ELEVEN

It takes until after lunch to get Freddy settled in one place so we can talk to him. I suppose we can’t complain. We have dropped in on Mary and Freddy without warning. They have fed us and given us a place to sleep for the night. When they go shopping for fresh produce at an organic market, on the other side of town, all we can do is wait.

I convey Matt’s news to the others, and suddenly Seymour and Shanti are more interested in Charlie and his research than the IIC. I guess I’d feel the same way if a plague of black blisters kept reappearing on my body and itching like crazy. I give Shanti a double dose of the vaccine we have and her symptoms improve but don’t vanish.

Finally, Freddy is all ours. The group, Mary included, squeezes into the cramped living room to hear the parts of the IIC’s birth that Professor Sharp was too frightened to tell us about. It’s probably a good thing Mary’s present. Freddy, looking nervous, downs three beers before he even starts.

I just want to get him talking. There’s no way I’m going to start with the Cradle. I can be patient, if the need is there. By the time I’m done with Freddy, I’ll know everything he knows.

“Mary says you’re super psychic,” I say. “That you tested better than anyone Professor Sharp had ever met before. Is that true?”

Sitting on the floor next to Mary and me, Freddy stares at his bottle of beer, takes a sip, and then nods. “That’s how I met the man. He was always canvassing the campus for people to volunteer for his experiments. One day I decided to give it a try. I remember it vividly because he scheduled me for an odd hour—from twelve at night to one in the morning. Cindy was there. She sat across from me in a small room. She’d pick up a card, stare at it for thirty seconds, then set it down and wait fifteen seconds before picking up another card. I can’t say she was totally professional. She winked at me a few times during the test. She was so damn pretty, it was hard to focus on the cards. But I guess I did great. When the hour was up Professor Sharp burst in the room and shook my hand. I thought it was a weird thing for a professor to do. He said he wanted to congratulate me, that I’d gotten sixty-five correct hits out of seventy-five cards.”

“That’s better than eighty percent,” I say. “Were you able to keep up that average?”

“That’s the first thing Sharp wanted to find out. He had me come back the next day and tested me all over again, this time using two hundred and fifty cards. I didn’t mind, the research was funded by the university and they paid us five dollars for every hour we sat in one of his chairs. I made twenty bucks that second day. Back then, that was a lot of money. I don’t know who the tester was, except it wasn’t Cindy. But I remember I scored around seventy-five percent and the professor said I could be the next Uri Geller.”

“Who’s that?” Shanti asks.

“A famous psychic from the seventies,” Freddy says. “He was supposed to be able to bend spoons with his mind. A lot of people said he was a fake, a smooth stage magician. But there were many scientists who believed he was genuine. I don’t know, our paths never crossed. I had my hands full with Professor Sharp. I was close to finishing my undergraduate degree in chemistry. I was thinking about becoming a doctor. But Sharp told me it would be a waste of my talents. He wanted me to get a master’s in parapsychology, in a program he was starting up. I told him no but when he came back to me with a full scholarship—that included room and board—it was hard to refuse.”

Mary sighs. “Never mind that you were dating Cindy at the time.”

“I admit she influenced my decision. I fell for her big-time. We were together night and day. Cindy was full of life back then. But my interest in the professor’s work was genuine. I could see that he’d hit on an amazing tool with his array. The more people we brought aboard, and the better we got at screening them, the more impressive were our results. We didn’t just prove the existence of telepathy, we were able to do the same when it came to precognition.”

“When you talk about proving precognition,” I say, “you’re talking about playing the stock market, aren’t you?”

“When Cindy brought up using the stock market, it seemed a clever way of testing whether the array could predict events. Understand, we didn’t start down that road until after we’d been together a couple of years. Noel and Wendy were already married by then and had a kid, Angela. We were all surviving on our scholarships—except for Tom, Thomas Brutran, who had his own money—but we were living on the edge. We were often broke. When Cindy showed us how we could take a small sum and multiply it several times over, it seemed like manna from heaven.”

“Did Sharp approve of using his research to make money?” I ask.

“We didn’t tell him. At least not at first.”

“Why not?” Paula asks.

“Cindy asked us to keep it secret so we could prove that it worked before showing him the results. I felt kind of funny going behind his back, but I have to say Cindy wasn’t the easiest person in the world to argue with. She was so strong-willed, she had to have her way.”

