Mindbenders Read Online Free

upset me. “I don’t want a password,” I whined.
    “Well, you’ve got one and I’ll bet—” He stared right through me; the back of my skull went hot again. “ What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine . Give me a list of all the agents in the program.”
    I stared back at him, blank as newsprint.
    “You see? He rigged it so I can only get one name out of you at a time. I’ll bet, once we’ve found Tauber, you’ll give me the next name. Which means, until then, we’re Siamese twins.”
     
     
    ~~~~
     

Two
     
    Whick-whick went the trees along the highway, whick-whick like the frames of a movie flashing through the shutter. Whick-whick while the fields lazed in sunlight, the grass a little brown from too little rain and too much sun, water spurting from irrigation pipes wrapped in grape vines. Whick-whick, marking space, marking time. Marking time, which is all I’d done as long as I could remember, not that that was very long.
    I used to be good with words, I remember that. Words and me got along. They tell me I was a writer for Stars & Stripes, till my brains got rattled one time too many. I still play with them but all I get are phrases, flickers—whick whick—and each new one just drives out the old. In the end, it’s just light through the trees—pretty and whispering all kinds of promises but nothing real and nothing that’s a part of anything bigger.  And that’s not enough.
    Mr. Dulles was driving. He was a lousy driver, real intense but never seeming to be where he was. It was like he was keeping real good track of traffic a hundred and forty miles ahead while just barely lurching through the close-up stuff.
    “The government?” I asked. “Their program, right?” It didn’t hurt to talk anymore; it just felt weird. It was so peaceful ignoring everybody once they accepted they weren’t getting much out of you.
    “They disowned it. Everybody was put out to pasture. Governments are not real interested in re-exploring their failures.”
    “But if it’s a failure—”
    “The guys who murdered Dave didn’t think it was,” Dulles said and it hurt to hear the word ‘murder’ out in the air. “The guys who hired them didn’t either.” He was glaring at the driver ahead of him. “Get moving, willya?” he snapped.
    “Those guys—part of the program?”
    He shook his head. “Too young. The programs ended years ago. But…they must have trained with people from the program. ”
    “Why?”
    “Just procedures they were using, defenses they tried against me.”
    “Are they dead?” I asked, buying time to think as much as anything else.
    “They’ll come around by morning,” he said. Seeing my reproach, he added, “They don’t matter anyway. If you want revenge, you want the guys who sent them.”
    “Big guns,” I said, though I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.
    “Guns are just their first line of defense. With guys like that, guns always are. They had more dangerous weapons, if they’d been a little more imaginative.” He swerved around the car in front of us, cursing a blue streak. “Who teaches them to stack up like this?”
    “Who?”
    “Look!” he said, gesturing out the windshield. It looked like regular traffic to me. “Three slowpokes, clogging all the lanes. They stack up right next to each other so you can’t pass them.”
    “The guys we’re warning—in the program—they dangerous too?” I asked.
    “With any luck,” he laughed—a nasty, harsh laugh. “Hopefully, they’re dangerous too.”
    I waited a long moment before the next question. “You?”
     “Yeah,” he said, with a half-smile that actually seemed genuine. “Yeah. You saw. Me too.” He banged at the steering wheel. “Okay, that’s enough, dammit,” he grumbled at the traffic. “ Move !”
    His face turned red and I wouldn’t have wanted him looking at me like that. And as soon as he spoke, the car in front of us suddenly swerved out of the way, weaving and