Authors: Jonathan Gash
Bray found it hard speaking with Kylee. He felt he’d been away months.
This Creb seemed her good friend, but might he be a misjudgement? Bray had been lucky – Kylee, Lottie, George, Jim Stazio. He’d have been enriched meeting them any time. He could have asked others – train people, computer wizards, his few acquaintances – and been rejected, becoming defeated. He told Lottie this. She’d only answered that their virtues simply reflected him.
“Does it look bad, Kylee?” he asked, determined to keep talk anonymous against electronic ears of hacker trackers.
“The figures? You berk. I said look at your sum when the first question’s in.”
“Right.” He’d been scared to. “Are you all right?”
“Yih.” But she wasn’t. He could tell. “It’s me age.”
God, he thought, some growing problem? She’d freely admitted having sex with hash-smoking Porky. Was it the same with this Creb?
“Age, love?”
“Yih. I’m fifteen now, see.” A long pause while he got
the gist. “Today.” He heard caterwauling music in the background.
“They’ve discovered you were only fourteen?”
“Yih. I’m fifteen. The firm’s rumbled. Mr Maddy’s having fucking kittens. That Catchpole cunt’s been here. I’m going back in care.”
He was a time trying to speak.
“I’ll ring them, Kylee. I’ll get my son and his wife to take you off the probation people’s hands. You can’t go back. I’ll send Lottie home to help.”
A dozen notions churned in his brain. Somebody at Gilson Mather? No.
“You haven’t said about the hunt, yer daft pillock.”
He was sweating in a bus station opposite the hotel, the noise indescribable.
“No.” Everything was coming at once. “I’d best find Geoffrey, get him to see Mr Catchpole.”
“I’m lamming off. Got a pen?”
“Lamming off?” He felt frantic. “
Escaping
?”
“Yih. Till yer done.” She barked a laugh. “Never thought you’d put summink else first, silly old bugger.”
“Please listen. I’ll send —”
“Shurrup. Stick to the plan.”
“What will you do? How can we stick to the scheme now?”
Passengers were arriving, a convention with fez hats, back-slapping welcomes.
He thought he heard her snuffling, maybe some suppressed chuckle. “Same as usual. Palmtops, laptops, phone.”
“But the answers.” The news left him stricken.
“You never lissen. Do usual. The fuckers know nowt.”
“Can we really keep it going?”
“Leave orf,” she said in disgust. “We’re on song, wack. Your dog is a fucking chiseller, eats any fucking thing. A frigging runt.”
“You’ve been to Buster?”
“Same contact times, tarra.”
No reminder to do his teeth, no joke ending. For a few moments he stood. She must have a way to divert the responses to her, wherever she’d decided to flit. This Creb was her Fifth Column in Mr Maddy’s firm. Where had she acquired costly computers? He hated to think.
And she’d been fourteen, until now. Fifteen. Mr Maddy was having kittens. Well he might. Could a minor, a child, patent an invention? Kylee had devised some liquid-state computer. He remembered her telling him.
Now what?
He returned to the hotel, grimly told Lottie Kylee’s news. They talked it over and decided that Geoffrey really should be asked to see what he could do. Lottie wouldn’t leave Bray. She couldn’t do what Geoffrey could, married after all and already to hand.
An hour later he remembered Kylee’s admonition, and found her arithmetic. She was confident she could cope with the answers shoaling in. Otherwise she’d have bluntly given him different orders. She stood by him. He knew that.
He wondered if she’d started to cry at one point. Unlikely.
The paper she meant was the one with her quick mathematics. He called Geoffrey. For a whole thirty minutes they spoke about Kylee. He took two more calls back. It wasn’t satisfactory, but Geoff finally agreed to do as Bray asked. Later, Bray and Lottie held hands to watch the recordings she’d made of the latest KV episode.
An hour before midnight, he got the second question to Kylee.
Things seemed to be falling apart, but only if you looked at it without optimism. That night Lottie made sure they slept together for the first time since coming to the New World. She rubbed his nape until he began to doze. Hardly the grand passion, but normality returning.
When Bray emerged onto the TV studio set Lottie almost exclaimed, though mechanically she applauded with the rest. She saw a stranger.
Bray was attired – no other word – in a sombre suit, formal as an undertaker. White shirt, navy tie, hair sleeked down, he could have been an elderly Victorian. He was welcomed by the genial talk-show host, seated himself gravely, and replied directly to each question.
Despite her shock, Lottie realised how accomplished Bray was in his subject. Where the presenter Evan Traur, a garish man with dyed grey hair, seemed to invent an attitude – “Mr Charleston, you are pretty hard on our approach to art. Is this fair?” – Bray easily segued into agreement then veered towards appreciation of American enthusiasm. His knowledge was a standby, and he had the knack of bringing every flown topic back to the art of furniture.
