"Sixty-two as of last week," murmured an old, creaky gentleman two chairs down. He blinked at Lucia benignly from behind thick, magnifying lenses.
"Edgar, it doesn't matter. I wasn't trying to be precise, I was—"
"Precision is important," Edgar said. "I wouldn't want our new friends to think we weren't precise. My, no."
Jeffrey shot him a grim look. "As I was saying, I could give you the exact mathematical equations about how we derive the existence and location of these people, but I doubt it would mean anything to you. To put it simply, we are a kind of clearinghouse. In addition to Simms, who founded our organization, we maintain facilities in which quite a number of precognitives are housed and cared for. They give us predictions—some, as many as hundreds each day. We feed these into a sophisticated mathematical model, and from that, we see the shape of things to come. Not in detail, you understand. In generalities. The psychics themselves are specific, but in combining their prophecies you lose the—the details. You understand?"
Lucia exchanged a fast look with Jazz. Why isn't Borden here? She couldn't tell if Jazz was thinking about that; her partner looked closed and coplike, utterly unreadable. Just like McCarthy, next to her. How much of this had he heard before? How much did he believe? Not enough, obviously, if he'd finally broken with the Society and gotten himself tossed in jail for his troubles.
"Yes, I understand," she said, although she was fairly certain that she didn't. "You get hundreds of predictions a day. Somehow you create scenarios out of blending all of them together, to show you the future."
"No," Laskins said. He'd recovered some of his calm. His color was a hot pink instead of deep red, and he'd seated himself again. "Not the future. A—sketch of the future. A rough outline of it, with some details in place to give it structure and scope."
"And if you don't like what you see," McCarthy said, "you just figure out which pinball levers to push until you get what you want."
It was as if they'd forgotten he was there. All eyes turned toward him. If he felt the weight of it, he didn't let it show; he was reconfiguring a paper clip into steel origami, and he kept right on doing it.
"What they're not telling you," McCarthy continued, "is that they're all about the greater good. Excuse me, the greater good as they see it. So if a couple hundred people have to die in an upcoming terrorist attack, well, those are acceptable losses if that still takes us down the path they want us to follow."
"People die," said a young woman dressed in ill-fitting blue jeans over a skeletal frame. Her arms were frighteningly thin, as if she'd just come from a prison camp. But since her skin had a tanning-salon glow, Lucia was fairly certain that it was the gauntness of fashion, not famine. "You can't make decisions like this based on individuals, it makes everything worthless. You have to take a wider view than that."
"I'm sure that's a great comfort to the dead," Lucia said. "That they died for a reason."
"Everybody dies for a reason," Laskins said. "We just try to make it a better reason than random chance."
"That apply to all of you, too?" McCarthy asked. They looked surprised. "No. Didn't think so. That's just for the rank and file, right? The chorus? The spear carriers? The guy on the left, in the back row, whose name we never know? It's okay if he dies for a reason. Not if your own kid does." He got up, staring at them in bitter contempt. "I told you before, I'm not playing your game."
The gaunt woman smiled cynically. "So you've told us," she said. "Have you informed your friends that we provided the information that got you out of prison? In return for your cooperation?"
McCarthy slowly bent over and put his hands flat on the table, staring at her. If looks could kill… Lucia shuddered at what was in his face. She'd thought Gregory had the wolf in him, but this was something else again.
"I'm not working for you." He said it softly, but it was loaded with meaning. "You have no idea what it costs me, but I'm not doing it. Do you understand me? You can send me back to prison. You can kill me. You can't make me do what you want."
"I think you'll find," she said in an even softer whisper, "that it no longer matters, Mr. McCarthy. You've served your purpose. You're Chorus. You're that poor man in the back row whose name we won't remember when you die."
Silence. Lucia felt her whole body trembling with the tension of it. There was something terrible being said, something awful in Ben's face.
"What did you do?" he asked, and suddenly all that control was gone, and he was moving, moving fast, screaming. "What did you do, you bitch? You were just supposed to take care of her, you weren't supposed to—"
He went over the table. The woman stumbled backward, terror written all over her face.
"No!" Laskins yelled, and then it was a melee, and when it was over, McCarthy was on the carpet, facedown, panting, with Gregory's knee in his back. "I will not have this, do you understand? This behavior is unacceptable!"
"Unacceptable!" McCarthy's voice broke. "You fucking bastards, you have no idea what you're doing, do you? Ask Simms. Ask Simms if you don't believe me."
Silence. The assembled members milled around, and some of them returned to their chairs. Laskins looked around the room, then cleared his throat.
"Unfortunately, we can't do that," he said. "Max Simms broke out of his prison three days ago. We have no idea where he is at this point."
The thank-you messages Jazz and Lucia had gotten had been signed, in invisible ink, by Max Simms. They don't know that, Lucia thought, and met Jazz's eyes.
Jazz smiled slightly. Not a nice expression. She was furious, and she wanted to hit something, anything.
The fact that she hadn't, that she'd let McCarthy be taken down without jumping in with both feet, was significant. "What do you want?" Lucia asked. "Why are we here?" Laskins seemed to forget about McCarthy for a moment to focus back on the two of them.
"You're here for the same reason we all are. Because if you weren't, you'd be dead," he said. "And really, we can't have that happen. Not just now. Now if you don't sit quietly, I'm going to have Mr. Ivanovich handcuff and gag you."
"What are you waiting for?" Jazz demanded.
"Something terrible." It was one of the other Cross Society members, a sad-looking little man in a gray sports coat. He had a ragged fringe of gray hair clinging to the crown of his skull, and big dark eyes behind round glasses. "Something terrible. I wish we could avoid it, but it's impossible. Something terrible must happen."
Gregory Ivanovich let McCarthy up off of the floor and tossed a tangle of zip ties onto the conference table, along with three leather ball gags. Tools of his trade. Lucia felt her stomach clench when she saw them.
"Sit quietly, or I will do it," he said. "You know it, dorogaya. Tell them."
Lucia leaned forward and put a hand on Jazz's arm. A light pressure, but Jazz got the message.
McCarthy rose to his feet, breathing heavily, face still red with fury, but he didn't say anything either. After a moment, he took the chair next to Jazz and clasped his hands tight on top of the table. His knuckles turned as pale as parchment. Silence.
"That's better," Laskins said, and turned to look out the window at the view. "That's better. Now, we wait."
Two hours later, with no explanation, one of the Society members' beeper went off, and some unspoken signal was passed. They all relaxed.