Coils

Chapter 14

Moving off. The skin of the sky was very blue and the song of the air whistled inside my helmet around my ears. I gripped the handlebars and maintained a steady pace within my lane. The ’cycle held the road beautifully.

I had found the little town right where Catlum had said it would be, up the road, and I had indeed purchased new trousers there—also a shirt and a jacket. Except for a few stores, though, I was stymied. They had a vehicle rental place, but it was closed and I couldn’t locate the owner or manager. Upon reflection, this may have been just as well. It resulted in my getting in some good thinking time.

I had passed a little motel on my way into town. I could get a room, and the shower itself would be worth it. I was not sleepy after the day’s hibernation, but I wanted to be out of sight while I waited and I did not feel like skulking about the countryside.

When I said cash and he saw that I had no luggage, the clerk asked for payment in advance. But that was okay. I gave him a false name and out-of-state address, of course, got the room, cleaned myself up and stretched out on the bed.

Still feeling alert, I reviewed everything that had happened—from the Keys to Baghdad and on along my current odyssey to the present moment. I thought about Cora. I knew where she was now, and I felt that she was safe for the time being. A dead hostage is after all no hostage, and they would derive no benefit from making her suffer until or unless I could be made to watch. While recent experiences demonstrated the fineness of the distinction, I felt that Barbeau would still actually rather have me alive and working for him again than dead. This much of what he had said back in Philadelphia, I believed. If this could not be, however, he wanted me dead. What he feared most, I was certain, was probably my going to the Justice Department with my story. I could see myself at a hearing, playing computer tricks to demonstrate what I was saying. No. He would not like that. And so long as he had a live Cora for insurance, he knew that this would not come to pass. He would hang onto a live Cora now until he had a dead BelPatri—for he must realize by now that I wasn’t coming back.

I had remained safe so far by exploiting the new, manipulative aspect of my paranormal ability. Barbeau had not been prepared for anything like it, and I was certain it had him worried. I realized, too, that I was going to have to rely upon it from here on out, to exploit it fully, for offense and defense, for the rest of my journey, to keep him off balance, to maintain an edge.

I intended renting a vehicle on the morrow, for the next stage of my journey. As I had just been reminded at the desk, however, one either charges or pays cash for things—and my funds were dwindling and my credit cards all said DONALD BELPATRI.

No problem, I decided, remembering the policeman with the little box, back in Philadelphia. No matter what the card says, I can alter what the machine says it reads there.

But wait… It was not quite that simple.

For one thing, altering the account number signal would not be sufficient. It had to be altered to something intelligible and acceptable. Otherwise, the transmitter would receive a notice that there was something wrong, and I would be in trouble.

For another thing, the cards all bore my name. While this meant nothing to the computer, which was only interested in an account number associated with some name on file, a human operator on this end would see the name and would also doubtless create a local, personal record of the transaction. This was unacceptable, with Angra shaking the shrubbery after me.

I studied one of my credit cards. The name and numbers were embossed in such a fashion that I couldn’t really do much to alter their values. With the point of my pocket knife, though, it seemed that I might be able to scrape a letter off flush with the surface of the card, so that it would not print onto any paper inserts. A little scribbling and smudging could then mask the letter-sized gap… I got rid of the B and the RI.

DONALD ELPAT. It looked good enough. They never seem to look at the card itself, anyhow, except to check whether it’s still valid and sometimes to see that it’s signed.

I studied my signature on the reverse side of the card: my usual half-legible scrawl. Excellent. I added a few more squig-gles and no one could say that it didn’t read DONALD ELPAT there, too.

… And while I did this, I composed a series of simple biographical data concerning my new persona.

That done, I turned my attention to the matter of accounts. Certain numbers simply would not work. If I altered the signal from the Elpat card to a number in a series that was not in use the receiving computer would take immediate exception. If I chose one corresponding to a real account that had something wrong with it—non-payment by the real owner or such—I would also find myself without credit. I thought about accounts.

Good old 078-05-1120 occurred to me immediately. Back in the 30’s, when the Social Security Act was passed and the first cards issued, a wallet manufacturer had decided to insert a facsimile of one in the little Celluloid-covered pocket of his product, to demonstrate its use to the unimaginative. It did not occur to him that, for the sake of consistency in his estimation of human intelligence, he ought also to have indicated that it was only a sample. The card which accompanied the wallets bore his secretary’s Social Security account number. Later, his secretary was distinguished by becoming the only person in the history of the Social Security program to have her number withdrawn and to be issued a new one. This, because people were indeed using the cards which had accompanied their wallets. And thousands of them had been sold. F.I.C.A. taxes poured into that account over the years. It was never completely unscrambled. A generation later, IRS was still receiving tax returns from all over the country with that magic number on them. And I’d a suspicion that even now, almost sixty years later, there were still a few coming in.

