The Alien Years (55 page)

Andy went to a street access and summoned the Toshiba from wherever it had parked itself.

It came driving up, five or ten minutes later, and he told it to take him north, up the freeway, out of the city. He wasn’t sure where he would go. San Francisco, maybe. It rained a lot in San Francisco in the winter, Andy knew, and from all he had heard it was colder than he liked a place to be. But still, it was a pretty town, and a port city besides, so he could probably arrange to get himself shipped out there to Hawaii or Australia or someplace like that, where it was warm, where he could leave all the tattered fragments of his old life behind him forever.

He reached the wall at the Sylmar gate, some fifty miles or so up the road. The gate asked him his name. “Richard Roe,” he said. “Beta Pi Upsilon 1043 24X. Destination San Francisco.”

Implant reading, now. He provided access. No problem. All cool.

The gate opened and the Toshiba went through, easy as Beta Pi.

The car went zooming northward. It would be about a five-hour drive, maybe six, Andy guessed, to Frisco. The freeway here seemed to be in unusually good shape, all things considered.

But then, when he was less than half an hour beyond the Sylmar gate, an idea came to him, an idea so strange and unexpected, so surprising and bewildering, that Andy couldn’t quite make himself believe that he had actually thought of it. It was a crazy idea, absolutely crazy. He brushed it aside for the craziness that it was; but it had its hooks in him and would not release him. He struggled with it this way and that for about five minutes. And then he surrendered to it.

“Change of plan,” he told the Toshiba. “Let’s go to Santa Barbara.”

“Someone at the gate,” Frank said, as the honking sounded. “I’ll get it.”

It was a mild January day, getting toward evening, everything very green, the trees glistening from a recent drizzle. The weather had been very rainy lately; and more rain would be here before dawn, Frank figured, judging by the fishbelly clouds in the sky to the north. He grabbed the shotgun and went loping up the hill. He was a slender athletic young man, now, just on the cusp between adolescence and manhood, and he ran easily, gracefully, untiringly, in long loose strides.

The car sitting out there was an unfamiliar model, fairly new as cars went these days, very fancy. Looking through the bars of the gate, Frank was unable to make out the driver’s face. With a wave of the shotgun he signaled to the man to get out of the car and show himself. The driver stayed where he was.

Suit yourself, Frank thought, and started to turn away.

“Hey, fellow—wait!” The car window was open, suddenly, and the man’s head was sticking out. A strong face, just a little jowly, dark eyes, heavy frowning eyebrows, tough, scowling expression. The face looked familiar, somehow. But for a moment Frank wasn’t quite able to place it. Then he gasped in astonishment as the click of recognition occurred.

“Andy?”

A nod and a grin from the man in the car. “Me, yes. Who are you?”

“Frank.”

“Frank.” A moment’s pause for contemplation. “Anson’s Frank? But you were just a little kid!”

“I’m nineteen,” Frank said, not troubling to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “You’ve been gone better than five years, you know. Little kids grow up, sooner or later.” He pressed the button that opened the gate, and the bars slid back. But the car stayed where it was. That was puzzling. Frank said, frowning, “Look, Andy, are you coming in or aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. That is, I’m not really sure.”

“Not
sure
? What do you mean, not sure?”

“I mean that I’m not sure, is what I mean.” Andy scrunched his eyes closed for a moment and shook his head, like a dog shaking off raindrops. “—Shut up and let me think, will you, kid?”

Andy stayed put inside the car. What the hell was he waiting for? A little drizzle began to come down again. Frank began to fidget. Then he heard Andy say something in a low voice, obviously not intended for him. Speaking to the car, apparently. A model this recent would have a voice-actuated drive. “Come on, will you?” Frank said, getting really irritated now, and beckoned once more with the shotgun. But then, grasping at last the fact that Andy had changed his mind about being here and was about to take off, he strode quickly out through the open gate and pushed the gun through the car window, right up against the side of Andy’s jaw, just as the car began slowly to move in reverse along the muddy road. He kept pace easily with the vehicle, jogging alongside, holding the shotgun trained on Andy’s forehead.

