Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place
Page 27
sheer willpower... as far as I'm concerned, that's teleportation."
"But how?" Julie asked.
Bobby shrugged again. "Right now, it doesn't matter how.
Just accept the assumption of teleportation as a place to start."
"As a theory," Hal said.
"Okay," Julie agreed.
"Theoretically, let's assume Frank can teleport himself."
To Frank, who was sealed off from his own experience by amnesia, that
was like assuming iron was lighter than air in order to allow an
argument for the possibility of steel-plated blimps. But he was willing
to go along with it.
Bobby said, "Good, all right, then that assumption explains the
condition of these clothes."
"How?" Frank asked.
"It'll take a while to get to the clothes. Stay with me. First,
consider that maybe teleporting yourself requires that the atoms of your
body temporarily disassociate themselves from one another, then come
together again an instant later at another place. Same thing goes for
the clothes you're wearing and for anything on which you've got a firm
grip, like the bed railing."
"Like the teleportation pod in that movie," Hal said.
"The Fly.
"Yeah," Bobby said, clearly getting excited now. He put down his coffee
and slid forward on the edge of the sofa, gesticulating as he spoke.
"Sort of like that. Except the power to this is maybe all in Frank's
mind, not in a futuristic machine He just sort of thinks himself
somewhere else, disassembles himself in a fraction of a second-poof!-and
reassembles him self at his destination. Of course, I'm also assuming
the remains intact even during the time the body is dispersed
disconnected atoms, because it would have to be the sheer power of the
mind that transports those billions of particles and keeps them together
like a shepherd collie herding she then welds them to one another again
in the right configurations at the far end."
Though his weariness was sufficient to have resulted from an impossibly
complex and strenuous task like the one Bobby had just described, Frank
was unconvinced.
"Well, gee, I don't know.... This isn't something you go to school to
learn about doesn't have a course in teleportation. So it's...
Instinct? Even supposing I instinctively know how to break body down
into a stream of atomic particles and send it some where else, then put
it together again... how can any human mind, even the greatest genius
ever born, be powerful enough to keep track of those billions of
particles and get them all exactly as they belong? It'd take a hundred
geniuses, a thousand years, and I'm not even one. I'm no dummy, but I'm
no brighter than the average guy."
"You've answered your own question," Bobby said.
don't need superhuman intelligence for this, 'cause teleportation isn't
primarily a function of intelligence. It's not instinct either. It's
just... well, an ability programmed into your genetic makeup like
vision or hearing
or the sense of smell. Think of it this way. You look at things with
your eyes. Your eyes are composed of billions of separate points of
color and light and shade and texture, yet your eyes instantly order
those billions of bits of input into a coherent scene. You don't have
to think about seeing. You just see, automatic. You understand what I
meant about magic? This is almost magical. With teleportation, there's
probably a mechanism you have to pull-like wishing yourself to
elsewhere-but thereafter the process is pretty much automatic; the mind
makes it happen the way it makes instantaneous sense of all the data
coming in through your eyes." Frank closed his eyes tight and
concentrated on wishing himself into the reception lounge. When he
opened his eyes and was still in the inner office, he said, "It doesn't
work. It's not that easy. I can't do it at will."
Hal said, "Bobby, are you saying all of us have this ability, and only
Frank has figured out how to use it?"
"No, no. This is probably a scrap of genetic material unique to Frank,
maybe even a talent that sprung from genetic damage-"
They were all silent, absorbing what Bobby had conjectured.
Outside, the layer of clouds was cracking, peeling, and the old blue
paint of the sky was showing through in more places every minute. But
the brightening day did not lift Frank's spirits.
Finally Hal Yamataka indicated the pile of garments on the coffee table.
"How does all this explain the condition of those clothes?"
Bobby picked up the blue cotton sweater and held it so they could see
the khaki swatch on the back.
"Okay, let's suppose the mind can automatically shepherd all the
molecules of its own body through the teleportation process without a
single error. It can also deal with other things Frank wants to take
with him, like his clothes-"
"And bags full of money," Julie said.
"But why the bed railing?" Hal asked.
"No reason for him to want to take that with him."
