Saint by Ted Dekker Page A

brings you to this conclusion?”
    Jamie shrugged. “I don’t believe him.”
    David put his arm around Jamie and faced the president. “Listen to your son, Robert. For the sake of his generation, listen to Jamie.”

6
    D eep in the darkness beyond the black tunnel, a terrible enemy had gathered and was waging war against the light.
    The light was a tiny pinprick at the end of the tunnel, and Carl’s mind and soul were fixated on that light. Two days or maybe ten days ago—he’d lost his sense of time completely—that light had been the murder of two people in the Andrassy Hotel. But he’d extinguished that light, as Kelly had asked him to. He’d learned long ago that if he didn’t obliterate certain memories, Agotha would, and he didn’t favor her methods.
    Now the light at the end of his tunnel was survival.
    He’d learned how to ignore the darkness and focus on the light by disciplined repetition. His ability to control his mind and by extension his body was his greatest strength.
    In fact, his mind, not a gun or a knife, was his greatest weapon, and his handlers had helped him learn how to wield his mind in a way that few could.
    The enemy changed shape regularly. Right now it was an intense heat that threatened to suck the moisture out of his body and leave him so dehydrated that his organs might stop functioning. But if he forced his mind to accept the impression that it was cool in the room rather than hot, he could maintain his energy for an extended period of time.
    He sat crosslegged on the metal chair, willing his flesh in contact with the chair to stay cool, sitting perfectly still so the rest of his skin would not be unexpectedly scalded.
    He’d slowed his heart rate to fifty beats per minute to compensate for the heat in the same way that he increased his heart rate to compensate for extreme cold. He did not eat or drink or pass any waste. These were the easiest functions to control. More difficult were his emotions, which seemed predisposed to rise up in offense at such treatment. In the worst conditions, he resorted to turning his emotions to Kelly. To her blue eyes, which were pools of kindness and love. The only such pools he knew.
    All of this information registered as part of his subconscious, like a program that ran in the background. The light at the end of his tunnel remained at the center of his attention. Carl was so used to the torturous conditions of his pit that he no longer thought of them as torment. They were simply the path to the light.
    Agotha had asked him recently whether he thought he could ever step outside the mental tunnel. “If your tunnel protects you from threats, could you not deal with those threats offensively rather than merely defensively?” she’d asked.
    â€œI am offensive,” Carl replied. “My aim is to survive.”
    â€œYes, and you achieve that aim very well. But have you ever tried to deal with the threats more directly?”
    â€œI’m not sure what you mean.”
    â€œYou ward off the heat by controlling your mind and changing the way your body reacts to it. Have you ever tried to change the heat itself?”
    Was she suggesting he try to lower the room’s temperature? It was absurd, and he politely told her as much.
    â€œIs it? What if I were to tell you that it’s been done?”
    â€œHow? When?”
    â€œIn many documented cases studied by science. The pH balance of water, for example, can be significantly raised or lowered strictly through focused thought. This was first published by William Tiller, PhD, in a book titled Conscious Acts of Creation . There have been dozens of studies by quantum physicists since. None of this fits well with the older understanding of Newtonian physics based on subatomic particles, but it makes sense in accepted quantum theory, in which waves of energy, not particles, form the foundation of the world we know. It is possible,