Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
Wylie tried to slow his heart and order his thinking. “Well, we've had this family coffee business for fifteen years and Gargantua's trying to shut us down so they can have all the business in Mammoth Lakes. And Jacobie, if you deny that or try to spin what I just said, I'm going to throw you back in that pool and hold you under.”
Wylie cringed inside, tried not to show it. Why, once he got riled up, could he not let a thing blow over? Especially a thing as underpowered and inconsequential as Jacobie? Escalation had always been his weak spot. And when his anger turned inward, as it had turned now, he became just plain stupid.
April looked at Jacobie. “Is that true?”
“Look across the street and figure it out for yourself,” said Wylie.
“It's utter silliness,” Jacobie said. “The reason he got violent is because I exposed him for the vicious clown that he is.”
In hardly more than a flash, Jacobie was back in the pool, Wylie on top of him and holding him under. When Wylie finally let go, Jacobie came up gasping, fear in his eyes, and the men locked into a graceless waterlogged skirmish before two Mammoth bicycle cops waded in and pulled them apart.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
Wylie got a holding cell with a homeless man, asleep and reeking of alcohol. Jacobie had the adjacent cell and they could see the rough outlines of each other through the perforated steel mesh.
Sgt. Grant Bulla sat on a folding chair outside the cages, with a laptop computer on his thigh and April Holly and her mother standing on either side of him. April and Helene had already stated what they'd witnessed, and Wylie had quickly confessed. Jacobie had gone from outrage to sullenness.
“Okay,” said the sergeant, “I can write warning tickets and free both of you guys, if you both agree not to press charges. If you do press charges, it's arrest time, two calls and all that. So which will it be?”
Wylie and Jacobie declined to press charges.
“Okay. Next time, my gloves come off. I don't care who you think you are.” Bulla opened the holding cells and the miscreants walked free. He took Wylie by the arm and held him back as the others moved along. “Get your act together.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked toward the exit. “Those maple-bacon turnovers at Let it Bean yesterday were really something.”
“Cops know their doughnuts.”
Bulla smiled slightly. “I walked into that one. But good luck at the Mammoth Cup. The less time you spend behind bars, the more training you'll get in. My son is Daniel, on the freeski team, by the way. Thanks for being cool to him.”
April was waiting for him outside. Wylie's heart fell but bounced. He saw Helene at the sidewalk with Logan and Clean Cut, none of them speaking, all staring at him. Across the street, the festivities were still going on, though Wylie could see that Gargantua had given away most of their prizes by now. The big inflated gorilla logo swayed on its tethers.
“I'm sorry I had to testify against you,” April said.
“I forgive you.” Wylie felt foolish and repentant now and wished he could crawl into a hole.
“Have you always had that temper?”
“We go way back.”
“I know the history here. And it looks to me like you've got a log on your shoulders, Wylie Welborn. Not a chip, a
log
. Why? Because certain people will not forgive you for being born. Or your mom for having you.”
“What makes you a sudden expert on Welborns?”
“Tell me I'm wrong.”
Wylie looked at her and nodded, felt all the old currents still running their unchanged courses, pettily violent and repetitious, channeled by the past.
“Wylie,” said April. “There's a proven way to shrink that log down to a chip.”
“How?”
“By hugging another person, or persons, at least four times per day.”
“What?”
“It works. Give me your hands.” He was too stunned not to. Hers were smooth and warm and small. She looked up at him, one corner of her mouth raised in a half smile, her eyes busily searching. He waited for her to erupt into laughter. Her voice was whispery, but it stayed on tune as she sang, “Four hugs a day,
that's
the minimum. Four hugs a day,
not
the maximum⦔
Wylie felt his mouth part. “Mom sang that to me.”
“Well, she was right. That song was written by Charlotte Diamond, who understood that hugs improve temperament. You can start by hugging me if you'd like.”
