready for the first time to use a woman exactly as he wanted, he found the reality more exhilarating than the dreams he’d had so many years to elaborate upon.

She regarded him quizzically. “Is that all?”

“No.” His voice was hoarse.

“What do you want?”

He went to the nearest lamp, switched it on, and sat down on one of the sofas. “You stand where you are,” he said. “Answer my questions and do what I say.”

“All right.”

“What’s your name?”

“Brenda.”

“How old are you, Brenda?”

“Twenty-six.”

He took his handkerchief from his hip pocket, wiped his face. He looked at the paintings of sailing ships. “Your husband likes the sea?”

“Then he likes paintings of the sea.”

“No. He doesn’t care for them.”

He had only been talking to pass time while he decided how he wanted to proceed with her. Now, her unexpected answer confused him. “Then why the hell do you have all these paintings?”

“I was born and raised in Cape Cod. I love the sea.”

“But he doesn’t care for it. Why does he let you hang these damned things everywhere?”

“He knows I like them,” she said.

He wiped his face again, put the handkerchief away. “He knows if he took them off the wall, you’d freeze him out in bed. Wouldn’t you, Brenda?”

“Of course not.”

“You know you would, you little bitch. You’re a pretty little piece. He’d do anything to keep you happy. Any man would. Men have been running to do your bidding since you were old enough to fuck. You snap your fingers, and they dance. Don’t they?”

Puzzled, she shook her head. “Dance? No.”

He laughed bitterly. “A game of semantics. You know I didn’t really mean ‘dance.’ You’re like all the others. You’re a bitch, Brenda.”

She squinted. Frowned.

“I say you’re a bitch. Am I right?” Her frown vanished. “Yes.”

“I’m always right. Isn’t that true?” “Yes. You’re always right.”

“What am I?”

“You’re the key.”

“What are you?”

“I’m the lock.”

He was feeling better by the minute. Not so tense as he had been. Not so jittery. Calm. In control. As he’d never been. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “You’d like me to strip you naked and screw you. Wouldn’t you like that, Brenda?”

She hesitated.

“You’d like it,” he said.

“I’d like it.”

“You’d love it.”

“I’d love it.”

“Take off your halter.”

Reaching behind her back, she slipped the knot, and the polka-dot cloth fell to her feet. The flesh beneath was white, in stark and erotic contrast to her dark tan. Her breasts were neither large nor small, but exquisitely curved, upthrust. A few freckles. Pink nipples not much darker than her untanned skin. She kicked the halter out of her way.

“Touch them,” he said.

“My breasts?”

“Squeeze them. Pull on the nipples.” He watched, found her movements too mechanical, and said, “You’re horny, Brenda. You want to be fucked. You can’t wait to have me. You need it. You want it. You want it more than you’ve ever wanted it in your life. You’re almost sick with wanting it.”

As she continued to caress herself, her nipples swelled and turned a darker shade of pink. She was breathing heavily.

He giggled. He couldn’t suppress it. He felt terrific. So terrific. “Take off your shorts.”

She did.

“And your panties. You’re a real blonde, I see. Now, put one hand between those pretty legs. Finger yourself. That’s it. That’s good. That’s a good girl.”

Standing, her feet wide apart, masturbating, she was a stunning sight. She threw back her head, golden hair trailing like a banner, mouth open, face slack. She was gasping for breath. Shivering. Twitching. Moaning. With her free hand, she was still caressing her breasts.

The power. Good God, the power he had over them now, would always have over them, from this day forward! He could come into their homes, into their most sacred and private places, and once inside do whatever he wished with them. And not just with the women. Men too. If he ordered it of them, the men would mewl and crawl to him on their hands and knees. They would beg him to screw their wives. They’d give him their daughters, their girl children. They wouldn’t deny him any experience, however extravagant or outrageous. He would demand every thrill, and he would enjoy each of them. But on the whole, he would be a benign ruler, a benevolent dictator, more like a father than a jailer. No jackboots in their faces. He laughed at that last thought. Ten years ago, when he was still conducting lecture tours and writing about the future of behavior modification and mind control, he was subjected to extensive ridicule and vehement condemnation from some members of the academic community. In lecture halls, all but forcibly detained at the end of his speeches, he had listened to countless self-righteous bores droning through homilies about invasion of privacy and the sanctity of the human mind, They quoted hundreds of great thinkers, epigrams by the score — some of which he remembered to this day. There was one about the future of mankind amounting to little more than a jackboot in the face. Well, that was crap. Jackboots, and the cruel authoritarian state they symbolized, were only a means of keeping the masses in line. Now, with his drug and the key-lock program, jackboots had become obsolete. No one would have a jackboot pushed in his face. Of course, for selected women, he had something else to push in their faces. Massaging himself through his trousers, he laughed. The power. The sweet, sweet power.

“Brenda.”

Shuddering, gasping, her knees bending slightly, she climaxed as her index finger worked industriously between her legs.

“Brenda.”

At last she looked up at him. She was beginning to perspire. Her hair was dark and damp at the brow.

He said, “Go to that sofa. Kneel on it with your back to me, and brace your arms against the pillows.”

When she was in position, her white butt thrust up at him, she looked over her shoulder. “Hurry. Please.”

Laughing, he shoved the coffee table out of the way, sent it sliding off the carpet, across the hardwood floor and into the magazine rack. He stood behind her, dropped his trousers and his yellow-striped shorts. He was ready, the veins about to burst, hard as iron, bigger than he’d ever been, big as a stallion’s gun, a horse cock. And red. So red it looked as if it had been smeared with blood. He ran one hand over her buttocks, over the golden hairs on her back, along her side, under to the swinging breast, pinched the nipple, smoothed her flank, pinched her ass, slipped his fingers between her thighs, to her pubes. She was wet, dripping, far more ready then he was. He could even smell her. Giggling, he said, “You’re a bitch in more ways than one. A regular little bitch dog. A little animal. Aren’t you, Brenda?”

“Yes.”

“Say you’re a little animal.” “I am. I’m a little animal.” The power.

“What do you want, Brenda?”

“I want you to screw me.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“How bad do you want it?”

“Real bad.”

Sweet, sweet power.

“What do you want?”

“You know!”

“Do I?”

“I already said!”

“Say it again.”

“You’re humiliating me.”

“I haven’t even begun.”

“Oh, God.”

“Listen to me, Brenda.”

"What?"

“Your cunt’s getting hotter.”

She groaned softly. Shuddered. “Feel it, Brenda?”

“Yes.”

“Hotter and hotter.”

“I don’t— I can’t—”

“You can’t stand it?”

“So hot. Almost hurts.”

He smiled. “Now what do you want?” “I want you to screw me.”

See, Miriam? I am somebody.

“What are you, Brenda?”

“I am the lock.”

“What else are you?” “A bitch.”

“I can’t hear it often enough.”

“A bitch.”

“In heat?”

“Yes, yes. Please!”

Poised to enter her, dizzy with excitement, demoniac, electrified by the power he held, Salsbury had no illusions that his orgasm, deep within the silken regions of this woman, was the most important aspect of the rape. The spasmed outpouring of a tablespoon or two of semen was only the punctuation at the end of the sentence, at the conclusion of his declaration of independence. During the past half hour, he had proved himself, had freed himself from the dozens of bitches who had messed in his life all the way back to and including his mother, especially his mother, that goddess of bitches, that empress of ball-breakers. After her came the girls who were frigid and the girls who laughed at him and the girls who whined about his poor technique and the girls who rejected him with unconcealed distaste and Miriam and the contemptible whores to whom he had been forced to resort in later years. Brenda Macklin was only a metaphor, written into his life by chance. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else this afternoon or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. She was the voodoo doll, the totem with which he would exorcise some of those bitches from his past. Each inch of prick he jammed into her was a blow to the Brendas of years gone by. Each stroke — the more brutal it was the better — was an announcement of his triumph. He would pound her. Bruise her. Use her until she was raw. Hurt her.

With every blade of pain he sent through her, he would be cutting each of those hated women. By mounting this lean blond animal, by battering relentlessly into her, tearing her apart, he would be proving his superiority to all of them.

He seized her hips and leaned close. But as the tip of his shaft touched her vagina, even before the head of it slipped into her, he ejaculated uncontrollably. His legs gave way. Crying out, he fell on her.

She collapsed against the pillows.

Panic took him. Memories of past failures. The sour looks they gave him afterwards. The contempt with which they treated him. The shame of it. He held Brenda down, weighed her down. Desperately, he said, “You’re coming, girl. You’re climaxing. Do you hear me? Do you understand? I’m telling you. You’re coming.”

She made a noise, muffled by pillows. “Feel it?”

“Mmmmm.”

“Do you feel it?”

Raising her head she said, “God, yes!” “You’ve never had it better.”

“Not ever. Never.” She was gasping.

“Feel it?”

“Feel it.”

“Is it hot?”

“So hot. Oh!”

“Coasting now. You’re coming down.” She stopped squirming under him.

“Drifting down. It’s almost over.”

