Everything but the Squeal

20

The telephone clanged and whirred like a chain saw poised above my forehead. I opened my eyes, saw four of everything, and closed them again. When I reopened them they had uncrossed, and the phone was still ringing.

No wonder it had sounded like it was poised above my forehead. It was. I was flat on my back on the living-room floor, looking up at the rickety wooden orange crate that supported the answering machine and the phone. I used an arm that seemed to outweigh the rest of my body to reach up and grab the receiver.

“Unghh,” I said, registering that my tongue didn't work.

“Mr. Grist?” said a voice that could have belonged only to Yma Sumac in her top register or to Morris Gurstein. Since Yma Sumac didn't have my phone number, I said, “Hlo, Mrrs.” My voice was furrier than Tammy's chinchilla.

“I've got it,” he squeaked. “It's very interesting.”

“What is?” I asked, trying without success to sit up.

“This code. I've never seen anything like it before.”

“Morris,” I said, managing it better this time. “What's on the disks?”

“Data base, like you said.” He sounded less excited. “Maybe some kind of bulletin board. Bunch of junk, if you ask me.”

“Where are you?”

“What do you mean, where am I? I'm a kid. I'm at home.”

“Yeah, right.” An alien was trying to chew its way into the world via a route that led through the center of my forehead. “I'll be right over.” I was straining my back to get the receiver anchored again when a shrill sound told me that he was still talking.

“What is it?” I said, slamming the receiver painfully against my right ear.

“Bring Jessica,” he said.

“Morris,” I said through clenched teeth as my ear throbbed, “don't be coy.”

I took a hot shower, a cold shower, and a second hot shower while the coffee brewed. I drank two cups as quickly as I could pour them, standing stark naked and dripping wet at the kitchen counter, and then took another cold shower. Then, still wet, I took four aspirin. When I climbed into Alice, a third cup of cooling coffee quaking in my hand, it was about eight a.m. outside, and grayer than the Confederate army.

Elise Gurstein, in a flowing housecoat, handed me yet another cup of coffee as I came through the door. She seemed always to be handing me things. “I didn't know,” she said apologetically. “I had no idea. I never go into Morris’ part of the house.”

“Skip it,” I said around gulps. “Kids are smarter than we are. Just give me a refill.” She did, splashing some hot coffee on my wrist, and I descended into Morris’ lair, rubbing alternately at my sore ear and my wrist. I took some encouragement from the fact that my head remained on my shoulders all the way down the stairs. I still had it on when I used what seemed like somebody else's hand to open Morris’ door.

“What took you so long?” Morris demanded. The computer screens were on and glowing, and Jessica peered at me over Morris’ shoulder. She gave me an excited grin.

“Tell you in a second,” I said, reaching over his shoulder and slapping Jessica on the cheek. I hit her harder than I'd intended to, and she toppled to the left and landed on Morris’ rumpled bed, on top of a heap of school books that I recognized as hers. Somebody else's hand tingled from the force of the blow.

“Hey,” Morris said protectively, assuming the half-assed karate stance of wimps the world over. Jessica looked at me in sheer disbelief, then looked at Morris, and started to bawl. I brushed aside Morris, who was trying to figure out which fist should point palm-up, and stood over her.

“You self-centered little shit,” I snarled. My forehead was wet and aching and probably green with sweat. “I saw a dead girl last night. That was my second in a few days. Another one is still missing, and maybe she's dead too. How do you think their parents feel? You've had enough to do with this that you should know better. Annie and Wyatt are my friends, and they're your friends too, even if you're too dumb to know it. How dare you do this to them?”

“We didn't do anything,” she sniffled. “I slept in Morris’ data room.”

“She did,” Morris said, abandoning his lethal pose after one last futile pass at getting it right.

“Shut up, Morris.” I wiped my forehead with the hand that had the coffee in it and poured some on my nose. “I don't care if you slept on a bed of nails,” I said to Jessica. “Your parents didn't know where you were.”

“They hit me.”

“My golly, my gosh. The brutes. Well, now I've hit you too. Maybe we know something you don't.”

She turned over on her stomach and cried into Morris’ pillow, abandoning logic in favor of something that usually worked. I wiped the coffee off my nose, gave her rear a thwack with the back of my hand, and turned to Morris.