She released his hands and slid her arms around him, leaning in and turning her face primly to one side. He placed his arms around April, but he couldn't commit because he wasn't sure if she was mocking him, so he bent at the waist almost formally and held her for a moment. Wylie smelled her hair and wondered if it was the shampoo she advertised. Glancing past her shoulder, Wylie saw Helene staring at him and talking to Logan, who leaned, hands on knees, beside her like a lineman in a huddle, nodding. The clean-cut young man looked eagerly to Helene, as if for a signal.
April stepped back and looked at him. “And?”
“I feel better.”
“Of course you do. And are we getting negative vibrations from behind me?”
“Clearly negative.”
“How come you don't shave?”
“I like my beard.”
Her eyes scanned his face again. “What you like is distance between yourself and the world. I'd grow a beard if I could. I'd hide behind it. Then I'd make a million dollars doing an ad for a beard-trimmer company.”
“I'd buy one. They haven't made a good one yet.”
She smiled. “I'm going to Chile tomorrow for six weeks. Portillo. I'll get a good look at the next year's Europeans. Of course, we Americans invented my sport, so I've got an advantage.”
“You're a beautiful slopestyler. I've never seen a triple cork like yours.”
“It's all just amplitude on those triples.” Her eyes were back in scan mode. “What you just said means a lot to me. My whole goal is to board beautifully.”
“Good luck in Portillo, then.”
“It's gorgeous there. You should think about heading down.”
He nodded.
“Look, I only met him once, but I'm very sorry about what happened to Robert. I hope and pray he can recover. I've read about people coming out of comas like that. You must miss him very much.” Wylie nodded, bracing himself for another hug plug regarding Robert. “Also, I don't like what Jacobie Bradford is trying to pull on Let It Bean. He denied it all, but I believe you. So you'd better watch that temper of yours, because all it's going to do is make things worse.”
“That's all it ever does.”
“See you later, Wylie. Four hugs a day. Minimum.
Not
the maximum.”
She smiled at Wylie with all-American cover girl and Olympic gold medal wholesomeness, turned, and walked away.
Â
In late August, on floor two of Mountain High, in a room behind a formidable steel door that only Bart Helixon could unlock, Sky Carson waited inside the dark, shiny belly of the Imagery Beast, Helixon's invention. The plasma glass enclosure housed him roundly on all sides as would an igloo. The glass was backed by black acoustic baffling, so it was always twilight in here, until the Imagery Beast came to life.
Behind Sky stood cabinets, glass-faced and filled with electronics. Red and blue lights pulsed or held steady. Six feet in front of Sky, an electric leaf blower was clamped to a ladder, eye level with him, the barrel of the blower aimed at his face. Glued into a hole in the top of the barrel was a large flared funnel filled with chipped ice and slushy water.
Coach Brandon Shavers's voice came to him from a small but powerful speaker mounted somewhere in the ceiling above him. “Ready, Sky? We don't have all day.”
“The runs take approximately one minute, Brandon.”
“But you'll be dripping sweat when it's over,” said Helixon.
“I'm already dripping sweat and everything else.” Sky thought that Helixon was the worst of dilettantes when it came to racers. Though to Helixon's credit, he'd invented the Imagery Beast to help racers train in the off-season. The Beast was really something. But of course Helixon insisted on hovering around and acting like he knew something about doing highway speeds down a mountain of snow with three other hell-bent maniacs.
“You should be,” said Helixon. “I see on the monitor here that your pulse is still at a hundred and five. That last run was one minute, one and two-tenths seconds.”
“My best.”
“You can beat it,” said Brandon.
“These shin bangs are bad. Much worse than on real snow.”
“Eyes on the prize, Sky,” said Helixon. “Your mind is a muscle and you are about to work it out again.”
Sky couldn't see the video cameras that allowed Brandon and Helixon to see him, so he just flipped off the ceiling in general.
“Cute,” said Brandon.
“Don't distract me,” said Sky. He pulled his goggles away from his head to forestall condensation, then patiently fitted them to his face. The straps were soaked and the lenses flecked with bits of ice. He wore his baggy race pants and O'Neill jacket, which were pretty much soaked; his Head Worldcup Rebel i skis with the Vöelkl rMotion2 race bindings; and his Head Raptor boots, cinched up tight. His poles were cut off short so they wouldn't hit the floor and actually move him off the sensors. He strapped his helmet and wiggled his fingers in his gloves.