“So good. ” Softly.

“You little animal.”

With that the tension drained out of her.

The doorbell rang.

“What the hell?”

She didn’t react.

Pushing away from her, he swayed to his feet, tried to take a step with his trousers around his ankles and almost fell.

He grabbed his shorts, jerked them up, then his trousers. “You said you weren’t expecting anyone.”

“Wasn’t.”

“Then who’s that?”

She rolled onto her back. She looked sated.

“Who’s that?” he asked again.

“Don’t know.”

“For God’s sake, get dressed.”

She rose dreamily from the couch. “Quickly, damn you!”

Obediently, she scuttled after her clothes.

At one of the front windows, he parted the drapes a fraction of an inch, just enough to see the porch. A woman was standing at the door, unaware that she was under observation. In sandals, white shorts, and a scoop-necked orange sweater, she was even better-looking than Brenda Macklin.

Brenda said, “I’m dressed.”

The doorbell rang again.

Letting go of the drapery, Salsbury said, “It’s a woman. You better answer it. But get rid of her. Whatever you do, don’t let her inside.”

“What should I say?”

“If it’s someone you’ve never seen before, you don’t have to say anything.”

“Otherwise?”

“Tell her you’ve got a headache. A terrible migraine headache. Now go.”

She went out of the room.

‘When he heard her open the door in the foyer, he parted the velvet again in time to see a smile touch the face of the woman in the orange sweater. She said something, and Brenda replied, and the smile was replaced by a look of concern. Filtered through the walls and windows, their voices were hardly more than whispers. He couldn’t follow the conversation, but it Seemed to go on forever.

Maybe you should have let her come inside, he thought. Use the code phrase on her. Then screw them both.

But what if you let her come in and then discover she’s got a weak spot in her program?

Not much chance of that.

Or what if she’s from out of town? A relative from Bexford, perhaps. Then what?

Then she’d have to be killed.

And how would you dispose of the body?

Under his breath he said, “Come on, Brenda, you bitch. Get rid of her.”

Finally, the stranger turned away from the door. Salsbury had a brief glimpse of green eyes, ripe lips, a superb profile, extremely deep cleavage in the scoop-necked sweater. When she had her back to him and was going down the steps, he saw that her legs weren’t just sexy, as Brenda’s were, but sexy and elegant, even without nylons. Long, taut, smooth, scissoring legs, feminine muscles bunching and twisting and stretching and compacting and rippling sinuously with each step. An animal. A healthy animal. His animal. Like all of them now: his. At the end of the Macklin property, she turned left into the searing afternoon sun, distorted by waves of heat rising from the concrete sidewalk, soon out of sight.

Brenda came back into the living room.

When she started to sit down, he said, “Stand. The middle of the room.”

She did that, her hands at her sides.

Returning to the sofa, he said, “What did you tell her?”

“That I had a migraine headache.”

“She believed you?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you know her?”

“Yes.”

“Who was she?”

“My sister-in-law.”

“She lives in Black River?”

“Has most all her life.”

“Quite a looker.”

“She was in the Miss USA contest.”

“Oh? When was that?”

“Twelve, thirteen years ago.”

“Still looks twenty-two.”

“She’s thirty-five.”

“She win?”

“Came in third.”

“Big disappointment, I’ll bet.”

“For Black River. She didn’t mind.”

“She didn’t? Why not?”

“Nothing bothers her.”

“Is that so?”

“She’s that way. Always happy.” “What’s her name?” “Emma.”

“Last name?”

“Thorp.”

“Thorp? She married?” “Yes.”

He frowned. “To that cop?” “He’s the chief of police.” “Bob Thorp.”

“That’s right.” “What’s she doing with him?” She was baffled. She blinked at him. Cute little animal. He swore he could still smell her. She said, “What do you mean?”

What I said. What s she doing with him?

“Well.. they’re married.”

“A woman like her with a big, dumb cop.”

“He’s not dumb,” she said.

“Looks dumb to me.” He thought about it for a moment, and then he smiled. “Your maiden name’s Brenda Thorp.”

“Yes.”

“Bob Thorp’s your brother.”

“My oldest brother.”

“Poor Bob.” He leaned back in the sofa and folded his arms on his chest and laughed. “First I get to his kid sister — then I get to his wife.”

She smiled uncertainly. Nervously.

“I’ll have to be careful, won’t I?”

“Careful?” she said.

“Bob maybe dumb, but he’s big as a bull.”

“He isn’t dumb,” she insisted.

“In high school I dated a girl named Sophia.”

She was silent. Confused.

“Sophia Brookman. God, I wanted her.”

“Loved her?”

“Love’s a lie. A myth. It’s bullshit. I just wanted to screw her. But she dropped me after a few dates and started going with this other guy, Joey Duncan. You know what Joey Duncan did after high school?”

“How would I know?” “He went to junior college.” “So did I.”

“Took criminology for a year.” “I majored in history.”

“He flunked out.” “Not me.”

“Ended up with the home town police.”

“Just like my brother.”

“I went to Harvard.”

“Did you really?”

“I was always a better dresser than Joey was. Besides that, he was as dull as a post. I was much wittier than he was. Joey didn’t read anything but the jokes in Reader’s Digest. I read The New Yorker every week.”

“I don’t like either one.”

“In spite of all that, Sophia preferred him. But you know what?”

“What?”

“It was in The New Yorker that I first saw something about subliminal perception. Back in the fifties. An article, editorial,

maybe a little snippet at the bottom of a column. I forget exactly what it was. But that’s what got me started. Something in The New Yorker.”

Brenda sighed. Fidgeted.

“Tired of standing?” “A little.”

“Are you bored?”

“Kind of.”

“Bitch.”

She looked at the floor.

“Get your clothes off.”

The lovely power. He was filled with it, brimming with it— but it had changed. At first it had seemed to him like a steady, exhilarating current. Part of the time it was still like that, a soft humming inside of him, perhaps imagined but nevertheless electrifying, a river of power on which he sailed in complete command. But occasionally now, for short periods, it felt not like a constant flow but like a continuous and endless series of short, sharp bursts. The power like a submachine gun: tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. The rhythm of it affected him. His mind spun. Thoughts adance, no thought finished, leaping from one thing to another: Joey Duncan, Harvard, key-lock, Miriam, his mother, dark-eyed Sophia, breasts, sex, Emma Thorp, bitches, Dawson, Brenda, his growing erection, his mother, Klinger, Brenda, cunt, the power, jackboots, Emma’s legs— “What now?”

She was naked.

He said, “Come here.” Little animal.

“Get down.”

“On the floor?”

“On your knees.” She got down.

“Beautiful animal.” “You like me?”

“You’ll do until.”

“Until what?”

“Until I get your sister-in-law.”

“Emma?”

“I’ll make him watch.”

“Who?”

“That dumb cop.”

“He isn’t dumb.”

“Lovely ass. You’re horny, Brenda.”

“I’m getting hot. Like before.”

“Of course you are. Hotter and hotter.”

“I’m shaking.”

“You want me more than you did before.”

“Do it to me.”

“Hotter and hotter.”

“I’m — embarrassed.”

“No. You aren’t.”

“Oh, God.”

“Feel good?”

“So good.”

“You don’t look at all like Miriam.” “Who’s Miriam?”

“The old bastard should see me now.” “Who? Miriam?”

“He’d be outraged. Quote the Bible.” “Who would?”

“Dawson. Probably can’t even get it up.” “I’m scared,” she said suddenly. “Of what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop being scared. You aren’t scared.” “Okay.”

“Are you scared?”

She smiled. “No. You going to screw me?” “Batter the hell out of you. Hot, aren’t you?”

“Yes. Burning up. Do it. Now.” “Klinger and his damned chorus girls.” “Klinger?”

“Probably queer anyway.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“Tear you up. Big as a horse.” “Yes. I want it. I’m hot.”

“I think maybe Miriam was queer.”

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat .

At five o’clock Monday afternoon, Buddy Pellineri, just out of bed with seven hours to pass before he had to report to work at the mill, went to Edison’s store to see if any new magazines had been put on the racks. His favorites were the ones that had a lot of pictures in them: People, Travel, Nevada, Arizona Highways, Vermont Life, a few of the photography journals. He found two issues that he didn’t have and took them to the counter to pay for them.

Jenny was at the cash register. She was wearing a white blouse with yellow flowers on it. Her long black hair looked freshly washed, thick and shiny. “You look so pretty, Miss Jenny.”

“Why, thank you, Buddy.”

He blushed and wished he had said nothing. She said, “Is the world treating you right?”

“No complaints.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“How much I owe you?”

“Do you have two dollars?”

He thrust a hand into his pocket, came out with some change and rumpled bills. “Sure. Here.”

“You get three quarters in change,” she said.

“I thought they cost more.”

“Now, you know you get a discount here.”

“I’ll pay. Don’t want special treatment.”

“You’re a close friend of the family,” she said, shaking a finger at him. “We give discounts to all close friends of the family. Sam would be angry if you didn’t accept that. You put those quarters in your pocket.”

