The Program (10 page)

"An invite to what?"

"Shit, how'd you get put on this case? You have no clue how this works."

"Educate me."

Reggie stood and paced a few turns, stray papers crinkling underfoot. "It's a spiral, man, a flushing toilet. You snare 'em and drag 'em inward."

"What're the criteria?"

"If you have money. If you listen well. If you please him."

One male leader, Tim noted.

Reggie sat down, shoulders humped, exhausted. "He's real selective about who gets to move to the Inner Circle -- that's why he's had so much luck with people staying on board. He'd never run the risk of people leaving and revealing him for who he is -- he'd fucking kill them first. He's building a tight, loyal core to take on the world."

"You see any evidence of his killing anyone who betrayed him?"

"He never had to kill anyone. The couple of us he booted out are such fucking messes there's not much threat anyone would listen if we did talk." Reggie picked at a button on his shirt. "Or that we'll survive very long. As long as I mind my own business, I'm safe from him." He snickered. "Not like Oprah's banging down my door anyway."

"So the recruits. What do you do with them?"

Reggie was up on his feet again, walking in circles. "We'd pick the best ones and try to get them to move into or near our house. We'd get the twenty-four-hour thing going, really start taking apart their minds and putting them back together."

Tim recalled the jarring difference between Leah's dorm room on an affluent campus and the dump in Van Nuys. Her "full dance card" after the move.

"How do they get you to sign over your money?"

"Oh, that trick he's got down. That's the whole point of it, really. Never mind that you wind up with nothing on the balance sheet but tens of thousands of dollars in gift tax you didn't know existed." Reggie smiled crookedly. "That's right. I'm a cool hundred grand in the hole. And since mind control doesn't exist -- did you know that? Legally, mind control doesn't even exist, stupid asshole lawmakers -- then what are you gonna do? It's not illegal to coax someone to give away all their money. Nothing to stop willing victims like me from ending up here."

"If I'm looking to find this girl and get her out, can I expect to run across muscle?"

"You can bet on it. He likes having big guys around. They help him feel taller."

Was the leader short? Tim didn't want to pry, since specifics seemed to set Reggie off. "The girl sold all her possessions three weeks ago and moved out of her apartment. No forwarding information. Do you think she's in the cult house?"

"Probably. The next step would be living with the leader, wherever he is now. Either way your nameless girl just entered a new world of trouble. They have their claws into her around the clock now. It's gonna be a rapid downhill from here."

"She get much time alone?"

He snorted. "No one gets much time alone. That's the whole point. You have a Gro-Par with you twenty-four/seven, group activities, le --"

"Gro-Par?"

A nervous glance around the room, as if invisible culties were in attendance.

"Growth Partner." Reggie ran his hand along the underside of his nose. "Yeah, no alone time at all. Why? You gonna try to nab her? Good luck. She'll fucking hate you for it. And she'll be right to." His pacing had taken on an agitated quality -- he slogged through clothes and trash, hands jiggling, sentences running together. "Shit, you don't stand a chance anyway. They'll spot a Common-Censor like you a mile away. They're on the lookout, all the time. He sinks it into your brain to avoid outsiders. He says they come to kidnap you and take you back to your miserable former life. You gonna prove him right?"

"I hope not." He weathered Reggie's stare. "Anything you can...Anything you're comfortable telling me about the leader?"

"I'm not going there."

"Give me something, Reggie. Doesn't have to be his Social Security number. His tastes, proclivities, sexual preferences...?"

Reggie rolled his head to one side, then back, lost in some internal debate. "He only fucks virgins. Or at least girls whose cherries he's popped -- his Lilies. He won't fuck a girl if anyone else has."

Tim thought of Katie Kelner's sneering reference to Leah's being "the big V" and felt his stomach roil. "Does he rape them?"

Reggie's fingers pressed into his temples as he walked, as if staving off a migraine. "Define 'rape.' Define 'force.' Define 'free will.' No, he doesn't rape them, technically. He convinces them. But they don't have a choice."

