Or so Jim thinks, fearfully, as he runs. But when he reaches the east side of the mall and flies through the entryway doors, damned if the two men aren’t coming up an escalator back there, at full speed!
Outside, however, on the street bordering the parking lot, he sees his car, which has made it there on its own. Good programming. He runs out to where it sits by the curb, noticing only at the last second the three policemen approaching to inspect it.
Panic on top of panic; Jim’s systems almost blow out at the sight, but his pursuers are in the parking lot now and there’s no time to lose. Without thinking he runs up to the car and shouts at the policemen, “It’s mine! They’re robbing me, they dragged me out of the car and now they’re chasing me!”
The three policemen regard him carefully, then look as he points at the two men, running across the parking lot. “That’s them!”
The two men see what’s happening, and quickly turn and run back inside. Perfect.
But there’s Arthur and the other two suppliers, tracking up in Arthur’s car, stuck in the traffic on the street. Jim says quickly, “There’s the rest of them in that car there! Quick, right there! Yeah!”
And he points. And Arthur sees him pointing.
Arthur ignores the policemen flagging him down and shifts to the fast track. This gets the cops’ attention, and two of them hustle off to their truck, parked behind Jim’s car. The third appears to be staying behind, and he’s looking into Jim’s car curiously.
Jim says, “There’s the others again, Officer!” and points at the east doors of the mall. While the policeman peers in that direction Jim yanks open his car’s door, leaps in and jams the accelerator to the floor. The car jerks away over the right track, leaving the policeman shouting behind him.
Jim makes a sharp right on Chapman, because ahead of him on the City Avenue, the police truck is in hot pursuit of Arthur and his two companions. Arthur.…
Jim tracks onto the Santa Ana Freeway south. He’s free of all pursuit, as far as he can tell. His reaction is to feel acutely sick to his stomach. He might even throw up in his car. And that look on Arthur’s face, as he saw Jim pointing him out to the police… “No, no! That isn’t what I meant!…”
Nothing for it now. Arthur will very likely be picked up, with the two suppliers. But will the police have any reason for holding them? Jim has no idea. He only knows he’s in a car with six boxes of felony-level weaponry, and the police likely have his license plate number. And he’s just betrayed a friend to the police, for no reason. No reason? My God, he can’t tell! He has the feeling that he has, in fact, betrayed everyone he knows, in one way or another.
He checks the rearview mirror nervously, looking for CHP, local police, sheriffs, state troopers—who knows what they’ll send after industrial saboteurs? He catches sight of his unshaven face, the expression of sick fear on it. And suddenly he’s furious, he slams his fist against the dash, filled with disgust for himself. “Coward. Traitor. Fucking idiot!” Unleashed at last, all the directionless angers pour out at once, in fists flailing the dash, in incoherent, sobbing curses. “You know—you know—what should—be done—and you—can’t—do it!”
All control gone, he remembers the cargo he has and tracks like a madman to South Coast Plaza. He jams to a halt in an open-air parking lot across from SCP’s administrative tower, jumps out of his car, tears open the box on the passenger seat, pulls out a Harris Mosquito missile with its Styx-90 payload. There among scattered parked cars he glues the little missile base to the concrete and aims it at the dark windows of the tower. He sets the firing mechanism, clicks it on. The missile suddenly gives out a loud whoosh of flame and disappears. Up in the administrative tower a window breaks, and there’s a tinkle of glass, a tinny little alarm sounding. Jim hoots, drives away.
Up into Santa Ana, to the office of First American Title Insurance and Real Estate. It’s dark, no one is there. Another missile set in the parking lot, aimed at the main doors; it’ll melt every computer in there, every file. He’ll be out of a job! He laughs hysterically as he sets the mechanism and turns it on. This time the missile breaks a big plate-glass window, and the alarms are howlers.
In the distance there are sirens. What else can he knock out? The Orange County Board of Supervisors, yeah, the crowd that has systematically helped real estate developers to cut OC up, in over a hundred years of mismanagement and graft. Down under the Triangle to the old Santa Ana Civic Center. It’s dark there too, he can set up his Mosquito without any danger. Click the firing mechanism over and the little skyrocketlike thing will fly in there and knock the whole corrupt administration of the county apart. So he does it and laughs like mad.
Who else? He can’t think. Something has snapped in him, and he can’t seem to think at all.
There’s a closed Fluffy Donuts; why not?
Another real estate office; why not?
One of the Irvine military microchip factories; why not?
In fact, he’s close to Laguna Space Research. And he’s crazy enough with anger now to want to punish them for his betrayals, made for their sake. They deserve a warning shot, they should know how close they came to destruction. Give them a scare.
And then they’ll know to look out, to be on guard.
As confused in his action as in his thinking, Jim gets lost in a Muddy Canyon condomundo, but when he comes out of it he’s at an elementary school on the edge of a canyon, and across the canyon is LSR. He unboxes two Mosquitos and carries them out to a soccer field overlooking the canyon. Sets them up, aims them both for the big LAGUNA SPACE RESEARCH signs at the entrance to the plant. He clicks over the firing mechanism and hustles back to the car.
Just a couple left. He blasts two more dark real estate offices in Tustin.
Only the boxes left, now; he throws them out on the Santa Ana Freeway, watches traffic back up behind him. Back onto the streets in Tustin, his breath catching in his throat, in ragged, hysterical sobs. Redhill Mall mocks all his efforts, even when he gets out and throws stones at its windows. They’re shatterproof and the stones bounce away. He can’t make OC go away, not with his idiot vandalism, not even by going crazy. It’s everywhere, it fills all realities, even the insane ones. Especially those. He can’t escape.
He drives home, still mindless with rage and disgust. His ap maddens him, he rushes to the bookcase and pulls it over, watches it crunch the CD system under it. He kicks the books around, but they’re too indestructible and he moves on to his computer. A hard left and the screen is cracked, maybe a knuckle too. “Stupid asshole.” He goes and gets a frying pan to complete the job. Crack! Crack! Crack! On to the disks. Each one crunched is a couple thousand pages of his utterly useless writing gone for good—thank God! Drawers of printed copy, not that much of it, and it’s easy to rip in fourths and scatter around like confetti. What else? CDs, he can frypan all his mix-and-match symphonies to plastic smithereens, reassemble the scattered pieces and finally get the random mishmash the method deserves. What else? A sketch of Hana’s, ripped in half. Orange crate labels, smashed and torn apart. The room’s beginning to look pretty good. What else?