by John Saul
She paused in front of the door to the women’s locker room, screwing her face into her habitual tight squint of concentration.
What if she changed her mind right now?
Was it possible the experiment had already started?
She glanced around. There were a few of the college students lying around under the trees and walking along the sidewalks, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to her.
And she didn’t have that creepy feeling on the back of her neck that she always got when she felt like she was being watched.
Sighing, she decided the experiment hadn’t begun yet, and walked on into the locker room. It was empty except for Hildie Kramer, who stood up as Amy came into the humid room.
“I was starting to wonder if you were going to show up at all,” Hildie said, smiling. “Dr. Engersol wants you to put on a bathing suit and go out by the pool.”
Amy’s lips pursed. “The pool? Is that where the experiment is?”
Hildie nodded. “Do you have your own bathing suit here?”
Amy shook her head. “It’s in my room. Nobody said I should bring it. Should I go get it?”
She had already started toward the door when Hildie stopped her. “It’s all right, Amy. We have plenty of bathing suits. I’ll bring you one.”
Amy went to her locker and started undressing, and a minute later Hildie reappeared, carrying with her one of the shapeless maroon tank suits with which the gym was stocked. “Yuck,” Amy said, eyeing the suit with distaste. “I hate those things!”
Hildie chuckled. “Doesn’t everyone? But I tried to find one that doesn’t look too worn-out.”
Amy took the suit from Hildie, then finished stripping off her clothes and pulled it on. Poking her arms through the straps and wriggling, she pulled the piece of material over her body, then looked hopefully up at Hildie. “Is it really awful?”
Hildie cocked her head critically. “Well, I don’t suppose you’d win the Little Miss America contest, but it could be a lot worse. At least it fits, and it doesn’t have any holes in it. Ready?”
“I guess,” Amy agreed. She followed Hildie through the locker room to the showers, then into the foot bath that filled a shallow pan sunk into the concrete in front of the door to the pool. Suddenly Amy’s nerves got the best of her. She gazed pleadingly up at Hildie. “Can’t you please tell me what the experiment is?” she begged.
Hildie’s warm laugh filled the locker room, the sound itself making Amy feel a little bit better. “Why don’t you just stop worrying about it?” she asked. “You know I’m not going to tell you anything about it, except that it’s not going to hurt you at all. And if you don’t want to take part in it, you don’t have to. As soon as you know what it is, you can turn around and walk away, if that’s what you want to do.”
Amy took a deep breath and considered the situation. Should she trust Hildie? Hildie had been on her side over the animal experiments, after all. So whatever this experiment was, it couldn’t be too bad. She stepped through the door to the pool.
And stopped, startled by what she saw.
At the far end of the pool, a curtain had been hung, so the diving boards were completely invisible.
Ten feet away from her, sitting near the pool, was a chair. Next to the chair was a table on which sat a computer and what looked like some kind of headset.
There were video cameras in various places around the pool, all of them trained on the empty chair.
Dr. Engersol was sitting in a second chair, facing the computer screen. Seated around him were the other members of the seminar.
Did they all know what was going to happen? Was she the only one who wasn’t in on it?
She felt betrayed.
Her first impulse was to turn around and run back through the door, but her friends were already watching her, staring at her as if they were sure she was going to chicken out before it even began.
And it wasn’t just her friends.
Her eyes shifted away from the group of children gathered around the computer to the small grandstand that faced the pool from the other side.
Sitting on the benches were at least fifty of the college students, and they were watching her, too.
Amy felt herself burning with embarrassment. Were all these people really here just to watch her? But why? What was going to happen?
Behind her, she heard Hildie’s voice. “Are you all right, Amy? Do you want to go ahead?”
What Amy wanted to do was fall through the concrete and have the earth swallow her up. Why were all these people here? Why wasn’t it just the kids in the seminar, who were at least people she knew? And what would happen if she turned around and ran back into the locker room?
They would laugh at her.
All of them. They would know she was a coward, and even though they might not laugh out loud, inside they would be laughing at her.
Tonight, in the dining room, she would hear the clucking as all the rest of the kids made chicken sounds.
Even her friends would laugh at her, and she would feel just like she had back in public school, when everyone acted as if she was some kind of freak or something.
No!
She wouldn’t let it happen. Somehow, she would get through it.
She took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “I—I’m okay,” she managed to say, but even she could hear the trembling in her voice. “I just didn’t—who are all those people?”
Hildie smiled reassuringly at her. “They’re from one of the psychology classes. Dr. Engersol invited them to watch the experiment.”
“But he didn’t tell me,” Amy wailed.
Sensing what was going through the little girl’s mind, Hildie knelt down and took Amy’s hands in her own. “It’s all right, Amy. Nothing’s going to happen to you. They’re just here to watch. They’re not going to say anything, or do anything. It’s going to be all right.”