“I believe you,” I mutter.

“When we finally did tell him, he yelled at us that none of the other academics would take us seriously now. The truth is, I think he was just looking for someone to blame for why he couldn’t get his results published. He said that Cindy’s money-making system had made his peers think he was operating a Ponzi scheme. Those were tense times. We’d been together for over two years and there was talk among the other teachers that Sharp was squandering the university’s money. He was still having to pay everyone who volunteered. When the array reached a thousand heads, you can see how funds started to be a problem. Ironically, it was Cindy who kept the experiments alive with the money she made on the market. That was true even after Berkeley shut us down.” He pauses. “I don’t suppose Sharp told you that.”

“He didn’t mention it,” I say.

“How did the Cradle come into existence?” Seymour asks, growing impatient. I sympathize with his mood. Freddy has begun to repeat several points Sharp has already told us. It’s time to cut to the chase. He tenses at the question and stares at his beer bottle. He doesn’t respond, not at first. Mary strokes his back and whispers in his ear.

“Tell them, honey. It’ll be good to get it off your chest.”

Freddy sighs. “It’s hard. It was my fault.”

“It was Cindy’s fault,” Mary says.

Freddy looks up. “Two unrelated events led to the creation of the Cradle. The first was definitely my fault. I’d heard a rumor that Tom—the man you know as Thomas Brutran, the president of IIC—had been seen kissing Cindy at some restaurant. I don’t know why I didn’t confront her about it. I guess I was afraid she’d tell me it was true. Suffice to say I was pretty upset to get the news. To make matters worse, I heard about it two hours before we were supposed to have a full gathering of the array. Back then we didn’t usually get everyone together in the same room to conduct our experiments. We’d discovered that a person could be on the phone and give us practically the identical support, as long as we were all on one line together.

“That day was different. Sharp wanted to get everyone together to see if we could boost our results. I forget his reason. I just know it was a pity I was chosen to lead the group. My brain was on fire. All I could think of was Cindy in Tom’s arms. And here I was the guy in charge of helping everyone focus.” Freddy stopped and shook his head. “I know that’s why it happened.”

“What happened?” I ask.

“During the session, Tom started having trouble breathing. His skin took on a bluish tinge. He gasped for us to help him. He felt as if he had a mountain on his chest, crushing him down. The professor was sure he was having a heart attack. We called for an ambulance. It goes without saying we broke up the array. After that, we were all afraid to do any psychic work. Especially me.”

“Why you?” I ask.

“Isn’t it obvious? I was the one who hurt Tom. I was the one who almost stopped his heart. I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t control myself. I already told you the state of mind I was in. Then, when I took my place in front of the crowd, and they closed their eyes, I felt this huge magnetic web encircle me. I can still recall how it felt to this day. It was like a huge spider entered the auditorium and spun a hideous web that somehow linked us together. It was real, it was as tangible as a physical object. There was only one thing that kept me from running screaming from that auditorium. The one thing that overshadowed the horror I felt.”

“It was a sense of power,” I say.

Freddy stares at me, stunned. “How did you know?”

“It’s a long story.”

He nods. “It was like my anger toward Tom got magnified a thousandfold and transformed into something else. Into an evil I’d never dreamed could exist.”

I suddenly have trouble breathing. I cannot stop thinking of Numbria in that crummy London motel room, and what I did to her. I know the evil he is talking about.

“What happened to Tom?” Seymour asks.

“He had a heart attack. He ended up spending over a month in the hospital. A twenty-five-year-old guy who didn’t smoke or drink and who played tennis before breakfast. He couldn’t have been in better shape. Yet somehow my mind, in connection with the array, almost killed him.”

“That’s quite a leap from answering yes and no questions,” Seymour says.

“You’re telling me. It was a power we just stumbled onto.”

“Did you tell Sharp about your state of mind during the experiment?” Seymour asks.

“I confessed to the others what I’d done. My guilt haunted me. But ironically the professor didn’t blame me. He felt it was a fluke. Still, to be on the safe side, he made it a rule that no one was to join an array if they were feeling emotional.”

“Did you confront Cindy?” Seymour asks.

Freddy hesitates. “No.”

“Why not?” Seymour persists.

“That’s none of your business!” Freddy snaps.

