Nobody Gets The Girl (12 page)

"But you did it anyway," said Starkner.
"Can't look back now. We have to trust in the big guy to work
things out."

"I don't believe in God," said Summer,
checking Rail Blade's pulse.

"I was talking about Knowbokov," said
Starkner.

"Pulse is good," said Summer, leaning over
Rail Blade and pressing the stethoscope against her ribs.
"Breathing is steady. Most of her burns are second degree. The best
I can do now is clean and dress them. But she's going to have some
serious pain. I'll start a morphine drip." She gently touched a
bruised knot on Rail Blade's temple. "I'm more worried about this
more than anything. We need to get her to facilities for a CAT scan
or MRI."

"Knowbokov's sending a helicopter," said
Starkner. "She'll get good medical treatment at home. You've been
to the island. Do what you can for now."

As Summer worked, she continued to talk.
"What will my husband say when he learns the truth? My kids?"

"Maybe it won't come to that. Knowbokov can
pull a lot of strings. It happened so early in the morning, how
many people saw it? How many people understood what they saw? I bet
Knowbokov will have this buried and the sod patted down by
lunch."

"Do you know what he does with the
prisoners?" asked Summer.

"No," said Starkner. "What's it matter? How
much worse can it be than being dead?"

"I worry about that sometimes," said Summer.
"I went along with this because I wanted to save lives. But what if
he's using them for some horrible experiments? What else would he
need them for?"

"Not our cow to milk," said Starkner.

Silence followed, as Starkner slung his hefty
frame into a chair and cradled his head in his hands. Summer
continued to work, her lips pursed.

Nobody radioed Dr. Know. "Doc, we need to
talk."

"Has Amelia's condition worsened?" asked Dr.
Know. "She's doing OK, I think. A doctor here named Summer is
treating her. You know her?"

"Summer Pagent. Yes. She assists me in
certain projects."

"These projects involve death-row inmates
coming back to life?"

"No. Their deaths are faked. Summer merely
declares them dead afterwards."

"Uh-huh. And why, pray tell, would you be
doing something like this?"

"These are men whose lives have legally come
to an end. They are society's waste. I recycle them."

"Doc, I doubt you have any idea how sinister
that sounds to me. Am I fighting on the right side here? What kind
of crazy game are you up to?"

"Richard, I have no intention or desire to
keep you in the dark. There are many levels to this, as you put it,
game. When you return to the island, we'll talk. There's no reason
you shouldn't know the whole story"

CHAPTER TEN

THE SECRET ORIGIN OF DR. KNOW

RICHARD PLACED HIS
hand against the
warm glass. Before him, Amelia was suspended in a tube filled with
translucent pink goo. She was awake but couldn't speak, as her
lungs were filled with the fluid. She stared at him, her eyes gray
and hard, her lips thin and tight. It wasn't a look of pain, so
much as a look of contempt. Richard wasn't quite sure what to make
of it.

He left the lab, unsure what to make of
anything he’d witnessed earlier that day. He tried imagining what
good purpose Dr. Know could have for kidnapping death-row inmates,
and was hard-pressed to find an explanation that seemed remotely
ethical. What kind of man was he working for?

He went to the library, and found Katrina
there. He didn't see her much these days, now that she had stopped
attending dinners with her husband and daughters. He hadn't heard
her speak to Paco or anyone else since the episode in the museum.
She seemed a living ghost, just as he was. On the rare occasions he
saw her outside the library, she seemed lost in her own thoughts,
somnambulistic as she wandered through the halls. Presently,
Katrina was reading a book written in an alphabet Richard didn't
recognize. She stared at the text before her for what seemed an
unnaturally long time before her trembling hand turned the
page.

Kneeling before her, Richard said, "I feel so
bad about all this. Like it's my fault. If Dr. Know hadn't tried to
make you see me maybe you could have gone on in whatever passed for
normal in your relationship with him. I'm sorry."

Of course, she didn't acknowledge this. With
a sigh, Richard turned away, distracted by a noise from the
lawn.

