Coils

Chapter 11

The other vehicles in the automated lane made room for us, and soon we were a part of the traffic flow once again. It was, of course, too good to last. We had broken the pattern of the traffic control computer’s programming routine and must even now be showing up as an oddity. While I might have gotten away with reprogramming a long line of vehicles earlier, I was fairly certain that it wouldn’t work now. There had to be some sort of alert in effect after the results of my last alteration had become known. And the vehicle I rode would even be easy to spot physically, with the damage it had sustained.

A quick coil, a quick search, showed me that I was in eastern Tennessee. I caused the truck to pull over onto the shoulder, and I ran it along there for nearly a mile before I stopped it and got out. Off in the distance, across open fields and better-groomed grounds, appeared what could be the line of a railroad track. Reaching out, I could feel the data-flow along the fiber-optic cables which followed it.

I stood beside the truck for a moment. Looking back, I could see the dark, wind-twisted streamers of smoke which rose from the wreckage of my original truck and its companion. I hoped that Barbeau would assume I had been killed in it, at least for a sufficient while to give me something of a headstart.

I instructed my rescuing vehicle to return to the automated lane and continue on its way. Obediently, the gears ground and it moved off, the other trucks immediately adjusting their spacing to accommodate its presence.

I checked the skies. There were no more ’copters in sight. I did, however, hear the sound of a distant siren. I commenced hiking across the green and hilly countryside, heading in the direction of the park-like expanse. There were a number of buildings in that area, though not a great deal of activity. I guessed, as I walked among reedy grasses over the red clodded earth, that it was probably a campus that I was approaching.

Rick. Click. Terick. Yes. There was a computer there, a list of grades within it. Summer session stuff.

Far away, the siren died. I believed that it had stopped in the area of the burning trucks. It would be some time, I decided, before they could really go through that smouldering wreckage. But I increased my pace through the midday heat. It would be pleasant to pass into the shade up ahead. I certainly looked presentable enough for a campus.

I found my way to a path which widened and acquired gravel as I progressed. I smelled magnolias and recently mown grass. Real smells—I could see the trees and the place where the lawn had been cut—not preface to some imaginary horrors.

Several guys and gals were tossing a Frisbee in an open area to my right and ahead. They paid me no special attention. Passing them and approaching the buildings, I caught the smell of food and my stomach immediately began sending signals.

A flight of concrete stairs with a pipe railing led down to an opened door. Behind it was a small cafeteria-style lounge. I stood beside the doorway as if looking for someone. I noted that people were paying cash to the boy at the register, who was reading a paperback between customers. I saw no flashing of ID cards.

So I went in and passed along the line, buying two hot dogs, a bag of chips and a large Coke. I took them back outside with me to a secluded bench I had noted beneath a large old tree.

It was a peculiar feeling, sitting there and eating, watching students pass. It made me think of my own days in school. I was about to reach out for the computer again—just for company, I guess—when a girl in white shorts, a lime jersey and tennis shoes passed, a racquet in her hand. She descended the stairs into the eatery. About Ann’s height and build. Same color hair.

… And she came walking through my memory, as she had that day on campus, wearing a white silk blouse and dark blue skirt, carrying a small purse. I was standing in the doorway of the Student Union, out of the wind. She looked right at me, as if she already knew who I was and smiled and named me. I nodded.

“…And you are Ann Strong,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “I’d like to take you to lunch.”

“All right.”

I started to turn.

“Not in there,” she said. “Someplace a bit more civilized, and quiet”

“Okay.”

She had a car. She drove us to an off-campus place, the dining room at her venerable hotel, where the food was excellent and the napkins heavy cloth.

I had been back at school for over three months. It had been a little over twice that time between my recovery and my entering the university again. I had thrown myself into my studies as if they were occupational therapy, and I expected to do very well on my finals in a few weeks.

Our talk on the way over had been general, directed toward getting us acquainted. Nor did she rush into anything as we ate. I actually forgot briefly that she was a recruiter for Angra Energy, so pleasant was the conversation. She seemed to hit, as if by chance, upon nearly everything in which I was currently interested, even a couple of books which I had recently enjoyed or was just then reading.

Finally, as we sat drinking coffee, she asked me, “What sort of plans have you made for the future?”

“Oh, something having to do with computers,” I replied.

“Would you consider going East?”