“I had a customer,” he said without a smile, “related to someone in the Middle East. She required a set of five Chippendale-style English oak settees, double-backed. We made them, she then declined them, on the grounds that they didn’t cost enough!”
Amid the audience laughter, Bray went on, “So we advertised them at double the price. The same lady saw the identical settees, and paid for them without demur, saying
they were a great improvement! Commerce and art become confused.”
Evan Traur let the interview run over time. The studio ran a series of legends on the fade, showing where Bray was speaking in the State.
Lottie met them both afterwards. Bray looked drained. They attended the after-show cocktail party in token thanks before making their escape.
“Would you mind telling me what that was all about?” she demanded in the TV station’s coffee house.
“I’m scared, Lottie. Kylee’s numbers are there – her ratio thing – but I’m coming unglued.”
“You’re tired, that’s all.”
“No, Lottie. It’s the size of everything. Look about.” He gestured to the plate-glass window, the crowds hurrying to a cinema. “How many people’ve we met since we arrived? Thousands?”
“So?” She’d never seen him like this. It worried her.
“The country’s so huge, the people so hospitable.” He faced it. “So I’m building a fail-safe, something I said I’d never do. If the KV plan doesn’t work, then I’ll come here permanently and continue the search. I’ll bring Kylee if necessary.”
“Don’t lose heart.”
“I’m trying not to.” He tried his coffee, laid the cup down. “See? Even the bloody coffee’s perfect. What if something’s triggered in Davey’s mind and the stealers spirit him further away? I feel I’m ruining my one plan.”
“Isn’t this what you planned, though?”
“That’s the problem. Look at Kylee. She’s in trouble because I got her that job. I ought to have left well alone, let her father cope with her. Now Kylee’s on the run, our only contact by electronics she probably stole. And there’s you.”
“From anyone else this would sound like self-pity.”
He tried the scalding coffee again, gave up. “Maybe you’d be less encumbered.”
“Don’t throw my words back at me!”
“Know what the problem really is?” He became self-conscious. “I never was numerate. Kylee’s maths about the competition daunt me. She taught me her numbers, starting at a hundred answers. They became forty thousand, and now it’s a hundred thousand with more still coming in. That’s only for one question. She’s pleased, says we’re
on song
.”
“Trust her. You always have.”
“The new book comes out this week.”
“It’s already out.” She smiled. “George sent it today while you were dressing up like a funeral director.”
They spoke of the itinerary: Kansas City, Omaha, Fort Worth and Dallas, back north to Oklahoma City.
“Arranged to coincide with festivals,” she admitted. “Next time, maybe I’ll think of the travelling before I work out destinations.”
“Geoffrey will phone tonight.”
“I’ll handle it, Bray.” She took his hand. “Time you left things to me.”
“I heard all about the camp,” Mom told Clint gaily. “We were so proud, right, Pop?”
“Sure were!”
“What did you like most, honey?”
“The log slalom!” Clint cried excitedly. He felt real strange at home. “We did canoeing, then waterfalls. And backpacking! I didn’t like the hidey games.”
“Hidey games?” Mom asked, suddenly glassy-eyed.
“We had to chase each other. One of us had to hide. I got scared.”
“Didn’t you tell that girl, Brighter Sally?”
“No. They would have said I was chicken. Me and Leeta and Carlson and Consuela and Elgin were a team.”
“Did you win?”
But Hyme was paying a fortune and didn’t want Mom to forget it. That Sally. He wanted value.
Clint told how he’d learned to ride a pretend bucking bronco, because if you fell off you only fell into a sponge. Mom was relieved. After supper Clint watched some kids’ programme on TV. He sat still.
“This is the one where we got into the competition,” he
offered during the break. It was only five minutes each half, though Mom was sure he must be tired after the ride home.
“What competition, honey?”
“The game.” Clint was animated, spinning round to tell her. “You send off an answer when they ask a question, see? We’re great. We won the practice game. Ask anybody!”
“Send off?” Mom froze staring at the television.
“We’ll get our pictures taken if we win!”
Mom gazed in horror. So this was it, these angular figures with cloaks, odd hats, the landscape’s skies filled with kites and rectangular clouds.
“Pop?” she said faintly. “Come and see.” She made eye signals to Pop but he didn’t heed.
“They give us a million bucks. We’ll be famous.”
“Million bucks?” Pop emerged to follow the conversation.
“The competition! KV!” Clint used to feel queer saying the initials, but familiarity had made the strange sensation go away. “You guess answers. If you guess them all you get a million dollars!”
“It’s the competition, Pop!” Mom exclaimed with a fixed grin. “Kids enter their names and addresses. Remember?”
