The Institute Read online

  Tim closed the mailbox and put one hand behind him, as if to give his belt a tug. His belt was in place and so was the gun, a Glock which had once been the property of a redheaded sheriff’s deputy named Taggart Faraday.

  The man turned off the engine and got out. He was dressed in jeans much newer than Tim’s—they still had the store creases—and a white shirt buttoned to the neck. His face was both handsome and nondescript, a contradiction that might have seemed impossible until you saw a guy like this. His eyes were blue, his hair that Nordic shade of blond that looks almost white. He looked, in fact, much as the late Julia Sigsby had imagined him. He wished Tim a good morning, and Tim returned the greeting with his hand still behind his back.

  “You’re Tim Jamieson.” The visitor held out his hand.

  Tim looked at it, but didn’t shake it. “I am. And who might you be?”

  The blond man smiled. “Let’s say I’m William Smith. That’s the name on my driver’s license.” Smith was okay, so was driver’s, but license was lithenth. A lisp, but a slight one. “Call me Bill.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Smith?”

  The man calling himself Bill Smith—a name as anonymous as his sedan—squinted up into the early sunshine, smiling slightly, as if he were debating several possible answers to this question, all of them pleasant. Then he looked back at Tim. The smile was still on his mouth, but his eyes weren’t smiling.

  “We could dance around this, but I’m sure you’ve got a busy day ahead of you, so I won’t take up any more of your time than I have to. Let me start by assuring you that I’m not here to cause you any trouble, so if it’s a gun you’ve got back there instead of just an itch, you can leave it where it is. I think we can agree there’s been enough shooting in this part of the world for one year.”

  Tim thought of asking how Mr. Smith had found him, but why bother? It couldn’t have been hard. Catawba Farm belonged to Harry and Rita Gullickson, now living in Florida. Their daughter had been keeping an eye on the old home place for the last three years. Who better than a sheriff’s deputy?

  Well, she had been a deputy, and still drew a county salary, at least for the time being, but it was hard to tell just what her remit was nowadays. Ronnie Gibson, absent on the night Mrs. Sigsby’s posse had invaded, was now the acting Fairlee County Sheriff, but how long that would last was anyone’s guess; there was talk of moving the sheriff’s station to the nearby town of Dunning. And Wendy had never been cut out for boots-on-the-ground law enforcement in the first place.

  “Where is Officer Wendy?” Smith asked. “Up at the house, maybe?”

  “Where’s Stackhouse?” Tim countered. “You must have got that Officer Wendy thing from him, because the Sigsby woman’s dead.”

  Smith shrugged, stuck his hands in the back pockets of his new jeans, rocked on his heels, and looked around. “Boy, it’s nice here, isn’t it?” Nice came out niyth, but the lisp really was very light, mostly not there at all.

  Tim decided not to pursue the Stackhouse question. It was obvious he wouldn’t get anywhere with it, and besides, Stackhouse was old news. He might be in Brazil; he might be in Argentina or Australia; he might be dead. It made no difference to Tim where he was. And the man with the lisp was right; there was no point in dancing.

  “Deputy Gullickson is in Columbia, at a closed hearing about the shoot-out that happened last summer.”

  “I assume she has a story those committee folks will buy.”

  Tim had no interest in confirming this assumption. “She’ll also attend some meetings where the future of law enforcement here in Fairlee County will be discussed, since the goons you sent wiped most of it out.”

  Smith spread his hands. “I and the people I work with had nothing to do with that. Mrs. Sigsby acted entirely on her own.”

  Maybe true but also not true, Tim could have said. She acted because she was afraid of you and the people you work with.

  “I understand that George Iles and Helen Simms are gone,” Mr. Smith said. Simms came out Simmth. “Young Mr. Iles to an uncle in California, Miss Simms to her grandparents in Delaware.”