“Ten seconds,” said Brandon. “Nine⦔
Suddenly, the dome around him brightened and Sky was standing at starting gate 3 on the Mammoth Mountain X Course. The course fully surrounded him in high definition, beautifully detailed. The snow glistened slightly, and downslope the branches of the pine trees dangled and swayed and cast moving shadows on the run. The tracks of prior skiers were visible. The blower roared on, huffing bits of snow and ice into his face, lightly now. He felt eager but calm, no nerves lurking inside, looking for a way to ruin this run.
Today they were focusing on flat light conditions, a treacherous combination of shadows and poor light that flattened out the course topography to the point where it was hard to read. Every racer hated flat light, especially when combined with hard-packed snow or ice. Helixon had constructed this virtual run beginning with Sky's GoPro videos of his runs down the Mammoth X Course. Stabilized and linked to Sky's skis through the an intricate network of floor sensors, then streamed throughout the surrounding dome, the graphic course was visually authentic, and as close to being on the real course as anyone could get. Plus, Helixon could simulate different conditions of snow, light, and even wind. Due to his hours in the Imagery Beast, the Mammoth X Courseâthis time of year nothing more than a steep gash of rock and rubble through which mountain bikers bombedâhad become more familiar to Sky than ever in his life. Much more familiar. Intimate. He was a full two seconds faster than he'd been the month before. By ski-cross standards, two seconds were huge.
The gate swung open and Sky launched and the half-pipe bowl rushed up to meet him. The shin bangs hurt, but he gave himself over in spite of them. He felt the chipped ice hitting his goggles and his racing buff, heard it tapping against his helmet. He tore across the bowl and down the first short straight to a hard right bank. He went in early and high, just above the track.
He let himself become lost, but not fully so, his mind mostly in the now but with one crafty corner of it thinking ahead to the next thing he would have to do. The clear, loud audio caught the movement of his skis with eerie verisimilitudeâwhispering on the powder, grinding through the ice, slashing through the turns. Even with his boots locked into his skis and his skis sensor-bound to the floor, Sky extended into the jumps and tucked into the straights, torquing his hips through Mike Cook's fast, narrow gates.
He finished the run panting hard, his heart thumping, his legs trembling. It was far more mental than physical, but still, four runs of the X Course every day, plus the exterior imaging that would come later, the weights and isometric exercises, the running and biking, all fueled by the Soylent diet, were making him faster and stronger by the week.
“One minute, three and eight-tenths seconds, Sky,” said Brandon. “Off the pace a bit.”
“Chip, chip.”
“Tired, Sky?” asked Helixon.
“One more run.”
“Okay, animal,” said Brandon. “One more, but that's all. Five a day is probably one too many. After that, we'll do some exterior imaging, then hit the weights.”
“I love my Imagery Beast,” said Sky.
His next run was a downhill scald, beating today's best by another one-tenth of a second, leaving Sky heaving for breath, his legs aching and his heart racing. Afterward, he knelt in the twilight to loosen his boots. The floor was opaque Plexiglas, and past his dull reflection he could see down into it like an aquarium. Sky studied the labyrinthine tangle of electronics built into the floor, which registered his slightest body movements and sent them to the computer. The boots were likewise fitted with microcomponentsâa tiny motherboard in the sole, crowded with chips and capacitors and buses and wires he did not understandâand more within the walls of his boots, blinking and glowing when he stepped out of them.
He heard Brandon outside, speaking to Helixon: “So I guess they didn't arrest Wylie or Jacobie yesterday.”
“I guess not.”
“Wylie Welborn no longer exists,” said Sky, stepping from the Imagery Beast.
“Still on that kick?” asked Brandon.
“It's not a kick, you cephalopods. It's the way it is. I'm starved.”
“Weights, external imaging, then your wonderful Soylent supper.”
“You're nothing but sadists living off my talent.”
“Yes,” said Brandon. “And we hope you have enough of it to win the cup next season.”