I shrugged.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said. “If I liked a job I’d go wherever it took me.”

“Well, you’ve come to my attention as a possibility for recruitment by Angra.”

“That puzzles me,” I replied. “I thought that you were only hiring graduating seniors and grad students. I’m not there yet.”

She took a sip of coffee.

“I am here to look for talent,” she said, “not for pieces of paper with fancy writing on them.”

I smiled.

“But of course you want that, too.”

“Not necessarily,” she stated. “Not in special cases.”

The waiter came by and refilled our cups. As I raised mine, Ann reached out and touched the rosebud in the cut glass vase between us.

“I am flattered by what I think you are saying,” I finally answered, “but I doubt that I’ve been back in school long enough to provide much of a record for you to go on.”

“I’ve seen your earlier records,” she said, “and of course we are also influenced by current professors’ recommendations.”

“You know about the accident?”

“Yes.”

“To be practical about it—from your point of view—it could have left me unbalanced. Would it not be more prudent to watch such a person for a longer period of time?”

She nodded.

“That is one of the arguments for personal contact. May I watch you?”

“Of course.”

“Are you unbalanced?”

I laughed.

“Stable as a rock,” I said.

“In that case, Angra’s generous expense account will include dinners. Would you be free Friday evening?”

“Yes.”

“There is a play opening that night, which I would like to see.”

“I like plays,” I answered. “But I don’t want to string you along under false pretenses. I really think that I want to finish school before I take a job.”

She put her hand on my arm.

“We can talk about such matters another time,” she replied. “But I should mention that Angra does provide opportunities for the continuing education of its employees. More importantly right now, I need justification to use the expense account myself. I’ll pick you up at your place at six, on Friday.”

“That’ll be nice,” I said.

And it was. She was going to be in town for an indeterminate period of time—at least several weeks, she told me—and there were lots of good things to see and do, if one had money and a car and wanted to get to know someone real well.

Even though we became lovers during the weeks which followed, I refused to leave school to take a job with Angra at the end of the mid-year semester. I was determined to complete the academic year and start work that summer. That way, I decided, if I did not like the job I would be able to quit and return in the fall without missing any time. It sounded, I suppose, presumptuous for an undergraduate offered a good position with a major company to dictate terms that way, but I was already beginning to suspect that my case involved something special. The fact that they agreed to my terms only seemed to confirm it.

And Ann was in and out of town constantly. That following semester I was seeing her just about every weekend. It was almost as if she were keeping some sort of watch over me. I even asked:

“You certainly make it through here a lot. Are they afraid some other company’s going to steal me?”

She looked hurt.

“I juggle my schedule for you,” she replied. “Would you go elsewhere if you suddenly had another offer?”

“I haven’t had any,” I told her. “But no, I said that I’d try it at Angra and I will.”

“Then let us enjoy this bonus my travel permits.”

It seemed almost ungracious to pursue matters beyond that. Yet, I realized that I was only one of many bright kids across the country. I had even asked around a bit among my classmates—some of them very talented—and learned that outside of a standard interview and a we’ll-let-you-know, she hadn’t offered any of the others employment, not even seniors and grad students. While vanity may be the sustaining shadow of every self, I knew that I was not so much better than everyone else that I warranted that much extra consideration.

… Unless, of course, the personal liking she had taken to me had caused Ann to build me up as some sort of Da Vinci to her employers. In which case, I knew that I would be very uncomfortable at Angra. I did not want an unfair advantage, and I did not want to be anyone’s pet.

But Ann anticipated this reaction as she had so many others. The logic of it was compelling, and there was only one real way to handle it. The time had come for the truth.

It was a lovely day in late April, sunny and cool and crystal clear. The fresh green of spring still frothed across the land and the smells of the damp earth were heavy with life. I was again drinking coffee with Ann, only this time I had managed by judicious class-cutting to provide us with a three-day weekend together and we were taking coffee on the terrace of a place in the mountains which she had rented or Angra had owned or a friend had lent—I was never clear which—and I was wearing a maroon silk robe many sizes too small for me, with a golden, pop-eyed dragon coiling about itself upon the left breast, and I was peeling an orange and wondering how I was going to tell her that I didn’t want the job just because she had taken a fancy to me, and if that wasn’t it, what was?

