by Tom Clancy
"Sounds like she was obsessed," said Mark very qui- etly.
"It sounds like it," said Winters. "Well, all her complaints and attempts to get Deathworld shut downgot her nowhere, as you might imagine, since there was no evidence whatever to suggest that the environment, or Bane, were implicated in any way in her son's death." He sighed. "And then the second suicide happened. That's when we got involved. Once could be an accident. Twice could be a coincidence-"
"Three times is enemy action," Mark said.
"Well, even proverbs can be wrong," said Winters, lacing his fingers together. "But this time, as it happens, it was indeed enemy action. Because Mitch Welles's mother decided that if the government and Net Force weren't going to do the responsible thing and shut Deathworld down, then she would do it herself."
He breathed out. "Well, that's the simple way to describe it. Your mom would know," and Winters glanced up at Charlie, "that the ways a human mind gets itself into such a position are usually a lot more subtle than people suspect from outside, or after the fact. After all, she had managed to convince herself, over time, that her son couldn't have killed himself, that it had to be murder. Well, acknowledging that he had committed suicide would mean admitting that it might possibly have been due to something she d done wrong… so that was a realization that her mind buried as soon as it could. From that it was just a step to believing that Joey Bane was personally responsible for his death. And from there, maybe not such a long step to believing that anyone who was in Deathworld willingly was somehow complicit in her son's 'murder.' "
"Maybe," Charlie whispered. "It would explain a lot."
Winters shook his head. "It may be something like that which was going on in her head. The process itself is obscure, and it's probably going to stay that way for a while, because she's not talking about much of anything now. But soon enough Maureen Welles got the idea that, if people had accused her son of being a suicide, then she was going to turn that back on them, get revenge on them for hurting her, for hurting him like that. They would be the suicides, not him. She started monitoring the new login information, and the message boards, as anyone could… but her purpose was to pick likely targets, to make sure that the ones she 'worked with' in her Shade and Kalki personas seemed genuinely suicidal, people who 'were going to do it anyway.' Their deaths would make her son's look like what she was sure it was: something done to him, to them, by the environment they'd been spending time in. That this would also hurt Joey Bane must have occurred to her. She may even have had some fantasy of killing him and turning him into a 'suicide' as well. More to the point, though, she was sane enough to realize that a string of suicides would affect the place adversely."
"But it didn't," Charlie said. "It went wrong. In a lot of ways. No one put it together that the suicides were connected. And Deathworld got even more popular."
Winters's look was grim. "You're right. It backfired on her. Her methods were too subtle. Not subtle enough to completely prevent the suspicion, here and there, that these suicides weren't uncomplicated. But distributed over so much time, and such a large physical area, they didn't attract the attention she wanted. And she wasn't completely nuts, not yet. Her first murder took a lot out of her, scared her-scared her briefly sane. She kept quiet for a while. The next suicide, the one in October, was genuine, and had nothing to do with her. But come the next year, around April, her pain started to unseat her reason again. By May she was more than ready to murder someone else, as revenge against Bane… or as a kind of sacrifice to her dead son." He frowned. "And she did… then scared herself sane again for a little while."
"But she couldn't stay that way," Charlie said. "Probably the knowledge of what she'd been doing was starting to prey on her. And her son was still dead… "
"And Deathworld was still in operation," Winters said, sounding a little sad now. "It must have been intolerable for her. One part of her wanting to believe that her son had been exonerated, avenged… another part of her continually wanting revenge on whatever had taken him away from her."
"And so she kept on killing," Mark said. "And then did it again, this month… "
"Twice," Winters said, somber. "But now she was getting into the pattern of serial killers. One murder isn't enough. The same kind of murder isn't enough. They have to get closer together, be more terrible, somehow, to provide the same level of catharsis. But they never do."
"It's a drug," Charlie said softly.