“Wh-What am I supposed to do?”
“Just go over and sit in the chair,” Hildie told her. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”
Holding Amy’s hand, the housemother led her over to the chair, and Amy perched nervously on its edge. Then, at last, Dr. Engersol explained what was going to happen.
“We’re going to attach electrodes to you, Amy,” he explained. “But they don’t do anything except measure your physical responses. I promise you, you won’t feel anything at all. All we’re going to be doing is recording changes in your heartbeat, and your breathing, and your brain-wave patterns. The cameras will be recording your facial expressions and any movements of your body. So all you have to do is sit there.”
“But why me?” Amy asked. “What am I supposed to be doing?”
“You’ll see in a minute,” Engersol told her. “And remember, you can leave anytime you want to, just like I promised.”
And have everyone laugh at me, Amy thought silently.
She sat still on the chair as Dr. Engersol attached the electrodes to her body. Soon she was even more festooned with wires than the cat had been that morning. At last Dr. Engersol placed a helmet over her head, and she felt a mass of tiny points press against her scalp.
“Does that hurt?” Dr. Engersol asked her. “It shouldn’t, and if it does, I can make adjustments so it won’t. The electrodes should touch your head, but there shouldn’t be much pressure.”
“I—It’s all right,” Amy managed to say. Then her eyes met Engersol’s, and he could see the fear in them. “Something’s going to happen, isn’t it?” she asked. “Something awful.”
“Nothing awful at all,” Engersol reassured her. He checked over the electrodes once more, then went around to the computer screen. On its display, Amy’s respiratory rhythm, heartbeat, and brain-wave patterns were clearly visible, reflecting a body under a certain amount of mental stress.
But nothing out of the normal ranges.
“All right,” he said. “We’re about to begin. All I’m going
to do is ask you to make a deci
sion.” At the far end of the pool the curtain was suddenly pulled away. Next to the high diving board, a scaffolding had been erected. From the scaffolding hung the knotted rope, the same one she had tried to climb in the gym last week. Tried to climb, and failed.
“I want you to pick one of them, Amy,” Dr. Engersol told her. “Which would you rather do? Climb the rope? Or jump off the high diving board?”
Amy stared at him. Was he kidding? Did she really have to do one of those things?
But he’d said she didn’t! He’d said she didn’t have to do anything at all! All she had to do was sit here.
Her heart sank.
Already she could hear the laughter that would erupt from her friends when they figured out she was terrified of both the rope and the diving board.
The cat.
He was doing to her what he’d done to the cat this morning.
A double negative.
Make a choice between two things she hated, or let everyone know how terrified she was.
Let them know, and put up with them teasing her.
Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat, Amy is a scaredy-cat!
Though no one had uttered the words, she could already hear them ringing in her ears.
She tore her eyes away from the rope and the diving board and looked at the faces of her classmates, who were gathered around the computer, some of them watching the screen, some of them watching her.
Jeff Aldrich was grinning, already figuring out how scared she was.
What would he do? Would he just tease her?
Or would it be worse? Maybe he’d hold her out the window, dangling her above the sidewalk, threatening to let her fall.
Her thoughts began to race. What was worse? To have everyone laugh at her and tease her, or to make a choice
and try to get through the terror that always seized her when she was more than a few feet off the ground?
But Dr. Engersol had told her she just had to choose! She didn’t actually have to do anything!
Except it wouldn’t be enough, If she said she’d chosen one or the other, and then didn’t go through with it, they’d all know!
Trapped.
Even after all his promises, he’d trapped her.
Which?
The rope?
She remembered freezing up there, terrified that she was going to fall, clinging to the rope until the coach climbed up and got her.
And she hadn’t even been able to make herself climb the ladder to the high board.
A ladder and a rope! How could she be afraid of a stupid ladder and a dumb rope!
But what if she fell?
If she fell off the rope, she’d break a leg at least.
But she might not fall off the ladder, not with bars to hang onto and steps for her feet. And when she got to the top, all she had to do was walk out to the end and jump off.
Just the thought of standing on the narrow board three meters above the pool made her stomach feel hollow and her groin tighten with fear.
But it was only ten feet! What could happen to her?
Surely being terrified for a few seconds was better than having everyone laugh at her because she was chicken.
“I—I made up my mind,” she whispered. “I’m going to jump off the diving board.”
Immediately, Dr. Engersol left his chair and came to remove the helmet from her head while two graduate students detached the electrodes from her body. But the cameras, which had been recording her every facial expression, every movement of her body, were still running.
And everyone was still watching.
She approached the ladder that led to the diving board and gripped the handrails tightly. She put her foot on the bottom step and started climbing.
She was halfway up when she looked down, and froze.
Do it! she told herself. Just climb up, walk out on the board, and jump.
Then, as she stared down at the concrete beneath her, her terror of heights welled up in her and she knew she couldn’t do it.