Richard walked out onto the balcony. A
helicopter was landing. Something was familiar about it. Then he
realized he had seen this chopper in the background of dozens of
news broadcasts. He wasn't surprised in the least when the
President of the United States emerged from it.

He went back to the library.

"Your husband has powerful friends," said
Richard.

Katrina continued her reading. Richard left
her, curious as to what the President might be doing here. After a
brief search, he found not only the President, but also a dozen
other men in suits seated around a large table. Some looked vaguely
familiar, though no names sprang to mind. He wished he were more
up-to-date on world affairs.

Dr. Know entered the room. The men rose from
their seats.

"Gentlemen," he said. "Thank you for coming.
I know you have many questions about the course of action that we
will be taking to deal with recent events. Rest assured, your
questions will be answered. Rex Monday's little stunt last night is
far from a disaster for our cause. It is, in fact, a wonderful
opportunity. But before we begin our discussion, I ask your
patience. I have a brief matter to attend to."

As he said this, he looked across the room to
Richard.

"Patience?" asked the President. "You have a
lot of gall to ask for our patience. What's so important about this
business of yours?"

"I merely wish to extend private thanks to
someone who provided aid and comfort to my daughter in her time of
need," said Dr. Know, walking toward Richard. "And we both know I
have a surplus of gall."

He placed a hand on Richard's shoulder and
led him from the room.

"Who are those people?" Richard asked.

"Heads of state, captains of industry. What
the press might call world leaders."

"Might call? That's the President in
there!"

"Yes. He's a vital member of my cabinet."

"Your cabinet? What's going on here? Who do
you think you are?"

"Richard, I owe you a debt of gratitude.
Amelia says you roused her from unconsciousness in the middle of a
burning building. You may have saved her life."

"I don't even understand why her life was in
danger. What are you doing kidnapping prisoners? Who was this Rex
Monday and why did Amelia murder him? There's no way to justify
that as an act of self-defense."

"Perhaps not. But it was a defensive act. It
was a blow for the safety and security of the whole world. Alas, it
was also a futile blow. The man beneath that hood has been
identified. His name was Michael Winston, and he went missing from
the campus of the University of North Carolina six months ago. He
was far too young to be the true Rex Monday, though I have no doubt
he was brainwashed to believe every word he said on
television."

"So Amelia killed an innocent man? This is
supposed to reassure me that she was doing the right thing?"

"Richard, allow me to show you
something."

As they spoke, they had walked back into the
mansion's command center. Dr. Know went to his chair in the center
of the room and pressed a button concealed under the armrest. The
floor around the chair began to lower.

"You have a real fetish for this hydraulic
stuff, huh?" said Richard.

They descended several hundred yards down a
steel tube. Richard began to feel claustrophobic.

At last the walls of the tube gave way to
open space. They were in a vast chamber, filled with the sort of
pink goo tubes that Richard had seen in the infirmary. These tubes
held dozens, perhaps hundreds, of men, all sleeping.

"By now," said Dr. Know, "I imagine Sarah has
revealed to you my special ability"

"She says you can read people's minds," said
Richard.

"This is accurate, to a point. On the
subtlest level of consciousness, my mind touches the thoughts of
nearly every other person in this world. I cannot focus on the
direct thoughts of everyone at once, however. So the privacy of the
vast majority of the world's citizens is in no danger. I’ve trained
myself to pay attention to subtle anomalies in people's thoughts,
so I'm aware when truly unusual events are occurring, and are being
witnessed by someone my mind touches. This is how I found you.
Henry and Martha truly believed they were seeing something
supernatural. Scanning the area, I saw you on a television
broadcast, dressed in your pink robe, and thought it strange that
your presence failed to register in the minds of anyone who saw the
broadcast. At first I thought you were perhaps one of Rex Monday's
men, as my mind could not touch yours, and he has somehow perfected
a way to shield his agents' thoughts from me. Only through careful
analysis was I able to piece together the chain of events that led
to your present existence."

"And this explains all these people in tubes
how?"

