Sleepwalk (41 page)

Jed shook his head. “Nothing sounds crazy around here anymore. What happened?”

For a moment Peter hesitated. What, after all, could a teenage kid do? He should go to the police, put the whole thing in the hands of people who would know what to do. But as Jed’s eyes fixed on him, Peter changed his mind. There was a strength in Jed he’d never seen before in someone as young. Quickly he told Jed what had happened.

“The antenna,” Jed said as soon as Peter was finished. “That’s where they’re sending the transmissions from.” His eyes darkened. “And I know where they’ve got Jude too.”

“Then let’s call the police,” Peter said.

Jed seemed to think about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’ll take too much time. Even if they believe us, it’ll be too late. We’ll do it ourselves.”

Without waiting for Peter to argue further, Jed grabbed his jacket and headed out the back door. A second later Peter followed him.

Judith strained against the heavy straps that held her to the bed, her wrists and ankles already abraded from her struggles against the thick leather bonds. From the chair a few feet away, Black-hair watched her
indolently. “It won’t do much good, you know,” he said in that infuriatingly conversational tone. “You might just as well lie there and enjoy yourself until Mr. Kendall gets here.”

Judith wanted to scream, but wasn’t about to give Black-hair the satisfaction.

She didn’t know how long it had been since the two men had appeared at her house and calmly taken her away, a gun in her back, with no one apparently either knowing or caring. She’d known where they were taking her as soon as they started up the road into the canyon. They’d brought her into one of the cabins at The Cottonwoods, tied her up and gagged her. A little while later an orderly had appeared, and, as Judith’s heart pounded with terror, administered a shot to her. She’d expected to fall asleep then, but when nothing happened, her terror only grew as she realized that the shot could have been only one thing—a dose of the micromechanisms that had already been administered to nearly all the teenagers in town.

But finally, as the hours went on, her terror had given way to cold fury, and when Black-hair had at last removed the gag, she’d screamed out at him in rage, not fear.

He’d only chuckled quietly, settling himself back into a chair. “Scream all you want,” he’d told her. “Around here, I guess that’s what people are supposed to do, isn’t it?”

Since then she’d remained silent, but still struggled against the bonds, knowing even as she did that she wasn’t strong enough to break them.

Even if she were, Black-hair was still there, and she had no doubt that if it became necessary, he would kill
her. Indeed, she was certain that he would even take pleasure in the act.

After a while the door opened and Greg Moreland entered the room. Nodding to Black-hair, he came over to the bed and looked down at Judith, his eyes glittering with cold anger.

Judith stopped struggling and glared up at him.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why are you doing this?”

Greg ignored the question. “I want to know where you got that sample of my flu inoculation.”

Judith said nothing.

“Look, Judith,” Greg told her, speaking exactly as if they were conversing at a cocktail party, rather than in a room where she was being held prisoner, “I don’t know how much you’ve discovered about what I’m doing, but I can assure you that at this point, it won’t make any difference. What I want to know from you is how you got your hands on one of our syringes. And you
did
get hold of one of them. There isn’t any other reason why you’d have gone down to the Brandt Institute yesterday.”

Judith’s mind raced. He didn’t
know
. So far, he was still just guessing. If she simply refused to speak—

It was as if Greg had read her mind. “You’ll tell me, you know. The question is whether you tell me now or tomorrow morning.”

Judith’s eyes betrayed the sudden surge of panic that gripped her.

Moreland smiled. “I gather you figured out what was in that shot the orderly gave you a while ago. Actually, I considered having them put some sodium pentothal in it too, but the trouble with that is that you might have slept through the night. And I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the experience of being realigned.”

Judith stared balefully up at Moreland. “Is that what you call murdering people?” she asked, her voice trembling with both fear and anger. “Realigning them?”

Moreland’s voice hardened. “Judith, you haven’t the slightest idea of what it is we’re doing here, but I can assure you that it has nothing whatever to do with killing people.”

Anger overrode fear in Judith now. “Then what happened to Frank Arnold, and Max Moreland, and Reba Tucker?” she demanded.

Greg shrugged as if what Judith was saying had no importance. “You could call them victims of research, I suppose,” he replied.

