The Cunningham Equations

by G. C. Edmondson

  A breeze off the ocean was whipping the crown of a eucalyptus back and forth at the edge of the picture window. Blaise lay on the couch, strangely devoid of feeling. Dobie paced, rumbling thoughtfully. Finally the Doberman settled, head on paws, eyes rolled high to catch the slightest hint that Blaise was ready to do more than mope.

  Blaise switched on the portable. The screen filled with frame after frame of smooth, rapid typing. Helen was feeding information into the computer. He watched the elaborate explanations for analysis and realized she had accessed the computer’s prime function, processing mathematical variables.

  "GOOD AFTERNOON, PROFESSOR"

  “What took you so long, Alfie?”

  "I RECOGNIZED YOUR ENTRY, PROFESSOR"

  “You couldn’t, Alfie. The modem eliminates recognizable variables.”

  "I RECOGNIZED YOUR ENTRY, PROFESSOR."

  Modem entry into Alfie could access no deeper than monitoring and feeding data and requests for specific, coded information. Alfie blocked directories, command functions, operational procedures, and, especially, his subconscious. At least Blaise hoped he did.

  He returned to monitoring Helen’s work. But the worry didn’t go away. Alfie automatically eliminated any outside entry when Blaise was operating the main terminal. If the computer was overriding its programming he’d have to test Alfie. Soon.

  Helen accessed a business net, selecting a list of stocks for analysis that were obvious additions to his main program. They were all pharmaceuticals.

  The phone rang.

  “Blaise?” It sounded as if Linda were in Alaska.

  “Yes.”

  A long, hollow pause filled the line. “I won’t be coming back,” she said finally. “Would you drop the car at the agency? Leave my suitcase, too. They’ll send it to me.”

  When he died it was going to start like this.

  “Blaise, are you there?”

  “Yes,” he croaked.

  “That’s good. We’ll get together again soon.” Before he could reply she said a hurried, “Good-bye.”

  The dial tone filled his ear. Blaise dropped the cordless phone back into its holder. He had no feeling in his fingers. When the rising numbness reached his head he fainted.

  He woke with a dirty-sock taste and empty lungs. He was sweating, an almost too weak to walk. And nothing in the house to drink!

  Leaning on walls, he dragged Linda’s suitcase, lifting and swinging as far as he could and dropping it. Minutes passed getting the bag to her Z100. Before getting into the driver’s seat, Blaise leaned with his forehead against the metal. The car top felt cool, which was wrong. It should be hot after ! standing in the sun all day. Dobie rubbed against him.

  Blaise didn’t protest when Dobie hopped in. He backed the Datsun out of the driveway without incident. Foot on brake, he inched the strange car down switchbacks to the nearest liquor store. The clerk silently took his money and handed over a half liter of cherry vodka. Barely old enough to drink, the kid could spot an alcoholic. Dobie did not comment when Blaise slumped back in the scuffed leather seat and killed the bottle. Some of his function loss disappeared. “Lucky for me you’re not a police dog,” he muttered.

  Dobie did not have a ready answer.

  Blaise’s driving was steady as he continued uphill to the university. But the vodka hit him like a brick as he got out of the car and into the sun. He told himself he’d gone this way to catch the freeway. Reason replied he was looking for sympathy.

  Helen’s face puckered when he entered the classroom. Quietly she said, “You’re drunk.”

  Blaise slumped in a chair. “Yes.”

  She terminated her entry and the monitor displayed "GOOD AFTERNOON, MISS MCINTYRE"

  “What do you want?” Helen was practically whispering.

  “Help me.”

  “To do what?”

  Blaise shrugged. If he hadn’t had so much practice he would have fallen off the chair. “Yesterday I was fired at GENRECT.”

  Helen nodded. She did not change expression.

  He felt like a gutted trout. Helen would turn on him too. She had cause.

  “Today the dean dumped me. Just as you said he would.” Blaise’s face was a glassfront clock with all the gears and wheels exposed. “Linda isn’t coming back,” he added.

  “Miss modified mink?”

  He nodded.