“Well. thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Buddy.”

“Is Sam here?”

‘She pointed to the curtained doorway. “Upstairs. He’s getting dinner.

“I ought to tell him.”

“Tell him what?” she asked.

“About this thing I saw.”

“Can’t you tell me?”

“Well . Better him.”

“You may go up and see him, if you like.”

The invitation frightened him. He was never comfortable in other people’s houses. “You have cats up there?”

“Cats? No. No pets at all.”

He knew she wouldn’t lie to him — but then, cats turned up in the most unexpected places. Two weeks after his mother died, he was asked to visit the parsonage. Reverend Potter and Mrs. Potter had taken him straight to the parlor where she had served homemade cakes and cookies. He sat on the divan, knees together, hands in his lap. Mrs. Potter made hot chocolate. Reverend Potter poured for everyone. The two of them sat opposite Buddy in a pair of wing-backed chairs. For a while everything was so nice. He ate the gingerbread and the little cookies with red and green sugar on them and he drank the cocoa and smiled a lot and talked a little — and then a big white furry cat leaped over his shoulder, onto his lap, claws digging in for an instant, from his lap to the floor. He didn’t even know they had a cat. Was that fair? Not to tell him? It had crept onto the window sill behind the divan. How long had it been there? All the while he ate? Paralyzed with fear, unable to speak, wanting to scream, he spilled his chocolate on the carpet and wet himself. Peed in his pants right on the preacher’s brocade divan. What a stain. It was awful. An awful day. He never went back there again, and he stopped going to church as well, even if he might go to hell for that.

“Buddy?”

She startled him. “What?”

“Do you want to go upstairs and see Sam?”

Picking up his magazines, he said, “No. No. I’ll tell him some time. Some other time. Not now.” He started toward the door.

“Buddy?”

He glanced back.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No.” He forced a laugh. “No. Nothing. World’s treating me okay.” He hurried out of the store.

On the other side of Main Street, back in his two-room apartment, he went to the bathroom and peed, opened a bottle of Coca-Cola, and sat down at the kitchen table to look at his magazines. First thing, he paged through both of them, search. ing for articles about cats and pictures of cats and advertisements for cat food. He found two pages in each magazine that offended him, and he tore them out at once, regardless of what was on the backs of them. Methodically, he ripped each page. into hundreds of tiny pieces and threw the resultant heap of confetti into the wastebasket. Only then was he prepared to relax and look at the pictures.

Halfway through the first magazine, he came across an article about a team of skin divers who were, it seemed to him, trying to uncover an ancient treasure ship. He couldn’t read more than two words out of five, but he studied the pictures with great interest — and suddenly was reminded of what he had seen in the woods that night. Near the mill. When he was taking a pee. At a quarter of five in the morning, on the day he’d so carefully marked on his calendar. Skin divers. Coming down from the reservoir. Carrying flashlights. And guns. It was such a silly thing, he couldn’t forget it. Such a funny. such a scary thing. They didn’t belong where he had seen them. They hadn’t been hunting for treasure, not at night, not up in the reservoir.

What had they been doing?

He’d thought about that for ever so long, but he simply couldn’t figure it out. He wanted to ask someone to explain it, but he knew they’d laugh at him.

Last week, however, he realized that there was someone in Black River who would listen to him, who would believe him and wouldn’t laugh no matter how silly the story was. Sam. Sam always had time for him, even before his mother died. Sam never made fun of him or talked down to him or hurt his feel-

ings. Furthermore, so far as Buddy was concerned, Sam Edison was easily the smartest person in town. He knew just about everything; or Buddy thought he did. If there was anyone who could explain to him what he had seen, it was Sam.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to look like a fool in Sam’s eyes. He was determined to give himself every chance to work out the answer first. That was why he had delayed going to Sam since he had remembered him last Wednesday.

A while ago in the store, he finally was ready to let Sam take over his thinking for him. But Sam was upstairs, in rooms that were unfamiliar to Buddy, and that raised the question of cats.

Now he had more time to puzzle it out on his own. If Sam was in the store the next time Buddy went there, he would tell him the story. But not for a few days yet. He sat in the patterned late-afternoon sunlight that came through the curtain, drank Coca-Cola, and wondered.

Eight Months Earlier:

Saturday, December 18, 1976

IN THE COMPUTER CENTER of the sealed wing of the Greenwich house, seven days before Christmas, the monitor boards and systems bulbs and cathode-ray tubes and glowing scopes, although they were mostly red and green, had not reminded Salsbury of the holiday.

When he entered the room, his first time there in months, Klinger looked around at the lights and said, “Very Christmasy.”

Strangely enough, it was rather Christmasy.

However, because he hadn’t perceived something which had registered with the general in mere seconds, Salsbury felt uneasy. For almost two years now, day and night, he had been telling himself that he must be quicker, sharper, more cunning, and more forward-thinking than either of his partners — if he was to keep his partners from eventually putting a bullet in his head and burying him at the southern end of the estate beside Brian Kingman. Which was surely what they had in mind for him. And for each other. Either that or slavery through the keylock program. Therefore, it was quite disturbing to him that Klinger-hairy, flat-faced gorilla that he was — should make, of all things, an aesthetic observation before Salsbury himself had made it.

The Only way he could deal with his own uneasiness was to

put the general off his stride as quickly as possible. “You can’t smoke in here. Put that out at once.”

Rolling the cheroot from the center of his thick lips to one side, Klinger said, “Oh, surely—”

“The delicate machinery,” Salsbury said sharply, gesturing at the Christmasy lights.

Klinger took the slender cigar from his mouth and appeared to be about to drop it on the floor.

“The waste can.”

When he had disposed of the cheroot, the general said, “Sorry.”

Salsbury said, “That’s all right. You’re not familiar with a place like this, with computers and all of that. You couldn’t be expected to know.”

And he thought: Score one for me.

“Where’s Leonard?” Klinger asked.

“He won’t be here.”

“For such an important test?”

“He wishes it weren’t necessary.”

“Pontius Pilate.”

“What?”

Looking at the ceiling as if he could see through it, Klinger said, “Up there washing his hands.”

Salsbury wasn’t about to take part in any conversation meant to dissect or analyze Dawson. He had taken every measure to protect himself from any attempt on Dawson’s part to plant bugs in his work area. He didn’t believe it was possible for anyone to spy on him while he was in here. But he couldn’t be positively, absolutely certain of that. Under the circumstances, he felt that paranoia was a rational vantage point from which to view the world.

“What all have you got to show me?” Klinger asked. “For a start, I thought you’d want to see a few print-outs from the key-lock program.”

“I’m curious,” the general admitted.

Picking up a sheet of computer paper that was folded like an accordion into dozens of eighteen-inch-long sections, Salsbury said, “All three of our new employees—”

“The mercenaries?”

“Yes. All three of them were given the drug and then shown a series of films, ostensibly as evening entertainment: The Exorcist, Jaws, and Black Sunday, on successive nights. These were, of course, very special copies of the films. Processed right here on the estate. I did the work personally. Printed each of them over a different stage of the subliminal program.”

“Why those three movies in particular?”

“I could have used any I wanted,” Salsbury said. “I just chose them at random from Leonard’s film library. The movie is simply the package, not the content. It merely establishes a reason for the subjects to stare at the screen for a couple of hours while the subliminal program is running below their recognition threshold.” He handed the print-out to Klinger. “This is a second-by-second verbal translation of the images appearing on the screen in the rheostatic film, which begins simultaneously with the movie. Wherever the computer prints ‘This Legend’ it means that the visual subliminals have been interrupted by a block-letter message on the rheostatic film, a direct command to the viewer.”

SUBJECT CODED — KEY LOCK

REVISED PROGRAM/STAGE ONE

STORAGE MATERIAL

PROGRAM STORED: 8/6/76

THIS PRINT: 12/18/76

PRINT

SECONDS SUBLIMINAL CONTENT

0001 NO CONTENT

0002 NO CONTENT

0003 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0004 VISUAL — WOMAN'S BREASTS

0005 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0006 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0007 VISUAL — WOMAN’S BREASTS

0008 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0009 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0010 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0011 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH

0012 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

0013 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

0014 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

0015 VISUAL — DETUMESCENT PENIS

0016 VISUAL — DETUMESCENT PENIS

0017 VISUAL — DETUMESCENT PENIS

0015 VISUAL — PENIS IN WOMAN’S HAND

0019 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0020 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0021 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0022 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0023 THIS LEGEND — YOU WATCH THIS FILM

“The first sixty seconds do nothing but insure that the subject will pay close attention to the rest of the movie,” Salsbury said. “Beginning with the second minute and continuing throughout the movie, he is very carefully, very gradually primed for stage two of the program and for eventual, total submission to the key-lock behavior mode.”

“Carefully and slowly — because of what happened to Brian Kingman?” the general asked.

“Because of what happened to Brian Kingman.”