The room suddenly feels tense enough to prompt another visit from the psychic spider. I let Freddy calm down before I gently encourage him to explain about the other half of the Cradle. I have a feeling I’ve waited a long time to hear what he has to say.

Freddy finally tell us the big secret.

“Six months after Tom had his heart attack, the professor had a stroke and was forced to retire. For a time the members of our group went their separate ways. Except for us couples, Cindy and me, and Wendy and Noel. There were no more experiments with the array. There was no longer an authority figure to get the thousands of people together. I was glad. After my contact with that evil power, I lost all enthusiasm for the work.

“I told you that Wendy and Noel had a child, Angela. She was five years old when Cindy got pregnant with our child. Unfortunately, this was in the days before routine sonograms, although it’s debatable that knowing about the baby’s situation ahead of time would have made any difference.

“When Henry was born, he had a condition where his liver, his gallbladder, and portions of his small and large intestines were outside his body. The surgeons operated immediately. They skillfully shifted Henry’s tiny organs into their proper place and sewed him back up. For a few days it looked like he would make it. But the trauma of the surgery or else the pressure of the organs themselves was too much for the boy. He died and it broke Cindy’s and my heart.

“We didn’t have a funeral with a coffin. We didn’t believe in them. Cindy and I had Henry cremated. The old gang rented a boat and took it out on the San Francisco Bay. We prayed, sang songs, and sprinkled his ashes on the dark water. My heart felt so heavy that day. I kept thinking how unfair it all seemed.

“It was while I was driving home that night with Cindy that an idea struck me. I wasn’t a major follower of astrology, but I dabbled in it from time to time, largely because I’d noticed that many of the events the array predicted, the stars were also able to predict.

“I couldn’t stop thinking of Henry and it made me wonder if there was a sign in his astrological chart that would indicate that he was meant to die. Like so many people who had suffered a loss, I suppose I was looking for meaning in his death.

“The Internet was on the horizon but it didn’t yet exist. However, personal computers had begun to appear. The first were primitive Apples, which we all thought were miracles in a box. My point is that computers and their endless streams of data had begun to spread around the globe, and it struck me that this incredible wealth of information might somehow be harnessed to prove whether astrology had any validity to it or not.”

“You just lost me,” Seymour says.

Freddy explains in a patient tone.

“Consider the case of Henry. He died six days after he was born. If astrology had any truth to it at all, then surely there must be something in his chart that would indicate his days would be short. To see if this was the case, I drew up his chart the same day we spread his ashes on the bay, and I stayed up all night studying it. To my surprise I found not one but four clear markers that he was doomed the instant he took his first breath. To this day, I remember what they were. He had Mars in the eighth house, the house of loss. Mars is the planet of death. Then he had both of them in Scorpio, which gives great power to the negative influence. Worst of all, he had been born during a solar eclipse. It’s true it was a partial eclipse but it had been noticeable. Outside, I recalled, the light had dimmed just as Cindy pushed our son out of her body and Henry drew his first breath.

“All of this seemed an incredible coincidence. It made me wonder if it was possible to create a more accurate astrological system than anyone had come up with in the past. Trillions of bits of data on millions of people would be the key. I proposed using computers to scan the charts of living people, to identify astrological patterns that matched what was already going on in their lives.”

“I’m still lost,” Seymour says.

Freddy grows animated. “Let me give you an example. Say you took a thousand successful CEOs. Men and women who had worked their way to the top of the largest companies on earth. What if you threw all of their astrological charts together into a computer and programmed it to look for characteristics in the heavens that they all shared. What if the computer began to spot patterns. They could be anything. Venus in the second house, the house of wealth. The sun in the ascendant. With Jupiter and Uranus trine with Venus.”

“Did you just list the astrological signs of successful people?” I ask.

Freddy nods. “Yes! I began to spot patterns everywhere I looked. Some matched the ancient texts on astrology. That surprised me. It meant that either someone in the distant past had come up with the same concept as me and implemented it without the help of computers, or else there had been a handful of psychic people back then who’d cognized the patterns out of thin air. But no matter how insightful those ancient seers were, they couldn’t compete with modern computers and trillions of bits of data.”

“Fascinating,” Seymour says, finally grasping the concept. “Why do I get the impression you created this system by working backwards?”

