Ur (7 page)

He took a long hot shower, shaved, dressed, and decided to go down to Susan and Nan’s for either a late breakfast or an early lunch, whichever looked better on the menu. As for Robbie, Wesley decided he’d let the kid sleep. He’d be out practicing with the rest of the hapless football team this afternoon; surely he deserved to sleep late. It occurred to him that, if he took a table by the window, he might see the Athletic Department bus go by as the girls set off for the Bluegrass Invitational, eighty miles away. He’d wave. Ellen wouldn’t see him, but he’d do it anyway.

He took his briefcase without even thinking about it.

He ordered the Susan’s Sexy Scramble (onions, peppers, mozzarella cheese) with bacon on the side, along with coffee and juice. By the time the young waitress brought his food, he’d taken out the Kindle and was reading
Cortland’s Dogs
. It was Hemingway, all right, and one terrific story.

“Kindle, isn’t it?” the waitress asked. “I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I’m reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult’s books.”

“Oh, probably not all of them,” Wesley said.

“Huh? Why not?”

“She’s probably got another one done already. That’s all I meant.”

“And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.

Wesley had pushed the
MAIN
MENU
button while they were talking, hiding the Ur-Hemingway novel without really thinking about it. Feeling guilty about what he was reading? Afraid the waitress might get a look and start screaming
That’s not real Hemingway
? Ridiculous. But just owning the pink Kindle made him feel a little bit like a crook. It wasn’t his, after all, and the stuff he had downloaded wasn’t really his, either, because he wasn’t the one paying for it.

Maybe no one is
, he thought, but didn’t believe it. He thought one of the universal truths of life was that, sooner or later, someone always paid.

There was nothing especially sexy about his scramble, but it was good. Instead of going back to Cortland and his winter dog, he accessed the UR menu. The one function he hadn’t peeked into was UR
LOCAL
. Which was
UNDER
CONSTRUCTION
. What had Robbie said about that last night?
Better watch out, traffic fines double.
The kid was sharp and might get even sharper, if he didn’t batter his brains out playing senseless Division Three football. Smiling, Wesley highlighted UR
LOCAL
and pushed the select button. This message came up:

ACCESS
CURRENT
UR LOCATION? Y  N

Wesley selected Y. The Kindle thought some more, then posted a new message:

THE
CURRENT
UR
LOCAL
IS MOORE
ECHO

ACCESS? Y  N

Wesley considered the question while eating a strip of bacon. The
Echo
was a rag specializing in yard sales, local sports, and town politics. The townies scanned those things, he supposed, but mostly bought the paper for the obituaries and Police Beat. Everybody liked to know which neighbors had died or been jailed. Searching 10.4 million Moore, Kentucky Urs sounded pretty boring, but why not? Wasn’t he basically marking time, drawing his breakfast out, so he could watch the players’ bus go by?

“Sad but true,” he said, and highlighted the Y button. What came up was similar to a message he had seen before:
Ur Local is protected by all applicable Paradox Laws. Do you agree? Y  N.

Now
that
was strange. The New York
Times
archive wasn’t protected by these Paradox Laws, whatever they were, but their pokey local paper was? It made no sense, but seemed harmless. Wesley shrugged and selected Y.

WELCOME
TO
THE
ECHO
PRE-ARCHIVE!

YOUR
PRICE
IS $40.00/4
DOWNLOADS

$350.00/10
DOWNLOADS

$2500.00/100
DOWNLOADS

Wesley put his fork on his plate and sat frowning at the screen. Not only was the local paper Paradox Law-protected, it was a hell of a lot more expensive. Why? And what the hell was a pre-archive? To Wesley, that sounded like a paradox in itself. Or an oxymoron.

“Well, it’s under construction,” he said. “Traffic fines double and so do download expenses. That’s the explanation. Plus, I’m not paying for it.”

No, but because the idea persisted that he might someday be forced to (someday
soon!
), he compromised on the middle choice. The next screen was similar to the one for the
Times
archive, but not quite the same; it just asked him to select a date. To him this suggested nothing but an ordinary newspaper archive, the kind he could find on microfilm at the local library. If so, why the big expense?

