by Robert Maxxe
Where was the sorcerer to tame the flood of computers?
But why should there have to be one?
Imagination. It was supposed to be a miraculous faculty of the human mind. But it was also a curse sometimes; it caused the species to go off in search of impossible dreams, and to fight non-existent phantoms. How efficiently the computer did its work because it had no imagination to interfere.
"I don't want to lose you," she said at last.
"Then leave room for me. Stop chasing shadows."
"I'll try," she whispered, and was comforted by his arms circling around her as he pulled her into a kiss.
She suggested that he follow her back to Millport, pick up his kids, and then come back to her house for dinner. But there was work he'd left undone in order to spend the afternoon with her, he explained, and he would be staying at the factory for a few more hours.
In any case, they agreed, Thanksgiving was only a week off, and gathering around a turkey with all the trimmings would provide the perfect circumstances to bring both families together for the first time.
Coming into Millport, Carrie headed straight for Treats. Pulling up across the street, she sat for a minute and watched the store's lighted windows. Inside, beyond the displays, she could see Em behind the counter, Patrick beside her. Emily was giggling, and on her head she wore a white chef's toque Patrick had taken from the kitchen supplies. It was just a few minutes before closing time and there were no customers. Emily could wait a bit longer, Carrie decided.
All the way from Meadowdale she'd kept telling herself Lon was right. Going any further would only put her in jeopardy—from Peale, if not the law itself. To say nothing of losing Lon. But each time she tried to harden her resolve to give up, some memory or image would surface in her mind—Peale's gun, Nick in the entrance hall with his trousers dripping, Alan Pomfrey telling her that Nick was an ult. Then the doubts would shatter her resolve like pressure bubbling up under thin ice, and a new determination would reform around an opposing plan—to get at a machine, tear it apart, see the guts of it.
Until, as she entered Millport, Carrie was hit by a startling realization. For all her suspicion of the game, she had never played it. She had come close, then backed off. She had watched kids involved with it. But she had not actually interacted with the machine herself. It occurred to her, too, that the relief she anticipated from breaking apart the machine might hint at some motive beyond the search for truth. Perhaps she did have a kind of vendetta against the game, resented it for capturing Nick's interest, drawing him away from her.
She hadn't even played it.
She owed the enemy a chance to prove its innocence.
A block before the arcade, Carrie drove past Ryland's Funeral Home. Thirty or forty cars were bunched along the sidewalk on either side of the entrance, and there were more cars lined along the curb across the street. Dozens of people were crowded around, on their way in or coming out. Glancing into the lighted vestibule, Carrie recognized several families she knew, accompanied by their children, who were all dressed up properly, hair neatly brushed and combed.
Anne Pomfrey was receiving.
Of course, Carrie thought, she ought to stop herself and offer condolences. She slowed the car, pulled into the first available place at the curb, and switched off the motor.
But then she sat frozen, unable to move. Envisioning Anne in her grief, a tide of guilt rose within Carrie, a sick feeling that flooded up with such force that it seemed almost to drive the air out of her lungs, suffocating her. If only she had dared to tell Anne more, revealed what was troubling Alan, warned her before it was too late.
How could she face the victim's mother? Wasn't she, Carrie asked herself, an accomplice in the boy's death?
Or were any warnings she could have given senseless? Oh God, Carrie sighed inwardly; she felt so lost, helplessly adrift in the outer space of her own imagination.
She turned the key in the ignition, and drove away from the curb toward the arcade. There was only one thing she could do now: play the game. Explore the inner space of her mind, and find out once and for all what was real.
A minute later she was there.
Inside it was dark, quiet, and almost empty. There were just two boys of nine or ten using adjacent games near the front. Where were the spacies?
Had the death of one scared off all the others?
Fishing in her purse, Carrie found some coins, but no quarters. So how did the arcade handle this—with no attendant to provide the correct change? Rely on barter between customers?
