Harbinger (22 page)

“This one,” she said, once we’d attained the second floor, and she pushed her finger against a door marked by a simple plaque: “Mayor.”

I knocked.

The old man who answered was short and stooped. What little hair remaining on his pate was wispy as cobwebs. The wrinkly face brightened slightly at the sight of Alice. He kissed her cheek, then rubbed her head with a palsied hand. She put up with it.

When he turned his attention to me all he said was, “You’re Herrick.” And his eyes were like a pair of peeled grapes staring moistly from nests of papyrus skin. I didn’t hold my breath for a kiss.

“And you’re—”

“Ben Roos. Alice’s father.”

“Gene father,” Alice said.

Roos scowled at her. “Where’s Delilah?”

Alice looked at me. Delilah had called Roos before we departed Bedford Falls. She had assured him that I could put things right if given a chance.

“We had to split up,” I said.

He grunted. “You can fix this mess?”

“Possibly.”

He grunted again, eloquently, and turned his back. We followed him into the office. He pointed at the Core Access Interface, another big barber chair version, like the one I’d once used in Bedford Falls. At the sight of it a queer sensation passed through me. Something like fear. Then it was gone.

“There you go,” Roos said. “People could die, Mr. Herrick. I hope when you say ‘possibly’ you’re just being coy.”

“Me, too.”

I sat down and performed a soft interface with the CAI. The old man and Alice and the room and the world slipped away. The SuperQuantum environment read me and produced an analog. George. Mr. George, my seventh grade history teacher was an Ichabod Crane knock-off, only not as handsome. I’d left him in an empty classroom “correcting” student papers with a liar’s red pen, disbursing a stickman army of D’s and F’s to papers deserving of better. This was my unconscious symbolic language for the smidgen of chaos I’d intended to introduce and which, apparently, had morphed into something much more serious.

I looked over George’s shoulder. He was drawing smiley faces on the endlessly replenishing stack of papers. Huh?

“You can’t outfox me with my own toys,” Laird Ulin said, speaking through the mouth of Ichabod George, not looking up from his endless scribble of smilies.

I backed away. The room lacked windows and doors. Laird had isolated my virus and was letting me know as much. I pressed into a corner and found myself folded over to my parent’s bedroom, the way it had looked when I was an eight-year-old boy. There was another analog: Me, this time. I was rummaging through my mother’s purse. I came up with Mom’s wallet and started plucking bills out while sneaking looks over my shoulder. Sneaky. Repeat.

I fled from that scene and passed through a complex chain of interconnected vandalisms. My various analog selves set fires, kicked some kid in the balls, tortured insects and small animals, etc. Anyone else seeking problems in the SuperQuantum environment would witness their own versions of various malicious acts—but
my
individual stamp would be on every single one.

“It’s quite out of control,” Laird Ulin said.

I turned. He was sitting behind a free-floating ebony slab the thickness of a sheet of paper, fiddling with cut glass chess pieces.

“I thought George would catch you off guard,” I said.

“You forgot about shadows,” Laird said. “Or gambled one wouldn’t occur.”

“Shit. I gambled.”

Ulin grinned.

A quirk of SuperQuantum technology is the occasional quantum shadow—a future ghost in the machine. Laird must have seen my tampering before I even did it, which gave him time to do a little tampering of his own and stamp it with my personal signature—conferring upon me instant persona non grata status in The County.

I felt a weird combination of relief and resignation.

“So now I’ll come back to surgery and you’ll make things right,” I said.

Laird smiled.

The chessboard turned into a crystal display of complex quantum language: the reality behind the dramatic analogs.

“The errors are self-perpetuating,” Laird said, pointing. “I constructed it that way. Couldn’t help myself, Ellis. You made me mad this time.” He waved his hand and the chessboard returned.

“Definitely mad,” I said, picking up a knight. It was slightly tempting. Retreat was my fatal flaw and I knew it. Besides, there was nothing I could do about the quantum errors Laird had unleashed. Only he could spare The County. Hell, returning to my emotionally remote cocoon on the Command Level was practically an act of noble self-sacrifice.

