Interrupt

by Tony Dwiggins

  INTERRUPT

  by

  Toni Dwiggins

  Version 1.0

  Copyright © 1993 by Toni Dwiggins

  ISBN: 0-812-52037-8

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I learned what is on the other end of my telephone handset from several engineers and technicians who graciously introduced me to their network. If there are factual or technical errors in the book, they are mine alone. My thanks and appreciation go to Dave Naumann, Bob Denig, and Mark Robbins, from Pacific Bell; and to John Katzfey, Jacqueline Levy, My-Hanh Do, and Bob Graber, from AT&T. They are at least part of the reason that my phone always works.

  For their support and advice, I am deeply grateful to Sue and Wally Worsley. To Dan Kolsrud, thanks for the name and the words of wisdom.

  Finally, my most enthusiastic thanks to the people who shepherded my book to life: Lisa Bankoff and Harriet McDougal.

  CHAPTER 1

  There was something alluring about an engineer like Andy Faulkner.

  Interrupts face scorched, and the cold wind stung.

  Like me, Interrupt thought. Committed. An engineer with passion.

  Couldn't be better.

  Interrupt gazed at Faulkner's house. The house, unlike the man, was a disappointment.

  Hard to make out details because the storm had killed the streetlights. But moonlight tore through the clouds to show enough. Boxy house, too large for the small lot. Garage sticking out at one end toward the street, like a thumb. Middle-class house, streets full of houses just like this all over Silicon Valley. Probably all that Faulkner could afford, the house of an engineer with more commitment than business sense.

  The wind picked up, with a vengeance. Interrupt shivered violently and moved. No one else on the street, no one at the windows. Everyone huddled inside their houses around candles and emergency lanterns. If anyone looked outside and caught a figure in the shifting moonlight, they would see a telephone lineman. They'd feel safe, because nights like this belonged to someone in uniform.

  Interrupt stepped onto Faulkner's sodden lawn. A tall walnut tree canopied the front lawn, but provided no cover. Close to the house, hugging it, huge oleanders clumped around the front and side windows. Someone could hide in those oleanders.

  Interrupt shouldered into the wet flower jungle and moved around to the side window.

  Now the movie scene came to mind, the scene in which the intruder stalks up on the old house. The house in the scene was better than Faulkner's: it stood alone, it had three stories with sharp angles and, Interrupt dredged up the word, dormers. The power hadn't gone out, so it was lighted up inside like a stage. Outside, the intruder moved confidently through the night, closing in on the bushes below the lighted windows.

  The scene stopped, cut cold. Interrupt pressed close to Faulkner's window and felt a quick spurting of the heart, like the oleanders quaking uncontrollably in the wind. Not fear, not an attack of nerves. Just gut-level thrill.

  Through the window, the living room flickered by the light of a camping lantern, like an ancient fire-lit cave. Interrupt gazed inside and whispered, "Bingo."

  There was the phone; beside it, hooked to it, was the TDD.

  And there they were, Faulkner and the boy, seated facing each other at a table, Andy snaking his fingers at the boy and the boy snaking back. Sign language. Almost primitive, like the cave-lit room.

  Interrupt had expected the boy to be frail. He had a frail-sounding name, Wayne. But, even seated, the boy looked tall like Faulkner, although kid-skinny, and his hands and arms already showed musculature.

  Faulkner had his back to the window, and his face showed only occasionally in profile. An admirable face. Clear, strong features, especially in the slanting light from the lantern. A draftsman could have drawn it, getting in a few clean lines the almost-straight brow and the wide mouth and between them the hard angles of the nose and cheekbones. Suddenly, Faulkner turned toward the window and the lantern light took him full in the face, caught the wide-set dark eyes, boyishly somber. Interrupt froze, but Faulkner apparently did not see through the window. Faulkner grinned and two sculpted lines appeared under the eyes, marks of experience quickly sketched in by the draftsman. Then the grin disappeared and Faulkner turned soberly back to the boy again, the private amusement masked.

  Andy Faulkner had a fine engineer's face, Interrupt thought, a fine Stanford engineer's face.