"Richard, what I'm going to tell you next you
might find morally objectionable. I ask that you approach this with
an open mind."

"Sounds like you're an expert in open
minds."

"Due to your no longer being fully in phase
with our world, your mind is now closed to me, if it makes you feel
any better."

"What might I find objectionable?" Richard
asked.

"I have the ability to enter a person's mind
so thoroughly, their entire personality is subverted. I control
their thoughts."

"That isn't objectionable," said Richard.
"That's flat out repulsive."

"It takes time," said Dr. Know. "Several
weeks often, to suppress someone with a strong ego. But once this
occurs, I control all areas of the brain devoted to conscious
thought. I can't control their bodies, as muscular movement and
balance requires more than the conscious mind. But, I can use the
areas of the brain I do control to work on intellectual
projects."

"So you take death row prisoners, fake their
deaths, slap them into goo tubes, and turn them into external brain
packs?"

"Well summarized," said Dr. Know.

"That's just... monstrous. I mean, I don't
support the death penalty, but death has to be preferable to this.
What gives you the right?"

Dr. Know walked over to the nearest tube. The
man within was small, thin, and bald, his skin covered with
tattooed swastikas.

"This is Thomas Weilder. Twelve years ago, in
celebration of his twentieth birthday, he took the .38 Special his
friends had given him as a gift and tried it out by shooting the
first black man he saw. His aim left something to by desired. He
fired six shots at his victim, only two of which struck, both in
the left thigh. In frustration, he beat the man unconscious with
the butt of his pistol. Then, he locked the man in the trunk of his
car, and kept him there for seven days. The man had stopped
struggling and crying after two. But Thomas waited the extra five
days to make sure."

"So the guy's a racist creep," said Richard.
"It doesn't make what you're doing to him right."

"It's possible I could have stopped him,"
said Dr. Know. "My mind touched his. I also touched Marcus
Jefferson, the man who died so horribly. I sensed the hatred, I
sensed the pain and fear, and I paid it no attention because I
always feel these things. Right now, you can't imagine all the
hate-filled minds I’m in contact with, all the fear and loneliness
and despair I’m witness to. I recoil at these emotions. I cannot
focus on individuals, to bring peace and comfort to their lives.
There is just too much pain in this world to handle on a
person-by-person basis."

Richard was silent. The tortured tone of Dr.
Know's voice revealed the true depth of his sorrow. But could mere
sorrow justify this forest of tubes?

"All the evil in this world," said Dr. Know,
"rests upon my shoulders."

"You aren't to blame for this guy being a
Nazi," said Richard. "But I guess I can see where you're coming
from. I can see why you want to change the world. But there must be
a better way."

"Thomas Weilder's mind, once so filled with
hate, now whirls ceaselessly as it processes the information
flowing in from the AIDS research centers that I fund. Within his
head, I collate and analyze the data."

Dr. Know moved to the next tube. "Morgan
Mathers. A tragic life, filled with abuse from his earliest
childhood. He snapped one day, and seventeen people died before he
turned the gun on himself. It was empty by then, to his dismay. He
welcomed his death sentence, and fought every appeal on his behalf.
Now, his head is filled with numbers. I use his brain to analyze
financial data from around the globe. I create wealth with this
knowledge, and use it to provide funding for dozens of charitable
institutions. Through him, I feed the world."

He moved to the next tube. "Tyrone Adams.
Rapist and thug. Murderer of a dozen men. Inside his skull I keep
track of millions of endangered species and design plans for
habitat protection."

The next. "Martin Banderas. Hitman for a drug
cartel. Thanks to my use of his brain, the cure for most cancers
has perhaps already been discovered. Even now, I’m studying the
test results he’s receiving via electro-retinal stimulation."

"OK," said Richard. "OK. I get the idea. I
still don't get what gives you the right. So you can't stand
feeling people's pain and misery. Wouldn't it be simpler to just
get out of everyone's heads? And what is it with your whole family
anyway? How on Earth did you get such powers?"