H2O (7 page)

Kids resented me, but envied my
knowledge of computers. I could fix them better than Jim Givens, whose job it
was to fix them. I learned how to fix computers from manuals my dad had
salvaged over the years and, for a while, I was obsessed with computers.

A few families
in Clearview were lucky enough to have computers that worked and they used them
for accounting or watching movies or playing games or listening to music. But
that was about it. And when those computers broke down, these families held on
to them, hoping Jim Givens could eventually fix them. But replacement hardware
was hard to come by. Those kinds of Remnants turned up less and less, so over
the decades there were fewer and fewer working computers.

Computers were
also part of Corolaqua’s water purification system. They ran simple software.
Simple enough that Jim could work on it if necessary. A set of instructions
about the software had been passed down to him from Clearview’s previous
computer worker and that worker had gotten it from his predecessor. The focal
point of Jim’s job was to keep Corolaqua’s computers working, so the one thing
he knew well was this set of instructions. (I’d concluded that fuel towns and
electric towns must’ve also had computers that still worked, also with someone
in charge of their upkeep, but I didn’t know for sure. I did know that every
town in the Territory had a computer connected to the Line.)

Now, when it
came to any other kind of software, the story was entirely different. Jim could
rarely fix the problem, and knowledge of how to fix software was impossible to
track down. Software itself was even more impossible to track down. That’s why
Jim’s number one job was to make sure he never lost the knowledge needed to
keep Corolaqua’s primitive set-up running.

But I didn’t
need to track down new software. I could fix, modify, or improve all kinds of
software and I could write new software. My obsession with computers started
while I was living with the Levingworths. There, I taught myself programming
and learned how to modify the software behind computer games. A few years later,
I’d progressed to designing new games.

So I ended up
paying Rick back by teaching him about computer games. During the summer that
followed the Mory Aqueduct confrontation, I rebuilt a computer and gave it to
him. Then I showed him how to play all the computer games I’d collected,
modified, or designed. Within a year, his computer ran the best games in
Clearview. Every kid wanted to play them.

For Rick and
me, those games became our common ground and, as the years passed, computers,
themselves, became our common ground. Rick developed a talent for programming
and I fed that talent. After we finished high school, he became the go-to guy
for software help and, if there was a problem he couldn’t fix, I’d help him.

The day Victor
Crow walked into Rick’s house was one of those days when Rick couldn’t fix a
problem.

He was working on a project for
Ellen Sanchez, the phone operator in Clearview. Before the Virus, parent
switches in cities ran all phone service. The parent switches controlled the
remote switches in small towns (like Clearview), but after the Virus killed off
the cities, no one was left to operate the parent switches, so all phone
service broke down.

Decades later,
when the Territory finally stabilized, a few towns figured out how to manually operate
the remote switches and a basic kind of phone service was restored. But you
could only call within your own town. This was the system that Ellen Sanchez
inherited from her predecessors. But unlike them, she wasn’t satisfied with
running the phone system like it’d always been run. She’d been one of the
smartest students in school (though she’d kept that hidden), but now wanted to
apply her smarts. She wanted to computerize the mechanical system of switching,
so she began to work on an algorithm to do that.

It took her a
while, but she came up with one. Then she asked Rick to convert it into a
computer program and it took him a while, too, but he came up with one. Ellen
implemented the program and it worked pretty well, but it had a few bugs. Some
calls weren’t going through. So she asked Rick to do more work on it and he
asked me to come over and help.

Rick and I were going through the
original coding of the algorithm. We were in the basement and two Fibs were
upstairs. These were two of the three dozen in town, preparing for the rumored
marauder attack. Mrs. Levingworth was hosting them and so far they’d pretty
much ignored Rick, which was fine with him.

I went
upstairs to use the bathroom and I heard the front door open and close. Then a
voice said, “Are we alone?” The voice was deep and unassailable, the voice of a
man who didn’t like to be questioned.

“No, sir,”
came the answer.

“Then clear
the house,” the voice said.

I headed back
to the basement and told Rick that the Fibs were about to kick us out. We’d
have to work at my house. So he started downloading the program but didn’t get
too far when the basement door opened.

I saw polished
black boots descending the stairs. The boots gave way to a pair of crisp brown
pants and a pressed brown shirt. The Fib uniform. Only this uniform was more
distinguished than all the other uniforms I’d seen around town. It wasn’t
decorated with medals or signs of rank, but it still looked like it belonged to
someone in command. Maybe it was the silver belt buckle that gave that
impression. A polished silver block with no insignia, perfect in its simplicity
and beauty.

The man behind
that silver buckle made it to the bottom of the staircase. Victor Crow. A big
man. Composed, controlled, and confident. But there was an undertone of menace
to that confidence.

“Gentlemen,
you’re going to have to clear out of the house for thirty minutes or so,” he
said.

“No problem,”
Rick said, glancing at the computer to see how the download was going. “Another
four minutes and we’ll be out of your way.”

Crow’s
attention went to the computer. “What are you working on?”

“Helping our
phone operator,” Rick said.

Crow’s eyes
shifted from the computer to the external hard drives, then to the cables. “How
are you helping the phone operator?” he said. The subtext was clear: Don’t lie
to me.

Rick, nervous,
glanced at me, and I answered, “We’re working on a computer program to route
phone calls.”

“Phone
switching doesn’t need computers. It’s mechanical,” Crow said.

Right then I
knew that the Territory’s top cop was smart. In a time when knowledge was
scarce and when workers knew only what they had to know to do their jobs, he
knew more than his job required. Way more.

Crow stared at
me like he was waiting for further explanation. His expression was hard and I
saw that menace wanting to break out.

“She came up
with an automated way to do the switching,” I said.

“And why did
she bring you two in on it?” he said.

