Del stormed out of the house swearing that Bill was the damnedest bald-faced liar he had ever met.

can’t take it anymore,” Allen said to Arthur when he was alone in his room. “We’ve got to get out of here. I feel like an intruder with Del hovering around all the time.”

“Same here,” said Tommy. “Dorothy’s been like a mother to me, but if she’s going to marry Del, I want out.”

“All right,” Arhtur said. “Let’s find a job, put a few quid aside and get an apartment of our own.”

The others applauded the idea.

Allen got a job at Lancaster Electro-Plating on September 11, 1973. It didn’t pay much and it was dirty work, not the kind of employment Arthur had in mind.

It was Tommy who did the boring work as a zinc-tank operator, pulling the cage that hung from the overhead moving chain and lowering it into the acid for the plating. He moved from one square tank to the next; they were lined up the length of a bowling alley. Lower it, wait, raise it, move it, lower it, wait.

Sneering at such menial labor, Arthur turned his attention to other matters. He had to prepare his people to move out on their own.

All during Zanesville, he had been studying the behavior of those he allowed to come on the spot, and he was beginning to understand that the key to survival in society was self-control. Without rules there would be chaos, endangering them all. It occurred to him that the rules at the youth camp had a salutary effect. The constant threat of being bumped back to zone 1 or 2 had kept all those unruly lads in check. That is what would be needed when they were on their own.

He explained his code of behavior to Ragen. “Because someone became involved with women of ill repute,” Arthur said, “we were accused of rape by those two women in Pickaway County—a crime we did not commit—and they sent us to prison. It must never happen again.”

“How you will prevent it?”

Arthur paced. “I can usually prevent someone from taking the spot. And I have observed your ability to bump someone off immediately after the vulnerable moment of switching. Between us, we ought to control the consciousness. I have decided that certain undesirable individuals should be permanently banished from the spot. The rest of us will be required to live by a code of conduct. We are like a family. We must be strict. A single infraction will result in someone being classified as undesirable.”

With Ragen s agreement, Arthur communicated the rules to all the others:

first: Never lie. All their lives they had been accused unjustly of being pathological liars for denying knowledge of things one of the others had done.

second: Behave properly to ladies and children. This included avoiding foul language and adhering to proper etiquette, such as opening doors. The children were to sit straight at table, with napkins across laps. Women and children must be protected at all times, and everyone should come to their defense. If any one saw a woman or a child being hurt by a man, he or she must step off the spot immediately and let Ragen deal with the situation. (If one of their own were in personal physical danger, that would not be necessary, since Ragen would take the spot automatically.)