by Robert Maxxe
Carrie hurried to speak before he was gone. "It doesn't make sense, does it?"
He glanced around. "Excuse me?"
"I mean, it seems pretty senseless sometimes—the things that frighten people, the way they act when they're afraid. . . ."
"Oh, I don't get too surprised anymore," he said, "not when it's tied up with computers. Lots of people have strange feelings about them. So many are downright terrified, in fact, there's even a medical term now for fear of computers—cyberphobia."
With a couple of steps Carrie had moved alongside. Together they continued through the exit and down the outside steps. "But games," she said, groping for comprehension of her own feelings, "why get so worried about games?"
"Foolish, isn't it?" he said. "But for some people—mostly from a generation that was never comfortable with the computer—it's just an extension of their reaction to a machine that threatens to outsmart all of us. Maybe what people resent about these games is that they know how to entertain our kids better than we can ourselves."
Carrie nodded thoughtfully and, reaching the bottom of the stone steps, turned left toward the school parking lot. Suddenly she realized he was no longer beside her. She had assumed the man would also be going to the lot, but he veered onto the footpath leading in the opposite direction.
"Good night," he called out cheerily as they moved apart.
Carrie was disappointed. Even from the little he'd said at the meeting, the man projected a sense of familiarity with computers and, more important, of mastery over them. Probably he could have dispelled the concerns she had about Nick's attraction to SPACESCAPE. But evidently he'd parked his car in front of the school. And she didn't know how to go after him and draw him out further without seeming to cling.
"Good night," she called back.
For a moment she stood and watched the tall man walking away. Funny their paths hadn't crossed before, she thought; there was almost no one in town she didn't know, at least by sight—especially among the year-rounders.
She headed for her car. Maybe it was just as well they hadn't talked longer. She would only have confessed her own vague anxieties about the arcade . . . and he would have dismissed her as just one more fool.
10
Whenever she happened to be near the center of town at night, Carrie drove past her store for a spot check. After coming out of the school parking lot she took the turn toward Elm, and was surprised some moments later when the far reach of her headlights picked out the man from the auditorium still strolling along the sidewalk.
Coming abreast of him under a street lamp, she stopped the car at the curb, and leaned across to crank down the passenger window.
"Need a lift?"
"Thanks," he said, "I don't mind walking."
It wasn't a flat turndown, she decided. "Please. I'd like to hear more of what you wanted to say to the meeting."
He hesitated another second, then came across the sidewalk and got into the car.
"This is very nice of you," he said. Then he thrust out his hand. "I'm Lon Evans, by the way."
Carrie liked being offered the handshake. Since going into business she had become sensitive to the fact that men often skipped the formality. Sometimes it was merely out of shyness; but more often she sensed it was a small symbol of exclusion from a certain clubby interaction men reserved for each other.
"I'm Carrie Foster." Seizing his hand, she appreciated his firm grip.
"Oh, I know who you are," he said. "You own that terrific food store, Treats. . . ."
"So you do live in town?"
"You sound doubtful. Don't tell me you also suspect I was planted at tonight's pow-wow by the international computer conspiracy."
Carrie laughed. "I just assume I must have seen every local face in the store. Business ego."
"Oh, I've been in there. But only once, I'm afraid. I haven't been in town very long . . . and I don't get time for the kind of leisurely shopping your place deserves."
The car had remained idling at the curb. For a moment they looked at each other wordlessly. In the fragmented light from the street lamp, Carrie thought the short eyebrow affected his face quite differently from before. The expression no longer seemed permanently quizzical and bemused. Now it looked more tough, cynical, molded by a past that was either sinister or tragic.
She broke off staring and moved her foot to the accelerator. Steering away from the curb, she asked, "Where can I take you?"
He told her an address on Bowridge Road, an expensive neighborhood of large old houses on sizable parcels of land. Carrie thought she knew almost everyone who lived up on Bowridge. Evans must be renting. She wondered why he hadn't driven to the school. The distance from there would be a mile or two.
"Would you mind if I take you by way of my shop?" she said. "I'd like to make sure everything's battened down."
"Fine with me. I'm just along for the ride."
Having learned he was new in town, Carrie felt she should apologize to Lon Evans for tonight's rude treatment.
"Please don't think everyone in town is so opinionated and unfriendly. It's just a small group. . . ."
"I know," Evans replied agreeably. "And maybe they mean well. I came on a little strong myself, didn't I—leaping up to defend the honor of my profession?"
"But you're not actually involved with making those games, are you?"
"Not at all. Though, in my own way, I've helped to make them possible. That's why when I saw that petition going around it was like waving the red rag at a bull. Because it says that children are being corrupted by their fascination with a technology I helped to create and refine. Hell, I've got kids myself. Maybe that's why I had to stick my two cents in tonight. My own children have just moved into this town—they've got a big adjustment to make. It doesn't make it any easier when they hear people saying the work their father does gives rise to things that are dangerous and destructive. Such goddamn simple things, at that," he added, sounding genuinely pained. "Games!"
