“You mean asking you what was on them.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. I thought they were Rhine cards, pretty much had to be. I got tested on those a couple of years before I wound up in this charming hole of hell. This was after my parents figured out I really could move things around sometimes if I looked at them. Once they decided I wasn’t faking it just to freak them out, or as one of my little jokes, they wanted to find out what else was going on with me, so they took me to Princeton, where there’s this thing called Anomalies Research. Or was. I think they closed it down.”

“Anomalies . . . are you serious?”

“Yeah. Sounds more scientific than Psychic Research, I guess. It was actually part of the Princeton engineering department, if you can believe that. A couple of grad students ran the Rhine cards on me, but I pretty much zeroed out. I wasn’t even able to move much stuff around that day. Sometimes it’s just like that.” He shrugged. “They probably thought I was a faker, which was okey-doke with me. I mean, on a good day I can knock over a pile of blocks, just thinking about them, but that’ll never get me chicks. You agree?”

As someone whose big trick was knocking a pizza pan off a restaurant table without touching it, Luke did. “So did they slap you around?”

“I did get one, and it was a real hummer,” George said. “It was because I tried to make a joke. This bitch named Priscilla laid it on me.”

“I met her. She’s a bitch, all right.”

A word his mother hated even more than fuck, and using it made Luke miss her all over again.

“And you didn’t know what was on the cards.”

George gave him an odd look. “I’m TK, not TP. The same as you. How could I?”

“I guess you couldn’t.”

“Since I’d had the Rhine cards at Princeton, I guessed cross, then star, then wavy lines. Priscilla told me to stop lying, so when Evans looked at the next one, I told him it was a photo of Priscilla’s tits. That’s when she slapped me. Then they let me go back to my room. Tell you the truth, they didn’t seem all that interested. More like they were crossing t’s and dotting i’s.”

“Maybe they didn’t really expect anything,” Luke said. “Maybe you were just a control subject.”

George laughed. “Man, I can’t control jackshit in here. What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Never mind. Did they come back? The lights, I mean? Those colored dots?”

“No.” George looked curious now. “Did they with you?”

“No.” Luke was suddenly glad that Avery wasn’t here, and could only hope the little kid’s brain radio was short-range. “Just . . . I did have a seizure . . . or thought I did . . . and I was afraid they might come back.”

“I don’t get the point of this place,” George said, sounding more morose than ever. “It almost has to be a government installation, but . . . my mother bought this book, okay? Not long before they took me to Princeton. Psychic Histories and Hoaxes, it was called. I read it when she was done. There was a chapter on government experiments about the stuff we can do. The CIA ran some back in the nineteen-fifties. For telepathy, telekinesis, precognition, even levitation and teleportation. LSD was involved. They got some results, but nothing much.” He leaned forward, blue eyes on Luke’s green ones. “And that’s us, man—nothing much. Are we supposed to achieve world domination for the United States by moving Saltine boxes—and only if they’re empty—or flipping the pages of a book?”

“They could send Avery to Russia,” Luke said. “He could tell them what Putin had for breakfast, and if he was wearing boxers or briefs.”

That made George smile.

“About our parents—” Luke began, but then Kalisha came running out, asking who wanted to play dodgeball.

It turned out they all did.

20

There were no tests for Luke that day, except of his own intestinal fortitude, and that one he flunked again. Twice more he went to the Star Tribune, and twice more he backed out, although the second time he did peep at the headline, something about a guy running over a bunch of people with a truck to prove how religious he was. That was a terrible thing, but at least it was something that was going on beyond the Institute. The outside world was still there, and at least one thing had changed in here: the laptop’s welcome screen now had his name instead of the departed Donna’s.

He would have to look for information about his parents sooner or later. He knew that, and now understood perfectly that old saying about no news being good news.

The following day he was taken back down to C-Level, where a tech named Carlos took three ampules of blood, gave him a shot (no reaction), then had him go into a toilet cubicle and pee in a cup. After that, Carlos and a scowling orderly named Winona escorted him down to D-Level. Winona was reputed to be one of the mean ones, and Luke made no attempt to talk to her. They took him to a large room containing an MRI tube that must have cost megabucks.

It almost has to be a government installation, George had said. If so, what would John and Josie Q. Public think about how their tax dollars were being spent? Luke guessed that in a country where people squalled about Big Brother even if faced with some piddling requirement like having to wear a motorcycle helmet or get a license to carry a concealed weapon, the answer would be “not much.”

A new tech was waiting for them, but before he and Carlos could insert Luke in the tube, Dr. Evans darted in, checked Luke’s arm around the site of his latest shot, and pronounced him “fine as paint.” Whatever that meant. He asked if Luke had experienced any more seizures or fainting spells.

“No.”

“What about the colored lights? Any recurrence of those? Perhaps while exercising, perhaps while looking at your laptop computer, perhaps while straining at stool? That means—”

“I know what it means. No.”

“Don’t lie to me, Luke.”

“I’m not.” Wondering if the MRI would detect some change in his brain activity and prove him a liar.

“Okay, good.” Not good, Luke thought. You’re disappointed. Which makes me happy.

Evans scribbled something on his clipboard. “Carry on, lady and gentlemen, carry on!” And he darted out again, like a white rabbit late for a very important date.

The MRI tech—DAVE, his tag said—asked Luke if he was claustrophobic. “You probably know what that means, too.”

“I’m not,” Luke said. “The only thing I’m phobic about is being locked up.”

Dave was an earnest-looking fellow, middle-aged, bespectacled, mostly bald. He looked like an accountant. Of course, so had Adolf Eichmann. “Just if you are . . . claustrophobic, I mean . . . I can give you a Valium. It’s allowed.”

“That’s all right.”

“You should have one, anyway,” Carlos said. “You’re gonna be in there a long time, on and off, and it makes the experience more pleasant. You might even sleep, although it’s pretty loud. Bumps and bangs, you know.”

Luke knew. He’d never actually been in an MRI tube, but he’d seen plenty of doctor shows. “I’ll pass.”

But after lunch (brought in by Gladys), he took the Valium, partly out of curiosity, mostly out of boredom. He’d had three stints in the MRI, and according to Dave, had three more to go. Luke didn’t bother asking what they were testing for, looking for, or hoping to find. The answer would have been some form of none of your beeswax. He wasn’t sure they knew themselves.

The Valium gave him a floaty, dreamy feeling, and during the last stint in the tube, he fell into a light doze in spite of the loud banging the machine made when it took its pictures. By the time Winona appeared to take him back to the residence level, the Valium had worn off and he just felt spaced out.

She reached into her pocket and brought out a handful of tokens. When she handed them to him, one fell to the floor and rolled.

“Pick that up, butterfingers.”

He picked it up.

“You’ve had a long day,” she said, and actually smiled. “Why don’t you go get yourself something to drink? Kick back. Relax. I recommend the Harveys Bristol Cream.”

She was middle-aged, plenty old enough to have a kid Luke’s age. Maybe two. Would she have made a similar recommendation to them? Gee, you had a tough day at school, why not kick back and have a wine cooler before tackling your homework? He thought of saying that, the worst she’d probably do was slap him, but . . .

“What good would it do?”

“Huh?” She was frowning at him. “What good would what do?”

“Anything,” he said. “Anything at all, Winnie.” He didn’t want Harveys Bristol Cream, or Twisted Tea, or even Stump Jump Grenache, a name John Keats might have been thinking of when he said something or other was “call’d as romantic as that westwards moon in yon waning ribbon of the night.”

“You want to watch that wise mouth, Luke.”