Entering the equations was a long, painstaking job, made all the more difficult by having to watch what he was doing through a small set of opera glasses. But finally he hit the return key for the last time, keying in the simultaneous-solutions program already loaded. The terminal beeped acknowledgment, and with a grunt Garwood got stiffly back into his chair. His stomach growled as he did so, and with a mild shock he saw that it was ten-thirty. No wonder his stomach had been growling for the past hour or so. Getting up, rubbing at the cramps in his legs, he went over to the kitchen alcove.
To find that he'd once again let his supplies run below acceptable levels. "Blast," he muttered under his breath, and snared his wallet from the top of the dresser. There was a burger place a few blocks away that might still be open... but on the other hand, his wad of bills was getting dangerously thin, and when this batch was gone there wouldn't be any more. For a moment he studied the terminal's display with his opera glasses, but the lack of diagnostic messages implied that nothing immediate and obvious had tripped it up. Which meant that it would probably be chugging away happily on the equations for at least another half hour. Which meant there was plenty of time for him to skip the fast food and walk instead to the grocery store.
—
The overhead lights were humming loudly as Garwood started across the store's parking lot, and for a moment he fantasized that that he was out in some exotic wilderness, circled by giant insects made of equal parts firefly and cicada. Out in the wilderness, away from Backdrop and the curse that hounded him.
It might come to that eventually, he knew. Even if he was able to continue eluding the searchers Saunders had scouring the area, he still couldn't stay here. His carefully engineered sublet would last only another five weeks, his dwindling bankroll dropping near zero at about the same time. Leaving him a choice between surrender and finding a job.
Both of which, he knew, really boiled down to the same thing. Any job paying enough for him to live on would leave a trail of paper that would bring Saunders's people down on him in double-quick time. Not to mention the risk he would present to the people he'd be working with.
He grimaced. A walking time bomb, that Intelligence major—Davidson—had dubbed him. A part of Garwood's mind appreciated the unintended irony of such a characterization; the rest of it winced at the truth also there.
The grocery store, not surprisingly, was quiet. Wrestling a cart that seemed determined to veer to the left, he went up and down the aisles, picking out his usual selection of convenience foods and allowing his nerves to relax as much as they could. There were probably some people somewhere who truly disliked supermarkets and the efficient long-term storage of food that made them possible; but if there were, the number must be vanishingly small. As a result, grocery stores were near the top of the short list of places where Garwood could feel fairly safe. As long as he stayed away from the cigarettes and smoking paraphernalia, he could be reasonably certain that nothing would break or crumble around him.
He collected as many packages as he estimated would fit into two bags and headed for the checkout. There, the teen-aged girl manning the register—or possibly she was a college student; they all looked equally young to him these days—gave him a pleasant smile and got to work unloading his cart. Listening to the familiar beep of the laser scanner, Garwood pulled out his wallet and watched the march of prices across the display.
The cart was still half full when a jar of instant coffee failed to register. The girl tried scanning it four times, then gave up and manually keyed the UPC code into her register. The next item, a frozen dinner, was similarly ignored. As was the next item... and the next... and the next...
"Trouble?" Garwood asked, his mouth going dry.
"Scanner seems to have quit," she frowned, tapping the glass slits as if trying to get the machine's attention. "Funny—they're suppose to last longer than this."
"Well, you know how these things are," Garwood said, striving for nonchalance even as his heart began to pound in his ears.
"Yeah, but this one was just replaced Saturday. Oh, well, that's progress for you." She picked up the next item and turned back to her register.
Almost unwillingly, Garwood bent over and peered into the glass. Behind it, the laser scanner was dimly visible. Looking perfectly normal... No, he told himself firmly. No, it's just coincidence. It has to be. Nobody hates laser grocery scanners, for God's sake. But even as he fought to convince himself of that, a horrible thought occurred to him.
Perhaps it was no longer necessary for anyone to hate laser grocery scanners directly. Perhaps all it took now was enough people hating the lasers in self-guided weapons systems.
A dark haze seemed to settle across his vision. It had started, then; the beginning of the end. If a concerted desire to eliminate one incarnation of a given technology could spill over onto another, then there was literally nothing on the face of the earth that could resist Garwood's influence. His eyes fell on the packages of frozen food before him on the counter, and a dimly remembered television program came to mind. A program that had showed how the root invention of refrigeration had led to both frozen foods and ICBMs...
The girl finished packing the two paper bags and read off the total for him. Garwood pulled out the requisite number of bills, accepted his change, and left. Outside, the parking lot lights were still humming their cicada/firefly song. Still beckoning him to the safety of the wilderness.
A wilderness, he knew, which didn't exist.
—
The bags, light enough at the beginning of the walk, got progressively heavier as the blocks went by, and by the time he reached the door to his apartment house his arms were starting to tremble with the strain. Working the outside door open with his fingertips, he let it close behind him and started up the stairs. A young woman was starting down at the same time, and for an instant, just as they passed, their eyes met. But only for an instant. The woman broke the contact almost at once, her face the neutral inward-looking expression that everyone seemed to be wearing these days.
Garwood continued up the stairs, feeling a dull ache in the center of his chest. The "not-me" generation. Everyone encased in his or her own little bubble of space. So why should I care, either? he thought morosely. Let it all fall apart around me. Why am I killing myself trying to take on decisions like this, anyway? Sounders is the one in charge, and if he says it'll work, then whatever happens is his responsibility. Right?
The computer had finished its work. Setting the bags down, Garwood dug out his opera glasses again and studied the display. The machine had found three solutions to his coupled equations. The first was the one he'd already come up with, the one that had started this whole mess in the first place; the second was also one he'd seen before, and found to be mathematically correct but non-physical. The third solution...
Heart thudding in his ears, Garwood stepped to the table and reached to the ashtray for one of the loose cigarettes lying there. The third solution was new... and if it contained the build-in safeguard he was hoping to find...
He picked up one of the cigarettes. Squeezing it gently between thumb and fingertips, he gazed at the formula through his opera glasses, letting his eyes and thoughts linger on each symbol as he ticked off the seconds in his mind. At a count of ten he thought he felt a softness in the cigarette paper; at twenty-two, it crumbled to powder.