A broad category, therefore, was similarly in order for me now, for credit purposes. Then it hit me. Some companies have a single account for the traveling expenses of key executives and they obtain multiple credit cards bearing the same account number for issuance to the persons in that category. Such a number, backed by the credit of a reputable corporation, would be accepted by the credit company’s computer without question. I could see that an amendment in the area of Donald Elpat’s place of employment would soon be in order. All that I had to do was to discover the proper company and its number.

I thought about it for a few minutes and came up with a possible avenue of research. Since I still had plenty of time, I got up then, turned on the tv and looked at an all-news channel. I was loath to get too far behind on the world’s doings. It’s always good to know whether there’s a flood or a tornado rushing to compound your problems.

I watched for over an hour. There was nothing about a fugitive named BelPatri—not that I’d expected to make the national news—and nothing at all about Angra.

Then I heard a car pull up in front of the office. I switched off the set at about the same time that the car door slammed, and I went to the window and looked out. Then I dropped the curtain and I reached.

Nothing.

I returned to the bed, stretched out and kept reaching.

Nothing. Nothing. Sooner or later, though. I just had to remain receptive…

Nothing. Nothing…

Flicker.

The terminal in the office had been activated. The person was taking a room. The desk clerk was inserting a credit card…

… Coiling into the unit, I moved in a direct line to the credit company’s computer.

I sought out the company accounts listings and ransacked them for multiple input numbers with good high ceilings on the amounts chargable in a day’s time…

… Then I got fussy and looked for one that was easy to commit to memory.

There.

Elpat had found his place of employment.

Just as I coiled out, a wavering image of Ann presented itself to my mind’s eye. Just a blink—flickerclick—and she was gone and I was staring at the ceiling and wondering again at the contents of the subconscious.

I committed the number firmly to mind, then turned the tv on again and watched for a while.

Moving off. Pine pinched my nostrils. An incontinent bird decorated my bike. The day grew warm, but at least I had the wind to cool me somewhat through it. Traffic was moderate. I saw no truck dancers…

Donald Elpat had had no trouble at the vehicle rental place. He had decided upon a motorcycle for a number of reasons—one very good one being that they are not equipped with any devices which would make them show up on traffic data computers; another being that cycling had not been one of my hobbies in Florida, nor had I even done much of it in my previous life. It seemed that I might reasonably expect to take the opposition by surprise by doing it now. At some point in the past I had at least learned how, and these new ones were particularly easy. Re-chargable at any Angra station, the one I selected was powered by ultra-highspeed flywheels which also provided a gyro effect that helped to give it road stability. Donald Elpat signed for it, and we were moving off.

Since I had already zigged, I decided that it was time to zag, and after I had crossed the river I headed to the northwest, for Little Rock.

Yes, the memories had been there, of the occasions when I had biked in the past. They had started back in college, with Ann. We had occasionally continued them, afterwards:

Down in the pine barrens, eating our lunch under the trees…

“I’m beginning to feel funny about this work, Ann. But of course you know that.”

“Yes. But what can I tell you that I did not tell you before?”

“You never told me before that Marie was going to be wrecking other people’s research.”

Her brows fluttered in puzzlement, like dark wings.

“But it is sometimes necessary, to maintain our lead.”

“I thought that the whole point to all our pilferage was that once we had what we needed we could cut through all the rivalries and begin producing cheap energy faster than anybody else.”

“That is correct.”

“But if other people are gaining on us to the point where we have to set them back, it means that maybe they could do a better job than us if they were left alone. Maybe our whole premise is wrong.”

“You thinking of changing employers?”

“No. I’m thinking that maybe we’ve got enough of an edge that we don’t really have to step on the competition. After all—”

“A clear superiority,” she interrupted, sounding like Barbeau now. “We have to be so far ahead that nobody can impede us in the slightest way. Only that will permit us to move quickly and efficiently to save the economy and maintain a high quality of life.”

“You’re talking monopoly, you know.”

