Francis had no idea how to reply. He did not know how anyone could prove that a promise made was truthful, other than by behaving that way. "I just want to go outside," Francis said. "I haven't been outside since I got here."

"Do you think you deserve the privilege of going outside? What have you done to earn that, Francis?"

"I don't know," Francis said. "I didn't know I had to earn it. I just want to go outside."

"What do your voices tell you, C-Bird?"

Francis took a small step back, for his voices were all shouting, distant, yet clear, instructions to get away from the psychologist as fast as he could, but Francis persisted, in rare defiance of the internal racket. "I don't hear any voices, Mister Evans. I just wanted to go outside. That's all. I don't want to escape. I don't want to take a bus somewhere. I just want some fresh air."

Evans nodded, but locked his lips into a sneer at the same time. "I don't believe you," he said, but he pulled a small pad from his shirt pocket and wrote a few words on it. "Give this to Mister Moses," he said. "Permission to go outside granted. But don't be late for our afternoon group session."

Francis found Little Black smoking a cigarette by the nursing station, where he was flirting with the pair on duty. Nurse Wrong was there, and a younger woman, a new nurse-trainee called Short Blond because she wore her hair cropped close to her head in a pixie like style that contradicted the bouffant do's of the other staff nurses, who were all a little older, and a little more committed to the sags and wrinkles of middle age. Short Blond was young and thin and wiry, with a boy like physique hidden behind the white nursing outfit. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and seemed to glow softly beneath the over head lights of the hospital. She had a slight, hard-to-hear voice that seemed to slide into whispers when she was nervous, which, as best as the patients could tell, was often. Large noisy groups made her anxious, and she struggled when the nursing station was swarmed at the hours medications were dispensed. These were always tense times, with folks jostling back and forth, trying to get up to the wire-enclosed window, where the pills were arranged in small paper cups with patients' names written on them. She had trouble getting the patients into lines, getting them to be quiet, and she especially had trouble when some pushing and shoving took place, which was often enough. Short Blond did much better when she was alone with a patient, and her reedy, small voice didn't have to battle with many. Francis liked her, because, at least in part, she wasn't that much older than he was, but mainly because he thought her voice was soothing, and reminded him of his own mother's years earlier, when she would read to him at night. For a moment, he tried to remember when she had stopped doing that, because the memory seemed suddenly far distant, almost as if it were history, rather than recollection.

"You get the permission slip, C-Bird?" Little Black asked.

"Right here." He handed it over and looked up and saw Peter the Fireman walking down the corridor. "Peter!" Francis called, "I got permission to go outside. Why don't you go see Mister Evil, and see if you can come, too."

Peter the Fireman walked up quickly. He smiled but shook his head. "No can do, C-Bird," he said. "Against the rules." He glanced over at Little Black, who was nodding in agreement.

"Sorry," the attendant said. "The Fireman's right. Not him."

"Why not?" Francis asked.

"Because," the Fireman said quietly, slowly, "that's my arrangement here. Not beyond any of the locked doors."

"I don't understand," Francis said.

"It's part of the court order putting me here," the Fireman continued. His voice seemed tinged with regret. "Ninety days of observation. Assessment. Psychological determination. Tests where they hold up an inkblot and I'm supposed to say it looks like two people having sex. Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil ask, and I answer, and they write it down and one of these days it goes back to the court. But I'm not allowed past any locked doors. Everybody's in prison, sort of, C-Bird. Mine is just a little more restricted than yours."

Little Black added, "It ain't a big thing, C-Bird. There's plenty of folks here who never get to go out. Depends on what you did that got you here. Of course, there's plenty, too, who don't want to go out, either, but could, if they only asked. They just never do ask."

Francis understood, but didn't understand, both at the same time. He looked over at the Fireman. "It doesn't seem fair," he said.

"I don't think the concept of fair was truly one that anyone really had in mind, C-Bird. But I agreed, and so, that's the way it is. I stay put. Meet with Doctor Gulp-a-pill twice a week. Attend sessions with Mister Evil. Let them watch me. See, even now, while we're talking, Little Black here and Short Blond and Miss Wrong are all watching me and listening to what I say, and just about anything they observe might end up in the report that Gulp-a-pill is going to write up for the court. So, I pretty much need to mind my p's and q's and watch what I say, because no telling what might become the key consideration. Isn't that right, Mister Moses?"

Little Black nodded. Francis found it all to be oddly detached, as if they were speaking about someone else, not the person standing in front of him. "When you speak like that," he said, "it doesn't sound like you're crazy."

This comment made Peter the Fireman smile wryly, one side of his mouth lifting up, giving him a slightly lopsided, but genuinely bemused look. "Oh my gosh," he said. "That's terrible. Terrible." He made a slight choking sound deep in his throat. "I should be even more careful then," he said. "Because crazy is what I need to be."

This made no sense to Francis. For a man who was being watched, Peter seemed relatively unconcerned, which was in opposition to many of the paranoids in the hospital, who believed they were constantly being observed, when they weren't, but took evasive steps nevertheless. Of course, they believed it was the FBI or the CIA or perhaps the KGB or extraterrestrials who were doing the watching, which made their circumstances significantly different. Francis watched the Fireman turn and head off through the dayroom doors, and thought that even when he whistled, or perhaps added some obvious jauntiness to his step, it only served to make whatever saddened him all that much more obvious.

The warm sun hit Francis's face. Big Black had joined his brother to lead the expedition, one at the front and one at the rear, keeping the dozen patients making the journey through the hospital grounds in single file. Lanky had come along, muttering about being on the lookout, as vigilant as always, and Cleo, who spent some time staring at the ground, and peering at the dirt beneath every bush and shrub, hoping, as she said to anyone who noticed her behavior, to spot an adder. Francis guessed that an ordinary garter snake would nicely serve the serpent part of the bill, but not the suicide part. There were several older women who walked very slowly and a couple of older men, and three middle-aged male patients, all of whom fit into the bedraggled, nondescript category that marked folks who had been assimilated into the hospital routine for years. They wore flip-flop sandals or work boots and pajama tops beneath frayed and threadbare woolen sweaters or sweatshirts, none of which seemed to quite fit or match, which was the norm for the hospital. A couple of the men had sullen, angry expressions on their faces, as if the sunlight that seemed to caress their faces with warmth infuriated them in some internal way that defied understanding. It was, Francis thought, what made the hospital such an unsettling place. A day that should have brought relaxed laughter instead inspired quiet rage.