The silent urge arose in her gut like steel drawn to a powerful magnet. If Pastor Madison had been correct, she figured her normal pace carried her along at an easy three miles per hour. But now she pushed it up to four. At least. And she felt no worse off for the wear, if indeed there was any wearing going on in these bones of hers. She certainly did not feel fatigue. Her legs tingled at times as if they were thinking of falling asleep or going numb, but they never actually slowed her down.
Three days earlier she had tried walking through her eight hours and she had finally fatigued at the ten-hour mark. The energy came like manna from heaven, daily and just enough. But she had never felt the energy directing her anywhere except along the streets of her own neighborhood.
Now she felt as a salmon must feel when it strikes out for the spawning ground. Her daughter’s Reeboks fit perfectly. She had already tossed her own pair in the garbage and switched to a black pair that Gloria had favored. Now she strutted down the sidewalk sporting black shoes and white basketball socks. Once she had looked at herself in the full-length hall mirror and thought the getup looked ridiculous with a dress. But she didn’t care—she was a dress person. Period. She would leave fashion statements to the fools who gave a rat’s whisker about such matters.
Helen entered the street leading to Kent’s home and brought her focus to the two-story house standing at the far end. Not so long ago she had referred to the home as Gloria’s home. But now she knew better. Her daughter was skipping across the clouds up there, not hiding behind pulled drapes in that stack of lumber. No, that was
Kent’
s house.
That’s your house
.
The thought made Helen miss a step. She turned her mind to praying, ignoring the little impulse.
Father, this man living in that house is a selfish, no-good hooligan when you get right down to it. The city is crawling with a hundred thousand people more worthy than this one. Why are you so bent on rescuing him?
He didn’t answer. He usually didn’t when she complained like that. But of course she had no reason to hide her suspicions from God. He already knew her mind.
She answered herself.
And what about you, Helen? He is a saint compared to what you once were.
Helen turned her thoughts back to prayer.
But why have you drawn me into this? What could you possibly want from my silly walking? Not to complain, but really it is rather incredible.
She smiled.
Ingenious, really. But still, you could certainly do as well without this exercise, couldn’t you?
Again he didn’t answer. She had once read C. S. Lewis’s explanation for why God insists on having us do things like pray when he already knows the outcome. It is for the experience of the thing. The interaction. His whole endeavor to create man centers around desire for interaction. Love. It is an end in itself.
Her walking was like that. It was like walking with God on Earth. The very foolishness of it made it somehow significant. God seemed to enjoy foolish conventions. Like mud on the eyes, like walking around Jericho, like a virgin birth.
She mumbled her prayer now. “Okay, so he is worthy of your love. Go ahead, dump some of the stuff over him. Let’s have this over with. Lay him out. Drop him. You could do that. Why don’t you do that?”
He still wasn’t answering.
She closed her eyes momentarily.
Father, you are holy. Jesus, you are worthy. Worthy to receive honor and glory and power forever. Your ways are beyond finding out.
A tingle ran through her bones. This was actually happening, wasn’t it? She was walking around physically empowered by some unseen hand. At times it seemed unbelievable. Like . . . like walking on water.
You are God. You are the Creator. You have the power to speak worlds into existence, and I love you with all of my heart. I love you. I really do
. She opened her eyes.
I’m just confused at times about the man who lives in that house,
she thought.
That’s your house, Helen.
The inner voice spoke rather clearly that time, and she stopped. The house loomed ahead, three doors down, like an abandoned mortuary, haunted with death. And it was not her house. She did not even want the house.
That’s your house, Helen.
This time Helen could not mistake the voice. It was not her own mind speaking. It was God, and God was telling her that Kent’s house was actually hers. Or was meant to be.
She walked forward, rather tentative now. High above, the sun shone bright. A slight breeze pressed her dress against her knees. Not a soul was in sight. The neighborhood looked deserted. But Kent was in his house, behind those pulled blinds. The silver car parked in the driveway said so.
“Is that my Lexus too?” The corner of her mouth twitched at her own humor. Of course, she did not want the Lexus, either.
