by Jim Stark
And he remembered being beeped in the L.A.P. group when he'd referred to his own agnosticism. He'd been forced to correct himself then, but he saw now that that particular beep was because he believed he was an atheist ... at the time. This LieDeck-verification technique is tricky, he realized.
He straightened up, and found himself wondering what that clarification was really worth, the fact that he was an agnostic rather than an atheist. Strangely, he felt relieved, as if being an agnostic wasn't quite as “sinful” as being an atheist, as if it were more “forgivable,” although he didn't know how that worked if there was no God to offend or be forgiven by. He also wondered whether this distinction would help him deal with Bill Doyle, or with his own personal “reformation.” Again, he had found questions with no answers, and the circumstances were all wrong for him to speak out loud, or to continue using LieDeck-verification to sort himself out.
He decided to keep the LieDeck in his hand and strike up the band with his driver. He leaned forward, placing an elbow on the back of the front passenger seat. “What do you think of all this LieDeck business that's been going on?” he asked as they exited Aylmer and entered the wonderfully dark countryside.
"The LieDeck?” repeated the driver. “Well, it's obviously turned out to be the all-time leading shit-disturbing bit of technology that ever came on the scene. I feel sorry for the people who can't cope with the sucker, but to be honest with you, I'm for it. I think it's a hoot."
"Really?” said Steve, as he made sure his LieDeck was still on, and on the pin mode.
"Yeah, really,” said the driver. “Name's Allen, by the way ... Allen Potter."
"Oh, sorry ... my name's Steve,” he managed, with an awkward shake of the hand that Allen Potter had flipped over his shoulder towards the backseat. “Don't know where my manners have gone. I've been sort of ... distracted lately."
"Stressed out, Father,” said Allen. “I mean—uh—Steve."
"Yeah ... stress,” said Steve as he gave his burning forehead one of his patented pincer treatments, the thumb and middle finger performing the operation, the palm hiding his closed eyes. He terminated the movement quickly—he was tired of his self-pity, and didn't want it to show. “The impact of the LieDeck on religious people is a real bitch,” he said, feeling relieved that he could finally speak the vernacular without having to log it in his memory for his next confession. “What's your take on that aspect of the thing?"
"Hmmm,” said Allen, with a glance in the rearview at his contemplative passenger. He knew the Patriot car was bugged, mostly for his own protection, and he didn't know if he'd have trouble explaining this conversation to his supervisor, but the new rule was, if your passenger asks you a question, shut up or be straight.
"Well, I can tell you this,” he began. “When I found out there was no Santa Claus—I'd say I was about five at the time—I took it kind of hard for a day or two. But when I found out there was no God—I was about eighteen then—I felt ... well, I was really glad, frankly. Religion was sort of a pain in the ass in my life, and in my family too. My father was Protestant. He came from farming stock. His father's father—my grandfather—he was an Orangeman. Lived for the glorious 12th of July when he and his cronies would get a parade going down the main street to celebrate beating the piss out of the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne. My mother was a Catholic. She'd always figured she would be a nun until she met my dad. They were decent people, mind you, but ... they fought about religion the whole time I was growing up. When it dawned on me that there was no God, I remember thinking: Good riddance to bad rubbish."
"I see,” said Steve. He did see. He envied the ease with which this rather average guy could dump Jesus and get down to ... well, down to reality, he supposed ... or up to it. “And your wife? She's ... on the same wavelength as you?"
"No, actually,” said Allen. “She believes in God ... strongly, so she says, although she never goes to church. But it doesn't screw up our relationship that she leans one way and me the other. It's no big deal. She votes Tory and I vote NDP. Same thing. It's just not important in the larger scheme of things. It's mostly a tool, religion—helps people to define their values and hold on to them. That's the way I figure it anyway."
"So—you don't think her belief is as strong as she says it is?"
"Nobody really believes that God stuff,” laughed Allen. “Maybe the odd one here and there, but not too many, far as I can tell."