“You're a jerk too,” I said. “What did you think you were doing, guarding the ideal of justice?” He gave me a startled look that told me that that was exactly what he'd thought he'd been doing. “Listen,” I said, trying for a tone of sanity and taking one of his hands in mine as I sat on the bed next to Jessica's heaving back. I balanced the coffee against her thigh. “I'm here this morning because there are people in the world who think that kids like you and Jessica are merchandise. Some of the kids they sell are dead. Some of the others probably wish they were. Your parents, hers and yours, Morris, aren't monsters. They're trying to help you get to the point where you can tell the monsters from the human beings. That's all. They know they can't make you happy for your whole lives. They know you're going to fuck up and make mistakes.”

Morris made a dismissive gesture with his free hand, and I caught it. Now I had both of them, and he looked faintly uneasy. “You're going to marry some twit who beats you or cheats on you or takes everything you've earned,” I said. “You're going to vote for the wrong presidential candidate and go to work at some job that grinds your soul to dust. You're going to wake up some morning when you're forty-five and look around you and realize that you're living someone else's life by mistake and that it's too late to change your mind. Those are things they can't do anything about. But they can protect you from monsters while you're still too young and dumb to see them for yourselves, and you have to let them do it. Hell,” I said, “give them a break, okay? It's not like they think they're going to get anything out of it. They do it, even though they'll probably fail, because they love you.”

Morris looked down at Jessica on the bed. He looked like a man watching a sparrow fall. She'd given up on crying. I let go of his hands.

“I told her she should go home,” he said to her back.

“You've got to take love where you find it,” I said to Jessica. “There's not so much of it in the world that you can turn your nose up at it.”

“They hit me,” she said again, her face buried in the pillow.

“You're breaking my heart,” I said.

“Well,” she said, rolling onto her back and wiping her eyes on her sleeve, “they shouldn't have.” The coffee cup tilted over and made a brown stain on Morris’ bed. There were a lot of stains on Morris’ bed, so I gave up on it.

“You're going home with me. Your home, not mine.”

She looked at Morris, who immediately focused on one of the computer screens. She swallowed and then nodded. “But you can't let them hit me.”

“I'll see to it.” I looked up at Morris, hovering over us. “And you,” I said, “you have to promise not to kill me with a flying fist when my back is turned.”

He considered it in all seriousness. “Okay,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Let's look at the disks.”

As Morris busied himself with the computers, Jessica pulled herself up to a sitting position, took one last wipe at her face, wiped the coffee off her jeans, and tucked her knees under her arms. “Do you know what's on these?” I asked.

“I've seen them,” she said. “I don't have any idea what they mean.”

“I figured it out about six,” Morris said, doing something esoteric to a keyboard. “I woke her up and we looked at it, and then we called you.”

“Six? You mean, in the morning? What time did you get up?”

“He didn't,” Jessica said with a note of concealed pride. “He got me started on my math at about ten last night and then came in here. The next thing I knew, he woke me up to tell me that he'd busted it.”

“You worked all night?” I said. I wanted to hug him.

“I'm a kid,” Morris said. “Kids don't need as much sleep as old people.”

“You win,” I said. “Let's look at them.”

“Hold on,” he commanded, back in his element, “let me bring the first one up.”

Keys clacked, and then he grunted. I patted Jessica on the head in a paternal, old person's fashion, picked up the empty cup, and peeked over his shoulder. Morris was looking at a screen full of words. I'd seen it before.

“Morris,” I said, feeling disappointed, “I got that far.” I was considering a new career.

“This is real cute,” Morris said, gazing at the screen as though it were TheLastSupper and he'd just bought it to hang on his wall among the fractals or whatever they were. “It looks just like word processing. In fact, it is, it's Wordstar, one of the later upgrades. Now watch.” He typed a few words and a warning came up at the bottom of the screen:

DISK FULL.

“I've gotten that far too.” Maybe I should go back to teaching, I thought. Tenure, pretty young students, regular office hours. It all looked a lot better to me than it had while I was doing it.

“But you haven't gotten this far,” Morris said triumphantly. He typed the word and, and added a question mark.

“My sentiments exactly,” I said.

He hit Enter.