“If that’s what it takes, what of it? The alternative is chaos.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know any more. I guess I never knew for certain. And what about this Matthews, anyway? What does he do? There’s something vaguely sinister about him.”

“He is a highly specialized technician,” she said, “and his work is even more secret than ours.”

“But you can read his mind. Is he trustworthy?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “He can always be relied upon to do what he says. I’d trust him with my life.”

I was again persuaded for a time. Some birds were singing. Angra continued to tick along, like a bomb within my mind. I learned a little about bikes in those days, anyway.

I rested in Little Rock that afternoon and chowed down on junk food. Then, batteries recharged, having zagged, it was time to zig again, headed for Dallas, ears buzzing, body vibrating.

Moving off, the beat of the road filling me, my mind went back again, to those last days at Angra. I had learned of Willy Boy’s talent, but still I stayed on, actually buying Barbeau’s explanation that Matthews only incapacitated the competition, putting out researchers with unexplained fainting spells, resurgences of ulcers, false angina pains, temporary blindness, aphasia, bouts of the flu, transient neuropathies of various sorts. Then, one day, on its way from Double Z to destruction, I had come upon the kill order for an executive in a rival company. The only reason it even caught my attention was that I had read the man’s obituary that morning and the name stood out. He had died of heart failure. I’d even met him once. He was young and had seemed healthy. The order had only gone to Willy Boy the day before. There was no way this could be a coincidence…

I stormed into Barbeau’s office. At first he denied it. Then he admitted it and tried to explain that the action was necessary, the man too dangerous.

“Too dangerous to go on living?” I shouted.

“Now listen, Steve. Calm down. You’ve got to understand the big picture…”

He moved around his desk and tried to put his hand on my shoulder, a spurning one of his paternalistic poses. I knocked it away.

“I am starting to understand the big picture. That’s what’s bothering me. I’ve done a lot for good old Angra—a lot of things I felt badly about—but I always consoled myself that a lot of good was going to come out of it all. Now I find out you’re killing people, too! Damn it! We’re not at war! We’ve got to draw the line somewhere—”

The door opened then and two company guards entered. Barbeau had obviously signaled for them when I’d started getting loud. Unfortunately for them I was in the mood to hit something. Right after I’d gotten out of the hospital, after the accident, I’d started in martial arts classes, to build up my muscle tone, my coordination. I’d never stopped, because I’d taken a liking to it. I’d switched disciplines a number of times over the years. I had a whole battery of reflexes.

I left both guards unconscious and Barbeau trying to tell me that Matthews was always quick and merciful. I stalked out and went back to see Big Mac. Before I was taken at gunpoint, I had transmitted the entire contents of our Double Z file to the Interstate Commerce Commission’s computer.

I was held prisoner for three days after that, and I was not physically abused. First, he sent Ann to try to talk me back into the fold, but I was onto her trick of seeing my objections before I voiced them and having the best possible reply ready. This time it was a little different. She couldn’t change the facts and I wasn’t buying anything she had on the menu. She seemed saddened by my attitude, as if I were blaming her personally for everything.

Willy Boy himself actually came around later, and I thought that the show was over for me. But not yet. In an almost eloquent way, interspersed with Biblical quotations which didn’t really apply, he tried to justify himself. Angra was the Chosen People and he was the Joshua for Barbeau’s Moses. For a moment, he almost seemed pathetic, but then I remembered how much he got paid for his expertise.

“You’re talking in tongues about nothing of interest to me,” I told him. “And you don’t really believe all that yourself.”

He smiled.

“Okay, Steve. How ’bout lookin’ at it this way, then—Marie and me, we just mess up the competition. You and Ann are the ones who really bring in the goodies. The stuff you bring home is more technical and more important. That makes you important. Forget about what you might think are right and wrong. You’re on the winning side. You can write your own ticket, not skitter around like a hog on ice. If you still feel bad ten years from now, when you’re really on top, that’ll be the time to repent. You’ll be in a position for all kinds of good works to ease your conscience. I know all about consciences…”

I shook my head.

I just don’t see it that way.”

He sighed. He shrugged.

“All righty. I can tell The Boss I tried. Want a drink?”

“Yeah.”

He passed me his hip flask and I took a pull. He took a generous one himself before he restored it to his pocket.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Get it over with.”

He looked startled.

“Sorry if I made that seem like your last meal. I’ve got no orders to send you to your reward yet.”

“Do you know what Barbeau’s going to do with me?”