The pin tapped Steve's hand just as the driver said the word “stuff,” but it remained inactive for the rest of his statement. Allen Potter had been exaggerating when he'd said “nobody,” effectively a lie, but then he had corrected himself, and qualified his answer, probably without fully realizing that he had lied, or that the lie had been detected.
Steve wondered whether the LieDeck would have signaled a lie for Allen's second sentence if it hadn't started with the word “maybe.” He knew that the driver's offhand estimate jibed with the preliminary research results of the “belief systems and public morale” subgroup at the L.A.P., but for some strange reason it astonished him that this thirty-year-old fellow could have reached such a conclusion so confidently without the aid of LieDeck-verification. Of course, Allen's statement only reflected what he believed to be the case, and that wasn't any kind of accurate gauge of objective reality.
"What makes you so sure that hardly anybody really believes in God?” Steve asked.
"Only logical,” said Allen. “I mean, let's say you got kids and—I don't mean you personally, Steve—but let's say there's these kids, and they're going to Disneyland in July. Hell, they start talking about it nonstop in frigging February, and it never lets up. I went through that myself, as a kid, and I went through it with my own little guys—I got three sons. That's just the way people are, Steve. Adults too ... not just kids. That's half the fun, anticipating good stuff like that. But when's the last time a Catholic slapped his knee and said, ‘I just can't wait to get to heaven. Man oh man, I'm so excited about that I could burst.’ Now tell me the truth ... when's the last time anybody said that to you? In fact, did anybody ever say that to you?"
Steve wanted to judo-chop this wannabe Quincy Smith right on the Adam's apple. No he didn't. Yes he did. He did ... and he didn't ... and he resented the emotional turmoil. Allen's good-humored, common sense insight had somehow bullied its way through the theological fog by dint of its utter simplicity. How could I know hundreds of thousands of splendid things about religion, and yet never notice this revealing incongruity? he asked himself silently. Seems I've got an uncanny knack for missing the point.
"No,” he admitted. “No one ... ever ... said that to me. And you're right. If people believed in God, in heaven, they would feel exactly like you said, and they would say it ... well, approximately like that ... maybe with even more enthusiasm than if they were just going to Disneyland, actually. I remember feeling that way a couple of times in my life, mostly back in the seminary ... maybe a few times since then..."
His voice trailed off as it occurred to him that perhaps common sense was blocked by religious belief. Take away all the mythical reasons for being decent to each other, and people might get wise to some reality-based reasons for being decent, for having a moral code, for doing good. Just as it was predictable how people would anticipate the ecstasy of getting into heaven if they really believed in God, it became clear in his mind that no one who believed in God could molest a child, could even contemplate molesting a child ... or an adult, for that matter. We are what we do, and we do as we are, he remembered learning a few days earlier. And, while I'm waxing away on this subject, we are not only the product of our genes and our upbringing; we are also the person we choose to be!
"You've ... got this all figured out, eh?” he asked the Patriot driver, who seemed to be tuned in to the possibility that Steve was losing it, or drifting into some private mental swamp.
"Nothing much to figure out,” shrugged Allen. “Only mystery I see is how come so many peop
le play along, get swept up in the thing even though deep down they know it's not real."
Ain't that the truth? thought Steve. And how am I supposed to get Bill Doyle around that corner when I can't seem to stay there myself?
"I wonder if you could turn off the interior light?” he asked. “I want to rest for a little while."
"No problem,” said Allen Potter.
No problem, thought Steve. You want a light out, you flip a switch. You want to turn God off, you ... what? Have a nervous breakdown? He smiled to himself, crookedly.
The rest of the trip was passed in silence, meaning not simply that there wasn't any conversation, but that there was a sort of radio silence within Steve's mind. He had spent much of his life with his inner thoughts in high gear, a sort of manic hyperactivity of the psyche, a stream of consciousness that never seemed to let up, awake or asleep. A few years ago, he'd learned the trick of throwing a mental switch, of tuning out, emptying his brain, slowing down the river, silencing the neurological tornado. It didn't always work, and on this occasion he found himself backsliding often, but for the most part he just watched on-coming headlights zoom past, stared at lit-up windows of farmhouses as they slipped by and kept his mind unoccupied, freed of the ripening tensions that had stretched his endurance so gravely in recent days.