“We didn’t have enough computers to go round,” Clint told them joyously. “Brighter Sally said we couldn’t join in it. But Carlson’s brother sent the answer.”
“Did he now,” Mom said faintly.
“He’s wicked!”
Mom talked about it a while, let Clint see his programme. The new question would be shown tomorrow. He went to bed after his hot drink.
The CNN news briefly mentioned the KV series. It was coming in for serious criticism from educationalists and moral preachers. Mom listened, repeating almost every word to Pop.
“We must do something, Hyme. It’s time we left here, go somewhere else.”
“Go where?” Hyme was sick of it. Doctor had guaranteed no comeback.
Mom considered. The school, Clint’s friendships. It was a threat far worse than she’d perceived. At first she’d only worried about local newspapers, Clint’s photograph, possibly some Little League list.
“Anywhere, Pop. Anywhere else at all.”
The next morning they packed. Pop called the head and Clint’s class teacher. Clint, he told them, had been summoned for a special clinical evaluation. No, they had no criticism of the school, in fact they were very pleased. They wanted Clint’s doctors to see for themselves. They would let the school know how long they would be away.
Clint, Pop said, sent his love.
Geoffrey wasn’t able to do any more than reassure Mr Maddy. It went against the grain to pretend that Kylee was a relative, but he’d promised Bray.
“My father takes responsibility very seriously,” Geoffrey told the computer manager.
“You understand my position, Mr Charleston,” Maddy said earnestly. “I was given false information about the girl’s age and status.”
“Which is the reason I’m here, to convey my father’s undertaking to resolve the issue completely. He accepts responsibility for the girl’s behaviour.”
“Until he returns?”
“He has appointed a counsellor, Mrs L. Vinson, to assume charge of the girl for the next three weeks.”
“Very well.” Maddy asked about probation.
Geoffrey repeated his father’s firm assertion. “My father has an agreement with them until the end of the year.”
He left sweating and uncomfortable, wishing to hell he knew exactly what Bray was doing. He felt he’d pulled it off, bought his dad some time. Thank God Shirley had decided not to come.
In Bray’s house, Kylee checked the clocks. The house felt her own. She checked the hunt shed first, then Davey’s old shed. No sign of intruders.
She made Creb phone the neighbours and tell them that Kylee would be walking Buster. She liked running the dog over the fields.
She settled into a peaceable existence. It was her first real home. Bray seemed everywhere. She collected his letters and put them on the mantelpiece. She got them the right way up, because the stamps were always in the top right corner. On the second morning a post girl called. Kylee scrawled anything, grabbed the package and slammed the door.
Answers to the second question came pouring through the computer terminal.
Jim Stazio met them on their arrival in Portland. He thought Oregon dull. Lottie and Bray found it beautiful. The sweep of the river was grand, the countryside exquisite.
“We got a start yet?” he wanted to know.
Lottie was delighted by the riverside shops. Bray was disappointed in the furnishings, but Lottie countered that he had tunnel vision and went bric-a-brac hunting.
“I want to be doing, Jim,” Bray told Stazio. “Kylee’s working out the second set of answers. Hundred and fifty thousand, give or take.”
Jim was unfazed. “Any idea how many are repeaters?”
“Sending in different answers?”
“Them too. I mean the core.”
“Not yet. Kylee’s got it.” Bray thought it wise not to say anything about Kylee’s personal problems. “She’ll send it today.” If she’s not caught, that is.
“Three goes out tomorrow?”
“That’s so.”
“Ten days is all, then.”
Bray felt nauseous of a sudden. Jim nodded his understanding.
“Thing is, Bray, you’re at the stage of wanting to postpone. Once, I had a man sprung from the state pen, unjust conviction. He was due out. Know what? Proved innocent, clear as maybe, he didn’t want to go.”
“He was innocent, yet couldn’t face freedom?” Bray pondered.
“Couldn’t take the emotion.” Jim chuckled, hooked a chair with his boot, putting his heels on the seat. “What seemed a promise when he was behind bars changed into a risk the minute he was freed. Get the point? Maybe you longed to see your elder brother for years, but he’s due in today and you jess can’t meet that plane. Or say you want your niece to call after some argument, and now she’s phoning from Atlanta you can’t pick up that phone. It happens.”
“It’s cowardice, Jim.”
“It’s human is all. I got a couple of sisters together. Didn’t know they were related, lived within eighty miles of each other twenty years. Know what? I brung them into town. They took three days – three whole days – before they got up courage to meet!”
“They were frightened?”
“How the hell’d I know? Wouldn’t come out of their hotels. Drove me crazy, called me night and day. Wanting to know what the other sister was like, what she’d be wearing. Christ, I lost twenty pounds.”
