Mercury Man (20 page)

Tom's mother paced up and down the room. The apartment seemed to shrink around her.

“It's not possible!” she said, for the third or fourth time. “It's just not possible.”

Jack squirmed on the couch and once again tried to explain. “I've talked to the police,” he said. “They're more or less on our side, Karen. Otherwise we wouldn't think of going in.”

“Rubbish! You'd do it no matter what they said. And when you talk about the police, I know what you mean: you mean a few old boozing cronies who think the same way you do. And what happens if everything goes wrong? I don't want my son with a criminal record, thank you!”

“Mom!” Tom started to object, but thought better of it. His grandfather had given him a look. Paul Daniel, who had said nothing so far, sat on a chair by the kitchen door. To Tom's amazement, his usual
grim expression had softened; he seemed to be controlling himself, enjoying the situation, barely suppressing a smile.

Tom hoped Paul wouldn't laugh at his mother. All hell would break loose if he did. He'd never seen her so angry or so frustrated. At any moment, he thought, she might burst into tears.

“I just don't believe that you couldn't trust me,” she continued. “That you got into all this without letting me know. God — talk about chauvinism! A bunch of silly boys who have to protect me from reality. Who think it's a game to break into a respectable business, just because they have a few wild suspicions about what's going on inside.”

“Mrs. Blake —” Paul stood up. He crossed the room, intercepted her, and held her gently by the arm. He was serious now.

“I understand how you feel, Karen. But a lot of things are at stake here. I'm thinking of my family, too. You understand that I have to clear my name. And, believe me, our suspicions are based on fact.”

“What facts? You haven't told me anything yet.”

Paul Daniel gently steered her toward the sofa. To Tom's amazement his mother let him do this. She settled down, took a deep breath, and gave Paul Daniel a close, searching look. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time.

“I don't know … I just don't know,” she murmured. “You can't expect me to approve of this. Surely there's a better way.”

“There's no other way, Karen,” Paul said quietly. “I didn't want to have to tell you this — at least not until I had the proof to hand you. I haven't told anyone the whole story, not even my friends here.” He waved in the direction of Tom and Jack. “We talked last night about how to break into Fabricon, I'll admit it, but even then I was being a bit cagey about what I knew. Frankly, I didn't want to disgust anyone.”

“What we heard was bad enough already,” Jack said. “And I've got a pretty strong stomach.”

“Tell me and I'll make up my own mind,” Karen said. “And I want Tom to know what he's getting into.”

Paul nodded grimly. “Have you ever heard of the molecular computer?”

He looked at each of them in turn. Tom was baffled and the others looked equally blank.

“I thought not. You see, most computers are made of silicon strands, but the molecular computer is different. It's made of DNA.”

Jack whistled softly. “You mean genetic stuff, the stuff of life? That sounds crazy!”

“It's not crazy at all. A California scientist discovered the possibility years ago. DNA is actually a digital entity — that means it can count. It fact, it can count like almost nothing on earth. Scientists agree on the fantastic capabilities of the molecular computer. It can calculate a hundred million billion things at once.”

Tom shook his head. “Gosh, that would put today's computers to shame, wouldn't it?”

“Exactly. It would be the most incredible thinking machine in the history of the world.”

“It sounds amazing,” Karen said. “But why is it evil?”

“Like most scientific discoveries, it's not evil at all,” Paul explained. “Whether it's evil or not depends on how responsibly you use it, and what you have to do to create it.”

Tom leaned forward, listening closely as Paul continued in his quiet monotone. “DNA chips can be implanted in the human body. They can serve good purposes, such as monitoring illness, but they can also be used to manipulate people. Tarn has not only taken advantage of this, but he's gone much further. I'm sure he talked a lot of grandiose nonsense to you two in the restaurant — he's good at that. But let me tell you what I discovered …”

Paul Daniel got up and began to pace the room. “When Tarn came to Fabricon, he decided to jump ahead of the world's scientists to create a very special super DNA computer. So instead of using just any DNA material, he decided to base his computer on human brain tissue.”

