Tea with the Black Dragon (v1.4)

by R. A. MacAvoy

  It was the tea, she discovered, which was not black but Chinese. Smelled like peaches. Tasted slightly salty. As she sat, craning her neck to stare all around, she began to swing her legs. The chair was too high for her. It made her feel like a little girl.

  So did all this room, so old looking—old mannish looking, really, but in such good taste. And almost oppressively neat by her standards. Having a few books scattered across the floor proved the rest weren’t just book-binding wallpaper.

  Martha Macnamara was resigned to being too early. She sat swinging her stockinged legs while her toes brushed the subtle cream and maroon pattern of the rug.

  Mayland Long did not mention that he himself hadn’t shut eye the past night, and if weariness caught him as he squatted on the floor, slipping Dr. Dobb’s between Donleavy’s and Forbes September 4th issues, that drowse might hav6 been merely the effect of the first sunlight, which struck suddenly through the morning haze and threw him into a sort of peaceful trance. His amber eyes lidded over and his hand was slipping down the slots of the rack when he heard Martha gasp. Then his head moved quickly.

  “That is Oolong,” he stated.

  The half empty cup and saucer rattled in her lap. “No,” she whispered eagerly. “The statue! That magnificent statue!”

  He turned back to the window, brushing invisible dust from his trouser knees. “Yes. It’s called Oolong.” His perfect voice had sunk to a mumble of disinterest and Mayland Long stared out into the sky, caught by some pattern of sun and mist.

  “Is that the name of the piece, the sculptor, or the dragon who posed for it?”

  Motionless, he answered, “Any one you please,” and he yawned an enormous yawn, with his tongue curling up like that of a cat. But when he turned again toward her there was crispness and decision in his attitude.

  “Now, my dear lady, I have done with dawdling and we may off.”

  “Ah. Okay.” She deposited her white cup on the oilcloth beside the green teapot and the red kettle. Puzzled, she lifted the lid of the pot and the smell of leaves leaked out. She was sure that tea was Oolong. Both the tea and the statue were named Oolong? The tea, the statue and the dragon? The word swelled in her mind, assuming awful proportions. Perhaps if she asked him the name of the black lacquer table here, he would state, “Oolong” again. She had once had a Master like that; no matter what the question was, his answer had been, “Dust on the floor.” After a year of that she had rebelled, shouting, “There’s nothing in you but ‘Dust on the floor!’“ That had turned out to be the proper response; from then on they’d gotten along famously.

  She met Long’s challenging eyes with a greater challenge. “Oolong,” she announced. “The tea, the statue, the dragon—and you too. The same word can do for all.” And she laughed, till the bare shock in his face drained the humor away.

  “I’m not insane, really,” she explained carefully. “That was just a little Zennie joke. Very little. And now, Holmes! The hunt’s afoot! Or the game’s up, or… something…” She preceded a thoughtful Mayland Long out the door.

  “When Thou hast done, Thou art not done, for I have more,” he announced, sinking back into the upholstery of the passenger seat. Brown fingers, seemingly by themselves, sought out the handle of the door and swung it closed.

  Martha was a bit dejected, having drawn a blank both at FSS and Stanford. What was worse, Judy Freeman, Liz’s school friend and Martha’s best hope, had moved to Seattle months previously.

  She started the engine of the silver Mercury Zephyr and lurched into first gear. Her passenger was unaffected by the jerk; he had had his arm braced against the dash. It was not the first lurch of the day.

  “Done? Oh yes. Donne. That’s John Donne, isn’t it? Punning as usual. When I was first at school, everyone was mad about Donne. Now dropped like a stone. Sign of the times, I guess.”

  Mayland Long cast a cold eye in her direction. “You insist on dating me, madam.”

  With complete frankness she said, “Yes. I would love to. Hate mysteries, and you insist on being one. But I like Donne. ‘… outside that room. Where I shall be Thy music, I pause to tune my instrument before…’ or something. But tell me, Mayland. What is the More? I find the only child of my flesh has no job, no friends, no forwarding address. She had grown into a positive nonentity, if that is not too much of a paradox. How do we find her?”

  Long glanced at her face and read her concern. He didn’t reply immediately. The date palms of Palm Drive passed by the windows of the car: tall ones and .short ones, the sick and the healthy, dead nubs and towering majesties. He peered through them at the road ahead. “Please turn right on El Camino,” he said.

  “Yes sir.” She did so.

  “You’ll find her, Martha,” said Long quietly. “You always find the thing you look for in the last place you look.”

  Laughter caught her unaware. She shifted lanes. “My! Look at these bicyclists! How pretty they are. All blond. And such muscles. Stanford has always had good-looking students; just the opposite of Columbia. I wonder if one still has to send a picture along with the applications?”

  He let her prattle unimpeded while a few blocks passed, then spoke sharply. “There’s a parking spot. On the right.”

  She pulled into it. “Are we there? Where?”

  “At a shop called Friendly Computers,” he replied, striding purposefully across the street.

  “Friendly computers? What kind are those?”