The words fell away, and instead of a bunch of impenetrable math I found myself looking at a data-base entry just like the one I'd seen on Birdie's console. It read like this:

RECORD 1. (186–486)1. 3088 Compton Blvd., Bellflower, CA 90266 (213) 555-12962. 4 yrs3. Turkey4. CURRENT5. ORDERSa. Fingers, 1200 orders, last order 1000 (913)b. Parts, 2800 orders, last order 2300 (913)c. Paper, 4000 orders, last order 3300 (913)d. Drinks, “A” category (no change) (911)6. SPECIAL ORDERSa. 188,u.r.,188(422–427)JX6b. 217,c.r., 188(517–522)CP1c. 217, c.r., 188 (523–529) UId. 202, u.l., 687 (unavailable) BXe. 226,u.r., 188(74-711)BXf. 226,u.r., 188(712–718)UIg. 193, I.e., 188(1001–1010)BX

We sat there, all three of us, and stared at it. Nobody said anything.

“Turkey?” Jessica finally said.

“It still looks like garbage,” Morris said in his soprano, “but it can't be. Look at the trouble they went to to hide it.”

“Page down,” I said. “I think there's more.”

There was. There were five more records on the disk. They all consisted of similar gobbledygook. It was a classic data-base form, the same from screen to screen. All that changed was the data, and we didn't have any idea what it meant.

“Fingers,” Morris said, flipping through the forms. “Parts. Paper. Drinks.” He shrugged. “All the disks are more or less the same.”

“Let me sit down,” I said.

He gave me a look full of deep misgiving. “Which keys are you going to touch? I haven't backed these up and I don't want you to trash them.”

“I'll touch the keys you tell me to touch. Now get up.” He did, and I sat. “Page down, right?” I asked. “That moves me to the next screen.”

“Right,” Morris said, “but be careful.”

The next screen, even upon closer examination, looked pretty much like the last screen. So did the others.

“Concentrate on one field,” Morris suggested.

“What's a field?” Jessica asked.

“The little answers after the periods. Each one of those answers is a field. The whole thing is called a record.”

“Let's look at the first disk,” I said, pulling out the floppy that Morris had put in and inserting the one I'd labeled one, in imitation of Birdie. The top of the screen read: record 1. (186–486). “Since we haven't got anything else to do, let's look for numerical sequences.”

There weren't any. The numbers were the same at the top of every record. They all read: (186–486).

“That's real productive,” I said. “Let's look at the other numbers.”

We did. We flipped from record to record. Some numbers seemed to have a logical sequence and some didn't. One thing did change: the words after the period following the number three. I wrote them down as we paged through the records, and then we all sat and looked at the page I'd written on.

‘Turkey,” Jessica read. “Inthe. Straw. Hollered. Begged. Hotwater.” She looked at both of us and shrugged.

‘They're code words,” Morris said. “If this is a bulletin board, which I think it is, these are the words people use to access the board. All the users have secret words. Without them, they can't get into the data base.”

“What's a bulletin board?” Jessica said.

“It's just a data base that people reach by telephone. See all the phone numbers? You use the modem in your computer to dial a number and then you've got to give a code to get to the information. If you use the wrong code, the bulletin board disconnects. There are dating services that work like that,” Morris said, blushing becomingly. “The people who called this board probably typed in these names, and that was their code.”

“Look at the other disks,” I said, getting up.

Morris dealt disks into the slots like an old Vegas hand playing a new form of computer poker. Each of the other disks contained six records, just like the first. The same six words, or combinations of words, came after number three on each disk.

“They're duplicates,” I said, feeling disappointed.

“Turkey in the Straw,” Morris said suddenly, looking at the page. “That's a kind of folk song, some kind of hillbilly music.”

“Yeah?” I said, grasping literally at straws. “How does it go?”

“Mom,” Morris bellowed. I quailed nervously, and Jessica retreated a step. “She'll know,” Morris said in explanation. “She and my dad are into hayseed music. They're old-fashioned liberals.”

“Poor you,” Jessica said with the new conservatism of the American teenager.

Elise Gurstein came to the door. “More coffee?” she asked.

“Sing, Mom,” Morris commanded. ” Turkey in the Straw.’ ”

“Morris,” Elise Gurstein said, looking flustered. “Surely you jest. It's nine-fifteen. I can barely talk at this hour.”

“Then get Dad.”

