01. When the Changewinds Blow

WHEN THE CHANGEWINDS BLOW

Copyright © 1987 by Jack L. Chalker.

e-book ver. 1.0

For
Eva

1

The Girl Who Was Afraid of Thunderstorms

There is something almost other-worldly about a huge shopping mall; enter it and you leave heat or cold, night and day behind, and enter a futuristic Disney-like vision of a future world which is all antiseptic, insulated, and artificial yet somehow it caters to all your basic modem needs. It is the synthesis of the ancient bazaar, the communal marketplace, the soda fountain, the drive-in, and the town square and more. Its vast interiors with their wasted space, careful fountains, phony waterfalls, plastic park benches and canned music which may be
The 1001 Strings Play the Best of the Rolling Stones
but somehow sounds like the same elevator music the parents and grandparents of those denizens of malls heard in their day. To many of the youth who are too young to be allowed in the adult bars and clubs and too old to be in by eight o'clock it is a massive singles bar as well.

Wednesday night wasn't the best night out, even in the mall, and it was tough on a school night to figure out an excuse to get there that parents might accept, but teens have had many centuries of evolution to get to a point where they instinctively know how to manage such urgencies when they have to, and Sharlene "Charley" Sharkin certainly felt like she had to.

It wasn't anything to do with the mall itself, but rather what it filled in her life. She was seventeen and due to graduate in five months, an occasion she was looking forward to with great anticipation. She was bright, athletic, and had good grades for the most part, but she hated school and all it stood for. Her parents had all sorts of plans for her, all of which included college and perhaps beyond, but the thought of four or more years of additional school was just
gruesome,
that was all. She could see herself putting up with some secretarial school-she was already a lightning typist and did some word processing on the school computer for office brownie points-or maybe even a medical technician's course, or paralegal, or something like that, but nothing more. College wasn't like regular school in one way: if you didn't get it and later regretted it there was nothing that said you had to be eighteen and not twenty or even older to get in.

She had a nice, round face with just a bit of an overbite set off by mid-length Clairol brown perm-curled hair, no beauty but cute and she knew it. She was slightly chubby and thought she was fat and hated it but not enough to really work at dieting or giving up all the nice foods that made life worthwhile. She'd been a skinny, athletic kid but it had just started to come on and stay there, particularly in the past year or two, but at five foot three and a hundred and thirty-six pounds she
didn't feel
out of whack. She'd really let herself go since-well, since Tommy.

She had just turned sixteen, and was real popular with the boys, and the night of the junior prom Tommy Meyers had brought out this bottle of high-proof whiskey he'd gotten someplace and before she knew it Tommy had popped her cherry for good in his brother's borrowed conversion van, and while nothing had come of it she'd gone through
months
of nervous fear wondering if she was pregnant, or had caught something, or who knew what, and it'd scared her far more than all that blood. The experience made her something of a leader among her friends, of course, but it'd also given her a reputation among the boys as an easy girl and she'd had more than her share of troubles from
that.

She'd let herself go after that, giving up most of the athletics and pigging out on whatever she wanted, particularly chocolate. If it hadn't been for Sam moving into the city she might have gotten really depressed, but even though Sam was a real straight arrow she didn't care and there was no closer friendship.

And now Sam was gone.

Samantha Buell was certainly her best friend in the whole world and the only person she felt she could confide in. Sam had needed a friend when she'd moved here with her mother a little over a year ago and they'd hit it off, the original thing they had in common being that they both went by nicknames that sounded more boy than girl-although Sam just called it "unisex." They liked the same rock bands, the same TV shows, they swapped romance novels-although Sam was more of a reader than she was-and they both
loved
roaming the mall and trying on all sorts of outrageous fashions. They spent a lot of free time together and talking on the phone and all that. They were the same height, and while Sam had a better figure she had a little bit of extra weight herself. Still, they looked enough alike to be mistaken more than once for sisters, and they were both also the only children of well-off professionals, spoiled without really realizing it.

Not that there weren't real differences, the least of which was Sam's slight but noticeable New England accent contrasted with Charley's southwestern twang. Sam's folks were divorced, and she lived here now with her mother who was a lawyer who worked for some federal agency or another. Environment, she thought, but she'd never really gone into it. Sam's dad was a contractor in Boston and they still got along pretty good-Sam would fly out to stay with him part of the summer and some of the long holidays and he called a lot-but maybe three thousand miles was a lot of distance for so-called "joint custody."

But Sam's voice was, well, unique. She had one of the deepest, most asexual voices Charley had ever heard in a girl, although not. unpleasant or irritating. It was just, well,
asexual,
the kind of tonal voice that was stuck between the half octaves and could easily belong to a boy her age although it didn't sound wrong in her, either. Sam said that her grandmother- her dad's mothers-had the same kind of voice. She could actually shift that voice even lower a bit and you'd swear she was all male, too, or higher a bit and sound feminine and sassy. Sam had hoped that this odd ability might get her into acting one day.

She'd always been something of a tomboy type, fooling around in Dad's workshop as a kid. She particularly liked carpentry and was really good at it, but her Dad had always tried to steer her away with some ingrained sexist ideas about what was properly boys' work and girls' work while her mother, who wanted her to be like the first female President or a great doctor or something was appalled by Sam's taste for manual skills. Charley, on the other hand, wouldn't be caught
dead
if not dressed in the latest style. Until she'd met Charley the only real concession she'd made to unmistakable femininity was long, almost waist-length straight black hair.