“Maybe we should skip the game for now,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Laird said, taking the knight from my fingers and replacing it in its proper position on the chessboard.

“Shouldn’t you be getting busy? I nodded toward my delinquent analogs.

“There’s plenty of time,” he said. “All the time in the world. Besides, correcting these errors will be very difficult, and I’m not inclined to do it. The more miserable life is in The County, the less likely you will be to find safe haven. Ever. There will be
no more running away
, Ellis. Now why don’t we relax and have a game while the Environment sustains?”

I quoted Ben Roos: “People could die.”

Laird shrugged. He tapped a pawn on the chessboard. “Shall we play?”

“We shall not.”

Laird scowled. I inhaled deeply, withdrew from the interface, and leaned forward in the chair, rubbing my good eye. The patch had slipped a little on the other one, and I adjusted it.

Alice was gone. Ben Roos sat on the small sofa by himself with a cup of tea or something that he didn’t appear inclined to drink.

Two men flanked me. They didn’t look friendly. Something ticked against the window. The ticking increased and subsided, in waves. Rain. Wind. I looked up at the man on my right and said, “Not guilty.” He pulled a frown.

Ben Roos was staring daggers at me from the sofa. He was a pretty good dagger starer, too. Welcome back to the land of the living. Actually, I was glad to be there.
No more running away.

“Where’s Alice?” I asked.

“She’s gone off,” he said. “And if anything happens to her it will be on your head, like the rest of this mess.”

“I can explain some things,” I said.

Roos snorted. “Save your explanations.” He stood. “I’ll check the uplink. Keep Herrick here until they arrive.”

He went out.

I got up but my flankers crowded me.

“I’ll just be on my way,” I said. “I have uplinks to check, and miles to go before I sleep.”

The slightly older man shook his head. “You’re staying right here until the Command Authority comes for you.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

When I started for the door, the younger guy stood in front of me, rather beefishly.

“Have a seat, Mr. Herrick.” He grinned. “What are you supposed to be, anyway, a pirate?”

“Yo ho ho,” I said. “And what are you supposed to be, an idiot?”

He scowled impressively, and I moved into his space, held the back of his head as if I intended to kiss him, found his carotid artery with two rigid fingers, and invited him to unconsciousness. He looked surprised, then slack, then he fell.

His friend said, “Hey—” and started to reach for something in his pocket. I punched him once, hard, on the point of his chin, and he dropped.

I guess they hadn’t been expecting a fight. There were two sets of hooded raingear hanging in the corner, dripping on the carpet. I appropriated the larger set, put it on, and exited by the window. In eighty-eight percent gravity, one story is doable if you’re fussy about landing.

On the sidewalk, I pulled the hood up and kept my head down. There were dropships smoking in the street. A pair of biomechanical men with sidearms drawn entered the building I’d just exited. How long could I elude them and their ilk? I was counting on Laird correcting the quantum errors in the interest of keeping me alive until he could recover me, which is the only way
he
could remain alive. But it was a gamble. There had been more than a touch of madness in his eyes.

On the path beyond the suburbs of Waukegan a small girl’s voice squealed after me.

I turned around and smiled. “Hey, kid.”

“Hi,” Alice said. “I ran away.”

“What a coincidence.”

“Are you going to see my mom?

“Yeah.”

“Me, too.”

I thought of Delilah out there, certainly awake by now, perhaps on the path to meet us. I thought of hugs and tears, and the tightening web of relationship. I thought of letting her in through the open door in my heart which was really an unsutured wound.

The top-heavy oxygen trees tossed wildly in the wind. Dark clouds scudded overhead, dumping rain below a holographic flicker of summer. The great black gash in the sky was visible, and Alice stared upward, her lips puckered tensely.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said.

“I’m not afraid.

I picked up her little hand. “Me neither, kid,” I said. But I was a liar.

We did not encounter Delilah on the path, which was strewn with leaves and wind-ripped branches. I experienced a sinking feeling the deeper into the forest we hiked. Suppose after we left Delilah her body had manifested an allergic reaction to the tranquilizer? She had appeared so  . . .
lifeless
on that bench. I began to dread what we might find at the rest-stop. Cold dread: it’s what you get for caring.