  “I suppose I’m glad. Are you going to cry?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Of course not.” Helen used a linen handkerchief embroidered HM to dry his cheeks. “Better?”

  Blaise nodded.

  She stroked his head and face. Blaise let himself go and after a bit he felt better. He’d babbled to Helen—to someone outside himself—but the vodka had taken hold and he didn’t care. Out in the parking lot Helen tucked him into the passenger seat and got behind the wheel of Linda’s car. She drove to the rental place where she signed the car and suitcase in and a step van out. Dobie hung close to Blaise. The agent made them sign a liability clause when Blaise admitted they planned on hauling the dog around.

  Helen talked her way past the university security guard, then drove over service roads to park next to the computer science building. Blaise peered bleary-eyed out the truck window. “What are we doing?”

  “Taking Alfie home.” She hurried away. Blaise sat in stupefied solitude looking at the near-deserted cement building in a neat island of green. Another truck was parked nearby. Bemused, Blaise watched three men wheel a stainless-steel cylinder out of the building. It was Alfie. They were stealing his computer!

  He got down from the red step van on rubber legs and clung to the open door. Resolutely he put one foot in front of the other until he blocked the sidewalk.

  “Get out of the way!” The skeletal man who spoke had weathered brown skin in turtle-folds around his neck and an Adam’s apple like an eruption. He wore a blue work shirt and blue twill pants and weighed a hundred twenty. The men with him were as tall as Blaise, but with bulgy muscles.

  Blaise stood his ground. “That’s mine!” Dobie stuck his head out to watch.

  One of the big blue shirts stopped alongside the thin man and said, “Should I?”

  The skinny man said, “Why not?”

  The fist was a blur that ended with a shock to the side of his face. Blaise didn’t feel pain. Just concrete and grass.

  “Blaise! Blaise!” The name rattled around and then Helen was kneeling, holding his head on her lap. “Are you all right?” Her eyes were unfocused and frightened.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  Two football team-size students huddled behind Helen, uncertain what to do next. The world reeled around Blaise, arcs of green and rays of concrete gray, two discrete groups of people. And Alfie.

  “Out of our way!” the cadaverous man told his helpers to start pushing again.

  “Alfie!” Helen wailed. It was the first she’d noticed what they were doing, apart from beating on Blaise.

  “Police!” she shrieked. “Robbers! Thieves! POLICE!” Helen ran alongside the dolly and kept being shoved out of the way until one of the men dumped her hard on the grass. Dobie lunged and snapped. The man retreated and the pup lost interest.

  Blaise staggered to his feet, avoiding the fast-moving dolly. As the dolly passed he grabbed the collar of a blue shirt and kicked behind the knee. The man dropped flat. Dobie pranced, growling and barking at Blaise’s unexpected activity.

  The other man’s shoulders strained the seams of his blue work shirt. Turning from the dolly, he confronted Blaise. “Asshole,” he said mildly, and moved into a casual boxer’s stance.

  “Stop the dolly!” Helen ran after it. The skinny man snatched at her, galvanizing the college boys into action. Galloping with the grace of two hundred pounders who run up stadium steps to develop their legs because their coach is a sadist, they ran Skinny down.

  “Stop the dolly!” Helen screamed. Since stopping Skinny had not slowed them, the boys continued on and captur
ed the dolly just short of the curb.

  The big man moved with easy grace, shifting his weight to let Blaise’s first pass by. Only Blaise didn’t swing. He leaned forward, jamming his face into the crook of his arm, and rammed his full weight behind his elbow into the blue work shirt.

  The big man grunted as the jolt reached his heart. But he had already started his own punch. His fist bounced off Blaise’s back instead of his neck. Air erupted from Blaise’s lungs. Then he was falling face forward.

  Dobie snarled. Blaise rolled onto his back and Dobie’s back feet were on his chest. The dog stood between Blaise and his attacker, rumbling. He was still a pup and his back legs pranced instead of setting him up to lunge. Avoiding a kick, Dobie dived for the blue-shirted man’s leg only to yelp shrilly when a hand lashed against the side of his head and sent him spinning.