  Tim didn’t know where the lisping man was getting his information—Norbert Hollister was long gone, the DuPray Motel closed with a FOR SALE sign out front that would probably stay there for a long time—but it was good information. Tim had never expected to go unnoticed, that would have been naïve, but he didn’t like the depth of Mr. Smith’s knowledge about the kids.

  “That means that Nicholas Wilholm and Kalisha Benson are still here. And Luke Ellis, of course.” The smile reappeared, thinner now. “The author of all our misery.”

  “What do you want, Mr. Smith?”

  “Very little, actually. We’ll get to it. Meanwhile, let me compliment you. Not just on your bravery, which was apparent on the night you stormed the Institute pretty much single-handed, but on the care you and Officer Wendy have shown in the aftermath. You’ve been parceling them out, haven’t you? Iles first, about a month after returning to South Carolina. The Simms girl two weeks after him. Both with stories about being kidnapped for unknown reasons, held for an unknown length of time at an unknown location, then set free . . . also for unknown reasons. You and Officer Wendy managed to arrange all that while you must have been under some scrutiny yourselves.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  It was the lisping man’s turn not to answer, but that was all right. Tim guessed at least some of his information had come direct from the newspapers and the Internet. The return of kidnapped children was always news. “When do Wilholm and Benson go?”

  Tim considered this and decided to answer. “Nicky leaves this Friday. To his uncle and aunt in Nevada. His brother is already there. Nick’s not crazy about going, but he understands he can’t stay here. Kalisha will stay another week or two. She has a sister, twelve years older, in Houston. Kalisha is eager to reconnect with her.” This was both true and not true. Like the others, Kalisha was suffering from PTSD.

  “And their stories will also stand up to police scrutiny?”

  “Yes. The stories are simple enough, and of course they’re all afraid of what might happen to them if they told the truth.” Tim paused. “Not that they’d be believed.”

  “And young Mr. Ellis? What about him?”

  “Luke stays with me. He has no close family and nowhere to go. He’s already returned to his studies. They soothe him. The boy is grieving, Mr. Smith. Grieving for his parents, grieving for his friends.” He paused, looking hard at the blond man. “I suspect he’s also grieving for the childhood your people stole from him.”

  He waited for Smith to respond to this. Smith did not, so Tim went on.

  “Eventually, if we can work out a story that’s reasonably watertight, he’ll pick up where he left off. Double enrollment at Emerson College and MIT. He’s a very smart boy.” As you well know, he didn’t need to add. “Mr. Smith . . . do you even care?”

  “Not much,” Smith said. He took a pack of American Spirits from his breast pocket. “Smoke?”

  Tim shook his head.

  “I rarely do myself,” Mr. Smith said, “but I’ve been in speech therapy for my lisp, and I allow myself one as a reward when I am able to control it in conversation, especially a long and rather intense one, such as we are having. Did you notice that I lisp?”

  “It’s very faint.”

  Mr. Smith nodded, seemingly pleased, and lit up. The smell on the cool morning air was sweet and fragrant. A smell that seemed made for tobacco country, which this still was . . . although not at Catawba Farm since the nineteen-eighties.

  “I hope you’re sure they will keep shtum, as the saying is. If any one of them talks, there would be consequences for all five. In spite of the flash drive you supposedly have. Not all of my . . . people . . . believe that actually exists.”

  Tim smiled without showing his teeth. “It would be unwise for your . . . people . . . to test that idea.”

  “I take your point. It w
ould still be a very bad idea for those children to talk about their adventures in the Maine woods. If you’re in communication with Mr. Iles and Miss Simms, you might want to pass that along. Or perhaps Wilholm, Benson, and Ellis can get in touch with them by other means.”

  “Are you talking about telepathy? I wouldn’t count on that. It’s reverting to what it was before your people took them. Same with the telekinesis.” He was telling Smith what the children had told him, but Tim wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. All he knew for certain was that awful hum had never come back. “How did you cover it up, Smith? I’m curious.”