"Something like one," said Winters. "The addiction always getting worse, in her case, because the dose increases and increases and doesn't do any good. And then this last time, she was driven to commit two murders.. and no sooner have they happened than Deathworld, her old enemy, suddenly is doing better than ever. It drove her to levels of rage she'd never experienced before. She decided to go straight out to try to kill again. And found you… using some pretty advanced 'hunting' routines. She tripped the 'wire' around your workspace, as you thought. Felt you out, to make sure you were suicidal enough. And then went for the kill."
Winters's eyes were resting on Charlie in a way that made him even more uncomfortable than the man's anger had.
But there was only one answer to that look. Charlie swallowed. "You remember Helicobacter?" he said.
Mark looked at Charlie as if he was from Mars. But Winters's expression shifted microscopically to something a little less uneasy than it had been.
"Helicobacter pylorii," Charlie said. "Forty years ago everybody thought stomach ulcers were caused by stomach acid." He had to laugh, for at this end of time, it sounded silly. But back then, they hadn't had any other answer that made sense. "Then a scientist, a doctor, noticed that in all the cultures he took of his patients' stomach ulcers, they all had this one bacterium present. Helicobacter, they called it, because it was shaped like a little helix. He worked with that bug for something like five years, until he was convinced that it was the cause of stomach ulcers, and that it could be killed, and the ulcers wiped out, just by using the right kind of antibiotic for long enough. He published papers, tried to convince everybody. They laughed at him. They said that the proof wasn't conclusive, that the evidence was all circumstantial. They wouldn't approve even animal testing, let alone human." Charlie smiled a smile as grim as Winters's had been. "So finally the guy swallowed a pure culture of Helicobacter and gave himself the fastest, nastiest case of bleeding ulcers anybody ever saw. Then he put himself on a course of antibiotics, and cured them."
Winters just looked at him.
"A lot of doctors have done stuff like that," Charlie said. "Pasteur. Jenner. It's traditional." He gulped, for Winters's look was not getting any friendlier. "When you're sure you're right. But when it's a life-and-death thing… the only life you have a right to put on the line is your own."
Winters just looked at him, like something carved from stone. "Mark," he said at last, "would you excuse us?"
Mark threw Charlie one apologetic glance, and then removed himself from the room with a speed that suggested he had recently had ion drivers installed.
A moment's silence ensued. "Now what the hell am I supposed to do with you," Winters said at last, "when you play the moral card on me like that."
Charlie thought it wisest to keep his mouth shut for the moment.
Winters sighed and leaned back in his chair again. "Your mother and father," he said, rubbing his face, "are going to have my hide off my bones if I don't come down on you hard for this dumb stunt. Which it was." Charlie looked down. "The 'morality card' aside. Morality starts at home, Charlie. You have not treated your folks very well. If you and the irrepressible Mr. Gridley hadn't had God's own luck, not to mention a sense of timing developed well beyond what people of your tender years should have, you could very well have been 'suicide' number seven. And maybe Mark and Nick for eight and nine. And regardless of the fact that the work and the evidence you left us would have made your death murder rather than suicide, and that your murderer would have been behind bars very quickly inde
ed, it would have shattered your parents' lives."
Charlie sat there with the sweat bursting out all over him, because he knew it was true, and that one way or another, he was unlikely to hear the end of this for months.
The silence stretched out again for a long while.
"All right," Winters said. "We'll see what you work out with them. They've let me know that, after talking to Jay Gridley, they think you should be allowed to continue as a Net Force Explorer. You may have to get used to being, uh, monitored a little more closely. You threw quite a scare into them."
Charlie swallowed. "Yes, sir."