He shrugged, typed in July 5, 2008, and pushed select. The Kindle responded immediately, posting this message:

FUTURE
DATES
ONLY

THIS
IS
NOVEMBER
20, 2009

For a moment he didn’t get it. Then he did, and the world suddenly turned itself up to super-bright, as if some supernatural being had cranked the rheostat controlling the daylight. And all the noises in the café—the clash of forks, the rattle of plates, the steady babble of conversation—seemed too loud.

“My God,” he whispered. “No wonder it’s expensive.”

This was too much.
Way
too much. He moved to turn the Kindle off, then heard cheering and yelling outside. He looked up and saw a yellow bus with
MOORE
COLLEGE
ATHLETIC
DEPARTMENT
printed on the side. Cheerleaders and players were leaning out the open windows, waving and laughing and yelling stuff like “
Go, Meerkats!
” and “
We’re number one!
” One of the young women was actually wearing a big foam Number One finger on her hand. The pedestrians on
Main Street
were grinning and waving back.

Wesley lifted his own hand and waved feebly. The bus driver honked his horn. Flapping from the rear of the bus was a piece of sheeting with
THE
MEERKATS
WILL
ROCK
THE
RUPP
spray-painted on it. Wesley became aware that people in the café were applauding. All this seemed to be happening in another world. Another Ur.

When the bus was gone, Wesley looked down at the pink Kindle again. He decided he wanted to utilize at least one of his ten downloads, after all. The locals didn’t have much use for the student body as a whole—the standard town-versus-gown thing—but they loved the Lady Meerkats because everybody loves a winner. The tourney’s results, pre-season or not, would be front-page news in Monday’s
Echo
. If they won, he could buy Ellen a victory gift, and if they lost, he could buy her a consolation present.

“I’m a winner either way,” he said, and entered Monday’s date: November 23
^rd
, 2009.

The Kindle thought for a long time, then produced a newspaper front page.

The date was Monday’s date.

The headline was huge and black.

Wesley spilled his coffee and yanked the Kindle out of danger even as lukewarm coffee soaked his crotch.

Fifteen minutes later he was pacing the living room of Robbie Henderson’s apartment while Robbie—who’d been up when Wesley came hammering at the door but was still wearing the tee-shirt and basketball shorts he slept in—stared at the screen of the Kindle.

“We have to call someone,” Wesley said. He was smacking a fist into an open palm, and hard enough to turn the skin red. “We have to call the police. No, wait! The arena! Call the Rupp and leave a message for her to call me, ASAP! No, that’s wrong! Too slow! I’ll call her now. That’s what—”

“Relax, Mr. Smith—Wes, I mean.”

“How can I relax? Don’t you
see
that thing? Are you
blind
?”

“No, but you still have to relax. Pardon the expression, but you’re losing your shit, and people can’t think productively when they’re doing that.”

“But—”

“Take a deep breath. And remind yourself that according to this, we’ve got almost sixty hours.”

“Easy for you to say.
Your
girlfriend isn’t going to be on that bus when it starts back to—” Then he stopped, because that wasn’t so. Josie Quinn was on the team, and according to Robbie, he and Josie had a thing going on.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I saw the headline and freaked. I didn’t even pay for my breakfast, just ran up here. I know I look like I wet my pants, and I damn near did. Not with coffee, either. Thank God your roommates are gone.”

“I’m pretty freaked, too,” Robbie admitted, and for a moment they studied the screen in silence. According to Wesley’s Kindle, Monday’s edition of
The Echo
was going to have a black border around the front page as well as a black headline on top of it. That headline read:

COACH
, 7
STUDENTS
KILLED
IN
HORRIFIC
BUS
CRASH; 9
OTHERS
CRITICAL

The story itself really wasn’t a story at all, only an item. Even in his distress, Wesley knew why. The accident had happened—no, was
going
to happen—at just short of nine PM on Sunday night. Too late to report any details, although probably if they heated up Robbie’s computer and went to the Internet—

What was he thinking? The Internet did not predict the future; only the pink Kindle did that.

