The Gold Coast

68

Jim sleeps on his living room couch through the day, curled on his side around a tensely knotted stomach. He wakes often, each time more exhausted than the last. Every time he gains enough autonomy to pull himself upright, he calls Hana. No answer, no answering machine. More uneasy, unrestful sleep. His dreams are sickening, the problems in them more outlandishly insoluble than ever before. In the last of them he dreams he and all his friends have been captured by the Russians and held in the Kremlin. He tries to escape through a pinball machine, but the glass top slides back too quickly and cuts off his head. He has to climb back out and go through the ordeal of finding his head without the help of his eyes, then place the head back on his neck and balance it there very carefully. No one will believe he is walking around with his head chopped off. Premier Kerens, in a uniform with lots of medals, is flanked by Debbie and Angela and Gabriela, all wearing nothing but underwear bottoms. “Okay,” the premier says, holding up a device like an artificial hand that will cut out hearts. “You choose which one goes first.”

He wakes up sweating, his stomach clenched as if by cramp.

About two P.M. he tries Hana again, and she answers.

“Hello?”

“Ah? Oh! Hana! It’s Jim. I’ve… been trying to get hold of you.”

“Have you.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t home. Listen, ah, Hana—”

“Jim, I don’t feel like talking to you right now.”

“No, Hana, no—I’m sorry!”

But she’s hung up.

“Shit!” He slams down the phone so hard it almost cracks. After a moment he dials the number again. Busy signal, hateful sound. She’s left the phone off the cradle. No chance for contact. It’s so stupid! “Oh, man.”

He wants to go up there, beg her forgiveness. Then he gets angry at the unfairness of it, he wants her to beg his forgiveness, for being so unreasonable. “Come on! I was just having dinner with a friend! After the funeral of another friend!” But that isn’t exactly true. He pulls his big Mexican cookbook from the shelf and furiously slams it to the floor, kicks it across the kitchen. Very satisfying, until the moment he stops.

An hour later, angrier than ever, he calls up Arthur. “Arthur, have you got anything ready to go?”

“Well—come on over and we’ll talk about it.”

Jim tracks over to Arthur’s place in Fountain Valley. Arthur’s face is flushed, he is in a strong field of excitement, he takes Jim’s upper arm in a tight grip and grins. “Okay, Jim, we’re on for another strike, but this one’s a little different. The target is Laguna Space Research.” His straightforward blue gaze asks the obvious question.

Jim says, “What about the night watchmen they made the announcement about?”

“They’ve been taken out of the plants and are out on the perimeter.”

“Why?” Jim doesn’t understand.

Arthur shrugs. “We’re not sure. Someone bombed a computer company’s plant up in Silicon Valley, and a janitor inside was killed. Not our doing, but LSR doesn’t know that. So they’re going to automatic defenses and a perimeter watch. It’s going to be a little more dangerous. We’ve got them all running scared. But this time—well, I wasn’t going to call you, because it was LSR.”

Jim nods. “I appreciate it. But it’s the ballistic missile defense system we’re going after, right?”

“Right. LSR has the lion’s share of the boost-phase defense, Ball Lightning as they call it. A successful strike against it could be devastating.” Arthur’s excitement is evident in the tightness of his grip on Jim’s arm.

“I want to do it,” Jim says.

It’s the only avenue of action left to him, and he can’t stand not to act; the tension in him would drive him mad. “My father’s in another program, this won’t have anything to do with him. Besides, it has to be done. It has to be done if anything is ever going to change!”

Arthur nods, still looking at him closely. “Good man. It’ll be easier with your help, I’ll admit that.”

Gently Jim shifts his arm out of Arthur’s grip. Arthur looks at his hand, surprised. “I’m wired,” he confesses. “It’s tomorrow night, see. Tomorrow night, and I thought I was doing it on my own.”

“Same procedure?”

“Yeah, everything’ll go just the same. Should be simple, as long as we keep a good distance away and under cover, and…”

Jim listens to Arthur absently, distracted by his own anger, by everything else. He thought the commitment to action would release some of the tension in him; instead he is more tense than ever, he almost needs to bend over, give in to the contraction of the stomach muscles. Laguna Space Research… Well, do it! None of these companies should be exempt! Something has to be done!

It’s time to act, at last.