by Bruce Bethke
I was just about done packing the car when Mom’s voice echoed through the house and found me out on the parking slab in the backyard. “Jack! I don’t know how you’re doing it, but your computer is screwing up my TV again!”
It was definitely long past time to go.
16: WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE?
LeMat had apparently returned by the time I made it back to our office. His truck was parked in the alley; the door to the freight elevator was unlocked; a few open boxes of his junk were scattered around the floor of the office. He’d even managed to rustle up some curtains to fit the east windows, although on closer inspection they proved to be green plastic tarpaulins held in place by massive amounts of duct tape. LeMat himself seemed to be MIA, although I didn’t start worrying about it until after I’d finished unloading my Toyota and he still had not shown up. Then I grew concerned and went out searching for him.
I found him up on the roof, with his air pistol in his hand, a pile of dead pigeons on the tarpaper at his feet and a dazed and blissful smile on his face that scared the living bejeebers out of me. “Joseph?” I said softly. When that got no response, I gently pried the pistol out of his fingers and waved a hand in front of his face. “Joseph? Can you hear me?”
He turned and looked at me with a smile so beatifically wonderful I didn’t know whether to call the mental health crisis line or the Vatican canonization board. “Hello, Jack,” he said.
When no further communication was forthcoming, I asked, “You feeling okay?”
“Never felt better,” he said. He favored me with a smile again, then drifted back into that vacant stare across the valley. “I think I’m in love,” he said at last.
I glanced around the roof, saw no clear object of affection close at hand, and took a step back. “That’s, uh, great. Who’s the lucky, er—”
“Inge,” he said. “Listen closely: you can hear the wind whisper her name. IngeAaandersssonnn.”
Actually, the sound I think I heard was that of my jaw dropping and hitting the tarpaper rooftop. “Inge Andersson?” I said, my nose so wrinkled I must have looked like a mandrill. “The CPA down on the fourth floor? That chubby little bun-haired tennis-shoed—?”
“Tennis shoes,” LeMat said dreamily. “Yes. I was taking the trash down to the dumpster when I caught a glimpse of her through the stairwell door. It was open a crack; she had her back to me, and was ironing the laces of her tennis shoes.”
I hardly knew how to respond. “Ironing shoelaces?”
“Yes!” he cried exultantly. “She was radiant! Such concentration! Such dedication to perfection!” I felt his forehead. He didn’t seem to be running a fever. “But,” his voice dropped to a low, conspiratorial tone, “do you know what was the best part?” I shook my head. “I was so captivated,” he said, “I became like a man entranced. I couldn’t move; couldn’t speak. I just pressed my face against the doorframe and watched her, and then do you know what happened?”
Actually, I could imagine this part pretty well. A lone, single woman, finding herself being stared at by a Peeping Tom?
“I startled her,” LeMat said. “Some little noise I made, some flicker in the light, alerted her to my presence. And do you know what she did?”
I guessed. “Screamed and called the cops?”
“She pulled a gun on me!” LeMat said, his eyes wide with glorious wonder. “I couldn’t even tell that she was carrying! But yet, when she realized she was being watched, there was no fear, no hesitation. In one graceful move she dropped the iron, spun like a turret, and drew from her hip holster to a perfect Weaver stance! And do you know what she said?”
I could imagine several choice and appropriate things, none of them printable in a daily newspaper.
“She said, ‘I don’t dial 911.’”
I could only shake my head. “You’re just lucky she didn’t say, ‘Oops, sorry about that bullet hole in your chest.’”
“Ah, no,” he said, grinning at me, “I was never in any danger. I told you, my beautiful Inge is a master of control. In her lovely hands the Colt Gold Cup is a precision instru—”
“Whoa,” I waved a hand to interrupt him. “Wait a minute. You were close enough to recognize her gun?”
LeMat seemed puzzled by my reaction. “Of course. Colt Gold Cup National Match, Series 90 Mark V, with Wilson trigger group, King match barrel and bushing, Bo-Mar sights, Bacote grips—”
I made another time-out gesture. “I thought you said you were on the stairwell. Did you sneak into her apartment?”