“Because that’s exactly what I did! To understand the compassionate nature of someone like Mother Teresa, I took her astrological chart and the charts of thousands of other people who had devoted their lives to service. Then I fed their birth data into a computer and searched for qualities in the sky that they all shared. Do you see?”

“Gotcha.” Seymour nods.

“My goal was to discover the perfect place and time for an infant to be born on earth so they would embody the exact qualities their parents were hoping they would have. I sought for patterns that would create the greatest scientist, statesman, dancer, writer, artist, actor, doctor. With my system, I imagined a day would come when every parent could choose what kind of child they wanted.”

“That was a lofty goal,” I say. “It’s amazing, working alone, that you were able to identify all these patterns.”

“I worked on the system for years, night and day, without rest.”

I pat his arm. “It was the pain of your son’s death that drove you.”

Freddy stares at me with tremendous feeling in his eyes. “I’m glad you understand. The system was to be Henry’s memorial.”

“What went wrong?” Seymour asks.

Freddy drops his head. “Cindy,” he whispers.

“You have to tell them,” Mary says gently when a minute goes by without him speaking.

He shrugs helplessly. “After we lost Henry, Cindy and I grew apart. We’d go days, even weeks, without speaking. She didn’t tell me that her grief had inspired her to head in a totally different direction. She went back to the professor’s experiments. She gathered together an array that was far more powerful than any of Sharp’s creations. She used every dollar she’d saved from her earlier ventures with the stock market to first identify the kids that were most psychic, then to pay them to work for her at predicting the moods of the market. I should have known what she was up to because suddenly we had money. But I didn’t want to know. My research consumed my every waking moment and frankly I needed her funds to continue with my research. To this day I don’t know if she supported me because she had faith in what I was doing. Or if she simply saw the potential of my idea and planned from the start to steal it.” Freddy pauses. “Of course, that’s exactly what she did.”

“How could she steal your system?” Seymour asks.

“Every single computer disk, every hard drive, every scrap of paper that dealt with the Cradle . . . she took it all. Now I know what you’re going to ask. Didn’t I have backups of my work? I did. Unfortunately, she knew where they all were. It’s not as if I tried to hide them from her. After all, she was the one who was supporting me.”

“First she stole Professor Sharp’s work,” I say. “Then she stole yours. You don’t need to check her stars. Her pattern is obvious.”

Seymour nods. “She’s a user.”

Freddy shakes his head. “She’s more than that. She’s a monster.”

“What did she do with your astrological system?” I ask.

Freddy appears stunned, as if the answer were obvious.

“She used it to create more monsters,” he says.

“Huh?” Seymour says.

“It all goes back to that day I sat before the professor’s array with my mind in turmoil. Cindy spotted an important secret that day that none of us noticed. She realized if you took a person who had exceptional psychic gifts—in this case, me—and connected them to the array, he or she could focus its power so that it caused physical harm. In other words, she saw a way to allow the array to transcend the confines of the mental realms. Make no mistake, I gave Tom a heart attack. My mind struck him down like the hammer of Thor. It’s a miracle he didn’t die, although, as things eventually turned out, it’s a shame he didn’t.”

“Tom helped Cindy steal the Cradle from you?” I ask.

“He took everything I had. I don’t know exactly when Cindy left me for Tom. I’d ask if she still loved me, and she’d say sure, but she had always been a great liar. All I know is that when they stole my work, I was left with nothing and the world was in terrible danger.”

“What did they do with your Cradle?” I ask.

“I’m sure you can guess. They began to seek out the qualities that defined a psychic child. Not only that, they sought out the qualities that made a person empathetic.”

“They wanted to draft people with empathy?” Seymour asks.

Freddy smiles bitterly. “The opposite. They wanted to know which qualities gave rise to love and compassion so they could avoid them at all cost. By this time they probably had so much money and power their reach stretched across the world. I know they set about testing children in the most remote corners of Africa, India, Mongolia, South America. In these places they identified future astrological charts that would produce children more psychic and cold than anything the world had ever seen. Then they made it a point that a child was born in the right place at the right time.”

“How?” Seymour asks.

“Cesarean section,” I say.

“Right,” Freddy says. “It was these children, as they took birth—according to the stars, and according to Cindy’s will—who eventually became the most lethal members of her Cradle.”

“How many are there?” Seymour asks.

