The Rackham Files

by Dean Ing

  "You got it, and it's got you. But I'm not taking you back to Oakland now, Kate. I'm heading for my home in Contra Costa County, which has a nice deep basement and all of Mount Diablo to protect us against whatever ails the Bay Area." She was struggling against her torso restraint. "Are you listening?"

  In answer she turned toward me with claws flashing; raked my jacket sleeve in lightning swipes that almost drew blood through the Dacron; shifted her aim toward my face. It was not a move calculated to bring out my gentlemanly instincts.

  I cuffed her with my gloved hand, lightly, twice—just enough to make her draw back to protect those lovely strong cheekbones. "You can go," I said, and repeated it as she gazed at me through defensive hands. I triggered the release on the torso restraint and, while she surged up from the seat, I added, "While you lie dying, remember I gave you a chance."

  She hadn't panicked because she was still thinking ahead. She paused astraddle the door sill. "A Berkeley whizkid told me once that the only smart way out of Oakland, in an evacuation, was north along the coast. I'll make it."

  "So will a million others." I jerked my head back toward the clogged arterials. "Did he also mention that you might starve? Did he mention the very few people there who might be willing to share food and drinkable water? I may take chances, Kate, but I haven't been stupid."

  While she stood there undecided, for all I knew, heavyweight Soviet rockets might've been thundering up from Semipalatinsk—and from Nevada, for that matter. I jazzed the engine. "I asked if you can swim, Kate."

  "Damn right," she shot back, and twinkletoed back into my Lotus. "You just make sure I don't have to haul your fat ass ashore."

  And that was how I chose to spend Doomsday with a beautiful felon.

  If I'd had a true unfettered choice, I'd have chosen someone other than Kate Gallo for a nuclear survival companion. And I probably would've chosen worse; Kate was no survivalist, but a born survivor—as I learned. As for Doomsday: you can't split a planet with a few gigatons of explosive, but you can sure doom a lot of its inhabitants.

  I muttered something to that effect while keeping the Lotus above small, languid whitecaps in Suisun Bay. Kate Gallo stayed scrunched down, scanning the October sky as if by sheer willpower she could keep it clear of hostile weapons. Halfway across the two-mile stretch of water she showed optimistic colors. "So what do you do with me if this turns out to be a false alarm?"

  "Hadn't thought about it," I said, shouting to compete with the fan noises. "Let you give yourself up, maybe, if you can convince me you're through making dumb decisions. But don't count on—oh, Jeez-us," I finished, glancing to my left toward the soaring bridge structure a mile distant.

  Near the bridge center, vaulting the rail of concrete and steel, a tiny oblong of four-door sedan climbed aloft, etched on a hard sapphire sky, propelled from behind by a determined eighteen-wheeler. Shards of concrete and metal sparkled. A minuscule fire-bloom trailed the sedan as it cartwheeled nearly two hundred feet to the water. When the big rig jackknifed, its trailer found the same hole in the rail and (okay, admit it, Rackham) I had the satisfaction of seeing the bully ooze through the gap and begin a one-and-a-half pike into the bay. The rig moved so slowly that I saw its driver, ant-size from my view, leap to the safety of the bridge. However small his chances, they were better than those of anybody a few miles behind him in Oakland.

  I guessed that the bridge incident was being multiplied by drivers made mindless by terror from San Jose to Norfolk. We couldn't hear the truck caterwaul past the railing, nor even its splash, and our distance somehow insulated us. In minutes we'd be nosing into the reality of waterfront chaos in Martinez.

  The dashboard map display reminded me we'd have to cross one major arterial, then skirt the Concord NavWep station en route to the winding roads near my place. With traffic like we were seeing, those odds had no appeal whatever. Our chances would be better with the bay itself as our conduit—but not if I kept the Lotus's engine near redline for much longer. "Don't worry if you feel water," I called to Kate Gallo, and eased back on the pedal while turning the wheel.

  The worry was all mine. I passed under the highway bridge heading up the bay, fully aware that an errant wave could toss a gallon of water into the fan intakes and send us skating like a flat rock; a rock that would disintegrate before it sank, at the speed we were crossing. A dozen big powerboats and twice that many smaller ones crisscrossed the bay, creating a nightmarish chop that slapped our bottom. Twice I heard strangled surges as bits of spray entered the fan intakes. I'd destroyed an off-road Porsche that way once, and my sphincter didn't unpucker until we droned up the mouth of the San Joaquin River.