0061 VISUAL — WOMAN FONDLING TESTICLES

0062 VISUAL — WOMAN FONDLING TESTICLES

0063 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0064 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0065 VISUAL — WOMAN STROKING PENIS

0066 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0067 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0068 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0069 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0070 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0071 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0072 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0073 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0074 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0075 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0076 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0077 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0078 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0079 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0060 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0081 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0082 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0083 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0084 VISUAL — MALE DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0085 VISUAL — MALE DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0086 VISUAL — MALE DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0087 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0088 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0089 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0090 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0091 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0052 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0093 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0094 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S PUBIC HAIR

0095 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0096 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S PUBIC HAIR

0097 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0098 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0099 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0100 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S PUBIC HAIR

Klinger said, “The penis doesn’t become erect until the viewer is to]d that obedience to the key equals satisfaction.”

“That’s right. And you’ll notice that both the man’s and woman’s orgasms are represented. This program would be effective with either sex.”

“Was all this taken from some porno movie?”

“It was shot especially for me by a professional pornographic-film maker in New York City,” Salsbury said, pushing his glasses up on his nose and wiping his damp forehead. “He was instructed to use only the most attractive performers. He shot everything at regular light intensity, but I used a special process to print below the recognition threshold. Then I intercut the sex footage with the block-letter messages.” He unfolded some of the print-out. “This first sequence lasts another forty seconds. Then there is a two-second pause, and another message is presented in the same fashion.”

0143 VISUAL — WOMAN FINGERING CLITORIS

0144 VISUAL — WOMAN FINGERING CLITORIS

0145 VISUAL — MAN STROKING DETUMESCENT PENIS

0146 VISUAL — MAN STROKING DETUMESCENT PENIS

0147 VISUAL — MAN STROKING DETUMESCENT PENIS

0148 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0149 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0150 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0151 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0152 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0153 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

0154 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0155 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0156 VISUAL — WOMAN DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0157 VISUAL — WOMAN DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0155 VISUAL — WOMAN DOMINANT INTERCOURSE

0159 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0160 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0161 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0162 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0163 VISUAL — DOG STYLE INTERCOURSE

0164 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0165 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0166 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0167 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0168 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0169 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0170 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0171 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S BUTTOCKS

0172 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0173 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S BUTTOCKS

0174 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY— FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0175 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

“I see the pattern,” Klinger said. “How many of these ‘legends’ were there?”

They were standing at one of the computer consoles. Saisbury’ leaned over and used the keyboard.

One of the screens mounted on the wall began a line-print:

KEY/LOCK STAGE ONE BLOCK — LETTER MESSAGES, IN ORDER OF

APPEARANCE, AS FOLLOWS:

01 OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

02 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

03 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FEAR

04 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM GUILT

05 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM WORRY

06 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM MORAL CODES

07 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM RESPONSIBILITY

08 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM DEPRESSION

09 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM TENSION

10 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — CONTENTMENT

11 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — HAPPINESS

12 SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — YOUR GREATEST DESIRE

Salsbury touched a tab on the console.

The screen went blank.

“The series was repeated three times through the film.”

“The same thing the second night?” Klinger asked. “No.” He picked up another folded print-out from the seat of the console chair and exchanged it for the stage one analysis. “The first minute is spent securing the. subjects’ undivided attention, as it was in the first film. The difference between stage one and stage two becomes evident starting with the second minute.”

0061 VISUAL — WOMAN WEEPING

0062 VISUAL — WOMAN WEEPING

0063 VISUAL — WOMAN WEEPING

0064 VISUAL — MAN WEEPING

0065 VISUAL — MAN WEEPING

0066 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0067 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0065 VISUAL — WOMAN_, COVERED WITH BLOOD, SCREAMING

0069 VISUAL — WOMAN, COVERED WITH BLOOD, SCREAMING

0070 THIS LEGEND-REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0071 THIS LEGEND-REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0072 VISUAL — MAN, COVERED WITH BLOOD, SCREAMING

0073 VISUAL — MAN, COVERED WITH BLOOD, SCREAMING

0074 THIS LEGEND-REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0075 THIS LEGEND-REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0076 VISUAL — WOMAN_, COVERED WITH BLOOD, SCREAMING

0077 VISUAL — MAN, COVERED WITH BLOOD, SCREAMING

0076 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — PAIN

0079 THIS LEGEND-PAIN, PAIN, PAINi PAIN

0080 NO CONTENT

0081 NO CONTENT

0082 VISUAL — WOMAN SMILING AT ERECT PENIS

“The second stage of the program alternates between negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement,” Salsbury said. “The next twenty-five seconds are devoted to a sex reinforcement sequence much like those you saw on the first print-out. Skip ahead just a bit.”

0110 VISUAL — WOLF’S FACE, SNARLING

0111 VISUAL — WOLF’S FACE, SNARLING

0112 VISUAL — SCORPION STINGING A MOUSE

0113 VISUAL — SCORPION STINGING A MOUSE

0114 VISUAL–COFFIN

0115 VISUAL–COFFIN

0116 VISUAL–COFFIN

0117 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — DEATH

0118 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — DEATH

0119 VISUAL — HUMAN SKULL

0120 VISUAL — HUMAN SKULL

0121 VISUAL — ROTTING CORPSE

0122 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — DEATH

0123 VISUAL — ROTTING CORPSE

0124 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — DEATH

Looking up from the print-out, Klinger said, “Do you mean that death is as effective as sex in subliminal persuasion?”

“Nearly so, yes. In advertising, subliminals can be used to establish the same sort of motivational equation with death as with sex. According to Wilson Bryan Key, who wrote a book about the nature of subceptive manipulation a few years back, the first use of death images might have come in a Calvert Whiskey ad that appeared in a number of magazines in 1971. Since then hundreds of death symbols have become standard tools of the major ad agencies.”

Putting down the second print-out, the general said, “What about the third stage? What was hidden in the film you showed them on the third night?”

Salsbury had another length of computer paper. “In the beginning, this one just reinforces and strengthens the messages and effects of the first two films. It’s broken down into tenths of seconds in some places because by this time the subjects are primed for faster input, rapid-fire commands. Like the others, it really begins with the second minute.”

0060 00 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0061 00 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0061 05 VISUAL — PENIS EJACULATING

0062 00 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0062 05 THIS LEGEND — OBEDIENCE TO THE KEY — SATISFACTION

0063 00 VISUAL — WOMAN WEEPING

0063 03 VISUAL — MAN WEEPING

0063 06 VISUAL — WOLF’S FACE, SNARLING

0063 09 VISUAL — SCORPION STINGING A MOUSE

0064 02 VISUAL–COFFIN

0064 05 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — DEATH

0065 00 VISUAL — WOMAN KISSING PENIS

0065 05 VISUAL — PENIS SLIDING BETWEEN WOMAN’S BREASTS

0065 08 VISUAL — PENIS ENTERING VAGINA

0066 00 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — FREEDOM FROM FAILURE

0066 05 VISUAL — SEVERED, BLOODY HUMAN ARM

0066 08 VISUAL — ROTTING CORPSE

Farther on, both the tempo and the emotional impact of the images increased drastically:

0800 00 VISUAL — HUMAN HEAD WITH GUNSHOT WOUND

0800 02 VISUAL — DEAD VIETNAMESE BABY

0800 04 VISUAL — MAGGOTS IN PIECE OF BEEF

0800 06 VISUAL — RAT’S FACE, SNARLING

0800 07 VISUAL — WOLF’S FACE, SNARLING

0800 08 VISUAL–COFFIN

0600 09 VISUAL — MAGGOTS IN PIECE OF BEEF

0801 00 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL TO OBEY THE KEY — DEATH

0801 02 VISUAL — ERECT PENIS

0801 04 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

0801 06 VISUAL — TONGUE ON CLITORIS

0801 08 VISUAL — WOMAN KISSING PENIS

0801 09 VISUAL — PENIS IN VAGINA

0802 00 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S PUBIC HAIR

0802 01 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION TO THE KEY — YOUR GREATEST DESIRE

Much farther on, faster and faster:

2400 00 VISUAL — DEAD BABY’S FACE, CLOSE — UP

2400 01 VISUAL — MAGGOTS IN HORSE MANURE

2400 02 THIS LEGEND — REFUSE THE KEY: DEATH

2400 03 VISUAL — MAN FINGERING CLITORIS

2400 04 VISUAL — WOMAN LICKING PENIS

2400 05 THIS LEGEND — SUBMIT TO THE KEY: HAPPINESS

2400 06 VISUAL — STEAMING ENTRAILS OF COW

2400 07 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL: PAlN

2400 08 THIS LEGEND-REFUSAL: DEATH

2400 09 VISUAL — EJACULATION INTO WOMAN’S MOUTH

2401 00 VISUAL — WOMAN’S FACE EXPRESSING ECSTASY

2401 01 THIS LEGEND_ — SUBMISSION: HAPPINESS

2401 02 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION: BLISS

Eventually, there was less time given to the motivating images and more to the direct commands:

3600 00 VISUAL — MAGGOTS IN PIECE OF BEEF

3600 01 THIS LEGEND — REFUSAL: DEATH

3600 02 VISUAL — DEAD CAT

3600 03 THIS LEGEND-OBEY THE KEY

3600 04 THIS LEGEND — OBEY, OBEY, OBEY

3600 05 VISUAL — WOMAN LICKING PENIS

3600 06 THIS LEGEND — SUBMISSION: LIFE

3600 0? THIS LEGEND — OBEY THE KEY

3600 08 VISUAL — EJACULATION ON WOMAN’S THIGH

3600 09 THIS LEGEND — OBEY THE KEY

3600 10 THIS LEGEND — LIFE, LIFE, LIFE

“That pace is maintained straight through to the end of the film,” Salsbury said. “During the last fifteen minutes, while all of this sex and death input continues, the concept of the key-lock code phrases is also introduced and implanted permanently in the viewer’s deep subconscious mind.”

