Shadows

20

“Is she really going to take you out of school?” Josh asked. The seminar was over, and Josh was trying to hurry Jeff Aldrich by cutting across the lawn toward one of the new buildings that flanked the mansion. They only had another two minutes before Steve Conners’s English class was to begin, but Jeff refused to be rushed, ambling along as if he had all the time in the world.

“Nah,” Jeff replied. “Shell let me do anything I want. Parents are easy that way — all you have to do is know how to push their buttons. And if I threaten to kill myself, they’ll let me do anything I want. Especially after what happened to Adam.”

Josh shot the other boy a sidelong glance. “I thought you didn’t think Adam was dead,” he said.

The same mysterious expression that had appeared on Jeff’s face on the day of Adam’s funeral now twisted his mouth into a scornful grin. “Who do you think’s sending those notes to my mom’s computer?”

Josh stopped walking and turned to stare at the older boy. “Come on,” he said. “Everybody knows—”

Jeff’s voice turned cold. “Nobody knows anything,” he said. “All anybody thinks they know is that Adam died. And that’s bullshit. Adam didn’t want to die. He just wanted to get out of this dumb place. The only thing he liked about it was Dr. Engersol’s class, and his computer.”

“But — But where’d he go?” Josh asked.

Jeff smiled sardonically. “You’re supposed to be smart. Figure it out. It’s not really very hard. At least it shouldn’t be for you.” Then, laughing, he dashed ahead, and before Josh could catch up to him, disappeared into the building.

The bell rang just as Josh was approaching the door to Steve Conners’s classroom. He ducked inside, hoping the teacher wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t quite made it on time. But to his surprise, Conners wasn’t there at all. The rest of the class sat at their desks, already buzzing among themselves, speculating on what might have happened to the teacher. As Josh scurried up the aisle to his own desk, next to Amy’s empty one, Jeff Aldrich snickered softly.

“Boy, are you lucky,” he said as Josh passed him.

Josh said nothing, sliding into his seat and doing his best to look as though he’d been there for at least a couple of minutes as he heard the door open. But it wasn’t Steve Conners who entered. Instead it was Carolyn Hodges, one of the university graduate students, who worked part-time assisting Hildie Kramer. The girl walked to the front of the classroom and turned to face the students, whose buzzing had died away as they realized that something unusual was happening.

Carolyn, who hadn’t yet gotten over feeling intimidated by the Academy’s children — most of whom already seemed to know everything it had taken her nearly twenty-two years to learn — smiled nervously at the group before her. “Mr. Conners isn’t here this morning,” she announced. “We’ve been trying to find someone else to teach his classes, but—”

“Where is he?” someone asked from the back of the room. “Is he sick?”

Carolyn hesitated, then shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. All I know is that he isn’t here, and that Hildie Kramer has decided we should use the hour as study time.”

“Well, if he isn’t sick, what happened to him?” someone else asked.

“We don’t know that anything happened to him,” Carolyn replied. “But I’m sure if you have any questions, Hildie can answer them for you at lunchtime.”

Though Josh sat quietly at his desk, his mind was racing. Had Steve gone out looking for Amy this morning? And even if he had, why hadn’t he come to school? Unless he’d found Amy, and something had happened to her. Josh was wondering how he could find out where Steve was, when Jeff Aldrich’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Is it okay if I go study in the library?” Jeff asked. “I have a project for Dr. Engersol’s seminar that I need to do research on.”

Josh turned to look at Jeff, whose face reflected all the innocence the boy was capable of summoning up. But what project was he talking about? An instant later Josh was sure he understood. Jeff was just trying to get out of the classroom.

“I–I suppose that would be all right,” Carolyn Hodges said. “As long as you’re studying, I—”

Josh’s hand shot up. “May I go with Jeff?” he asked. “I’m working on the same project.”

Carolyn’s expression reflected her sudden doubt. Her eyes shifted to Jeff. To Josh’s relief, the other boy instantly backed him up.

“It’s a project on the biology of intelligence,” Jeff explained, improvising as he went along. “We have to do some research on the relationship between hormones and intelligence. Dr. Engersol says—” He was prepared to go on, but Carolyn Hodges held up her hands in protest.

“All right, both of you, and anyone else who wants to, can go to the library. But you’re on your honor, all right?”

Instantly, the class mumbled their agreement, then gathered up their things and headed out the door. A moment later they tumbled out of the building, most of them actually setting off toward the large library a hundred yards away, on the university campus. Josh MacCallum, though, fell in next to Jeff Aldrich.

“Do you know where Steve lives?” he asked.

Jeff’s brows rose. “You mean you don’t want to go to the library and work on our project?”

Josh flushed slightly. “Thanks for not telling her,” he said. Then: “Do you really have a project you have to work on?”

Jeff laughed out loud. “Shit, no! I just didn’t want to sit there for an hour. So how come you want to know where Conners lives?”

Josh’s tongue ran nervously over his lower lip. “I–I just want to find out what’s going on, that’s all. I mean, if they don’t even know where he is, what’s going on?”

“So you want to go see?”