His hands were shaking too badly to enter November 24
^th
. He pushed the Kindle to Robbie. “You do it.”

Robbie managed, though it took him two tries.
The Echo
‘s Tuesday story was more complete, but the headline was even worse:

DEATH
TOLL
RISES
TO 10

TOWN
AND
COLLEGE
MOURN

“Is Josie—” Wesley began.

“Yeah,” Robbie said. “Survives the crash, dies on Monday. Christ.”

According to Antonia “Toni” Burrell, one of the Meerkat cheerleaders, and one of the lucky ones to survive Sunday night’s horrific bus-crash with only cuts and bruises, the celebration was still going on, the Bluegrass Trophy still being passed hand-to-hand. “We were singing ‘We Are the Champions’ for the twentieth time or so,’ she said from the hospital in Bowling Green, where most of the survivors were taken. “Coach turned around and yelled for us to keep it down, and that’s when it happened.”

According to State Police Captain Moses Arden, the bus was traveling on Route 139, the Princeton Road, and was about two miles west of Cadiz when an
SUV
driven by Candy Rymer of Montgomery struck it. “Ms.Rymer was traveling at a high rate of speed west along Highway 80,” Captain Arden said, “and struck the bus at the intersection.”

The bus-driver, Herbert Allison, 58, of Moore apparently saw Ms. Rymer’s vehicle at the last moment and tried to swerve. That swerve, coupled with the impact, drove the bus into the ditch, where it overturned and exploded…

There was more, but neither of them wanted to read it.

“Okay,” Robbie said. “Let’s think about this. First, can we be sure it’s true?”

“Maybe not,” Wesley said. “But Robbie…can we afford to take the chance?”

“No,” Robbie said. “No, I guess we can’t. Of
course
we can’t. But Wes, if we call the police, they won’t believe us. You know that.”

“We’ll show them the Kindle! We’ll show them the story!” But even to himself, Wesley sounded deflated. “Okay, how about this. I’ll tell Ellen. Even if she won’t believe me, she might agree to hold the bus for fifteen minutes or so, or change the route this guy Allison’s planning to take.”

Robbie considered. “Yeah. Worth a try.”

Wesley took his phone out of his briefcase. Robbie had gone back to the story, using the
NEXT
PAGE
button to access the rest.

The phone rang twice…three times…four.

Wesley was preparing to deliver his message to voicemail when Ellen answered. “Wesley, I can’t talk to you now. I thought you understood that—”

“Ellen, listen—”

“—but if you got my message, you know we’re
going
to talk.” In the background he could hear raucous, excited girls—Josie would be among them—and lots of loud music.

“Yes, I did get the message, but we have to talk n—”

“No!” Ellen said. “We
don’t
. I’m not going to take your calls this weekend, and I’m not going to listen to your messages.” Her voice softened. “And hon—every one you leave is going to make it harder. For us, I mean.”

“Ellen, you don’t understa—”

“Goodbye, Wes. I’ll talk to you next week. Do you wish us luck?”

“Ellen,
please!
”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “And you know what? I guess I still care about you, even though you are a lug.”

With that she was gone.

He poised his finger over the redial button…then made himself not push it. It wouldn’t help. Ellen was wearing her my-way-or-the-highway hat. It was insane, but there it was.

“She won’t talk to me except on her schedule. What she doesn’t realize is that after Sunday night she may not
have
a schedule. You’ll have to call Ms. Quinn.” In his current state, the girl’s first name escaped him.

“Josie’d think I was prankin’ on her,” Robbie said. “A story like that,
any
girl’d think I was prankin’ on her.” He was still studying the Kindle’s screen. “Want to know something? The woman who caused the accident—who
will
cause it—hardly gets hurt at all. I’ll bet you next semester’s tuition she was just as drunk as a goddam skunk.”