"But there is this." He gave Charlie a thoughtful look. "If you hadn't done what you did… heaven knows who she might have killed next. How many more murders it would have taken to quieten her ghosts… and of course they wouldn't have stayed quiet, not for long." He sat back, looking at his folded hands. "Unfortunately, among the various kinds of serial killers, there are a few who `seal over' very effectively for prolonged periods between crimes. They're crazy as bedbugs, but either they're not crazy enough to let their symptoms show where people can see them, or there's no one to see. Living by herself, her son dead, her husband pretty much permanently out of thepicture, with no one to see how weird she got every April… this could have gone on for a long while. It could have caused Deathworld to be shut down, and left Bane fighting endless lawsuits that would not have been his responsibility. So an injustice has been prevented… though frankly, from what I've seen of the place, I wonder if-"
Then Winters stopped himself. "No," he said, sounding annoyed. "Injustice is injustice, dammit, and artistic opinions shouldn't enter into it. That way lies tyranny. Now would you mind explaining why you're looking at me like that?"
Charlie had begun to smile, just a little. He couldn't help it. "I think there's more to that place than meets the eye," he said. "And really, Mr. Winters, I think the media' ye overstated the case a little about Deathworld. It's not as kinky and cruel as they think. It's more a teaching exercise."
"Oh, is it?" Winters said. "Well." He glanced down at his desk, reading something that had been manifesting under its surface for a while now.
He sighed. "It was always forensics with you, wasn't it?" he said. " 'The noblest use of science,' I heard one of my people call it. Well, some good has come of this aspect of your riffling of the records, anyway. There really should have been more cooperation among the various police forces handling the suicides. There are mechanisms set up for that, but they don't get used enough. This outcome will enable us to put bugs under some people's rumps, and have them look more closely at how to coordinate deaths that have similarities. A 'smart' system can be coached by forensic people and profilers to start handling and correlating data like this… as long as the cops put it in. And that a kid beat them to a serial killer might just shame them into using it." He raised his eyebrows. "Fine. But at the end of the day I suppose I might have known you'd do what you did, once faced with the evidence. Regardless of how earnestly you promised me you wouldn't jump the gun."
Charlie blushed hot again. This is all I need. A rep as an incorrigible gun-jumper. With one of the two men who'll determine whether I ever work in Net Force at all. _ _
"Don't mistake my intent," said Winters. "I don't mindlessly push the 'team player' concept because some corporate-minded superior makes me do it. I do it because it is the sine qua non of this organization, the single thing that makes us effective. When you start working with other people in Net Force someday, assuming that you graduate medical school without incident and that you are somehow spared for that work by an overly kindly Universe which keeps you from getting your butt kidnapped or killed when you put it in harm's way"- Charlie began wondering whether it was possible to feel as hot and embarrassed as he presently did without actually running a clinical fever- "then you are going to have to do what you tell them you're going to do, for the simple reason that they're going to act on that information, and when they do, if you're not doing what you said you were going to do, you may get them killed. They will be depending on you to keep your word. If you can't… you are no good to anyone. So get the polar bears and the Helicobacter out of your system now, because there'll be no room for them later."
Winters looked at him.
"Uh," Charlie said, "yes, sir."
There was a long silence. "Good," Winters said. "Then we understand each other. Insofar as anyone my age can truly understand anyone yours." He shook his head. "Which is little enough. Especially after I just heard you defending Deathworld to me." He raised his eyebrows at Charlie. "I wouldn't have thought you'd care much for the music, for one thing. I thought you were all for tech-notrad."
"The context," Charlie said, "makes other readings possible."
Winters gave him a cockeyed look. "I hear the sound of someone managing information on what he considers a 'need to know' basis." He sighed. "You should go away, now, because you're making my head hurt." He glanced at the bird feeder stuck to his window, where a small brown bird was taking out one nut at a time and dropping it to the ground. "Even more than he was," Winters added, "until I realized what he's doing. He's feeding two of his buddies on the ground. Possibly his kids. They're too big to tell."
He made a shooing gesture at Charlie. Charlie got up."… So get out of here," he said.
In haste, Charlie got out.