“Dear God,” Judith breathed. “You’re playing with people, just like you played with your puppy …”

Greg’s face paled. “So Aunt Rita told you about that, did she? She always hated me after that. She always looked at me as if I was some kind of freak. And she wasn’t the only one. She told everyone what I did, you know. That’s why everyone’s always hated me …”

His voice went on and on, but Judith had heard enough to understand the truth.

He was paranoid, certain that everyone in Borrego hated him. And it would have been the same anywhere he’d gone. Everywhere, he would have felt people watching him, listening to him, plotting against him.

But here in Borrego he’d found a way to vent his insane rage, to get even for the imagined hatred he’d felt.

Only when the stream of Greg’s words died away did Judith speak again. “You don’t even know what you’re doing, do you?” she asked.

Greg’s expression hardened, and Judith realized she’d struck a nerve. “You don’t, do you?” she pressed.
“You’re just striking out blindly, seeing what will happen.”

“Don’t pretend to be stupid,” Greg snapped. “You’ve already seen the beginnings of what we’re doing. And if you think about it, you’ll realize that it isn’t so bad. Haven’t you noticed that your classes have been better behaved the last couple of days? And don’t some of your students concentrate on their work more than they used to?”

“They’re like sleepwalkers!” Judith flared. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s destroying their minds.”

“No,” Greg replied. “That’s where you’re wrong. What we’re doing is freeing their minds. By the time we get finished, we’re going to be able to create a population such as the world has never seen before!”

Judith gasped, and suddenly thought she understood the whole thing. “Slaves,” she breathed. “You’re turning people into slaves, aren’t you?”

Greg’s features hardened. “That’s an ugly word, Judith,” he said. He began pacing the floor, then stopped and looked at her again. “You’re a teacher, Judith. It seems to me you, of all people, would be able to see what’s going on in this country. What we’re faced with is economic ruin. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s on the horizon. America simply can’t compete. Our people aren’t well enough educated, and they have no self-discipline. They spend half their time wanting things they can never have, and the other half being miserable about it. Christ, look at this town. Is anyone here really happy? No. They hate the town, they hate their jobs, they hate their whole lives. Well, I’ve figured out a way to change all that. It’s simply a matter of making some adjustments to the brain itself. And what we’re going to wind up with is a whole population that is going to have
powers of concentration such as no one has ever seen before. They’re going to be able to take orders from their managers, and then carry out their jobs with so few mistakes that even the Japanese will sit up and take notice.”

Judith stared up at Greg, almost unable to believe what she was hearing. “But they’re not people,” she said. “For God’s sake, haven’t you even
seen
what you’ve done to them? Gina Alvarez was a bright, vivacious child three days ago. Now she doesn’t speak unless she’s asked a direct question. She doesn’t seem to be interested in doing anything. She just sits and stares!”

Greg Moreland looked at her almost pityingly. “But if you asked her, she’d tell you she was feeling just fine, wouldn’t she?” he demanded. “And that’s the whole point—for the rest of her life, Gina—and all the others—will be happy.”

“Happy?” Judith echoed. “My God, Greg, she won’t be happy—she doesn’t feel anything anymore. You’ve killed her, just like you killed Frank and Max and—” Her voice broke and her body was wracked with a sob she couldn’t control.

Greg Moreland’s lips twisted into a sardonic smile. “Well, that’s a matter of opinion, isn’t it?” he asked. “At any rate, it won’t be much longer until you can experience a realignment for yourself.” Judith shrank back on the bed, and Greg’s smile broadened. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “For most people, it doesn’t seem to be too unpleasant. Nothing more than a bad dream. Except that I expect you’ll be wide awake when it happens. And tomorrow, when I ask you where you got that syringe, you’ll tell me. You’ll
want
to tell me.”

Nodding once more to Black-hair, he walked out into the night.

*  *  *

“That’s it,” Jed said quietly. He brought the truck to a stop a few yards from the antenna on the rim of the canyon. Jed’s first impulse had been to go directly to The Cottonwoods, but Peter had talked him out of it. “If they’ve got Judith, they’ve probably already given her a shot. By now those things will have lodged in her brain, and they can activate them any time. Is there a way we can disable the antenna? If we can get it shut down for a while, at least it’ll buy us some time.”

