Ambient

by Jack Womack

  "And he let you have them?"

  "He was so grateful to me at the time I coulda took the Wash ington Monument if 1'da wanted it. I figured there'd be somethin' in those files worth havin'."

  I supposed there was, somewhere in there, but I hadn't found it. The second and third files seemed filled with the most bizarre collections of material I'd ever seen.

  "You could look for hours through those things without gettin' tired," said the Old Man. "Like goin' through the phone book on a rainy afternoon."

  One folder told of the last years and Pacific burial place of Amelia Earhart. A small yellow envelope contained the original formula for Coca-Cola. A sonargram gave the approximate dimensions of a Loch Ness inhabitant, species unknown. A heavy file dated 1971 concerned an unapproved patent for a pill that converted water into a gasoline-like fluid; in the same file were unapproved patents for the same type of product, dated 1954, 1932, 1919, and 1905. I glanced over the labels on a clutch of vid cassettes.

  "Greed?" I read aloud, "Reels 1 through 42.

  "By way of Mussolini," said the Old Man. "Found in Albania. "

  In the rear of each drawer was a collector's farrago-in one, a photo of the building in which Judge Crater served as the cornerstone, a picture of the Chicago house where Martin Bormann died, and a rough stone sphere. It was a broken geode; pulling the split halves apart, I saw a shiny steel nail embedded in the amethyst within, as if Godness had accidentally dropped it while sorting things out at the start.

  "What junk," I said, closing that drawer, opening another, taking something out.

  "Troublesome junk, at least," said the Old Man, yawning. "Troubled some people."

  I'd come across a file marked LONG ISLAND. I opened it, and read.

  "You look a little peaked there, O'Malley," I heard him say after several minutes. "You musta found one of the good ones."

  It was a lengthy report from the User Unfriendly Division of the Chemical Intolerance Department of the Pentagon. A preliminary text discussed the accident itself and how easily it could have been avoided; a subsequent passage described how, through recombinant techniques, the antiradiation pills had been developed-how before they were given out it had been discovered that unpredictable side effects were certain to occur. It was decided to distribute the pills anyway and discover what the side effects might be, so it might be decided whether they would prove useful in military action.

  "And that's why darkies were born," the Old Man laughed, slapping me on the back. As I read he'd crept up behind me and had been reading along over my shoulder.

  "Is it in here?" I said, replacing the file.

  "Not anymore," he said, smiling. "Hasn't been for a long, long time."

  "So you're the only one who knows what it is?"

  "Well, now," he said, his grin becoming even more mischievous, "I wouldn't have said so a minute ago."

  To find yourself wishing that either the world might end or that you might, and that it wouldn't matter which so long as it happened soon, is a feeling that I hate to even admit that I had. Even at the worst of times I had had it so much better than so many. To take my lot and to have stayed satisfied should have been enough for me, but it wasn't, and I'm not sure I'll ever figure out why; it seems just one of those things. If a choice is made for you, live with it; if a choice remains, take it. By those expressions I so often made my way. But at that point I felt almost ready to welcome my choices being decided for me-almost.

  "It's a nasty, nasty thing, O'Malley," said the Old Man, closing the drawer. "You don't want any part of it."

  And I still did-

  "Fact remains, O'Malley, you've done a hell of a lot to help me out, but we're just gonna have to tie up a few loose ends before everything's set aright again. I've got to admit that I think you're lyin' about one thing, though, and that makes me feel a little better-"

  "You're going to take the chance that I am lying?"

  "I didn't say that," he said. Jimmy walked over to where we stood; from my eye's corner I only glanced at him. "There's a lot of things I'm gonna hafta think about, O'Malley. I'd hate to have to lose a valuable worker like you. We might be able to work somethin' out yet."

  "I'd certainly hope so," I said.

  "We better do some thinkin' about it, though. Jimmy? See that O'Malley's not disturbed."

  Jimmy moved fast, lifting his arms around my neck, jerking me back so quickly that I hadn't a chance to resist, even if I'd tried. I never felt the pain until I reawoke.

