Prelude to a Scream (13 page)

“There, there,” said Giles. “We're all young, once. Besides,” he added, turning up the palm of one hand, “I thought the sixties were all rock ‘n' roll and sex and riots and dope and stuff: you know,
fun
.”

“I don't remember a thing, your honor.”

“Well, you know what they say…”

“I'm hardly ever aware of what they say, Giles.”

“They say that if you can remember the sixties, you weren't part of them.”

“That much,” said Stanley, “I can remember.”

Giles assumed a puzzled look, then brightened. “Ah. Here we go.” He tapped at the keyboard and spoke softly to himself. “Name… Password.…”

As Giles tapped in his password, blank green boxes appeared on the screen, each corresponding to a keystroke. So, in attempting to steal Giles' password, Stanley had to read the fingers that tapped it in.

“I wish I'd learned to type,” Stanley observed sourly, watching Giles' fingers. He took a couple of notes while the machine logged on. “Man,” he said, limping back to his chair. “You are fast.” Too fast. Stanley had managed to catch only
fome
—two letters short of the complete password.

“Actually,” Giles said, “I'm very fast on a typewriter, for which I trained. But the computer is more difficult. What with the function keys, non-standard keyboard arrays, and such.” He brushed his fingertips over the keys, like a pianist sounding an
arpeggio
. “One gets slowed down a bit.”

“Hey,” said Stanley. “That sounded like a
guiro
.”

“A what?”

“Do it again.”

“Do what again?”

“Run your fingers over the keyboard.”

“Like this?”

“That's it. That sounds just like a
guiro
. It's a Mexican musical instrument. They hollow out a dried gourd or piece of wood and carve parallel ridges into the exterior surface, see? And when a musician runs a twig or drumstick over the ridges he has a percussion instrument that sounds a lot like a giant male cicada.”

“A what?”

“You've heard one,” Stanley continued enthusiastically.

“A giant male cicada?”

“No, a
guiro
. Janis played one in the intro to
Piece of My Heart
. I think it was
Piece of My Heart
… It's on that album, anyway. You know, the song that—”

“Janis? Janis who?”

“Janis… Joplin. That's… She.…”

Giles' interest faded with his smile. “Do tell.”

Amazed that this kid had bought the geek-hippie act for as long as he had, Stanley let his voice trail to nothing. “Sorry.”

“Quite all right,” said Giles mildly.

“We made do with what we had, in the sixties…”

“I understand.”

“I mean, maybe she wasn't no Fine Young Cannibal or Mazzy Star or nothing,” Stanley added, somewhat disconsolately. “But, still, she could sing like…”

“I know, I know,” Giles interrupted, holding both hands aloft. “Although mother and I lived on a commune in Costa Rica, she had to have her record collection.”

“Oh really? You had electricity?”

“A water wheel in the creek ran the generator, so we could listen to subliminal tapes. Every Saturday night we played records. Wenatchee John said it was all right.”

“Wenatchee John?”

“He was our leader. At least for a while.”

“Isn't that the guy who got cooked and eaten by some pissed-off splinter group of his own followers? About 1974?”

Giles pulled off his glasses and sucked on a temple bar. “We were gone by then, but, yes. He wasn't such a bad guy. Just another control freak.”

“A control freak.”

“Have you seen the video?”

“No,” Stanley said tonelessly. “Should I?”

“Mother's still living off the residuals. At any rate,” said Giles, replacing the glasses, “all
my
disposable income goes into a balanced portfolio of penny stocks and mutual funds, not records and tapes. But in stocks, as in communal living, diversity is the key to growth.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his chair. “Now where was I?”

“Your password.”

“Oh yes,” he retyped it without thinking.

The computer beeped.

“Oh,” said Giles. “I already did that!”

“Did what,” said Stanley innocently, making a note. The last two letters were
n
and
t
—the password was
foment
.

“Never mind.”

“Say, look…”

“Yes?”

“I can see you're on a network, here. But do you share information with other facilities?”

Giles typed for a moment before answering.

A logo filled the screen. Stanley made another note. The clinic's venereal software was called BUGTRAK.

Giles spoke somewhat distractedly as he typed. “Only statistics. We share statistical information with the National AIDS Data Project, also with a network of blood and organ banks, and a couple of other, similar outfits.”

“Really? Blood and organ banks? Just like that? What if I want to be buried in one piece?”

“Then we don't list you as a donor.”

“No names?”

“No names.”

“What kind of statistics?”

“Every kind. Blood types, age groupings, sex of course, sexual preferences if volunteered, stuff we glean from the workup.”

“Histocompatibility?”

Giles turned and looked at Stanley over his glasses.

“I know what you're thinking,” said Stanley ingenuously. “What's an old hippie like me who gets his foot tangled in computer power cords know about the Major Histocompatibility Complex?”

“Yes,” said Giles. “What does he know about it?”

“Nothing,” Stanley shrugged. “He is just curious.”

“In fact, Stanley, we don't normally do histocompatibility panels here. I mean, so far as I know, nobody ever consulted a histocompatibility panel before having sex—or afterwards. And, let me assure you, we've heard it all in here. Besides, we don't do the actual analyses.”

“You send out to a lab. A subcontractor.”

