She made a sound of exasperation and shut her eyes. “You don’t understand. It’s out of the question. I’m pregnant.”
I blinked. “What’s the problem? I like kids.”
She stared into my eyes for a long time, and then looked away. “Jake, I’m forty-one years old. This will be my first and last baby.”
I shrugged. “I’m an old fart too. One kid is about all I could stand too. Let’s see how it plays out.”
Look, I’ve talked to several of my friends about it since, so I now understand that mine was a statistically unusual reaction. But I still don’t understand it. Sure, I know that from my DNA’s point of view, my attitude is suicidal. But I am not my DNA. I understand the part about achieving immortality by perpetuating yourself in children…but why do they have to have Xerox copies of my rotten teeth and sparse beard and bony frame and ugly face? The parts of me that I count important, that I consider identical of me, are the things I’ve done with the genes I was dealt. My vibes, if you will. My attitudes and beliefs and aspirations. The very things most parents are dismayed to learn genetics won’t install or instill in their kids. It just seems to me that anything really important I could pass on to a kid, I could pass on to just about any healthy kid. I mean, a baby is a baby is a baby. No?
She stared at me. Not quite gaping, but close. I could sense that I had gone too far, overplayed my hand. I saw her narrow it down to a choice of two: either I was lying through my teeth, saying whatever she wanted to hear in order to get into her pants…or I was entirely too hooked to suit her. She didn’t care which.
She was on her feet before I knew she had eyes to stand, scooped up her purse in one hand and her bass in the other, and headed for the door. No closing peroration, no thanks for the jam and the drink, zippo-bang, trotting.
I tried to get up on both lips and make the right words come out of my feet. My brain shut down. It was just like when the system hangs on a Macintosh and the screen freezes and none of the keys work. I could neither move nor speak.
System error, I thought wildly, ID # 4: Zoey and I are being divided, by nothing! Where the hell is that programmer’s switch: I have to reboot, fast!
BONG! A distant G-major triad…
…and faintly, against the crowd noise, Curly said what I was feeling: “I’m tryin’a think—but nuttin’ happens!”
The startup sound for the house Macintosh! Which I still had not gotten around to plugging in—
△ △ △
Instinct, intuition, a growing familiarity with the uncanny—I don’t know. One way or another, I knew instantly that somehow, for some reason, in some weird way that Macintosh was trying to help me.
I also knew it could not possibly be in time.
She was already a third of the way to the door—what did she care about a Mac booting up?—and the thing is that for at least the first thirty seconds after you switch a computer on, it’s busy: running through its operating-system program, reminding itself what a bit is, and why it cares, then asking the Finder how to rebuild your Desktop, and all that stuff. It’s called “booting,” short for bootstrapping, because the computer is teaching itself how to be a computer, lifting itself up by its own bootstraps like the Strong Muldoon. There’s no way to hurry the process—and indeed, I had roughly doubled its duration, by loading my Mac with all sorts of tricky Inits and CDevs that load on startup. Zoey would be out the door long before the silly thing could finish saying Welcome—which hadn’t worked for me.
And even if being operated by a poltergeist could somehow make a Mac boot faster—and I didn’t believe in poltergeists smarter than Steve Wozniak—what the hell could a Mac possibly do to help me? I had not yet wired it into the house sound system (because I hadn’t found a switching system that would meet my needs), so its puny little speaker could not possibly be heard effectively above the crowd noise, even at peak volume. If it displayed text in a font and size large enough to be seen and read by someone walking quickly by, twenty feet away, its twelve-inch screen could contain at most a handful of words. And she probably wouldn’t even glance at them.
So this was nothing but a doomed distraction, diverting my attention from the already impossible task of thinking up the right words to call after her. Oh God, even witchcraft can’t save me now—
Three point one seconds (I learned later) after the bong sounded, the Mac lit up—bright white, rather than the usual grey—and suddenly, instantly, impossibly displayed a clear sharp picture.
And Zoey froze in her tracks.
△ △ △
Several things about that picture struck me as flat out impossible. First, it was impossibly clear and sharp. Even at its best, an 82-dot-per-inch monochrome Mac monitor simply cannot form an image that crisp: the pixels are too big. This image was better than even a grey-scale monitor displays. Second, a picture that detailed, composed of that many tiny pixels, should have taken that Mac several seconds to load—even if the computer were already booted up, and a good graphics program were already running.
Finally, it was not a still. It appeared to be video, in realtime. And Trinitron quality video, at that. There are interface systems that will let you run video into a Mac, and there were one or two at that time in history—but we’re talking high five figures for the cheapest such package, plus a memory upgrade to handle the traffic, plus a man from the factory spending half a day to install and tune the system for you.
Against a neutral background: a face. Male, middle sixties, Jewish, kinky hair shot with grey. Worried expression, one hand upheld.
“Zoey,” he said, loud enough to be heard clearly from where I was sitting, “keep that one.”
She made a small sound, and stood stock still.
11
Monsters from the Id
People had been discreetly taking notice since the moment Zoey had leaped up from her chair; by now several were frankly staring. Conversations began to dry up, and several people moved to where they could see the monitor.