Now Peter stared through the windshield at the chain-link fence surrounding the antenna. It had an ugly look to it in the silvery light of the moon, though for the moment it seemed totally inactive. Finally Jed opened the door of the truck and got out, Peter following him.

There was a large toolbox in the bed of the truck, and Jed immediately went to it, taking out a hacksaw and a large plastic-handled screwdriver. He and Peter approached the fence.

“Don’t touch it,” Peter warned, remembering the fence that surrounded the Brandt Institute. “It might be electrified.”

Jed stepped forward, and making sure he was touching nothing of the screwdriver except its plastic handle, laid the tool against the fence.

Nothing happened.

Jed shook his head. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s got to be an alarm system.”

Peter frowned. “Maybe they figured an alarm would make it look too important,” he suggested.

Jed shrugged. “Well, there’s only one way to find
out.” Putting the screwdriver in his hip pocket and slipping his right arm through the frame of the hacksaw, he quickly climbed to the top of the fence, swung over the top, then dropped to the other side.

Instantly, a siren began to wail and four bright floodlights came on, wiping away the darkness with a brilliant artificial glare.

“Holy Christ,” Peter swore. “Get out of there, Jed. They’ll have guards up here in a minute!”

But Jed made no move to reclimb the fence. Instead, he moved to the antenna itself, where the PVC pipe that snaked up the canyon wall emerged from the concrete floor of the antenna pad. “We have some time,” he yelled over the din of the sirens. “It’ll take at least twenty minutes for anyone to get up here.” Kneeling down, he began sawing at the PVC.

Peter, feeling almost naked in the glare of the floodlights, looked around for a way to turn them off, but it was impossible. They hung from the tops of metal posts, and the lamps were covered with thick Plexiglas, itself protected by heavy metal mesh.

For a moment he felt a twinge of panic, but inside the fence Jed, apparently unaffected by the lights and sirens, pumped steadily at the saw. The blade penetrated the top of the PVC pipe, then moved quickly as it cut downward. But then the blade struck the cables within the pipe and Jed paused.

One of the cables inside, he was sure, would be a power line. He pulled the saw from the kerf in the pipe, examining its handle carefully.

It was all metal. If he’d kept sawing and hit that power line, he would have electrocuted himself. “Peter!” he called out. “Look in the box. I need electrical tape.”

Peter dashed to the truck and quickly rummaged through the tool chest. Finally, near the bottom, half buried under a confusion of wrenches, he felt a roll of plastic tape. He jerked it free of the tools, then tossed it over the fence.

Jed snagged the roll of tape in midair and quickly began binding the handle of the saw. After he’d covered it with five layers of tape, he began working again.

The blade bit into the cables once more, and now the work slowed down. But suddenly there was a shower of sparks, and then the lights went out and the wailing of the siren abruptly died away. Jed cursed softly as his eyes—their pupils constricted against the brilliance of the floodlights—failed him completely for a moment, but despite his blindness, he kept sawing.

A few moments later, as his eyes once more adjusted to the dim moonlight, the saw bit into the last centimeters of PVC, and then the pipe parted.

Jed jerked at the saw, trying to get it to come back up through the kerf it had left between the two ends of the pipe, but the cables within had shifted slightly, and the blade jammed firmly. Finally he gave it up, abandoning the saw as he quickly scaled the fence once more and dropped to the other side.

“I don’t know how much time we have,” he said. “But it’s going to take them a while to get that back together again.”

They rushed back to the truck, but Peter stopped short to stare at Jed.

“Where do we go?” he asked. “If we go back the way we came, we’re going to run right into them.”

“We go the other way,” Jed said.

Peter shook his head. “But the mouth of the canyon’s behind us. If we’re going to go after Judith—”

Jed was already in the truck. “Just do what I say, okay? Or do you want to wait around here and see what happens?”

Jed started the engine of the truck, and then, as they saw the first glow of headlights moving toward them along the canyon’s rim, headed farther up the rutted road.