LeMat stared at me as if I was an idiot. “Certainly not! I waited until she invited me.”
“She invited you in?”
“Of course. After I explained who I and asked where she’d had her trigger job done.”
My head was definitely in spin cycle. I sat down on some convenient boxy thing on the roof. “You talked guns with her?”
“Yes!” LeMat was beaming. “It was wonderful!”
I blew out a heavy sigh; took in a deep breath. Scratched my head for a minute or so. And honestly, while it seemed pretty weird, I couldn’t really find anything objectionable in how Inge and LeMat had come to terms.
“So,” I said, “you, uh, want to invite her up for pizza, or something? I mean, after we finish unpacking and all?”
At last, LeMat’s blissed-out smile failed. “Actually, Jack, I, er,” he looked down at his feet, put his hands behind his back, and kicked at the gravel. “I was kind of hoping you could handle things by yourself today. Inge and I…” He paused and shrugged.
“Well?” I said.
“She’s changing clothes right now,” LeMat said. “And after that, I kind of promised her I’d take her out to the rifle range and let her try my AR-15, if she’d let me try her FN FAL.”
I was still trying to figure out where I’d taken the wrong turn that morning and how to get back to my home dimension when the fire door at the top of the stairs clanged open, and Inge came striding out onto the rooftop. Her knee-high jack boots crunched crisply on the black tarpaper and gravel. “Hi, Gunnar!” she called out gaily.
It was my turn to shoot him a dirty look. “You told her?”
“I told her my real name is Joseph,” he whispered quickly, through smiling, clenched teeth, “and that my friends all call me Gunnar. She doesn’t know anything else.” She crunched nearer.
“Inge!” he said as he opened both his mouth and his arms. “You look wonderful!” They flew together and embraced. No, not hugged. Embraced. Anyone else would have settled for a simple hug, but those two made it look like the mating dance of the sandhill crane.
And while we’re at it, I decided then that I definitely needed to recalibrate my sense of what LeMat meant when he said someone looked “wonderful.” For my money, Inge didn’t look “wonderful,” she looked like a short, squat, overstuffed, thirty-five-ish freckled strawberry blonde who’d just stepped off the cover of the Abercrombie & Fitch large sizes catalog and was on her way to try out for Soldier of Fortune cover girl. Her boots I’ve already mentioned. But did I mention her khaki jodhpurs, or her hand-tailored tan shooting vest with contrasting suede recoil pad? And how about that long strawberry blond hair, pulled back into a French braid so tight it functioned as a temporary facelift? And those wraparound shatterproof yellow plastic glasses? I mean, we’re talking about someone who could make a major fashion statement on the club scene, here.
Inge and LeMat completed their embrace and decoupled. She turned to me. “You must be Jack,” she said with a mysterious smile. “Gunnar has told me so much about you.” She offered me a handshake. I took it. The woman could have crushed walnuts with her bare hands.
Clearly, there was a lot more going on here than I’d noticed on first, second, or even third glances.
“So, Jack,” LeMat said, fidgeting nervously and not looking straight at me. “You sure you don’t mind if Inge and I go off to the range for a few hours?”
Actually, I minded a great deal, but I
could see that saying so was not going to get me anywhere. I shook my head. “Not at all,” I said, lying with an open smile. “You two go have fun. I can handle everything here.”
“Wonderful!” LeMat said, clapping his hands together. “Then in that case—”
Inge grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into motion. “In that case, we’re wasting daylight, buddy. Move.” She favored me with another mysterious smile and nearly pushed LeMat through the open fire door. The last thing I heard from them was Inge’s voice echoing up the stairwell: “No, I’ll drive.”
For a few minutes after that, I just sat there on the roof, listening to the soft cooing of pigeons in the air-conditioning condenser and the rumble of traffic on the streets below. In time it occurred to me to take a look at LeMat’s air pistol, which I was still holding in my left hand, and that’s about the time I realized the thing was loaded and cocked, or charged, or whatever the heck you call an air gun that’s ready to go, and I’d been holding it all this time with my finger on the trigger.