This time God answered.
That’s your house, Helen.
And then she suddenly knew what he meant. She stopped two doors down, suddenly terrified. Goodness, no! I could never do that! The walking is one thing, but
that?
Helen turned on her heels and walked away from the house. Her purpose here was over. At least for the day. An unsteadiness accompanied her strides now.
That’s your house; that’s your house
. That could mean anything.
But it didn’t mean anything. It meant only one thing, and she had the misfortune of understanding exactly the message.
Helen walked for an hour, mumbling and begging and praying. Nothing changed. God had said his piece. Now she was saying hers, but he was not speaking anymore.
She was on her way back home, less than an hour from her house—her
real
house—before she found some peace over the matter. But even then it was only a thimbleful. She began to pray for Kent again, but it was not as easy as it had been on the first part of the trip.
Things were about to get interesting. Maybe crazy.
THE SECOND real bump in Kent’s road came two days later, on Wednesday morning, on the heels of the cop-in-the-bookstore bump.
The day started out well enough. Kent had risen early and shaved clean to the bone. He smiled and nodded a greeting to several tellers on his way through the lobby. He even made eye contact with Sidney Beech on his way in, and she smiled. A sexy smile. Things were most definitely returning to normal. Kent whistled down the hall and entered the Information Systems suite.
Betty sat in typical form, tweezers in hand. “Morning, Betty.” Kent forced a smile.
“Morning, Kent,” she returned, beaming. If he wasn’t mistaken there was some interest in her eyes. He swallowed and stepped past.
“Oh, Kent. They’re meeting in the conference room down the hall. They’re waiting for you.”
He spun around. “There’s a meeting this morning? Since when?”
“Since Markus got back from San Jose yesterday with new marching orders, he says. I don’t know. Something about taking more responsibility.”
Kent retraced his steps and entered the hall, trying to calm himself. This was out of the ordinary, and anything out of the ordinary was bad. His plan would work under existing circumstances, not necessarily under ones altered to meet some new marching orders.
Settle down, Buckwheat. It’s just a meeting. No need to go in there and sweat all over the table.
Kent took a breath and walked into the conference room as casually as possible.
The others rocked their chairs around the long table, wasting time, in good spirits. Borst had taken the head of the table and leaned back. His navy vest strained against its buttons. If one of those popped it might just poke Mary in the eye. She sat adjacent to Borst, leaning admiringly toward him. You’d think the two were best friends by their body language.
Todd sat opposite Mary, his head thrown back midhowl at some brilliant comment Borst had evidently graced them with. It was Todd’s hoot that covered the sound of the door opening and closing, Kent guessed. Cliff sat two chairs down from Mary, facing Borst, grinning his usual pineapple-eater smile.
“Kent! It’s about time,” Borst boomed. The others thought that funny and lengthened their laugh. He had to admit, the jovial atmosphere was almost contagious. Kent smiled and pulled out a seat opposite Cliff.
“Sorry. I didn’t know we were meeting,” he said.
They gathered themselves and dug in. Borst started by fishing for a few compliments, which the others readily served up. Kent even tossed him one. Some ridiculous comment about how perceptive the supervisor had been to bring in Cliff.
Mostly the discussion centered on preserving control of AFPS. Evidently the main Information Systems division at the administration branch in California was talking about flexing its muscles. Or, as Borst put it,
going for a power grab.
“That’s all it is, and we know it,” he said. “They have a dozen greedy engineers up there who feel left out, so now they want the whole thing. And I have no intention of giving her up.”
Kent had no doubt that the words were not original with Borst. They were Bentley’s. He pictured Porky and Porkier yapping up a frenzy on the flight home.
“Which means we have to run a tight ship; that’s all there is to it. They’re looking for weaknesses in our operation as we speak. In fact, three of them are flying down next Friday to survey the territory, so to speak.”
“That’s crazy!” Todd blurted out. “They can’t just waltz in here and take over.”