  “And so you shall remain,” the blond man said. “But I will tell you that it wathn’t just the installation in Maine that needed our attention. There were twenty other Institutes in other parts of the world, and none remain operational. Two of them—in countries where obedience is inculcated in children almost from birth—hung on for six weeks or so, and then there were mass suicides at both.” The word came out thooithides.

  Mass suicides or mass murder? Tim wondered, but that wasn’t a topic he intended to raise. The sooner he was rid of this man, the better.

  “The Ellis boy—with your help, very much with your help—has ruined us. That undoubtedly sounds melodramatic, but it’s the truth.”

  “Do you think I care?” Tim asked. “You were killing children. If there’s a hell, you’ll go there.”

  “While you, Mr. Jamieson, undoubtedly believe you’ll go to heaven, assuming there is such a place. And who knows, you might be right. What God could turn away a man who rides to the rescue of defenseless youngsters? If I may crib from Christ on the cross, you will be forgiven because you know not what you did.” He cast his cigarette aside. “But I am going to tell you. It’s what I came for, with the consent of my associates. Thanks to you and Ellis, the world is now on suicide watch.” This time the word came out clean.

  Tim said nothing, just waited.

  “The first Institute, although not by that name, was in Nazi Germany.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Tim said.

  “And why be so judgmental? The Nazis were onto nuclear fission before America. They created antibiotics that are still used today. They more or less invented modern rocketry. And certain German scientists were running ESP experiments, with Hitler’s enthusiastic support. They discovered, almost by accident, that groups of gifted children could cause certain troublesome people—roadblocks to progress, you might say—to cease being troublesome. These children were used up by 1944, because there was no sure method, no scientific method, of finding replacements after they became, in Institute argot, gorks. The most useful test for latent psychic ability came later. Do you know what that test was?”

  “BDNF. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Luke said that was the marker.”

  “Yes, he’s a smart boy, all right. Very smart. Everyone involved now wishes they’d left him alone. His BDNF wasn’t even that high.”

  “I imagine Luke also wishes you’d left him alone. And his parents. Now why don’t you go ahead and say your piece.”

  “All right. There were conferences both before and after the Second World War ended. If you remember any of your twentieth-century history, you’ll know about some of them.”

  “I know about Yalta,” Tim said. “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin got together to basically carve up the world.”

  “Yes, that’s the famous one, but the most important meeting took place in Rio de Janeiro, and no government was involved . . . unless you want to call the group that met—and their successors down through the years—a kind of shadow government. They—we—knew about the German children, and set about finding more. By 1950 we understood the usefulness of BDNF. Institutes were set up, one by one, in isolated locations. Techniques were refined. They have been in place for over seventy years, and by our count, they have saved the world from nuclear holocaust over five hundred times.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Tim said harshly. “A joke.”

  “It’s not. Let me give you one example. At the time that the children revolted at the Institute in Maine—a revolt that spread like a virus to all the other Institutes—they had begun working to cause the suicide of an evangelist named Paul Westin. Thanks to Luke Ellis, that man still lives. Ten years from now, he will become a close associate of a Christian gentleman who will become America’s Secretary of Defense. Westin will convince the Secretary that war is imminent, the Secretary will convince the President, and that will eventually result in a preemptive nuclear strike. Only a single missile, but it could start all the dominoes falling. That part is outside our range of prediction.”

  “You couldn’t possibly know a thing like that.”

  “How do you think we picked our targets, Mr. Jamieson? Out of a hat?”

  “Telepathy, I suppose.”

  Mr. Smith looked like a patient teacher with a slow pupil. “TKs move objects and TPs read thoughts, but neither of them are able to read the future.” He drew out his cigarettes again. “Sure you won’t have one?”

  Tim shook his head.

  Smith lit up. “Children such as Luke Ellis and Kalisha Benson are rare, but there are other people who are rarer still. More precious than the most precious metal. And the best thing about them? Their talents don’t fade with age or destroy the minds of the users.”