Alice became tired of walking, and besides she couldn’t keep up with me very well.

“We’ll piggyback you,” I said.

“What’s that?”

I shook my head. “Poor ignorant child.” I explained what a piggyback ride was, and she quickly grasped the idea and climbed aboard.

Finally I saw the domed roof of the shelter, like a landed saucer among the wildly thrashing trees. I put Alice down and she immediately started for the shelter, but I grabbed her little arm and said, “Hold up.”

She looked at me and read my anxiety and borrowed some for herself.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Probably nothing, but you wait here for a minute.”

I led her to a young tree and told her to hug it. “So you don’t blow away.” I was genuinely worried about it; some of those gusts were
big
.

Then I approached the shelter. I didn’t allow myself to hesitate, because I didn’t want Alice to know I was scared. Grab the handle, turn it down, and enter. The lights came up automatically, revealing the empty bench. I breathed out but didn’t relax. The bathroom was empty, too. I tried the com-line but heard only hissing static. Whom did I think I was calling, anyway?

Alice was hugging the tree like a long-lost sister when I came back outside, her face a little white oval with hectic red spots on the cheeks.

“Looks like she flew the coop, kid,” I said, all lighthearted.

“Flew it
where
?” she said.

I squinted into the relentless wind.
Flew it into the dark and wild forest where we’ll never be able to find her
, I thought. But that was just me being pessimistic.

“Come on and we’ll find out,” I said.

I crouched for her, but she said, “I can walk now.”

“I know, but I can go faster if I’m carrying you.”

“Okay.”

She hoisted herself onto my back and I stood up. I moved away from the shelter and stood upon the windy path for a moment, which didn’t diverge in the wood and was about equally traveled in both directions. The question was, which direction had Delilah chosen? We certainly would have bumped into her on our way out of Waukegan, if she’d gone that way. Unless she’d wandered from the path and was blundering lost in the forest. My mind threw up the frightening image of her coming awake by herself in the shelter, listening to the wind and rain battering at the walls, maybe the lights flickering in her face, and Delilah all dopey with the drug and fear. In such a state what might she
not
have done?

But such speculations got me nowhere. I turned toward Bedford Falls and started walking. Fast. After a while I saw the bicycles we’d abandoned when the lights went out. I put Alice down and we climbed on the tandem cycle and took off, making good time at last.

At about the moment we emerged from the Oxygen Forest, George dialed up the sun again. Rainbows occurred in the blowing rain. I leaned over the handlebars and pedaled for town.

Men and women in raingear humped it across the town square. We coasted up to the front of the Bedford Falls Hotel and dismounted and dumped the bike.

Inside it was warm and noisy and smelled like wet clothes. A hearth fire blazed in the lobby. I shouldered some people out of the way and installed Alice by it to warm up and dry out.

A woman about sixty years old was behind the check-in counter. I’d never met her before, but I knew who she was.

“You’re Delilah’s mother,” I said.

“Birth mother, yes,” she said, distracted. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, but some gray wisps had escaped and floated around her face. It gave her a scattered look. Her eyes kept moving over the milling crowd.

“Business is booming,” I observed.

“Half the power grid’s down. People are cold and wet. And frightened. Every room is full, but you’re welcome to huddle in the lobby until things get running again. Are you a friend of Delilah’s?”

“Yes. Have you seen her?”

“Not for a day. She said she was going away with someone. Are you the someone?”

“I was, but now she’s gone away from me, too.”

She looked at me closely for the first time.

“You’re familiar,” she said.

“I’ve got one of those faces.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Alice is with me, she’s over by the fire. Can you keep an eye on her while I go look for Delilah?”

“Alice
lives
here, Mr. Herrick. Of course I’ll keep her.”

“Mr. Who?”

She tilted her head sideways and smiled. “Don’t worry about me turning you in,” she said. “I believe in you. I’ve studied your Environment.”

Inwardly I groaned and sighed with relief at the same time.