wouldn’t talk, I was the kindly noncom who came in and gave them a drink or snuck them something to eat out of my pocket, a Quest Bar or a couple of Oreos. I told them the interrogators had all gone off on a break or to eat a meal, and the microphones were turned off. I said I felt sorry for them and wanted to help them. I said that if they didn’t talk, they would be killed, even though it was against the rules. I never said against the Geneva Convention, because most of them didn’t know what that was. I said if they didn’t talk, their families would be killed, and I really didn’t want that. Usually it didn’t work—they suspected—but sometimes when the interrogators came back, the prisoners told them what they wanted to hear, either because they believed me or wanted to. Sometimes they said things to me, because they were confused . . . disoriented . . . and because they trusted me. God help me, I had a very trustworthy face.”
I know why she’s telling me this, Luke thought.
“How I wound up at the Institute . . . that story’s too long for a tired, sick woman to go into. Someone came to see me, leave it at that. Not Mrs. Sigsby, Luke, and not Mr. Stackhouse. Not a government man, either. He was old. He said he was a recruiter. He asked me if I wanted a job when my tour was over. Easy work, he said, but only for a person who could keep her lip buttoned. I’d been thinking about re-upping, but this sounded better. Because the man said I’d be helping my country a lot more than I ever could in sandland. So I took the job, and when they put me in housekeeping, I was okay with that. I knew what they were doing, but at first I was okay with that, too, because I knew why. Good for me, because the Institute is like what they say about the mafia—once you’re in, you can’t get out. When I came up short on money to pay my husband’s bills, and when I started to be afraid the vultures would take the money I’d saved for my boy, I asked for the job I’d been doing downrange, and Mrs. Sigsby and Mr. Stackhouse let me try.”
“Tattling,” Luke murmured.
“It was easy, like slipping on an old pair of shoes. I was there for twelve years, but only snitched the last sixteen months or so, and by the end I was starting to feel bad about what I was doing, and I’m not just talking about the snitching part. I got desensitized in what we called the black houses, and I stayed desensitized in the Institute, but eventually that started to wear off, the way a wax shine will wear off a car if you don’t put on a fresh coat every now and then. They’re just kids, you know, and kids want to trust a grownup who’s kind and sympathetic. It wasn’t as if they had ever blown anybody up. They were the ones who got blown up, them and their families. But maybe I would have kept on with it, anyway. If I’m going to be honest—and it’s too late to be anything else—I guess I probably would have. But then I got sick, and I met you, Luke. You helped me, but that’s not why I helped you. Not the only reason, anyway, and not the main reason. I saw how smart you were, way beyond any of the other kids, way beyond the people who stole you away. I knew they didn’t care about your fine mind, or your little sense of humor, or how you were willing to help an old sick bag like me, even though you knew it might get you in trouble. To them you were just another cog in the machine, to be used until it wore out. In the end you would have gone the way of all the others. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands, going all the way back to the beginning.”
“Is she crazy?” George Burkett asked.
“Shut up!” Ashworth said. He was leaning forward over his belly, eyes fixed on the screen.
Maureen had stopped to take a drink of water and then to rub her eyes, which were sunk deep in their hollows of flesh. Sick eyes. Sad eyes. Dying eyes, Luke thought, staring eternity right in the face.