  I took the first boat ramp that wasn't clogged, which was on the outskirts of tatty little Pittsburg, and ignored the outraged yells of folks who were trying to clog it as the Lotus wheels found purchase. We fled from the waterfront, eastward through town, between rows of Pittsburg's down-at-the-heel date palms that, like the tall, rawboned strippers in Vallejo, promised a lot but never put out much.

  Kate called to me between gear changes: "Why is the traffic so light here?"

  "Just guessing," I replied, "but Pittsburg and Antioch have been small towns so long, they don't realize how near they are to ground zero." I still don't know if that's the right answer. I just know a hell of a lot of nice folks died thinking a nuclear strike was a respecter of city limits.

  At the outskirts of Antioch, with the brush-dotted hump of Mount Diablo looming nearly a mile high ahead of us, I turned south and passed wrecks at several intersections before turning onto Lone Tree Way. The power lines hadn't yet fallen across this broad boulevard, but some poor bastard's old highwing Luscombe was hung up like a bat on a clothesline between two highline towers, smoking and sparking as it dribbled molten aluminum ninety feet to the dry grass below. To wrench Kate's attention from the grisly clinkers that jerked in the cockpit, I pointed ahead. "Just past the airport we hit Deer Valley Road. No more towns now." I pulled the phone from under the dash, coded a number, gave the handset to Kate. "I need both hands; this road becomes a gymkhana up ahead. See if you can get through."

  "We're not supposed to use the phone," she said. "Your wife?"

  "My sister Sharon, in a San Jose suburb. If I'm any judge, she and Ernie and the kids'll be at my place before we are." Which just goes to show I'm a lousy judge.

  Relaxing too soon can be suicide. In the years since the '81 depression, when I lucked into some cash and bought my country place, I'd driven the Deer Valley-Marsh Creek route a thousand times—before this always enjoying the extravagant curlicues of two-lane blacktop winding between slopes so steep they hid the major bulk of Mount Diablo. I hadn't met a single car since turning onto the creek road; I knew every ripple on the road shoulder; and I was so near home that I'd begun to worry about Shar, taking my own safety for granted. That was when the old black Lincoln slewed around a blind bend, fishtailing toward us.

  My midbrain made its subconscious guess. If we were lucky, the Continental would regain enough traction to lurch back so that we could pass on the shoulder.

  We weren't lucky. Neither was he. This was no gimmicked limo with tuned shocks and suspension but your truly classic two-ton turd, and it began to spin at us just past the bend. But a mass that size does everything in slow motion; by the time its overlong rump swung around, my hand was on the fan lever.

  The trick to a Cellular's jackrabbit leap is in slapping the gear selector to neutral a split second before you engage the fans, so that all the engine's torque is available to energize those big air impellers inside the body shell. It doesn't halt your forward motion; in fact, removing your tires from macadam, it relinquishes all braking and steering control to the fan vents, so you can't obtain any strong side forces. With fans moaning, we soared over the trunk of the Lincoln by a two-foot margin, only to sideswipe the branches of a pinoak that showered us with twigs as my airborne Lotus tilted and veered back over the road. I kept my foot off the brake, l
et the fan vents remedy the tilt, chopped back on the impellers and didn't engage third gear until I felt the tires touch the road. After that I kept busy getting through the bend and decided to slow down a bit.

  "Aren't we going to stop?" Kate was white-faced, her neck craned backward.

  I hadn't risked a backward glance. "What for?"

  "He rolled and hit a big sycamore next to the creek!"

  I slowed while thinking it over, then let my biases show and pressed on. "If he was driving that kind of fat-cat barge with that kind of disregard," I growled, "the hell with him."

  She started to reply, then gave me a judgmental headshake and tried the phone again. But communication lines, like other traffic, had become overloaded to the point of paralysis. When I ducked off the macadam onto the gravel access road to my place, the girl was still trying Shar's number fruitlessly.

  I remoted the gate in the cyclone fence surrounding my place as we approached and caught sight of my friend Spot, whose ears could always discriminate between the sounds of my Lotus and any other machine. Kate studied the sign on the eight-foot fence, one of several around my five-acre spread that proclaimed:

  CHEETAH ON PATROL

  and she gave me a smirk as the gate swung shut behind us. "You don't expect anyone to believe that," she chided.

