Identity Matrix (1982) (36 page)

She nodded.

"You, Misty, get down to that chamber with the chairs. Think you can find it?"

I nodded. "If the elevators work and the doors will open."

"Good. I'll free the Urulu, and we'll all meet out in front of the access building."

I frowned. "But—Dan. What do we do when we get to these places?"

"You'll know what to do when you get there. Just let us guide you. Clear out as soon as you're finished, get upstairs and outside."

"Seems like a lot of extra-elaborate trouble to go through," I noted, "when you could just short out the computer from the air

He nodded. "But that's not the point of the exercise. There are loads of easy and quick ways to blow IMC, but
this
involves technology and demonstrations totally beyond the powers of your people. It's designed for max-imum effect, to illustrate their impotence. It'll scare the hell out of 'em so badly they'll have to listen to us."

"All right," I sighed. "When do we get it over with?"

"We're approaching the terminator now," he responded. "It'll be late night at IMC, which is best for us."

Dory looked around. "Uh—Dan? Where's our clothes?"

He looked sheepish. "Damn. My people don't use 'em, and I guess they were tossed out when the emergency vehicle was cleaned. I just plain forgot."

"You mean we have to do all this in the
buff?"

"They'll all be frozen anyway," he replied. "You'll be safer than anywhere else on the planet including your own bathroom."

"But our
keys,
driver's license, credit cards . . . ?"

He shrugged. "They can be replaced. Ready? Here we go! Put your hands on the plates
now!
"

We landed and went to the rear where the hatch opened, letting in a sudden mass of dry, incredibly hot air. We were in the middle of the parking lot and had to run barefoot across still really hot asphalt to the main building.

Everything was lit with an eery, purplish glow, which seemed to sparkle a bit with some sort of pent-up energy.

Everybody inside was frozen stiff, it looked like, sus-pended like still pictures in most cases, although some people had fallen over if not balanced. Even a police dog was frozen, caught in the act of a big yawn.

We walked down the hallway in eerie silence, although the lights remained on and we could hear the occasional clatter of automatic teletypes and the like still function-ing even with their operators stiff.

We reached the freight elevator, with two burly Ma-rine guards standing there, and Dan removed one key and I the other from the two men, then put them in the slot and turned. The elevator door slid open. Inside, he reached into the little compartment for the interior key, put it in, and started very slowly twisting and turning it, almost like a safecracker. Suddenly, the elevator started to move.

"It was an easy set of circuits to analyze," Dan com-mented, and I suddenly realized that it wasn't
he
who analyzed it, but the computer we were all theoretically connected to. I felt nothing except a slight, odd feeling of buoyancy, of unreality about it all. There had been no sensation when we'd touched the plates.

Our destinations were on different levels. Dory got off on 4, I on 12, and Dan continued down to the IMC dungeons. I was alone, heading towards Stuart's old office and that terrible theater of the mind.

Passing people frozen there, and occasionally stepping over them, was something of a novelty and a turn-on. I had a great urge to do something to them, maybe un-dress them or put them in obscene poses, but I barely repressed it. This was business.

I looked in at Stuart's office—it still had his name on the door, which made me feel a little better—and saw a number of technicians around, but not Stuart. I headed for the control room.

It was an odd feeling, walking into that place once again. Here Misty Carpenter had been born, Victor Gonser killed, sort of, in a cold, mechanical and technical proc-ess. It still gave me the creeps, even though I liked myself and who I was these days.

There were only a few people around, looking in the process of straightening up the place, and I sat down at the master control console, my back to the chairs. It was in this seat that a dispassionate engineer had called the shots for my, and who knows how many others', repro-gramming. It felt cold on my naked skin, but, then, the whole air-conditioned place did. I had goose bumps.

Now, though, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I looked at the massive screen and all the controls and keyboards but didn't know what to do next. I just put my hands out, typewriter style, and much to my surprise they started working. I had no knowledge or control of what I was doing; I was just a passenger, now, watching my hands control, adjust, throw switches, type in messages, read out outputs, and punch more messages. Academically,
I did
realize what was going on—the bosses up in orbit and their master computers were learning about this one, probing and testing and analyzing, comparing the information with what they already knew and were learning from Dory's end—and, perhaps, from Dory's matrix. She'd worked these things and had a lot of training on them.

