Armor (22 page)

I had to go through it all again before they had a chance to really consider it, more lots and lots of nothing, while never missing an opportunity to look shy and a little embarrassed by the need for secrecy and, most importantly, intimate. Intimate in the sense of acting like they understood what it was like to be me since they were so exciting and knowing themselves.

Stringing that out, layer upon layer, until the rhythm was right for my secret, personal confession that I really hated to burden them with it wasn’t their problem, after all.

Holly jumped to assure me that I could speak freely, snatching at his cue. Lya echoed his assurance, snatching at hers. Only the bolt of lightning, which should have torn through the ceiling of the dome and splattered my lying teeth on the dining room table, but didn’t, missed its cue.

“. . . the other reason I want to stay with. . . with you . . . is that, well, I hate the City, Holly. I hate those people. I’ve spent too much of my life with people like that and with you it’s. . . . It’s nice. And I’m just so tired of pounding the fools who are always out trying to test themselves against Jack Crow.”

I gave them a minute to enjoy the compliment and have fun pretending to feel an understanding sorrow before:

“And I am interested in your work. Holly. And I do want to bear whatever you will take the time to explain to me, though I know there’s nothing more boring than trying to explain things to a layman. ...”

“On the contrary. Jack,” he said quickly. “I. . . .” “C’mon, Holly,” I said with a wave, “you don’t have to pretend with me. I know the last thing you want is an audience,” knowing damn well he wanted nothing more in the whole wide universe.

“On the contrary, Jack,” he repeated, “I’m terribly flattered by your interest. I just hope I won’t bore you.”

“Not a chance, Holly. I’m the sponge type.”

“I do think we have a few projects of interest in the works. And, without getting too technical. . .” he began, before becoming too technical almost at once.

It didn’t matter. I was only half listening. The other half was waiting. For Lya.

Because it wasn’t over until she said it was. So I sweated. Holly had already bought it all, luxuriating in the brotherhood of anything even faintly man-to-man.

I had thrown in the part about wanting to stay with them for her, mostly, figuring she would demand, in lieu of facts, something personal at least, before being satisfied. But was she? I could damn near feel her probing gaze, which had strayed not one inch from my eyes the whole time. She’s not buying, I thought at last, mustering more sugar cloud to float toward her, when suddenly she relaxed.

And I knew I was in.

I could turn and look at her then, and smile. She smiled back. It was a sweet smile, a warm smile, and, incredibly, an ‘ ‘I’msureyou’lldotberightthing’ ‘ smile.

Madness!

But I don’t know what I’m doing! I shouted from my mind to hers. How can you? you stupid bitch! Your faith in me is insane!

But her gaze didn’t even darken. She had decided. And that was that.

I shuddered, passing a hand over my eyes. It was so stupid to feel this way! What was I upset about, anyway? Winning, for crissakes? What the hell Guilt for deceiving her? For being able to? Dammit! Forget it! Go on, go on! It’s a done thing. A completed task. Go on!

“As regards the armor?” I blurted blindly, interrupting Holly in midesoterica.

“Why, yes,” he said, surprised. “I was just coming to that. You do follow this, don’t you?”

I didn’t hit him. I just clamped down and tried to slide into his voice, into the sense of what he was saying. Long slow deep breaths.

I bolted suddenly upright as, out of the blue, I realized what it was he was suggesting.

“But Holly, the one thing that anybody, that everybody knows about battle armor is that no one but the owner can wear it. You’d be crushed!”

Holly smiled, completely unconcerned. “Oh, of course I would. Jack,” he replied happily. “I know that. I’m not planning to wear the suit. Not even the helmet. But, Jack,” he added, looking excitedly at me and leaning forward across the table eagerly, “what if I could use routing feeds to another helmet!”

I stared at him. “Why?” I asked.

He looked surprised. “The record. Jack! The record is there!”

“Then why not just play the coil?”

“Because it’s not on the coil, like I’ve been saying. . .”

Oh.

“... electromagnetic scattering of some time caused it to bleed off.”

“Holly, I still don’t understand you,” interrupted Lya thankfully. “You say it’s there and then you say it’s been, what? bled off? Bled off where?”