"What does that mean?"

"If you don't get it, I can't explain it to you." Reggie's tone was so cold and definitive that Tim just stared at him for a few minutes. Reggie broke the standoff by falling back on the bed, pushing fists into his temples. "Look, I've got a massive headache coming on. I can't do this anymore."

"Where do they --"

"I can't do this anymore!" Reggie lay still, his breath coming in jerks -- he was either crying or in intense pain. When he spoke again, his voice was apologetic. "I can't...I'm just done, man. I can't anymore. It puts me back."

"Okay. It's okay. Thank you." Tim rose to leave.

"Can you turn off the light?"

"The light's off."

"Wait. Can you...? I can't figure out..." Reggie fumbled for the notebook, accidentally knocking it back between the nightstand and the wall. "Shit. That's my nighttime list. What should I do?"

Tim stared at him, nonplussed.

"What am I supposed to do? Like, before bed?"

"Brush your teeth?"

"Right, that's right." Reggie pushed himself up off the bed. "Hang on. Just stay a second. Please." Then, from the bathroom, "How much toothpaste?"

"Just enough to cover the bristles." This type of caretaking, while a bizarre variation, wasn't entirely unfamiliar to Tim. Two months ago, on Ginny's birthday -- the year anniversary of her death -- any movement had felt torpid and fatiguing. That night, as on a handful before, he and Dray had nursed each other through the rote movements of living.

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

"Yes."

The sound of Reggie pissing; he hadn't bothered to close the door. He came back and stood before the bed, staring at it, blinking. He'd remembered to remove his shirt, revealing a torso so wasted each rib was visible, but he was still wearing his jeans. He muttered to himself, confused, utterly backslid into dependency.

Tim flapped the comforter once, hard, scattering the trash to the floor. He pulled back the sheets. "Get in."

Reggie slid beneath the covers.

Tim pulled them up, dropping them so they fell across Reggie's chest. Reggie's eyes were bulging now. "Can I have the TV on? I need the light and movement."

"Yes." It took Tim a moment to locate the TV -- it sat draped beneath a ratty bath mat. The antenna was snapped, so the picture came up a confusion of blurs and warped voices. Tim tried to adjust the stub, but Reggie called out, "It's fine like that. Makes me feel like I have a bit of company."

When Tim reached the door, Reggie said, "Hey, Sheriff."

Tim turned, resisting the urge to correct him. Reggie had pulled the sheets up above his chin; his eyes peered out, sunken and fearful. "You'd better get that girl out of there as soon as fucking possible."

Chapter
nine

Leah opened her eyes and felt a flutter of anxiety, as she had every morning for the last three months. And, as she had every morning for the last three months, she willed away her weakness, controlling her thoughts as she had been taught.

She told herself that her doubts were the last vestiges of her Old Programming.

That she could maximize her growth by minimizing her negativity.

That she needed to let go and Get with The Program.

It was a great honor to be invited to join the Inner Circle up at the ranch, just twenty-two days ago, and she wasn't about to screw it up. She'd sacrificed way too much for that. She stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling of her shared bedroom, the wrinkles of concern smoothing from her face, her heart rate slowing to normal. The space resembled a state-college dorm room -- two beat-up wooden beds, drawers beneath, a single dresser, a closet with a splintering door that wouldn't close. Periwinkle paint covered the cinder-block walls, fading in patches where the sun hit it through the lone window.

Her Growth Partner breathed heavily on the other twin bed crammed into the space. Janie was a perky, attractive twenty-five-year-old; Leah found it hard not to envy her ready confidence and womanly curves.

The door creaked open, and the form of a man resolved from the dusty early-morning light. There were no locks on the doors up here, except, she had heard, in the Teacher's cottage. No phones, watches, clocks, TVs, or newspapers either. And no mirrors -- Leah had learned to fix her hair without the aid of her reflection. Or, as was increasingly the case, she and Janie primped each other.