She was about to bother one of the boys when she spotted a box about the size of a stamp dispenser affixed to the wall near the entrance. A small illuminated sign above it read: CHANGE. On past visits she had been too diverted to notice it. She went over.
A printed card on the front of the box gave instructions for changing one-dollar or five-dollar bills. As directed, Carrie took out a single dollar and inserted one end of the bill into a thin slot, Washington's portrait facing up. A roller mechanism plucked the bill from her hands, it disappeared into the slot, and four quarters spilled into a tray.
How did it do that? Could it recognize old George's white peruke, or Abe's black beard, distinguish between the ruff worn at one man's neck and the black cravat at another's?
If a little gadget like this could tell the difference between the small engraved pictures of G. Washington and A. Lincoln, it might be small potatoes for a computer to recognize a name and speak it back.
Carrie chose a machine in the row opposite the one where the boys were playing. She could tell from their grunts and sighs and backslapping that they were in a serious contest, and she didn't want to be distracted.
At the console, she stood before depositing her quarter and let her fingers roam lightly over the buttons. She still felt timid. On the screen the visual display unfolded, the name of the game formed by meteors, stars, rainbow pyrotechnics. And the intermittent sales pitch:
Try Me
Fly me
Stay
Play
S*P*A*C*E*S*C*A*P*E
Only a programmed circuit.
She brought the quarter over the slot. And hesitated again, unable to shake the idea that to begin the game might start her on a fearsome journey she would have to finish. What did the pilots call it when you'd flown too far to turn back—the point of no return? This was hers.
The coin felt glued to her fingers.
Lost. Give into this phobia now and she would be surrendering forever. She'd read about people who never left their houses anymore, never took elevators, could never stay in a dark room. It started with this first surrender—the day you dressed to go out, then stared at the door trembling at the nameless shapeless terror waiting on the other side . . . and then took off your coat and stayed home. Victim of a sickness.
She let go, heard the quarter rattle down the chute, being swallowed into the mechanical innards of the machine.
The cute animation of an alien creature appeared in front of her and spoke in its twangy synthesized voice:
"Greetings, earthling. Preceding your flight, will you please identify yourself."
She started to supply the reflex answer, then remembered what Lon had said about the names that night they'd "escaped" from the arcade.
"Carolyn Amanda Whittaker Foster," Carrie said.
"Your full name is needed. Thank you," said the creature on the screen.
This time she remained silent. Three seconds ticked by.
And it began. The same elementary game Carrie had seen a girl play the first time she'd watched the machine being used—steering a tiny spaceship over a lunarlike landscape of jagged peaks, deep craters, and futuristic cities with soaring spires. Looking into the screen as if through a window, Carrie marveled at the simulation of terrain that rushed upon her at dizzying speed. It felt different being at the center of it, embraced by the curved screen and the stereophonic sound effects of whooshing rocket engine, much differ
ent from watching at the sidelines. Exhilarating.
Maneuvering between the obstacles required only the joystick, at this level of the game no buttons came into play; but no matter how fast she moved it, Carrie couldn't prevent her ships from crashing. They exploded in quick order against a mountainside, the rim of a crater, and the spire of a building in one of the cities. In less than a minute her turn was over.
She put in another quarter.
This time the machine didn't ask her name. It simply began the same type of game as before.
With the same result.
She played a third time. Without passing through this beginner level, she knew there would be no opportunity to advance, discover more of the game's "personality."
One, two, three, the spacecraft exploded. Each time she lasted a little bit longer, flew a bit farther over the illusionary landscape. But she never got near reaching its far horizon, she simply didn't possess the skill. Or maybe it wasn't a matter of skill, but an instinctive attunement to the rhythm of the electronic "mind" behind the game that the kids had. They could process what they saw on the screen at a much faster rate, translate messages received in the brain instantly into the necessary movements of arm and hand.
She had one quarter left, one turn. She paused and looked around, thinking she might ask one of the young boys for "pointers." But they were gone.
