The Program tr-2 Page 27

  Tom Altman emitted a sharp little laugh. "No."

  "Are you sure? A guy like you has got some options. Why search for strength when you can go buy a Humvee? A Humvee could make you feel like a real man. Don't you think?" TD drifted back into view, his eyes blazing into Tim's. "In fact, why face your problems at all when you can pay someone else to deal with them for you?"

  The silence was overpowering. Tim could see only darkness beyond the tight scope of his spotlight. "I have everything I could want," he said. "But it doesn't mean much to me. Numbers in an account, that's all. The Fed raises interest rates, your assets drop. The Fed lowers rates, your assets rise. I've gotten so far away from what I set out to do. From what I thought I wanted." Tim felt himself getting surprisingly worked up over the burdens of imaginary affluence. He took a rattling breath, which reverberated around the Growth Hall. For all he knew, the Pros had cleared out, leaving him sitting on a stage in an empty auditorium. "I've been arrogant. I've assumed power I shouldn't have had. I've made some mistakes I wasn't entitled to make. And, even worse, I've gotten away with them. Living my life tied to that…it's no way to be."

  TD stepped into the shaft of light, joining Tim. "Why don't you do something to liberate yourself from it? Break away."

  "I'm ready to."

  TD continued staring, lips tensed, waiting to dispense approval.

  "What?" Tim's voice cracked with genuine emotion. "What can I do?"

  "Only you can answer that. It has to be what's right for you." TD's eyes flicked to the eighteen-karat watch on Tim's wrist, resplendent in the glare.

  Tim removed the thirty-thousand-dollar timepiece and let it dangle from a finger. TD held his hand out, and Tim leaned forward, dropped the watch into TD's cupped hand.

  The lights came up, and Tom Altman was back in the world, his spirit one Cartier wristwatch lighter.

  Exhausted and drained, the Pros milled around the Growth Hall, group leaders directing them to various workstations. No mention was made of breakfast.

  The calling out of assignments impressed upon Tim the daunting scope of the organization. Nathan – Literature, DevRoom C. Spectacular job on the glossy four-color trifold. Shelly, Andrea, Dahlia – Accounting, LabSpace 1. Let's finish those second-quarter estimates! Ted – Expansion, DevRoom B. The Maui proposal is lagging, and the Houston projections slipped 3 percent.

  And on it went, a never-ending situating of spokes in wheels. The manpower-to-cost ratio was staggering – sixty-eight affluent, educated people working themselves to exhaustion for a dollar a year.

  "Tom." TD had glided up behind him. He placed an arm across Tim's shoulders, drawing him away from the others. "After seeing how well you fit in here, I might be so confident as to say that an ambassadorship has your name on it. Pick a city, and we'll go in." His hand shot up from his pocket, the Cartier hanging from the wall of his four fingers. He extended his arm.

  Tim feigned astonishment. "That was my Renunciate. It's not mine anymore."

  TD ran his tongue along the inside of his lip, making his patch of beard undulate. "It's a gimmick, a set of psychological training wheels for the rest of them." He nodded at the Pros, still clamoring around the group leaders. "You and I know they require it and you don't. You and I, we know what's underneath."

  TD reached to hand Tim the Cartier, and Tim stepped back, feeling a stab of agitation. "I don't want the fucking watch, all right?"

  TD watched him, pleased. "That's commendable. But don't kid yourself. You killed a man not responsible for your daughter's death, and you think you're atoning by driving around in your Hummer and feeling bad? How do you think that person's family feels?" He examined Tim's face, his eyes. "Giving up a watch isn't renouncing your former self. It's renouncing an accessory of your former self. And you and I both know what you have to give up is a lot deeper than that."

  He tilted his hand, letting the watch slide off into Tim's hands, and walked off.

  As Tim and Leah passed along the rear of the cafeteria, she averted her eyes from the side of the walk-in freezer so as not to catch a prohibited glimpse of her reflection. She forged ahead of Tim, cresting the north rise of the ranch, her feet plopping through a stretch of weedy field steeped in rainwater. Indistinct clouds, the color of dirty ice, smudged the sky.