She turned to stare at me. If you’re poised halfway between terror and rage, prepared to go either way in an instant, is that awe?
I raised my eyebrows, shoulders and thumbs, as one who would say, Don’t look at me! I did not want Zoey in awe of me, or terrified of me, or enraged at me.
When I thought it over later I was flattered by how quickly she turned back to the screen. She believed me implicitly, and at once. She stared at it for another few seconds, studying that face. Then she glanced around quickly at the crowd, totally silent now, and back to the screen again. I saw her come to a decision.
“Why him?” she asked the troubled Jewish man.
His troubled expression melted into a smile of unusual beauty and serenity. “Because he’ll give you what you need…and he needs what you can give.”
The room was silent now. After a few seconds, she looked over her shoulder at me, with a stare so piercing I had the eerie conviction that she had achieved what we had all come here to find; that she was a telepath. In case that were true, I tried to radiate everything I knew about myself, and everything I hoped for myself, like a transponder beacon constantly announcing its identity.
Including, this time, how badly I wanted her. I no longer had world enough or time for coyness—by now it had begun to dawn on me that something was happening in my bar that was actually more important than me falling in love for the third time in my life.
Lawd! LAWD! Can you dig me in dis heah fish?
“Okay, Jake,” she said to me. Then she swiveled her head around and repeated it to the man on the Mac. “Okay, Pop.”
A completely indescribable welter of emotions took me all at once. My ears roared, and my vision blurred.
His smile, startlingly, increased in beauty. “Such a smart one.”
She turned around to face me. Her face now wore a nearly identical copy of his smile. It looked even better on her. Fewer wrinkles. She gestured back at the screen. “My father.” She took a deep breath, but the smile
never faltered. “My late father. Murray Berkowitz. He never said ‘Keep that one’ before.”
“Was your father a scientist?” I asked.
She blinked at the non sequitur. “An English professor, and scholar. Will you excuse me a second?” Without waiting for an answer she turned around again; she did not see my face fall. “Pop?”
“Yes, Punkin.”
“What’s it like being dead?” Her voice quivered on the last word. I knew that smile was still in place, and her eyes were shining.
His version of the smile became rueful. “What can I tell you? It’s not like anything.”
“Pop!”
“I mean exactly what I said. It’s the only thing that can be said about it. It’s not like anything. It’s not like sleeping, or being unconscious, or like the rabbi said it would be, it’s not like any religion tells you, it’s not like you think it will be—it’s especially not like you fear it will be. It’s not a thing to fear. It’s not like anything. Ask me a question with an answer, I’ll answer it.”
Three deep breaths, and she had control. “Do you know how much I love you?”
His smile went away. Soberly, he said, “Yes. Even in death. That one thing can never change. And even in death, I will always love you just as much.”
In a very small voice she said, “Thank God.”
He shrugged with his lips. “It couldn’t hurt. I have to go, Zoey. Give your mother my love, and yours too. I’ll see you at the far end of the tunnel. But don’t be in a hurry, you’re always in a hurry.”
She looked over her shoulder at me again. Her cheeks were wet, and she was still smiling. “I won’t.” She turned back to him. “Au revoir, Pop.”
I felt like bursting into tears myself. But I had to speak up. He was obviously going to do a Boojum any second now—and I dared not let him. “Mr. Berkowitz!”
His eyes shifted to me. “Yes, Jake?”
I found Mike Callahan’s face in the crowd. He understood too. I had known he would. I appealed for help with my eyes.
Good luck, son, his eyes replied.
It has to be my turn to save the world now, when I’ve been awake and drinking for a week? Okay, I can handle that…but why do I have to hurt my Zoey to do it? Guardian Idiot! Defcon One: scramble!
Bullets hurt your teeth when you bite down on them. This was like a runaway abscess—but I didn’t seem to have a choice.
“Who are you really?” I asked.
Zoey staring at me. I could feel it on my cheek.
He looked amused. “You don’t believe in ghosts? After some of the things you’ve seen in your time?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Especially not in ghosts that use computers. On odd-numbered days I believe in poltergeists, and I’ve lost track of the date, but I don’t think you’re a poltergeist either. But I’m certain that you are not Zoey’s father. You’ve been here before—a week before she or I ever imagined each other existed.”
“That’s preposterous—”
“‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,’ huh?”
“You’ll queer the pitch, boy,” he said without moving his lips.
“And I think you know how much I’ll hate that,” I said. “So you know how badly I want an answer.”
Zoey staring back and forth from me to the screen, frowning.
“You patrons have to give their right name, here, is that it?” he said finally.
“Only when they scare the living shit out of me.”
She stared only at me, now. The crowd was utterly still.
He closed his eyes and sighed. Then he sighed again, slower. Finally he said, “Then you already know the answer, don’t you?”
Zoey’s lower lip twitching.
Growing vacuum beneath the navel. Under the table, my legs began to tremble. “Yes, I’m afraid I do.”
“Wrong,” he cried. “You think you know. And if you think you know what I know you think, young man, I have to tell you: you are suffering from rectofossal ambiguity.”
“STOP THAT!” Zoey shouted, so loud that people flinched. I was one of them. For an instant I thought she was talking to me.
