… Unless, of course, the personal liking she had taken to me had caused Ann to build me up as some sort of Da Vinci to her employers. In which case, I knew that I would be very uncomfortable at Angra. I did not want an unfair advantage, and I did not want to be anyone’s pet.
But Ann anticipated this reaction as she had so many others. The logic of it was compelling, and there was only one real way to handle it. The time had come for the truth.
It was a lovely day in late April, sunny and cool and crystal clear. The fresh green of spring still frothed across the land and the smells of the damp earth were heavy with life. I was again drinking coffee with Ann, only this time I had managed by judicious class-cutting to provide us with a three-day weekend together and we were taking coffee on the terrace of a place in the mountains which she had rented or Angra had owned or a friend had lent—I was never clear which—and I was wearing a maroon silk robe many sizes too small for me, with a golden, pop-eyed dragon coiling about itself upon the left breast, and I was peeling an orange and wondering how I was going to tell her that I didn’t want the job just because she had taken a fancy to me, and if that wasn’t it, what was?
“I suppose that we must discuss it sooner or later,” she said before I gave voice to what I was thinking. “It is not your academically acquired abilities with computers in which Angra is most interested.”
“Could you be more specific?” I said, still studying the orange peels.
“You have a unique mental rapport with computers.”
“And if I do,” I said, “how might you know of it?”
“My unique mental ability involves other people’s minds.”
“Telepathy? You can tell what I’m thinking?”
“Yes.”
Oh, I tested her on a few strings of numbers and lines of poetry, but I believed her before she proved it. I guess it is not overly difficult for the possessor of a paranormal ability to believe that there might be others around.
“I didn’t think it could be my sweet personality.”
“But I am very fond of you,” she responded, perhaps a trifle too quickly.
“Why is Angra hiring paranormals?” I asked. “And are there many others?”
“None like you,” she said. “Any company with a group such as ours would have a terrific edge over the competition.”
“It sounds somewhat like an unethical edge, even without hearing the particulars of what I’d be doing.”
She rose to her feet and folded her arms. Her lip curled. I had never seen her angry before.
“Look around you,” she said. “The country is going to hell in a handcart. The whole world is. Why? We have an energy crisis on our hands, that’s why. It can be beaten. How? The technology is there—only pieces of it are tied up by dozens of different concerns. This one has a good lead in one sort of thing, that one in another. This one has an almost-good patent pending on something else, that one has a brilliant concept but no hardware yet. They’re falling all over each other, blocking each other, getting in each other’s ways. Supposing one company cut through all the crap, got its hands on everything good in the area right away and then pushed it into reality? Cheap, clean energy, and lots of it, that’s what. No more crisis. A lot of toes would be stepped on. There would be a lot of lawsuits and maybe an antitrust action later. But so what? A company as big as Angra can roll with all that—stall, settle, compromise. And the results? We will solve the energy crisis. We can do it within ten years. You want to watch them falling all over each other until we’re on the brink of disaster, or are you willing to help do something about it? That’s what Angra wants you for, that’s why Angra wants your special talent. Are you going to help?”
I drank my coffee. I was glad that I finally had a straight story as to what I’d be doing, and that I still had a month in which to think about it.
In June I went to work for Angra, and Ann and I remained friendly. It was not until much later that we began to drift apart, as I felt increasingly that I was just an assignment for her. Circumstances sometimes seemed to indicate it, but I lacked her ability to know how someone really felt. This could have been a mistake on my part. She behaved coolly the first time that I went out with another woman, and later she presented me with a copy of Colette’s Cheri. This was somewhere near the end of my tenure with Angra, but before the difficulties had arisen. I could not tell by reading that story of the young man who did not appreciate the older woman until it was too late whether it meant that she really liked me and was hurt by my behavior, or whether she was bothered by the fact that she was older than me. That’s the trouble with literature. Ambiguity.
I could look about me now and see that, true to Ann’s prediction, Angra had broken the energy crisis. Only, somewhere along the line, something had gone wrong…
“Damn!”
I stuffed my napkin and papers into the empty cup and tossed them into a nearby waste bin. I began walking about the campus then. There were several parking lots. Should I try stealing a car?
“Dr. Porter. About my grade…”
I turned suddenly. I hadn’t heard him approach—a thin boy with a bad complexion and long brown hair. His mouth opened.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you were my professor…”
“And you want your grade?”
“Yes, sir. Ill be leaving in a little while, and I thought—”
“Give me your name and section,” I said. “Maybe I can help.”
“James Martin Brown,” he answered. “Political Science 106.”
Tick. Tick. Terick.
“You were carrying a B,” I told him. “You pulled a B on your final. Your grade should be a B.”
His eyes widened. I smiled.
“I work in the office,” I said. “Computer. Some of the stuff sticks.”
He grinned.
“Thanks. I can sleep easy on the train home.”
He turned and hurried off.
Train? I’d almost forgotten the tracks nearby. Some trains carried passengers, most carried freight and some were mixed. Most were fully automated now—those hauling freight exclusively so—though, unlike the trucks, they still had a few human trouble-shooters aboard. The railroad union had held out longer than the Teamsters on this point…
I turned my attention once more toward the distant tracks.
I coiled… In, and back… Through, along…
There was a train due by in a little less than an hour. But it carried passengers. Tick. There was another in about three hours. Mixed. Tickter. One in about five hours. Freight. These last two were headed for Memphis. Terick.
I turned and began walking toward the tracks. There was a stand of trees farther to the west. I shifted my course in that direction. It seemed a good place to wait.
I had not hunted up the boy’s grade out of pure altruism. If he were questioned later about strangers on campus, I wanted him thinking of me as someone who belonged, someone who had even done him a favor. No stranger.
I crossed the tracks and hiked on over to the trees. I located a sheltered place and sat down. Waiting there, amid shade and mosquitoes, I ran back through the system and studied the manifest for that third run. There was to be a human crew of three aboard—engine, freight and caboose. Usually, I understood, they got together in a comfortable place and played cards. The trains were as safe as the trucks. This one was scheduled to haul twenty-two filled freight cars and three empty passenger cars for delivery in Memphis.