Firefight Y2K

by Dean Ing

  I found Infante playing with the damned tree as he tried to balance it upright at the loading ramp. Given time, I think he could’ve made the big fir stand alone. For a few minutes, anyway-or until somebody nudged it.

  He saw me smile and interpreted it correctly: funny, but only as an idea. Impassive, he rolled back and let the huge log fall. Its butt kicked up nearly against the Seven. I silently cursed Infante for gashing the prime wood he had harvested, and risking his vehicle. But his pneumatics coughed, the nearside legs literally bouncing him safely away. That little lunatic could move.

  “Kelley sending in the second team?” Infante’s deceptively mild voice came through my com set.

  “Wants us to check out the Six and-I’ll tell you while we do it,” I said. Ordinarily Infante was happy to drive while I inspected mechanical bits; George at his console, all’s right with the world.

  But now Infante flatly refused to handle the Six further. “If you ask me, that thing belongs in a straitjacket,” he snarled. “You drive; I’ll check the leg rams for binding.”

  As we went through the checkout, I wondered if it were only my imagination that made the Six seem more tractable for me than for Infante. Or maybe his low boiling point interfered with his fine touch. But even granting some difference, the Six had problems. Why did the bloody thing stagger? The malf was systemic, I decided: not traceable to any one leg. I hardly blamed Infante.

  If Infante was an operator at heart, I was basically a troubleshooter. I’d had most of a five-year B.E. in systems engineering before I learned, during summer work, to make fast money highballing an earthmover. Dumb stunt, but I dropped out and chased the bucks. I wanted to design and build and race against the best Formula cars, and I did-with just enough success to keep me broke and hoping. I was exactly right for Kelley’s operation after I sold the race car: just enough experience in vehicle systems, and just sick enough of myself to want somebody to believe in.

  It was easy to believe in Tom Kelley. He did his own things, but they were useful things like the Magnums. Having helped him through some bitchin’ chassis development problems, I had more time in our two prototypes than Kelley did himself. He was lean and mean for a sixty-year-old, but had the sense to trust younger synapses. They weren’t helping me find the malf in the system, though.

  Finally I gave up on the checkout and signaled my frustration to Infante. “I could use a ride in something that works,” I added, nodding toward the Seven. “Let’s see if Scortia really has that beer.”

  Infante scrambled down from his handholds on the Six. “But why doesn’t my Seven act up the same way? They both have the same parts.”

  “Mechanicals, yes,” I hedged. “The differences are mainly in that solid-state stuff Kelley dreamed up.”

  Pausing before swinging into the Seven’s bubble, Infante gave me a wink full of fatherly wisdom. “That’s where your malf is,” he husked.

  I gave a damifino shrug and followed. Those wise nonverbals seemed funny on Infante, but I didn’t laugh. When he suspected you were laughing at him, George Infante was not likable. I preferred him likable. He wasn’t quite my bulk, two years my senior, with big brooding eyes bordered by the longest lashes I have seen on a man. Women didn’t seem to mind his macho ways. I liked him too, when he wasn’t overcompensating for looking like a small latin angel.

  We rolled back to the Scortia dome and Infante put the Seven into a run as we neared the place. Kelley and I had discussed the theoretical top speeds of the Magnum in walk and wheel modes, and it was Kelley’s dictum that we would not try to find out until he’d sold a few. Infante must’ve been secretly practicing high-speed runs, though: we were not merely trotting, we were running hard and crabwise as we neared the dome. Infante tooted, in case anyone failed to see us approach. The toot was redundant. Kelley and Mr. Scortia stood in the doorway, Kelley’s face a study in feigned satisfaction. Infante went in for his beer. I sat in his harness a few moments, figuring how he had obtained that angled gait. Infante was given to unpredictable moods and furies, an abrasive man for teamwork. But as a solo operator he was brilliant.

  As I entered the dome, Mr. Scortia handed me a beer, holding it like a fragile toy in his great paw. “I hear good things about your ways with machines,” he said.

  Infante started to respond, realized the lumberman was addressing me, and quickly turned away. I said, “It may be a case of their having a way with me, Mr. Scortia.”

  I perched on a stool near Kelley, who mused, “Keith and my machines are easy to figure: they think alike.”