Alone in the arcade, she felt a chill pass through her. Now . . . if it wanted to harm her . . .
"Stop it!" she hissed at herself out loud.
She shoved the fourth quarter into the slot, started to play.
The fear vanished. Boom, boom, boom.
It was over.
She lingered indecisively by the machine. Should she get some more change? She wanted to pass through the obstacle course at least once, succeed to the next level.
Hardly a matter of life and death. Perhaps she ought to accept that it was simply beyond her.
She turned away from the machine and left the arcade. The game had beaten her. But, in losing, she had won. She no longer felt evil emanations from the machine, any terror of strange conspiracies. Nothing had happened to her. No beam had penetrated her brain and taken control of her being. The whole neurotic package had vanished almost as easily as one of the game's symbols, a tiny spaceship or alien invader, being blown off the screen by a ray of light.
On the way back to the store, she saw the funeral home again. This time she stopped.
In the hushed receiving room, Anne Pomfrey sat on a sofa with her two other sons flanking her. When Carrie came up, Anne took her hand and pressed it gratefully.
Carrie stood before her, muted by a fresh rush of guilt. But it had nothing to do with the game; this was the involuntary shame of one mother who has suffered no loss standing before another whose child was dead.
"Thank you for coming, Carrie," Anne said. She didn't ask what Alan had wanted with her yesterday evening. She appeared to hold no one—no thing—responsible for what had happened. The file of people moved along, and Anne took another proffered hand.
Arriving at the store, seeing Emily through the window, still clowning with Patrick, Carrie was overwhelmed by a sense of fate's capriciousness. A child was dead. Her own was safe and well.
But there was no reason to blame herself. It was an accident, that's all. A whim of fate, bad luck.
A flip of the coin.
27
Music was playing softly through the house when she and Emily stepped through the door. Carrie followed the sound to the den. Nick and Dana were stretched out on the rug in front of a slow-burning fire, each reading silently from an open schoolbook and making notations on a loose-leaf pad. Between them on a tray were two cans of Dr. Pepper, a large bowl half-filled with potato chips, and Nick's small transistor radio tuned to a soft-rock station. They looked up as Carrie came into the doorway.
"Hi, Mom," Nick said.
"Hello, Mrs. Foster," said Dana.
"Hello." Doing homework together, nothing more innocent and constructive. Yet Carrie remembered from her own high school days the underlying intimacy in studying with a boyfriend. What was it that could bond this girl so closely to Nick? They wouldn't even be studying the same subjects in their classes. To keep from staring, Carrie had to dig for words:
"I'm . . . about to make dinner, Dana. Would you like to stay?"
The girl smiled shyly and checked Nick with a glance. "I don't think so, Mrs. Foster. I'm all full of potato chips. . . ."
She rubbed her stomach and straightened as if to flex away a cramped feeling. The movement of her lithe body was imbued with a languorous sexy grace.
"We were going out soon, anyway," Nick chimed in. "We're meeting some other kids." To head off any protest, he added, "I'll have my work all done. And we thought that we should all, y'know, go over to Ryland's and see Alan's mother. . . ."
The mention of the funeral parlor reminded Carrie that this was the first time she'd seen Nick since hearing of the Pomfrey boy's death, and linking it in her mind with Nick's presence on the beach last night. She couldn't help wondering if Nick hadn't arranged to have Dana here to arm himself against interrogation. Someone to back up his alibi.
Alibi . . .?
Emily had removed her coat and joined Carrie now at the door of the den. She gazed at Dana, who smiled charmingly in greeting.
"Can I watch 3-2-1 Contact?" Emily asked. It was an educational program on the public channel that she loved, all about science.
"Let them finish studying," Carrie said after a second. "They'll be going out soon."
Emily gave her a dark look and stamped away, up to her room. Nick and Dana turned back to their books. Carrie hovered at the door another second, then went to start dinner for herself and Em.