  TD had lowered a digital camera on a lanyard around her neck -her task was to capture some inspiring shots of the ranch for the nascent Web site. She'd barely spoken to Tim since he'd harassed her during the Guy-Med, but Gro-Par convention meant they were stuck together. The Program required constant companionship, a weakness Tim hoped to spin to his advantage when it came time to extract her.

  Leah traced the perimeter of the ranch, keeping dutifully south of the chalk line. She snapped a picture of the mist settling into the distant hills. "It's always better to upload digitals. The guy running the site before insisted on scanning prints, but that gives lower resolution."

  Tim took up the proffered conversation. "You must be glad to be running it now."

  "I am." A trace of girlish pride found its way into her smile. "I guarantee you I love programming more than anyone else up here."

  "What about it do you love?"

  "Its simplicity. There's an elegance to a good program. A finite number of keystrokes in a particular order yields a predictable result. When there's a malfunction, the code can be tested, diagnosed, repaired. It all works the same ways, abides by the same laws." She scowled. "Programs beat people that way."

  "We have more glitches."

  She looked at him sideways, wearing a half smile. "That's right."

  Though Tim had only a vague idea what time it was, the gray sky suggested dusk was encroaching. They walked for a while in silence. "What you said last night. About my daughter. I think you're right. I spend too much time talking about her murder, her absence, and not enough time talking about her. I think when I get back to talking about her, I'll remember what it was like to be a parent, not just a victim-by-proxy." A thought of Dray stole through his defenses. "I need to do that."

  A turkey vulture lazed in circles over the distant water tower, drawing Tim's attention. Leah inhaled sharply. One hand covered her mouth, the other pointed at his feet. Expecting a rattlesnake, he looked down. His foot had strayed over the chalked boundary.

  "You crossed the boundary." Her tone wasn't scolding; it was shocked.

  He stood still, one leg on either side of the divide. "What did you think would happen if someone stepped over?"

  "I don't…I don't know." She drew near, studying his foot. "I never thought about it, I guess." Her voice hardened. "We don't leave the ranch. Not even a footstep."

  "Do you think it'll damage you to step over?" He offered his hand to her.

  She studied his face, then the chalked line, then his face again. The heel of her sneaker rose, but the toe stayed planted. She stared at his hand for a long time. Her cheeks were splotched from the wind.

  She reached out, her fingers hesitant, and took his hand. She waited for him to pull her. When he didn't, she put one foot across. Her other hand came up to his chest, as if she were breaking a stumble, and they faced each other. Despite the cold, the tips of her hair had darkened with sweat.

  Before her mood could turn, Tim stepped back across. She was shaking as they made their way back.

  TD twisted the mike free from his headset and handed it to Shanna.

  Assembled in the Growth Hall in an immense circle around them, the Pros stretched their limbs, blinking the grogginess from their eyes. Tim watched by Leah's side.

  Shanna stared at the little black bulb of the mike, opened her mouth, then hesitated.

  Stanley John began to stomp his foot on the floorboards, slowly, rhythmically. A few Pros joined in, then a handful more. Within seconds the auditorium thrummed with the beat. Tim watched the skin of Leah's face smooth until it was devoid of expression, cadaverous. Her cheeks vibrated as she slammed her foot down, paused, slammed again.

  Shanna w
as breathing hard, hand resting on her chest. TD hovered with a placid grin. She whispered something to him. He spread his arms. The pounding ceased.

  She leaned awkwardly over the mike rather than raising it to her mouth. "I've decided to break my ties with my old self."

  The flare of noise startled her, her eyes widening as the Pros charged her. Ecstatic embraces. Sports-arena whistles. Julie and Lorraine held hands around her, leaping for joy. Confused at first, she joined in. Soon she wore a similar face-splitting smile.

  Tim caught himself clapping like an idiot. He searched for the other initiates in the crowd – Jason was joining in, babbling about catharsis. Don wore a vicarious smile. Wendy alone looked troubled, standing at the fringe of the festivities. Chad found her immediately, pulling her into a spontaneous hug, the embrace of two fans brought together by the winning touchdown.

  From the rear, Stanley John pressed forward, bearing a stack of legal-size documents.

  Tim sat on the toilet and devoured a protein bar – his second to last. He licked the inside of the foil wrapper before ripping it up and flushing it. Shaving without a mirror proved a challenge, but he managed as he had on deployments. He used his free hand to help guide the razor around his goatee.

