Midnight Read online

  34

  They were in Harry’s third-floor bedroom again, where they passed the last hour and a half, brainstorming and urgently discussing their options. No lamps were on. Watery afternoon light washed the room, contributing to the somber mood.

  “So we’re agreed there are two ways we might send a message out of town,” Sam said.

  “But in either case,” Tessa said uneasily, “you have to go out there and cover a lot of ground to get where you need to go.”

  Sam shrugged.

  Tessa and Chrissie had taken off their shoes and sat on the bed, their backs against the headboard. The girl clearly intended to stay close to Tessa; she seemed to have imprinted on her the way a baby chick, freshly hatched from the egg, imprints on the nearest adult bird, whether it’s the mother or not.

  Tessa said, “It’s not going to be as easy as slipping two doors to the Coltrane house. Not in daylight.”

  “You think I ought to wait until it gets dark?” Sam asked.

  “Yes. The fog will come in more heavily, too, as the afternoon fades.”

  She meant what she said, though she was worried about the delay. During the hours that they bided their time, more people be converted. Moonlight Cove would become an increasingly alien, dangerous, and surprise-filled environment.

  Turning to Harry, Sam said, “What time’s it get dark?”

  Harry was in his wheelchair. Moose had returned to his master, thrusting his burly head under the arm of the chair and onto Harry’s lap, content to sit for long stretches in that awkward posture in return for just a little petting and scratching and an occasional reassuring word.

  Harry said, “These days, twilight comes before six o’clock.”

  Sam was sitting at the telescope, though at the moment he was not using it. A few minutes ago he had surveyed the streets and reported seeing more activity than earlier—plenty of car and foot patrols. As steadily fewer local residents remained unconverted, the conspirators behind Moonhawk were growing bolder in their Policing actions, less concerned than they’d once been about calling attention to themselves.

  Glancing at his watch, Sam said, “I can’t say I like the idea of wasting three hours or more. The sooner we get the word out, the more people we’ll save from … from whatever’s being done to them.”

  “But if you get caught because you didn’t wait for nightfall, then the chances of saving anyone become a hell of a lot Slimmer.”

  “The lady has a point,” Harry said.

  “A good one,” Chrissie said. “Just because they’re not aliens doesn’t mean they’re going to be any easier to deal with.”

  Because even the working telephones would allow a caller to dial only approved numbers within town, they’d given up on hope. But Sam had realized that any PC connected by modem with the supercomputer at New Wave—Harry said they called it Sun—might provide a way out of town, an electronic high-way on which they could circumvent the current restrictions on the phone lines and the roadblocks.

  As Sam had noted last night while using the VDT in the police car, Sun maintained direct contacts with scores of other computers—including several FBI data banks, both those approved for wide access and those supposedly sealed to all but bureau agents. If he could sit at a VDT, link in to Sun, and through Sun link to a Bureau computer, then he could transmit a call for help that would appear on Bureau computer screens and spew out in hard copy from the laser printers in their offices.

  They were assuming, of course, that the restrictions on outside contact that applied to all other phone lines in town did not apply to the lines by which Sun maintained its linkages with the broader world. If Sun’s routes out of Moonlight Cove were clipped off, too, they were utterly without hope.

  Understandably, Sam was reluctant to enter the houses of the people who worked for New Wave, afraid that he would encounter more people like the Coltranes. That left only two ways to attain access to a PC that could be linked to Sun.

  First, he could try to get into a black-and-white and use one of their mobile terminals, as he’d done last night. But they were alert to his presence now, making it harder to sneak into an unused patrol car. Furthermore, all of the cars were probably now in use, as the cops searched diligently for him and no doubt, for Tessa as well. And even if a cruiser were parked behind the municipal building, that area was at the moment, bound to be a lot busier than the last time he had been there.

  Second, they could use the computers at the high school on Roshmore Way. New Wave had donated them not out of a normal concern for the educational quality of local schools but as more means of tying the community to it. Sam believed, and Tessa agreed, that the school’s terminals probably had the capacity to link with Sun.

  But Moonlight Cove Central, as the combination junior-senior high school was called, stood on the west side of Roshmore Way, two blocks west of Harry’s house and a full block south. In ordinary times it was a pleasant five-minute walk. But with the streets under surveillance and every house potentially a watchtower occupied by enemies, reaching Central high School now without being seen was easy as crossing a minefield.

  “Besides,” Chrissie said, “they’re still in class at Central. You couldn’t just walk in there and use a computer.”

  “Especially,” Tessa said, “since you can figure the teachers were among the first to be converted.”