Don’t look, she commanded herself.
She forced herself to look up, and there, looming above her, was the board itself.
No!
She couldn’t do it, couldn’t possibly walk out on it! It was too narrow. She’d fall before she took even a single step.
As she felt the last of her nerve slipping away from her, she began to sob. Tears streaming down her face, she scrambled back down off the ladder and fled toward the locker room, covering her face with her hands, already imagining she could hear the laughter following her. Then she was inside the locker room, scurrying across the empty shower room. By the time she came to her locker, the bathing suit was already half off, and she jerked it the rest of the way, hurling it into a corner and pulling on her clothes as fast as she could. Leaving her locker standing open, sobs of humiliation racking her body, Amy Carlson fled from the gym.
By the time Hildie Kramer came looking for her, the locker room was empty, but Hildie was almost certain she knew where Amy had gone.
As she, too, left the gym, every trace of the warm and kindly expression she habitually wore when she spoke to either the children or their parents was gone from her face, replaced by a look of harsh determination. Before anyone else saw Amy Carlson again, Hildie Kramer intended to find her.
Jeanette Aldrich gave up trying to concentrate on her work. Though it was only a little after four o’clock, she knew that no one would object if she left early today. Not that she’d gotten all that much done, for while the morning had been lost to all the people who had come in to offer her
sympathy and support, most of the afternoon had been lost to thinking about the thesis that still lay hidden in the depths of her purse. During lunch she had managed to find a quiet corner and begin reading it, but she hadn’t gotten very far. Simply reading about all the other children who had fallen victim to the same pressures to which Adam had finally succumbed had almost torn her heart out. More than once she’d had to stop reading altogether, for even through the dry prose with which the graduate student had constructed his paper, the human suffering kept breaking to the surface.
It was as if each of the children discussed in the thesis was reaching out to her, calling for help, pleading with her to do something for him.
But there was nothing she could do, for, like Adam, they were already dead.
The youngest had been only five years old when, in front of his mother and older sister, he’d walked in front of a bus.
There had been no question that he knew the bus was coming. He’d even pointed it out to his mother.
Together, they’d stood watching it roll along the road, moving at a steady thirty-five miles an hour.
At the last second the little boy had jerked his hand out of his mother’s and darted into the street, throwing himself under the tires.
Jeanette could barely bring herself to finish reading the paragraphs, feeling the pain the mother of that child must have felt, her tears blurring the words until she finally had to put the thesis back in her purse.
But tonight she would finish it, no matter how difficult it was for her. Until she did, she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else, for no matter what she tried to do, the thesis seemed to beckon to her, demanding her attention.
At last she gave up even trying to work, and began the process of closing her office for the day. Giving her computer a command to print out the document she had been working on—the final edited copy of an article the head of the department was submitting to one of the psychological journals—she set to work putting the files on her desk back into the cabinet, replacing each of them in its proper folder. In the background the quiet buzz of the printer provided an oddly soothing noise, interrupted every thirty seconds or so by a brief silence as it rolled a fresh sheet of paper into the platen.
Almost unconsciously, she found herself counting the pages as they printed.
Halfway through the seventh one, the printer suddenly stopped.
/> Jeanette paused, glancing at the machine.
The page was resting motionlessly, a line partway down waiting to be completed.
None of the warning lights on the printer was glowing, so she shifted her attention to the computer screen.
The program had crashed.
Swearing softly under her breath, Jeanette rebooted the program, brought up the file she was looking for, and set it to begin printing again with the top of the seventh page. When she was ready, she turned back to the printer, pressed the form feed button to kick a new sheet of paper into the platen, and returned to the computer.
She stared at the screen.
Once more the word processing program had crashed. She was facing a blank screen.
She started to type in the command to reboot the program once more, but this time the keyboard refused to respond.
She hit the control, alt, and delete keys simultaneously, and waited for the entire computer to reboot itself.
Nothing happened.
Sighing, she reached for the red switch on the computer itself, and was about to shut off the main power, wait a few seconds, then start over again by turning the machine back on when the screen suddenly came to life:
MOM
Jeanette stared at the word for a moment. What was going on? Was it really the word she’d heard from her kids all her life, or was it just some kind of garbage the computer had kicked up?
She tried rebooting the computer once more, and this time it worked. The screen went blank, then a series of commands rolled up the screen as the operating system installed itself. But as she was about to enter the command for the word processing system yet again, the screen once more came to life. This time, there was no mistaking what it said:
MOM. ITS ME. IT’S ADAM.
Jeanette stared at the words.
A joke.
Someone’s horrible idea of a joke.
She stared numbly at the message for a moment, and suddenly realized she was trembling. What was she supposed to do?
Did someone expect her to answer?
Her mind raced as she tried to figure out where the message could have come from.
A timed message, slipped into the computer by practically anyone, set to pop up at a certain time of day.