“Nope. He hasn’t said. See you around.”

And that was the last time I’d seen him till he tried to kill me in Philadelphia.

It wasn’t until later that Barbeau, flanked by armed guards, gave me the pitch himself, in very obvious sociological terms. My answer was still the same.

He pursed his lips.

“What are we going to do with you, Steve?”

“I can guess.”

“I’d rather not. Hate to see a talent like yours wasted, especially when you could change your mind one day. Who knows what time might bring?”

“You going to keep me locked up for a few years to find out?”

“I was thinking of a more congenial way for you to pass the time.”

“Oh?”

“How would you like to be someone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t have you walking around, knowing everything you know. My contacts at ICC were able to dispose of your message properly. At least, I think that matter’s closed. Hate to have to send Willy Boy to Washington at this point. He should never have to waste his time there on anything less than a congressman.” He chuckled at his own wit. “Now, I can’t just wait around and wonder what you’ll do next time. So you’ve just earned yourself a very long leave of absence—maybe permanent.”

“Meaning?”

“A good doctor can do wonders with hypnosis and drugs. New identity. A whole new set of memories. It’s even easier, I understand, if the patient is cooperative. Now, if the alternative is death and the new life promises to be one long, pleasant vacation, what would any sane man say?”

“You’ve got a point there,” I said, after a time.

… And I dreamed of Baghdad and awoke to palm trees.

I watched the sun go down, lighting low clouds. I was tired. My crazy sleep schedule of the past few days was getting to me. The lights of advancing traffic became a molten stream in my aching eyes. There was no sense in pushing on to Dallas and arriving dead beat. I located a motel outside Texarkana, came up with another new name and paid cash again, just to be cautious. I showered, went out and found a diner, ate, came back and went to bed.

That should have been the end of it for the day, but as I lay there, drifting between sleep and wakefulness, my mind moved toward the nearest focus of data processing activity. A telex, receiving reservations, was chattering away somewhere nearby.

Chattet-tet-ter.

… Low-level stuff, hardly even recreational for the semi-conscious. Yet I drifted with it—somewhere…

“Hello”—flat and mechanical, her entire being. For a moment, I forgot that she was dead…

“Hi, Ann.”

“Hello.”

… Slowly, an awareness that something was wrong came over me. Her image was superimposed upon a twinkling array of lights—a magic loom? consciousness weaving?

Memory crept back.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“Happened…” she repeated. “I am—here.”

“How do you feel?”

“Feel… Where are my flowers?”

“Oh, they’re around. What—what have you been doing?”

“I am not all here,” she said then, as if just discovering it. “I—doing? Waking. I think—waking. Waking up.”

“Is there something you want?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“I do not know. More. Yes, more. And my flowers…”

“Where are you?”

“I am—here. I—”

… And then the lights faded and she was gone.

I woke up and thought about it for a time. It had seemed as if she were somehow being turned into a computer program. Not a terribly advanced one, at this point. It seemed as if her mind were somehow preserved in a manner similar to a body’s being maintained on a heart-lung machine. Basic, low-level functioning. How? Why?

I was too tired to return to the data-net and look for answers. A deep, black sleep was rushing toward me…

I cast my plans over an early breakfast. Whether it was impatience or a hunch, I decided to switch modes of transportation in Dallas if I could. I was beginning to feel more confidence in my abilities.

From breakfast to Dallas was not a bad ride; a bit dusty in places, a bit gusty in others, but I made it out to the big Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport in good time. I left the bike in the lot there and found out from an information unit the section of the terminal from which the Dallas to El Paso shuttle departed. I also learned that it routinely stopped at Carlsbad and at Angra Test Facility Number Four. Then I cleaned myself up, had lunch at a counter and rode the monorail to the proper building.

When I arrived, I studied the posted schedule. There were several shuttle flights that afternoon and evening.

Then I went and sat down in a deserted section of the waiting area. I could feel all of the computer activity around me. Since Angra was responsible for this whole damned trip, I decided that they ought to start footing the bill.

I coiled and worked my way eastward through the data-net. Nothing as spectacular as my earlier raid on Big Mac was in order now. The information I wanted would not be in Double Z. By comparison, it would almost be lying about in plain sight. I was still very fresh on the first, outer layer of defenses, and I passed through them like smoke through a window screen.