Josh nodded. A moment later the two boys set out, heading across the lawn toward the university in case anyone was watching, but then cutting away from the campus as soon as they were out of sight of the mansion.

Fifteen minutes later they stood on the sidewalk in front of the house on Solano Street, behind which was the little guest house Steve Conners had rented. Josh looked around, searching for the teacher’s Honda.

There was no sign of it.

“Want to go look in the windows?” Jeff suggested, already starting down the driveway. Josh hesitated, his eyes going to one of the front windows of the house.

An elderly woman was peering out. When Josh realized she was staring at them, he waved, then ran up and knocked at her door. A few seconds later the front door opened and the old woman gazed out at Josh.

“Shouldn’t you boys be in school?” she asked, her voice projecting disapproval.

“We’re looking for Mr. Conners,” Josh explained. “He’s one of our teachers, and he didn’t come to school today.”

The woman’s brows rose a notch. “You’re from that school for smart kids, are you?”

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” Josh stammered, glancing toward Jeff, who was still standing in the driveway, obviously enjoying his discomfort.

“And they just let you run around town all day?” the old woman went on.

Josh squirmed with embarrassment. “We just came looking for Mr. Conners,” he repeated. “We just wanted to see if he’s here, that’s all.”

“Well, he’s not,” the old woman said. “I heard his car leave this morning, just before dawn, just like always. Don’t know why he can’t just run around the block if he’s a mind to, but I suppose there’s no accounting for young people nowadays. Anyway, he hasn’t been back since.”

“Run around the block?” Josh asked. “Why would he do that?”

The old woman’s eyes narrowed and her voice rose. “He doesn’t! Aren’t you listening to me, young man? I said that’s what he ought to do! But instead he drives up to the point, then runs two miles up the road and two miles back. Doesn’t that beat all?”

“The point?” Josh asked, “mere—?”

“I know where it is,” Jeff called from the driveway. “Come on!”

Josh hesitated, but the irritation in the old woman’s voice, combined with the fact that Jeff was already headed down Solano Street toward the beach, made up his mind for him. “Thanks,” he said, then jumped down the three steps that led to the porch and darted across the lawn.

“Be careful of my grass, young man,” the old woman called after him, but it was too late. As she closed the door, Josh and Jeff were already halfway down the block.

Twenty minutes later they were at the viewpoint, staring at the broken concrete pilings, and the rusted chain that dangled uselessly down the face of the cliff.

“Maybe nothing happened at all,” Josh said softly, staring at the spot where Steve Conners’s Honda had plunged over the cliff only hours earlier. “Maybe it’s been that way for a long time.”

“Sure,” Jeff replied sarcastically. “That’s why the breaks in the cement look like they just happened. Can’t you see a car went off here?” He went to the edge and peered down. “Oh, Jeez, Josh,” he said, his voice hollow. “Come here.”

Hesitantly, Josh approached the precipice and peered down at the water heaving against the base of the point. He wasn’t sure what Jeff was talking about, but then the wave receded and he saw it.

A car, lying on its back with one of its doors open, was visible for just a second. Then another wave came in, shifting the car slightly and covering it once more with water.

“I–Is it Steve’s?” Josh stammered.

“I’m not sure,” Jeff said, his voice tinged with excitement at his own discovery. “But one of the doors is open, so maybe someone got out.”

“What shall we do?” Josh asked. “Shouldn’t we go get the police?”

Jeff shook his head. “We better look at the beach first. What if someone’s still alive? They could drown while we’re going to find someone!” He pointed north, where Josh could see the stairs leading down to the cove at which they’d had the picnic the day he’d first arrived at the Academy. “You go down there, and I’ll find a way down to the beach on the other side. If you find anything, come and get me!”

Jeff took off, running back down the looped road the way they’d come, then trotting along the edge of the highway to the south, looking for a path that might lead him down to the beach below.

Josh himself moved more slowly, walking along the pavement’s edge, stopping every few yards to gaze down at the rocks that formed the south end of the cove, and the beach that curved north and west, ending at the next point.

He was halfway to the stairs that led down to the beach itself when something floating in the water caught his eye.

At first he thought it was just some trash drifting in the waves and about to be washed up onto the beach. Then, as the object was lifted by a cresting wave and tossed up onto the sand, Josh realized that it wasn’t junk at all. As the next wave washed it back down into the roiling water, he yelled for Jeff, then ran to the top of the long switchback flight of stairs. Without even thinking of going back for Jeff, he started down the steps, taking them two at a time, his breath coming in quick gasps from the effort.

Somehow he made it to the bottom without tripping and raced down the beach to the spot where he’d last seen the object. But it seemed to have vanished, as if the tide had swallowed it up.

Stripping off his shoes and socks and throwing them as far up the beach as he could, Josh waded into the water.

He’d seen it! He knew he had! But where was it?

He moved a few feet farther down the beach, and then felt something bump against his bare foot. Recoiling, his first instinct was to run back out of the water, but then he took a deep breath, stooped down and groped in the sandy water.

His fingers closed on the object.

A shoe, almost the same size as his own.

A shoe just like the ones most of the kids at the Academy wore, and that he’d been hoping his mother might be able to get him for Christmas.