  Interrupt imagined being the draftsman, grasping a mechanical pencil, hexagonal casing, its ultra-thin point a polymer lead strong enough to withstand the slashings of a driven hand, scoring straight vertical lines down the paper, then slashing across them with hard straight horizontal lines until a black lead grid canceled out the face in the drawing. The lead broke and Interrupt flicked out a new point like the tongue of a switchblade.

  Then Interrupt let the drawing hand uncurl and pressed closer to the window, for inside, Faulkner and the boy were grasping hands across the table.

  Wayne locked onto Andy's hand with a fierce grip. The kid was getting stronger, Andy thought. When had he grown this strong? Andy had to focus immediately on his own grip or he would have lost it right then, and any remaining urge to smile passed.

  Next time, he thought, I won't be giving him this much of an advantage. He won't need it.

  He could feel the ungiving Formica under his elbow and the pressure from Wayne's push all the way up his arm through his shoulder and back. He tensed his muscles and tried to pull their forearms up to vertical.

  "Give?" he said, and when Wayne didn't respond he turned his head so that the light from the lantern fell more fully on his face. "Give, Rambo?"

  Wayne shook his head. With his free hand he fingerspelled "Look who's on top."

  "Not for long." Andy grinned this time, psyching.

  Wayne grinned back.

  There was a noise at the window and Andy snapped his head around to look. Dark shapes, movement, it was the oleanders slapping against the glass. The wind was picking up. He turned back to Wayne, but the boy had followed his father's movements and still looked toward the window.

  With his free hand, Andy touched Wayne's free hand and the bay turned to him.

  "Wind in the trees," Andy said.

  They tightened grips.

  Andy channeled his strength into his hand and tried to curl Wayne's wrist inward to weaken it, but Wayne knew the trick as well as Andy, he'd learned it from his father, and he blocked it. Their locked arms held at a 120 angle, with Andy on the downside.

  "Give?" Wayne fingerspelled.

  Andy shook his head.

  "Give?" Wayne mouthed it. No sound came; Wayne could have produced an approximation of the word but he wouldn't. He had stopped trying to produce words when the expressions of the hearing registered confusion, or worse, amusement.

  Andy's arm was beginning to ache. Next time, they'd start at a 110-degree angle. "I don't give," he said, his breathing a little tight. In a couple of years, Wayne was going to be able to slam him down at the start and then it would be time to begin the matches as equals.

  Andy could remember the first time his father had arm-wrestled him from a vertical start. Joe Faulkner had simply sat down, placed his elbow on the table, and held up his open hand to Andy at ninety degrees. Andy had been surprised, and then he'd been proud as hell. He lost, and he kept on losing, but Joe never asked if he wanted to start with an advantage again and Andy would have been humiliated if he had. Finally, Andy won a match. He knew he had really won it, he knew his father hadn't let him win, for Joe Faulkner believed that everything, everything in life must be earned.

  Andy watched Wayne's face. He supposed that was the way he himself looked when he was concentrating hard: squinting, teeth clamped together so tight that the jaw muscles ticked. Wanting t
o win so badly that it hurt.

  For a moment, he was going to let the boy win.

  But that's not the way they played it. Wayne was given an advantage at the start, less and less as he got older and stronger, and from then on it was each contestant for himself.

  Andy became conscious of the wind again. It was spiraling up to a howl, rattling windows in their casings. He stopped himself from turning to look.

  It was humid in the half-lit room. Sweat made their bare arms gleam and slicked the palms of their locked hands.

  Andy loosened his fingers to get a better grip. Instantly, with a small grunt of victory, Wayne forced his father's hand back. Andy felt his wrist give, felt the weakness ripple up his forearm. He sucked in a deep breath and pushed back.

  Wayne's face was rigid with concentration.

  Andy poured every bit of strength into his hand. "Give?" he mouthed. He didn't have a breath to spare.

  As their arms shuddered toward vertical, thunder crashed in, splitting their hands apart and roaring through Andy's head. Thunder almost on top of them, taking the roof off.

  Andy jumped, knocking his chair over, and stared in amazement at Wayne.

