by Robert Maxxe
Of whom? What?
Nick could tell her none of it.
"It's over for you, Nick. I don't know if I'll ever find out what's behind that infernal game, but whether I can or not, you won't go near it again, not ever!"
He gazed at her in disbelief, then with one violent shake he wrested free of her grasp, sideslipped to the other side of the bed and hopped to the floor.
"I know you can't understand it," he yelled. "That's part of the reason we have to do it. But you can't stop us. We have to get through."
He retreated deeper into the shadows. She rose and quickly circled around the bed.
"Nick, we're both lost in something we can't understand. But I've still got an advantage. It hasn't taken me over, told me what to think. I'm still able to see that it can't be good. You've got to be stopped, and those machines have to be destroy—"
"No, no, no!" He erupted in squalling shrieks. "Please believe us, please. We can't stop!"
"Damn it, Nick!" she roared, the last shred of her equilibrium blasted away by his blatant defiance. "I'm your mother. I'll tell you what to do. For your own good, like it or not, you'll do what I say, you'll listen to me—not to some unholy, unhuman—"
A faint noise sliced into her awareness then, the door behind her squeaking on its hinges, being pushed open very slowly. Carrie spun around.
Emily stood in the doorway, pawing at her bleary eyes. "What's wrong, Mommy? Why are you and Nicky yelling?"
Carrie fumbled out something about "a little disagreement" and how they hadn't realized they were making so much noise. "Now back to bed, kitten, we'll be quiet." When Emily hesitated, Carrie snapped the command: "Off you go. Scoot!" And Emily shuffled away.
The quick show of obedience only emphasized for Carrie the impotence of her authority over Nick. How could she enforce control if he chose to defy her? He was possessed—no, not exactly. He was more like those cult victims whose thoughts were trained and channeled to make them hold certain beliefs. Programmed!—that was the word used to describe them. Computer language.
Then could she use the same remedy as those parents trying to reclaim their children from the cults? Hire one of those men—deprogrammers, they were called—who kidnapped the believer and restructured his mental reflexes?
Except that Nick didn't need to be kidnapped, He was right here in front of her.
And the program in his mind was outside the experience of anyone who'd ever been able to help those who were merely brainwashed.
She stared at Nick helplessly until, hardly above a whisper, he said, "We won't let you stop us. We can't. We're the only hope."
The fervor of Nick's belief had escalated to a new plateau. Hope for what? Carrie wondered. But she knew there was no point in asking. Nick didn't know the answer himself.
Clinging to some pretense of control and restored normality, Carrie retreated to the door. "Go to sleep now," she told him, and she lingered until, obediently, he climbed into bed and switched off the light.
For hours she lay awake, churning with plans and strategies.
She'd canvass the neighborhoods, talk to parents of all the spacies, whip up a petition and close down the arcade, write to state congressmen, involve the police somehow, bring them to Peale's factory and get him arrested on some charge.
But how would other parents react if she approached them with her bizarre claims? Even if she persuaded them to confront their own children, what then? The spacies could close ranks in a conspiracy of silence.
Going to the authorities was senseless. What grounds were there to condemn Peale? Whatever she said about the game would only make her appear ridiculous—at best.
Which left only the more extreme options.
She entertained visions of taking the jerricans she kept in the garage to fuel the lawnmower and the emergency generator, filling them with gasoline, driving to the arcade late tomorrow night, and then watching it burn to the ground.
But Peale had spent too much effort preparing the children to give up before the end. He had more machines. He could rent a new space.
And there were games being shipped and installed in dozens of other places besides Millport, perhaps hundreds of others, thousands. Even if she rescued Nick, Peale's mission might continue to its conclusion everywhere else. Could she find every machine that had been sent out into the world?
Perhaps, then, Peale would have to be killed.
The ideas got crazier and more desperate as the night went on. None were any less futile. Peale had said he was a representative. If he disappeared, someone would take his place.
Aside from the strict logic of what was achievable, one more thing deterred Carrie from adopting a plan. The sound of Nick's voice in her memory, calling through all her fearful thoughts like an echo from the bottom of a deep well, full of earnest conviction.
Good
Important
The only hope
And what if it was?
Finally, there was only one course that seemed reasonable and possible. The spacies themselves couldn't reveal the secrets of the game. She had to get hold of one of those game machines long enough to disassemble it.
And then analyze it . . . how? There were plenty of computer experts available—at manufacturers, universities—but seeking outside help might waste a lot of time. There was also the risk of complications. How could she explain her need to analyze the game? And suppose someone learned the machine being analyzed was stolen?
Somehow, Carrie knew, she would have to enlist Lon, overcome his resistance.
But she was too weary to think any more about it now. Tomorrow, when the sun came up again, she might see a way to approach him.
Carrie turned her head toward the window and looked out at the sky—way, way out into the starry depths, trying to see with her mind's eye what Nick had seen, the proximate galaxy, the kor. . . .
Whatever.