School that day went by in something of a blur, mostly caused by Charlie having to refuse again and again to say anything about what had happened down at the public access place near the Square. The case was now officially sub judice and could not be discussed. By the end of the day he was thoroughly tired of not being able to say anything, and seriously relieved to see Nick.
"Are you okay?" Charlie said to him as they started to walk in the general direction of home.
"Uh, yeah." Nick chuckled a little. "I didn't realize whose son Mark was! James Winters called my dad.". "He did? Oh, no!"
"No, it was okay," Nick said, sounding completely unconcerned… but then he didn't have to answer to James Winters. "My dad was really impressed."
"Winters didn't… say anything awful, did he?"
"Not at all. He was nice, actually. From what my mom said, he made me come out sounding like some kind of hero." He gave Charlie an odd look. "They're probably gonna hand you the same kind of stuff."
"I wouldn't worry too much about that," Charlie said. "It hasn't been a problem so far."
They headed for Nick's apartment, if only because Charlie wasn't willing to go straight home to his own and find some new and interesting aspect of last night's argument waiting for him. When they got there, though, Charlie wondered whether this had been wise, for Nick's mother was putting down the receiver of the vidphone with an odd look on her face.
Nick froze when he saw it. Charlie, not knowing what that kind of expression might mean on someone else's mother, didn't bother panicking. On his own, though, he would have been cautiously optimistic about what was to follow. "Hi, Mrs. Melchior…"
"Hi, Charlie honey, how are you?" She sounded very abstracted.
"Uh, hi, Mom," Nick said.
"Nick," his mother said, "what have you been doing?"
Charlie saw the oh-no-what-now look cross his friend's face. "We came straight from school, Mrs. Melchior," he said, hoping it wouldn't make things worse. "Did we-"
"No, Charlie, it's all right," said Nick's mother, looking dubious. "I guess. Honey, that was someone from the service provider."
Nick instantly burst out in a sweat that Charlie could see from two feet away, and indeed could practically feel. "Mom, in three weeks I'll have enough to give them about two hundred-"
"I wouldn't worry about that," his mother said, "because they say that the last month's bill has been paid in full."
Nick's eyes widened. "Oh, no. If Dad went and-"
"Your dad didn't do anything, honey," said Nick's mother, sitting down at the small kitchen table and looking at him oddly. "It seems someon
e from Joey Bane Enterprises got hold of them and said that the company was paying your expenses for 'your efforts on their behalf.' Which they took to mean the last month's comm charges, with a cash reserve to cover another year's worth of use. And apparently they're reimbursing you for your public access in the last couple of weeks."
"Oh, wow," Nick said, looking almost weak with relief, and collapsing into the chair opposite his mom at the table.
Charlie stood and watched all this with poorly concealed approval.
"Charlie," said Nick's mother to him, turning on him what would have been a fairly fierce expression except for the confusion still underlying it, "did you have something to do with this?"
"I don't think so," Charlie said. Not directly, anyway. Or at least not the way you think…
He was spared having to go through any longer a list of mental reservations by Nick's mother sighing, raising her hands in the air, letting them fall again. "Honey," she said, "it's very nice of them to come in and get you off the hook like this-"
"Mom," said Nick, "I'm going to keep the summer job… if it's all the same to you."
She looked at him thoughtfully. "That's the best thing I've heard all day," she said, and got up, heading down the hall toward the rear of the apartment. "Meanwhile, I suppose we'd better see about getting your server reconnected… "
Nick and Charlie looked at each other as she went down to the den. "It's a miracle," Nick said softly.
"Somehow I doubt it."
"I wonder how much of… you know, what we did… is going to come out."
"I don't think it'd be smart for us to discuss that here," Charlie said softly. "Not under the circumstances. You gonna be online again tonight?"
"One way or another," Nick said. "I meant it about the job… I noticed that when I'm out of the apartment more, the tension level around here goes down somewhat. I would have thought it'd be the other way around. Could it be that they wanted me to get out more or something? Even if it's just to use a public booth?"