Carrie asked then exactly what kind of work he did.
He explained that he was a computer "architect." It was his responsibility to lay down the basic design for the complex electronic systems by which infinitesimal pulses of electrical energy lasting no longer than a billionth of a second—a nanosecond he called it—were somehow translated into bits of information that could be shunted back and forth inside of a machine, to be stored, recalled, converted to graphs and pictures, or synthesized to produce logical answers to the most elaborate problems human beings could devise. The company for which he worked, Intellitronics, had boomed in recent years, manufacturing specialized computer systems used in weaponry, as well as a line of the small powerful computers known in the trade as "micros." Five months ago, to meet growing demand and simplify their marketing, the California-based firm had opened a new assembly plant on the East Coast, in central Long Island. Lon Evans had volunteered to transfer from California to oversee production of a new micro-computer he had helped to engineer. To facilitate his move, the company had leased and furnished a house for him in advance.
"I told them I wanted to be in a nice small town on the water with big old trees and beautiful beaches," he said. "My main recreation is sailing, and my kids love to swim. So the company found me this place in Millport—it's just a thirty-minute drive from here to the factory."
"You mean you don't walk to work, too?" Carrie observed lightly.
His expression was momentarily blank, then he understood and laughed. "No, that would be a little too far. But around here I like to take good long walks. So much of my life is involved with accelerating the thinking process artificially. I need a chance to depressurize and slow down. I use my walks to work out problems in the good old-fashioned way."
Carrie wondered if the problems he'd referred to were merely the difficult technical questions he encountered in his job. From the few things he'd said about himself, she thought he'd already given hints of personal dissatisfactions, an incompleteness in h
is life. Volunteering to move from one side of the country to the other was one clue. Few men would deny a promotion from their company, but offering to uproot a whole family was something else. And Evans had spoken of choosing a new home on the basis of satisfying just himself and his children. There was an obvious gap in the equation.
The opening was there to satisfy her curiosity: How does your wife like Millport? But Carrie let it pass. Not because she didn't care, but because she was too eager to know. Suddenly aware of her own loneliness, she felt a mean hunger to discover somebody else's—and she was afraid it would show.
She stuck to the impersonal. "These computer games," she said, "you'd started to talk about a good side, about how they did something positive for kids. I need to hear more about that."
"Sounds like you've got children who play them a lot."
She nodded. "My son. Lately he spends more and more time down at the arcade."
"And that worries you?"
"That's why I came tonight."
"Well," Evans said, "the way I look at it, a couple of hours playing a computer game is a darn sight better than watching television. It's interactive, for one thing, it helps develop certain skills. But that's just a fringe benefit. The most valuable thing about these games is that they've gotten kids hooked on the technology behind them."
"Is that good?" Carrie said skeptically. "Being hooked?"
"Look, I'm not talking about the game freaks who'll stand and play from morning till night. They're children with problems; if there were no games, they'd have to be rescued from something else. I'm interested in the average kids who enjoy these games, and always make a little time to play."
"I don't understand. That may not hurt them . . . but I don't see what's necessarily good about it."
He gave her the slightly impatient glance of a professional bored with simplifying his thoughts for amateurs. "Carrie, do you remember back fifteen or twenty years ago how much hostility there was to computers? Anytime a company sent out computer cards to simplify its billing or subscriptions, there had to be a little begging message printed on each and every card, saying—"
"Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate," Carrie quoted with mock solemnity. Who didn't remember the plea, or the sheer mischievous delight in disobeying it (even if she had never figured out what it was to "spindle")?
"How about that language?" Lon remarked. "Mutilate. Odd, when all they were talking about was a piece of cardboard, But, you see, the generation that was first exposed to computers did experience that kind of rage against the machines and anything connected to them. The average person thought of them as . . . well, we heard a hangover of the old attitude tonight: a plot foisted on unsuspecting humans by some cruel god of technology determined to depersonalize all of us, turn us into numbers. We've all learned to tolerate the electronic brain since then. But most people are still leery, still afraid that there's some kind of contest between us and the computer for the right to be intelligent. They can't get over a resentment of something man-made that outthinks its maker."
"Human chauvinist pigs," Carrie put in, recalling the phrase Evans had used earlier to describe such people.
He nodded. "But not the kids. They aren't afraid of these machines at all—and that's going to make for some thrilling breakthroughs. Because they'll grow up trusting it, not resisting it, this generation and the next will take the technology far beyond anything we can imagine. They'll allow the computer to have a real intelligence. They'll be friends with it." He glanced at her to emphasize the point. "And that friendship will probably start for most of them when they play with the computer—maybe in an arcade. Because you can't be on any friendlier terms than you are with your playmates."
Carrie was impressed by the passion he conveyed, yet still skeptical. "I hoped there was a positive side," she said. "I'm not quite ready to believe it's nothing less than the salvation of humanity."
He countered quickly. "Let me ask you something, Carrie: in the past thousand years, what single invention has done the most to advance human potential? Think, now. No quick answers."