  Wayne had clapped his hands to his ears. His mouth opened as if he were going to speak; his eyes widened, ringing the green irises with white.

  "My God," Andy said.

  They both stood frozen in the vacuum silence that followed the thunder. Then Wayne dropped his hands from his ears and began signing rapidly.

  "I know," Andy signed. He crossed to his son and took hold of his shoulders. "I know," he said.

  Wayne had heard the thunder.

  It meant nothing. Once in a great while, very rarely, a sound was loud enough, at just the right frequency, to touch Wayne's residual hearing. It meant nothing, but for seconds Andy and Wayne had been in the world of sound together.

  Thunder roared again, farther away. Wayne did not flinch.

  Andy almost reached out to touch Wayne's ears, as if he could find the blocked neural circuits with his fingertips and rewire them, as if he could pour in sound.

  The boy could hear? He jumped at the thunder, so he could hear. No. He just felt the vibrations, or he jumped because Faulkner jumped. The boy couldn't hear, because there was the telecommunications device for the deaf hooked up to the phone. He couldn't hear, and he used a TDD.

  Relax.

  Interrupt checked the time. Eight forty-one. Sooner or later, the boy would use the TDD. Used it a lot, according to the phone records. Interrupt's hand rested on the lineman's mobile phone dangling from the tool belt. Worst possible case, Interrupt would have to call the boy's TDD line. Not as elegant, but an alternative.

  Patience.

  It began to rain again. Interrupt barely felt it beneath the oleanders, but the raindrops snapped loudly on the gutters overhead.

  Interrupt allowed the movie scene to continue.

  The three-storied house was wood, painted white. A symbol, of course: white for innocence, defenselessness. The intruder watched at will the pretty young woman inside. She came into her living room carrying a paper bag, pulled dead flowers from a vase, dropped them in the bag, then passed into the dining room. More dead flowers into the bag.

  The flowers were obviously a symbol too. Heavy-handed, but it worked.

  As the young woman moved from room to room, the intruder shadowed her outside, circling the house. The scene played on, now revealing the intruder's face: full of rage. Finally, the intruder located what he was looking for, a thick black cable snaking down the side of the house. Here, the scene cut to a close-up of a black rotary telephone on a hallway table inside.

  Interrupt could not help smiling. The close-up was to make sure the viewer understood that the cable was a telephone line, the cable and pair connecting her phone with the central office.

  Now the intruder knelt beside the cable and caught it in the jaws of a heavy-duty bolt cutter. Close-up of the hands, the flexed tendons showing the force that was needed to snap the cutters shut. The cutting sound, savage. And then the severed ends of the cable with the twisted wire pairs suddenly exposed. The intruder had cut the line, and her phone was dead.

  Something soft, wet, and cold dropped onto Interrupts hand from the oleanders, and Interrupt hit out. unthinking, like a wild thing.

  "What the ..." Andy spun around to the side window. He could see nothing but darkness out there.

  Wayne came beside him and peered out too.

  Andy snapped down the blind. "Wind again in the bushes," he signed.

  It hadn't been wind in the bushes. Andy grabbed one of the flashlights from the table and pulled open the front door. Wind caught him in the face as he swept the porch and front yard with the tunnel of light.

  Wayne was right behind him.

  Andy turned. "Maybe something fell. Cat knocked over the trash can. I'm going to check."

  Wayne stabbed a finger at himself.

  "Wait here." Andy thought quickly. "In case of the phone." Andy followed Wayne's glance at the TDD. The light wasn't flashing now, but if it did, Wayne would not want to miss it. The timeless worry of parents—where's the kid?—had never been a particular worry for Andy. He always knew where to find the kid: in his room, draped over the keyboard, schmoozing on DeafNet, combing through his E-mail, scoping out the bulletin boards, just cruising down the superhighway. Wayne lived online, by modem or by TDD; it was online where he could communicate just like the next guy.

  Wayne was already parked by the TDD.

  Andy stepped outside and pulled the door firmly shut, curling his hand tighter around the flashlight handle.

  Stupid. Should've got out to the street as soon as Faulkner pulled down the blind. A door slammed, from the front of the house.