“Bled off into the pod itself. Dear. It’s on the inner surface of the pod shielding plate. But it’s still intact. It’s still there.” She frowned. “Then how can you get it off?”

He smiled indulgently at our inability to keep up with his racing brain. I imagined he had had much practice in his short but brilliant life. “But don’t you see? That’s what makes it such a fascinating problem! To draw it out of such an irregular surface while still maintaining its cohesive interval requires an ability to adjust to millions of split-second alterations of power level. We’re talking about a tiny, tiny bit of charge here. And the smallest change in resistance factor an imperfect allow on the shield plates, a drop of paint, even the fact that the surface is curved can make a difference. You see, if you draw it too quickly, the chain breaks and the electrons lose their cohesion. If you draw it too slowly, then the field halts for the microsecond required for it to produce its own field and. . . bingo! It’s gone!”

“You mean you’d lose the record?” I prompted. “It would go blank?”

“Well, not blank. It would become a regularly interspersed pattern of dots and dashes which, for our purposes, is the same thing.”

“Just like that?” asked Lya.

He nodded. “Just like that. Listen, I’ve seen six hours that’s six computer hours, mind you turn static, coalesce, and pop across to a lab assistant’s belt buckle. All before the computer much less us knew there was a problem. No matter how good your hardware, or how large your storage capacity given current limits, there are still too many bits with too many problems to allow for.”

“I don’t get it,” I said and I didn’t. “Then you’re saying it can’t be done?”

“No, no, no, no. Jack! I’m saying no computer can do it?”

“Then what can?” asked Lya, sounding as confused as I was.

Holly’s face broke into a wide grin. His right index finger stabbed the air. “The brain!” he said triumphantly.

Lya looked at him. I looked at him. She and I looked at each other.

“That’s absurd,” she said at last. “No man can think as fast as your smallest relays; you told me that yourself.”

“I said process,” he replied with a tolerant but firm smile, “not think. Computers don’t think. They simply sort.” “What’s the difference?” Lya wanted to know.

“Four or five billion bits of data, for one thing.”

“For the computer. . .” I interjected.

“No. For the brain!” he retorted. “We don’t focus as well, true enough. And our data priority system is horridly uncontrolled. But whether you call it panicking or ‘going blank’ or just stuttering, those are generally breakdowns in the delivery system, not the storage. The answer, and about two million others per second, is there.”

“So the computers are more effective, Holly, which is the same thing!” demanded Lya.

“Yes, yes. But it. is we who do the programming for the effect we want. Computers are, in limited areas, much better devices. But we are vastly superior machines.”

I took a deep breath. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that in order to suck this record out of that pod, it takes a zillion decisions every second which then require an equivalent zillion alterations in the. . . strength of the pull, right?”

“Right.”

“And you say that no computer is fast enough and big enough at the same time …”

“Right now none are. Maybe later, they do marvelous things with fluidics these days. ..”

I waved that off. “Don’t confuse me. And the only thing that can make those instantaneous decisions and the like is a human brain?”

“Right again. You see …”

“Just hold it a minute. Holly,” I blurted, more bluntly than I meant. “I still don’t get it. You’re talking about all this . . . computing being done on an unconscious level?” “Yes.”

Lya looked unhappy. “But nobody could. . . How could you direct the focus of your unconscious mind to do this for you?”

Holly smiled again. It was infuriating. “Ah, there’s the part where the computer can help. It’s not so much a matter of concentration in the conventional sense. It’s more a matter of frequency. It’s just a problem of getting the two brainwave patterns close enough so that they begin to work in harmony and. . .”

He stopped when he saw the shocked look on our faces. But he continued anyway, like a schoolboy trying to get in the rest of his excuse before being punished too severely.

“You see, if your drawing field, your brain wave in this case, is on a compatible interval pattern, then all those adjustments would be made automatically. I admit there can’t be a complete match up,” he added sheepishly, “since no two people have exactly the same frequency. Both sides would have to give a little. ...”

“Give a little,” Lya shouted with outrage. “You’re talking about allowing a machine to alter your brainwave pattern to fit someone else’s??”

“Only briefly,” he insisted lamely. “And not very much. And it wouldn’t really fit. I mean, you wouldn’t be able to read his thoughts or. . . .”