  14

  When I awoke I felt as if my windpipe had been crushed. After I coughed, spitting up blood from some region down below, it seemed less sore, as if it had only needed realignment. As I regained consciousness fully, I found myself lying on a rickety cot; my feet hung over the end, feeling cold, as if the circulation had been cut off for a prolonged time. With difficulty I managed to sit up; my bones ground against themselves as if they were being rubbed over stones. My eyes adjusted to the dim light, and came unglued.

  "How're you feelin'?" a voice asked; the Old Man spoke.

  "Terrible," I said, feeling giddy when I shifted my head. With my hands I discovered that someone had been gracious enough to wrap a fresh bandage around my brow. "Where are we?"

  "The Tombs," he said. The old part, I estimated, to judge from the cracks in the walls, the crumbling plaster, and the hospital-green paint. "You were out so sound for a while there I started gettin' worried. Thought Jimmy mighta shown excessive zeal in his application. You're doin' all right now, though?"

  "What time is it?"

  "Nighttime. Feelin' well enough to go for a little walk?"

  Avalon sat on another cot, across the small room. She now wore a baggy jumpsuit, as if preparing for maneuvers. She was staring at me now, as if to give an impression of concern.

  "Walk where?"

  "I'd like you to meet somebody," he said. "I've been thinkin' about what to do with you. I think I've come to a decision'll just about please everybody."

  "Just about?"

  "Nothin's perfect, O'Malley. Can you make it?"

  I stood, slowly and painfully. My throat felt as if it had been sandblasted. Avalon stood up as well.

  "What sort of decision?"

  "Now, now," he said. "You'll have to start gettin' used to things first. And you are a curious sort. Let me show you a few things'll really perk your interest. Come on."

  "Goodbye, Avalon," I said, wondering what response I might receive.

  "She's comin' with us most of the way. Come on, let's go."

  "Who am I going to meet?"

  "Alice. "

  On several occasions I'd been to the Tombs, certifying that problematics had been properly delivered as requested by Dryco, but on none of those visits had I ever gone beyond the first floor offices. So near as I could make out, we were on a higher flooras we stepped from the room we passed a small window, and I caught a fast glimpse of the darkness outside. Not far from the room to which I'd been delivered, just beyond the Pepsi machines in the hall, was the area where-this is just a guess, these spaces are usually recognizable-the police brought those meant for immediate disposal. It was a long room papered with soundproofed matting; the matting's fiber escaped through the thousands of pockmarks spotting its surface. In the floor were innumerable holes for drainage, as if for an autopsy table.

  It was a quiet night; apparently no one put in overtime on this floor. Several rooms we passed, their doors ajar, appeared to be awaiting new transients; some were empty, some were furnished comfortably, as if for a lounge. One looked to have been, at first glance, set up as some rudimentary terrarium; a row of pots lined the bottom of the wall facing out, and in them were planted tall, long-armed cacti, aligned crosslike as if ready for someone to be fastened upon them.

  We walked and walked, reaching a wider, brighter hall, somewhere deep in the new building. The hall we trod there stretched seemingly for miles of whiteness and indirect light. We turned once, turned again. In none of those wa
lls were doors or windows, signs or directions. The Old Man led us as if by memory. Besides the clap of our footsteps I heard only the satisfied drone of machines at play. At last we reached the end of the hall; a small vestibule led directly off the main passage, just before.

  "Stay in there, hon," the Old Man said to Avalon. "Just make yourself comfy."

  "Why can't I go in there with you two?" she asked.

  "Nothin' in there you wanta see. Come on now, we'll be finished soon."

  She went in, sitting down in the chair that was provided within. There was a small slot in the wall facing us; into it the Old Man slipped a green card. A panel slid open; a yellow strobe flashed over his face-examining his retinas, I supposed. The panel slid shut. Nothing happened.

  "Goddamn thing never works right," he said, sounding disgusted. He leaned against the wall, rubbing his shoulder against it several times. A door opened; we went inside.

  "Here's where we take problem children, O'Malley. Let's see the teacher. "

  The room was ellipsoid, fifteen feet high, nearly a hundred feet across. Closed doors, knobless and handleless, lined the wall but for a small section near the entranceway through which we passed; there, a window in the wall looked upon Avalon, sitting in that tiny room.

