The Select

by F. Paul Wilson

  MONITORING

  "I wish the hell I knew what they talked about in there," Louis Verran said as he watched Timothy Brown's father leave the dorm on the video monitor.

  "Well," Kurt said, stretching languidly after his flight back from Vegas, "you're the one who wanted the bugs pulled from those two rooms."

  "And a damn good thing I did, too! You two guys have any idea how I felt when Brown's old man showed up with that industrial espionage consultant? I damn near blew lunch."

  "Why? The rooms were clean. Nothing to worry about."

  "Oh, really? You two guys haven't exactly been models of efficiency lately. You had to put Brown's SLI back together and replace the headboard, cut the power to his roommate's SLI, clean out all our bugs, and make like maids and neaten everything up. That's a lot of stuff. You could've missed something."

  "But we didn't. And don't forget whose idea it was to check out the girl's room."

  "Okay, okay. I admit it. That was a good thought."

  A damn good thought. Verran rubbed a hand across his queasy stomach. If Elliot hadn't checked Cleary's room, they wouldn't have found the notes. And then when Brown's father had shown up with that sweeper, Verran had quickly ordered the power cut to all the SLI units in the building.

  Not that the sweep would have picked up the bugs anyway. The electrets were non-radiating. Plus, the dorm phone taps were all off-premises.

  Altogether a bad weekend, though, spent worrying all night about who else the Brown kid might have told. But nobody new had made any noise about it yet, so it was pretty safe to assume that they'd managed to keep the lid on everything.

  The only ongoing risk would be Deputy Ted Southworth. Verran knew the Ingraham's security measures rubbed the Sheriff's department the wrong way—they saw Verran's crew as some sort of vigilante force—but Southworth had had a special hard-on for The Ingraham since the Prosser thing two years ago. He'd asked an awful lot of pointed questions when Prosser had disappeared and he'd made it clear he wasn't satisfied with the answers.

  He turned to Kurt. "You ditch the rental good in Vegas?"

  "Just like you said: Wiped clean as a whistle and sitting smack dab in the middle of the MGM Grand parking lot."

  Verran nodded. Hide in plain sight. That was the best way. The Vegas hotel lots were always loaded with rented cars. It would be a long time before that one was picked up. And when it was, no one would suspect a damn thing.

  "All right then," he said, leaning back. "I think we've got everything under control again. They all think the kid has a gambling problem and is still alive and making the scene in Vegas. The father's off our backs, looking for him out in Nevada."

  Kurt yawned and said, "All we've got left to worry about is the girl. What do we do about her?"

  "We don't chase her around the anatomy lab again," Verran said sharply. "That's for sure."

  "Hey, Alston wanted me to bring her in."

  "Yeah, well, it's just as well you flubbed it."

  "I'd've had her if Emerson hadn't wandered by."

  The door to the control center opened then, and Doc Alston walked in. He looked pale as he dropped heavily into his usual seat.

  "I've just been on the phone with Senator Whitney and two of the board members."

  "All at once?"

  "A conference call." His hand shook as he rubbed his high forehead. "And they are not happy—with either of us. Not happy at all."

  Verran felt his heart begin to hammer. Two board members and the senator on the phone at once. Someone was majorly pissed. And that someone could only be Johann Kleederman himself.

  As much as he disliked Alston, Verran could not help feeling a twinge of sympathy for him.

  "Did you explain?"

  Alston nodded. "I explained my heart out. Believe me, it's not easy explaining away two near disasters in two years."

  "Will they be...calling me next?" His mouth went dry at the thought.

  "I don't think so. I think I settled everything."

  If that was true, he owed Alston. But...

  "They always want to blame someone," Verran said, watching Alston closely. "Who's getting the blame?"

  "I managed to spread it around. I told them this has to be expected. If they want only the cream of the intellectual crop, it's inevitable that every so often one member of that crop is going to spot an inconsistency and follow it up."

  "And they bought it?"

  "Of course. It's true, and the logic is inescapable. They were somewhat mollified when I told them that we intercepted Brown before he told his girlfriend much of anything. I hope that is still true, Louis."