  Interrupt began to sweat. Only one way to go. Around to the backyard and pray there's a way out.

  Interrupt crouched and ran, soft-footed and bent over like some kind of quarry.

  A familiar pressure built just behind the eyes, and it started to hurt. Losing control. Interrupt winced and rounded into the back. The whole backyard was fenced. Bad luck.

  Where was Faulkner? Coming through the side yard?

  Get hold, Interrupt thought. Plan it.

  There was a patio back here, a big slab of concrete, and a basketball setup, and grass, and along the back fence more oleanders. Have to be the oleanders again.

  The headache was building, sickening.

  Interrupt bolted across the grass, nearly tripping on a garden hose that snaked into the oleanders. Once more, into the slick jungle.

  Light stabbed into the backyard, and behind it, a tall figure moved cautiously.

  Interrupt's head throbbed.

  In planning this night, in laying it all out step by step, Interrupt had briefly considered bringing the automatic but decided it was unnecessary. You took a gun if you planned to shoot something. Interrupt had shot targets—bull's-eyes— and pierced rats on the run. But the plan for this night had certainly not involved shooting.

  Now, sweating, hurting, trapped quarry, Interrupt clutched at the tool belt for a weapon.

  Faulkner was prowling through the backyard, searching with the light. Hunting.

  The pain. Interrupt tried to hold the pain back with fingers pressed hard against skull.

  Faulkner's flashlight swept the oleanders and caught Interrupt full in the face, blinding. Then it moved on, then it zigged back and slashed across Interrupt's chest. And moved on.

  What did the man see? Was he playing?

  He was coming toward the oleanders, slow. Still cautious.

  Interrupt crouched lower and, as Faulkner's light arced by again, saw something briefly gleam by the base of an oleander. Interrupt glanced out at Faulkner, calculated his path, waited, waited, then reached for the gleaming object on the ground. The nozzle of the garden hose. With the other hand, Interrupt slipped the bolt cutters off the tool belt.

  Faulkner stepped forward, paused, took another step.

>   Interrupt pulled the hose up taut, then yanked it to the left. It caught Faulkner across one ankle, with the other foot raised to take one more cautious step.

  Faulkner pitched forward and fell facedown in the grass.

  Interrupt came fast out of the oleanders, but there was no movement from Faulkner. Stepping cautiously, like Faulkner, Interrupt approached the form on the grass. The flashlight was still in Faulkner's hand, its beam stabbing down into the earth.

  Interrupt got a double-handed grip on the bolt cutters, gummed with granules of something from the oleanders; raising the cutters to strike, Interrupt inhaled the thick wet odor of pollen. Head throbbing, almost giddy with the pollen, Interrupt came down on both knees.

  Faulkner lay still.

  Something was wrong. The ground, Interrupt thought. It was soft, saturated with rainwater, spongy. Why was Faulkner not moving? Interrupt fingered the pollen granules on the cutters, bothersome, like dried scabs of glue, and bent close enough to hear the soft hiss of Faulkner's breathing. Bent this close, Interrupt could see the depression in the lawn, the network of gray metal pipe and faucets and the vicious spiked disk that kissed Faulkner's temple.

  He was breathing. Knocked cold but breathing. "Thank you," Interrupt whispered, to no one, to God maybe.

  Suddenly, sounds came from the side yard. Heavy thump thump along the concrete walkway, big-kid heavy-sneakered footsteps.

  Interrupt shoved back into the oleanders.

  The boy appeared, spotted his father, and stopped cold. He made a sound, a harsh expulsion of breath, and then he started moving. His big sneakers sank into the earth, he walked with difficulty like someone walking through wet sand. He reached his father and came down stiffly on one knee, then grabbed Faulkner by the shoulders and rolled him over.

  Stupid kid, too rough with a possible head injury.

  Another sound, a groan. Interrupt couldn't tell if it came from the boy or Faulkner. Then the kid panicked, sprang up, and charged across the patio and through a back door into the house, propelling the door into the wall so hard that Interrupt could hear the doorknob sink into the drywall.