She saw nothing. The black hole was still there in her imagination. And like the black holes in space that swallowed all matter into their super-gravity trap, this one sucked all other perceptions into its awesome dark center. Searching the empty vastness that extended beyond her window into infinity, Carrie could feel every solid confident notion of reality falling in on itself, vanishing into the abyss of that black hole in her mind, until at last her whole universe collapsed into the nothingness of sleep.
29
"Is it closed forever, Mommy?" Emily said too loudly. "Do they make it so he can never get out?"
Carrie bent down to whisper her reply. "It is going to stay closed, honey. But when people die they never want to get out."
"Well, I wouldn't stay in there forever," Emily remarked, loud enough to draw a dozen glances away from the coffin, "without a television or a bathroom."
It was Saturday morning and they were at the graveside in the Holy Spirit Cemetery, the final phase of the Pomfrey funeral. Carrie had thought twice about bringing Em, but had decided in the end that a seven-year-old was entitled to know about death. A time might come, too, when a good cautionary example might help to keep her daughter from going near the arcade—and the funeral would provide it.
The hillside around the grave was covered with mourners; as, earlier, the church had been overflowing. Out of respect, all the shops in town were closed for a day of mourning, and Owen Haber had even prevailed on a couple of the chain outlets to follow suit. Driving to the service this morning, Carrie had noticed, too, that the flag on the lawn outside the library was flying at half-mast. It was so unusual for the quiet pace of life in Millport to be shaken by any violent event that the drowning of a young boy was regarded as a personal tragedy by everyone in town.
Though not Lon. Carrie had searched for him in vain at both church and cemetery. Perhaps because he was a newcomer to Millport and not ready to accept his communal grief, or else because there had been business that urgently needed attention, he had stayed away. Just as well, maybe, She couldn't have handled a meeting with him right now. She wou
ld cling to him too quickly, blurt out her need; then he would feel her obsession had gone too far and withdraw from her completely.
Yet being here—right now, seeing what she did across the top of the coffin—only reinforced her awareness of the unworldly strangeness that lurked beneath the surface of conventionality. There was Nick, on the hillside opposite her, in a row of people not far back from the grave. Next to him, on his right, stood Dana. And lined up to his left were three other boys.
His zal.
He had been gone from the house when she rose this morning. This would be the pattern, no doubt, from now on. He would go his own way, but as long as she didn't interfere with his going to the arcade, he'd live in the house and in all other respects play the role of ordinary, obedient child. Carrie was prepared to endure the arrangement, for the moment. At least this way she could keep an eye on him.
Scanning the hillside, she saw several other strings of five youngsters—a girl with four boys—scattered through the crowd. There had been six members to a zal, she recalled, that time she had seen them all milling outside the arcade. Since then each had been diminished by one. One boy in each zal had been torped—though only one of the children had found it unbearable.
Yet why didn't the parents of other spacies realize something unnatural was happening?
Or did they? Was there a vein of common fear and suspicion only waiting to be tapped? Suppose she stepped out of the crowd right now, stood right at the edge of the grave and made a plea for help?
And then she remembered seeing that same scene in all those old horror movies, one alarmed citizen pleading with the complacent populace to recognize the encroaching peril of the body-snatching plants, or the giant ants, or a devouring blob of protoplasm.
The scene would end no differently here than in the B-movie thrillers. She would inspire only pity. There were too many good reasons not to believe the unbelievable. She ought to know: she had been using them herself.
So she went on listening as the Reverend Spaulding tried to dredge up some comforting message in his graveside eulogy. ". . . life's mysteries . . . the will of a divine being that surpasses human comprehension . . . the great cosmic plan. . . ." Carrie had never found the platitudes more irritating, or more provocative, than she did today.
All the while she kept gazing across at Nick with his zal. Life's mysteries. It was the first opportunity she'd had to study them in broad daylight. One of the three boys looked a couple of years younger than Nick; the other two were considerably taller, and Carrie judged them to be sixteen or seventeen. One of the older boys was quite handsome—to Carrie's mind a natural match for Dana.
But not to the mind of the machine. That surpasses human comprehension.
The service ended at last, the Pomfrey family and some of the townspeople filed past the grave and somberly tossed clods of earth onto the coffin. The crowd melted away from the hillside.
Carrie watched Nick and his four companions walk away, and noticed a number of similar groups converging as they approached the gates of the cemetery. Six, then seven. Then two more. Nine zals in all.
A zal for each machine.
The great cosmic plan.
Where did the arcade fit in?
She took Emily home, made her a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, and sat with her fielding all her questions about death and funerals and why hadn't Nick gone with them to the cemetery or come home with them.
"He just . . . wanted to be with his friends," Carrie said.
"Boy, will he be sorry," Emily gloated, "when he hears we had BLTs."
After lunch, Carrie's nerves began to go haywire. She kept thinking of directions in which to move, and kept running into mental roadblocks. Call Lon. But what would she say? Go to the arcade. And do what?
She couldn't sit still, though. At last she picked up the phone and, after three tries, arranged for Emily to spend the afternoon at the house of Jenny Archer, a girl from her gymnastics class.
When she dropped off Emily, Carrie was offered a cup of coffee by Jenny's mother. She accepted to be polite, but found herself sitting in the other woman's kitchen unable to concentrate or hold a conversation, her hands trembling so that every time she moved to pick up her cup, it rattled against the saucer.