  Scortia chuckled from somewhere deep in the earth. “That’s why I need him, Tom.” I glanced up; so did Infante. Kelley missed neither look. There was a moment’s utter silence.

  “As I said, Howard, it’s really up to Keith,” Kelley said. He looked alternately at me and Infante. “Howard Scortia wants to chop costs by having his operator trainees learn here on the job. And only from our best man. That’s you, George-or you, Keith. As an operator-and I’m being up front, with you both-George, you’re so good it scares me.” I caught the gut-level truth of that, though Kelley’s glance at me was bland. “Another month in a Magnum and you could enter the effin’ thing in the Winter Olympics!”

  We all laughed to relieve tension. Scortia lifted his beer in silent toast to Infante, who seemed less edgy now. The big man put in, “But I asked who trained you, George. And who’s the best on-site consultant for maintenance gangs.” He turned to me. “And Tom says they’re both Keith Ames.”

  Kelley said wryly, “Keith, I explained we need you on assembly interfaces at Ashland and he could forget about borrowing you. And this Neanderthal says we can forget about the five Magnums while we’re at it . . .” Kelley went on banking his rhetorical fires. Five Magnums! Too attractive an offer by far. Scortia was not a bigger name in the Oregon Cascades only because he liked to manage all his operations. If he sprang for a handful of Magnums, everybody from Weyerhaeuser on down would follow suit.

  I half-listened to Kelley drip drollery instead of excitement. Like Scortia, Kelley was self-developed and knew his best operational modes. Kelley had started as a cards-lucky kid in the Seabees and never lost his fascination with heavy equipment that functioned with precision. But he also had an eye for what the equipment was all about, the massaging of man’s world. When he realized the future of glass fibers around 1950, he sank a month’s poker winnings into Corning and didn’t regret it. By the time I was born he was building military runway extensions and saw what was about to happen in air travel. He got fatter on Boeing, then on fluorocarbons. Finally he saw he was still gambling with paper when he wanted to do it with hardware and his goofy solid-states. And he took his twenty million right in the middle of the recession and sank it into man-amplifier systems. The Magnum was his heavy bet.

  “I know what your contract says, Keith, but I also know what I told you. And if Howard Scortia doesn’t take Magnums, his competitors will,” Kelley finished, whistling in the dark.

  I swirled my beer, thinking. “Well, it’s nearly June. By the time we have enough Magnums, there’ll barely be time to get ’em in full operation before the rains.” Scortia nodded; in Western Oregon you aren’t a native until your gill slits begin to function. “Fifty days of familiarization. I can lift down to Ashland in an hour if you need me,” I said to Kelley.

  “And what if you have to start training with only one Magnum,” Kelley asked softly. Infante was perfectly still, listening to something in his head.

  “Add thirty days,” I hazarded. “I don’t see how we can spook up a new Magnum before July, though. Unless somebody slips a cog and we sell a proto.”

  Now Scortia laughed openly. Kelley made a rueful face: “Guilty as charged, I guess. Keith, I promised him the Seven.”

  “When?” Infante’s question was soft but his corneas were pinpricks in his eyes.

  “Is she a hundred percent now?”

  Infante hesitated. Kelley glanced at me, and I nodded. Kelle
y spread his hands. “Then she stays here. Anything wrong with that?”

  “I hear rumors you’re the boss,” I grinned. What bothered me was George Infante. I wished I could read behind those eyes.

  “One thing,” Scortia said. “Could I hitch a, uh, walk to my Cottage Grove office? I want to enjoy my Magnum before she gets all scruffy. A walk through town is more than I can resist.”

  “I can resist it,” I said, counting off on my fingers. “No street license, too wide for state code, and a risk of equipment, for starters.”

  He winked, “I’ll take care of any problems. I want my new rig under my office window for a few days.”

  Somehow I had never thought of the Magnum as a status symbol. But there it was: the kid in Howard Scortia was loose in our toyshop. “I believe this man has it worse than we do,” I said to Infante. “Promise you won’t kick any Buicks?”

  “It’s your show,” Infante replied easily. “Why don’t you tote Mr. Scortia downtown?”

