has been suspended, because it hardly seems there’s any point.”
“What are these people?”
“Precogs,” Luke said.
Smith wheeled around, startled. “Why, hello, Luke.” He smiled, but at the same time drew back a step. Was he afraid? Tim thought he was. “Precogs, that’s exactly right.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tim asked.
“Precognition,” Luke said. “People who can see into the future.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m not and he’s not,” Smith said. “You could call those six our DEW line—a defunct Cold War acronym meaning Distant Early Warning. Or, if you’d like to be more up to date, they are our drones, flying into the future and marking out places where great conflagrations will start. We only concentrate on stopping the big ones. The world has survived because we’ve been able to take these proactive measures. Thousands of children have died in this process, but billions of children have been saved.” He turned to Luke and smiled. “Of course you understood—it’s a simple enough deduction. I understand you’re also quite the math whiz, and I’m sure you see the cost-to-benefit ratio. You may not like it, but you see it.”
Annie and her two young charges had started down the hill again, but this time Tim didn’t bother motioning them back. He was too stunned by what he was hearing.
“I can buy telepathy, and I can buy telekinesis, but precognition? That’s not science, that’s carnival bullshit!”
“I assure you it’s not,” Smith said. “Our precogs found the targets. The TKs and TPs, working in groups to increase their power, eliminated them.”
“Precognition exists, Tim,” Luke said quietly. “I knew even before I escaped the Institute it had to be that. I’m pretty sure Avery did, too. Nothing else made sense. I’ve been reading up on it since we got here, everything I could find. The stats are pretty much irrefutable.”
Kalisha and Nicky joined Luke. They looked curiously at the blond man who called himself Bill Smith, but neither spoke. Annie stood behind them. She was wearing her serape, although the day was warm, and looked more like a Mexican gunslinger than ever. Her eyes were bright and aware. The children had changed her. Tim didn’t think it was their power; in the long term, that caused the opposite of improvement. He thought it was just the association, or maybe the fact that the kids accepted her exactly as she was. Whatever the reason, he was happy for her.
“You see?” Smith said. “It’s been confirmed by your resident genius. Our six precogs—for awhile there were eight, and once, in the seventies, we were down to just four, a very scary time—constantly search for certain individuals we call hinges. They’re the pivot-points on which the door of human extinction may turn. Hinges aren’t agents of destruction, but vectors of destruction. Westin was one such hinge. Once they’re discovered, we investigate them, background them, surveil them, video them. Eventually they’re turned over to the children of the various Institutes, who eliminate them, one way or another.”
Tim was shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“As Luke has said, the statistics—”
“Statistics can prove anything. Nobody can see the future. If you and your associates really believe that, you’re not an organization, you’re a cult.”
“I had a auntie who could see the future,” Annie said suddenly. “She made her boys stay away one night when they wanted to go out to a juke joint, and there was a propane explosion. Twenty people got burnt up like mice in a chimbly, but her boys were safe at home.” She paused, then added, as an afterthought, “She also knew Truman was going to get elected president, and nobody believed that shit.”
“Did she know about Trump?” Kalisha asked.
“Oh, she was long dead before that big city dumbshit turned up,” Annie said, and when Kalisha held up an open palm, Annie slapped it smartly.
Smith ignored the interruption. “The world is still here, Tim. That’s not a statistic, it’s a fact. Seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by atomic bombs, the world is still here even though many nations have atomic weapons, even though primitive human emotions still hold sway over rational thought and superstition masquerading as religion still guides the course of human politics. Why is that? Because we have protected it, and now that protection is gone. That’s what Luke Ellis did, and what you participated in.”
Tim looked at Luke. “Are you buying this?”
“No,” Luke said. “And neither is he, at least not completely.”
Although Tim didn’t know it, Luke was thinking of the girl