“He's asleep. They shot until three last night. Morris’ father is in television,” she said to me.

“You get the part, then,” Morris said mercilessly. ” Turkey in the Straw.’ You and Dad know all those chestnuts.”

“This is more than a trifle embarrassing,” Elise Gurstein said to me. “Especially since I don't know the words.”

“Just ‘deedle, deedle,’ ” Morris said. “This could be important.”

“It had better be,” said his mother. “Okay, but all of you have to turn your backs.” We did, and I heard her draw a deep breath. “Ohhh,” she sang in a pure soprano, “De deedle deedle deedle and de deedle deedle de. And de deedle deedle deedle, deedle de de de.”

“Again,” Morris commanded.

“I know the words,” Jessica said, cutting Elise off in mid-deedle. “My dad used to sing it sometimes when he was carrying Luke and me around on his back.” She looked down at the pad. “Oh, Jesus,” she said.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“They're here, sort of,” she said. Then she sang: Oh, the little chickie hollered And the little chickie begged, And they poured hot water Up and down his leg.

“That's pretty morbid,” Elise Gurstein said reprovingly. Words like those weren't in the Liberals' Children's Songbook.

“It's a children's song,” Jessica said. “Or that's what Daddy says.”

“Hot water,” I said. Something connected in my mind, with the force of a bolt lock being shot home. I heard the gush of water echoing on a tape cassette, almost drowning out Aimee Sorrell’s screams.

“They've left out Chickie,” Jessica observed, scanning the words I'd written.

“Is the concert finished?” Elise Gurstein asked. “Can I go back upstairs now?”

“I guess so,” I said. She left.

“So that's it,” Morris said. “Maybe they're all folk singers. Maybe this is a folk singers' bulletin board. They all get together on Saturday nights and clog-dance.”

“They're not anything that dull,” I said. “Look, we've got one sequence already. The words occur in the song in the same order as the records. One is ‘Turkey,’ two is ‘Inthe,’ and so forth. Let's look for other sequences, numbers, this time.”

“There aren't any,” Jessica said. “We already did that.”

“Not on a single disk, there aren't. But what about if we look from disk to disk?”

“Wait,” Morris said. “I'll load them onto the hard disk and then we can look at them all without having to change disks all the time.” He did some magic at the keyboard, and two minutes later we were able to page from disk to disk as well as from record to record.

“Look at the numbers at the top,” I said, “the ones we were looking at before.”

After five minutes we'd found the progression.

The disk I'd labeled one had in parentheses the numbers (186–486). There were similar numbers in parentheses on each of the records on the disk. The disk I'd numbered two identified all the records on it as spanning (586–986). three began with (1086-187). Morris hadn't copied them to the hard disk in numerical order, so it took a little longer than it would have otherwise.

“They're dates,” I said conjecturally. “One-eighty-six means January 1986. Look at them all. They're a continuous record. Disk one ends with April 1986, and disk two begins with May 1986. They're not duplicates, they're some sort of chronological record. ’ ’

We all looked at the screen.

“Yes,” Morris said, rubbing his chin with an oddly middle-aged gesture. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?” Jessica demanded, sounding like her old self.

“Then some of the numbers following the orders and the special orders are dates too,” Morris said. “Just put a slash in between the first or second number and the last two. Look, all the numbers to the right are sequential top to bottom. Special order A lasted from April 22 to April 27. Special order B goes from May 17 to May 22, and special order C is May 23 to May 29. I think you're right.”

“It's Simeon's job to be right,” Jessica said.

“Why no years in those fields?” I asked, thinking out loud.

“Because the year is at the top,” Morris said in the patient tone of one who had to break the news to a half-wit. “This disk covers January 1988 to October 1988.”

“Wooey,” Jessica said, staring at the screen.

“There's another sequence,” Morris announced to the room at large, paging through the records and the disks. “Look: 1200 orders of fingers, 2800 orders of parts: 4,000 orders of paper. So fingers and parts equal paper. See? The amount of paper equals the number of parts and fingers added together.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said, moderating my awe at Morris’ expertise. Addition had never been a comfortable subject. “Can you print this one out?”

“Sure,” Morris said confidently, “no prob.”

“Before you do, type in the dates.”

Humming to himself, Morris typed for a few minutes, then hit a couple of keys, and said, “Here it comes.”