“That’s all there is to it?”

“Thanks to the drug that primes them for the subliminals— yes, that’s all there is to it.”

“And they don’t realize they’ve seen any of it.”

“If they did know, the program would have no effect on them. It has to speak solely to the subconscious in order to pass the natural reasoning ability of the conscious mind.”

Klinger pulled the command chair away from the console and sat down. His left hand was curled in his lap. It was so matted with black hair that it reminded Salsbury of a sewer rat. The general petted it with his other hand while he considered the print-outs he had just seen. At last he said, “Our three mercenaries. When did they complete the third stage of the program?”

“Thirty days ago. I’ve been observing them and testing their submissiveness for the past few weeks.”

“Any of them react at all as Kingman did?”

“They all had bad dreams,” Saisbury said. “Probably about what they had seen on the rheostatic screen. None of them could recall. Furthermore, they all had severe night chills and mild nausea. But they lived.”

“Encountered any other problems?”

“None.”

“No weak spots in the program? No moments when they refused to obey you?”

“None at all, so far. In a few minutes, after we’ve put them to the ultimate test, we’ll know whether or not we have absolute control of them. If not, I’ll start over. If we do — champagne.”

Klinger sighed. “I suppose this is something we have to know. I suppose this last test is entirely necessary.”

“Entirely.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Weren’t you an officer in Vietnam?”

“What’s that got to do with this?”

“You’ve sent men to die before.”

Grimacing, Klinger said, “But always with honor. Always with honor. And there’s sure as hell no honor in what’s going to happen here.”

Honor, Salsbury thought acidly. You’re as big an idiot as Leonard. There isn’t any heaven, and there’s no such thing as honor. All that counts is getting what you want. You know that and I know that and even Leonard, when he’s humbled Over his fruit cup at a White House prayer breakfast with Billy Graham and the President, knows that — but I’m the only one of us who will admit it to himself.

Getting to his feet, Klinger said, “Okay. Let’s finish this. Where are they?”

“In the next room. Waiting.”

“They know what they’re going to do?”

“No.” Salsbury went to his desk, thumbed a button on the

intercom, and spoke into the wire grid. “Rossner, Holbrook, and Picard. Come in now. We’re ready for you.”

A few seconds later the door opened, and three men filed inside.

“Co to the center of the room,” Salsbury said.

They did as he directed.

“You’ve already opened them with the code phrase?” Klinger asked.

“Before you came.”

The first of them, in spite of the fact that he was in his late thirties or early forties, looked like a dangerous street-corner punk. Slim but hard and wiry. Five feet ten. Dark complexion. Dark brown hair combed straight back and graying at the temples. A way of standing with his feet apart and most of his weight on his toes so that he was always prepared to move and move quickly. His face was pinched, his eyes a bit too close together, his lips thin and grayish-pink above a pointed chin.

“This is Rossner,” Salsbury told Klinger. “Glenn Rossner. American. He’s been a free-lance soldier for sixteen years.”

“Hello,” Rossner said.

“None of you is to speak unless spoken to,” Salsbury said. “Is that understood?”

Three voices: “Yes.”

The second man was approximately the same age as the first; otherwise, he could not have been less like Rossner. Six feet two. Husky. Fair complexion. Reddish-blond hair cropped close to his head. A broad face. Heavy jowls. His stem expression had been held for so many years that it seemed graven in his flesh. He looked like the sort of father who made arbitrary rules, used corporal punishment with a child at least twice a week, talked tough, acted bullheaded, and turned sons like Glenn Rossner into street-corner punks.

Salsbury said, “This is Peter Holbrook. He’s British. He’s been a mercenary for twenty years, ever since he was twenty-two.”

The last man was no older than thirty, and he was the only one of the three who could be called handsome. Six feet. Lean

and muscular. Thick brown hair. A broad brow. Peculiar green-gray eyes with long lashes that any woman would have been proud to have for her own. Very rectangular features and an especially strong jaw line and chin. He somewhat resembled the young Rex Harrison.

“Michel Picard,” Salsbury said. “French. Speaks fluent English. He’s been a mercenary for four years.”

“Which will it be?” Klinger asked.

“Picard, I think.”

“Let’s get on with it, then.”

Saisbury turned to Rossner and said, “Glenn, there’s a folded canvas drop cloth on my desk. Bring it here.”

Rossner went to the desk, came back with the cloth.

“Peter, you help him unfold it on the floor.”

A minute later the nine-foot-square canvas sheet was spread out in the middle of the room.

“Michel, stand in the middle of the cloth.” The Frenchman obeyed.

“Michel, what am I?”

“You are the key.”

“And what are you?”

“I am the lock.”

“You will do what I tell you to do.” “Yes. Of course,” Picard said.

“Relax, Michel. You are very relaxed.” “Yes. I feel fine.”

“You are very happy.”

Picard smiled.

“You will remain happy, regardless of what happens to you in the next few minutes. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“You will not attempt to stop Peter and Glenn from carrying out the orders I give them, regardless of what those orders are. Is that understood?”

"Yes."

Taking a three-foot length of heavy nylon cord from a pocket of his white laboratory smock, Salsbury said, “Peter, take this.

Slip it about Michel’s neck as if you were going to strangle him — but proceed no further than that.”

Holbrook stepped behind the Frenchman and looped the cord around his throat.

“Michel, are you relaxed?”

“Oh, yes. Quite relaxed.”

“Your hands are at your sides now. You will keep them at your sides until I tell you to move them.”

Still smiling, Picard said, “All right.”

“You will smile as long as you are able to smile.”

“Yes.”

“And even when you are no longer able to smile, you’ll know this is for the best.”

Picard smiled.

“Glenn, you will observe. You will not become involved in the little drama these two are about to act out.”

“I won’t become involved,” Rossner said.

“Peter, you will do what I tell you.” The big man nodded. “Without hesitation.” “Without hesitation.” “Strangle Michel.”

If the Frenchman’s smile slipped, it was only by the slightest fraction.

Then Holbrook jerked on both ends of the cord.

Picard’s mouth flew open. He seemed to be trying to scream, but he had no voice. He began to gag.

Although Holbrook was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, Salsbury could see the muscles bunching and straining in his thick arms.

Each desperate breath that Picard drew produced a thin, rattling wheeze. His eyes bulged. His face was flushed.

“Pull tighter,” Salsbury told Holbrook.

The Englishman obliged. A fierce grin, not of humor but of effort, seemed to transform his face into a death’s head.

Picard fell against Holbrook.

Holbrook stepped back.

Picard went to his knees.

His hands were still at his sides. He was making no effort to save himself.

“Jesus jump to hell,” Klinger said, amazed, numbed, unable to speak above a whisper.

Shuddering, convulsing, Picard lost control of his bladder and bowels.

Salsbury was pleased that he had thought to provide the canvas dropcloth.

Seconds later Holbrook stepped away from Picard, his task completed. The garrote had made deep, angry red impressions in the palms of his hands.

Salsbury took another length of cord from another pocket in his smock and gave it to Rossner. “Do you know what that is, Glenn?”

“Yes.” He had watched impassively as Holbrook murdered the Frenchman.

“Glenn, I want you to give the cord to Peter.” Without even pausing to think about it, Rossner placed the second garrote in the Englishman’s hands.

“Now turn your back to Peter.”

Rossner turned.

“Are you relaxed, Glenn?”

“Relax. Be calm. Don’t worry about anything at all. That’s an order.”

The lines in Rossner’s face softened.

“How do you feel, Glenn?”

“Relaxed.”

“Good. You won’t try to keep Peter from obeying the orders I give him, regardless of what those orders are.”

“I won’t interfere,” Rossner said.

Salsbury turned to the Englishman. “Loop that cord around Glenn’s neck as you did with Michel.”

With an expert flip and twist of the garrote, Holbrook was in position. He waited for orders.

“Glenn,” Salsbury said, “are you tense?”

“No. I’m relaxed.”

“That’s fine. Just fine. You will continue to be relaxed. Now, I’m going to tell Peter to kill you — and you are going to permit him to do that. Is that clear?”

"Yes. I understand.” His placid expression didn’t waver.

Don t you want to live?

“Yes. Yes, I want to live.”

“Then why are you willing to die?”

