"If you care for your daughter so much, why did you send her into danger?" asked one of the blondes--Mrs. Jones.
"So you admit you did this to her?" Jones was not a reader, but she had experience with them--he could feel him in her mind, and knew what it was.
"If you are so concerned about Betty-san, why do you not visit her?"
Mrs. Chiba, the one bound to a wheelchair, was a reader. This Swainson knew--but still a shiver of fear went up his spine. Of course he had thought of the reason, and the reader picked up on it. <She knew> She had known before . . . This he had suspected, and he thought he was prepared, but seeing it for himself . . .
Cowardice was not one of the Reverend Johnny Lee's shortcomings. Discipline was one of his virtues, and the ability to think on his feet another. He scanned the others in the room. Mrs. Umino knew; the others didn't. That had to mean something . . . He returned to the attack. "I notice you aren't answering. So you did do something to her, something that's close to putting her in the loony bin. Something you don't want me to know about so much you've hidden her from me." He'd scored; they all felt responsible, all had a measure of regret. That much he was sure of.
"You must be a brave man to face us alone if you believe that," said Mrs. Descartes, the Tenou daughter.
"But he has the special favor of his God," mocked Michiru in deadly sweet tones. "How can he fear with that behind him?"
Again, the wheelchair woman read him swiftly. But her friend had stepped onto his field now. "I have not made mean jokes about your faith, no matter how mistaken I know it is."
"I apologize for my bad manners," said the musician, suddenly acquiring an accent she hadn't had a trace of before.
She wasn't a reader, but her mind was armored, more difficult to read than Paterson, or anyone else he had ever encountered. He could read enough to tell whether she was lying, but little more. She was trying to provoke him, put him off balance. <Benny was right about this one, too; she's a leader, even if she doesn't look like one.>
Swainson slipped back into the role of a Good Ole Southern Boy. "Lessee heah . . . so many lovely ladies heah tonight a man can hardly keep count. Take Miz Watanabe heah. Another mind reader. In mah whole life afoh today, Ah met just two othahs with the gift, and today I meet three."
"Perhaps a strange attractor is involved," said Watanabe.
"Mebbe so, mebbe so," drawled Swainson. "You minor in nucleah physics, Darlin'?"
"No, I'm just well-read," said Watanabe. "Like you. You know many things, Reverend, many more than you advertise to your flock. Many things . . . and yet you came here."
"He is a very brave man," the Tenou daughter re-asserted. She could kill him . . . her mind had the taste of one who has killed. But . . .
The Reverend smiled genuinely. "One thing I know, Miz Watanabe, is that you have a syringe inside that big sash. Something to make me forget . . . maybe. Now you aren't so sure it will work."
He had surprised that one and most of the others, even the Tenou woman. But he hadn't surprised Mrs. Jones--she really had two minds, one steely-sharp, almost hidden under the sweet one. <Both are real . . .> He did his best to forget that, for now.
Johnny Lee turned up his performance mode. He shook his head in a fatherly way, as if to tut-tut naughty children for foolish mischief. "You are not going to win this. You know that, you all know that. the longer you fight, the worse it will be for you, and your friends, and your country."
"I am an American," insisted the wheelchair woman.
"For both your countries, Miz Chiba, Miz Jones. You know it, you believe it, your feel it right down to those beautiful bones of yours. The longer you fight, the worse for you, and the better I look to the people I want to reach." He shrugged elaborately. "I came here to help you. This is not a ploy. If this was just old Johnny Lee beatin' the drum for the New Gospel Church, why am I here tonight?" He adopted the pose and tones of the educated man he really was. "Persuade your friend to give the children to their parents. I will watch over them. Even if you think I have no decency, it is in my interest that the children thrive in the bosom of my church."
"Or seem to thrive," said Watanabe.
"In the long run, real substance is better than false appearances," said Swainson. "Usually easier to get and always cheaper to keep. And does anyong here think I don't see this thing in the long run?"
"What will you do about your daughter?"
The voice from behind startled the Reverend. He turned and found the not-so-formidable looking form of Mrs. Chiba's oldest daughter, dressed in a plain kimono, an infant in hand. How had he missed her?
"What do you mean, what will I do about her? What do you expect me to do?"
