The use of muscles seemed to clear the way for the use of other things. Intelligence, I hoped, was one of them. But not the only one…
Staring at the computer screen, I tried to see or not-see Cora’s fingers on the keyboard, typing that message. The timing of the arrival of the bits of data at the CPU…
Intellectually, I had no clear idea of what I was doing. But at some deeper level I knew that I was seeing into the computer, probing its electrical life. It was a feeling akin to the half-dazed empathy I had in recent days felt for the Radio Shack navigator on the houseboat
The shock of the discovery, or re-discovery, of this power in myself was deadened by my greater need. I could not find Cora’s fingers. Those of a stranger had been there…
I had to switch to thinking now, to get any further. Adrenalin wasn’t much help for that, and even my new-found ability stopped here. I cursed my quarrel with Cora, my leaving her alone to be attacked, kidnapped. I had only come back to Key West because it felt like my home ground, the place to make a last stand—not, as I thought she might have believed, because my money was due to come in today at the bank…
The bank.
In a flash, I saw again the old-fashioned door of frosted glass, swinging shut, as I had seen it in my reverie. COIL DEPARTMENT wasn’t quite right, though; it was dream-language, the language of my unconscious, for something I had named in secret years ago, for my thoughts only.
The bank.
I went out of the condo and got into my car. I drove to the bank, pulled into the lot there. I parked in a spot shaded by a coconut palm.
I looked at my watch. The money was due to arrive at mid-morning—in the form of electrical impulses, flowing through the slender fiberoptic cables that brought information into and out of the Keys, cables slung under the same long bridges the cars and trucks traversed.
It had grown hot, humid. I left the motor and air conditioner running (nobody looked at you for that anymore, as they might have before solar power came on so fast—solar power and Angra Energy) and I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes.
The computer inside the bank was a whole city, as compared to the small electronic outpost I had at home. But it was a city logically laid-out, with well-marked thoroughfares.
Hour by hour, minute by minute perhaps, I was remembering more. My mind reached for the bank’s computer. The Coil Effect began.
Chapter 4
icketderick, and outward, into the magic city of light and darkness… Rivers of cold electronic fire flowing about geometric islands, passing under bridges, halting at dams, trickling here, surging there . . . Lights blinking like pinball displays … A roar, a whine…
I made my way through to a still place where I could survey the entire prospect, dipping a finger here, touching a pylon there, to sense the echoes of the data pulsing by. Gates opened and closed, neutral transactions flashed past like freight cars… No, no, no… Time was suspended. And even if it were not, it was so pleasant to be back… I could wait. If my body died right now, I almost felt as if I would continue to exist within the great machine which surrounded us. Ticketderick…
Stop. Slow. Freeze. Enlarge. Expand.
Yes.
I had hold of it. There, the symbol-chain bearing my monthly stipend: 1111101000000, with my name on it. I shepherded it into my account. Immediately, a verification of receipt bearing the same coding sprang phoenix-like from that crackling nest, took flight along the line of power my credit had come in on…
I tagged it, hooked onto it, followed my name. Along the chain of cabled highways, I knew at another level, built upon piers, island to island, through copper and fiberoptic connectors snaking in conduits at their sides, to the Miami clearing-house, passing through another, larger city of lights, murmurs all about me, then racing on, up, down, around, through, terminal to terminal, Atlanta, New York, New Jersey, and then…
Angra Energy, home office, New Jersey.
Yes. Of course. But I had had to know for certain.
I dove. I surfaced at the Stock Exchange, wheat futures beating all about me in soothing pulses. Something was coming back…
I was seven years old. I was sitting on the floor in the sales and service center Dad and Mom ran in El Paso. As other kids did with other toys, I was talking to an old computer, a 1975 model, which was off-line for repair but active for diagnosis. “What’s wrong?” I said to it. “Why are you glitching?” There followed something like a burst of static in the center of my head and I twisted into its city of lights, only some of them were not burning. There, there, there—and there! I saw the pattern exactly as I had seen it that day. That had been the first time I had coiled into one. I—
The other world—the slower, less vivid one—intruded. I became dimly aware that someone was standing beside my car in the bank’s parking lot, looking in at me. I did not want to go back to that place yet, but I knew that I must. Shrugging off commodities, I coiled back into my head and regarded the person who stared.
She was small, dark-haired, rather pretty, partly Oriental. She had on a white pants suit. She was staring.
She was someone I knew I should know.
I rolled down the window.
“Don, are you all right? You do not look well.”
For a moment, I wondered whether she was some extrasensory leftover. But no, she had a name and substance to go with it. Ann. Ann Strong, I recalled. Nothing else, but I could use that much.
“Better than I’ve been in some time,” I said. “What are you doing here, Ann?”
She smiled again.
“I see that you remember me, at least,” she said. “I was not sure that you would.”
I smiled.
“I’m not a total wreck,” I said, and something else came to me, “How do you like the flowers?”
“So many and so lovely,” she replied. “So pure their—colors.”
Something special about her… “Colors” was not the word she had been about to use. I could just feel it. Something else. She had a special liking for something about flowers, but that was not it…
“Have you been in town long?”
“No.” She shook her head slightly. “I’m barely arrived. You like this place?”
“I’ve grown fond of it.”
“I can see how you would. But surely there must be more diverting things to do than to sit in the parking lot of a bank?”
“Unless one is waiting for Angra’s conscience-money to come in,” I said casually, partly just to try it out and partly because I had begun to suspect a connection.
She frowned. She puckered her lips.
“Tsk, tsk,” she went, shaking her head slowly. “Hand and bite. Old saying.”
“If I have to bite,” I said, “it will be more than a hand.”
“Why this rancor, Don?”
“Why are you here?”
“I had just gone to the bank to cash a check when I noticed a familiar face.”
“All right,” I said, “and perhaps well-met. May I drive you anywhere?”
“I was going to have something to eat next.”
“I know a good place. Come on.”
She got in. I drove out onto the road and turned left.
“Vacationing, then,” I said.
“Sort of.”
Something about her, something about her… Warning bells were ringing in the back of my head. It was as if I had already known whatever was the matter, but that something was holding the knowledge back from me. Not important, I decided. Not ultimately important, anyway. Somehow, Angra had to do with the gap in my life and with Cora’s disappearance because of her connection with me. It just seemed that it had to be so. I was going to go up to New Jersey very soon and make a lot of noises. I was going to look up people who were only dark outlines now, walking through the mists of my memory. The names would come, the faces would come. I would find them. I would make them talk. They would give Cora back to me or I would do… something. Something violent or revelatory. Or both. I no longer really had a choice.