A pigeon fluttered down onto the roof, about twenty feet away from me. I took careful aim, squeezed the trigger slowly like LeMat was always telling me to do, and was rewarded with the soft pop! of the gun, the sight of the pigeon flying away perfectly unscathed, and the merry tinkle of breaking glass from a window in the building across the street. I was always a piss-poor shot with real guns.
Which suggested to me that it was time for a workout in virtual reality. I trudged down to the office, slammed and locked the elevator and stairwell doors, threw LeMat’s air gun wherever it happened to land, and got down to business.
There isn’t a lot to say about the rest of Saturday afternoon. I cleared all of LeMat’s crap out of my movement area—he could unpack it himself, thank you—then strapped on the neural induction interface and dove into our local test reality to spend a few hours just practicing moving around in my body. The ProctoProd™ was slightly easier to—er, install—the second time around, but still, three hours seemed to be about my top limit, and then I had to either get that thing out or die.
WAITRONS
Mysterious aliens from the planet Wait. Most astronomers now believe this world orbits a black hole, as time there clearly moves far more slowly than it does here on Earth.
INFONUGGETS
What infonugget? Where? I don’t see one. You’d better get your eyes checked. There’s a coupon for Sister Bertrille’s back in chapter 4.
LeMat and Inge still weren’t back by 7 P.M., so I surveyed the extensive selection of cryogenic entrees in our freezer and settled on the microwave fettucine alfredo and a root beer for dinner. Nobody in their right mind delivers pizza to Lowertown, and I didn’t want to head out to one of the local pubs for fear that the saddlesore way I was walking would draw unwanted amorous attention from the waitrons. LeMat and Inge weren’t back by eight, either, so I strapped on my conventional VR gear, dove into the tank, and spent a few hours fine-tuning MAX_KOOL’s visual aspect in hopes of making him look somewhat more realistic to other super-users. Then I took a quick jaunt over to Heaven, more out of boredom than anything else, but both DON_MAC and Don Vermicelli were nowhere to be found, and I was only slightly surprised to discover that without them, the place didn’t interest me much at all.
Around 10:30, a rumor swept through Heaven that someone had seen Eliza coming in the front door with blood in her eye and a chainsaw in her hands. I took that as a cue to throw myself down the garbage chute in the Jobs Memorial Lounge and make my exit from VR.
I surfaced to a warm, humid, and breathless early summer evening. LeMat and Inge had clearly returned sometime in the last few hours. Their rifles were stacked by the refrigerator; evidence of a take-out Chinese meal was scattered all over the kitchen. LeMat had also torn open one of the large boxes he’d brought from his house this morning, and I followed the trail of styrofoam packing noodles up the stairwell, out the fire door, and over to the west side of the roof.
Aw, what a cute couple they made. Sitting there, cross legged, on the rooftop, their hands circumspectly kept to themselves but their shoulders touching erotically, Russian army-surplus night vision gear strapped onto their faces and earphones connected to an array of parabolic microphones focused on Mears Park, three blocks away. In the ruddy flickering light of a burning carjacked BMW I could see that the park was crawling with the usual after-sunset crowd of junkies, gang-bangers, and terribly lost yuppies in search of trendy restaurants.
“Ah, the children of the night,” LeMat said softly.
“What beautiful music they make,” Inge answered.
Stifling a sudden urge to vomit brought on by the sickly sweet smell of saps in love, I left the two of them up there, headed back downstairs, successfully fought off the urge to lock the rooftop door behind me, and crashed out on the futon. Whatever else may have happened that night, I slept through it.
Sunday morning: I drifted awake slowly and was surprised to find LeMat sleeping—alone—on his cot. The drifting phase didn’t last too long, though; at eight o’clock sharp his watch alarm went off, and he leaped out of bed like it was made of nails.
“So, Gunnar,” I said through a yawn, “how—”
“No time!” he shot back at me. “Inge’s got an IPSC pistol match today and we have to be at the club by nine!” And with that, he dashed into the bathroom. The shower hissed on.