“It’s still cowardice.”
“That’s why I come, Bray.” The obese man wanted brown sugar, waited in silence until the girl brought it over. “I got a couple of friends. We’re making a team.”
Bray didn’t understand. “What sort of team? A police team?”
“Private. Not like your search groups, relatives. Not
that. There’s all sorts of bureaux for that kinda thing. More like, well, what’s happened with your boy.”
“For whom?”
“For people the systems don’t want.” Jim Stazio raised a hand to ward off criticism. “I know, I know. When your son Geoff and his wife came, I admit I was kind of stupid. I thought them more shit delivered right to my door. And went about saying things like why the hell can’t folk keep a fucking hold of their kids and save police a load of mess. Thinking this shouldn’t be our problem. I admit it. No excuses.”
“The first thing you said was, our problem wasn’t unique.” Bray judged the other for a moment. “You spoke of the thousands of children who go missing, some senator’s exaggerations, remember?”
“I’m not liking this, Bray. I also told you any search would be useless. I used different words, but I meant exactly that.” He smiled with some bitterness. “I wasn’t much good, huh?”
“Best I’ve met. I’m relieved you’re with us.”
Jim wagged a warning finger. “No kindness, pal, or the deal’s off. I’ve explored what I could. I’ve got an ex-cop, and a computer spinner. We’re forming a company when this works out. I’ll get two more retirees for weight.”
“This?”
“Your hunt, Bray.” They weighed each other. “Proper channels work sometimes. Other times they only tell the bereaved to piss off and go manage.”
“Will your, er, team be any use, Jim?”
“Honest to God, I don’t know. But it’ll be more than nothing.”
“What…?” Bray began, and couldn’t continue.
“What if your hunt fails?” Jim took the point. “Then I’ll
learn from that. If it succeeds, it
could
be used for others. Know what I’m saying?”
“You came to tell me that, Jim?”
“Not quite. We want to use your hunt as a prototype. Free of charge. Anything you plan, we’ll help with, on the understanding whatever you learn we can use later.”
“I owe you at least that, Jim.”
“Christ, Bray, you’re a bastard. Didn’t I tell you no kindness?”
Lottie returned. “You two not falling out, I hope? D’you like my Chinese ginger jar?”
They said it was admirable. Bray hated it. If it pleased her, fine.
Jim left that afternoon. Bray promised to give him the breakdown the instant Kylee finished the last set of replies. After ten more days of lectures, attendances at seven antique auctions in three different states, now there were only the crowded hours of hurrying time.
The new place was called Dallas. Pop extolled its virtues to Clint.
“A city of lakes, son,” he said, showing Mom and Clint the Trinity River. “Boats, countryside, you got it all here. One of the richest —”
“Pop,” Mom cautioned, beaming at her son. “You’ll love it here, Clint.”
“Will I?” Clint asked.
“Sure will, son,” Pop boomed, taking a detour to show the river bend to best advantage. “And you’ll do just great!”
Clint looked out at the city. He was sorry to leave his friends, but Mom said it would only be for a week while Pop did some business. On the plane Mom had let him
watch a film about space ships.
They parked and went for ice cream. The house Mom and Pop had taken was near University Park and Highland Park close to the huge lake called White Rock.
“Lake in each of its four corners, Clint!” Pop boomed.
Clint wanted strawberry, which was Carlson’s best flavour. Next time he’d ask for chocolate, which Leeta liked. Melanaya changed all the time.
Mom said, “We love it here. Right, Pop?”
“Sure. First came before you were born.”
Clint started the ice cream. It felt thicker than the camp ice cream.
“You like the house, the garden, honey?”
“Sure, Mom.”
As they’d moved in, he heard a dog barking, and two children calling. He saw a ball rise, fall, rise again with an awkward bounce. Maybe he would like it.
“Do I have to go to school here?”
“Why, no!” Mom exclaimed. “The very idea!”
“We’ll be going home soon, son.” Pop winked. “Then you get right back to school. You’re doing so well.”
“Right back!” Mom echoed. She didn’t like Clint asking sudden questions. “This is sort of an extra furlough, isn’t it, Pop?”
“We’re really going to enjoy it!”
Clint watched the Dallas terrain and the lakeside, where two groups of families were clustered round something they’d found in the water. There was laughter. Car doors slammed nearby. A car passed with a picnic basket strapped to its roof. A man and a lady were standing in the distance. He couldn’t see them because of the sunshine. The man had a jacket over his arm, almost like hanging down in front. The school janitor wore one of those when he
was doing the boiler.
There was a public phone nearby.
“Thanks, Mom,” Clint said, finishing the ice cream. “That was real nice.”