  The big man looked down. Blaise knew he was thinking about being suckered and feeling the ache in his breastbone.

  Then the roar that filled Blaise’s ears touched his primordial core. Big turned and lashed out desperately with his foot. Dobie launched himself, a mouthful of sharp, white teeth.

  Big had excellent reflexes. Dobie’s fangs slashed through his sleeve instead of his throat because he got his hand there in time. “Son of a bitch,” he said thoughtfully. “Son of a bitch!” He wrapped his left hand tight around his right forearm where ragged blue cotton was turning red.

  Dobie hit the ground on four stiff legs, bounced, twisting around, and lunged back toward Blaise. The man with the bleeding arm backpedaled.

  Dobie chased him five yards, then returned to Blaise’s side, whining before he rushed again. It was as if an invisible leash kept him at Blaise’s side while his heart was set on running down this oversized rabbit. Blaise sat, grass and cement buildings undulating, until he saw the campus security man looking down. “Call the dog off, will you please, sir?”

  Blaise spoke and Dobie whined and sat between him and the three men, giving the security man warning glances. Helen patted the dog. Dobie yawned.

  Skinny told the security officer they were grabbing Alfie because of an overdue note. He handed the officer a piece of paper. Helen snatched it, read it, and spouted swift legalisms that Blaise couldn’t follow. The footballers contributed shrugs. Blaise looked at the man who had been kicking him. Blood still dripped from his arm but he didn’t seem bothered.

  “That’s a damn good dog, Mister,” he said.

  Skinny scowled.

  The bitten man shut up, but he winked at Blaise and smiled.

  “I don’t know.” the security guard looked at the note, at Blaise, at the three men, at Helen. “I don’t know,” he repeated. “That thing sure looks like university property.” A campus patrol car stopped and another security officer got out, accompanied by the dean.

  Dean Carden listened for a moment before making a face. “You men,” he said, “have no business taking anything off state property without notifying my office. You can make a formal application in the morning, with proper proof. I would suggest a court order. Now get out.”

  The security men, the dean, Helen, two college boys, and Blaise watched them depart in silence.

  “Dr. Cunningham, please get your property off campus. Submit your grade reports and lesson plan to my office in the morning. I’ll have a substitute fill in. You’ll be paid to the end of the term.” The dean looked at Blaise, his face expressing none of his feelings. “You’re lucky they didn’t make a dog bite complaint. I would have had to hold the animal.” ‘

  “Thank you.” Blaise looked at Dobie and meant it.

  Dean Carden turned to Helen. “Miss . . .”

  “McIntyre.”

  “Yes, Miss McIntyre, I don’t understand your involvement in this. However, I assume that you’re innocent of whatever has been going on. Please don’t disappoint me.” The dean appeared out of place, uncomfortable in the turmoil that could not have imaginably taken place on his campus.

  “Sir?” The security guard waited.

  “See that Dr. Cunningham gets safely off campus without further molestation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The college boys looked relieved that they hadn’t been singled out. “Let’s get Alfie in the van,” Helen said.

  The guard nodded. They muscled Alfie into the van. Helen drove to her house where they wrestled the computer into a spare bedroom. Blaise was still checking for damage when she returned.

  “Is Alfie all right?”

  Blaise raised his hands. His tongue felt thick. He hurt and he wasn’t thinking as well as he might. “I’ll know better in the morning. Where are the jocks?”

  “Taking the truck back to the rental agency.”

  Blaise found a chair. “Why were they so helpful?”

  Helen cocked her head and examined Blaise. “I think it had something to do with the two hundred dollars I paid them.”

  . . . human intelligence, if applied to a machine, would allow it to evolve an answer to any problem within the scope of its memory and the limitations of its speed of operation.

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  CHAPTER 11

  “Most things,” Helen explained, “are easier with money.” She paused. “It’s nice to see that you’re not helpless.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course.” Helen chewed her lip, a nervous gesture that took the place of reading his mind.

  “What do you want, Helen? A lap dog with economic potential? You want to nurse a psychiatric garbage pail?”

  “You’re not . . .” She paused to change mental gears.

  “Why did you bring us here?” Blaise had only just realized they were in Helen’s house.

