Virtual Destruction

CHAPTER 28

The high brown grass surrounding Hal Michaelson’s ranchhouse near the rural town of Tracy made the dead scientist’s residence look like home on the range. But the dead grass was not wheat; and Michaelson’s ranch sat not in a remote area, but near where the I-580 freeway spewed commuters over the rolling Altamont hills toward San Francisco. The Friday afternoon going-home traffic made a constant, droning white noise in the air, even more than a mile from the Interstate.

Craig stepped from Paige’s MG, stretched his legs, and held a hand up to shade his sunglasses. The sun slanted low over the golden hills, making the air too yellow, too bright.

Paint peeled from Michaelson’s white two-story farmhouse. A long dirt drive ran to a circle in front of the house; an old porch held half a dozen chairs, and off to the left stood a large, rundown storage barn exactly where Craig expected to see one. Creosote-covered utility poles carried a thick above-ground powerline to the house and the barn.

Not the sort of place he expected an important Lawrence Livermore scientist to choose, Craig thought… but then Hal Michaelson had been eccentric in everything else.

Paige slammed her car door, making the only sound over the whisper of the nearby freeway. Craig expected to see a couple of big black dogs stirring to life on the porch, sauntering over to bark at visitors. But the farm remained quiet. Since he lived alone, Michaelson probably hadn’t had time to bother with pets.

Craig took off his suitjacket and folded it over the passenger seat in Paige’s green MG. He sniffed the air. “No cattle or horses around. I wonder what Michaelson kept in there.” He rolled up his shirt sleeves as he started toward the old barn. Paige followed.

Craig knocked a long metal hook out of an eye that served as the only lock on the barn door. He grunted as he shoved sideways, sliding the square plank door along a rusty track. As the afternoon light poured into the shadows, he whistled. “What in the world is all this junk?”

Open wooden crates stood in stacks against the far barn wall filled with white, pink, and green styrofoam peanuts. Big white blocks of packing material lay discarded in the grimy corners.

In the middle of the barn, a square concrete pad extended fifty feet on a side, on which rested an army of scattered old computers like a bizarre high-tech chess game. Two towering machines stood sentinel in the middle of the whole mess, thick phallic symbols six feet high. Red padded seats encircled each tower like a slanted bench.

With Paige beside him, Craig stepped into the barn. She found a light switch near the rickety door, and flicked it on, flooding the shadowy interior with light from a set of naked bulbs wired to the rafters above.

The barn smelled musty, as if it had not been aired out in a month. Standing among the dusty monitors and clunky keyboards on the concrete pad, Craig placed a hand on one of the towering machines and rubbed at a tarnished and fading placard.

“These are Cray-1s,” said Craig. “He’s got the original Cray 1 supercomputer in here, serial one.” Glancing around, he made out the hulk of another squat computer with the words CDC CYBER 6600. He spotted a CYBER 7600 and an IBM 360 occupying their own territory on the concrete slab. “Jeez, do you think he’s got an old Texas Instruments hand calculator around here, too? The kind that weighed a few pounds, cost a hundred bucks, and could add, subtract, multiply, and divide? Maybe he’s got a slide rule, or an abacus!”

Paige joined him on the concrete pad and surveyed the junk around her. “What was Michaelson doing with this stuff?”

“Who knows?” Craig said, lifting up a plastic cover and smelling the unique odor of old electronics. “They’ve got computers a million times faster than these back at the Lab. Is there a market for antique computers? I doubt it. Maybe he was just collecting them.”

“Other people collect stamps,” Paige observed.

Craig poked around the rest of the barn, but soon decided that Michaelson was probably nothing more than a high-tech pack rat. Wiping a dusty hand on his suit pants, he said, “Let’s check out the house. No telling what he’s got squirreled away in there.”

Craig dug in his pocket for the key to Michaelson’s house Tansy had given him. He rang the doorbell, just for the sake of procedure, knowing no one would answer. After a few seconds, touching his crisp new search warrant for reassurance, he slid the key into the lock.

