Arcade

by Robert Maxxe

  "What?"

  "Didn't you see when we passed by? The door to the arcade—the glass wasn't broken. It's already been fixed . . . since last night!"

  ". . . Christ . . ." Lon hissed, and gave the car a surge of power, speeding up the drive, then jamming the brakes on in front of the house.

  Racing inside, they dashed up the stairs, each one to a different bedroom.

  The children were gone, all of them.

  Patrick, too. He had been taken, probably, because he was a witness to whatever had happened, to prevent him from raising an alarm. Peale was behind it, obviously. Knowing that the arcade had been penetrated, the machines examined, he was speeding up his schedule. He didn't want the police alerted or the rest of the town—not before the children could get through.

  The children. Would that include Emily and Wally? Did their absence mean they had been taken as hostages, or that somehow they were cooperating, had joined with the spacies?

  From the way things had been left at the house, it was hard to tell. Nothing indicated the use of force. Everything was in order. The beds had even been made.

  37

  The signs were on, they saw now, had probably been on the first time they drove by, though difficult to see in the bright rising sun.

  Carrie had driven the station wagon from the house, accelerator to the floor. She had jumped behind the wheel in such a blind panic that she had nearly driven away without Lon. Now she slammed to a stop in front of the arcade, and had the car door open before Lon grabbed her arm.

  "You want to stop them?" he said. "Is that really what you want?"

  She paused for an instant. "I can't let it happen this way, whatever it is," she said then. "I just can't let the children be taken. "

  "Then we should get help."

  "There isn't time," she cried, the panic rising. "Can't you feel that? There's no time to explain and persuade. We have to do it now —have to try—" Jerking loose from his grip, she ran.

  He caught up to her at the door of the arcade. She tugged at the handle, but the door wouldn't budge.

  ". . . something to break it," she snapped at Lon. "We'll smash it again—"

  But before Lon moved to fetch the jack handle from the car, there was a soft click and the door edged open. Through the narrow gap, Patrick stared out. He was obviously shaken, but under control, not terrified.

  "Mr. Peale is right behind me, Carrie," Patrick said, his voice stretched high and thin. "He has the gun, and he made me come. Now he wants you to slip inside quickly, without making any noise—you and Lon." In a rapid whisper, he added, "It might be all right. The children are in here, but he didn't force them. In fact, they're—"

  From within, somewhere behind Patrick, Peale's voice interrupted. "Come in, please, Mrs. Foster. No fuss." Toneless, unemotional as always. Perhaps where others had feelings, he had only the perfect vacuum of space. He didn't have to seem violent, Carrie thought, to be violent. But if she bolted now, would Peale hurt the children? He needed them—

  —though not Emily, or Lon's son. They could be used as leverage.

  Carrie sidled through the opening, and Lon followed.

  For the first moment she was dazzled. Though the door had closed, snipping off the thin shaft of morning light, inside it was as if the sun went on shining. There was no gloom, not even in the corners. The air was suffused with a golden glow, the kind of light that slanted down on the world only at the end of clear clean summer days.

  The light was radiating from the screens, Carrie saw, and as she looked down the two ranks of machines, she realized that crowded tightly in front of each game there were three boys and a girl—just four in a zal, not five. In every one another member had been torped.

  Nick and Dana were at one of the machines nearest the door, but they were oblivious to Carrie or Lon. Like all the other spacies, their eyes were fixed on the screen, faces illuminated by the glorious golden glow. Nick held the joystick, Dana and the other two boys in the zal each had a hand on one of the buttons.

  It was the same for all the zals—every spacie was touching a machine, making contact.

  And Emily? Wally?

  Carrie's glance darted around wildly until she found them, right there in plain view, all the way at the rear of the arcade. They were standing slightly to the side of the ninth machine (already replaced), ogling the four spacies who were at the controls.

  Peale stepped around Patrick. "They're going to be fine, Mrs. Foster. I wish you could believe me . . . "He wasn't pointing the gun at anyone; in fact, the hand in which he held it dangled carelessly at his side.