To Frank, Bobby said, "You can't remember it now, but you clearly knew
what was happening while you were caught up in that series of
teleportations. You were trying to stop, you asked Hal to help you
stop, and you seized the railing to stop yourself, to anchor yourself to
the hospital room. You were concentrating on your grip on that railing,
so when you went, you took it with you. As for the clothes getting
scrambled the way they are... Maybe your mind concentrates first on
getting your body back together in the proper order because error-free
physical re-creation is crucial to your survival, but then sometimes you
might not have the energy left to do as good a job on secondary things
like clothes."
"Well," Frank said, "I can't remember prior to last week, but this is
the first time anything like this has happened since then, even though
I've apparently been... traveling more nights than not. Then again,
even if my clothes have come through okay, I seem to be getting more
weary, weaker, and more confused day by day.... He did not have to
finish the thought, because the worry in their eyes and faces made clear
their understanding. If he was teleporting, and if it was a strenuous
act that bled him strength that could not be restored by rest, he was
gradually going to get less meticulous about the reconstitution of
clothes and whatever other items he tried to carry with him But more
important-he might begin to have difficulty reinstituting his body, as
well. He might return from one of his late-night rambles and find
fragments of his sweater woven into the back of his hand, and the skin
replaced by that piece of cotton might turn up as a pale patch in the
dark leather of his shoe and the displaced leather from the shoe might
appear as integral part of his tongue... or as strands of alien cells
twist through his brain tissue. Fear, never far away and circling like
a shark in the dept of Frank's mind, abruptly shot to the surface,
called forth the worry and pity that he saw in the faces of those on who
he was
depending for salvation. He closed his eyes, but it was a rotten
idea because he had a vision of his own face when he shut out theirs,
his face as it might look after a disastrous reconstitution at the end
of a future telekinetic journey: eyes or ten misplaced teeth sprouting
from his right eye socket;evicted eye staring lidlessly from the middle
of the cheek below; his nose smeared in hideous lumps of flesh and
gristle across the side of his face. In the vision he opened his
misshapen mouth, perhaps to scream, and within his sight were two
fingers and a portion of his hand, rooted where the tongue should had
been.
He opened his eyes as a low cry of terror and misery escaped him.
He was shuddering. He couldn't stop.
HAVING FRESHENED everyone's coffee and, at Bobby's suggestion, having
laced Frank's mug with bourbon in spite of the early hour, Hal went to
the nook off the reception lounge to brew another pot.
After Frank had been fortified with a few sips of the spiked coffee,
Julie showed the photograph to him and watched his reaction carefully.
"You recognize either of the people in this?"
"No. They're strangers to me."
"The man," Bobby said, "is George Farris. The real George Farris. We
got the picture from his brother-in-law."
Frank studied the photograph with renewed interest. "Maybe I knew him,
and that's why I borrowed his name but I can't recall ever seeing him
before."
"He's dead," Julie said, and thought that Frank's surprise was genuine.
She explained how Farris had died, years ago... and then how his family
had been slaughtered far more recently. She told him about James Roman,
too, and how Roman's family died in a fire in November.
With what appeared to be sincere dismay and confusion, Frank said, "Why
all these deaths? Is it coincidence?"
Julie leaned forward. "We think Mr. Blue killed them /."
"Who?"
"Mr. Blue Light. The man you said pursued you that night in Anaheim,
the man you think is hunting you for some reason. We believe he
discovered you were traveling under the names Farris and Roman, so he
went to the addresses he got for them, and when he didn't find you
there, he killed everyone, either while trying to squeeze information
out of them or... just for the hell of it."
Frank looked stricken. His pale face grew even paler, as if it were an
image doing a slow fade on a movie screen. The bleak look in his eyes
intensified. "If I hadn't been using that fake ID, he never would've
gone to those people. It's because of me they died."
Feeling sorry for the guy, ashamed of the suspicion that had driven her
to approach the issue in this manner, Julie said, "Don't let it eat you,
Frank. Most likely, the paper artist who forged your documents took the
names at random from a list of recent deaths. If he'd used another
approach, the Farris and Roman families would never have come to Mr.
Blue's attention. But it's not your fault the forger used the quick and
lazy method."
Frank shook his head, tried to speak, could not.
"You can't blame yourself," Hal said from the doorway, where he had
evidently been standing long enough to have gotten the gist of the
photo's importance. He seemed genuinely distressed to see Frank so
anguished. Like Clint, Hal had been won over by Frank's gentle voice,
self-effacing manner, and cherubic demeanor.