  “We’re about to find out, Martha. Please do not become a traffic statistic.” And he took her elbow and maneuvered her into the doorway of the shop.

  The little shop was filled with magazines and television screens, which Liz had once told her mother were properly called cathode ray tubes. The walls were tacked with bright posters and diagrams, all meaningless to Martha’s uneducated eye. The place gave forth an air of sophisticated clutter. Behind the single counter a young man sat, holding what appeared to be a walkie-talkie. As she glanced at this fellow, something prodded her in the ankle. It was a toy race car. She lifted her foot out of the way and the little thing nudged obstinately against her other ankle. It seemed to be alone.

  “Want to try?” The young man smiled at her.

  “To work the car?” she asked incredulously “I can’t. I never could. Machines.”

  He held the box under her nose. “Say ‘forward.’ “

  “Forward?”

  “Again, without the inflection.”

  “Forward,” said Martha Macnamara. Then the words “right,” “left,” “stop” and “reverse” were elicited from her. Finally he placed the box in her hands.

  “Now what?”

  The young man beamed with pride. He was blond. Good looking. Probably a Stanford student. “Now you tell the unit what you want the car to do.”

  Martha knew she was the butt of a joke. She waited for the laughter to start. She glanced at Mayland Long, who watched her with noncommittal interest. No one would dare shove a walkie-talkie at him and tell him to say “forward,” “right,” “left,” “stop,” and reverse.” A shame, too. Probably do him good.

  She cleared her throat. “Turn right,” she commanded. The car sat.

  “Perhaps it has to be moving, before it can turn,” suggested Mr. Long.

  She tried, “Go forward.” The tiny vehicle trundled across the carpeting and butted itself against the leg of a table.

  “Far out!” she cried with instant enthusiasm. “Oh wonderful!” She commanded a right turn, a left, and then produced series of jolting jerks reminiscent other encounters with the Mercury’s clutch. In fascination, she withdrew to a chair placed before a multi-colored terminal display, where she continued her monologue of limited vocabulary.

  Mayland Long turned to the shop man. “Modistics?” he inquired.

  “Mostly. I took the i.d. plate off the box because I made some changes inside. How’d you guess?”

  The older man shrugged his shoulders. “I have seen it advertised.”

/>   “Oh? Byte or Kilobaud?” The young man’s eyes were calipers. He judged his customer closely, according to criteria known only to himself.

  “Both,” answered Mr. Long. “But that was in the May issues. I remember reading that the speech recognition response was inadequate. That it was easily confused by labials, in fact.”

  A fat man in a white shirt walked through the door. He ignored Martha and her car and they ignored him. He proceeded to the magazine rack, where he planted himself.

  “S’true I made mods. Added a laser-cut filter, and a routine to cancel noise. Least mean squares.”

  “You are Fred Frisch?”

  He had a sizable blond moustache. He pulled on it now. “Yeah. Have I met you somewhere?”

  “No. But I have met you.” Mayland Long’s well-tuned voice slid from polite impersonality to something a shade warmer. He lounged against the counter. “In the pages of Dr. Dobb’s. Your article on financial system for the home computer, with a sample 8080 implementation. Interesting! Almost wasted, really, such elegant algorithms for a 16 K machine…”

  Mr. Frisch responded to this praise. He straightened. His silky moustache whuffed. His hands worried a black power cable into circles on the dusty counter. “Did you try it?”

  Long’s eyes shifted only slightly. “Alas, I don’t have CPM,” he demurred. The fat man by the magazine rack dropped a well-thumbed copy of Byte back into its slot, sighing deeply.

  “Oh. Well. There’s that,” Frisch admitted. “Interrupts would have made it run quicker, but so many people have CPM.”

  “You went to Stanford, I imagine,” said Mayland Long, as he stared down at the floor, where the toy car was careening in circles around his legs. Martha Macnamara showed quite a skill.

  “How’d you know? It wasn’t in the article, was it?” asked Frisch. Immediately he answered his own question. “No. They print only your name and address: no biography. I remember that because I got letters for months after, wanting me to send free tapes.”

  “But you acknowledged the assistance of a Professor Carlo Peccolo for certain of your ideas. And Professor Peccolo has published in EDN, where a biography did accompany his article. How would you have received his help if you were not a student of his? Since he teaches at Stanford, it must be that…”

  Fred Frisch cut in. “Oh sure. I see now. I thought for a moment you did auras, or like that.”

  Mr. Long let his toe down upon the hood of the irritating race car, which protested like an angry bee.

  “But I suppose Liz Macnamara might have told me who you were, without my chance reading.”

  He shot a look upward and locked eyes with Frisch. “How’d you know I know Liz?”

  “You were in the same department. You are of an age.”

  “Who are you?” countered Frisch. “You work with Liz?”

  “No.” He slipped his hand into his upper jacket pocket, as though to produce a card. Failing to find one, he patted the two side pocket, while furrowing his brow. Finally he spoke again. “Forgive me. My name is Long: Mayland Long. I know very little about Miss Macnamara. I am trying to learn more.”

  “You’re a headhunter?” Fred Frisch spoke with the politeness of contempt. Mr. Long exposed his large straight teeth in a laugh.