  “What time are classes over?” Sam asked.

  “Well, at Thomas Jefferson we get out at three o’clock, but they go an extra half hour at Central.”

  “Three-thirty,” Sam said.

  Checking his watch, Harry said, “Forty-seven minutes yet. But even then, there’ll be after-school activities, won’t there?”

  “Sure,” Chrissie said. “Band, probably football practice, a few other clubs that don’t meet during regular activity period.”

  “What time would all that be done with?”

  “I know band practice is from a quarter to four till a quarter to five,” Chrissie said, “because I’m friends with a kid one year older than me who’s in the band. I play a clarinet. I want to be in the band, too, next year. If there is a band. If there is a next year.”

  “So, say by five o’clock the place is cleared out.”

  “Football practice runs later than that.”

  “Would they practice today, in pouring rain?”

  “I guess not.”

  “If you’re going to wait until five or five-thirty,” Tessa said, “then you might as well wait just a little while longer and head over there after dark.”

  Sam nodded. “I guess so.”

  “Sam, you’re forgetting,” Harry said.

  “What?”

  “Sometime shortly after you leave here, maybe as early as six o’clock sharp, they’ll be coming to convert me.”

  “Jesus, that’s right!” Sam said.

  Moose lifted his head off his master’s lap and from beneath the arm of the wheelchair. He sat erect, black ears pricked, as if he understood what had been said and was already anticipating the doorbell or listening for a knock downstairs.

  “I believe you do have to wait for nightfall before you go, you’ll have a better chance,” Harry said, “but then you’ll have to take Tessa and Chrissie with you. It won’t be safe to leave them here.”

  “We’ll have to take you too,” Chrissie said at once. “You and Moose. I don’t know if they convert dogs, but we have to take Moose just to be sure. We wouldn’t want to have to worry about him being turned into a machine or something.”

  Moose chuffed.

  “Can he be trusted not to bark?” Chrissie asked. “wouldn’t want him to yap at something at a crucial moment. I guess we could always wind a long strip of gauze bandage around his snout, muzzle him, which is sort of cruel and would probably hurt his feelings, since muzzling him would mean we don’t emtirely trust him, but it wouldn’t hurt him physically, of course and I’m sure we could make it up to him later with a juicy steak or—”

  Sud
denly recognizing an unusual solemnity in the silence of her companions, the girl fell silent too. She blinked at Harry, Sam, and frowned at Tessa, who still sat on the bed beside her.

  Darker clouds had begun to plate the sky since they had come upstairs, and the room was receding deeper into shadows. But at the moment Tessa could see Harry Talbot’s face almost clearly in the gray dimness. She was aware of how he was struggling to conceal his fear, succeeding for the most part, managing a genuine smile and an unruffled tone of voice, betrayed only by his expressive eyes.

  To Chrissie, Harry said, “I won’t be going with you, honey.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. She looked at him again, her gaze slipping down from Harry to the wheelchair on which he sat. “But you came to our school that day to talk to us. You leave the house sometimes. You must have a way to get out.”

  Harry smiled. “The elevator goes down to the garage on the cellar level. I don’t drive any more, so there’s no car down there and I can easily roll out into the driveway, to the sidewalk.”

  “Well, then!” Chrissie said.

  Harry looked at Sam and said, “But I can’t go anywhere on these streets, steep as they are in some places, without somone along. The chair has brakes, and the motor has quite a lot of power, but half the time not enough for these slopes.”

  “We’ll be with you,” Chrissie said earnestly. “We can help.”

  “Dear girl, you can’t sneak quickly through three blocks of occupied territory and drag me with you at the same time,” Harry said firmly. “For one thing, you’ll have to stay off the streets as much as possible, move from yard to yard and between as much as you can, while I can only roll on pavement, especially in this weather, with the ground so soggy.”

  “We can carry you.”

  “No,” Sam said. “We can’t. Not if we hope to get to the school and get assistance and get a message out to the Bureau. It’s a short distance, but full of danger, and we’ve got to travel light. Sorry, Harry.”

  “No need to apologize, ” Harry said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. You think I want to be dragged or shoulder-carried like a bag of cement across half the town?”

  In obvious distress, Chrissie got off the bed and stood with her small hands fisted at her sides. She looked from Tessa to Sam to Tessa again, silently pleading with them to think of a way to save Harry.

  Outside the gray sky was mottled now with ugly clouds that were nearly black.

  The rain eased up, but Tessa sensed that they were entering a brief lull, after which the downpour would continue with greater fury than ever.

