Obedience

“How pathetic,” she said to him. De

“No,” De

“Except you forgot one thing,” Mary said.

“What’s that?” De

“The human element. It’s what you always forget, De

She looked down and caught Brian’s gaze, and he simply shook his head. His face revealed the gravity of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face, and Mary noticed that his hand, the hand that had held the gun, was trembling slightly.

Then Mary was being led away from them, into the crowd of people. Soon she was in the back of the room with Edna Collins beside her, and through the mass of people she saw the events of Seminary East unfold: Elizabeth Orman sat on the rolling chair and buried her head in her hands; Troy Hardings came to Elizabeth and stroked her hair, and Mary saw what he was saying to her by reading his lips: “It will be okay” the ambulance arrived, the stretcher was rolled in, and they took Leonard Williams away; the word “dead” began to ripple through the room. Then, much later, when only ten or twelve of them remained, a detective came in to talk to her. He was wearing a fla

“What’s going on here?” he asked, and Mary told him what she knew.

Two Months Later

59

Mary Butler had begun to pick up the pieces of her life.

She was back in Kentucky and pla

None of this mattered now to Mary except for Brian’s fate. She had moved on. It had taken her a while, of course. She had spent three or four dark weeks in her parents’ home, sleeping between those bouts of questions. She thought of Brian often. He was awaiting trial in DeLane, and the district attorney was pla

She took walks with her mother. She cooked di

De

Williams, of course, was dead by the time he reached the DeLane Baptist Hospital. One shot to the gut opened him up, destroyed his insides. They found cancer there, Mary heard, and it had been terminal. Eating him away in there, destroying him. She didn’t know if that was true or not. She wanted it to be.

Only one question remained: Who had sent the videotape of the Milgram experiments?

Mary had a feeling that she knew, and one day in the middle of winter she e-mailed him to test her theory.

To: [email protected] /* */

From: [email protected] /* */

Subject: Milgram

Thank you for trying to warn us, Dean Orman.

It took him only ten minutes to respond.

To: [email protected] /* */

From: [email protected] /* */

Subject: Re: Milgram

I am so sorry. I told Elizabeth that it was going too far, that things were breaking down. I sent the videotape as an object lesson. They, as you know, got ahold of it. Thus the audio at the end, the voices of Hardings and a boy named Net. All that chicanery. You know now: never trust those who seem to have extramural motives. Elizabeth and I have finally drifted apart. I suppose you heard that, though. After Leonard died we just couldn’t look at each other any longer. She wants to pursue her studies; I want to settle down, retire, live my life. My good friend Pig Stephens is recovering from the broken hand you gave him. He sends his best wishes. We go out fishing from time to time on the Thatch. We ponder life and how it winds and unwinds. It’s all masculine and pathetic and, yes, disingenuous. But it is what it is. I miss her some nights. But she had a drive unlike mine; it was the same drive Stanley had. I probably married her because of that, because I became-what?-subservient to her ambition. I noticed it from my dealings with Stanley, and I’m drawn to that kind of rigor. I admit it: I’m a sucker for a strong mind.

Don’t be ashamed, Mary. You are not alone. I was thirty years old when it happened to me, so I had some years on you. I too have spent my life trying to figure out how it was that I was…deceived. I know how it feels, you see. I know how you feel.

I’ll see you in DeLane soon for the legal mess.

All the best,

Edward Orman

New Haven, Co

Milgram.

They were ready inside the laboratory at Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University. There was a strong scent in there-like burning flesh. Milgram could smell it through the closed door. Why had they done that? He wondered if it was on purpose, to create some sort of deeper effect on his subjects. It certainly wasn’t his idea. He thought, Will I ever be the same after this is through?

“Stanley?” asked James McDonough, the man who would be acting as Milgram’s learner. “Are you all right, Stanley?” He assured the man that he was.

Milgram was looking at the shock machine, at this creation that would make him famous. Slight shock. Moderate shock. Strong shock. Very strong shock. Intense shock. Extreme intensity shock. Danger-severe shock. Milgram touched it, ran his palm across the cool surface. The machine seemed to pulse with some hidden life. It had become like some kind of a weapon. He had dreamed about the goddamned box for weeks. He had gone back to mescaline so that his mind might dodge the machine in his defenseless sleep.

“Stanley,” said McDonough. The man was not nervous. It seemed that nobody was nervous except Milgram himself. “We’re ready now.”

Milgram went into a back room, where he could watch the proceedings through a two-way mirror. He saw his experimenter, the man who would play the “scientist,” appear in the open room. The experimenter was wearing a gray coat. Not white, Milgram had demanded. Definitely not white. White presented the idea of medicine. Of sterility. People automatically distrusted white for that reason. So Milgram’s experimenter would wear gray, and upon seeing him in the coat for the first time Milgram thought he looked like a slab of granite. This was exactly what Milgram had intended.