"Yeah. He had kind of an accent. English, maybe. A little like the way John talks―but not exactly. Actually, he sounded like a fag."
" 'Fag'?"
"Yeah. Sorry, I mean… you know, a homo. Er, homosexual."
"Oh."
"Hell, I don't know. He just sounded strange." Carl looked at John. "Sorry, John. I didn't mean to imply that you were strange or anything."
"Quite all right," John said affably.
"Okay," I said, "so this guy was talking to you. What did he say?"
"Not too damn much that made sense. He didn't say much except that I shouldn't get upset and that everything would be all right and that they weren't going to hurt me in any way. I remember I was pretty hysterical at first. I mean, I thought Debbie was dead. They told me she wasn't, but I didn't believe them. I still more or less don't."
I nodded, waiting for him to go on.
Presently, he did: "I guess I can talk about it to a degree. But I don't want to go into what went on in the ship. It was like a dream. I have trouble remembering most of it. Next thing I knew… I mean, when things got a little clearer and it wasn't like a dream anymore, I was driving my car down this strange road… and I saw a portal for the first time. But I knew what it was! Boy, it was weird. I'd never seen one in my life, but I knew exactly what it was and what I should do. Stay in the guide lane, maintain constant speed, all that stuff. And I knew where I was―out in space somewhere. I didn't find out when I was until later." Carl took a deep breath and looked down at Lori's face. He smiled. "She looks like Debbie. A little bit anyway."
"Maybe Lori would like to hear this," I said.
"I've told her a little of what I've told you." He looked up and grinned. "For some reason it was easier to talk to her."
Lori's eyes fluttered and opened; then she sat up suddenly and said, "Huh?" She looked around at everybody, frowned disapprovingly, and yawned. "You people still jawing?" she said huskily.
"I was telling them about, you know, the crazy stuff that happened to me, about how I got out here and all that," Carl told her.
"Oh, that." She looked at us. "I think he's fibbing."
"You should try out the whole story on Lori first," I said, "then spill it to us. If she believes you, you know we will."
"Oh, I was only kidding," Lori said, snaking a possessive arm about Carl's neck. "I don't really think you're lying, Carl. It's just that it's so hard to believe."
Carl nodded. "Sometimes I think I'm dreaming this all up."
Lori yawned again, then complained, "I'm tired."
"So are we all," John said. "Perhaps we should turn in."
"I'm for that," Roland seconded.
So we did; rather everybody did but me, after we had stowed all the comestibles back into their, pressurized packing crates and had generally cleaned up. We also had to work Zoya and Yuri into the sleeping arrangements, split up the bedding and such, but we got it all squared away, and I took Susan forward with me, tucking her into the bunk in the aft cabin. I would take first watch, she the second.
I went out to the cab, slid the shotgun seat over in front of the keyboard console, and sat down to have a good look at what was going on with Sam. I had run a cursory check before the Voloshins had boarded, making sure the life-support monitors were working. Everything had seemed okay. Rechecking now, I found all systems functioning normally. I coded some diagnostic programs and went into main memory to see what was up, though I had a strong hunch what had happened. More than a hunch. Entity X had come out from hiding and had done his dirty work, that much was clear. I just wanted to know exactly what dirt had been done. Sam's Vlathusian Entelechy Matrix, that semimysterious thumb-sized Read-Only Memory component which was the seat of Sam's intellect and personality, had been completely bypassed. The phantom Artificial Intelligence program was in complete control. Hunched over the keyboard for two migraine-provoking hours, I tried and tried to alter that situation.
And failed miserably. There was little I could do but shut down the CPU―but you can't run and monitor a nuclear fusion truck engine without a computer, at least not very well.
Entity X was calling the shots.
I folded up the console, slid the seat back, sat down on it, and put my feet on the dash.
"Okay," I said, addressing the unseen malevolence that hung in the cab like a bad odor, "who are you and what do you want?"
"What have you got, Jake?" Corey Wilkes said.
Chapter 19
Corey Wilkes.
He and Sam had been friends and business partners once. Together, they had founded TATOO, the Transcolonial Association of Truck Owner-Operators. Years later, shortly after I started driving, Corey engineered a power grab that installed him as president more or less for life. Sam resigned from the board of directors and eventually from the organization itself. I followed suit. Sam wanted to retire to the farm, but I persuaded him to help me start the Starriggers' Guild, which he did. And that was the start of our troubles with Corey Wilkes. Wilkes harassed us, off and on, for the next ten years. Guild drivers kept disappearing. There were numerous suspicious mishaps, hijackings, and the like. It got so that some manufacturers refused to contract with Guild drivers, and most, while they would hire an occasional Guild member during peak periods, would not become signatories to the Guild's Basic Agreement, which had been the organization's raison d' etre in the first place. TATOO had become a combination private trucking company and labor union, run for the express purpose of lining the pockets of Wilkes and his friends in the Authority bureaucracy. Five years ago, Sam had died in an apparently unrelated Skyway accident. A few weeks ago I had learned from Wilkes himself that he had hired stunt drivers to stage the incident. I may have been the intended victim. Sam had been on his way to see a grain futures broker on Einstein, a meeting I had arranged and had intended to keep, but a job I couldn't refuse―times being what they were―had come up and Sam had gone instead.
"I thought you were dead, Corey," I said.
A faint chuckle came from the speaker on the instrument panel. "You know, Jake, I don't believe I'll tell you one way or the other. Right now I can't think of a good reason not to level with you, but you never know when a little datum like that could come in handy if held in reserve."
"I'd say you were dead. You took that.44 slug in the chest, as I recall. Looked like it hit near the heart if it didn't hit dead center."
"That very well may be. But let me preface this whole conversation by saying that you aren't talking to Corey Wilkes. I am an Artificial Intelligence program imbued with the personality and some, but not all, of the accumulated life memories of Corey Wilkes'. I have been updated on recent events, but not in detail. I have also been programmed with instructions."
"Which are…?"
"You'll forgive me if I'm not too specific, but generally I have been charged with the task of keeping an eye on you."
"And with leaving a trail of radioactive wastes," I added, "so we could be easily tracked."
Again, a chuckle. "Hard to put anything over on you, Jake. I don't know why I try."
I exhaled noisily and crossed my arms. "Cut the merte. What do you want?"
A sound like a sigh came from the speaker. "Yes, what in the world do I want? A very good question. Unfortunately, as a mere Personality Analog I lack the psychic underpinnings to answer that with any depth―I don't have the complete backlog of memory, the Freudian substrata, if you will. Something drives me; I don't know quite what."
I scowled. "The question wasn't philosophical. What do you want specifically? Now."
"Oh, of course. Sorry. Well, what with the facts that have recently come to light, I suppose I want the Cube."