Interrupt

by Tony Dwiggins

  He understood.

  When he moved out of the shielding oaks, emerging onto the ridgetop, he stopped and looked first to locate the large oak standing alone where they had picnicked. Beneath the oak, the grasses tramped down by Nell still lay flat, matted brown husks.

  Nobody there.

  Up here on the ridge, the breeze was stronger. It ruffled his shirt and combed through his hair, lifting the wet strands off his neck.

  Interrupt had to be watching. Andy put his hands to the shoulder straps and reset the pack, as if it were heavy and his shoulders were sore.

  Where was he? Andy remembered the concrete building, one of the engineering labs. Yes. It was the obvious place. Interrupt was there. Wayne was there. Wayne and Mr. Bell.

  He still felt light, buoyed, the runner's high. He took a couple of deep breaths, easy breaths, and stepped forward to a position that gave him a clear view along the ridge.

  He saw the lab and his breath caught, he was right. Although the door to the squat gray building was shut, one of the windows was broken. It was impossible to tell if anyone was at the window, for it was dark inside, and the shards of glass that still clung to the frame glinted in the sun like gold teeth.

  No one could approach that building, for a good long way in any direction, without being seen.

  As he gaped, halted in his tracks like one of the grazing cows, witless at an obstacle, his peripheral vision picked something up.

  The line of telephone poles.

  No, he thought, raising his eyes, no.

  He ran, the pack slapping his back and his chest tightening, shouting his son's name again and again as if a deaf boy strapped high on a telephone pole could somehow pick up the sound waves, the vibrations, the way he had once picked up a thunderclap.

  He ran, thinking that Interrupt was watching from the darkness behind the window.

  He ran, praying to God that his son was alive.

  Almost there, and he could see how Wayne was lashed tight with a safety belt, arms and knees hugging the pole like some arboreal animal, his feet at angles, the metallic flash of gaffs. His head in the orange safety helmet lay against the pole, his eyes were closed or he was looking up, away, somewhere, but he didn't move.

  Andy stared at the feet, the gaffs, and he saw slashes of pink on the boots. Nell's boots. His mind was reeling.

  Wayne was high, higher than Andy had climbed, nearly up to the cables.

  This was not the pole he had climbed with Nell. This was a different one, and it looked even higher.

  He reached the base of the pole, kicked it, but up above, Wayne didn't feel the kicks, didn't move.

  A set of climbing gear was heaped by the base, safety belt, gaffed boots, gloves, helmet.

  He turned to face the concrete building, maybe a hundred yards away, shouted something, bastard, he was shouting bastard over and over.

  Shaking, hurrying, he dropped to the ground and yanked off his loafers and pulled on the boots. They were too big, and the part of his mind that was working estimated that with heavy socks on they would be about a half size too big. He pulled the laces tight, tighter.

  He had climbed in these boots before.

  Belt on, gloves on, helmet on, and he started to loop the belt around the pole.

  Wait, no telephone pole is straight, find the side that's leaning away.

  He had one gaff into the pole, starting to lift off the ground, when he thought of the pack on his back.

  Nobody, not even a man sick with fear and anger, would choose to climb a telephone pole with a sixty-pound pack on his back. Interrupt watching out the window would be expecting him to drop it.

  "Fuck it," he said, and started to climb.

  Heels together, toes and knees out, strike the gaff cleanly, get a good foothold before moving the belt up. The pack did not bother him.

  He was climbing okay, he knew what he was doing and he stopped concentrating on the process, heels-toes-knees-gaff, he just did it. Not light and easy, but he did it.

  He looked up. Straight up, the pole seeming to shoot up directly from his forehead, up and up, far enough up that the diameter of the pole shrank, and he saw gaffs, pink-striped boots, black jeans, legs jackknifed in a crouch and a boy's skinny butt hung out in the air.

  A shudder ran through him, the height.

  Quickly, he looked back down, not meaning to look all the way to the ground but it was okay, he was not that far up and he was holding steady. The breeze was strong, it was a wind up here but it didn't move the pole and it felt good on his face. He saw the roof of the building, ashpalt shingles, he did a fast scan of the ridge and there was only grass and trees, no people, not Interrupt or Feferman or agents or cops. He saw the stand of oaks where he had been sick and he glimpsed something brown in there, an animal, must be a cow.