  "I wish I could, too," Carrie said. "Only you've never told me anything but lies."

  "Yes," he acknowledged unashamedly, "to gain time. But this truth cannot be told, anyway. It has to be seen, and felt. It won't be long, though, Mrs. Foster, and then you'll know. . . ."

  He looked aside to the children as if checking on their progress.

  None of them was moving, speaking. They stood tautly motionless, gazing into the golden screens.

  "Nick, your mother's here now," Peale called, apparently anxious to demonstrate to Carrie that the boy was all right, and that there was trust between them. "Anything you want to tell her before we go through?"

  Nick glanced over. He smiled, and perhaps it was only the golden light on his face, but Carrie thought she had never seen a more transcendently joyous smile. He looked like one of those boy saints in a medieval triptych, all painted in gold leaf.

  "Hi, Mom." It was so normal and breezy that he could have been spotting her in the stands as he trotted off the field from a soccer game. "Mr. Peale said he'd let you watch if you showed up—but you gotta promise not to interfere, huh?"

  Dana turned, too, and said with a smile, "Hello, Mrs. Foster. Hi, Dad. Don't worry, please, we know what we're doing."

  "Dana, honey," Lon said, "just tell us, so we—"

  "You'll see," she cut in with quiet force, and looked away again, locking her eyes onto the screen's field of plain golden light.

  In a trance? No, they weren't, Carrie thought, only keeping watch with fierce concentration.

  She turned to Peale. He was giving her a coy sidewise look, like a salesman waiting for her reaction to a dress she'd tried on.

  She mustn't be swayed by what the children said. All their desire and expectation and knowledge had been delivered to them, sent into their minds, by silent secret messages they'd had no chance to judge and reject. However it looked—had been made to look—the spacies were prisoners against their will. She had to stop Peale. Save them.

  There would be a chance, she was sure of it. Peale was being so lax with the gun, merely displaying it, so eager to believe that Lon and Carrie would cooperate. If they went for him at the wrong moment, of course, he could quickly bring up his hand—and if they moved too wildly he might be startled into shooting.

  But if he was lulled off his guard . . .

  If they waited, too, perhaps some help would come. There were thirty-six spacies in the arcade. Some of the children would be missed from their homes at this hour of the morning—

  Though weren't they old enough to leave a note saying they were running errands, or meeting friends? Any excuse to keep parents away until it was too late.

  "If only we knew some of the answers," Carrie said to Peale, trying to sound agreeable, stalling.

  "Where do you come from?" Lon chimed in.

  "Come from?" Peale repeated with a lilt of bemusement. "Nowhere—I mean nowhere else. I'm from right here."

  "Here?" Carrie said, surprised.

  "Born in a suburb of Baltimore, actually. . . ."

  "But you do represent—that was your word—you are in contact with . . . something—?"

  "Not exactly in contact," he said. "But you must wait, Mrs. Foster. I'd gladly explain it now if this would be made easier for you, but it will make so much more sense afterward. . . ." His eyes switched to the machines. "In any case, I'm not sure there's time bef
ore they begin."

  At the mention of time, Carrie's pulse quickened. Her eyes went automatically to Lon, then Patrick, a silent appeal for allies.

  Perhaps Peale noted the alarm in her expression, for he spread his hands apologetically. Then he called aside to the groups at the machines: "Any change?"

  Nick answered. "None yet."

  "Look for a white spot right at the center—that'll be the azolix. Let me know the second you see it."

  "Roger," answered a boy holding a joystick at a machine opposite Nick's.

  Again the echo of let's-pretend, of children imitating pilots and astronauts. It tempted you to think the make-believe would end at any moment, the last round of the game would be played and they could all go home.

  Except that Peale held a gun, and was so deadly earnest about his mission.

  "There may still be a minute or two to go," he offered now. "I suppose I could try . . . "He looked down at the floor, pondering, then glanced up at Lon. "You did get into the game, I suppose?"