“Exactly. But the lab we send out to doesn't work up histocompatibility either.”

“Could they? If you wanted it, I mean?”

“Oh, yes, they're a full-service medical laboratory. They can do just about anything with a blood sample.”

“There's just one lab?”

“For us, yes.”

“They work for other people?”

“Sure. Doctors, clinics, hospitals, the police. Say…”

“Yes?”

“You know, just last week another clerk was telling me about this detective who came in, asking questions very like the ones you're asking.”

“Cops are known to be curious.”

“And old hippies?”

Stanley looked at the clerk. “That's the second time this month someone has taken me for a cop.”

MacIntosh shrugged. “No offense.”

“The more interesting question would be, has anybody besides a cop been here asking these sorts of questions?”

“That's another question the detective asked.” Giles studied Stanley. “If he comes back and asks it again, I can tell him yes.”

Stanley shrugged. “I'm just a guy anxious to go to bed with his new girlfriend, and she's a little nervous about his past.”

“Ah, yes,” said Giles. “The girlfriend.” He returned his attention to his computer screen. “I guess that makes
hetero
your sexual preference.” He tapped tentatively at a key. “Unless…?”

“Hetero's fine,” said Stanley.

“Yes,” Giles smiled, hitting the key. “This is now and that was then.”

“And what would you know about it?” Stanley asked archly.

“My mom talks about it all the time. Mom always says there was about a three-year period when she would sleep with anything with buttons on it.”

“She didn't mention
guiros
?”

“Not that I recall.”

“A woman doesn't want to tell her son everything.”

“Not unless she wants to drive him mad with desire.”

Stanley smiled.

“But as we were saying, only the AIDS survey gets your statistics without your permission. The data submitted are anonymous, involving HIV results, gender, sexual preference, income level, age, geodemographic stuff like that. Obviously, in an organ or blood donor database, the information can't be anonymous. But for that we get your explicit consent.”

“I don't remember that woman, Ms.…”

Giles glanced at the screen. “Dunkirk. Ms. Dunkirk.”

“I don't recall her asking my permission to divulge such information.”

“Then it probably wasn't granted, Mr. Ahearn.”

“Okay,” Stanley agreed thoughtfully. “So it wasn't granted.”

Giles' casual glance at his screen became more concentrated. “But it says here, Mr. Ahearn, that it was granted.”

It was a moment before Stanley answered. He recalled the other case worker asking the question.
If, in case of an accident, do you wish your intact organs to be put to best use? No,
Stanley had replied,
I don't
. He'd been assuming, at the time, that by the time he died he'd either be HIV positive from messing around with hookers or too pickled in alcohol for his organs to benefit anyone.

“Negative, Giles. Permission was not granted.”

Giles was silent for a moment while he studied his screen. He typed a key. He tried another. “Hello…,” he muttered softly.

Stanley waited a bit before he said, “The computer says that my permission was given, doesn't it. Giles?”

“Permission for what?” Giles asked nervously.

“Permission to share information.”

Giles looked up from the screen. “Yessir, Mr. Ahearn. According to your file, sir, you gave your permission to share organ donor information.”

Stanley watched Giles for a moment.

“Oh, well,” he said suddenly, breaking eye contact with Giles as he did so. He sat back in his chair, heaved a sigh and looked up at the ceiling. “This Ms. Dunkirk, or somebody else, must have slipped up. Maybe the computer burped.” He allowed his eyes to find Giles' again. “Right?”

Frowning, Giles turned to his screen. “Right,” he said.

“Still, I refused it.”

“Yes sir, you said that.”

“It didn't have to be her mistake, did it?”

“Pardon?”

“Ms. Dunkirk. She didn't have to be the one making the mistake, did she? Somebody else could have made it. No? What's the matter?”

Giles stared at Stanley for a moment, then looked back at the screen. “I don't like mistakes,” he said simply.

“Oh, a perfectionist, eh? Well my boy, I'm with you there. Used to be quite a perfectionist myself when I was your age. Had to give all that up, of course. I saw a bit of the world and gave up on perfection. Now it's your turn. Welcome to the club. Perfection isn't how it works. Perfection isn't what the world produces. Perfection is only something it eats, not what it shits out. Get my meaning? Give up on perfection, Giles. Perfection will only stick to your shoes and bring you heartache. See?”

“I never had a father,” said Giles, staring at his screen.

“Besides,” Stanley said, ignoring this remark. “Was this Ms. Dunkirk the only one with access to this file? Obviously not. You're sitting here and looking at it. Let's suppose, if she didn't make the mistake, maybe somebody else made it. Then we'll get on with our current business.”

Giles remained silent, tapping a key thoughtfully.

“Is there a record of accesses?”

Giles brightened. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Ahearn, there is a record kept of something like the thirty-two most recent accesses to a given file.”

“Thirty-two? Why thirty-two?”

Giles shrugged. “It's the fifth power of two. Binary computer stuff. They have to put some limit on these little conveniences or risk a drain on memory, which could lead to a crash…”

“So? Look them up.”

“I don't have access to that information…” Giles shook himself again, as if out of a reverie, and frowned at the screen, renewing his concentration. “Besides, it might not make any difference.”