  He felt a pain in his shoulder, just a pinprick, where he had jammed it against the door, and a heaviness in his quadriceps, his muscles surprised by the climb.

  Move. He raised his right leg, locking his knee into position, and kicked the gaff hard into the pine.

  There was a sound, it might have been carried on the wind, a voice, low and throaty, a drawn-out monotone, and it came again. Daaaeee.

  His head jerked back and he stared up the pole.

  "Daaaeee!"

  Wayne's face peered down at him, shadowed by the orange helmet, but Andy could make out the big grin on his face. Wayne straightened his legs, coming out of his crouch, standing up on the gaffs, and Andy could almost feel the boy's muscles stretching in relief. He must have felt the vibrations from Andy's gaff kicking in. Wayne let go with one hand and waved, grinning like a big happy puppy, like a kid who has come through for his father and had a whale of a good time, showing off now, Spock, Rambo, He-man, GI Joe.

  "Wayne!" Andy yelled, and he held up his hand in the sign for "wait." Wayne must have climbed up there by himself. After all, with his boy's fierce attention he had watched Nell teach Andy to climb. But Andy swore that he wasn't going to climb down by himself.

  A shudder again. He closed his eyes and willed it away.

  When he opened his eyes, Wayne was still waving his hand and he realized that the boy was pointing at the ground.

  Andy looked down.

  He saw the door to the concrete building standing open, and directly below, near the base of the pole, he saw Interrupt.

  He wore a pink shirt and a white tie, the wind had whipped the tie over his shoulder, he had on dark glasses shielding his upturned eyes from the sun, and he held a rifle in his right hand, its stock tucked up under his arm and its barrel pointed at the earth.

  A full shot of nausea hit Andy—the height, the rifle—and he held on tight to the pole. "Drop the pack," Lloyd said.

  Andy was able to glance up, to see Wayne frozen in place above him, the grin gone from his face.

  He fought the nausea and looked back down. "Goddamn you."

  Lloyd held his right hand away from his body, and the rifle pivoted, the heavy stock dropping and the barrel swinging skyward. With his left hand, he pulled the tie off his shoulder and tucked it into his shirtfront. "Drop it, Andy-man."

  Six pounds, Andy thought, eyes on the rifle. He had six pounds to negotiate with.

  There were tremors in his leg muscles, and he had to shift position. He pulled out the left gaff, straightened his leg, reset the gaff.

  Below him, Lloyd dropped to one knee, bringing the rifle into firing position, his movements as practiced and precise as if he were kneeling at a panel to get at the wiring with a soldering gun.

  From above there came a low moan, a sound Wayne sometimes made in a bad sleep.

  Lloyd wouldn't shoot, Andy thought. Good Lord, Lloyd wouldn't shoot them, not for six lousy pounds. But maybe for ten lost years. Candace. His chest convulsed. "Let us down," he shouted, "and we'll talk," but his words were bitten off by the sharp crack of a rifle firing.

  He screamed, pushing out from the pole, letting go, arching his body back to some
how catch Wayne, but Wayne was still tethered in place, he hadn't been shot, but he, too, was arching away from the pole, trying to get out of the way of the thick black thing snaking down out of the sky at them.

  The telephone cable.

  Andy grabbed back onto the pole, shouting uselessly at Wayne. All he could do was hold on and wait as the cable swung back and forth in smaller and smaller arcs, slapping at the pole like a live thing seeking a place to latch on.

  Below, Lloyd stood, cradling the rifle, watching raptly.

  He'd shot the cable. Why?

  Above him, Wayne was out of position, fumbling with his safety belt.

  Andy yelled, then brought out his right boot and viciously kicked the gaff back into the pole.

  Wayne's head jerked and he looked down.

  "Stay," Andy signed, "not danger."

  The cable carried low voltage, only enough to make a telephone ring. It was still writhing near the pole, driven by the wind, but the exposed wires were no threat.

  "Faulkner, one more time."