  "Yes. We looked at the memory."

  "Remarkable, isn't it? But for them it's so simple. It really is only a toy for them. . . ."

  "Who?" Carrie demanded.

  Peale gave a quaint little shrug. "I can't wait to find that out myself, Mrs. Foster. Exactly who and what they are is not in the data I've been given. At this point it's not something they wanted the terminals to know."

  "Terminals?" Lon repeated quickly, picking up on the word that was familiar in the context of his own work.

  "Excuse me," Peale said. "That's what we call all those like me—those who've received the data."

  "Then you are in contact," Carrie insisted.

  "Oh dear," Peale sighed, shaking his head. "I told you this would be difficult to understand." He stole another glance at the machines, as if hoping to be saved by the arrival of the cosmic cavalry. Then, raising the hand in which he held the gun, he tapped the barrel in his palm like a lecturer absently playing with his pointer.

  "Some of what I've already told you about myself is the truth. I was an electrical engineer . . . and I did develop an idea that became an obsession—at least I thought at the time it was simply an obsession—to make a unique kind of game for the children. But as the idea developed, as I started gathering components, dealing with the necessary technology, a point came where I suddenly realized I was going beyond myself, exceeding what I knew was the limit of my knowledge and capability. It was . . . well, how can I explain the feeling: it was as though I'd had amnesia and couldn't remember where I'd picked up the training to accomplish things I was doing with ease. I would have been forced to conclude that, in fact; but then I began to tinker with developing the memory—formulating a kind of organic soup under special conditions of temperature—"

  "The freezer," Lon murmured, making connections for himself.

  Peale nodded. "So there I was, making things that I was sure weren't feasible by any existing technology, using methods that weren't known to anyone. . . ."

  He paused, eyes distant, and his listeners could hear the phantom voice completing the phrase:

  To anyone on earth.

  "There were days," he went on, "not many, but a few terrible days, when I thought I must be living in my imagination. When I thought what I was achieving must actually be happening in a schizoid fantasy. And then suddenly I was given the wisdom to comprehend. I knew that the desire to make the game, and all the knowledge I needed to do it, to conceive of its most fantastic elements—like the memory you saw—had all been programmed into my brain. I had been given, whole, an intelligence I didn't have before; and, as part of having it—at what must have been a pre-programmed time—I was allowed to understand how it had been done." He glanced from Lon to Patrick, both of whom were hanging on his words, like children themselves, captivated by a fairy tale. Lastly, Peale turned to Carrie. She was clearly preserving her skepticism, regarding him coldly. "I had," he said, "caught it."

  "Caught it?" Lon and Patrick echoed in unison.

  "In the same form that you see it in the memory. I had breathed it in, or drunk it, or perhaps taken it with something I'd eaten—the carrier of all that knowledge—an organism that reproduces, and then forms the circuits, and when those are complete, feeds the data into the system. It uses our body chemistry, you see, alters it slightly. . . ." He looked down, scanned his own body with its strange aura of insubstantiality. "You must have noticed the side effects."

  "So it is a bacterial organism," Lon said excitedly.

  Peale nodded. "I guess you could say we caught the germ of intelligence."

  "That would be true for all of you—the ones you called the 'terminals?' "

  "Yes."

  "But why you?" Patrick asked. "How does it choose who—?"

  "Oh, it doesn't—no more than a speck of dust chooses where to land. It was in the air, anybody could take it in. There's no doubt that many did who weren't at all affected. The ones who were, like me, were simply susceptible: those who already had within their system the foundation to interpret the program, to know how to go about making some of the initial assemblies, how to function within a certain industry—"

  "You mean, they're all people with a technical background?" Lon asked. "Computer-knowledgeable . . .?"

  "I haven't met them all, Mr. Evans. They're all over the world. But the few that I know, yes, they were all susceptible for the same reasons. Their knowledge, and also certain other characteristics—people without attachments, able to concentrate on this work. All the data in the brain is analyzed; wherever inappropriate, no connection is made."