  Both the spiritual and the physical gloom deepened.

  Moose whined softly.

  Tears shimmered in Chrissie’s eyes, and she seemed unable to bear looking at Harry. She went to a north window and stared down at the house next door and at the street beyond—staying just far enough back from the glass to avoid being spotted by anyone outside.

  Tessa wanted to comfort her.

  She wanted to comfort Harry too.

  More, than that … she wanted to make everything right.

  As writer-producer-director, she was a mover and shaker, good at taking charge, making things happen. She always knew how to solve a problem, what to do in a crisis, how to keep the ball rolling once a project had begun. But now she was at a loss. She could not always script reality with the assurance she brought to the writing of her films; sometimes the real world resisted conforming to her demands. Maybe that was why she had chosen a career over a family, even after having enjoyed a wonderful family atmosphere as a child. The real world of daily life and struggle was sloppy, unpredictable, full of loose ends; she couldn’t count on being able to tie it all up the way she could when she took aspects of it and reduced them to a neatly structured film. Life was life, broad and rich … but film was only essences. Maybe she dealt better with essences than with life all its gaudy detail.

  Her genetically received Lockland optimism, previously as bright as a spotlight, had not deserted her, though it definitely had dimmed for the time being.

  Harry said, “It’s going to be all right.”

  “How?” Sam asked.

  “I’m probably last on their list,” Harry said. “They wouldn’t be worried about cripples and blind people. Even if we learn something’s up, we can’t try to get out of town and get help. Mrs. Sagerian—she lives over on Pinecrest—she’s blind, and I’ll bet she and I are the last two on the schedule. They’ll wait to do us until near midnight. You see if they don’t. Bet on it. So what you’ve got to do is go to the high school and get through to the Bureau, bring help in here pronto, before midnight comes, and then I’ll be all right.”

  Chrissie turned away from the window, her cheeks wet with tears. “You really think so, Mr. Talbot? You really, honestly think they won’t come here until midnight?”

  With his head tilted to one side in a perpetual twist that was, depending on how you looked at it, either jaunty or heartwrenching, Harry winked at the girl, though she was farther away from him than Tessa and probably didn’t see the wink. “If I’m jiving you, honey, may God strike me with lightning this instant.”

  Rain fell but no lightning struck.

  “See?” Harry said, grinning.

  Though the girl clearly wanted to believe the scenario that Harry had painted for her, Tessa knew that they could not count on his being the last or next to last on the final conversion schedule. What he’d said made a little sense, actually, but it was just too neat. Like a narrative development in a film script. Real life, Tessa had just reminded herself, was sloppy, unpredictable. She desperately wanted to believe that Harry would be safe until a few minutes till midnight, but the reality was that he would be at risk as soon as the clock struck six and the final series of conversions was under way.

  35

  Shaddack remained in Paula Parkins’s garage through most of the afternoon.

  Twice he put up the big door, switched on the van’s engine, and pulled into the driveway to better monitor Moonhawk’s progress on the VDT. Both times, satisfied with the data, he rolled back into the garage and lowered the door again.

  The mechanism was clicking away. He had designed it, built it, wound it up, and pushed the start button. Now it could go through its paces without him.

  He passed the hours sitting behind the wheel, daydreaming about the time when the final stage of Moonhawk would be completed and all the world would be brought into the fold. When no Old People existed, he would have redefined the word “power,” for no man before him in all of history would have known such total control. Having remade the species, he could then program its destiny to his own desires. All of humankind would be one great hive, buzzing industriously, serving his vision. As he daydreamed, his erection grew so hard that it began to ache dully.

  Shaddack knew many scientists who genuinely seemed to believe that the purpose of technological progress was to improve the lot of humanity, lift the species up from the mud and carry it on eventually, to the stars. He saw things differently. To his way Of thinking, the sole purpose of technology was to concentrate Power in his hands. Previous would-be remakers of the world had relied on political power, which always ultimately meant the power of the legal gun. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others had sought power through intimidation and mass murder, wading to the throne through lakes of blood, and all of them had ultimately failed to achieve what silicon circuitry was in the process of bestowing upon Shaddack. The pen was not mightier, than the sword, but the microprocessor was mightier than vast armies.