  I was glad to; we had no experience in real-world traffic yet, and this was underwritten. But as we sauntered out to a chill afternoon breeze, I filed a question away. What made Infante so ready to divorce his amplified self, the Magnum Seven? Whatever had been behind his unreadable expression, it had changed when Scortia asked me to park the Seven in town.

  I highballed down from Scortia’s site to the interstate freeway in an hour, keeping to the verges with all subsystems fully retracted. That way we made a package twelve feet wide, thirty-two long, and scarcely ten high. It was only a bit cramped in the bubble, though I’m average size and Mr. Scortia is a fee-fie-foe-fum type. Naturally we picked up a patrol cruiser as the Seven walked chuffing into town. When he heard the beeper, Mr. Scortia waved joyfully. The cruiser was almost as massive as Caddies of the old days, and dwarfed normal traffic. Yet from the Magnum it seemed a bantam, challenging the cock of the-ah-walk. Whoever said, “Power corrupts . . .” maybe I should give him his due. Sacrifice a goat to him or something. I was uncomfortable with the thought that, momentarily, the police seemed insignificant. Walking a Magnum is walking very, very tall.

  The police beeper and beacon went off; the cruiser drew alongside and the big man made sign talk to the effect that this was his rig and Gawd, Nell, ain’t it grand? They didn’t stop us, but they didn’t leave us either. My rear video was full of cop cruiser from there to the Scortia offices.

  Once in his parking lot: “Waltz us around, this is private property,” he said. I did, while he watched me. I knew my first trainee would be Howard Scortia and smiled, wondering how many miles he would perambulate his Magnum around that space in the next few days. Then we set the operator harness for the Scortia bulk and got a half-assed calibration for his particular combination of synapses and rhythms. Once an operator is thoroughly calibrated you can insert a program card for him into the console. But for a new operator, the calibration is rough. Under the lumberman’s control, the Seven lurched a few times just as the Six did, until I set the verniers again.

  By nightfall my trainee could amble around with reasonable safety. I keyed all extensor subsystems for access only by primary operators, so I wouldn’t worry about Scortia accidentally shoving his remoting axle through a brick wall while I was in Ashland. Then he hauled us all into Eugene where we feasted at some place called Excelsior. Then we met a copter at the river and lifted down to the Ashland plant.

  Infante, Kelley and I stayed at the plant awhile, burping quiche Lorraine and debriefing. Kelley made notes. Infante shuffled call-ins before deciding to answer a miz and arranging to be picked up. To my surprise, he asked if I would make it a foursome. To my further surprise I said OK. I wanted to say good-bye to a miz, expecting to be gone awhile, and thought it would be less a problem if I did it in company. Besides, it did not seem the right time to make George Infante feel rejected. So much for Keith Ames, boy psychoanalyst . . .

  I don’t know how long the phone buzzed before I lurched up from a maelstrom dream and slapped the “accept” plate by my bed. I said something nonaccepting.

  “Always the last place you look,” Kelley grated, not amused. I lay back, glad I had no video on my phone, and tried not to breathe hard. It hurt. The light hurt too. I kept my eyes shut. “How long’ve you been there?”

  I thought for an eternity, and even that hurt. “What’s the time?”

  Kelley delivered a word he keeps for special occasions, then, “Eight-fifteen, and time you answered my question!”

  “I-honest to God, I don’t know,” I moaned. “Mr. Kelley, I need time to think. I feel rotted away.”

  “You may get fifty years to think while you sure ’nough rot away,” he said, and my eyes snapped open. Whatthehell now? “Keith, if you’re not at the plant in ten minutes you can handle this mother alone! Uh, you’re not hurt?”

  “I’m mummified. But I don’t think I’m-”

  “Move your ass, then! And walk. Up the alley. All the way.” He slapped off.

  Once on my feet I felt better, but nauseated. I struggled into a turtleneck and coverall, nearly passed out while putting my boots on, and shouldered past my back door wishing I had something to barf up. Whatever was wrong, it was screwed up tight and twisted off. I had gone three of the six blocks down my friendly informal alleys when I heard police beepers heading down Siskiyou, and so fuzzy-minded I didn’t connect them with Kelley’s call.