  The tone was mild, calm, the tone Lloyd used at R-TAC when there was a major alarm and everyone else was strung tight as a wire, but when Andy looked down he saw Lloyd crouched again in firing position. Only this time Lloyd was not precise and smooth. He took his hand away from the trigger, flexed it, moved it back to the rifle, and Andy thought he saw the hand shaking.

  Nerves? No, not nerves. The tension in the man's body was clear from up here, and Andy knew what it was because he felt it too. Lloyd's hands were shaking from raw hatred.

  Andy let go of the pole with one hand, slipped his arm out of the shoulder strap, then reversed the process, as slowly and obviously as he could. He held the pack out and let it drop.

  Lloyd didn't move, didn't lower the rifle, just kept looking up.

  There was silence from above, the adventure shocked out of the boy, he was not Rambo or Spock but a kid scared senseless and he had no senses to spare. The only sound was the whup-whup of the severed cable snapping in the wind and the steady muttering of the wind itself.

  Andy swallowed, then said loud and clear, "I'm sorry."

  He was not lying. He was sorry he'd followed the language, the interpreter, the compiler, Strowger, sorry he'd thought of a Trojan horse, sorry he'd offered Feferman the trigger bypass, sorry he'd screwed up about Colson. Painfully sorry that Candace had called to confide in him. Sorry that his son was deaf and had steadfast faith in anything that came over his TDD.

  Lloyd tucked the rifle under his arm and walked over to pick up the pack. He crouched again, laying the rifle across his knees, and unzipped the pack. He thrust a hand inside, then yanked the zipper all the way open and pulled out several green bricks. For minutes, it seemed, he flipped through the bills, counting them, holding them. How the hell long did it take to figure out that six pounds of fifty-dollar bills did not add up to two million dollars?

  Finally, he put the bricks back inside, zipped the pack, and put it on his back.

  All of a sudden, Andy's ears buzzed and the ground started to spin. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the cold sweat coat his body. No, not now.

  "Faulkner!"

  He opened his eyes, he couldn't lift his head away from the pole, couldn't stop looking down. The ground, Lloyd, the rifle, the pack, all of it reversed direction and spun again.

  "Faulkner!" Lloyd put his left hand to his mouth, funneling it like a megaphone. "You... cheated... me."

  He wanted to be sure Andy heard, he wanted a response. Andy wanted to respond, wanted to say, "Let us go and leave the switches alone and they'll negotiate with you about the rest," but people bargained across a table or on the phone or standing face-to-face, they couldn't expect a man to bargain strapped to a pole with the world spinning around his head.

  "Was it you?"

  The spinning stopped, and he didn't dare to close his eyes or shift his glance for fear that it would start again. He kept his eyes locked in a tight focus on Lloyd's upturned face. Yeah, you son of a bitch, it was me.

  "Was... it... you?" Shouts.

  Can't talk, Lloyd, don't like it up here. But you know that. Nell told you. She was waiting for Ray that day at R-TAC and you two started talking about climbing fucking telephone poles and...

  Lloyd snapped the rifle up.

  Andy flinched. There were no shots.

  ...so you got my kid up here and you got me up here, so what are you waiting for, are you waiting for me to totally lose it, scream, beg, black out....

  "Daaaeeee."

  Andy tore the right gaff out of the pole, forced his leg up, dug in the gaff, gouging the pole, wood chips flying. He moved up the belt, hauled himself higher, his inner ear going crazy, sweats and chills together, but he shinnied higher.

  If he could do nothing else, he could get right up under Wayne and shield the boy with his body.

  Shouts from below, but his ears were ringing.

  What the hell more did the man want?

  It suddenly dawned on him. Lloyd, the steady member of the team, good worker, reliable, but Lloyd was known more for his sarcasm than his engineering, Lloyd calling Andy "genius" with the calm voice and the bitter edge. But the man himself had a streak of genius. Look at his Trojan horse, an elegant piece of engineering.

  Recognition, that's what the man wanted. Andy shouted back, "An elegant... piece... of engineering!"

  He didn't try to look, just kept climbing, hugging the pole, his body heavy like rocks. The pole filled his vision, rough wood; then it cleaved the horizon, the two lines crossed, and the axis tilted.

