He looked about at the three frightened boys and tried to think of something to tell them—not just his own son but all three.

“ ‘Look,’ ” he said, quoting. “ ‘I tell you a sacred secret. We shall not all sleep in death. We shall—’ ” But then he could not remember the rest. Bummer, he thought dismally. “ ‘We shall wake up,’ ” he said, doing the best he could. “ ‘In a flash. In the twinkling of an eye.’ ”

“Cut the noise,” the driver of the truck, from beyond his wire mesh, growled. “I can’t concentrate on this fucking road.” He added, “You know, I can squirt gas back there where you are, and you’ll pass out; it’s for obstreperous pre-persons we pick up. So you want to knock it off, or have me punch the gas button?”

“We won’t say anything,” Tim said quickly, with a look of mute terrified appeal at his father. Urging him silently to conform.

His father said nothing. The glance of urgent pleading was too much for him, and he capitulated. Anyhow, he reasoned, what happened in the truck was not crucial. It was when they reached the County Facility—where there would be, at the first sign of trouble, newspaper and TV reporters.

So they rode in silence, each with his own fears, his own schemes. Ed Gantro brooded to himself, perfecting in his head what he would do—what he had to do. And not just for Tim but all the P.P. abortion candidates; he thought through the ramifications as the truck lurched and rattled on.

As soon as the truck parked in the restricted lot of the County Facility and its rear doors had been swung open, Sam B. Carpenter, who ran the whole goddamn operation, walked over, stared, said, “You’ve got a grown man in there, Ferris. In fact, you comprehend what you’ve got? A protester, that’s what you’ve latched onto.”

“But he insisted he doesn’t know any math higher than adding,” Ferris said.

To Ed Gantro, Carpenter said, “Hand me your wallet. I want your actual name. Social Security number, police region stability ident—come on, I want to know who you really are.”

“He’s just a rural type,” Ferris said, as he watched Gantro pass over his lumpy wallet.

“And I want confirm prints offa his feet,” Carpenter said. “The full set. Right away—priority A.” He liked to talk that way.

An hour later he had the reports back from the jungle of interlocking security-data computers from the fake-pastoral restricted area in Virginia. “This individual graduated from Stanford College with a degree in math. And then got a master’s in psychology, which he has, no doubt about it, been subjecting us to. We’ve got to get him out of here.”

“I did have a soul,” Gantro said, “but I lost it.”

“How?” Carpenter demanded, seeing nothing about that on Gantro’s official records.

“An embolism. The portion of my cerebral cortex, where my soul was, got destroyed when I accidentally inhaled the vapors of insect spray. That’s why I’ve been living out in the country eating roots and grubs, with my boy here, Tim.”

“We’ll run an EEG on you,” Carpenter said.

“What’s that?” Gantro said. “One of those brain tests?”

To Ferris, Carpenter said. “The law says the soul enters at twelve years. And you bring this individual male adult well over thirty. We could be charged with murder. We’ve got to get rid of him. You drive him back to exactly where you found him and dump him off. If he won’t voluntarily exit from the truck, gas the shit out of him and then throw him out. That’s a national security order. Your job depends on it, also your status with the penal code of this state.”

“I belong here,” Ed Gantro said. “I’m a dummy.”

“And his kid,” Carpenter said. “He’s probably a mathematical mental mutant like you see on TV. They set you up; they’ve probably already alerted the media. Take them all back and gas them and dump them wherever you found them or, barring that, anyhow out of sight.”

“You’re getting hysterical,” Ferris said, with anger. “Run the EEG and the brain scan on Gantro, and probably we’ll have to release him, but these three juveniles—”

“All genuises,” Carpenter said. “All part of the setup, only you’re too stupid to know. Kick them out of the truck and off our premises, and deny—you get this?—deny you ever picked any of the four of them up. Stick to that story.”

“Out of the vehicle,” Ferris ordered, pressing the button that lifted the wire mesh gates.

The three boys scrambled out. But Ed Gantro remained.

“He’s not going to exit voluntarily,” Carpenter said. “Okay, Gantro, we’ll physically expel you.” He nodded to Ferris, and the two of them entered the back of the truck. A moment later they had deposited Ed Gantro on the pavement of the parking lot.

“Now you’re just a plain citizen,” Carpenter said, with relief. “You can claim all you want, but you have no proof.”

“Dad,” Tim said, “how are we going to get home?” All three boys clustered around Ed Gantro.

“You could call somebody from up there,” the Fleischhacker boy said. “I bet if Walter Best’s dad has enough gas he’d come and get us. He takes a lot of long drives; he has a special coupon.”

“Him and his wife, Mrs. Best, quarrel a lot,” Tim said. “So he likes to go driving at night alone; I mean, without her.”

Ed Gantro said, “I’m staying here. I want to be locked up in a cage.”

“But we can go,” Tim protested. Urgently, he plucked at his dad’s sleeve. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it? They let us go when they saw you. We did it!”

Ed Gantro said to Carpenter, “I insist on being locked up with the other pre-persons you have in there.” He pointed at the gaily imposing, esthetic solid-green-painted Facility Building.

To Mr. Sam B. Carpenter, Tim said, “Call Mr. Best, out where we were, on the peninsula. It’s a 669 prefix number. Tell him to come and get us, and he will. I promise. Please.”

The Fleischhacker boy added, “There’s only one Mr. Best listed in the phone book with a 669 number. Please, mister.”

Carpenter went indoors, to one of the Facility’s many official phones, looked up the number. Ian Best. He punched the number.

“You have reached a semiworking, semiloafing number,” a man’s voice, obviously that of someone half-drunk, responded. In the background Carpenter could hear the cutting tones of a furious woman, excoriating Ian Best.

“Mr. Best,” Carpenter said, “several persons whom you know are stranded down at Fourth and A Streets in Verde Gabriel, an Ed Gantro and his son, Tim, a boy identified as Ronald or Donald Fleischhacker, and another unidentified minor boy. The Gantro boy suggested you would not object to driving down here to pick them up and take them home.”

“Fourth and A Streets,” Ian Best said. A pause. “Is that the pound?”

“The County Facility,” Carpenter said.

“You son of a bitch,” Best said. “Sure I’ll come get them; expect me in twenty minutes. You have Ed Gantro there as a pre-person? Do you know he graduated from Stanford University?”

“We are aware of this,” Carpenter said stonily. “But they are not being detained; they are merely—here. Not—I repeat not—in custody.”

Ian Best, the drunken slur gone from his voice, said, “There’ll be reporters from all the media there before I get there.” Click. He had hung up.

Walking back outside, Carpenter said to the boy Tim, “Well, it seems you mickey-moused me into notifying a rabid anti-abortionist activist of your presence here. How neat, how really neat.”

A few moments passed, and then a bright-red Mazda sped up to the entrance of the Facility. A tall man with a light beard got out, unwound camera and audio gear, walked leisurely over to Carpenter. “I understand you may have a Stanford MA in math here at the Facility,” he said in a neutral, casual voice. “Could I interview him for a possible story?”

Carpenter said, “We have booked no such person. You can inspect our records.” But the reporter was already gazing at the three boys clustered around Ed Gantro.