“I–I—” He looked confused.

“You are willing to die because refusal to obey the key means pain and death anyway. Isn’t that right, Glenn?”

“That’s right.”

Salsbury watched the two men closely for signs of panic. There were none. Nor even any of stress.

The stench from Michel Picard’s fouled body was nearly overpowering and getting worse.

Rossner surely knew what was about to happen to him. He had seen Michel die, had been told he would die in the same way. Yet he stood unmoving, apparently unafraid.

He was willing to commit what amounted to suicide rather than disobey the key. In fact disobedience was literally inconceivable to him.

“Total control,” the general said. “Yet they don’t look or behave like zombies.”

“Because they aren’t. There’s nothing supernatural involved. Just the ultimate in behavior modification techniques.” Salsbury was elated. “Peter, give me the cord. Thank you. You have both done well. Exceptionally well. Now, I want you to wrap Michel’s body in the canvas and move it to the next room. Wait there until I have additional orders for you.”

As if they were a pair of ordinary laborers talking about how to move a load of bricks from here to there, Rossner and Holbrook quickly discussed the job at hand. When they had decided on the best way to roll and carry the corpse, they set to work.

“Congratulations,” Klinger said. He was perspiring. Cool, dry, steady-eyed Ernst Klinger was sweating like a pig.

What do you think of the computer lights now? Salsbury

wondered. Do they look as Christmasy as they did ten minutes ago?

The computer room smelled of lemons. Salsbury had used an aerosol spray to get rid of the odor of feces and urine.

He took a bottle of whiskey from his desk drawer and poured himself a shot to celebrate.

Klinger had a double shot to steady his nerves. When he had tossed it back he said, “And now what?”

“The field test.”

“You’ve mentioned that before. But why? Why can’t we go ahead with the Middle East plan as Leonard outlined it in Tahoe, nearly two years ago? We know the drug works, don’t we? And we know the subliminals work.”

“I achieved the desired results with Holbrook, Rossner, and poor Picard,” Salsbury said, sipping his whiskey. “But it doesn’t necessarily follow that everyone will react as they have. I can’t possibly have complete confidence in the program until I’ve treated and observed and tested a few hundred subjects of both sexes and of all ages. Furthermore, our three mercenaries were treated and responded in controlled lab situations. Before we can take the extraordinary risks involved with something like the Middle East plan — where we’ve got to create a new subliminal series for another culture and in another language—. we’ve simply got to know what the results will be in the field.”

Klinger poured himself another shot of whiskey. As he lifted the glass to his lips, a look of fear flitted across his face. It lasted no more than a second or two. Pretending to be thinking about the field test, he stared at the liquor in his glass and then at the bottle on the desk and then at Salsbury’s glass.

Laughing, Salsbury said, “Don’t worry, Ernst. I wouldn’t slip the drug into my own Jack Daniels. Besides, you’re not a potential subject. You’re my partner.”

Klinger nodded. Nevertheless, he put his glass down without tasting the whiskey. “Where would you run a field test like this?”

“Black River, Maine. It’s a small town near the Canadian border.”

“Why there?”

Salsbury went to the nearest programming console and typed out an order to the computer. As he typed he said, “Two months ago I drew a list of the basic requirements for the ideal test site.”

All of the screens began to present the same information:

KEY/LOCK FIELD TEST DATA, AS FOLLOWS:

1A. SITE SHOULD BE SMALL TOWN, YET PROVIDE SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF SUBJECTS FOR STATISTICAL ACCURACY

1B. BLACK RIVER, MAINE — POPULATION 402 LUMBER CAMP — POPULATION 188

ADDITIONAL POPULATION WITHIN 5 MILES — NONE

“Lumber camp?” Klinger asked.

“It’s a company town for Big Union Supply. Nearly everyone in Black River works for Big Union or services the people who do. The company maintains a full-scale camp — barracks, mess hail, recreation facilities, the whole works — near their planned forests for unmarried loggers who don’t want to go to the expense of renting a room or an apartment in the village.”

2A. SITE SHOULD BE GEOGRAPHICALLY ISOLATED BY CURRENT SOCIAL STANDARDS

2B. FIRST NEAREST TOWN TO BLACK RIVER—30 MILES

SECOND NEAREST TOWN TO BLACK RIVER—62 MILES

LAND ROUTES TO BLACK RIVER—1 STATE HIGHWAY, 2—LANE

— 1 RAILROAD LINE, ONLY INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC

RIVER ROUTES TO BLACK RIVER — RIVER NAVIGABLE, NO REGULAR TRAFFIC

AIRFIELD FACILITIES AT BLACK RIVER — NONE

3A. SITE SHOULD BE WITHIN RECEPTION RANGE OF ONE OR MORE TELEVISION STATIONS

3B. STATIONS RECEIVED IN BLACK RIVER—1 AMERICAN

1 CANADIAN

“There’s an interesting bit of additional data that goes with that one,” Salsbury said. “The American station is owned by a subsidiary of Futurex. It plays a lot of old movies at night and on weekends. We’ll be able to get copies of the station’s program schedules well in advance. We can prepare subliminally augmented prints of the movies they’re going to show and switch those for the original prints in the station’s film library.”

“That’s a bit of luck.”

“Saves us some time. Otherwise, Futurex would have had to acquire one of the stations, and that could take years.”

“But how can you be certain the people in Black River will watch these movies you’ve doctored?”

“They’re going to be inundated with subliminals in a variety of media that will command them to watch. For instance, the Dawson Foundation for Christian Ethics will run dozens of public service commercials on both the Canadian and American stations, two days in advance of the movies. Each of these commercials will harbor very strong subliminal commands directing the people in town and in the lumber camp to tune in at the right time on the right channel. We’ll also do direct mail advertising for several of Leonard’s companies — as a means of getting even more subceptive messages to them. Everyone in town will receive ads in the mail and some free gifts like soap samples, shampoo samples, and free rolls of photographic film. The advertisements and the samples will be packaged in wrappers rich in subliminal commands to watch.a certain television station at a certain hour on a certain day. Even if the subject throws the piece of mail away without opening it, he’ll be affected, because the envelopes will also be printed over with subliminal messages. The major magazines and newspapers entering Black River during the period of programming will carry ads full of subceptive commands that direct the people to watch the movies.” He was getting a bit breathless in his recital. “A motion picture theater could not ordinarily prosper in a town the size of Black River. But Big Union runs one as a service to the town. During the summer, every day but Sunday, there’s a matinee show for children. The prints of the films shown at those matinees will be our prints, with subliminals urging the children to watch the television movies that will contain the key-lock program. All radio stations reaching the area will carry’ special thirty-second spot ads, hundreds of them, with subaudial subliminal directives. These account for only half our methods. By the time all of this washes through the community, everyone will be in front of a television set at the right time.”

“What about the people who don’t have television sets?” Klinger asked.

“There’s not much to do in a place as isolated as Black River,” Salsbury said. “The recreation hall in the camp has ten sets. Virtually everyone in town owns a set. Those who don’t will be directed, by the first wave of preliminary subliminals, to watch the movies at a friend’s house. Or with a relative or neighbor.”

For the first time, Klinger looked at Salsbury with respect. “Incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“What about the drug? How will that be introduced?”

Salsbury finished his whiskey. He felt wonderful. “There are only two sources of food and beverage within the site. The lumber camp men get what they want from the mess hall. In town everyone buys from Edison’s General Store. Edison has no competition. He even supplies the town’s only diner. Now, both the mess hall and the general store receive their goods from the same food wholesaler in Augusta.”

“Ahhh,” the general said. He smiled.

“It’s a perfect commando operation for Holbrook and Rossner. They can break into the wholesaler’s warehouse at night and quickly contaminate several different items set aside for shipment to Black River.” He pointed to the cathode-ray tubes where the list of requirements for an ideal site was being reprinted. “Number four.”

Klinger looked at the screen to his left.

4A. SITE SHOULD HAVE RESERVOIR THAT SERVES NO LESS THAN

90 PERCENT OF TOTAL POPULATION

4B. BLACK RIVER RESERVOIR SERVES—100 PERCENT OF TOWN RESIDENTS

— 100 PERCENT OF LUMBER

CAMP RESIDENTS

“Ordinarily, in a backwoods village like this,” Salsbury said, “each house would have its own fresh-water well. But the mill needs a reservoir for industrial purposes, so the town benefits.”

“How did you choose Black River? Where did you learn all of this stuff?”

Salsbury depressed a tab on the programming keyboard and cleared the screen. “In 1960, Leonard bankrolled a company named Statistical Profiles Incorporated. It does all the marketing research for his other companies — and for companies he doesn’t own. It pays for a trunk line to the Census Bureau data banks. \Ve used Statistical Profiles to run a search for the ideal test site. Of course, they didn’t know why we were interested in a town that met these particular requirements.”

Frowning, the general said, “How many people at Statistical Profiles were involved in the search?”

“Two,” Salsbury said. “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry. They’re both scheduled to die in accidents well before we begin the field test.”