  I drove slowly toward the garage, a partly converted smithy behind the house, and smirked right back. "Just so long as he believes it," I said, and jerked my thumb toward her door sill.

  Kate's brow furrowed and then she turned and stared full into the dappled half-feline face of Spot, whose lanky stride kept his blunt muzzle almost even with hers. Her whole bod stiffened. Then she faced straight ahead, swallowed convulsively, and slid far down into her seat. Her knuckles on the torso restraint were bone-white, but, tough little bimbo that she was, Kate never whimpered.

  I drove into the garage and killed the engine and delivered a long sigh, then traded obligatory ear sniffs with Spot while my head was still level with his. His yellow eyes kept straying to my passenger, more a question than a warning; I rarely brought nonfamily guests to my place. "Company, Spot," I said, and reached over to scratch Kate behind the ear.

  She sat rigid. "Does that mean I'm one of your pets, too?"

  "It means you're his peer; he'll let you take the first swipe. But Spot's no pet; he's my friend and a damn good watchcat. My Captive Breeding Permit from the Department of the Interior says I own him—but nobody's told him that."

  "So how do I behave? No sudden moves?" I caught the tremor in her voice.

  "Neither of us could possibly make a move he'd consider sudden," I said, and proved it by pushing my door aside abruptly. Spot, of course, pulled back untouched as I grunted my way out of the Lotus and waved for Kate to do the same.

  But: "Don't leopards turn against people sometimes?"

  "I wouldn't know. Spot isn't a leopard; he's a male cheetah in his prime and he stays healthy on farina mix and horsemeat. He's the nearest thing to a link between cats and dogs; his claws aren't fully retractile and he wasn't born with the usual feline hunting instincts. Even has coarse hair like a dog, as you'll find out when you pat him."

  "Fat chance." At least she was getting out of the car.

  "Or you can panic and run wild and wave your arms and scream," I said, "and he'll frisk circles around you and laugh at the funny lady. Come on, I need to check my incoming messages," I added, and let them both follow me to the tunnel while she stared at my house.

  My white clapboard two-story house, I told her, was a basket case when I bought it. I reroofed it, then found myself shopping for antique wallpaper patterns and reflectors for kerosene lamps, and ended with an outlay of fifty thou and two hundred gallons of sweat only when the house was furnished à la 1910 from the foundation up. The basement and part of the old smithy were something else again: you can't maintain a Cellular, or an automated cheetah feeder, or a bounty hunter's hardware, amid dust and mildew.

  I led Kate past gray shreds of wooden doors that led to my root cellar. The doors lay agape on an earth mound, flanking the dark stairs fifty feet from my back door. "Let there be light," I said on the stairs, and there was light. I could've said "Keep it dark," and the tunnel lights would've come on anyway. It was my voiceprint, and Shar's and Ern's, that the system reacted to. It didn't recognize Spot's sound effects. For all his wolfen ways, Spot had a purr like God's stomach rumbling. Plus a dozen other calls, from a tabby's meow to yips and even a ludicrous birdy chirp.

  Kate Gallo negotiated the turn behind me. "Curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice," she gibed. "I can't decide whether you're behind the times or ahead of 'em, Mr. Rackham."

  It was my turn to register surprise, and I stopped. So did she. "You didn't lift my wallet, so how'd you know my name?"

  "You told me."

  I merely shook my head, very slowly. Smiling.

  "Okay, if your ego needs stroking: most people on the scam in the Bay Area know about you. You're seven feet tall and weigh four hundred pounds and leap tall buildings, et cetera, and inside that rough exterior beats a heart of pure granite. You've got no friends, no family, no home, and anybody who tries to negotiate with you had better do it with silver bullets. I suspect you invented some of that crap yourself. Satisfied?"

  "Eminently," I said and laughed. "So why didn't you peel off when you first saw me?"

  "Lots of fa—uh, heavyset men around," she amended, glancing at my backlit paneling. "Let's just say I'm stupid."

  "Not me. You've suckered too many bright solid citizens into the badger game for me to make that mistake, Kate." She just grinned an impudent grin and, for good measure, deliberately laid her hand on Spot's patient head. I pressed on: "I know your family has money. Why'd you do it?"