  There was a momentary astonished silence. Then Lon clapped his hands together and let out a little whoop of delight. "Holy Hannah! That's beautiful. You caught it—like catching a cold!" He looked to Carrie and Patrick for any sign they could enjoy the joke, too. But Patrick, who had never seen the game's living heart, was merely puzzled. And Carrie was only more horrified by the image of Peale being literally infected by an organism that had the power to alter the brain.

  "But why?" she pleaded. "Why all of this just to get at the children?" She took the opportunity to step closer to Peale—in striking distance. She no longer felt sure Lon would help her. He was no less enchanted than the children. (Or had he, without knowing, without yet reaching that advanced stage of self-awareness that Peale had, "caught the cold"?)

  "Your questions, Mrs. Foster," Peale replied, "are also the answer."

  "Damn it, Mr. Peale, don't give me riddles now."

  "Forgive me, I mean to be straightforward. But to appreciate the importance of the children—"

  They were interrupted by a cry from one of the spacies: "I see it!"

  The thrill rippled through the arcade, excitement bubbling in every corner.

  "Wow, lookit . . . !"

  "So bright!"

  "Far out!"

  Peale darted a few steps to the nearest machine to look over the children's shoulders. At the center of the screen was a pinprick of white light of almost painful intensity.

  "Good, good," he said, "It's almost time. Are you all ready?"

  There was a chorus of affirmative murmurs from the spacies, already sinking again into total concentration on the screens.

  Left unguarded, Lon and Patrick glanced at Carrie, checking her wish. Peale was obviously vulnerable. The gun could be wrested away. (Though what then? Could the children be forced from the arcade, the games turned off?)

  Before Carrie could decide, Peale turned back to them, "It won't be more than another minute," he said, eyes glittering, happy and wanting to share it.

  "Answer me!" Carrie erupted. "Why the children?"

  He raised one hand slightly, not fending her off, but a gesture asking for calm.

  "Because," he said then, "those who are coming know so well the place they are coming to—this Earth that has been their destination for longer than we have lived, for as long as there has been life on this planet. And they know what is needed in this momen
t, the last moment before they arrive—"

  "Moment," Lon echoed in awe, and looked around, expecting something to materialize.

  Peale smiled. "In a journey that has taken them across light-years, Mr. Evans, their moment is not the same as ours. It will be thirty more years before they arrive. But just as we have sent probes into the universe, so have they—only theirs have been far more advanced. Their probes have monitored our radio and television signals, and have seen our history. Their probes have seen the landscape change, have seen our migrations and our wars, have seen civilizations created and destroyed, have seen our settlements reduced to ashes. Their probes have noticed the rapid development of some parts of the globe at the expense of others. Their probes have detected the depletion and misuse of this planet's resources. And analyzing all this information they have collected, as indeed we take our own data and put it through computers that are much less sophisticated than theirs, they have determined many things. They know that humans are egocentric beings, long accustomed to think of themselves as unique and superior in nature, with complicated systems of belief invented to support that view—systems that will crumble, with potentially devastating psychological effect, as soon as we realize our true place in the universal order. They know, too, that we are quick to mistrust, to fear strangers, to delay change—and that we are passionately attached to territory and will defend it savagely against anyone or anything who threatens it. In short, Mrs. Foster, they are not at all surprised at your fears. . . ."

  Another flutter of anticipation ran through the children, and Peale glanced over. He began edging back toward the nearest machine, while he continued in a rush, "So they set out to defend themselves against our suspicion. Not as we would, not with guns, but with information. They want these children—and all the children in other places where the game is being played—to know they need not be afraid. These children, in particular, because these are the ones who have been recognized as special—who, the data says, will rise to hold great responsibility, in government, business, education, in every field. These are the ones who will lead all the rest to know there is nothing to fear in making the ultimate contact . . . when it comes, a generation from now."