"Here you go,” said Allen as he pulled to a stop. “I'll likely see you again soon. Nice to meet you."
"Thanks,” said Steve as he got out. “I enjoyed meeting you, too,” he added, although he was suddenly concerned that the Patriot agent might have had a LieDeck operating, on the pin mode.
"Take care,” said Allen.
Steve closed the door and watched the new Buick depart. He transferred his briefcase to the other hand and stood at the end of the stone walk, looking at the tiny, mostly white cottage, the Sutherland family hideaway where he'd spent so many carefree days as a child, fishing, swimming, bicycling; the place where he'd spent so many fine days as a teenager, going out to well-chaperoned dances, masturbating in the shed, playing tennis, masturbating in the bathroom, learning golf, masturbating in his alarmingly squeaky bed. Christ, he thought as he pushed himself up the walk, I was one helluva horny kid before I ... he almost thought the words “found Jesus,” but he realized that those words would not survive the scrutiny of a LieDeck if he said them out loud. “Oh ... later,” he said softly as he started up the steps. “So much to learn, so much to unlearn."
"Bill?” he called jovially as he opened the door.
"In the kitchen,” hollered Bill. “Be with you in a sec. I'm just tidying up the dishes. You're not a very good housekeeper."
A good sign! thought Steve. A very good sign! he said to himself as he stashed the briefcase, kicked off his shoes, and put on his slippers. He noticed that everything looked somehow neater, cleaner, nicer. “Sorry I'm so late, but—"
"No sweat,” assured Bill as he emerged from the kitchen drying his hands on a tea towel. “I made good use of the time ... and the LieDeck. I did a lot of talking out loud. I guess I spent about two hours wallowing in guilt and self-loathing,” he confessed as he flung the towel carelessly onto the back of a stuffed chair. “Then I slapped myself silly, took a shower, and shouted, ‘Bill, get a fucking grip’ into the mirror. I ... made myself laugh, actually. Haven't said that word out loud in forty years."
Steve was astonished, but tried not to let it show. William Doyle had “seen the light,” so to speak. This was indeed better than saving souls ... or pretending to save souls, he corrected himself. “So ... you're okay?” he asked, somewhat doubtfully.
"No, I'm definitely not okay,” said Bill candidly, “but I've made one good first step towards getting there. We've got a lot to talk about, you and me. By the way, do you still play cribbage?"
"Good enough to whup your ass,” Steve joked, sensing that the burden had suddenly lifted, that maybe this wasn't going to be the wrenching all-nighter he'd feared.
"In your dreams,” snapped Bill. Yes—Bill—not Bishop Doyle. Billy Doyle, the man, the ex-boy, now sixty-something, back in the game after one bitch of a detour.
FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2014
Chapter 46
THUD
At about 3:00 a.m., Cam O'Connor's phone rang. He flipped on the bedside light and fumbled the receiver onto the carpet.
"O'Connor,” he grunted after he'd shushed his wife and retrieved the thing.
"Sorry to wake you, Cam,” said Helen, “but you'd better come over to the office and handle this yourself. We've got more than two hundred people lined up already, people who aren't even on the waiting list. They just came, expecting to buy LieDecks. Several are from other countries, for God's sake. One guy flew here in a chartered plane, from Rio! Two of them are from Europe, one from France, and one from Norway, of all places. Several of the guys seem connected, you know what I mean? Like—uh—Mafia types. We could have a riot in a few hours."
"Jesus H.,” said Cam. “Okay, get the cops out there, lots of them. Tell Laurent to get over there too. I'll need him to discuss what can possibly be done by way of revising our distribution policy. Maybe we can send these people away happy. I'll be over in half an hour."