Pushing the door open, Craig and Paige stepped into a richly decorated hallway. The walls were filled with framed photographs, some of them black and white glossies, some in color. Every one of them showed Michaelson standing and grinning with at least one other person. Craig recognized the president, the former governor of California, several senators, the House majority leader, venerable old scientists, Edward Teller, Clifford Rhoades….

Craig finally stopped. “Michaelson was well connected.”

“A lot of friends — and a lot of people who couldn’t stand him,” Paige said.

They walked past the wall of photographs to a meticulously decorated living room. It reminded Craig of his grandmother’s formal parlor. He wondered who Michaelson entertained in there.

The kitchen gave him an entirely different impression altogether: dirty dishes, aluminum TV trays, and ripped-open empty frozen-dinner boxes cluttered the sink. Green Perrier bottles, stacked three and four levels high, lined the tile counter. The smell of days’ old food made the air thick and sour.

Paige wrinkled her nose. “What a mess.”

“Think of it as a… uh, as a treasure hunt,” Craig said. “Try not to disturb too much, but we’ve got to look for those memos. I’ll look around upstairs if you want to check out the study down here.”

“Just don’t expect me to do the dishes,” she said.

“Ah, that would be destroying evidence.”

Craig walked briskly through the upstairs of the house, giving a cursory examination to the master bedroom, a guest room, and a bathroom. He found nothing. Just off the hall he saw a narrow set of wooden stairs that led up to an old door. He creaked up the stairs, feeling as if he were in an old horror movie.

But when he pushed open the dark-brown door, giving a shove with his hip to squeak it out of the old jamb, he found a perfectly normal attic through a cloud of dust. He sneezed. Craig doubted Michaelson would have found it easy to fit his large frame into the cramped, low-ceilinged attic.

He went back to the guest room and started going through the drawers of a small desk and nightstand.

Paige called upstairs. “Find anything?”

“Not yet. What about you?”

“Nothing. The guy doesn’t even have any cookbooks. For a scientist, he doesn’t own any electric gadgets either. No TV, no radio or computer. Besides the coffee maker — a vital item, I suppose — the only thing he’s got down there is an answering machine.”

Craig looked up. “Any messages on the machine?”

“Eight. Even dead, Dr. Michaelson’s a busy guy.”

Craig nudged shut the dresser drawer and stood up. “I’m coming. Let’s check it out.”

Downstairs, Craig pressed the solid-state device. A filtered voice immediately drifted up from the small speaker, “Hey, Doc Michaelson — we’ve filled your freezer with another month’s supply of Gourmet De’lite dinners. The Perrier water is under the sink. We’ve billed your account. Thanks.”

“Gee, we could stay here for a nice dinner, I suppose,” Paige suggested. Craig ignored her and moved closer to the machine.

After the fourth message came a woman’s voice, tired and disappointed. “Hal — this is Diana. Pick up if you’re there.” A pause. “Where are you? I got into Livermore last night and you’re not home. I thought you were catching the red-eye. Give me a call when you get in. I’m staying at the Pleasanton Sheraton. I must have missed you on the plane.”

Paige raised her eyebrows. “A girlfriend, you think?”

“Could be,” Craig said.

The next message, recorded some time later, was the same woman’s voice, more distraught this time. “Dammit, it’s ten o’clock in the morning and you still haven’t gotten in — or you’re not returning my calls. What the hell’s going on?” She continued to talk, and Craig listened with deepening interest.

“You might think this is all a big joke and you’ll be able to breeze past this senate confirmation, but you’re not bulletproof. Get that through your thick, arrogant skull. If they ever find out about us, it’s going to be one hell of a ride for you.”

She paused, and Craig stared at Paige. The woman, Diana, sounded as if she had been drinking. “People have had their careers ruined for far less than fucking administration officials. Talk to me — do I have to threaten you?” Then she hung up.

“A woman scorned, you suppose?” Craig suggested.

Paige’s blue eyes went wide. “Somebody else who doesn’t have Michaelson on their Favorite People in the World list.”