"Are you all right?" Sue Archer inquired as Carrie took her fourth sip of coffee. To fit the cup to her lips, Carrie had found it necessary to clamp both hands tightly around the rim.
Looking back at the other woman's sympathetic face, Carrie was powerfully tempted to unwind her tale. But she remembered that Jenny Archer was an only child—there was no older brother or sister who might be involved with the arcade at the level of Nick or Dana. Sue Archer couldn't begin to understand.
"Yes, I'm fine . . . just a little chilled. . . . I should have worn a sweater. . . ."
Carrie received a nod and a smile. But she could see that the concern in Sue Archer's eyes was now shaded by doubt. God, what must she think—that I'm on the verge of a breakdown, a secret drinker?
"I'll be all right once I get home and nap for a few hours." The explanation gave her an exit line.
Back in the car she drove around mindlessly, hoping merely to clear her head.
In a few minutes, without consciously choosing the destination, she found herself rolling up in front of the arcade. A need to check on Nick, to see what stage the spacies were at with the game, was obviously guiding her.
Her need?
Or could it be something else that had steered her to this place? If Spacescape could reach into the minds of the children and instruct them, couldn't it control her, too? That one time she had played, was that enough to become subject to the game's power?
Frantically needing to prove her autonomy, Carrie threw her foot down on the accelerator. The car surged forward, carrying her away from the arcade at a reckless speed.
But the demonic idea pursued her.
Suppose the first impulse to enter and observe had been her own—and the game had beamed its will into her mind to send her away, bar her from the arcade?
Carrie braked hard and veered her car to a stop at the curb.
She sat gripping the wheel as if it were a lifesaving anchor that would keep her from being swept away by a flood. She couldn't help gasping for breath, no less winded suddenly than if she had run a mile.
Gazing through the windshield, she spotted Owen Haber darting across Elm Street from his office building, evidently on some errand. A moment later, he caught her eye, too, and started to give a cordial smile. But something about the look she returned seemed to disturb him, for he turned away quickly, and went running on in the other direction.
Did she look as lost and crazy as she felt?
A bank of outdoor phones stood on a nearby street corner. Carrie gazed at them and thought again of calling Lon. But she was in no condition to do anything but babble hysterically. She was on her own.
Which way to turn? Where to go?
The most important thing was to keep a watch on Nick. There was nothing to stop her, after all, from going back to the arcade if she wanted to.
If she wanted—?
The instant he saw her, he knew it was an emergency. Not just from her harried expression, or the hint of frenzy in her eyes, but from the very fact that she had shown up at his door in the middle of a quiet day off.
"Carrie dear! What's wrong?" He grasped her by one arm and guided her gently into his room.
"Can I leave you then, Patrick?" said Mrs. Dilham, the bony widow who owned the white-elephant Victorian house where he boarded. She made little effort to hide the severe possessiveness she felt where Patrick was concerned. Opening the door to Carrie downstairs, she had put up some resistance to admitting her—"Was he expecting you? He always mentions if there are going to be visitors" —until Carrie had simply charged inside.
Patrick swept an appraising glance over Carrie before answering the landlady. "Yes, I'll manage, Mrs. D. But would you be an angel and bring up a glass of th
at brandy you keep in the decanter? Mrs. Foster looks like she could use it."
"I'm not sure there's any left—"
"Then bring whatever you have for a pick-me-up," Patrick said impatiently. "I'll buy you a whole new bottle in return."
The landlady scurried away, and Patrick closed the door of his room. "What happened to you, love?" he said to Carrie. "I've never seen you looking so positively flattened."
"Just give me a minute, Patrick. . . ."
First she had to get herself under control. It would be hard enough to win his cooperation without sounding as if she were simply raving.
Being here helped. Seeing his books, mementos, photographs—satisfying her curiosity about him—was a calming distraction. He trailed after her solicitously while she browsed the large square room, pausing to look at some antique French porcelain cups on the mantel, pick up a needlepoint pillow from a seat in the bow window, and peer at a sepia picture of two children in Fauntleroy velvet suits riding a wooden rocking horse, one of them Patrick. There was also a picture in a silver frame of an attractive middle-aged man. Carrie recognized him as a well-known symphony conductor who had spent a number of weekends in Millport over the years. She turned from the picture to Patrick, wondering if this was whom he'd been with before coming to her, not sure she ought to ask. But she didn't have to. He was looking right at her and, before she said a word, he nodded.
The silent communication encouraged her. They were on the same wavelength. Maybe he would believe her. . . .
The landlady knocked at the door, handed in some brandy in a plastic party cup, and Patrick brought it to Carrie, who had settled on the window seat.
She took a sip. The liquor stoked up a little fire in her stomach. It felt like courage. "I'll be okay now, Patrick. Come and sit down."
He turned a bentwood rocker so it faced the window seat.
She told it then. Everything. All her visits to the arcade, her encounter with Alan Pomfrey, the break-in at Peale's factory. She didn't leave out the complications of her relationship with Lon, or Nick's with Dana.