“I suppose we’ll send Rossner and Holbrook to contaminate the reservoir.”

“Then we get rid of them.”

The general raised his bushy eyebrows. “Kill them?”

“Or order them to commit suicide.”

“Why not just tell them to forget everything they’ve done, to wipe it from their minds?”

“That might save them from prosecution if things went badly wrong. But it wouldn’t save us. We can’t wipe from our minds all memory of what we had them do. If problems develop with the field test, serious problems that throw our entire Operation in the garbage, and if it turns out that Rossner and Holbrook were seen at the reservoir or left any clues behind—

well, we don’t want the authorities to connect us with Glenn and Peter.”

“What problems could arise that would be that serious?”

“Anything. Nothing. I don’t know.”

After he bad thought about it for a while, Klinger said, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“I know I am.”

“Have you set a date yet? For the field test?”

“We should be ready by August,” Salsbury said.

Friday, August 26, 1977

TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT. Since his experience with Brenda Mackim on Monday,

Salsbury had been able to resist temptation. At any time he could have taken full control of another good-looking woman, could have raped her and erased all memory of the act from her mind. He took strength from the knowledge that the bitches were his for the asking. Whenever he could honestly conclude that the field test was a smashing success, and that no danger of discovery existed, he would screw every one of them that he wanted. The bitches. Animals. Little animals. Dozens of them. All of them. Because he knew the future held an almost endless orgy for him, be was able to cop; if only temporarily, with his desire. He went from house to house, using the key-lock code phrase, interviewing his subjects, observing and testing. Denying himself. Working hard. Doing his job. So strict with himself. He was proud of his will power.

This morning his will power shattered. For the past four nights, his sleep had been disturbed by grotesque dreams that featured his mother and Miriam and sudden violence and blood and an eerie, indescribable atmosphere of perverted sex. When he came awake this morning, shouting and flailing at the bedclothes, he thought of Emma Thorp — deep cleavage in an orange sweater — and she seemed to him like an antidote for the poisons that had churned through him while he slept he had to have her, was going to have her, today, soon, and to hell with self-denial.

The smooth stream of power in him was again transformed into a rhythmic, alternating current, crackling across countless arcs, a hundred million synapses. His thoughts ricocheted with great energy from one subject to another, submachine-gun thoughts: tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat

At 7:45 he left Pauline Vicker’s rooming house and went to the cafe on the square.

The sky was cloudy, the air humid.

At 8:25 he finished breakfast and left the cafe.

At 8:40 he reached the Thorps’ place, the Last house on Union Road, next to the river.

He rang the doorbell twice.

The chief of police himself answered. He hadn’t gone to work yet. Good. Wonderful.

Salsbury said, “I am the key.”

“I am the lock.”

“Let me in.”

Bob Thorp stepped out of his way, let him by, then closed the door after him.

“Is your wife here?” “Yes.”

“Your son?”

“He’s here too.”

“Anyone else?”

“Just you and me.” “Your son’s name?” “Jeremy.”

“Where are they?” “In the kitchen.”

“Take me to them.” Thorp hesitated.

“Take me to them!”

They went along a narrow but brightly papered hallway.

The kitchen was modem and stylish. Mediterranean cupboards and fixtures. Coppertone refrigerator and upright freezer. A microwave oven. A television set was suspended from the

ceiling in one corner and angled toward the big round table by the window.

Jeremy was at the table, eating eggs and toast, facing the hall. To the boy’s right, Emma sat with one elbow on the table, drinking a glass of orange juice. She was wearing a blue, floor-length corduroy housecoat. Her hair was as golden and full as he remembered it. As she turned to ask her husband who had rung the bell, he saw that her lovely face was still soft with sleep — and for some reason that aroused him.

She said, “Bob? Who’s this?”

Salsbury said, “I am the key.”

Two voices responded.

At 8:55, making the weekly trip into town to lay in a fresh supply of perishables, Paul Annendale braked at the end of the gravel road, looked both ways, then turned left Onto Main Street.

From the back seat Mark said, “Don’t take me all the way to Sam’s place. Let me out at the square.”

Looking in the rearview mirror, Paul said, “Where are you going?”

Mark patted the large canary cage that stood on the seat beside him. The squirrel danced about and chattered. “I want to take Buster to see Jeremy.”

Swiveling around in her seat and looking back at her brother, Rya said, “Why don’t you admit that you don’t go over to their house to see Jeremy? We all know you’ve got a crush on Emma.”

“Not so!” Mark said in such a way that he proved absolutely that what she said was true.

“Oh, Mark,” she said exasperatingly.

“Well, it’s a lie,” Mark insisted. “I don’t have a crush on Emma. I’m not some sappy kid.”

Rya turned around again.

“No fights,” Paul said. “We’ll leave Mark off at the square with Buster, and there will be no fights.”

* * *

Salsbury said, “Do you understand that, Bob?”

“I understand.”

“You will not speak unless spoken to. And you will not move from that chair unless I tell you to move.”

“I won’t move.”

“But you’ll watch.”

“I’ll watch.”

“Jeremy?”

“I’ll watch too.”

“Watch what?” Salsbury asked.

“Watch you — screw her.”

Dumb cop. Dumb kid.

He stood by the sink, leaned against the counter. “Come here, Emma.”

She got up. Came to him.

“Take off your robe.”

She took it off. She was wearing a yellow bra and yellow panties with three embroidered red flowers at the left hip.

“Take off your bra.”

Her breasts fell free. Heavy. Beautiful.

“Jeremy, did you know your mother looked so nice?”

The boy swallowed hard. “No.”

Thorp’s hands were on the table. They had curled into fists.

“Relax, Bob. You’re going to enjoy this. You’re going to love it. You can’t wait far me to have her.”

Thorp’s hands opened. He leaned back in his chair. Touching her breasts, staring into her shimmering green eyes, Salsbury had a delightful idea. Marvelous. Exciting. He said, “Emma, I think this would be more enjoyable if you resisted me a bit. Not seriously, you understand. Not physically. Just keep asking me not to hurt you. And cry.”

She stared at him.

“Could you cry for me, Emma?”

“I’m so scared.”

“Good! Excellent! I didn’t tell you to relax, did I? You should be scared. Damned scared. And obedient. Are you frightened enough to cry, Emma?”

She shivered. “You’re very firm.” She said nothing. “Cry for me.” “Bob..

“He can’t help you.” He squeezed her breasts. “My son.

“He’s watching. It’s all right if he watches. Didn’t he suck these when he was a baby?”

Tears formed at the corners of her eyes.

“Fine,” he said. “Oh, that’s sweet.”

Mark could only carry the squirrel and the cage for fifteen or twenty steps at a time. Then he had to put it down and shake his arms to get the pain out of them.

“Cup your breasts with your hands.” She did as she was told.

She wept.

“Pull on the nipples.”

“Don’t make me do this.”

“Come on, little animal.”

At first, upset by all the jerking and shaking and swinging of his cage, Buster ran in tight little circles and squealed like an injured rabbit.

“You sound like a rabbit,” Mark told him during one of the rest stops.

Buster squealed, unconcerned with his image.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re not a dumb bunny. You’re a squirrel.”

In front of Edison’s store, as he was closing the car door, Paul Saw something gleam on the back seat. “What’s that?”

Rya was still in the car, undoing her safety belt. “What’s what?”

“On the back seat. It’s the key to Buster’s cage.”

Rya squirmed into the back seat. “I’d better take it to him.”

“He won’t need it,” Paul said. “Just don’t lose it.”

“No,” she said. “I’d better take it to him. He’ll want to let Buster out so he can show off for Emma.”

“Who are you — Cupid?”

She grinned at him.

“Unzip my trousers.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Do it!”

She did.

“Enjoying yourself, Bob?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Dumb cop.”

By the time he reached the edge of the Thorp property, Mark had found a better way to grip the cage. The new method didn’t strain his arms so much, and he didn’t have to stop every few yards to rest.

Buster had become so upset by the erratic movement of his pen that he had stopped squealing. He was gripping the bars with all four feet, hanging on the side of the cage, very still and quiet, frozen as if he were in the woods and had just seen a predator creeping through the brush.

“They’ll be eating breakfast,” Mark said. “We’ll go around to the back door.”

“Squeeze it.” She did.

“Hot?”

“Yes.”

“Little animal.”

“Don’t hurt me.” “Is it hard?”

“Yes.” Crying.

“Bend over.”

Sobbing, shaking, begging him not to hurt her, she did as she had been told. Her face glistened with tears. She was almost hysterical. So beautiful…

Mark was passing the kitchen window when he heard the woman crying. He stopped and listened closely to the broken words, the pitiful pleas that were punctuated by long sobs. He knew at once that it was Emma.

The window was only two feet away, and it seemed to beckon him. He couldn’t resist. He went to it.

The curtains were drawn shut, but there was a narrow gap between them. He pressed his face to the windowpane.

Sixteen Days Earlier:

Wednesday, August 10, 1977

AT TRREE O’CLOCK in the morning, Salsbury joined Dawson in the first-floor study of the Greenwich house.