“My best guess is the IIC has twenty thousand kids in their central Array. While another three hundred children make up their Cradle.”

“Interesting,” I say.

“That they have so many kids?” Freddy asks.

“That you know how many they have,” I say.

He acts innocent. “It’s an educated guess.”

“Freddy, get off it. Mary told us the truth. You know way too much about what Cindy’s been doing since you guys broke up not to still be in touch with her. If I had any doubts on that score, I just have to recall the face of the five-year-old girl I met in Cindy’s house. She looked a hell of a lot like you.”

Stunned, Freddy goes to deny my accusation, but then Mary touches his arm. “I told you not to lie to her,” she says.

“I didn’t lie,” Freddy says.

“How can you still see her after all she’s done to you?” Seymour asks.

Freddy shakes his head. “She’s the mother of my child.”

“Does Tom know the kid’s not his?” Seymour asks.

“He’s not stupid,” Freddy says, annoyed.

“Are you?” I ask gently.

“I know what you’re thinking. That I’m obsessed with her. Okay, maybe I do still care for her. But I know how dangerous she is. I see her for what she is.”

“Do you see your daughter for what she is?” I ask.

“Huh?”

“Isn’t she a member of the Cradle?” I ask. “One of these preplanned super-psychic children?”

Freddy appears stunned by the idea. “Jolie? No, she can’t be one of them. Cindy wouldn’t use her that way. Not our own kid.” He turns to Mary. “Would she?”

Mary is sympathetic. “It’s not your fault if Jolie is. Nor is it Jolie’s fault.”

“I’m surprised you let the relationship continue,” Paula says to Mary. If she’s thinking of getting a rise out of Mary, she doesn’t know the woman. Mary doesn’t bat an eye.

“I encourage the relationship,” she says. “It helps Freddy keep an eye on them.”

“So you know all their secrets?” I ask Mary.

She looks me straight in the eye. “I’ve seen what that Cradle can do.” She pauses. “Tell them, Freddy.”

He shudders. “It happened in this house, not long after Cindy learned I was seeing Mary. We had just finished making love. Mary was dozing and I came into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Then it struck, I didn’t know what the hell it was. It swept over me with a force that’s difficult to describe. Suddenly, my will was no longer my own. I was a puppet. I picked up a knife. I needed it because all I could think about was how good it would feel to stab Mary. To see her bleed. To hear her scream. I returned to the bedroom and held the blade over her like a guillotine. Right then, there wasn’t a soul on earth that could have talked me out of killing her. Fortunately, I stumbled as I neared the bed and bumped the mattress. Mary woke up, saw what was happening, and shouted my name. It didn’t help. I tried to stab her, but she rolled off the bed and jumped up.”

“I kept calling his name but something in his eyes told me he was gone,” Mary interrupts. “Yet it was more than that. There was something in that room that wasn’t human. It was a devil. It wanted me to suffer because it craved my pain. I sensed its hunger.”

“How did you stop him?” Seymour asks her.

“I ran out the back. He chased after me with the knife but he was so crazed, he kept bumping into things. I didn’t know what to do. I acted on instinct. When he ran into the well, I snuck up behind him and pushed him over the side. I knew he’d survive the fall into the water. The shock of it must have cured him of his madness. A minute later he was calling for me to throw him down the rope.”

“That’s an amazing story,” I say, feeling a huge piece of it was missing.

“It’s true,” Freddy says. “The IIC doesn’t just have enough money to take over the world. They have a tool that can control the most powerful men and women on earth. They have to be exposed. That’s the only way they can be stopped.”

“Do you honestly feel that will do any good?” Seymour asks.

“You have to try. Someone has to,” Freddy says weakly.

“But we should warn you that they own several major newspapers and TV stations,” Mary says. “The instant you speak against them, your lives will be in danger.”

“Is that why you’ve kept silent all this time?” I ask.

Freddy looks away. “I wanted to keep Mary safe.”

It strikes me then that I’m missing something very important in our conversation. It’s right in front of me but I can’t see it. The not knowing drives me nuts.

I stand. “This is all very interesting, but I need time to digest it. Would it be possible if we spent another night here?”

Mary smoothly climbs to her feet, leaving Freddy on the floor with his assortment of beer bottles. Mary gives me a shrewd look. Yet she appears genuinely happy with my request.

“We were hoping you would stay,” she says.