Something behind me panted and then whirred. I turned to see a laser printer. After a moment it stuck out a tongue of white paper at us.

“This is really neat,” Jessica said, grabbing the sheet. She put it on the desk and we all gathered around it. Now it looked like this:

RECORD 1. (April 88-October 88)1. 3088 Compton Blvd., Bellflower, CA 90266 (213) 555-12962. 4 yrs3. Turkey4. CURRENT5. ORDERSa. Fingers, 1200 orders, last order 1000 (September 13)b. Parts, 2800 orders, last order 2300 (September 13)c. Paper, 4000 orders, last order 3300 (September 13)d. Drinks, “A” category (no change) (September 11)6. SPECIAL ORDERSa. 188,u.r., January 88 (April 22-April 27) JX6b. 217, c.r., January 88 (May 17-May 22) CP1c. 217, c.r., January 88 (May 23-May 29) UId. 202, u.l., June 87 (unavailable) BXe. 226, u.r., January 88 (July 4-July 11) BXf. 226, u.r., January 88 (July 12-July 18) UIg. 193,l.c.,January88(October l-October 10) BX

“What the hell happens only in January or June? And what are the numbers on the left? What's u.l.? What's u.r.?” I asked. There was a long silence, followed by a mutual shrug.

“Look at the other disks,” I said, and Jessica and I looked over Morris’ shoulder as he toggled some key or another to bring disk after disk to the screen. As he did so, a number caught my eye.

“Back up,” I said. “No, not that one, the one before it.”

The record I wanted came obediently back to the screen and sat there glowing a comfortable green. “Well, I'll be damned,” I said.

“Which number?” Morris said, eyeing the screen intently.

“The phone number,” I said. “At the top.”

“What about it?” That was Jessica.

“I picked it up off Birdie's memory dialing buttons. I called it a couple of times.”

“And?” Morris said, popping his knuckles in his eagerness.

“The guy who answered it said ‘Captain's.’ When I asked him Captain who, he hung up. Find me a number with an L.A. area code.”

Morris found two. “That one,” I said, stopping him at the Bellflower screen. “I got the same answer there.”

Morris did something, and I found myself looking at another screen with an L.A. address and area code.

“I didn't have that number.”

“You've got it now,” he said. “Fingers, parts, paper, drinks. The Captain.” Suddenly he giggled. “Chickie. Oh, my gosh, chickie. Come on, Jessica,” he said. “What's there? Sixty-one-sixty Sunset. Fingers, parts, paper, drinks, chickie, the Captain. What's there? Think single-digit I.Q.”

“How should I know?” she said defensively.

“Full of idiots. Wearing masks. The most bogus place to eat in the whole wide world. Fingers, Jessica.”

“Morris,” she said reverently. It was a tone I hadn't heard from her since Wyatt explained how the world was round, when she was six. “That's brilliant.”

Morris glowed modestly while I sat there feeling like a floor lamp. “Listen,” I said after they'd simpered at one another for a few moments, “I hate to intrude on the communing of true spirits, but what's there?”

“The Captain's,” Morris said. Then he extended a hand, vaudeville-style, to Jessica, and said, “Ta-da.”

“Cap’n Cluckbucket’s,” she said, slapping his palm. “The world's corniest fast-food restaurant.” She gave Morris a blinding smile, and he ducked back toward the keyboard as if he were afraid her smile would blow his head off.

“Cap’n Cluckbucket’s,” I repeated in complete incomprehension, but even before I breathed in I knew what they meant. “Chicken,” I said. “Chicken fingers. Chicken parts. Drinks. Paper for serving all that crap on. Guys in chicken suits.”

“Paper masks. Cute little beaks and rooster combs,” Morris said.

I got up. “Listen, Morris,” I said, “can you get into this data base and screw around with it? Change it around, make it do things?”

“Probably.” He looked at Jessica for approval. “Why?”

“I don't know yet. I just need to know that you can do it.”

He hesitated and then decided on bravado. “Sure I can,” he said.

“Where are you going?” Jessica said.

“I'm hungry,” I said, going through the door and up the stairs and into the nonfractal world. As I'd promised, I dropped Jessica at home. As a bonus I fended off her ferocious parents before heading Alice into Hollywood.