Suddenly I stopped, but the CRT screen didn't. It filled with line after line of numbers, symbols, and the like, faster now than my eyes could follow, but it would pause occasionally and a single phrase would appear, but for a moment.

"Garbage dumped."

Then it would resume, again and again.

I felt now that I could leave it to its own devices, and got up without any hint of resistance from above. I was finished.

I headed back down the hall, stopping in on Stuart's inner office and seeing his nameplate, pipe, and even a spare lab smock. I didn't know whether, or if, Parch had done anything to his mind, but I felt certain Stuart was all right.

I headed back to the elevator, which now opened for me as I approached it.

The Urulu, then, were now in complete control of the computer.

"Hey! Wait!" I called out, although I didn't really know to who. "If there's time—stop at Level 4."

The elevator seemed to jerk slightly, then continued, and opened at Level 4. I looked around. "Thanks."

I walked down the still halls, heading for one particu-lar place. I found it easily—I knew the way well enough. Harry Parch's office. How very much I hoped to find him in.

But he wasn't. The office hadn't changed much, but there were only a couple of secretaries there, frozen in the act of typing. In the inner office I looked around for any sign of who or what he really was, but there was only the make-up table, the wigs, false moustaches, and wardrobe closet.

I was tremendously disappointed, but, I told myself, it didn't really matter.

Parch, Kelleam, and the others involved in all this—it was more than personal. It was worse, in a way. If they hadn't found Harry Parch to do their dirty work, they'd have found somebody else. The country, the world, had no shortage of them, and the

Phil Kelleams and the rest, the bureaucrats and techni-cians who followed the system blindly, each a small part of the whole they never really allowed themselves to think about. It was the Eisenstadts and Jeff Overmeyers and those assistants of Stuart's who were the rare ones, I knew. The horribly outmatched people of vision and all that seemed good in the world on whom the only hope of Earth's future rested.

I turned and walked back to the elevator, meeting Dory there. She turned and smiled. "All done. I figured you couldn't resist comin' up to
his
office."

I shrugged and smiled sheepishly. The elevator door opened, and then closed and took us back to the surface.

Pauley waited for us just inside the door, between the desk staff, security men, and the still yawning police dog. He had seven other people with him, four women and three men, all of whom looked pale and drawn but happy.

"We did it!" he called out happily.

I looked around at the strange faces, suddenly con-scious of my exposure.

They
all wore loose-fitting clothes. "Now what happens, Dan?" I asked, not waiting for unnecessary introductions.

He looked at the others. "I've told them what's going on," he said, "and they have all pretty well agreed to stay on and help. We're going to send them up for debriefing and a little reorientation, then they're all coming back to work for us."

Dory nodded. "What about us, though?"

He leaned over the counter and pulled up some car keys. "Why don't we all go home to your place? The three of us, that is." He looked at the big clock. It said 23:40.

"You mean—drive into Vegas? Like
this?"

He shrugged. "We'll get in about 3:30 in the morning, hunker down and take some back streets. Maybe we'll shock a few neighbors of yours but I think you can stand that."

"What about Parch?" I asked, suddenly worried. "He's sure to come after us."

"If he does he's in trouble, Dan replied. "Parch's bosses are at this moment getting the word from on high. They'll leave you alone, Misty. They're going to be scared stiff of you. You have powerful friends."

I nodded, hoping he was right. "I
still
would like some clothes," I grumbled.

"Don't get modest now," he laughed and pointed. Dory and I both looked around and gasped. Until this moment I hadn't realized, hadn't remembered, the secu-rity cameras, which were automated and, therefore, still running.

"You mean—we've been
televised
the whole time? Like
this?
"
Dory blurted out.

He laughed. "Just think of yourself as an honorary Urulu," he replied, and the others laughed, too.