She pulled together an easy menu—lamb chops with a sprinkling of thyme, string beans with a little chopped mint, and boiled new potatoes—and was almost done cooking when Dana came into the kitchen carrying the tray from the den. The girl put the empty soda cans into the garbage can under the sink, then started washing the bowl, from which all the potato chips had been eaten.
"You can leave that, Dana," Carrie said. "I'll put it in the dishwasher."
"It's already done, Mrs. Foster." Pulling a towel from a rack by the window, Dana dried the bowl, put it in the cupboard where it was kept, and then folded the towel neatly again over the rack.
Carrie appreciated it. She was used to Nick's having visitors who left things where they lay, or just dumped them in a heap on a kitchen counter. "Sure you won't change your mind about eating here? It wouldn't take long to—"
"No, thanks, Mrs. Foster. We have to go. Bye." She started out of the kitchen.
Carrie called her back. "Dana . . ."
The girl stopped, and half turned. Seen from a new angle, her beauty surprised Carrie yet again.
"I was wondering," Carrie said, "if you knew that your father and I . . . that we'd met."
Dana let out a laugh, sweet and light. "Oh sure. He told me about it. Actually he—" She stopped. Her cheeks colored suddenly.
"What is it?" Carrie prompted.
"Oh gosh, I just shouldn't have gotten into this!"
"Okay, never mind," Carrie said easily. "I don't want you to give away any—"
"Oh, it's nothing bad," Dana insisted. "It's . . . oh boy, I really shouldn't tell you maybe . . . but the next morning right after that night you took him in your store and gave him all that food—"
"I didn't give it to him," Carrie pointed out. "He bought it."
"Whatever. Anyway, the next morning he told me and Wally—Wally's my brother—he told us he'd met someone he really liked." She gave Carrie a sidelong glance. "Dad's never said that before, not since he and my mom split up." Her eyes took on a slightly suspicious cast. "What about you . . .?"
Carrie hesitated, not quite certain what Dana was asking.
"How do you feel about him?" Dana added.
"Oh . . ." Caught off-guard, Carrie waffled. Suddenl
y she saw the girl before her as a potential future stepchild. She wasn't unaware of the problems that could exist in such relationships. "I like your father a lot, Dana."
The girl nodded thoughtfully. "Are you going to marry him? Wally and I, well, we had the feeling he might be preparing us for something like that."
Carrie smiled in appreciation of the girl's insight and candor. It deserved an honest reply. "It's much too soon to talk about anything definite," Carrie said. "But it is a possibility. How would you feel about it?"
The girl looked very directly at Carrie, as though mentally putting her inside a frame labeled Mother. Then she shrugged. "I don't know, Mrs. Foster. You seem pretty easy to take. And if I look at it from my father's point of view, I can understand why he might want it. He's been alone a lot, working like an elephant to take care of Wally and me and do his job. I guess I'd like to see him have whatever he wants. . . ."
The approval was somewhat qualified, Carrie thought, but probably that was much as she could reasonably expect for now.
"And what about Nick?" she asked, seeing an opening to stop circling around the information she wanted, and dive straight for the truth. "You think you'd like having him for a brother?"
The girl's eyes narrowed. "But he wouldn't be my brother," she said emphatically. "Wally's my brother."
"But if your father and I did . . . get together, we'd all be in the same family. That would make Nick your—"
"It's not the same," the girl declared sharply.
They stared at each other for a moment, and both were relieved when Nick shouted from the hall:
"Hey, Dana . . . c'mon!"
"Good-bye, Mrs. Foster," the girl said politely. "Thanks for your hospitality." She hurried out of the kitchen.
Underneath that soft surface, Carrie reflected, a powerful will was operating. Not necessarily a bad thing. She wished she knew what that will was focused on where Nick was concerned, but over-all she liked Dana and was impressed with her. Lon's daughter was not only physically stunning, she seemed bright, modest, and basically thoughtful.