There was always an agent in a van outside the O'Connor home, just in case. Cam called the agent on the cell phone and told him to be ready to roll. He also advised him to slap their magnetic signs over the Patriot emblems to make the van look like a laundry vehicle, so they could steal in the back entrance unnoticed and undisturbed.
The first 5,500 LieDecks had already been sent out to customers via courier, late last night, so that many or most of them would arrive today, as promised in the radio ads. There were another 5,500 in the factory, packaged and set aside for the “special” orders. The decision had been made earlier that half of the LieDecks produced would go to bulk orders from governments and corporations and the other half would be used to fill orders from individuals.
We'll have to dump that plan, thought Cam as he closed the bedroom door, at least until we're sure the animals won't stampede.
Half an hour later, he was in Laurent Gauthier's office at the front of the Whiteside building, looking down onto the floodlit grounds and the parking lot. There were now more than three hundred people, almost all of them men, standing in a straight line, four abreast, with police patrolling alongside the line. The executive parking lot was full of cars that didn't belong there, and there were parked cars down the street as far as you could see, in both directions. Police vehicles were parked at key positions, their blue-red strobes casting an aura of drama and danger over the still April night.
"Quite a sight, eh?” said Laurent.
"Price of popularity,” said Cam. “Can you believe these people ... just showing up here?"
"Did you call Randall?” asked Laurent.
"Yeah,” said Cam. “He told me to handle it, like I can just go down there and tell them to go home or something. We're obviously going to have to increase production. What are we at now?"
"We're up to almost three hundred units an hour; about seven thousand a day,” said Laurent. “The insides of the LieDeck aren't the problem. It's those damned casings."
"Well, we're going to have to make do with something else,” said Cam bluntly. “We have to admit that we badly underestimated the intensity of demand for the thing and boost production up to ... say seven hundred an hour. Get on that, okay?"
"Okay,” said Laurent. “As soon as I wake up."
For a few minutes, the two men stood in silence, watching nothing happen below. Neither of them wanted to get philosophical about the process they had started, at least not out loud, but both of them had concerns, deep concerns. If this could happen when they specifically said in the ads that only 800-line orders would be accepted, it wasn't difficult to imagine what would have happened if they had decided to sell the device in stores.
"Lemmings,” said Cam, looking towards the growing crowd.
"What does that make us?” asked Laurent.
"Go ahead,” said Cam.
"We've had female agents going up and down the line, talking to people. There's a foreign fellow, sort of Mediterranean, about twentieth in line, standing there with sixty thousand Canadian in a briefcase, cash. He wants sixty LieDecks. I went outside and talked to him myself. I told him about the federal and provincial taxes, but he whispered to me that if he didn't return with sixty, he'd get whacked."
"Return where?” asked Cam.
"He wouldn't say. He wants me to accept a personal check for the tax so he can have the full sixty. And there's three other guys with bodyguards, also carrying briefcases. Maybe we should have a policy of five per person or something, and then they have to go to the back of the line. What do you think?"
"Did you believe him ... about getting whacked?"
"I don't have to believe him,” said Helen. “I had my LieDeck turned on, pin mode. He's telling the truth. If he doesn't get sixty LieDecks, he'll be killed. I told the cops."
"Okay,” said Cam as he walked to the window with the walkie-talkie, “the policy is ten per person. Give a twenty percent discount on orders of five or more, like we do for the corporate and government customers on the waiting list. That way this guy with the briefcase can afford his sixty, plus tax. He'll have to go to the back of the line six times, but he'll get what he wants. I don't want some guy getting murdered just because of our God damned distribution policy, even if he is a gangster. Randall will approve that. The fifty-five hundred units are in the hall? At the back of the lobby? Like I said?"
"Yeah,” said Helen. “I had them all brought up here, like you—"
"Okay,” he said. “Now when you open up later, don't let any more than a couple of people into the lobby at one time."