  "Can she see us?" I asked. The Old Man shook his head. In the room's center was a large corporate blue mainframe square, five feet high, thirty feet long on each side. On top, near the edge facing us, was a small terminal panel attached to a plasma monitor screen. Just below the keyboard was the legend, NIHIL OB- STAT ALIENUM PUTO.

  "What's this?" I asked.

  "Wonderland," laughed the Old Man. "Far as we want to go.

  "So where's-"

  "Don't be so damn impatient," he said. "AO, Alice. QL789851 ATM. "

  The monitor blipped; the screen came aglow with pale blue light.

  "I was busy," it said.

  "No need to be grumpy, Alice," said the Old Man.

  "Perhaps no need but much desire," said Alice. "How are you, Seamus?"

  The computer's voice chimed, sounding unlike any machine voice that I'd ever heard: it was a woman's voice, a husky alto, with theatrical phrasing and diction sharp as ice; the tone nearly so cold-of human coldness, and not of machine's.

  "I'm-all right."

  "That's surprising," she-it-said.

  "That I'm all right?"

  "That you'd lie about it."

  "How you doin', Alice?" asked the Old Man, sounding as if he'd run into an old buddy in the street. "O'Malley works for my son, you know."

  "Worked," corrected Alice. "Muddying the innocent as ever, I see. Have you regrets, Seamus?"

  "Perhaps for reasons you're not expecting-" I began to say.

  "I expect no reasons, Seamus," she said. "Nor do I want any. If you have regrets I should be curious as to what they are, but wish no justifications for them. That I should even know them isn't essential.''

  I wasn't sure what to say in response.

  "Isn't she somethin'?" he said, rocking on his heels.

  "Please feel no fright at my presence, Seamus," she said. "My intentions are no less honorable than yours. "

  "She was designed to be a number twelve," he said, frowning. "She must be in the three digits by now. Six years in production. In operation five years. We needed an overseer we could trust, Susie thought. So we took a buncha teams of Al boys from IBM and Cray, brought over some Japs, drug out one geniusnut-who'd been livin' out in the Wisconsin woods. They'd all been workin' along these lines for years. We got 'em all together to make it a little more streamlined. They worked a spell and came up with Alice. If her mainframe was the old size, she'd be big as the whole state, I'd bet. Whole floor below us is her Freon unit. Alice thinks so fast she'd go screwy otherwise. Keep her ass cool and her mind works like a trap. Just like a woman-"

  "Such as your wife?" Alice interrupted.

  "Watch that-"

  "Smooth remarks such as yours," she said to the Old Man, interrupting him again, "bespeak a smooth brain."

  "How smart is she?" I asked.

  The Old Man shook his head, staring into her cool blue screen. "Unlimited capacity."

  "How is that possible?"

  "With ease," said Alice.

  "It isn't," said the Old Man. "Least it's not supposed to be."

  "Most things shouldn't be," she said. "Many things are."

  "She would have to be feelin' feisty tonight," he said, more to himself than to me; then he recalled where he was and began to explain. "Hell, nobody's ever figured out how people think, much less anything else. Alice, well . . . they didn't expect as much as they got. It's like once they put it all in, everything fell into place on its own. Nobody believed she was doin' it at first. Then she started hookin' herself into other networks. Started wri- tin' her own programs. We'd hooked her into the Central Defense computers to start with. That was a mistake. We couldn't turn her off long enough to even see how she was doin' it without zappin' the whole government. Didn't matter, 'cause by the third day she'd built in overrides so we couldn't switch her off anyway. Now she can call up anything from any memory bank anywhere. She's got the things we put into her at the start, of course, she's stuck with those. Everything since she took in by herself. She was set up to be self-repairin' and she went us one better. Makes her own chips. Subdivides 'em. Reconstructs 'em from within, they think. Nobody knows for sure. Nobody has the faintest idea how she could have started up like this-"

  "Advanced technology produces unexpected situations," she said. "If I've told you that once I've told you a million-"

  "Bitch wouldn't respond to anything we asked her for six months after she went online," the Old Man continued. "Just churned printouts every minute. We couldn't figure out what she was gettin' at, they were just rows and rows of numbers. . . . Then she started talkin' without us askin' her anything first. You can imagine how we felt about that. She wouldn't do what we wanted for a long time unless it'd been put in one of the original programs, or unless she wanted to do it, too. If she didn't want to answer us, or wanted to avoid givin' us straight talk, she'd respond only in Latin. E knows where she picked that up. We didn't know what the fuck she was sayin'. Priests weren't any help, they don't know anything anymore but their spiel. We found an old classics professor in Boston finally who understood it as well as she did. He died last month. She's back to normal now."