“Oh, yes they can, Todd. That’s a fact. But we’re not going to let them.”
“How?” Mary asked, wide eyed.
“Exactly. How? That’s what we’re going to figure out.”
“Security,” Cliff said.
It was only then that the meaning of this little discussion came home to Kent. Like a flash grenade tossed into his skull. Whether the delay had been caused by tequila residue or his fascination at watching Borst’s fat lips move was a tossup. But when understanding did come, Kent twitched in his chair.
“You have something to say about that, Kent?” Borst asked, and Kent knew they had all seen his little blunder. To exasperate the matter, he asked the one question only a complete fool would ask in the situation.
“What?”
Borst glanced at Cliff. “Cliff said security, and you looked like you wanted to add to that.”
Security? Good grief !
Kent scrambled for recovery. “Actually, I don’t think they stand a chance, sir.”
That got a smile from them.
That’s our boy, Kent.
All of them except Cliff. Cliff scrunched his eyebrows. “How’s that?” he asked.
“How’s what?”
“How is it that the guys from California don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of taking control of AFPS?”
Kent leaned back. “How are they going to maintain a system they know nothing about?” Of course the whole notion was ridiculous. Any good department could work its way through the program. In fact, Cliff was well on his way to doing just that. He said so.
“Really? I’ve been here three weeks, and I’ve found my way around the program well enough. The code’s not even under active security measures.”
The room fell to dead silence. This was not going well. Tightened security could very well bring his entire plan to its knees. Kent felt a trickle of sweat break from his hairline and snake past his temple. He casually reached up and scratched the area as if a tickle annoyed him there.
“I thought you were going to take care of restricted security,” Borst said, staring directly at Kent.
“We have restricted codes at every branch. No one can enter the system without a password,” he returned. “What else do you want?”
“That covers financial security, but what about security from hackers or other programmers?” Cliff asked evenly. The newcomer was becoming a real problem here.
All eyes were on Kent. They were asking about ROOSTER without knowing it, and his heart was starting to overreact. He had programmed ROOSTER precisely for this purpose.
Then Cliff threw even the
not knowing
part into question. “Actually it looks like someone started to put a system into place but never finished. I don’t know; I’m still looking into it.”
The kid was on to ROOSTER! He’d found something that led to the link. It was all Kent could do to stay seated. This was it, then. If he didn’t stop them now, it was over!
“Yes, we did start a few things awhile back. But if I recall correctly, we discarded the code long ago. It was barely a framework.”
Cliff held Kent in a steady gaze. “I’m not so sure it’s gone, Kent. I may have found it.”
Kent’s heart felt like it might explode. He forced a nonchalant look. “Either way, it was far too clumsy to accomplish anything under the current structure.” Kent shifted his gaze to Borst. “Frankly, I think you’re approaching this all wrong, Markus. Sure, we can look at tightening security, but that’s not going to stop a power grab, as you put it. What you need is some political clout.”
Borst lifted his eyebrow, and his forehead rode up under his toupee a fraction. “Yes? And?”
“Well, you have some power now. Probably more than you know. You insist on maintaining control under the fairness doctrine. You were responsible for the program’s creation as a dedicated employee. It’s simply unfair for the big giant to come sweeping in and take your baby away, thereby minimizing any additional advances you might have realized had it remained under your control. I think you could get a lot of ordinary employees to back you on a position like that, don’t you?”
The smile came slowly, but when Borst got it, his mouth spread from ear to ear. “My, you are not so dumb, are you, Kent?” He glanced at the others. “By golly, that’s brilliant! I think you are absolutely right. The little man against the big corporation and all that.”
Kent nodded. He spoke again, wanting to nail this door shut while the hammer was in his hand. “If the boys in California want AFPS, no security is going to slow them down. They’ll just take the whole thing and stomp the living daylights out of anyone who stands in their way. You have to put a political obstacle in their way, Markus. It’s the only way.” Cliff had lost his plastic grin, and Kent wondered about that. What difference did it make to the newcomer how this went down? Unless he knew more than he was letting on.