"Hide her away somewhere," said the girl "She knows too much. But now we know too, Holy Man."
"Yes, some of us do," said Watanabe. "And if Betty Beringer should vanish, say, into some private hospital . . . then perhaps others will come to know as well, Reverend. Perhaps many others."
Swainson paused to consider the situation. They were threatening him . . . not over the Yount children but over Benicia. Meanwhile Swainson felt fear and anger and indignancy, all at once, all strongly. He refused to let any of these emotions speak for him. He waited the endless moments to be certain he was in control. Only then did he respond:
"Interesting. You really care about Benny, and after I sent her to snoop on you. In fact . . . you want to make her into one of you!"
For a moment, he read them all, understanding only that they were something together. The strangeness . . .
Mrs. Chiba, the one in the wheelchair, the alpha female, finally spoke again. Swainson turned back to face her. She had been speaking Japanese, and she continued to a moment or two more. But then she said to Swainson: "I will tell Mako-chan of your assurances.
"You'd best do more than tell her, Ma'am," said Swainson. "And as for my Benny . . . " He trailed off, inviting them to complete his thought. Tucking away these stolen bits of mind, he resumed. "As for my my Benny, I'll leave her where she is for now. But if she gets much worse I will put her in a hospital. Dr. Watanabe . . . My Dr. Watanabe--"<Mike Fine's right; there's a connection>--"wants to put her in observation for at least part of the Christmas break. Hasn't said it yet, but that's what he would like."
"My daughter has invited her to share our holiday," said Mrs. Umino. "That might do her more good than being locked up and pumped full of drugs."
"Mebbe so, mebbe so." Swainson made certain everyone noticed him checking his watch. "I should be going. My associate outside is liable to raise some kind of ruckus if I wait much longer. You think some more about what advice to give your friend, and I'll think some more about what I should do about my only daughter."
He turned to go, moving smoothly toward the massive doors. But something bothered him . . . <The girl.> The girl was gone. Her mind was so distinctive, Swainson was sure he could sense her for blocks . . . but her mind was not there.
He put that thought away as best he could. He couldn't be certain one of them couldn't read him.
Paterson did not surprise Swainson at all. "You need to get your girl out now.
"No."
"If she goes over--"
"She won't do anything that would really harm me," said Swainson patiently. "And even if she wanted to harm me . . . how could she, really? Who would believe her?"
"How about the President?"
"Perhaps," mused Swainson. "Perhaps. But the President can't admit she believes, can she? And if Benny goes to the press . . . well, she's a girl going through a difficult adolescence, and she has been under the care of a psychiatrist. She can do no permanent harm."
"I suppose so," said Patterson, conceding if not really agreeing. "But you can't be sure of the others. Especially--"
Swainson cut off Patterson, something he very seldom did. "Concentrate your efforts on Michiru for now."
"The fiddler?" Paterson snorted.
"The world-famous musician, my tin-eared friend. They all have secrets to hide, but she seems to have the biggest. She hides it, even from the others . . . What do we know of her? What do we think we know?"
"She's supposed to be someone's secret child. Some say Tenou's--which would make sense--some say the Emperor. Other contenders are one of the Yakuza bosses, the leader of that Pharoah cult, one or two dozen dead celebrities, and Michael Jackson, who is really a Japanese woman."
"Amusing. But tell me what you think you know, what you believe."
"I dug some, but I didn't get much. She's supposed to be from Kobe. However, the orphanage she was supposed to be at was wrecked by the last big quake. Records were lost, and it hasn't been rebuilt."
"Makes me think of what happened at that Professor Tomoe's school."
"That it does, that it does," said Paterson.
"See if you can find people who remember her from Kobe and from that school."
"That's work for a PI. There ain't a shortage of them here."
"I want you to look into all their backgrounds. Hire as many PIs as you think best. But I want you to look into Michiru's past personally. You, and just you, my friend."
Paterson said, "The Tenous--"
"Are important, but look at Michiru first."
Patterson shrugged. "It's your dime. Anything else?"
<How to put it?>
The Reverend found a way to guide Patterson to the proper path without being overly direct. In fact, such was the mind and conscience of the Reverend Johhny Lee that he couuld claim and even believe that he had not set in motion this latest extreme but unavoidable course of action.