“My God, Holly …”I began.

“You’re insane!” Lya finished. “It would drive you crazy.” There was a pause before we all laughed at the absurdity of her remark. It lowered the tension level somewhat. But the issue, with all of its implied horrors, still hung before us.

“It might very well, you know,” I said seriously. “It could cause all sorts of psychological damage. It might simply bum your ego away.”

Holly sat up straighter in his chair. He looked offended. “I believe I have made allowances for such a problem. Special entry and exit procedures, for example.”

“It’s madness,” muttered Lya bitterly. “It’s. . . wrong.” “You’re being emotional, Lya. And only because you can’t think of any rational objections.”

“All right, Holly,” I said, rising to the challenge, “here’s one: What if you’re him in there?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What if you became him? At least thought you were, anyway, as long as you were in there. You would be relivingfor the first time and then forgetting afterwards.”

He regarded me quizzically. “Complete submersion? Hardly likely, Jack. The brain is self, after all. You would conflict fast.”

“There’s still some ‘ouch’ in that,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but if you consider the. . . .”

“That’s just what you’re not doing. Holly Ware!” blurted Lya angrily. She had become quite upset. I saw tears in the corners of her eyes. She was terrified by this. I didn’t blame her. “When did you come up with this insane notion, anyway?”

He met her gaze without blinking. “Just now,” he said in the absolutely unmistakable fashion of one who knows what he is and what he is doing and who also knows that he and he alone is qualified for it.

An interesting thing happened then: Lya backed down. It caught me by surprise, left me wondering if, in my own stereotypical haste, I had misjudged the young mad scientist. But then I had it. She was not giving in to his machismo. She was retreating before his expertise.

Holly was, after all, the genius.

“Well,” she said after she had calmed a bit,” I don’t want to talk about this anymore today. I need a little time to get my feet bade on the ground. Ami I shall certainly dream about this tonight.” The last came with a tiny self-deprecating smile, a gesture which made the sculptured lines of her mouth seem even more delicate and frail than before. It was especially endearing, even for her.

Holly and I agreed with matching smiles of relief. We all went through the straightening and adjusting needed after too long at the table. We stretched, yawned, grinned. At the door turned to shake hands with Holly and found that I was doing it with a man I had not yet met. It was a man who seemed to me to be, at that time, the very best of Holly Ware. His grip was firm, his eyes bright, he locked more confident than I had ever before seen him. And more, he looked excited, hopeful, eagerly intrigued. Lya, despite her own buoyancy having apparently returned, seemed a faded shadow before the warmth of his creative glow. The image of those two at that moment struck something in me. It stayed with me, hanging before me, as I went through the seal and down the passage to my own suite. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way her face had looked, set with gentle firmness, eyes lifted to him, half turned to him, half eclipsed as his moon.

Ami I couldn’t stop thinking about something else, that there was little wonder that such women preferred the Hollys to me. The only time I ever looked that alive, I was probably killing.

Damn.

The lounge was dark. There was no sign of Cortex anywhere. I thought for a moment that I had stumbled into the wrong suite. Then I saw the light filtering through underneath the door to my bedroom and I froze, stock still, in my tracks. I could feel her.

I wanted a cigarette, but reaching for it seemed a noisy affair. Not loud enough for anyone to hear me from the bedroom1 wasn’t worried about that. I didn’t want to make, well, any sound. Absolutely still. Dead still, rock still. Bolted to the floor and long empty tubes for my arms. . . Long enough like that and it would all go away or better, much, much, better they. They? THEY? would come for me and take me out, lift me up and away and say everything is all right, of course you failed but you were only. ...

I shrugged mightily, violently, forcing my boots to make that horrible, rasping, barely audible shuffle across the carpet as I stepped up to the door and eased it open with my wet hand.

Upper lamp on lowest gain glowing down to white sheets and yellow hair and golden skin so much gold for so little skin and all of it, the gently rising flat tummy, the wide eyes closed or shielded or hidden, the positively dreamlike sweep of lines from throat to forehead and back again to the partial view of more yellow hair, but tufted, promising time: hair and more gold. . . all of it glowing back up into the lamp, shaming it. Shaming me.