Frank Carlson, after all, could have made a case against the school had they failed to prevent Amy’s suicide.
Her murder, though, was something he could never blame the school for, since, until this morning, Steven Conners’s character had been totally unblemished.
No, Hildie thought to herself, satisfied, there was nothing Frank Carlson could do.
Late that afternoon, Josh lay on his bed, trying to think. The day he had just lived through seemed nothing more than a blur. Indeed, from the time he had turned and scurried away from Hildie Kramer while she talked to the police officer, his mind already rejecting what he had just heard, everything had begun to seem as if it had been happening to someone else.
Steve killed Amy?
It wasn’t possible!
Steve was Amy’s friend. His own friend!
He had instantly rejected the idea, telling himself that there had been some mistake.
Maybe it wasn’t Steve’s car in the water at all! Or maybe someone had stolen Steve’s car.
They hadn’t even found Steve yet. He might not be dead at all.
His mind had raced, ideas tumbling over each other as he’d stumbled across the beach, threading his way through the crowd, ignoring the questions that seemed to come at him from every direction.
Maybe Steve had stopped to pick up a hitchhiker, and the hitchhiker had beaten him up and left him by the road, then taken his car.
Steve could be lying somewhere right now, unconscious.
Josh had run up the stairs and started along the road, approaching each curve with rising hopes, certain that just around the bend he would find Steve lying next to the pavement, just waking up.
By the time he got to the village, though, those hopes had faded away. He had started back to the Academy, trying to convince himself that when he arrived, Steve would be waiting for him.
But even if it happened — and it hadn’t — it wouldn’t bring Amy back.
Amy.
The image of her mutilated body was still vivid in his memory, the bones showing through where her flesh had been torn away.
But most vivid of all was the empty cavity where her brain had been.
For the rest of the day, as he tried to answer the questions that the rest of the students at the Academy and then the police had asked him, that image seemed to be burned into his eyes. Even as he repeated, over and over again, the story of the body washing up at his feet, all he could see was that enormous hole in the back of Amy’s skull, and the odd emptiness of the place where her brain should still have been.
Should have been, but wasn’t.
He remembered what the police had said, that some animal, maybe a sea otter or a seal, had scooped it out and eaten it.
But even through the confusion of the questions he tried to answer, he found himself always coming back to that one thing. At last, an hour before dinner, he had escaped to his room, insisting even to Jeff Aldrich that he wanted to be by himself.
Now, lying in his room, he wondered if he ought to call his mother. Would she hear about what had happened? And if she did, what would she do?
Come and get him, and take him back to Eden.
But he didn’t want to go back to Eden.
Not yet, anyway.
Not until he’d found out what had really happened to Amy, and to Steve Conners, too!
Because something in his brain, something he couldn’t quite get hold of, told him that none of what the police thought had happened was true.
He lay on his back now, holding his body perfectìy still, willing himself to calm down, to concentrate on the thoughts that were just out of reach, to bring them to the front of his mind and examine them.
Dimly, words began to echo in his mind.
Adam didn’t want to die.
He just wanted to get out of this dumb place.
The only thing he liked about it was Dr. Engersol’s class.
… and his computer.
His computer. But what did it mean?
Once more an image of Amy’s empty skull rose up in his mind, but then another memory took its place.
The cat.
The cat they had been working on all morning.
Its skull cut away, parts of its brain destroyed by lasers.
The cat was blind, and deaf, and couldn’t feel anything.
But it was still alive.
Now he heard Dr. Engersol’s voice:
By far the majority of the creature’s brain is occupied with the simple tasks of accepting stimuli and maintaining bodily functions.
Engersol’s voice continued to drone in Josh’s head as he recalled what the scientist had said that morning, word for word. Like a blue-white lightning flash, in a moment of brilliant clarity it all came together in Josh’s mind.
The experiment on the cat didn’t have anything to do with artificial intelligence. It was only meant to get them thinking about how much of their own brains were taken up with keeping their bodies alive.
But if someone didn’t have a body …
Josh’s mind sped, the implications of his thoughts quickly taking hold.
If a brain could be taken out of a body and still be kept alive …
Jeff’s words rang once more: Adam didn’t want to die. The only thing he liked was Dr. Engersol’s seminar and his computer.
Was it possible? Was that what Adam had done? Let Dr. Engersol take his brain out of his body and hook it up to a computer?
An icy chill seized Josh, and he shuddered as he thought about it. It wasn’t possible — it couldn’t be possible.
Could it?
The cat.
The cat’s body had essentially been cut off from its brain, but the brain was still alive.
And he’d actually seen Amy’s body, with the brain missing from her skull.
Josh nearly jumped off the bed when he heard a soft tap at the door, followed by Hildie Kramer’s voice. “Josh? It’s Hildie. May I come in?”
Josh’s mind raced. What should he do? Should he ask her all the questions that were suddenly churning through his mind? But what if she knew what had happened to Amy?
What if she’d helped Dr. Engersol?
He had to pretend he hadn’t figured out anything at all! If she knew what he was thinking …
He got off the bed and went to the door, opening it a crack. Hildie, her eyes looking worried, reached out to push the door farther open. “Are you all right, Josh?”
Josh, shaking his head, took a step backward from the door, letting Hildie come into the room.
“I–I just don’t feel very good, that’s all,” he said, his voice faltering under the housemother’s gaze.
“Of course you don’t,” Hildie said in her most soothing tones. “And I know how you must feel right now. Amy was one of your best friends, wasn’t she?”
Josh nodded, saying nothing, but his eyes remained fixed on Hildie. Why had she come up to see him? Was she really just worried about him, or was it something else?
“I thought you might want to talk about it a little,” Hildie explained, seating herself on the bed and patting the spot next to her in an invitation for Josh to join her. “Finding her like that was a terrible thing to have happen to you.”
Josh stayed where he was. “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just — it’s just hard to get used to Amy being dead.”
Hildie nodded sympathetically. “And I guess we didn’t really know Mr. Conners very well, did we?”
Josh hesitated, then managed to shake his head. “I guess he was just being nice to me so Amy would trust him.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Hildie’s reaction to the words he’d made himself say.
Was it only his imagination, or did she seem to smile just a little bit?
“It’s terrible,” Hildie sighed. “But things like that happen sometimes.”