  He knocked the blade against the lip of the sink and walked down the hall, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. The floor felt glacial through his socks. He pushed open the door to find Leah on her bed, facing the wall, her spine a pronounced stroke on the arc of her bare back. Bathed in the throw of light from the room's sole lamp, her shoulders heaved once, then stilled.

  To Tim's surprise she didn't whip the sheet across herself or reach for her shirt, which lay puddled by her pillow. Instead she rolled over, revealing the profile of a modest breast and an angry red inflammation on her chest. Her face was slick with tears.

  She sat up, collected her shirt, and stared at the rash. "It's your fault it hasn't gone away." Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. "Please don't tell them."

  Before he could respond, she reached over and clicked off the light.

  Chapter thirty-one

  Arms crossed over his knees, Lorraine's bobby pin pinched between his pale lips, Tim sat up in bed, waiting for Skate and the dogs to make their next pass around Cottage Circle. He wore two T-shirts beneath the sweater he'd pinched from Leah's drawer and an extra pair of socks. Trash bags, procured from the bathroom, encased his legs to the knees; he'd used shoelaces from his hipster Skechers to cinch them in place. Minutes before, he'd crept down the hall and unplugged the alarm's adapter, laying it beneath the outlet on the kitchenette counter.

  Across in the dark, Leah was breathing raggedly, having cried herself to sleep. She'd refused to talk to him, a backslide in rapport.

  The leaves of the elm said the wind was blowing east at a good clip, a Santa Ana riptide mountain-funneled back across the plateau. Tim would have to stalk Skate downslope to avoid the Dobermans' scent cone. He stared at the desolate ring of grass until Skate appeared, shuffling heavily by, the dogs' paws plunking in puddles.

  Tim pushed open the window, eased himself out, and crouched at the base of the wall, mindful of the motion detector dangling from the roof's northwest corner. About forty yards away, one of the Dobies turned, ears perked, and looked directly at Tim. Forest green fleece pulled bandido style up over his mouth, Tim didn't move, didn't blink. The wind livened, whooshing in his ears. The dog stayed on point.

  Skate snapped his fingers, and the Doberman reluctantly turned to trot beside his companion.

  Tim pursued them, moving from cottage wall to tree trunk, not wanting to lose them in the darkness. Through the plastic bags, his feet left smudged, scentless indentations. When Skate banked around the lawn's far curve, Tim struck out swiftly for the trail leading down to TD's cottage. His jeans whistling at the inseam, his sheathed sneakers sliding on loose rock, he sprinted down the slope.

  He reached the forbidden clearing and paused at a leaky pine, taking in the half-submerged wagon wheels, the grand porch, the candle flicker visible through the side window. Opera blared from TD's cottage. Across the way, Skate and Randall's shed nestled within a mass of brush. Orange light shimmered through the seams of the slatted wooden door. A silhouette crouched inside – Randall. Black smoke fumed from the pipe chimney, diffused by the rain cap. A blaze of fiery ash hiccupped out, then Tim heard the clank of an iron door. Judging from the gaps between the warped boards, the shed's frigidity outnumbed even that of the cottages; they probably kept the fire going all night.

  Tim circled the clearing, ducking through bushes and rakelike branches. He passed behind the shed, close enough to peer through a rift in the wood. Randall relaxed shirtless on a cot, his flesh sleek with perspiration and jaundiced from the flames. He was reading a letter and chuckling maliciously.

  The door to the mod confronted Tim with a rise of locks and a padlock dangling from a hasp staple. He plucked the meager bobby pin from his lips and twirled it between two fingers. Cold bit into him at the wrists and neck.

  He humped his way up a nearby oak, bark scraping his cheek, then swung out along the branch. He absorbed the three-foot drop to the roof with a deep-knee bend, making barely a sound. Four screws secured the skylight pane in its housing, so he rebent the bobby pin to form a flat length and worked it until his fingers cramped. Once the top screws were loosened, he slid the pane out of its housing. He removed the trash bags and stuffed them in a pocket. Gripping the edge, he swung down into the mod, landing softly on his clean Nikes.