  "Yeah. Truth is, I don't think we ever had a real worry there. Turns out Cleary doesn't know squat. And it also turns out a good thing Brown's father brought in his electronics man yesterday. Cleary stood right there in that room and heard him say there were no bugs. So even she's convinced her boyfriend's cuckoo."

  "Do we replace the bugs?" Elliot said.

  "Not yet. She's alone in the room, so she doesn't do any talking anyway. And we've got the off-premises tap on her phone. So I say we leave things as they are for the moment." He looked at Alston. "You agree?"

  Alston nodded. "She wasn't responding to the SLI anyway. Might as well leave her room entirely cold until I can think of a way to get her out."

  "You got it," Verran said.

  "But I want her phone monitored 24 hours a day."

  "No problem. I'll have Elliot hook up a voice-activated recorder to her line and we'll check it all the time."

  "That will do, I suppose. But I want someone to know where she is every minute of the day," Alston said. "Got that?" He fixed Kurt and Elliot each with a hard stare, then looked at Verran. "Every minute."

  "You're the boss," Verran said.

  TWENTY

  Floating. In darkness. Falling through a limitless black void with no sense of movement or direction, without so much as the sensation of air passing over his skin.

  I'm alive.

  Tim didn't know the hour, the day, or even the month, where he was or how he got there, but he knew he was alive.

  Or was he? In this formless darkness in which he could feel nothing, hear nothing, could he call this being alive?

  Cogito, ergo sum.

  Okay. According to Descartes, he was alive. But was he was awake or dreaming?

  He seemed to be awake. He was becoming aware of faint noises around him, of movement, of an antiseptic odor. He tried to open his eyes but they wouldn't budge. And then he realized that he didn't know if he was lying on his back or his belly. He couldn't feel anything.

  Where the hell was he?

  And then he remembered...he had passed out after being punched in the face in the early hours of Friday morning. Suddenly he wanted to shout out his rage, his anger. But how could he? He couldn't even open his mouth?

  Wait. That must have been a dream. Had to be—the bug in the fixture, the weird device in the headboard, the grilling by Dr. Alston, the man's elaborate Kleederman conspiracy. All a nightmare.

  Get these eyes open and the whole thing would be over. He'd see that ugly fixture in the ceiling of the bedroom, the one in his dream he'd thought was bugged. And then he could roll over and see his roomie conked out in the other bed. Good old Kevin.

  The eyes. He concentrated on the lids, forcing them to move. Light began to filter through. He kept at it, and the light brightened slowly, like the morning sun burning through fog. But this wasn't sunlight. This was paler. Artificial light. Fluorescent.

  Shapes took form. White shapes.

  And then he saw himself, or at least his torso, lying in bed on his right side, under a sheet.

  That's more like it.

  He tried to roll over, but his body wouldn't respond. Why not? If he could just —

  Wait. His left arm, lying along his left flank, draped over his hip—it was wrapped in white. Some sort of cloth. Gauze. And his right arm, too, lying supine upon the mattress, was wrapped in gauz
e to the fingernails. Why?

  Maybe he was still dreaming. That had to be it. Because although he could see his gauze-wrapped arms, he couldn't feel them—couldn't feel the gauze, couldn't feel the pressure of their weight on his hip or the mattress, couldn't feel anything. Almost like having no body at all.

  Then he saw the transparent tube running into the gauze from an IVAC 560 on a pole beside the bed. An IV.

  He was on IVs! That meant he was in a hospital. Jesus, what had happened to him? Had he had an accident?

  He spotted another tube, also clear but larger gauge. This one coiled out from under the sheet and ran down over the edge of the bed. The yellow fluid within it flowed downward, out of him and over the edge.

  A catheter. He'd been catheterized. He'd seen those rubber tubes with the inflatable balloon at the tip. His insides squirmed at the thought of one of those things being snaked up his penis and into his bladder. Apparently it had already been done. Why couldn't he feel it sitting in there?