She had the luxury of working with computers, but always ancient ones with the modems excised or phone cords removed. Though she missed surfing the Web, it was unproductive to question and nitpick; besides, her computer skills landed her cushier specialized jobs that spared her Rec-Dute. The Recruitment-Duty shifts lasted eighteen hours or until one secured five sign-ups for a colloquium, whichever came first.

The man eased forward into the room. Leah pretended she was sleeping, but she heard the floorboards creak. A large hand came to rest on her thigh, protected only by a thin sheet. "Leah. It's your time to rouse the Teacher."

She opened her eyes. Randall, the bigger of the two Protectors, was sitting on the edge of her bed. He was almost entirely hairless -- bald, no eyebrows, no chest hair -- except for his arms; the dense mats of black hair caused the cuffed sleeves of his flannel to bulge.

"Let me tell my Gro-Par," Leah said.

But Janie was already up, fussing. Her bark-colored hair swayed with the effort; she wore it seventies style -- center-parted and waist length. "Oh, my God. That's so killer. I can't be one of TD's Lilies because I'm married."

When it became clear Randall wasn't going to wait outside, Leah changed in front of him, made insecure by his beady eyes.

Janie preened her, combing her hair, which had been cropped in a shaggy pageboy her first day here. "It might be nice if you wore a sleeveless shirt instead."

"I'm a bit chilly. It's early."

"Cold is a state of mind, Leah. Don't indulge your Old Programming."

"I like this shirt."

Janie sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes at Randall. "See what I have to work with?" She covered up the slight with a nervous laugh and kissed Leah on the forehead. "I'm so proud of you."

Randall's throat rattled when he cleared it. "When you kiss someone on the face, you're sucking on a tube that's twenty-three feet long, the other end of which is connected to feces."

Janie shivered and busied herself tying Leah's shoelaces.

"I'll bear that in mind," Leah said.

Randall led her down the hall, past the cluster of closed doors. The cottage comprised two identical halves, each with four bedrooms and two baths, joined at a modest common room with a kitchenette. Cramped little structures with pebbles strewn across their flat roofs, the poorly insulated units were barely a step up from prefabs.

He headed outside, crossing the circular lawn around which the four other cottages were arrayed, Leah walking fast to keep up. At the edge of Cottage Circle, five enormous cypresses rose up, van Gogh shadows against the lambent glow of the horizon. The throw of land housing the little community was the sole stretch of flatness adrift on the thirsty brown mountains. The rest of the compound lay upslope on the precipice of a straight-drop cliff, except the Teacher's cottage, which stood to the west off a trail carved through chest-high brush.

As they turned onto the trail, Leah looked up at Randall, who had to stoop to get his six-three frame under the occasional branch. She spoke mostly to ease her own tension. "How did you find the Teacher?"

Randall kept on without pause. "He saved me."

The rest of the walk to the Teacher's cottage was silent.

Woods encroached on the rear of the building. Skate Daniels, the other Protector, tilted back on a rickety chair on the front porch, working at a hunk of wood with a hunting knife. He wore a boxer-style sweatshirt, the collar ripped and cross-threaded with a shoelace. The severed sleeves showed off arms massy with thick, undefined muscle. At his throat hung a crude necklace -- two twisted copper wires threaded through tiny earth-tone beads, vaguely Native American in effect. Dangling from it like a pendant was the notorious tiny silver key.

Skate's two Dobermans bolted over to investigate, snarling and barking. Leah recoiled, terrified, but Skate backed them down with a snap of his fingers, and they scrambled off through the underbrush behind the narrow shed where Skate and Randall slept. Barely wide enough to accommodate two cots, the shed leaned like a wind-battered bait shack, exhaling a perennial spiral of smoke from a black pipe of a chimney. Once when Leah had to deliver a file to the Teacher, she'd seen Skate in there, shuddering against the cold and stoking the fire in the potbellied stove with a stick.