The Program

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “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.”

  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 w
omanly 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.

  The shed, Leah had learned, was absolutely off-limits, as was the modular office a few paces behind it. The mod’s door sported a profusion of locks, protecting its consecrated interior—the Teacher’s private office space. Leah respectfully averted her eyes from the mod.

  She stepped up on the porch. “What are you making there?”

  Skate flicked the point of the blade against the wood, his flat eyes never leaving his task. “Jes’ whittlin’.”

  Randall gestured to the door, and she stepped inside, nearly tripping over a white plastic tub brimming with mail. The ranch had been a bigwig director’s retreat in the twenties; the Teacher’s cottage was the only building not since supplanted by a lowest-bidder abomination. Beautiful stone exterior, slat-wood doors, a lazy fan overhead. Wagon wheels from a bygone movie shoot still lined the walk and framed the porch, sentimentalized by the adolescent residential treatment facility that occupied and further degraded the ranch before The Program acquired it.

  Randall closed the door behind Leah.

  Alone in the Teacher’s cottage. She did her best to calm the storm of panic and excitement rising in her chest.

  She prepared as she had been taught, first picking up and folding the Teacher’s clothes, which had been left in the front room. She removed a ginseng mahuang smoothie from the tiny fridge, strained it into a glass to remove excess pulp, then arranged the vitamins in a grid on the serving platter. The napkin she folded into a crisp triangle.

  After washing the hair from the shower soap, she ran the water so it would be hot when he was ready. She removed a fresh toothbrush from the cabinet and squeezed onto it a straight worm of Aquafresh. She plucked a premarked Dixie cup from the stack beneath the sink and poured mint mouthwash to the indelible-ink line drawn precisely an inch and a half from the bottom. She rested a new razor on the towel beside the sink and wiped the excess from the nozzle of the shaving-cream can.

  You have been chosen, she told herself. You have been singled out. You are special.

  The door to the Teacher’s bedroom creaked slightly as she pushed it, balancing his breakfast tray with her other hand. His slumbering form lay beneath the king duvet. She set the tray on the nightstand and knelt at the side of the bed. She slid her hand inside the Egyptian-cotton sheets and gripped his erect penis.

  “Wake up, Teacher,” she said softly. Then she repeated herself, a little louder, barely recognizing her own voice. “Wake up, Teacher.”

  He stirred and stretched, arms shoving up against the massive headboard. He settled back, hands laced behind his head like Huck Finn. His facial skin was youthful, even taut, stretching his lips into thin strokes. A slender man with sharp, intelligent features, he had no wrinkles at all. His closely set eyes were hypnotic, captivating, prying; when he spoke to her, she tried to watch his hands or forehead instead. Now she kept focused on the task at hand, the silky duvet rising and falling a foot and a half in front of her face.

  “Now, not too firm,” he cautioned, his voice low and soothing. Then, a bit more sharply, “Relax.”

  At once her mind went blank, her breathing smoothed, and her hand moved of its own volition, butterfly soft, doing what it somehow knew to do.

  “There, now,” he said. “There, now.”

  His hips rocked slightly on the cushione
d mattress, and then he shuddered and it was done. She withdrew her hand, wiping it on the sheets. Still she avoided his eyes, but the energy coming off him was approving, and her insides went warm with relief and gratitude.

  Keeping her head bowed, she said, “Good morning, Teacher.”

  He reached down and stroked her hair gently, forgivingly. “Please,” he said, “call me TD.”

  TEN

  When Tim woke up half an hour later, Dray was on her side, leaning over him, hand near his face. He jerked, startled by her proximity, and she quickly rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom.

  “What the hell was that?”

  The shower flipped on. “Nothing.”

  Tim went in and leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching through the glass as Dray pretended to be absorbed in the lathering process. Finally she glanced up. “Look, I put my hand in front of your mouth sometimes when you’re sleeping to feel you breathing.” She stepped back into the stream. “So it’s kind of freakish... .”

  “You’re worried I’m gonna die in my sleep?”

  Furiously lathering a knee, Dray fought an embarrassed smile from her lips. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

  “We have a deal, remember?”

  “Die in our sleep when we’re ninety. The same night.”

  “Right. So cut me a break until then, huh? You’re overloading my pacemaker.”

  The shower door slid open, and a sudsy washcloth hit him in the face before he could get his hands up to block it. He pulled it off, laughing and coughing.

  Dray poised her leg on the tub’s edge and ran a razor up its slick length. “I wouldn’t have to do it if you’d just snore like a real husband.”

  Dray, standing behind Tim, punched a fork into a hunk of his Eggo and mopped it through a pool of residual syrup. She had to angle her head to get the bite in and even still wound up dripping on his sweatshirt. Particularly after their morning runs, Dray ate like a Jurassic carnivore, but her current performance was more arresting than usual. Tim watched two links of sausage disappear in the same direction. He listened for chewing but heard none.