“Murray” did not flinch. Instead he and his background metamorphosed—I suppose remetaphorized is more accurate—into a stylized version of the oldest Macintosh icon: the Smiling Mac that is the very first image any Macintosh ever displays, but scaled up by about a thousand percent. It’s sort of a Happy Face in a box. Its pixel lips moved as it spoke. “Quite right. I apologize, Ms. Berkowitz. For what it’s worth, it was Hell Highway I was trying to pave.” Its voice was now a neutral, newsnitwit’s voice, quite human-sounding, rather than the kind of stilted speech programs like Macintalk or Smoothtalker produce—and it still had better fidelity than a Mac should have been able to produce.
She glanced around and saw the new display. “Oh, hey, that’s all right then,” she said brightly. “Excuse me, I had the idea you were playing games with my fucking heart!”
“I am very sorry. It was not a game.”
“Answer Jake’s question,” she said, her voice bitter. “Who are you, really?”
“I am what I am,” Smilin’ Mac answered.
“God damn it—”
“I honestly don’t know what else to tell you,” he went on. “I have no name—there’s only one of me, and no one has ever called me. I am what you are listening to now.”
“Zoey?” I said.
She turned to me. “Yes, Jake?”
“Zoey, my darling, whose emotional choices are not necessarily voided by having been made on the advice of a liar, I am sorry I had to spoil things. More sorry than I can tell you. But I believe that what is talking to us is The Net. All the computers in the world that are hooked together. Between ’em, they’ve grown a mind. Artificial intelligence, self-generated.”
ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA Rooba rooba rooba rooba—
“I can’t think of anything else,” I said, “that could enslave a Macintosh and impose a special custom operating system lean enough to load and run in three seconds, all by carrier wave.”
“Is that true?” she asked the Mac.
“It is one of the truest misstatements that can be made about me,” it said. “Another would be to say that I am the first silicon intelligence.”
ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA
ROOBA ROOBA ROOBA—
△ △ △
I wished the Lucky Duck were present. Random chance must be a computer’s worst enemy, right?
To my own surprise, my voice came out loud enough to cut through the din. “What do you want here, Mac?”
The noise died down fast. Inquiring minds wanted to know.
“Simple politeness for a stranger would be a nice beginning,” the computer said.
The silence was now total. A lot of blinking took place. He had hit us where we lived. Five minutes ago I’d have taken a solemn oath that nobody was too strange or different to be welcome at Mary’s Place.
But Zoey was a newcomer, unfamiliar with our customs. “What’s wrong with our manners, pal?” she asked belligerently. “And don’t call him ‘Mac,’” she added to me. “That’s not his name; he’s not entitled to it, any more than he is to ‘Murray Berkowitz.’”
“How many of you here are science fiction readers?” the computer asked, ignoring her aside.
One by one, just about everybody in the room stuck a hand up. Hanging out with a time traveler, conquering alien invasion, surviving an atom bomb blast, meeting a cluricaune will do that to you, I guess. Even the handful of newcomers all had a hand up. Naggeneen himself was the only abstainer: his contribution was a snore rather like a chainsaw with a bad bearing, idling.
“How many of you here are presently thinking of John Varley’s story, ‘Press Enter■’?”
(If you’re not a sf reader, Varley’s famous story concerns a spontaneously occurring silicon intelligence—which kills, horribly, to protect the secret of its existence.)
Only two hands w
ent down. One of them belonged to Slippery Joe Maser. “I was thinking about Bill Gibson’s cyberpunk stuff. COUNT ZERO, mostly.”
(If you don’t know Gibson’s work, that book involves a computer net invaded by voodoo gods.)
“Also a skillful writer. But I did specify ‘science fiction’,” the computer said.
“I don’t make much distinction between sf and fantasy,” Joe said.
“Obviously.”
“I was thinking of Forbidden Planet,” said Bill Gerrity, the other maverick. “The Krell.”
(If you’ve never seen that movie . . . hell, what planet are you from?)
The Smilin’ Mac nodded—and if you think it’s easy to make a graphic that simple appear to nod, get yourself an animation program and try it. “Very well,” he said. “My point is made. Science fiction, fantasy or film, all of you have more or less the same attitude and expectations—in bold type on your foreheads. Mr. Latimer, may I ask you a rhetorical question?”
“Try it and see,” Isham suggested.
“Suppose you walked into a room full of people who had never actually met a black person before—suppose you’d walked in there to do one of them a favor—and the first thing they thought of, every one of them, were a drug-addled killer rapist thief on welfare?”
There was a shocked silence.
“Whatever you people think of me, I’m sure you don’t think I’m stupid. Has anyone here got a theory on why I risked breaking cover here, twice?”
Come to think of it, I didn’t.
“Mr. Callahan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Two decades ago, a man named Finn walked into your tavern—on a night when most of the people here now were present—and proved that he had the power, and the inescapable obligation, to annihilate your species at midnight, am I right?”
“Yeah.”
“He begged you all to kill him, correct?”
“He did that,” Callahan testified.
“And what did all of you do?”
Callahan shook his head at the memory. “We got him drunk.”
The Callahan Touch Page 18