Dan looked at the others a moment, particularly at one young woman who was particularly well-built and attractive. "You know, I've been getting an idea about the domestic angle of my evaluations," he said.

Driving home was a little nerve wracking, but we made it, in a nice Air Force station wagon. I kept worry-ing that we were going to be hauled over by a cop or something, but the only problem we had was at one traffic light in Vegas, when a couple in the car next to ours got more than their money's worth.

Dan picked the lock on our door with the government credit card in the glove compartment used by the nor-mal driver for fuel purchases, and we entered, both of us making mental notes to install dead-bolt locks from now on.

Things looked pretty well undisturbed, although Dan assured us that there were signs of a thorough search. My little electric calendar said it was July 20, so we'd been gone less than three weeks. I chuckled. If Dan were right, I was due back at work the day after tomorrow.

I felt tired, but very good inside, and Dory seemed the same. "You know," she told me, "I've been thinking. This may yet be the kind of world I'd want my kids to grow up in. Maybe it's worth bein' an optimist, just this once."

I stared at her. "You do what you want to do, honey."

Five years. Five years ago and a world away, it seems. Mankind still hasn't changed much, but it hasn't changed much for the worse, either. Things go on almost as if nothing has happened, and I wonder, after that massive cover-up the government pulled, whether we'll ever know what effect our actions had on them, on Parch, on the scientific community that creates our wonders and the political community that directs and controls them.

Parch, if he's still around, has not bothered us one bit. I hope he got some jollies out of seeing Dory and I jiggling around IMC on those tapes! We haven't heard from anybody connected with IMC, in fact, although Kelleam just won his second term last year and Stuart is in the papers, I think. At least, I suspected when I saw the trim, youngish, somewhat sexy new National Sci-ence Advisor to the President on a talk show that he was all right. The fellow, who was Dr.

Blumberg, we were told, had a most interesting set of mannerisms and a crazy accent that was mostly Americanized but had real problems with "w"s and occasionally "v"s.

When nothing happened to us, Dory relaxed quite a bit and really started talking seriously about children, a family. Of course we couldn't have each other'

s chil-dren, but that was easily remedied. She's had two beau-tiful, dark Indian babies now, with different fathers but they both look very much like her, and she'

s settled into what appears to be very happy domesticity. I love them so much I kept dreaming of having my own, but preg-nant strippers don't make it and we were not yet secure. We are, now—Joe's little club has turned into something of a colossus, with heavy interest in casinos here and in Reno, Tahoe, and Elko, and a mini-chain of high-class strip joints now in twenty cities. My Dory-negotiated five percent interest in the original company is now worth a couple million, making us more than comfortable.

We have a pretty home now, in the mountains outside of Vegas, with a pool and other comforts and enough privacy that we could walk nude without being ob-served by anything but jackrabbits, yet only forty min-utes from the Strip.

As for me, I'm heading towards thirty and finally decided it was now or never. I'm in my ninth month and feel like a bloated cow with a giant watermelon stuck in her stomach, and my tits have started swelling with my tummy to incredible proportions, but I can hardly wait. I could know the sex and all that, but I want it to be a surprise, like Christmas. The way it feels it
must
be a boy, and if so, I'll name him Victor Stuart Daniel Car-penter, I think. Or, maybe, I'll just have three boys. . . . I don't know. The world is fantastic right now, and I don't want anything to spoil it.

The pregnancy gave me the time, finally, to write this book. I wanted to write it, although I have no idea if it'll ever see print, at least in my lifetime. I'm forty-six, you know, going on twenty-nine... .

I'd like it to get published somewhere, although they'll probably just label it science fiction or something. Who would believe? Only the people who know, and Kelleam's still damned popular.

As for Dan and the Earth-based Urulu, we see them often, not only as guests at the ranch but in other capac-ities as well. He seems to have worked out an interest-ing idea for getting his people around the western world, anyway, meeting the common people in city after city, noting news reports, gossip, you name it for their reports. I wonder what people would say if they knew? The government knows, of course, but they can't do much about it. At least they can't say that the Urulu aren't earning their keep.