“I suppose that we must discuss it sooner or later,” she said before I gave voice to what I was thinking. “It is not your academically acquired abilities with computers in which Angra is most interested.”

“Could you be more specific?” I said, still studying the orange peels.

“You have a unique mental rapport with computers.”

“And if I do,” I said, “how might you know of it?”

“My unique mental ability involves other people’s minds.”

“Telepathy? You can tell what I’m thinking?”

“Yes.”

Oh, I tested her on a few strings of numbers and lines of poetry, but I believed her before she proved it. I guess it is not overly difficult for the possessor of a paranormal ability to believe that there might be others around.

“I didn’t think it could be my sweet personality.”

“But I am very fond of you,” she responded, perhaps a trifle too quickly.

“Why is Angra hiring paranormals?” I asked. “And are there many others?”

“None like you,” she said. “Any company with a group such as ours would have a terrific edge over the competition.”

“It sounds somewhat like an unethical edge, even without hearing the particulars of what I’d be doing.”

She rose to her feet and folded her arms. Her lip curled. I had never seen her angry before.

“Look around you,” she said. “The country is going to hell in a handcart. The whole world is. Why? We have an energy crisis on our hands, that’s why. It can be beaten. How? The technology is there—only pieces of it are tied up by dozens of different concerns. This one has a good lead in one sort of thing, that one in another. This one has an almost-good patent pending on something else, that one has a brilliant concept but no hardware yet. They’re falling all over each other, blocking each other, getting in each other’s ways. Supposing one company cut through all the crap, got its hands on everything good in the area right away and then pushed it into reality? Cheap, clean energy, and lots of it, that’s what. No more crisis. A lot of toes would be stepped on. There would be a lot of lawsuits and maybe an antitrust action later. But so what? A company as big as Angra can roll with all that—stall, settle, compromise. And the results? We will solve the energy crisis. We can do it within ten years. You want to watch them falling all over each other until we’re on the brink of disaster, or are you willing to help do something about it? That’s what Angra wants you for, that’s why Angra wants your special talent. Are you going to help?”

I drank my coffee. I was glad that I finally had a straight story as to what I’d be doing, and that I still had a month in which to think about it.

In June I went to work for Angra, and Ann and I remained friendly. It was not until much later that we began to drift apart, as I felt increasingly that I was just an assignment for her. Circumstances sometimes seemed to indicate it, but I lacked her ability to know how someone really felt. This could have been a mistake on my part. She behaved coolly the first time that I went out with another woman, and later she presented me with a copy of Colette’s Cheri. This was somewhere near the end of my tenure with Angra, but before the difficulties had arisen. I could not tell by reading that story of the young man who did not appreciate the older woman until it was too late whether it meant that she really liked me and was hurt by my behavior, or whether she was bothered by the fact that she was older than me. That’s the trouble with literature. Ambiguity.

I could look about me now and see that, true to Ann’s prediction, Angra had broken the energy crisis. Only, somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong…

“Damn!”

I stuffed my napkin and papers into the empty cup and tossed them into a nearby waste bin. I began walking about the campus then. There were several parking lots. Should I try stealing a car?

“Dr. Porter. About my grade…”

I turned suddenly. I hadn’t heard him approach—a thin boy with a bad complexion and long brown hair. His mouth opened.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were my professor…”

“And you want your grade?”

“Yes, sir. Ill be leaving in a little while, and I thought—”

“Give me your name and section,” I said. “Maybe I can help.”

“James Martin Brown,” he answered. “Political Science 106.”

Tick. Tick. Terick.

“You were carrying a B,” I told him. “You pulled a B on your final. Your grade should be a B.”

His eyes widened. I smiled.

“I work in the office,” I said. “Computer. Some of the stuff sticks.”

He grinned.

“Thanks. I can sleep easy on the train home.”

He turned and hurried off.

Train? I’d almost forgotten the tracks nearby. Some trains carried passengers, most carried freight and some were mixed. Most were fully automated now—those hauling freight exclusively so—though, unlike the trucks, they still had a few human trouble-shooters aboard. The railroad union had held out longer than the Teamsters on this point…

I turned my attention once more toward the distant tracks.

I coiled… In, and back… Through, along…

There was a train due by in a little less than an hour. But it carried passengers. Tick. There was another in about three hours. Mixed. Tickter. One in about five hours. Freight. These last two were headed for Memphis. Terick.