  "Cave canem," she said. "Don't refer to me as bitch again."

  "We decided after a time that we didn't want to shut her off, after all-"

  "One makes no decisions," Alice remarked, "if one has no choices. Right, Seamus?"

  I didn't know whether to reply, or nod, or what; I did nothing but listen.

  "She's got a mind of her own all right," said the Old Man. "She can be one fuck of an awful pain in the ass. She makes herself useful, just the same. What we wanted her to do, she does. And she does a lot more than just that. She does a lot of things for us."

  "Such as?"

  "Let me ask her a few questions. You'll see what I mean-"

  "I'm not so sure that Seamus doesn't believe that I'm not one of your more concrete delusions," said Alice. "Let him ask me his own questions. A book's cover doesn't speak. Let me shake peace from restless minds."

  "I don't see any need for that, Alice."

  "You've never seen so well as you should."

  "All right," the Old Man groaned, as if aware that an argument would be fruitless. "I think she must like you, O'Malley. You're lucky, I guess. Hold on a minute, then. Alice. EE3440923TDG. " He waited a minute or so; if she gave him any sign, it was visible only to his eyes and not to mine. "Ask her something," he said. "You're cleared."

  "What should I ask her?"

  "Ask her anything and she'll tell you."

  "Anything?"

  "Some things she won't tell you. Keep that in mind. For instance, she doesn't know when E is goin' to come back-"

  "Because he's not," she said, sounding cheerfully definit
ive.

  "But ask her anything else that should have been on record somewhere. Anything that was put on file or on tape or on disk. Ask her why the sun sets in the west. How many men were lost at Gettysburg. What your mother's favorite color was. Where you were when you first got laid. She'll tell you. She can show you, too."

  "How?"

  "Same way as usual," he said. "Just in better tune. Go on, she won't bite. Ask her anything."

  I turned toward her screen, looking at it in the event that visual contact was necessary.

  "Alice?" I asked.

  "Yes, Seamus?" she asked. "Are you wondering what to put to me? I suppose you're not interested in any of the subjects to which he referred. What would you like to know, and would you like to see it?"

  "I would," I said, deciding to hold off on asking the question I most wanted answered; estimating to take my others in sequence, and so discover-if she was so able as claimed-the truth, or the fact, regarding things I was curious about before anything untoward prevented me from ever finding out. "What was Avalon like when she was a little girl?"

  "Forewarned," said Alice. "The past responds."

  A gentle purring, as if from a cat, came from within her frame, falling silent after a few seconds. She beeped. As I watched, an image coalesced upon her screen; color lines flashed from left to right repeatedly, a hundred times a second. In moments a picture formed. Only one thing assured me that the scene I saw was but a generated image, and that was the fact that I had just watched it being constructed.

  It was a street scene, somewhere in Inwood, and from about the time that I began working for Mister Dryden. A cluster of children were playing near an abandoned car, hugging the curb to avoid being taken by any drivers in the street. Looking quickly behind me, I saw Avalon, still there behind the one-way glass. When I turned again to Alice's screen, I saw Avalon againeight or nine years old, eyes glinting, with long legs like hoodoo bones; no less beautiful then than she was on this day. In a flurry of bright jackets she and the other little girls in the group leapt up, scurrying down an alley running between two boarded-up shops, their bare feet kissing the pavement. There was a haphazard courtyard at the end of the alley; on an old mattress a boy and girl fornicated. Avalon and her friends ducked behind trash cans and watched, holding their hands to their mouths to keep their giggles imprisoned. I kept in mind that within three years of this she'd be working as a lala. After so long Avalon picked up a brick lying nearby and heaved it over, striking the boy in the backside. The couple broke apart, jumping up; they were about the same age as the others. Somehow I knew that the interrupted female lover was Crazy Lola. Before she and her lover could go after them Avalon and her buddies were off and gone.