The only
answer was that we knew software, but I sensed that blurting that out was a big
mistake. Still, I had no choice. “Because I know a little about programming,” I
said.

I hoped that
by saying ‘I’ instead of ‘we,’ I was protecting Rick. I owed him that and much
more.

“That’s a rare
talent,” Crow said. He looked at Rick, “Do you have it, too?”

Before Rick
could answer, I said, “No.” I was determined to bail him out.

Crow looked
back at me. “And the phone operator? Does she know how to program?”

“No,” I said,
“That’s why she came to me with the idea.” I was digging my own grave, but I was
keeping Rick out of his. And Ellen.

Crow stared at
me for a few seconds as if he were preparing to pass final judgment. But before
he could, the other Fibs came down the stairs. They didn’t say a word. They
probably felt the danger hanging in the air.

“Destroy the
computer and other equipment,” Crow said.

The two Fibs
moved to the computer and one of them pushed it off the table. It crashed down
onto the concrete floor and the Fib kicked in its screen with his thick boot,
then stomped on it, again and again, until the computer was nothing but broken
pieces of plastic and smashed circuits.

Rick and I
tried not to betray any emotion.

The other Fib
knocked the external drives to the floor and stomped on them, crushing them
into oblivion.

Crow said to
me, “We all have jobs to do and I don’t know what yours is, but I know it’s not
programming. That’s not a job.” He headed back upstairs with his men in tow. He
didn’t have to say anything more.

There was no
actual law against working on computers, but everyone in the Territory did
their jobs and nothing more. That was the key to order, and order was the key
to survival. Crow saw me as a threat to that order and that’s what he’d
basically said.

But I wasn’t
enough of a threat to follow up on. At least, not yet. He didn’t pursue me, or
Rick, or Ellen. And after he left Clearview, I never saw him again.

Until today.

From the cover of the woods, I
watched Crow and his men climb into one of the SUVs and pull out of the lodge’s
parking lot. I wondered if he’d come to Yachats for the same reason he had come
to Clearview. The threat of a marauder attack. Or had he come because of the
water? But he must’ve already known about the storage facility. Even though
each town didn’t know much about other towns, the Fibs knew everything about
each and every town. It was their job to know. That’s how they kept order.

I watched
Crow’s SUV drive down the road and out of sight, then focused back on the
parking lot. The other SUVs meant that other Fibs were still in the lodge, so
stealing a car was out. It’d be safer to continue hiking toward town and check
houses along the way for another car. So that’s what I did.

I kept parallel to the road, but
stayed hidden in the forest. I passed a few isolated houses, but none of them
boasted cars. As I moved closer to town, I started to wonder if turning myself
in was a better idea. If the Fibs had bigger fish to fry, like preventing a
marauder attack, maybe they’d forgive my panicked escape and overlook the fact
that I didn’t have a proper visa. And even if they didn’t overlook it, at least
I’d know my fate. Five years in the penitentiary in Devinbridge.

Still, the
thought of being locked up wasn’t too appealing. So I convinced myself again
that there was just enough chaos in the Territory that if I were able to get
back to Clearview without causing any more trouble, the Fibs might forget about
me or just let me go. Like Crow had done the first time around. And this line
of thinking led to another decision. I wouldn’t steal a car. Stealing a car
meant breaking more laws and that played against settling back into Clearview
without further trouble.

My new plan
was to get to the Corolaqua van. If the Fibs had left it alone, I’d drive it
back to Clearview. So I changed course and headed toward the storage facility.
On the way, I considered just how I’d be able to drive out of Yachats without
getting stopped by Fibs.

Thirty minutes later, as I was
hiking past a dilapidated house, tucked in the woods, I heard shouting. I
looked back and saw a lanky, old man, wielding a shotgun and herding a woman
out of a shed. The woman had beautiful lemon blond hair which was disheveled,
like she’d just woken up, and she was swinging a large backpack onto her
shoulders.

I slipped
behind a tree and watched.

The old man
was pushing the woman forward with his shotgun and yelling at her, “Get the
hell off my land,” even though that’s exactly what she was doing. When he
finally pushed her onto the road, he added, “I’m calling the police, you
goddamn marauder.”

At that point,
the woman could’ve walked away. There wasn’t any reason to aggravate the old
man any more than he was already aggravated. But she didn’t walk away. Instead,
she turned back and said, “Go ahead and call the police. You get seven years
for a gun. I get one for trespassing. You lose.” Her defiance animated her
green eyes.

“You’re a
goddamn crazy one,” the old man shot back. Then he lifted his shotgun, taking
aim at the woman’s head.

“I
am
a
crazy one,” she said and started down the road.

I was hooked.
By her fierceness. A fierceness that was as striking as her beauty.

From a safe distance, I followed
her. She stuck to the open road and I stuck to the dark forest. I kept
expecting her to veer into the woods and couldn’t understand why she was hiking
in plain sight. If the old man did end up calling the police, she’d be walking
right into their hands. Maybe, she didn’t care. Maybe she wasn’t a deserter or
a marauder.

After five
minutes or so, she suddenly stopped and looked back into the woods. “Why are
you following me?” she said.

I thought I
was too far back to be heard, but I should’ve realized from her backpack that
she knew which sounds belonged to the wilderness and which didn’t.

I approached
her. She stood her ground. “You scared?” she said.

“I’m not so
sure it’s a good idea for us to chat out there in the open,” I said.

The hint of a
grin flashed across her lips. I’d just admitted that I
was
scared.
“Where are you from?” she said.

“Clearview.”

“A deserter,
huh?

“Not exactly.”

She tilted her
head and a ray of sunlight lit up her lemon hair.

“It’s a long
story,” I said.

“Does that
story explain why you’re hiding in the woods?”

“I could tell
it to you and you could decide for yourself.”