He liked games of all kinds, she thought as she pondered the question. Did he expect her to say the computer? Without it men could never have mastered the technology that had put men on the moon, and controlled farther probes into space. But was that the greatest measure of man's potential, to be able to walk on small dead stars, and bring back pictures of lifeless planets? What was more important, then—electricity, the steam engine?
Then it came. "The printing press!" she declared triumphantly.
"Right on," he agreed. "Joe Gutenberg and his Bible led off the first great information revolution back in the fifteenth century—providing the means to make knowledge accessible to everyone. Only then what happened? Except for a few kings and priests, no one knew how to read—so what good was it to be able to print more books? Carrie, it took another four hundred years before the benefits of the printing press were spread around. And that's why I'm so damn glad about something that turns these kids on to computers. We've got the invention to make a great leap forward in civilization . . . and we won't have to wait four hundred years to get the most out of it. With the problems facing us . . . yes, that just might mean the salvation of humanity."
Glancing over, Carrie saw the bright fervent shine of his eyes. Though she wasn't convinced, he had succeeded in arousing her sympathy.
They were approaching the store, on the other side of Elm Street. Carrie slowed the car.
"Everything looks shipshape," Evans said, gazing across at the darkened windows.
"Always is," she confessed as the car coasted to a stop. "A night watch isn't really necessary in this town, I just like to drive by when the town is sleeping, quiet, and remind myself that it's there and it's mine. After my husband died, I set out to achieve something of my own and by God I—" She stopped abruptly. It wasn't like her to boast. Perhaps hearing him so pumped up about his work had set her off.
"Listen," he said, helping her past the embarrassment, "you've got a right to be proud. I was impressed as hell when I was in there."
"Even if you never came back."
"Hey, wouldn't I love to have time to stand around and taste cheeses! But between getting the new plant in operation and looking after the kids, it's all I can do to hit the supermarket once a week for a supply of milk, laundry soap, and frozen pizzas."
Two more clues: he looked after the children; he did the shopping. He was alone—had to be.
Then all at once, for the first time since Mike's death, a feeling swept through Carrie, the reawakening of a long-unused part of herself, something deep in a cave that had slept through a few cruel and endless winters. She was attracted to this man. And she wanted to flirt.
"I think I've got an answer for your problem," she said. "Custom service. Since you can't get over here during regular hours, suppose I open the store for you right now?"
He laughed. "Thanks a lot, but—"
She was already swinging the car in a wide U-turn to stop in front of the store.
"Listen, I couldn't let you—"
She finished fishing in her handbag. "C'mon, got the keys right here."
She was out of the car in a flash, unlocked the doors, flipped on the lights, and went behind the counter. For good measure, she put on Patrick's apron.
Shaking his head and laughing, he trailed her into the shop.
"What'll it be?" she said.
He threw up his hands, and his laughter subsided. Then their eyes met across the high countertop. There was a long silence.
"C'mon, mister," Carrie said finally, "I don't have all night." She had intended to mimic a gruff counterman, but when the voice came out it surprised her with its husky softness. The tone carried a different message: for him, maybe, she did have all night. Sooner or later.
He stared at her another moment, then dropped his glance to the display of cheeses behind the glass. "How's that St. Andre . . .?"
She gave hi
m a sliver of the cheese to taste, and he told her to cut half a pound.
He bought four more kinds of imported cheese, some of the stuffed eggplant, half a dozen assorted pastries—"The kids'll pig out on these"—a bacon quiche, and a quarter pound of beluga caviar. Then he started browsing the shelves for canned specialties.
As the bill mounted up, Carrie was mortified. Her playful gesture had backfired terribly. Though he kept assuring her he was genuinely grateful, tossing more items into his order, she was convinced he was only buying out of obligation.
After bringing some cans of the smoked Icelandic brook trout back to the counter, his eye fell on the fresh seafood salad in the cooler. $12.90 a pound.
"Is that good?" he asked.
"No. It's last week's. You'll get ptomaine."
"I'll take half a pound."
"No, look. You can't—"
"Maybe you're right. I'll take a pound." When she bridled, he added, "I want it. Don't I have the same rights as any other customer?"
She gave up and started reluctantly spooning it into a container. With him standing over her at the counter again, she felt awfully self-conscious. Each time she glanced up, she found his pale-blue eyes focused on her. The silence was filled now with unbearable tension.
Deliciously unbearable.
Flirting? What had come over her? She was too old for it, had forgotten how.
Then he spoke again. His voice was extremely gentle, yet it shattered the silence like an explosion.
"My wife," he said, "was an actress. I met her when I went to California after graduate school. She was nineteen, already getting some jobs in television. We were married too quickly, and had children too soon—a girl, then a boy. We stayed together for thirteen years, most of them by polite agreement that it was best for the children if not for us. She went on working a lot, small roles in television; I worked hard at my business. We didn't see each other very much. Three years ago, she said she didn't care for the arrangement any more. She wanted to devote herself more to her career, be free to go on long locations, or go abroad if that's where the work was. I gave her an uncontested divorce. She gave me absolute custody of the children."