  Tim dragged his gaze away from himself and forced his eyelids open another millimeter to take in his surroundings.

  He wasn't alone. There was another bed next to him, half a dozen feet away. And a white-swathed body under the sheet. And beyond that, another. And another. All mummy wrapped, with tubes running in and out of them. And beyond them all, a picture window, looking out into a hallway.

  Tim realized he'd seen this place before. But he'd seen it from another perspective, from the hallway on the far side of that window.

  I'm in Ward C!

  He wanted to scream but his larynx was as dead as the rest of him.

  Tim battled the panic, bludgeoned it down. Panic wouldn't help here. He tried to think. He had to think.

  The dream, the nightmare of being bound and gagged, and then listening to Dr. Alston while strapped into that chair in the basement of the Science Center, that all had happened. And now he was a prisoner in Alston's private preserve.

  At least they hadn't killed him.

  But maybe this was worse.

  Tim shifted his eyes down to his body. He saw white gauzy fabric all around the periphery of his vision—his head was wrapped like the rest of his body. Another faceless Ward C patient. And something else: snaking up past his right eye...a white tube. It seemed to go into his nose. A feeding tube, snaking through a nostril, down the back of his throat, and into his stomach.

  Further down his body he saw the gentle tidal rise and fall of his chest. Quinn had told him the properties of the anesthetic Dr. Emerson was developing, and how it was being used on the patients in Ward C. Obviously he'd been dosed with it as well.

  What had she said? She'd called it 9574 and it supposedly paralyzed all the voluntary muscles while it let the diaphragm go on moving—like in sleep. But it didn't have complete control of him. He'd managed to open his eyes, hadn't he? He could move his eyeballs, couldn't he?

  He drew his gaze away from the ward about him and looked at himself again.

  He had to get control of his body. He could move his eyeballs and eyelids. But he needed his hands. He searched out his right hand where it lay flopped out before him on the mattress, palm up. If he could move it...

  Maybe start small. Just a finger. One lousy finger. He picked his little finger, the pinkie. He imagined himself inside it, crawling through the tissues, wrapping himself around the flexor digiti minimi tendon and pulling... pulling for all he was worth...

  And then it moved. It moved!

  He tried it again. Yes, the tip was in motion, flexing and extending, back and forth. The arc was no more than maybe a centimeter, but he could move it, dammit, he could move it. And he could actually feel something down there. A faint tingle. He was regaining control. He was going to get out of here. And then he was going to bring the walls down.

  "Good morning, Number Eight. About time you woke up."

  A nurse, dark skin, brown eyes, her nose and face behind a surgical mask, her hair tucked into a surgical cap, was looking down at him. Tim's eyes fixed on her blue eye shadow, so glossy, almost luminous. The eyes smiled down at him.

  "Time to turn you, Number Eight. But first—" She held up a syringe filled with clear fluid. "Time for your two-o'clock dose."

  She poked the needle into the rubber tip of the Y-adapter on the intravenous line and emptied the syringe into the flow.

  She patted his shoulder—he felt nothing. "I'll be back in a sec to turn you."

  Tim watched her go, then returned his attention to his tingling fingers. He watched his pinkie finger move again, but this time the arc seemed smaller. He had to keep working at it. He tried again, struggling, pushing harder, but this time it wouldn't budge. And the tingling, the parasthetic, pins-and-needles sensation in his hand had faded.

  ...Time for your two-o'clock dose...

  The nurse's syringe. It had been loaded with 9574. The fresh dose had turned him into dead meat again. They had him on a round-the-clock schedule.

  Movement...at the window into the hall. Someone standing there, looking in. His eyes focused so slowly.

  Quinn! Jesus, it was Quinn, looking right at him. Didn't she recognize him? But no, how could she? He was swathed head to toe in gauze. He tried to shout, begged his hands to move, but his voice remained silent, his limbs remained inert.

  Fear, frustration, terror, and rage swam around him. Helpless...he was utterly helpless.

  And then Quinn turned and walked on.

  Tim's vision blurred. He knew a tear was running down his cheek, but he couldn't feel it.

