5

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 nightmare. 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 oncerational, 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.”