Tom shuddered and found himself rubbing his hand across his forehead, as if his grey cells were already under threat.

“That sounds horrible,” Karen said.

“It is horrible. Tarn's idea is that with human brain tissue he can create a DNA computer that will itself be a kind of ultra programming machine, one that will be able to manipulate us absolutely because it would be constructed of living human material,
of thinking matter
. Such a machine — or genetic super-being, which is
what it would really be — might well find ways to control whole populations, to reshape the whole planet.”

“What's the poor world coming to?” moaned Jack. “Destruction, I greatly fear, if Tarn has his way.”

“It could well be. He's worked out a three-stage plan. Stage one, recruit bright young people and condition them so that they would be docile enough to be used as guinea pigs. Stage two, take them in a hypnotized state to the Pavlov Room and scan and map their brains for a later operation. Stage three, take actual genetic brain material from them and recombine the DNA in order to produce the world's most powerful DNA computer. It's significant that Tarn was going to call that room Pavlov, after the famous scientist. Pavlov experimented on and controlled rats or dogs, but this computer could be used to control not only the machinery of society, but
our very thought processes themselves
. Once this monster gets built, there's no telling what will happen to human beings on this earth.”

“God Almighty, that Tarn's some kind of Dr. Frankenstein,” Jack said. “And he's out to build the computer from hell.”

“You're right, but he's worse than Frankenstein. This isn't an experiment with dead matter. This involves real living people. And some of them have already been hurt by it.”

Tom swallowed hard. He thought of what Zak Daniel had told him about Miranda. He understood now why Paul had wanted to bomb the company. But evil shouldn't be answered with evil, he was sure of that.

“There's your horror,” Paul said. “The man will stop at nothing. But I know where the evidence is and I have to go and get it. I won't succeed on my own, but if you don't want Tom to go in there with me, Karen, I'll go anyway. I can understand your feelings as a mother, believe me I can. But maybe you can understand my feelings as a father. My daughter infiltrated the program to try to vindicate me. The conditioning affected her negatively; she lost her speech and it's taken her many months to regain any of it. Thanks to Tom here, she's getting better by the hour, but it's been a sad time for all of us.”

Karen bowed her head. Everyone was silent. Then she said, “But can you beat them? If you get the evidence, won't they just buy their way out of it? Is it a good idea to break the law?”

“I've waited too long already,” Paul said. “You know that when Tom and his friends went for jobs in the spring they got turned away by Fabricon. Now it's only midsummer and all the kids are being welcomed with open arms. It's clear that the experiments began a while ago, then stopped while Tarn evaluated the results. Now they're beginning again and he needs more people, more kids, more victims.
They're heading into the final phase.
If Tom hadn't scouted out their premises, if we hadn't connected, no one would be challenging them. No, Karen, nothing can stop me from going in. They may arrest me but at least I'll have tried.”

A silence fell over the room. Finally, Paul stood up and said, “This isn't getting us anywhere. Maybe I should get out of here and just let you three work it out.
I'm going to wait in my truck downstairs. It was nice to meet you, Karen.”

Tom's mother looked at him; she seemed to be meditating on something. They stood in the centre of the room and shook hands. “It was nice to meet you, Paul,” she murmured. “And believe me, I wish you nothing but the best.”

But as soon as Paul Daniel had disappeared, she started in again.

“Jack, you're an idiot!” she told him. “And you” — she turned a searching glance on Tom — “of course it would have been too much for you to talk to me, to your own mother. I always said I wanted to hear about what was going on in your life. But no, you had to shut me out. Now you see the result.”

“I'm sorry, Karen,” Jack said. “It's my fault that it worked out this way. We didn't even know half these things, Tom and I … but I'm committed to help Paul, you understand.”

“I've
got
to help him, Mom,” Tom told her.