  Rifle fire.

  More fire, crackling, explosions.

  In pure terror he watched the cable coming down, twisting and snarling like the first time, only this wasn't the telephone cable. It was the power cable, shorting, spitting fire, tongues of electricity shooting out, whip-cracking the air, 12,500 volts looking for a ground.

  The cable danced closer, then with a crack like bones snapping, a pure blue stream of electricity arced from the raw wires to the telephone pole, and at each point of contact where his body touched the pole Andy felt a vibration.

  The wood was conducting, he thought wildly, wood wasn't a conductor but it was conducting, it was hot. Then as the cable bucked away, sending down blue bolts to the earth below, he thought moisture, the fog brought moisture and there was moisture in the wood and water was a conductor, and he and Wayne were pinned to the pole like mounted butterflies.

  The cable was snapping back toward them. Why didn't the circuit breakers kick in, the cable was live, arcing, the cracking was deafening, deafening, he looked up and saw Wayne's right foot dangling, the metal gaff flashing as the boy tried to scramble down.

  Metal.

  Andy tore off his helmet and heaved it upward but it didn't go high enough, Wayne didn't see it.

  The wind howled into his unprotected ears.

  Wayne got his gaff in as the cable writhed past. Blue fire arced into the pole and the wood vibrated and sent its convulsive shivers through Andy's hands and feet.

  He climbed; his body was a machine programmed only to climb and he would climb until it failed.

  A shout came among the cracking sounds, carried on the wind, and he looked down to see Lloyd with the pack on his back and the rifle slung over his shoulder, and Lloyd was mounting a brown horse.

  Then the cable was coming again, jerking and snarling, grounding its fire in the pole as it passed.

  If the cable swung much closer, Andy thought, it would find two perfect conductors, two solutions of electrolytes wrapped in skin and clothing, and the ground-seeking current would flow along a path that took it through the organs of the chest, and the heart would be shocked into a frenzy of fibrillation, or the chest muscles would freeze in an uncontrollable contraction, and in either case the two conductors would cease to exist.

  He climbed, heels together, toes and knees out, strike the gaff cleanly.

  Suddenly, the wind was louder and the sky was brighte
r and he looked to find the cable swinging more gently, driven only by the wind, limp and relaxed after its exhaustive hunt for ground.

  Somewhere, a circuit breaker had finally tripped.

  He wanted to hang relaxed and free like that cable, just hang from his safety belt and let the wind rock him, but he climbed, inching up the pole, and he was surprised when he finally felt his hand closing over his son's leg.

  Interrupt sighted through the lens, sweeping the .22 across a wide arc until he was satisfied that there was no one within range, then kicked the horse into a hard gallop across the grasslands toward the next shelter of oaks. There were several thousand acres of oak woods and grasslands in this section of foothills, not an easy area to search if indeed the authorities were rash enough to come clambering up here. No, they would concentrate their resources around the perimeter and wait until Faulkner reappeared with the boy, if Faulkner and the boy managed to reappear, or until Pac Bell and Pacific Gas and Electric arrived to locate their downed lines, and then if they did come they would come cautiously. That was precisely how he intended to proceed, cautiously, working his way down as if they were already hunting him.

  His eyes streamed and itched; he could taste the grass; his nose and throat burned as he inhaled. He wanted out of this place so badly that he took double care.

  When he came within sight of the fence he stopped, watching until he knew what belonged there and what didn't. Trees on either side of the fence, oak and buckeye and others he couldn't identify; blue jays flapping the leaves; dense scrub brush, weeds; telephone poles. He listened. Jays squawking, sound of the wind, traffic noise in the distance. Everything belonged.

  The fence was six rows of barbed wire strung between metal posts.

  When he was fully satisfied, he dismounted and unstrapped the saddlebag and stuffed Faulkner's pack inside. There was plenty of room, because he had brought a bag large enough to accommodate the gear he had had to transport up to the pole, and large enough to accommodate the bulk and weight of the money he had asked for, but he hadn't got payment in full. He roughly closed the bag.

  He set the bag and the rifle on the ground beside the fence and turned back to the horse. He balled his hand into a fist and struck the horse in the neck.