He switched hands in midair and did ten more chin-ups with his left arm. Finished, he dropped to the ground, still breathing easily.

“I got my head together and I got my body in shape,” he said. “I got where I need to be.” He folded his arms and waited, his gaze steady on Monks.

It seemed that whatever challenge existed between them in Freeboot’s mind had reached the point where the line was drawn in the dirt.

“To start Revolution Number 9?” Monks said.

Freeboot nodded, looking pleased. “Right on. John Lennon saw this coming.” He spoke with the air of having privileged information. “That song was a message, kicking it off. That’s why he got killed. The deal about the guy being a fan is bullshit. It was the CIA that zapped him.”

“I don’t recall that there was any message in the song,” Monks said.

“That’s the point, man,” Freeboot said mysteriously. “He who hath ears, let him hear.”

So-the Bible, the Beatles, and conspiracy theories had joined the mix. It was impossible to take seriously-and yet, the more that Monks saw and heard, the scarier it got.

“I still don’t get why you care what I think,” Monks said.

Freeboot’s face took on a sly look. “I hear you got fucked over by the system yourself.”

Monks realized that Glenn must have told Freeboot about this, too-an incident from a dozen years earlier, when paramedics had killed an elderly woman by ignoring Monks’s radioed orders from a hospital ER. Then, to cover themselves, they had destroyed the recorded tape of the radio conversation. Monks was eventually vindicated, but by then he had lost his job, marriage, and a lot of his friends, and he had plunged into a rage-driven alcoholic depression that he almost hadn’t come out of.

Freeboot was right. He had been fucked over by the system.

“True enough,” Monks said.

“Cost you big, huh?”

“In a lot of ways.”

“So maybe you and me aren’t so far apart,” Freeboot said.

“Maybe,” Monks said. “Except that one of us is the other’s prisoner.”

“That could change. Let’s say I was thinking about giving you a chance to get on this bus.”

A crow cawed suddenly in the forest, a harsh grating anhhh-anhhh that seemed to tumble in on the wind. The big black shape swooped down out of the foggy treetops a second later. It landed near the edge of the clearing, folded its wings, and hopped to investigate something on the ground, pausing to caw again and glare around, warding off competition.

Monks kept his expression careful, as if appraising the offer.

“You don’t seem to think much of doctors,” he said.

“Oh, they got their uses, don’t get me wrong. What it comes down to is virtu, see?”

“No,” Monks said, “I don’t.”

Freeboot turned away, clasping his hands behind his back. He raised his face to the cloudy sky, as if searching for an answer. The pose seemed staged, like others that Monks had seen-and yet he had the sudden sense that this was a crucial moment-that Freeboot was about to impart something weighty, and that everything that happened from here on would depend on how it played out. Monks shifted uneasily and realized that he was getting cold. The fresh wet wind was picking up, tossing the mist-shrouded treetops.

“My son is ordained to be the root of my dynasty,” Freeboot said, still facing the sky. “I know Mandrake’s just a kid. I’m giving him some time, with the insulin. It’s like training wheels. But if you don’t take the training wheels away, he’s never going to learn to ride without them. He’s got to prove he’s got virtu.”

“You mean Mandrake has to pull himself out of his sickness,” Monks said.

“It’s not his fault, I understand that. It’s his mother. No way I could have known she had bad genes. But I can’t be passing my genes down through a kid who’s damaged goods, you know what I’m saying?”

A day ago, Monks would have been astounded. Now, this only filled in another piece of the puzzle. Bound up with Freeboot’s concept of himself as Nietzschean superman was a facile, distorted understanding of genetics.

Then, in an instant of electric clarity, Monks grasped the real reason that Freeboot refused to take the little boy to a hospital-the reason why a man who would eat the raw heart of a deer quailed in terror at being tainted by the urine of his own son. The issues of faith, the distortion of virtu into a mystical healing power, the need to be sure he could trust Monks, were all a sham. The truth stemmed from Freeboot’s diabetic uncle.

Freeboot was afraid that he, not Motherlode, had passed on the diabetes to Mandrake-afraid that medical examination would reveal this, and bring his megalomaniacal theory of his own superiority crashing down.

And he was willing to stand by and let his son die to keep that from happening.

Once again, despising himself for it, Monks kept his true feelings to himself.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said.

“We’re just talking, that’s all. We got to get to know each other a lot better. Trust, right?”

Monks nodded.

Freeboot turned and started away. The interview was over. But then he paused and looked back.

“You want to take a hot bath, let me know. We got a luxury setup.” He grinned. “Maybe even provide you some company, a pretty girl to wash your back-and, hey, who knows what else?”

“I’ll think about that, too,” Monks said.

He walked on to the washhouse and cleaned up distractedly, trying to make sense of this gambit. Freeboot could hardly be serious about his offer to join, and Monks’s initial hope-that he might be able to pay extortion money for Glenn and be set free-was long gone. After all that he had seen, that would be far too great of a risk for Freeboot. More likely, this show of friendliness was a way of keeping Monks cooperative, for as long as Mandrake stayed alive.

After that…

When Monks walked back outside, he saw that there were now three crows on the ground, croaking and flapping their wings at each other in contention for some bit of carrion. Sidewinder, the guard, was sighting his rifle at them and jerking the barrel up in a pantomime of each gunshot’s recoil.

Monks felt the first light sprays of rain against his face.

In mid-morning, Monks heard the lodge’s outside door slam violently, then bootsteps in the main room, heavy enough to rattle the lamp’s glass chimney. He tensed, fearing that it was one of the guards, coming to drag him off to another lesson that Freeboot had arranged.

But a man’s voice called out excitedly: “Marguerite! Where are you?”

Monks heard her muffled reply from the kitchen.

“Come when you’re called, girl,” the man commanded.

Monks got up quietly and went to the bedroom’s doorway. The unmistakable shape of Hammerhead stood in the room’s center. He was holding something behind his back. His grin looked manic.

Marguerite walked slowly out of the kitchen, her own face tense and uncertain.

“I’m full maquis now,” Hammerhead announced. “I want you in the Garden, wearing this and nothing else.”

He thrust something toward her, holding it in his big hands and letting it slither through his fingers like a snake. Monks glimpsed a gold chain.

Marguerite’s mouth opened, but not with the pleasure of a woman receiving a gift-more as if it was a snake. Her hands, instead of reaching to receive it, twisted each other nervously.

“Where’d you get that?” she breathed.

Hammerhead frowned. Clearly, this was not the reaction that he had expected.

“Never mind where I got it. You have to do what I tell you. Put it on!”

With obvious reluctance, she reached forward to accept it, and slipped it around her neck. At the end of the gold chain hung a dark green pendant, but Monks was too far away to see it clearly.

“Now come on,” Hammerhead said. He grasped her wrist, pulling her toward the door.