Frank cleared his throat, and finally the words broke out. "No, no,
it's on me, my God, all those people dead because of me."
IN DAKOTA & DAKOTA'S computer center, Bobby and Frank sat in two
spring-backed, typist chairs with rubber wheels, Bobby switched on one
of the three state-of-the-art IBM each of which was outlinked to the
world through its modern and phone line. Though bright enough to work
by, overhead lights it was soft and diffuse to prevent glare on terminal
screens, and the room's one window was covered with blackout drapes for
the same reason.
Like policemen in the silicon age, modern private detectives and
security consultants relied on the computer to make the work easier and
to compile a breadth and depth of information that could never be
acquired by the old-fashioned gum methods of Sam Spade and Philip
Marlowe. Pounding pavement, interviewing witnesses and potential
suspects, conducting surveillances were still aspects of their job of
course, but without the computer they would be as ineffective as a
blacksmith trying to fix a flat tire with a hammer and nail and other
tools of his trade. As the twentieth century progressed through its
last decade, private investigators who were ignorant of the microchip
revolution existed only in television dramas and the curiously dated
world of most PI novels. Lee Chen, who had designed and now operated
their data-gathering system, would not arrive in the office until around
nine o'clock. Bobby did not want to wait the hour to start putting the
computer to work on "Frank's case!" He was not a primo hacker, as Lee
was, but he knew all the hardware, had the ability to learn new software
quickly and was almost as comfortable tracking down information in
cyberspace as he was poring through file age-yellowed newspapers.
Using Lee's code book, which he removed from a locked desk drawer, Bobby
first entered a Social Security Administration data network that
contained files to which broad public access was legal. Other files in
the same system were restricted and supposedly inaccessible behind walls
of security codes required by various right-to-privacy laws.
From the open files, he inquired as to the number of men named Frank
Pollard in the Administration's records, and within seconds the response
appeared on the screen: counting variations of Frank, such as Franklin
and Frankie and Franco-plus names like Francis, for which Frank might be
a diminutive-there were six hundred and nine Frank Pollards in
possession of Social Security numbers.
"Bobby," Frank said anxiously,
"does that stuff on the screen make sense to you? Are those words, real
words, or jumbled letters?"
"Huh? Of course they're words."
"Not to me. They don't look like anything to me. Gibberish." Bobby
picked up a copy of Byte magazine that was lying between two of the
computers, opened it to an article, and said,
"Read that." Frank accepted the magazine, stared at it, flipped ahead a
couple of pages, then a couple more. His hands began to shake. The
magazine rattled in his grip.
"I can't. Jesus, I've lost that too. Yesterday, I lost the ability to
do math, and now I can't read any more, and I get more confused, foggy
in the head, and I ache in every joint, every muscle. This
teleporting's wearing me down, killing me. I'm falling apart, Bobby,
mentally and physically, faster all the time."
"It's going to be all right," Bobby said, though his confidence was
largely feigned. He was pretty sure they would get to the bottom of
this, would learn who Frank was and where he went at night and how and
why; however, he could see
that Frank was declining fast, and he would
not have bet money that they'd find all the answers while Frank was
still alive, sane, and able to benefit from their discoveries.
Nevertheless, he put his hand on Frank's shoulder and gave it a gentle
reassuring squeeze.
"Hang in there, buddy. Everything's going to be okay. I really think
it is. I really do." Frank took a deep breath and nodded. Turning to
the display terminal again, feeling guilty about the lie he'd just told,
Bobby said,
"You remember how old you are, Frank?
"No."
"You look about thirty-two, thirty-three."
"I feel older."
Softly whistling Duke Ellington's "Satin Doll," Bobby thought a moment,
then asked the SSA computer to eliminate those Frank Pollards younger
than twenty-eight and older than thirty-eight. That left seventy-two of
them.
"Frank, do you think you've ever lived anywhere else are you a
dyed-in-the-wool Californian?"
"I don't know."
"Let's assume you're a son of the sunshine state." He asked the SSA
computer to whittle down the remaining Frank Pollards to those who
applied for their Social security numbers while living in California
(fifteen), then to whose current addresses on file were in California
(six).
The public-access portion of the Social Security Administrations data
network was forbidden by law to reveal Social security numbers to casual