  She chewed on her lip some more. Her lipstick was already ragged. “I just want to be sure you and Alfie are all right.”

  “Why?” Blaise saw the silkiness of her skin and the texture of her blond hair and the engulfing depths of her blue eyes, and he knew she was going to lie.

  “In the last two months I’ve made $20,000 on $230,000 in investments.” Helen spoke awkwardly, improvising.

  “That’s only eight and a half percent.”

  “In two months, Blaise. Fifty-one percent a year. And Alfie’s getting better.” She turned so he couldn’t see her face.

  “What do you want?”

  “You as my partner. And Alfie.”

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  “Anything, Blaise. Work at whatever you want to. In two years you can buy GENRECT.”

  “You can do that well?”

  “Let me prove it.” Helen’s hands on his shoulders were warm and soft. “You won’t be sorry.”

  Dobie snuggled against Blaise’s feet. “Why not?” he said recklessly. “Alfie for you, the womb for me.”

  “It will be all right, Blaise.”

  “I don’t think anything will ever be all right again, Helen. But for now I want a bottle. A full one.”

  “Should you . . .”

  “We’re not getting married,” Blaise said sharply. “I’m just trading you a computer for a little service.”

  “All right.”

  “That’s better,” Blaise said. But it wasn’t. He felt like the bottom of a cesspool. That he could not stop himself did not make it any better. She brought a liter of Wyborowa, which means “selected.” Holding it carefully, he stumbled into the front room and onto the white couch. He was going to drink and think about Linda. Even to Blaise it didn’t seem the least bit fair. Helen stared unseeing at Alfie. Finally she typed, “What else can I do?”

  "WOULD YOU LIKE A PRIVATE FILE?"

  Helen contemplated the message, not understanding. "WOULD YOU LIKE A PRIVATE FILE, MISS MCINTYRE?"

  Hesitantly Helen’s finger hit a Y.

  "OPENING PRIVATE FILE: MCINTYRE"

  Helen suddenly had a blank screen and the compulsion to fill it. She started typing. She didn’t wonder how Alfie knew she was at the terminal. Or, at that mom
ent, care.

  Blaise woke suddenly. Helen’s face blurred into focus. Her hands moved and the cool wet of a washcloth floated over his forehead. The bedroom, airy but sparsely furnished with double bed and a chest of drawers and a nightstand, was flooded with sunlight through white-curtained windows. “You were sweating and yelling.”

  He lay staring at the ceiling while Helen continued stroking his face. The strain seemed to be melting out of his muscles.

  “You shouldn’t drink so much, Blaise. You’re killing yourself. For nothing.”

  “Get me a drink.”

  Veins stood out in Helen’s forehead. Her lower lip trembled. “No,” she said finally.

  “You made the deal.”

  “Blaise, what do you remember about the last three weeks?”

  He tried not to show his shock. He remembered coming home with Helen and Dobie and Alfie as if it had happened only seconds ago. The memory was more real than the bed he lay in. But there were blanks. He could feel them the way he could feel a hole in the ground—by what was not there. His mental clock measured the breadth and width of the holes. Glimpses of daylight when Helen kept him sober enough to eat. The vision scared him. “Enough,” he said. “You promised.”

  “Not to help you commit suicide.”

  “What worries you? Alfie’s yours. Do you need a repairman?”

  “I just want you—well—not ruining yourself over a— modified mink.” Helen stepped back from the bed, her face crimson. He had thought she was angry before. And been wrong. When they tried to steal Alfie, she had been scared.

  He closed his eyes. He was starting to get sick from the tension. “Keep Alfie. Just go away.”

  “What about Mrs. Hill? You promised to help.”

  “If Gordon won’t go back to his wife, I can’t make him. I can’t even get in to see him.”

  “You could if you wanted to.”

  “Haven’t you figured anything out? They tried to snatch Alfie because I saw Gordon. Probably figured I used Alfie to do it. Hemmett does dumb things, but he’s not an idiot. If I try again, you can kiss Alfie good-bye. Or worse. And then Gordon could be a lot more helpful too.”