  Tim caught movement in the corner of his eye, and turned. Luke had come down the driveway. Further up the hill, Annie Ledoux was standing with a shotgun broken open over her arm. Flanking her were Kalisha and Nicky. Smith didn’t see any of them yet; he was gazing out over the hazy distance to the small town of DuPray and the glittering railroad tracks that ran through it.

  Annie now spent much of her time at Catawba Hill. She was fascinated by the children, and they seemed to enjoy her. Tim pointed at her, then patted the air with his hand: hold your position. She nodded and stood where she was, watching. Smith was still admiring the view, which really was very fine.

  “Let’s say there’s another Institute—a very small one, a very special one, where everything is first class and state of the art. No outdated computers or crumbling infrastructure there. It’s located in a completely safe place. Other Institutes exist in what we thought of as hostile territory, but not this one. There are no Tasers, no injections, no punishments. There is no need of subjecting the residents of this special Institute to near-death experiences such as the immersion tank to help open them to their deeper abilities.

  “Let’s say it’s in Switzerland. It might not be, but it will do. It is on neutral ground, because many nations have an interest in its upkeep and continued smooth operation. A great many. There are currently six very special guests in this place. They are not children anymore; unlike the TPs and TKs in the various Institutes, their talents do not thin and disappear in their late teens and early twenties. Two of these people are actually quite old. Their BDNF levels do not correlate with their very special talents; they are unique in that way, and thus very hard to find. We were searching constantly for replacements, but now that search has been suspended, because it hardly seems there’s any point.”

  “What are these people?”

  “Precogs,” Luke said.

  Smith wheeled around, startled. “Why, hello, Luke.” He smiled, but at the same time drew back a step. Was he afraid? Tim thought he was. “Precogs, that’s exactly right.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Tim asked.

  “Precognition,” Luke said. “People who can see into the future.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not and he’s not,” Smith said. “You could call those six our DEW line—a defunct Cold War acronym meaning Distant Early Warning. Or, if you’d like to be more up to date, they are our drones, flying into the future and marking out places where great conflagrations will start. We only concentrate on stopping the big ones. The world has survived because we’ve been able to take these proactive measures. Thousands of children have d
ied in this process, but billions of children have been saved.” He turned to Luke and smiled. “Of course you understood—it’s a simple enough deduction. I understand you’re also quite the math whiz, and I’m sure you see the cost-to-benefit ratio. You may not like it, but you see it.”

  Annie and her two young charges had started down the hill again, but this time Tim didn’t bother motioning them back. He was too stunned by what he was hearing.

  “I can buy telepathy, and I can buy telekinesis, but precognition? That’s not science, that’s carnival bullshit!”

  “I assure you it’s not,” Smith said. “Our precogs found the targets. The TKs and TPs, working in groups to increase their power, eliminated them.”

  “Precognition exists, Tim,” Luke said quietly. “I knew even before I escaped the Institute it had to be that. I’m pretty sure Avery did, too. Nothing else made sense. I’ve been reading up on it since we got here, everything I could find. The stats are pretty much irrefutable.”

  Kalisha and Nicky joined Luke. They looked curiously at the blond man who called himself Bill Smith, but neither spoke. Annie stood behind them. She was wearing her serape, although the day was warm, and looked more like a Mexican gunslinger than ever. Her eyes were bright and aware. The children had changed her. Tim didn’t think it was their power; in the long term, that caused the opposite of improvement. He thought it was just the association, or maybe the fact that the kids accepted her exactly as she was. Whatever the reason, he was happy for her.

  “You see?” Smith said. “It’s been confirmed by your resident genius. Our six precogs—for awhile there were eight, and once, in the seventies, we were down to just four, a very scary time—constantly search for certain individuals we call hinges. They’re the pivot-points on which the door of human extinction may turn. Hinges aren’t agents of destruction, but vectors of destruction. Westin was one such hinge. Once they’re discovered, we investigate them, background them, surveil them, video them. Eventually they’re turned over to the children of the various Institutes, who eliminate them, one way or another.”