  *

  Matt Crawford turned from the floor-to-ceiling view of the harbor and crossed his living room. He'd been putting it off all day. By nine o'clock he could hold out no longer. He picked up the phone and called Quinn.

  What a nightmare wild man Brown had started by running off to Las Vegas. Both his parents were ready for rubber rooms. Matt had spoken to Tim's mother just yesterday and all she'd done was cry; she'd heard from Tim's father in Vegas but his search for Tim was getting nowhere. Apparently Tim hadn't used his credit card again after renting the car at the airport.

  And Quinn...Quinn had sounded like someone on a ledge. When she'd called him last Friday, there'd been something in her voice when she spoke Tim's name, something that said she was worrying about someone who was a lot more than just a friend.

  No question about it, Quinn had been hurting. And that could only mean...

  Quinn and Tim...he hadn't let it sink in at the time, but maybe it was possible. She did sound broken-hearted that he'd left...left her.

  And Tim. What the hell was he thinking about with this Las Vegas stunt? Matt knew the guy, knew how he liked to keep you off balance, be unpredictable, but this went way beyond anything he'd done since Matt had known him.

  And that was what had been bothering Matt since Friday. This wasn't like Tim. This was something else. This smelled bad.

  Matt listened to the phone ringing. Quinn picked up on the third. When he said hello she all but jumped through the phone, the words frantically spilling out.

  "Matt! Is it about Tim? Have you heard from him? Did they find him?"

  He'd intended to ask her point blank if she and Tim had something going on. Now he didn't have to. He wasn't sure how he felt about this. Quinn had never been his, so why did he feel as if something special had been stolen away from right under his nose?

  "No, Quinn. Nothing yet. I just called to talk to you and see how you're doing."

  "I'm okay."

  "Are you?"

  She didn't answer, at least not with words. Matt heard soft sobbing on the other end.

  "You miss him that much." It wasn't a question.

  Her voice was a gasp. "Yes."

  "He'll be back soon."

  "I'm afraid, Matt." She was getting her voice back now. "I've got this horrible feeling I'm never going to see him again."

  She sounded so lost. This wasn't like the Quinn he knew. Was this what love did to you?

  "You'll se
e him. He's got to come back soon."

  "You really think so?" She sounded like a ship-wrecked sailor groping for a piece of floating debris.

  "I guarantee it. When are you getting in Friday?"

  Christmas break was a few days away. Maybe he'd drive out to Windham County and try to cheer her up.

  "For Christmas? I won't be leaving until next Friday."

  "The twenty-third? Our break starts the sixteenth. Why so late?"

  "Well, I'm working on this project. I can get overtime if I stay, and I thought if Tim comes back I ought to be here."

  Matt resisted the impulse to say that's crazy, that if Tim's old man finds him in Vegas, he'll bring him straight back to New Hampshire.

  "You're going to hang around an empty campus?" He hated the thought of her being alone in a deserted dorm. "You think that's a good idea?"

  "It's not empty and you sound like my mother."

  "Sometimes mothers make a lot of sense."

  "I just got off the phone with her. She's got one of her 'feelings' and wants me to come right home."

  "Is that so bad?"

  "Do you have any idea how quiet a farm gets in the winter?"

  "How about I come visit you down there?" he found himself asking without thinking.

  "No, Matt. You've got better —"

  "What's better than visiting an old friend who sounds like she needs a friend."

  "That's nice of you, Matt, but really, I'll be busy in the lab and there's not much to do around this part of Maryland if you aren't working. I appreciate it, and I'll be fine. And I promise to call you as soon as I get back home. Then the three of us can go out together and catch up."

  "The three of us?"

  "Sure. Tim will be back by then. He's got to be. He wouldn't stay away through Christmas."

  "Right," Matt said slowly. "Sure. The three of us. That'll be great."

  I hope you're right, Quinn, he thought as he hung up a few minutes later.

  The phone rang almost immediately. Matt didn't recognize the voice at first.

  "Matthew? This is Lydia Cleary. Quinn's mother."