“That's fine for both of you. But if this is going to happen — and I can see that you won't back down — I intend to be there. Besides, I want to meet this Miranda — and her grandfather, too, as a matter of fact.”

Tom felt a thrill of joy when his mother said Miranda's name. It was as if some unspoken barrier had been broken. He looked at his grandfather; Jack Sandalls looked at Tom.

She was coming through for him. He wanted to hug her, to thank her.

There was a knock at the door. All three of them jumped.

“You see,” his mother said, “we're acting like criminals already.”

The door was flung open. Chuck Reichert stood there, outfitted for softball. He wore a baseball cap and a striped uniform that made him look like a convict. In his right hand he held a couple of bats; a catcher's mask and two mitts were slung on a cord over his right shoulder.

Reichert tipped up his sunglasses, looked at them expectantly, and said, “Play ball!”

“Oh my God!” Karen Blake shook her head and half-closed her eyes. Tom thought,
Maybe she's seeing Reichert for the first time.

Chuck seemed to miss her expression. “How are you, buddy?” he asked, beaming at Tom. “Ready to hit a few good ones for the old A&P?”

“We're not going to the game,” Tom said. “We have more important things to do.”

“Tom!” his mother cautioned. He gulped and realized that he had nearly blown it.

“A family emergency's come up,” Jack intervened. “It's a terrible shame, Chuck, but it looks like none of us can go.”

Chuck Reichert gazed from one to the other. “What? Are you kidding? This has been planned for weeks. What's going on here?”

“It's my fault, Chuck,” Karen Blake told him. “I'm a wicked woman. Did you see a man going out as you came in here?”

“A man? You mean the rangy guy with the black T-shirt and the heavy shades? Yeah, I saw him on the stairs. What about it?”

Tom's mother crossed the room, hesitated, then told him, “I'm sorry, Chuck. He's an old flame of mine. He's just turned up unexpectedly and he wants to buy us all lunch. He's into mountain climbing — that kind of thing — and now he's suddenly going to Nepal to teach. Leaving in a couple of hours, in fact. I can't very well refuse him, can I?”

“What? What are you talking about? You never told me about this guy! Why does he have to say goodbye to you? What about the damned game?”

Chuck Reichert looked at each of them in turn and shook his head. He shifted the gear on his shoulder, started to question them, but seemed suddenly at a loss for words.

“Don't worry, Chuck,” Tom's grandfather said. “We'll get together later. We'll call you.”

Karen Blake leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I sure hope the A&P wins,” she said.

Reichert, his glance full of suspicion, muttered, “What in hell is going on here?”

“It's a family emergency,” Jack reiterated. “Just like we said.”

Still Reichert hesitated. He seemed to be waiting for Karen to say something, and when she remained tight-lipped, he hung his head like a guilty child.

“OK, OK … if you can come along later, you know where it is, Karen.”

He turned and left quickly, not bothering to close the door. Tom clapped his hands in glee, but his mother said, “I felt rotten doing that to Chuck.”

“A woman has to do what a woman has to do,” Jack told her. Then he added, “But you can understand why we want to help Paul.”

“Yes,” she said, but didn't look at him.

“There are some things to get into the pickup,” Tom said.

He felt excited. It seemed the last barrier had been crossed. The great adventure was beginning.

On the street, he struggled with two heavy boxes. Paul had parked half a block away and Tom could see his black truck waiting there. Paul himself was clearly visible, sitting placidly behind the wheel. But when Tom waved to him to pull closer, an odd thing happened — he ducked away suddenly and disappeared.

Tom blinked and looked around.

A car had pulled up beside him, a bright red sedan. The passenger windows rolled down, and Estella leaned out and smiled at him.

“Hi, Tom, like to go over to the casino?”

Tom was taken aback. She was heavily made up, dressed in a tight black blouse, and her eyes had a crazy glitter that he'd never seen there before.

Pete Halloran, in sports jacket, rollneck, and shiny slacks, sat next to her. He leaned over, giggled, and nodded at Tom's burdens.