I turned and began walking toward the tracks. There was a stand of trees farther to the west. I shifted my course in that direction. It seemed a good place to wait.

I had not hunted up the boy’s grade out of pure altruism. If he were questioned later about strangers on campus, I wanted him thinking of me as someone who belonged, someone who had even done him a favor. No stranger.

I crossed the tracks and hiked on over to the trees. I located a sheltered place and sat down. Waiting there, amid shade and mosquitoes, I ran back through the system and studied the manifest for that third run. There was to be a human crew of three aboard—engine, freight and caboose. Usually, I understood, they got together in a comfortable place and played cards. The trains were as safe as the trucks. This one was scheduled to haul twenty-two filled freight cars and three empty passenger cars for delivery in Memphis.

Where should I try to board? It depended on where the crew had located itself, a thing I hoped to discern when the unscheduled stop occurred. It would be nice to ride in one of the passenger cars, though.

It was too soon to program in the stop. Some overzealous employee could theoretically spot it if I fooled with the train’s computer too far in advance. I sat listening to the birds and watching a few clouds rise in the east. I thought of possible courses of action I might take further along the line. I thought about Cora…

I felt the vibrations of the first train a long way off. I watched it when it finally roared by, and I listened to its rumbling fade again in the distance. I checked back and found that the others were still scheduled as they had been. For a second—just a bare second—as I did this, it seemed that I felt that shadowy presence once again, regarding me. I withdrew quickly and continued to brood upon the future.

After a time, I dozed. I was awakened by the approach of the second train. The sun had moved farther into the west. There was a certain stiffness in my knees and shoulders. My mouth had grown dry.

I stretched and cracked my joints and watched the other train pass. I checked once more after the freighter. On its way now, still on schedule, no changes. I programmed in the stop, using the nearest electrical mileage-marker as a guide. I wished that I had had the foresight to buy a few candy bars and a can of soda at the place back on campus. I chewed a blade of grass and tried to recall the last time I had ridden on a train.

When it did finally arrive it began to slow on schedule. There came a squealing noise as brakes were applied, and the ground shuddered. The engine drifted past me, slowing, slowing. Several cars went on by, still slowing, and finally the entire procession ground to a halt. It stood there in the long shadows, shuddering, while I readied myself for a dash.

I heard voices to my left. A man was climbing down from the caboose. Another followed him. The second one turned to shout something to a third person who remained aboard. The two on the ground conferred for a time, then split up and moved forward, passing along both sides of the train.

I coiled into the computer. Someone was querying it concerning the stop at the moment I entered into it. The one who remained behind, I decided, was checking the systems while the others looked for some external cause for the halt.

The man on my side of the train peered between the cars and looked beneath each one as he passed, apparently determined to eyeball the situation all the way up to the engine. I caused the doors of the nearest passenger car to open, dashed across, entered and released them immediately.

There followed a long wait, as I wondered whether I had been seen. My car was dark inside, as were the other two. I crouched low in one of the seats and stared out of the window. After a number of minutes had passed, I breathed a little more easily. Still, it was another good ten minutes before I heard the crunch of gravel along the side to my right. I crouched even lower and waited for it to pass. I continued to wait. Shortly, the other passed on my left.

I sighed, and some of the tension went out of me. I checked the computer again. I did not relax completely until a “Hold” order was removed and the train gave a lurch. Slowly, we ground forward. The motion grew more even, we began to pick up speed. I sat up straight again.

When our speed grew uniform, I rose and inspected all three cars. I decided to locate myself in the most forward one, so that I might hear the sounds of anyone approaching from the rear. I was not sure that I would be able to, over all of the other noises, but it made me feel a little safer.

Then I settled myself and clicked, ticked and dericked my way back into the central computer for the region, where I removed all memory of the train’s unscheduled halt and replaced it with the simple fact that we were running late. I watched the correction order formulated and transmitted. I felt the train pick up speed as the adjustment was made. If no human observer had spotted the situation before I’d cleaned it up, I was relatively safe. I felt that I was learning to mask myself properly.

I watched the countryside roll past me. This far, this far now I had made it. I began to feel that I had a small chance.

“Cora, I’m coming,” I said.

The wheels chuckled mechanically. The sun plunged toward another extinction, above my goal.