  He pulled the flexible-rod flashlight from his back pocket and uncurled it. The confined tactical signature illuminated TD standing in the room, arms crossed confidently. Tim started at the cardboard display. A few moments' pause helped him level his breathing and stop smiling at himself. Then he moved systematically through the modular, searching through boxes and crates. He turned up a staggering array of propaganda and a locked Pelican case he presumed held ordnance; a barrel key in the bottom desk drawer fit the case, which opened to reveal a cache of fifteen handguns. Not wanting to pause to write down the registration numbers, he resecured the case, making a note to return to it if he had time. He couldn't risk a spin through the computer – his tech skills weren't good enough to justify the risk of a glowing monitor – but the bank of file cabinets beckoned.

  Torturing the bobby pin further, he got through the crappy locks. He sat on the floor with the flashlight goosenecked between his teeth, flipping through file after file. All five drawers of the first cabinet housed prospective land purchases for TDB Corp. Various business models and proposals filled the next cabinet, many of them too complicated for Tim to assess.

  The bottom drawers held social-science research. Table 1-9: Increasing Immediacy in Obedience-Inducing Force. Chart 4: Compliance as a Function of Demographic Group. Generating Socially Undesirable Behavior: A Reward-Cost Analysis.

  TD had compiled his own database to underpin The Program.

  Moving quickly, Tim evened documents' edges, realigned paper clips in their grooves, replaced folders in their hanging files. At the snap of a twig or the rattle of the wind, he'd click off the light and take a position of cover beneath the desk; the vigorous weather proved an impediment to swift progress.

  He came upon lists of all sorts. A list of Decrees for TD's higher-ups – Do not make spontaneous eye contact with the Teacher; a list of Glitches – Touching the Teacher's skin when you are menstruating; a list of System Errors – Taking any action without your Gro-Par; even a list of Invisible Viruses – Having negative thoughts about The Program.

  One file was stuffed with letters from TD bearing his signature stamp. Tim fanned the stack, eyeballing one in the middle – The Teacher forgives you for having an unflattering dream image of him last night. The adjacent file explained the mass-produced absolutions – letters to him from the Pros, begging forgiveness for everything from unauthorized masturbation to clandestine snacks.

  The final two cabinets accommodated
the most disturbing materials, dossiers on every Pro and initiate. Glancing through them recalled the eeriness Tim had felt perusing his own file in the midst of last year's mess.

  The meticulous logging was mind-boggling. Sleep schedules. Weekly Gro-Par reports – Winona complained twice yesterday of missing her twins. Self-report forms – Name your complaints about The Program you least want to say out loud. Medical reports from the ranch physician, one Dr. Henderson, who seemed to double as a shrink – Chad complained of perianal itching; he believes it's stress-related. He's not yet fully sublimated into GrowthWork; he recalled weight-lifting fondly. A peek inside Dr. Henderson's file revealed him to be a podiatrist who'd had his license revoked for selling OxyContin, a juicy nugget rooted out by an outside PI, one Phil McCanley. TD had created a time-tested system for psychological leverage – trickle-down snitchonomics.

  Tim found Leah's file and spent more time on it than was judicious. Primary trauma – father's death. Primary phobia – cancer. Primary victimization – enabling others in their victimhood. Point of leverage: stepdad. Below this the wrongdoings Will had ostensibly perpetrated upon Leah – the precise list she had regurgitated to Tim last night. Having scrutinized similar lists in countless other files helped put Will's allegedly abusive parenting in perspective. Dr. Henderson had much to report on Leah's rash. A pink bow fastened a bundle of love letters Leah had written to her new self. A note jotted on TD's letterhead made Tim's stomach churn: Latent feelings of unwantedness and minor instances of neglect serve as tenable areas of exploration. Guide Leah to recall physical and sexual abuse.

  Tom Altman's file held exhaustive financial information regarding his phony portfolio. Not surprisingly, murdered daughter was Tom's key point of leverage; Tim felt another wave of shame at having exploited the trauma so cheaply. The file was updated to include TD's suspicion, then confirmation, of the murder-for-hire, as well as the fictional hit man's blunder. Tom's bout of impotence had already appeared, as well as his extensive dish-wiping miscues from yesterday's lunch. His divorce was noted as well. All in all, the file declared him an exceptional candidate.