  If they knew what he had undertaken and what dreams of conquest still preoccupied him, virtually all other men of science would say that he was bent, sick, deranged. He didn’t care. They were wrong, of course. Because they didn’t realize who he was. The child of the moonhawk. He had destroyed those who had posed as his parents, and he had not been discovered or punished, which was proof that the rules and laws governing other men were not meant to apply to him. Hi
s true mother and father were spirit forces, disembodied, powerful. They had protected him from punishment because the murders that he’d committed in Phoenix so long ago were a sacred offering to his real progenitors, a statement of his faith and trust in them. Other scientists would misunderstand him because they could not know that all of existence centered around him, that the universe itself existed only because he existed, and that if he ever died—which was unlikely—then the universe would simultaneously cease to exist. He was the center of creation. He was the only man who mattered. The great spirits had told him this. The great spirits had whispered these truths in his ear, waking and sleeping, for more than thirty years.

  Child of the moonhawk …

  As the afternoon waned, he became ever more excited about the approaching completion of the first stage of the project, and he could no longer endure temporary exile in the Parkins garage. Though it had seemed wise to absent himself from places in which Loman Watkins might find him, he was having increasing difficulty justifying the need to hide out. Events at Mike Peyser’s house last night no longer seemed so catastrophic to him, merely, a minor setback; he was confident that the problem of the regressives would eventually be solved. His genius resulted from the direct line between him and higher spiritual forces, and no difficulty was beyond resolution when the great spirits desired his success The threat he’d felt from Watkins steadily diminnished in his memory, too, until the police chief’s promise to find him seemed empty, even pathetic.

  He was the child of the moonhawk. He was surprised that he had forgotten such an important truth and had run scared. Of course, even Jesus had spent his time in the garden, briefly frightened, and had wrestled with his demons. The Parkins garage was, Shaddack saw, his own Gethsemane, where he had taken refuge to cast out those last doubts that plagued him.

  He was the child of the moonhawk.

  At four-thirty he put up the garage door.

  He started the van and pulled down the driveway.

  He was the child of the moonhawk.

  He turned onto the county road and headed toward town.

  He was the child of the moonhawk, heir to the crown of light, and at midnight he would ascend the throne.

  36

  Pack Martin—his name was actually Packard because his mother named him after a car that had been her father’s pride—lived in a house trailer on the southeast edge of town. It was an old trailer, its enameled finish faded and crackled like the glaze on an ancient vase. It was rusted in a few spots, dented, and set on a concrete-block foundation in a lot that was mostly weeds. Pack knew that many people in Moonlight Cove thought his place was an eyesore, but he just plain did not give a damn.

  The trailer had an electrical hookup, an oil furnace, and plumbing, which was enough to meet his needs. He was warm, dry, and had a place to keep his beer. It was a veritable palace.

  Best of all, the trailer had been paid for twenty-five years ago, with money he had inherited from his mother, so no mortgage hung over him. He had a little of the inheritance left, too, and rarely touched the principal. The interest amounted to nearly three hundred dollars a month, and he also had his disability check, earned by virtue of a fall he had taken three weeks after being inducted into the Army. The only real work in which Pack had ever engaged was all the reading and studying he had done to learn and memorize all of the subtlest and most complex symptoms of serious back injury, before reporting per the instructions on his draft notice.

  He was born to be a man of leisure. He had known that much about himself from a young age. Work and him had nothing for each other. He figured he’d been scheduled to be born into a wealthy family, but something had gotten screwed up and he’d wound up as the son of a waitress who’d been just sufficiently industrious to provide him with a minimum inheritance.

  But he envied no one. Every month he bought twelve or fourteen cases of cheap beer at the discount store out on the highway, and he had his TV, and with a bologna and mustard sandwich now and then, maybe some Fritos, he was happy enough.

  By four o’clock that Tuesday afternoon, Pack was well into his second six-pack of the day, slumped in his tattered armchair, watching a game show on which the prize girl’s prime hooters, always revealed in low-cut dresses, were a lot more interesting than the MC, the contestants, or the questions.

  The MC said, “So what’s your choice? Do you want what’s behind screen number one, screen number two, or screen number three?”

  Talking back to the tube, Pack said, “I’ll take what’s in that cutie’s Maidenforrn, thank you very much,” and he swigged more beer.

  Just then someone knocked on the door.

  Pack did not get up or in any way acknowledge the knock. He had no friends, so visitors were of no interest to him. They were always either community do-gooders bringing him a box of food that he didn’t want, or offering to cut down his weeds and clean up his property, which he didn’t want, either, because he liked his weeds.

  They knocked again.

  Pack responded by turning up the volume on the TV.

  They knocked harder.

  “Go away,” Pack said.

  They really pounded on the door, shaking the whole damn trailer.

  “…What the hell?” Pack said. He clicked off the TV and got up.

  The pounding was not repeated, but Pack heard a strange scraping noise against the side of the trailer.