  “A job recruiter? No. Hardly. I represent a more personal interest.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “The lady with the talent for driving is Elizabeth Macnamara’s mother.”

  Frisch peered covertly at the top of Martha’s head and at her obliviously hunched shoulders. The control box dangled unnoticed from her wrist, for she had discovered the more adult fascination of computer checkers.

  “Why doesn’t she ask her daughter herself?” he muttered uneasily. “I hardly know Liz.”

  “Elizabeth has disappeared, Mr. Frisch.”

  Frisch blinked at the word. “Disappeared? Jeez.”

  “Mrs. Macnamara lives in New York, and so she’s slipped out of touch with Liz, who seems to have quit her job and moved from her last known address. We do not know who her friends are.”

  “I’m not the one to ask,” said Frisch, for Long’s ears only. “Liz’s a bit of a pushin’ baby, if you know what I mean.”

  Dryly, Mayland Long admitted he did not. “I’ve gathered the impression that Miss Macnamara is a rather ambitious young woman and she keeps to herself. Is that what it is to be ‘a bit pushin’ baby?’ “

  Frisch sighed and shrugged, with a half-smile that was one-quarter apology. “Not quite. She can be friendly when she wants to. When she thinks a guy might be… good for her career. She got along with Peccolo.”

  Mr. Long’s eyes widened. Frisch hurried to explain “She was his T.A.—teaching assistant, you know? They were very chummy, for a while. But it didn’t last.”

  “Why not?”

  The blond fished with one hand ‘til he snagged the back of a high stool and pulled it under him. Once seated, he remained in thought for a count of five. “I think it was this way. Liz wants to be a manipulator—the kind who controls. Peccolo is that kind. Much better at it. He used her when it was supposed to be the other way around. She put in a lot of hours on the machine for him—designing his lessons, cleaning up his math… Peccolo is a good teacher, fine organizer—all that jazz…” Frisch, who had been talking to the glass counter top, suddenly sought out the other’s eye. “But Liz has the technical brain. She’s real good.” The gaze slid away again. “Too bad technique ain’t everything.”

  The dark man smiled slowly. His fingers drummed on the glass. “You’ve knocked heads with her? Don’t worry about offending me; I’ve never met the young lady.”

  Frisch shuffled in place, embarrassed. “Well—no. Not me. I avoided Liz, you see, so I wouldn’t.”

  “Do you think Peccolo would know where she is now?”

  Fred Frisch shrugged once again. “Better than I,” he said. “What’s your part in this. Detective?”

  Mayland Long laughed. Martha looked up. “Worse and worse! I’d rather be a headhunter!”

  Frisch looked unconvinced.

  “Mrs. Macnamara doesn’t speak the jargon, you see, and my field is languages.” Long found Martha standing beside him. Gently he took the controls of the racer from her hand and returned the box to Frisch.

  “That fellow went to Stanford, didn’t he?” asked Martha, as she was propelled across the busy street.

  Mayland Long, in a graceful inversion of traditional politeness, waited for her to let herself in the driver’s side, then swung around the front of the car and waited for her to reach over and unlock his door.

  “So you were listening?” he replied, once in the quiet of the closed car.

  “Oh no. I heard you say ‘modistics’ and immediately tuned out the conversation, since I would not be able to understand a word. I knew the fellow was from Stanford because he was blond, and there was a bicycle locked to the post outside.” Her voice trailed off. She was thinking of something.

  “Well, however you came upon it, the supposition is correct. He is a Stanford alumnus, and knows your daughter slightly.”

  Martha nodded. “Only slightly?”

  “He has given us another name. Perhaps a more important one. Back to campus,” he commanded, and the car lurched obediently forward.

  “Mayland—,” she began, as she found a space in the flow of traffic, entered and took it with unexpected competence. “I enjoyed myself back there. I think I missed my calling in life.”

  The dark man smiled and his arm, braced against the dash, relaxed to the seat. “You should have been a computer engineer?”

  “Sweet Jesus, no! I should have sold toys.”

  Chapter 4

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t the least idea,” said the professor. He leaned back in his leather chair until the springs creaked; his pale fingers drummed against the mahogany desktop. It appeared that the conversation was over early.

  Martha frowned. Her blue china eyes shone like beads. Mr. Long and she had s
pent the last half hour being wonderfully lost among the Spanish red sandstone buildings and the dusty live oaks of Stanford campus. They had stopped to nose into the chapel, with its gold murals and gaudy, loud, Victorian glass, and had known the satisfaction of excoriating the place together. Now it was getting hot and she was tired. Peccolo’s attitude was no help.

  Mayland Long drew breath slowly and spoke. “I believe she assisted you in your researches until quite recently…” His calm had an edge on it—an edge which told Martha she had better bite her tongue and leave this matter to him. It spoke another message to Dr. Peccolo.

  “Recently? No. Not at all. She’s been gone almost two years, now.” He pulled himself erect again and focused over the expanse of the desk at Mr. Long. Dr. Peccolo was a much heavier man than the Eurasian, fair and stocky.