I rolled out of bed, staggered into the kitchen area, and fired up the coffeemaker. That consumed the last of our rather meager gourmet coffee supply. I was definitely going to have to buy a large can of conventional beans the next time around. The coffeemaker was just breaking into the first bars of “Volare” when LeMat came bursting out of the bathroom. I wish I knew how he did it. The man had managed to be showered, shaved, and fully dressed in less than ten minutes.
“Got time for coffee?” I asked, as he flew past.
He screeched to a stop, sniffed the air, and turned around. “Great idea, Jack! Thanks!” Diving into one of his boxes of undifferentiated kitchen utensils, he produced a large, red-and-brown checkered Thermos and poured the entire pot into it. “Inge will love this!” He handed the empty carafe back to me, to hold in my left hand in perfect match to the never-filled cup in my right and the slack-jawed expression of surprise on my face. “Bye!” he shouted as he ran out the stairwell door. “I should be back around suppertime!” And he was gone.
And so too, dammit, was the coffee.
I sulked about that for at least an hour or so. Sulked, and pouted, and stomped around the office steaming under the collar and kicking every cardboard box that that thoughtless jerk LeMat had deliberately left in my way. I probably would have whined about it, too, had there been anyone there to listen, but I was the only one in the building and was enjoying my tantrum too much to go out in search of a fresh victim.
So I sulked some more. But eventually, about halfway through a good bout of standing in the shower, feeling the hot needles of water massaging my face and replaying the coffeepot scene in my mind (complete with snappy new dialogue featuring all the things I should have said), I finally realized that the problem was: I was jealous. No, not of the attention Inge was getting from LeMat, or of the deeply latent affection he seemed to be getting from her. But of the fact that those two had a life outside of virtual reality, and I didn’t.
Once that was clear, I finished up my shower, got dressed, and decided to blow off the rest of the morning. Locking up the office, I went down to street level, hiked over to a coffee shop in the next block and bought myself a croissant, a large java, and the Sunday paper. I spent the rest of the morning sitting on a park bench on the riverwalk, just enjoying the beautiful spring weather and watching the death-defying antics of the inline skaters on the bike path. And in three hours of pretending to read the paper, all I really managed to get through were the funnies and the Parade section.
I felt strangely proud of that.
By the time I got back to the office, around noon, my attit
ude was much improved, and someone had repainted the right front fender of my Toyota a deep, glossy, royal blue.
17: TAKING TIGER MOUNTAIN BY STRATEGY
I spent the rest of Sunday afternoon studying the files Amber had given me and mapping out my strategy for the job. Late in the afternoon I decided some intelligent query agents would be a tremendous help, so I cobbled together two hasty, sloppy, and not terribly attractive autonomous imps. These I gave the look of knee-high protohumanoids, with unruly hair, insane grins, and three-fingered mittens in place of proper hands; then I stepped back, took one look at the results, and dubbed them Thing1 and Thing2.
LeMat came back around six, and he’d had the decency to stop at a Captain Calamari’s and pick up a ten-piece Bucket O’ Squid. He apologized for sloughing off on his work, and I apologized for having such a pissy attitude, and he apologized for letting his hormones seize control of his brain, and I apologized for begrudging him a good time with his new friend, and after a few more rounds of this we realized that if we kept trying to out-apologize each other we’d have a real fight on our hands, so we broke it off and hit the squids. Then, after supper, we finished work on the query agents, and LeMat went home to check up on his house and spend a night in a real bed.
The next morning at 7 A.M. sharp, I got a wake-up call from a fax machine. Apparently my call-forwarding was now working.
Monday, May 22, 0805 Local Time: I was wired up, strapped in, Dressed For Insanity, and very glad we’d taken the time to add another strip of duct tape to the curtains on the east windows. LeMat was sitting in the chair before the interface workstation, sucking coffee, munching a doughnut, monitoring my vital signs, and running through the prelaunch checklist.
“Thoracic harness?” (It sounded better than “databra.”)
“Check.”
“Pelvic harness?” (Ditto.)
“Check.”
“Audio headset?”