Angra, too, had multiple-input credit accounts—different ones for different executive levels. I selected a sufficiently high one that it might give me priority on the shuttle—like bumping some lower-grade executive—as Angra appeared to be a steady customer with reserved blocs of seats on the thing. Then, in a whimsical mood, I added Donald Elpat to the list of Angra executives entitled to use that account. Even if the airline were to check back now, I had my bona fides. But why go halfway?

Next, I instructed Big Mac to make the reservation for Elpat, for a seat on the next shuttle. I waited for a confirmation.

I coiled out then, jotted the account number on a scrap of paper from my wallet and rehearsed it until I could call it quickly to mind. Then I went over to the desk, told the man I was Elpat and that I wanted my ticket. I passed him my doctored card at which he did not even glance, save to orient it and insert it into a slot before him. I controlled the signal, and a moment later my ticket emerged from an adjacent slot. He handed it to me.

“It’s not going to be landing at Angra today, though,” he said.

“Oh?”

“They’ve closed the place. The nearest you can get off is at Carlsbad.”

“How come?”

He shrugged.

“Some sort of testing, I believe.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“That gate over there,” he said, gesturing. “In about forty minutes.”

While I waited, I decided to have a cup of coffee from a machine across the way. When I got there and began fishing around, however, I discovered that I did not have the proper change. Suddenly, the machine clicked and hummed. A cup descended onto the gridwork and began to fill. Black, the way I liked it.

I smelled violets, and then heard Ann’s voice, as if she were standing beside me.

“Fortify yourself,” she said. “I’m buying.”

The violets had faded and the sense of her presence had vanished before the cup was completely filled. I didn’t know what to make of that one. But, “Thanks,” I said, as I raised the plastic hatch and took the steaming cup back to the waiting area. It couldn’t be larceny, I decided later, since it’s a bigger crime to take anyone’s money for that bad a cup of coffee.

I studied the other people who were gradually populating the waiting area. The possibility had only just occurred to me that someone I had known back in my Angra days might be on the flight. Barbeau had kept his little group of specialists pretty much apart from the regular run of employees; but still, we were all acquainted with some of them. Most of my associates, though, had been in data processing and none of them seemed to be about. It was not difficult to tell who the Angra people were, though. One had but to listen for a few moments. They were the ones bitching about having to get off in Carlsbad and wait around, eating and drinking and loafing at company expense, poor devils.

We finally boarded, and I sequestered myself behind a magazine. The automatic takeoff was uneventful, as was the first half hour or so of the flight. Then, suddenly, Ann was talking to me and I closed my eyes and saw her, standing beneath a highly polished-looking tree with a mirrorlike finish, clusters of metal flowers about her, gleaming with machine oil, riveted to the surface on which she stood. And she stood there as if at attention, eyes straight ahead, arms down at her sides, heels together.

“It’s, it’s, it’s,” she said. “It knows you.”

“What does?” I said mentally.

“It which is. It gardened me here. It would care.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s… It knows you.”

“But I don’t know it.”

“Yes you do.”

Tell me about it.”

“…Going again,” I heard her say. “Back again, stronger…”

And then she was gone.

Carlsbad finally came into view. I had the impression of an oasis on a small brown river, set in the midst of a hot, lunar-looking landscape. As we flew nearer, I noted a lot of new construction around the edges of the town, a good indication that it was growing fast

Then we began to descend for a landing at a little field perhaps twenty kilometers out of town. Again, some of my fellow passengers began to complain. I could have taken over the autopilot and forced the shuttle to land us at Angra’s own field. I’d a feeling they would be a lot more disturbed at what happened to them if I were to do that.

It gave me an idea, though, that train of thought. It was no difficult trick to slip into the flight computer as we were landing and to activate a temporarily proscribed program which was already there.

The shuttle took off quickly after we had disembarked, once the field about it was cleared. It was on its way to Angra’s own field. I wondered whether they really believed I was stupid enough to approach them in that manner. It should prove mildly diverting, at any rate. I wondered how afraid of me they might have become. I kept my mind open for impressions, following the progress of the empty vehicle.

Later, as the bus bore us into town, I felt the sudden destruction of the shuttle during its descent pattern. I couldn’t tell what they’d hit it with—lasers, solar mirrors—but it went fast.

Nervous, I’d say.

Good.

I decided not to keep them in suspense too much longer. The Yellow Pages and a street guide told me everything I needed. I walked to a shop where they rented me a simple bicycle, and then I headed out of town to the southeast. Moving off.