Andy gave the muzzle of the gun a pop-eyed disbelieving sidewise stare.

“You aren’t leaving here,” Frank told him. “Just forget about that idea. You’ve got about two seconds to put on the brakes.”

He heard Andy tell the car to stop. It came abruptly to a halt. “What the fuck,” Andy said, glaring out at him.

Frank did not pull the shotgun away from the window. “Okay, now get out of the car.”

“Listen, Frank, I’ve decided that I don’t feel like visiting the ranch after all.”

“Tough. You should have decided that before you drove up the hill. Out.”

“It was a dumb idea, really. I never should have come back. Nobody here wants to see me again and there’s nobody here I want to see. So would you very kindly get that goddamn cannon out of my face, please, if you don’t mind, and let me move along?”

“Out,” Frank said once more. “Now. Or I’ll blow the hell out of your car’s computer and you won’t go anywhere at all.”

Andy gave him a surly look. “Come on.”

“You come on.” Motioning with the gun.

“All right, kid. All
right!
I’m getting out. Cool down a little, okay? We can both ride down to the house together. It’ll be a lot quicker. And I wish to hell you’d stop pointing that gun at me.”

“We’ll walk,” Frank said. “It’s not that far, really. Let’s go. Now. You’re capable of walking, aren’t you? Move it, Andy.”

Grumbling, Andy pushed the car door open and stepped out.

This was very hard to believe, Frank thought, that Andy was actually here. For the past couple of weeks Steve and Paul and all the other computer people at the ranch had been doing all sorts of on-line gymnastics, trying to trace this man’s trail in Los Angeles, and here he was, turning up here all on his own. Operating under some confusion, apparently, about whether he should have come; but he was here. That was what mattered.

“The gun,” Andy said. Frank was still holding it at the ready. “It really isn’t necessary, you know. I’d like you to realize that it makes me very uncomfortable.”

“I suppose it does. But there’s just the two of us up here and I don’t know how dangerous you are, Andy.”

“Dangerous? Dangerous?”

“Walk on ahead, please. I’ll be right behind you.”

“This is very shitty, Frank. I’m your own cousin.”

“Second cousin, I think. Come on. Keep it moving.”

“You taking me to your father?”

“No,” Frank said. “Yours.”

“Where is he?” Steve asked.

“In the library,” said two of Anson’s boys, speaking at the same time, as Anson’s boys tended to do. Martin said, “My brother Frank’s keeping watch over him there.” “He’s got the shotgun on him,” added James, the other one. They both looked very pleased.

Steve hurried down the hall. In the library, a dark low-roofed room with floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with hundreds and hundreds of rare and learned books on various Oriental cultures that had belonged to the Colonel and had not been looked at by anyone in fifteen or twenty years, a most unscholarly tableau was on display. Frank was leaning casually against a bookcase to the left of the door, with the shotgun that everyone carried when going up to the gate resting lightly across his left forearm. It was pointing in the general direction of a tense, scowling, heavyset man in loose-fitting denim trousers and a plaid flannel shirt on the other side of the room. An angry-looking stranger, whom Steve recognized, after a moment, as his son Andy.

“We probably don’t need to hold him at gunpoint, Frank. Do we, Andy?”

“He
seems to think so,” Andy said balefully.

“Well, I don’t. Is that all right with you, Frank?”

“Whatever you say, sir. Do you want me to leave the room?”

“Yes. I think I do. Don’t go very far, though.”

As Frank went out, Steve looked toward Andy and said, “Am I safe with you?”

“Don’t talk crap, Dad.”

“I can’t be sure. You’re a strange one, you are. Always were, always will be.” Andy had put on more than a little weight, Steve noticed. And his hair was beginning to recede. The Gannett genes rising up in him. How old was he, anyway? Steve had to count it up. Twenty-four, he decided. Yes. Twenty-four. He looked considerably older than that, but then Steve reminded himself that Andy had always had looked older than his years, even when he was only a little boy. “A strange one, yes, indeed, that’s you. Anson said he thought you were a mutant.”