  "Because of my family—and because I damn well like making men squirm. If you knew my mother you wouldn't have to ask."

  I nodded. Raised in a strict household where females were expected to keep the Sabbath holy, the pasta tender, and the men on pedestals, Kate Gallo had learned too much about the rest of the world; had cast aside her illusions and her virginity before reflecting that both had their good points; had decided she would make the system pay. And men ran the system, so-o-o. . . . "Ever meet a male who didn't undervalue your gender?" I asked.

  "A few."

  "Well, you've just met another one. Two, if you count him," I said, nodding at Spot. Who just sat there with his tongue showing in a doggy leer. "Time's awasting, Kate; and quit laughing, you skinny sonofabitch," I said to Spot.

  Long before I'd asked Ern McKay to critique my ideas on "the place"—we seldom called my fenced homestead anything else. With twenty years at NASA's Ames wind tunnel in the south Bay Area, master modeler Ernest McKay was what the Navy called a mustang engineer; no degree, but bagsful of expertise. Ern had taught me about parsimony, i.e., keeping it simple. Why require two codes for my tunnel lights and basement door lock when a unique voiceprint was the key to both functions? It was my idea to hang the steel-faced door into my underground office so that gravity swung it open, and Ern's dictum to avoid an automatic door closer. That would've required a selenium cell, pressure plate, or capacitance switch—all fallible—when all I needed, quoth ol' Ern, was a handle. While helping me convert a basement into a livable modern apartment and office, Ern had briefed me on a lot of NASA's design philosophy.

  The result was a subterranean Bauhaus living area without many partitions, where everything worked with a minimum of bells and whistles—and when something didn't work, like a clogged drain, it was easy to get at. You can carp all you like about exposed, color-coded conduits, but I liked knowing which plastic pipes were air vents and which one led from my basement john to my septic tank down the hill. You guess which was painted a rich brown.

  Kate Gallo stepped onto the linolamat of my office and gawked while I heaved the door shut. "Up those stairs"—I pointed to the freestanding steel steps that melded into old-fashioned wooden stairs halfway up—"is the kitchen
, and just off the kitchen is a screen porch. Grab the antique galvanized tub off the porch wall and all the pans in the kitchen, bring 'em down here to the john, and fill 'em with water."

  I strode around the apartment divider, a rough masonry interior wall that served as a central crossbeam under the floor above, grabbed my remotable comm system handset from my computer carrel, and headed for the john while querying for incoming messages. In the back of my head was envy for Kate, who was evidently slender enough that she didn't make those top stairs squeak on her way upstairs.

  The first message was from a bail bondsman, who assured me positively that Kate Gallo had run to Sacramento. I muttered an anatomical instruction for him under my breath while readying my oversize bathtub for filling; started back to my office as the second message pinged; stopped dead as I saw why Signorina Katerina hadn't made squeaky music on my stairs. She was still standing on my linolamat, arms crossed in defiance. We traded hard stares as the message began, and Spot's ears twitched in recognition of the voice from my speaker.

  "We're on the way, Harve, at—uh, eleven fifteen or so. Ernie and Cammie are putting bikes in the vanwagon and Lance is clearing out the freezer. I dumped our medicines and toilet things into a box and I'm checking off everything, and we'll take the Livermore route to avoid freewayitis. In case you haven't heard, Ernie says tell you somebody at Ames got word from Satellite Test Center at Lockheed: they're monitoring evacuation out of Leningrad and Moscow . . ."

  Then we caught part of a McKay tradition in the background, young Lance throwing one of his patented tantrums. " . . . but he's not taking mine and he knows I gotta have it, he can fix it, I know it, Iknowitiknowit—" and then a slam of something. I knew it wasn't the impact of Shar's palm on Lance's butt; that was beyond reasonable hope.

  My sis again: "Poor Lance, his bike is broken so he's been using Cammie's in spite of everything we've—well, Ernie isn't packing it so of course the child is broken up," she went on quickly, ending with a breezy, "Well, we'll cope. We always do. Oh! You said to be specific, so: we're taking Route Six-Eighty toward Livermore, then the old Morgan Road to your place. Don't worry, bubba, we should be at your place by three pee-em unless we have to fire the second-stage. Coming, hon," she called to someone, and then the line went dead.