“Have they begun already?”

“Ten minutes ago,” Dawson said.

“What’s coming in?”

“Exactly what we’d hoped for.”

Four men sat on straight-backed chairs around a massive walnut desk, one at each side of it. They were all household servants: the butler, the chauffeur, the cook, and the gardener. Three months ago the entire staff of the house had been given the drug and treated to the subliminal program; and there was no longer any need to hide the project from them. On occasion, as now, they made very useful tools. There were four telephones on the desk, each connected to an infinity transmitter. The men were referring to lists of Black River telephone numbers, dialing, listening for a few seconds or a minute, hanging up and dialing again.

The infinity transmitters — purchased in Brussels for $2,500 each — allowed them to eavesdrop on most of the bedrooms of Black River in perfect anonymity. With an IF hooked to a telephone, they could dial any number they wished, long distance or local, without going through an operator and without leaving a record of the call in the telephone company’s computer. An

electric tone oscillator deactivated the bell on the phone being called — and simultaneously opened that receiver’s microphone. The people at the other end of the line heard no ringing and were not aware that they were being monitored. These four servants were able, therefore, to hear anything said in the room where the distant telephone was placed.

Salsbury went around the desk, leaned down and listened at each earpiece.

“. nightmare. So vivid. I can’t remember what it was, but it scared the hell out of me. Look how I’m shaking.”

so cold. You too? V/hat the devil?” “…feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“… all right? Maybe we should call Doc Troutman.”

And around again:

“…something we ate?”

“…flu. But at this time of year?”

“…first thing in the morning. God, if I don’t stop shaking, I’ll rattle myself to pieces!”

“…running with sweat but cold.”

Dawson tapped Salsbury on the shoulder. “Are you going to stay here and watch over them?”

“I might as well.”

“Then I’ll go to the chapel for a while.”

He was wearing pajamas, a dark blue silk robe, and soft leather slippers. At this hour, with rain falling outside, it didn’t seem likely that even a religious fanatic of Dawson’s bent would get dressed and go out to church.

Salsbury said, “You’ve got a chapel in the house?”

“I have a chapel in each of my residences,” Dawson said proudly. “I wouldn’t build a house without one. It’s a way of thanking Him for all that He’s done for me. After all, it’s be cause of Him that I have the houses in the first place.” Dawson Went to the door, paused, looked back, and said, “I’ll thank Him for Our success and pray for more of the same.”

“Say one for me,” Salsbury said with sarcasm he knew would escape the man.

Frowning, Dawson said, “I don’t believe in that.”

“In what?”

“I can’t pray for your soul. And I can only pray for your success so far as it supports my own. I don’t believe one man should pray for another. The salvation of your soul is your own concern — and the most vital of your life. The notion that you can buy indulgences or have someone else — a priest, anyone else

— pray for you —. Well, that strikes me as Roman Catholic. I’m not Roman Catholic.”

Salsbury said, “Neither am I.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Leonard said. He smiled warmly, one Pope-hater to another, and went out.

A maniac, Salsbury thought. What am I doing in partnership with that maniac?

Disturbed by his own question, he went around the desk again, listening to the voices of the people in Black River. Gradually he forgot about Dawson and regained his confidence. It was going to work out as planned. He knew it. He was sure of it. What could possibly go wrong?

Friday, August 26, 1977

RYA FLUNG THE CAGE KEY high into the air and a few feet ahead of her. She ran forward as if she were playing center field, and she caught the golden “ball.” Then she flipped it up and ran after it again.

At the corner of Main Street and Union Road, she tossed the key once more — and missed. She heard the metal edge ring as it struck the sidewalk behind her, but when she turned she couldn’t see the trinket anywhere.

Emma Thorp bent over and braced her arms on the kitchen table. She accidentally knocked aside an empty coffee cup. It fell off the table and shattered on the tile floor.

Kicking the fragments out of his way, Salsbury stepped in behind her and with both hands stroked the graceful curve of her back.

Bob watched, smiling primly.

Jeremy watched, amazed.

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat: the power, Miriam, his mother, the whores, Dawson, Klinger, women, vengeance —. Ricocheting thoughts.

She looked over her shoulder at him.

“I’ve always wanted one of you like this.” He giggled. He could not suppress it. He felt good. “Scared of me. Of me!”

Her face was pale and streaked with tears. Her eyes were wide.

Lovely,” he said.

“I don’t want you touching me.”

“Miriam used to say that. But with Miriam it was an order. She never begged.” He touched her.

She was covered with gooseflesh.

“Don’t stop crying,” he said. “I like you crying.”

She wept, not quietly but uncontrollably and unashamedly, as if she were a child — or as if she were in agony.

As he prepared to enter her, he heard someone shout just beyond the window. Startled, he said, “Who—”

The kitchen door crashed open. A boy, no older than Jeremy Thorp, came inside, shouting at the top of his voice and wind-milling his thin arms.

At the edge of the Thorp property, Rya tossed the key and missed it again.

Two errors out of forty catches isn’t so bad, she thought. In fact that’s major league talent. Rya Annendale of the Boston Red Sox! Didn’t sound bad. Not bad at all. Rya Annendale of the Pittsburgh Pirates! That was even better.

This time she saw where the key fell in the grass. She went straight to it and picked it up.

When the door flew open and the boy charged in like a dangerous animal breaking free of its cage, Salsbury stepped away from the woman and pulled up his trousers.

“You let go of her!”

The boy collided with him.

“Get out of here! Now! Out!”

Under attack, Salsbury staggered backwards. He was strong enough to handle the boy, but he was suffering from surprise and confusion; and he had lost his balance. When he backed into the refrigerator, still trying to button the waistband of his slacks, the boy pummeling him, he realized that it was ridiculous for him, of all people, to retreat. “I am the key.”

The boy hit him. Called him names.

Desperate, Salsbury fought back, seized him by the wrists and struggled with him. “I am the key!”

“Mr. Thorp! Jeremy! Help me!”

“Stay right where you are,” Salsbury told them.

They didn’t move.

He swung the boy around, reversing their positions, and slammed him against the refrigerator. Bottles and cans and jars rattled loudly on the shelves.

Very young children would not have been affected by the subliminal program that had been played for Black River. Below the age of eight, children were not sufficiently aware of death and sex to respond to the motivational equations that the subceptive films established in older individuals. Furthermore, although the vocabulary had been made as simple as possible since the Hoibrook-Rossner-Picard indoctrination, a child had to have at least a third-grade reading ability to be properly impressed by the block-letter messages that established the key-lock code phrases. But this boy was older than eight, and he should respond.

Through clenched teeth Salsbury said, “I’m the key, damn you”

Halfway across the lawn, atop the grape arbor, a robin bounced along the interlocking vines, stopped after every second or third hop, cocked its head, and peered between the leaves. Rya paused to watch him for a moment.

Panic.

He had to guard against panic.

But he had made a fatal mistake, and he might have the power taken away from him.

— No. It was a serious mistake. Granted. Very serious. But not fatal. He must not panic. Keep cool.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The boy squirmed, tried to free himself.

“Where are you from?” Salsbury demanded, gripping him so tightly that he gasped.

The boy kicked him in the shin. Hard.

For an instant Salsbury’s whole world was reduced to a bright

bolt of pain that shot from his ankle to his thigh, coruscated in his bones. Howling, wincing, he almost fell.

‘Wrenching loose, the boy ran toward the sink, away from the table, intent on getting around Salsbury.

Salsbury stumbled after him, cursing. He grabbed at the boy’s shirt, hooked it with his fingers, lost hold of it in the same second, tripped and fell.

If the little bastard gets away.

“Bob!” Panic. “Stop him.” Hysteria. “Kill him. For God’s sake, kill him!”

The canary cage was on the lawn by the kitchen window.

Rya heard Buster chattering — and then she heard someone shouting in the house.

Tat-tat-tat-tat…

Salsbury got up.

Sick. Scared.

The naked woman wept.

Crazily, he thought of the refrain from the rhyme that went with a child’s game that he had once played: all fall down.. all fall down. all fall down…

Thorp blocked the door.

The boy tried to dodge him.

“Kill him”

Thorp caught the intruder and drove him backwards, knocked him against the electric range with devastating force, clutched him by the throat, and pounded his head into the stainless steel brightwork that ringed the four burners. A frying pan fell to the floor with a clang! As if he were a machine, an automaton, Thorp hammered the boy’s head against the metal edge until he felt the skull give way. When blood sprayed across the wall behind the range and streamed from the boy’s nostrils, the big man let go, stepped back as the body crumpled at his feet.

Jeremy was crying.

“Stop that,” Salsbury said sharply.

The boy stopped, reluctantly.

On his way to the bloodied child, Salsbury saw a girl in the open door. She was staring at the blood, and she seemed mesmerizedby the sight. He started toward her.

She looked up, dazed.

“I am the key.”

She turned and fled.

Salsbury ran to the door — but when he got there, she was already gone around the corner of the house, out of sight.