“He did? Look, Dad. Five fingers on each hand. Only one head. Only two eyes, on different sides of my nose, the way they’re supposed to be.”

Steve was only faintly amused. “Nevertheless,” he said, “a mutant. A mutant personality, is what Anson meant. Someone who’s not at all like any of us. —Here, look at it this way: I’m a nerdy sort of guy, Andy. Fat and slow and cautious. Always have been, always will be. I don’t mind being like that. But I’m also a decent and responsible and hardworking citizen. So tell me this: How did I raise a criminal like you?”

“A criminal? Is that what I am?”

“Too harsh a word, is it? I don’t think so. Not from the things I’ve heard. Why did you come back here, Andy?”

“I’m not sure. A touch of homesickness, maybe? I can’t say. I was on my way to Frisco and suddenly something came over me and I thought, Well, what the hell, I’m driving up that way anyway, I think I’ll go to the dear old ranch, I’ll see the folks again, good old Mom and Dad, good old tight-assed Anson, good old red-hot La-La.”

“La-La, yes. She prefers to be called Lorraine now. That’s her real name, you may remember. She’ll be glad to see you. She can introduce you to your son.”

“My son.” Not a flicker of animation appeared on his chilly face.

Steve smiled. “Your son, yes. He’s five years old. Born not too long after you skipped out of here.”

“And what’s his name, Dad? Anson?”

“Well, actually, you’ll be surprised to learn that it is. Anson Carmichael Gannett, Junior. Wasn’t that sweet of Lorraine, naming him after you, all things considered?”

It was Andy’s turn not to seem amused. He gave Steve a long, steady, sullen look. In an absolutely flat, cold voice he said, “Well, well, well. Anson C. Gannett, Junior. That’s very nice. I’m terribly, terribly flattered.”

Steve chose to take no notice of Andy’s mocking tone. Smiling still, he said, “I’m glad to hear it. He’s a really lovely child. We call him ‘Anse.’ —And just how long are you planning to stay with us, son, now that you’re here?”

“As least as long as Frank is sitting out there in the hall with his shotgun, I guess.”

“I’m sorry about the gun. Frank overreacted a little, I think. But he didn’t know what to expect from you. We know that you’ve been living on the edge of the law ever since you left here. Working as a pardoner, right?”

Stiffly Andy said, “The laws that pardoners break are Entity laws. The things that pardoners do save people from Entity oppression. I could make out a case for looking upon pardoner activity as being one aspect of the Resistance. A kind of freelance Resistance effort. Which would make me just as decent and law-abiding a citizen as you claim to be.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Andy. Even so, the fact remains that pardoners live a kind of shady underground existence and not all of them are completely honest. I like to think that you were more honest than most, though.”

“As a matter of fact, I was.” There was a crackle in Andy’s voice and a glint in his eye that led Steve to think that he might actually be telling the truth, for a change. “I wrote a few stiffs, yes—you know what those are?—but only because the pardoner guild told me I had to. Guild rules. Most of the time I played it straight and did the job right. A matter of professional pride as a hacker. I got to know the Entity net inside and out, too.”

“That’s good to know. We rather hoped you had. That’s why we’ve been looking all over for you, all these years.”

“Have you, now? What for?”

“Because we’re still running the Resistance up here, and you have unique skills that could be of service to us in a major enterprise that we’ve been working on for a long time.”

“And what kind of enterprise might that be? Let’s get down to it, all right? Just what do you want from me, Dad?”

“To begin with, your cooperation on a little hacking project of critical importance, one that happens to be too tough even for me, but which I think you can handle.”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

“You will,” Steve said.

Andy was astonished. The Borgmann archive! Well, well, well.

He remembered having gone looking for it once or twice or thrice—when he was fourteen, fifteen, somewhere back there. Everyone did. It was like looking for El Dorado, King Solomon’s mines, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The legendary Borgmann data cache, the key to all the Entity mysteries.