Still, under Charley's skilled eye and guidance, Sam had lately taken to trying all sorts of new and feminine fashion, taken a real interest suddenly in perfume and cosmetics and stuff like that, which somewhat pleased her mother and also started getting her all sorts of attention from the boys. So far she hadn't done much, though; Sam had some real hangups of her own. Back in Boston she'd gone to this private all-girls' school, and two of her classmates had done it before they were past sixteen that Sam knew about. It was sheer stupid bad luck, but one of them had gotten pregnant the first time out and the other one had come down with VD. The odds against both of 'em, or even either of 'em, having anything like that happen was small, and maybe that was only the two Sam found out about, but it had scared the hell out of her. She was still a virgin and not real inclined to changing that in the immediate future. That was why a best girlfriend was an essential. They protected and supported each other. Together, somehow, they were safe.

And now Sam was gone.

At first she hadn't thought anything of it, when Sam hadn't shown up for school on Monday. Charley had been away visiting relatives all weekend, and had been too damned tired to feel sociable on Monday. On Tuesday she'd called over to the house and gotten Sam's mother's answering machine and left a message. No big deal. Maybe somebody got sick back east or something. Later, she heard it had been in the news over the weekend and in the Sunday paper, but they'd thrown out everything but the comics.

But today, in school, she'd been called out of first period English to Mr. Dunteman's office-he was the administrative vice principal-and waiting there had been this strange man who introduced himself as Detective O'Donnell of the Juvenile Division and said he wanted to know if Charley had heard from Sam in the last few days.

"Huh? No. Why? Has something happened?"

"We-don't really know. When was the last time you saw or spoke to her?"

"Uh-Friday. Here. I went away that night for the weekend and didn't get back til Sunday night."

"Uh-huh. And did she seem-different? I mean, did she seem out of the ordinary in any way? Nervous? Irritable? Depressed? Anything like that?"

She thought a moment. The fact was, there
had
been something wrong. She'd sensed it rather than been told it, but it was noticeable enough that she'd asked Sam if there were any problems.

"She seemed-you know, tense. Yeah, maybe nervous. I figured at first it was just her period or something but it wasn't like that, really. She looked, well, kinda
scared.
But she said everything was okay when I asked her about it. She just sorta' shrugged it off and said she was havin' some problems and that she'd tell me when I got back. I
did
kinda get the idea that she wanted to say more but when she found out I was goin' away, well, she just tried to laugh it off. Why? What's happened to her?"

O'Donnell had sighed. He was big and craggy and built like cement block, with curly red hair and real pale blue eyes. If you'd been ordered -to build an Irishman he was about what you'd come up with.

"She left school normally-we know that much," he told her. "She caught the first bus home, got a few things-her mother wasn't back from work yet-and then left. We don't know anything beyond that. She simply-vanished." He paused as he watched her look of horror grow. "These things
do
happen, Miss. All the time. It's my job to piece everything together and see if we can find her before something very bad happens to her."

"You think she-
ran away?
Not Sam! The only one she could run to would be her Dad and he'd send her right back here. I
know!"

"We don't honestly know. She certainly hadn't made any long-range plans to bolt; there's no sign of it. Everything points to a sudden decision to just take off. She went home, packed a small suitcase, went down to the Front Street Bank's automated teller with the backup of her mother's card and withdrew the maximum three hundred dollars allowed by the machine."

"Yeah, her mom gave her the card just in case she needed money when her mom wasn't around but I don't think she ever used it for more'n twenty bucks. Three hundred ..."

"That's really not that much when you consider it," the detective had pointed out. "Enough to buy a ticket to most places but only if you had money or people at the other end.

We checked the airlines and bus stations-no sign, although that doesn't always mean much. She didn't have a driver's license?"

Charley shook her head. "Nope. Flunked the test three times. She was just too scared behind the wheel."

"And no boyfriends? Particularly new ones? No major infatuations? You're positive?"

"Positive! She's not gay or nothin' like that-she liked boys and all, but if she had anything going she'd'a told me. No way there was anybody she'd do
this
for, not unless it happened between Friday morning and Friday afternoon."

"Stranger things have happened, but I admit it's unlikely unless it involved someone in school and we can account for everyone but her. Very well-if she contacts you let me know
immediately.
I'll give you a card, here, with my name and number. It looks very likely that something scared her very badly. Something she couldn't or wouldn't confide for any of a thousand reasons to either her best friend or her mother. She panicked. She ran. No note, nothing. But her resources are quite limited. If she uses any of her mother's charge cards we'll find her and I think she's bright enough to know that. Her cash will be running low if it isn't gone already. She'll only have a few choices, and they're crime, or falling prey to the seamier side of society, or she'll have to contact somebody she trusts. You're a likely candidate for that. If she does, try and get her what she needs and find out where she's staying and then call me. And, if you can, find out what in the world could scare her so much that this was the only way out."

She had promised it all, but the truth was that if Sam called she didn't know
what
she would do, and she suspected O'Donnell knew that, too. What the hell could have
scared
her like that? Caused her to run rather than go to her mom or best friend? Had Sam been less honest than she seemed? Had she, like, gotten knocked up? No, that wouldn't do it. Hell, she might get grounded for six months but her mom would still have worked it all out and Sam would know that. Her mom was pretty busy but she was all right deep down-much more modern than Charley's parents, anyway.