  Tom Kelley opened the alley gate himself and hauled me in with desperate strength, as though the plant meant safety. Maybe it did. Hurrying to his office, he held my sleeve as a truant officer had, once. He kept gnawing his lip and muttering. I began to feel well enough to hit somebody. Infante, maybe; what had I been swilling?

  Halfway through a skull-ripping question-and-answer session with Kelley, I was still trying to get his drift when the phone buzzed. The close-cropped curls of a lady cop flicked onto Kelley’s video. Kelley made the right decision: yes, I was with him and no, I wasn’t their man, and since I was in no condition to visit the station, could they come to the plant?

  When police lieutenant Meta Satterlee arrived, I was trying not to spill mocha on the table every time I shuddered. Satterlee reminded me of a loose-jointed math prof I knew. She asked for a blood sample and took it herself, expertly, but I fainted anyway. They both eased up then. The police already knew where I’d been until midnight, from a talk with my miz. Some of it came back to me. I hadn’t been drinking heroically, but somehow I got a gutful of something so potent, Infante took me to my apartment. That’s all I knew. “Maybe Infante can shed some light on this,” I said.

  Kelley and the cop exchanged a wry look. “A meeting devoutly to be wished,” Satterlee replied, savoring her line. “Mr. Kelley has been less than completely open with us up to now, but I think we can all benefit if I can see some personnel files.” She raised a questioning brow toward Kelley, who mooched off through the deserted offices to hunt up our files.

  Satterlee sat on the table edge, swinging one trousered leg. It was quiet for a moment, except for the ball bearings someone was grinding in my head. “I’ll accept as probable that you didn’t know about the APB out on you,” she said at last.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Did you?”

  I realized Tom Kelley had known even if I hadn’t. “No.” The leg began to swing again. “I woke up with-uh-buzzing in my head, and something seemed all wrong, and I got up and walked down to the plant like I usually do.”

  “Uh-huh. You usually run down alleys every Saturday morning?”

  I raised my head, not wanting to shift my eyeballs, and almost managed a smile. “If I had tried to run, lady, my body would’ve simply disintegrated. You have no idea how I feel.”

  She caressed the blood sample. “Not at the moment,” she admitted. She added something under her breath and left quickly, returning without the sample. I wondered how many cops were milling around in front of the plant. Hell of a public image.

  Kelley spread a pair of folders on the t
able. Satterlee took them, evidently speed-reading, then tapped one with a finger while looking off into the office gloom. Then she said, “I have to take some risks in this business, Mr. Kelley. I’m taking one on you now: are you certain Ames is not involved?”

  Tom Kelley stared his best two-pair bluff straight into her face. “One-hundred-percent.”

  She registered faint amusement. “I’ll settle for ninety-five,” she replied, “if I can place him in your custody.”

  A nod. I looked from one to the other. “Will you goddamn kindly tell me what has happened,” I asked. “A hit and run?”

  “Altogether too good a guess. Using that vehicle of yours.”

  I was slow. “My Porsche?”

  “Your tree harvester,” she said tiredly.

  I put my hands over my face. “Oh dear goddy,” I said. Infante!

  Satterlee went on. “I’m from Eugene; we have a copter waiting . . .”

  “Hold it,” I said and looked up, alert. “Where’s the Seven?” Satterlee was slow this time. “The Seven. The Magnum. My bloody tree harvester,” I cried, exasperated.

  “Mr. Infante seems to have it at the moment,” Satterlee said, “and we have nothing that can catch him.” She saw my alarm and went on quickly, “Oh, we’ll take him eventually; and I understand your concern over your new machine. But right now I wish there were somebody else with a similar vehicle.”

  “There is,” Kelley said. He jerked a thumb at me.

  Satterlee taped my statement as we lifted north to the Eugene-Cottage Grove strip city. She began to leak the story as she had pieced it together and Kelley glumly watched wet green-black forest and fogwisp slip below the copter. Editing out my questions and some inevitable back-tracking, Satterlee put it roughly this way: “Sometime around three A.M., a poker crowd in Cottage Grove heard chainsaws ripping through a third-floor wall nearby. All they knew was, it was one awful racket for a few seconds. This was near the city limit where the cities are snarling over jurisdiction.