Washing the sand from it, he examined it carefully.

Even though it was soggy, the tread was unworn and the shoelaces still looked almost new.

Then he noticed something funny about the shoe.

Across the top — and the sole, too, when he turned it over — were twin crescents of gashes, puncturing right through the leather of the upper part of the shoe and gouging deeply into the hard rubber of the soles.

Marks, like tooth marks.

As if something had bitten the shoe — bitten it really hard.

His heart suddenly racing, Josh gazed back into the sea once more.

And this time he saw the object again.

A wave was building, and as it towered up in preparation to break, the sun shone full upon the thing he’d seen from high up on the highway.

It was a corpse.

Or at least it was what was left of a corpse, for even from where he stood at the edge of the water, Josh could see what had happened.

The wave broke and the water surged forward, tumbling the broken remains of the little girl up the beach, depositing them at Josh’s feet as if they were some sort of grotesque sacrifice being offered up to the boy by the sea in penance for whatever mysterious sins it might have committed.

Josh gazed silently at the mutilated body. One of its arms was completely missing; great chunks were torn out of its torso. But despite the damage it had absorbed, Josh was still sure he knew who it was.

Amy Carlson.

His stomach heaved, and the half-digested breakfast he’d eaten only a couple of hours earlier spewed out onto the sand. He knew he should run and find Jeff — or anyone else — but somehow he couldn’t.

He couldn’t just go away and leave Amy lying on the beach.

Gingerly, he reached down, took hold of her one remaining arm and pulled her farther up the sand, out of reach of the crashing surf.

What had happened to her?

And then, as he stared fixedly at the ruined body of his friend, he remembered a movie he’d seen on television a while ago.

He knew what had happened to her.

Sharks.

She had been attacked by sharks.

A crowd had gathered on the beach, the usual curious throng that seems to form out of nowhere whenever a tragedy occurs. Some of them had walked out from the village, where the news of the discovery of a body washed up on the sand had spread like wildfire.

Above, on the road that ran along the edge of the bluff, cars were lined up, the first ones drawn by the car that had responded to Jeff Aldrich’s frantic signals after he’d spotted Josh sitting quietly on the beach next to Amy’s corpse. He hadn’t even yelled to Josh, but instead waved down the first car that came along. After the first car stopped, two more quickly followed. By the time Hildie Kramer had arrived, responding to a call from the police department, there had been barely enough room for her to edge off the road. After trying to jockey her Acura into a just-too-small space that had been left between a pickup truck full of surfboards and a motor home, she had abandoned the car, leaving its rear end sticking out a couple of feet into the lane of northbound traffic, and hurried across the pavement to the head of the stairs.

Already there were more than twenty-five people on the beach, half a dozen of them police officers and medics, the rest a milling throng of sightseers who were talking among themselves, passing on every bit of information they’d picked up from other conversations they’d overheard.

By the time Hildie had made it down the stairs to the beach and worked her way through to the knot of men clustered around Amy Carlson’s body, she’d already heard three or four versions of what had happened.

“She was kidnapped out of a mall in Santa Cruz,” someone said.

“That’s not what I heard,” someone else replied. “She’s one of the kids from town, and she got caught by a riptide.”

“I heard she was already dead before she even got into the water,” a third person ventured. “Someone said she’d been stabbed fifty-seven times. Can you imagine? How could anyone do something like that to a child? I don’t know what the world is coming to.”

Hildie ignored it all, even when someone called out her name, and asked if the child was one of the kids from the Academy. Instead of answering, she simply pressed in farther, until finally she was standing over the knot of policemen and medics who surrounded the badly maimed corpse. Hildie’s expression tightened as she gazed down on what was left of Amy, but even as her gorge rose at the mutilation of the little girl, she still felt a sense of relief.

It had worked, just as she had known it would.

Now, as she silently wondered if they’d found Steve Conners, too, she summoned up the proper tears of grief and sympathy for Amy Carlson. What the pounding of the sea might have failed to accomplish, something else had.

“Dear Lord,” she breathed, “What happened to her?”

One of the medics glanced up. “Sharks,” he said. “I don’t know what she was doing in the water at all, but she was sure in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once the first one hit her, she didn’t have a chance.”

What was left of Amy’s body was almost totally unrecognizable. Her right arm was completely gone, as was most of her left leg. Her stomach had been torn open, and there was nothing left but an empty cavity where her internal organs had once been.

Everywhere, flesh had been ripped away from bones, and the bones themselves seemed to be held together by no more than fragments of cartilage. Even her head had not been spared from the attack.

The back of her skull was completely gone, and the jagged edges of the empty cavity where her brain had been were broken and irregular.

Exactly as George Engersol had left them, Hildie told herself, obliterating the work he’d done with the saw with a small hammer and a pair of pliers.

“Her brain,” Hildie breathed. “What happened to it?”

The medic shook his head. “Something got it. Shark maybe, or even a sea otter. An otter could have scooped it out like an abalone out of its shell.”

Moaning, Hildie turned away, only to find Josh MacCallum standing beside her, listening to every word that had been said. “Josh? What are you doing here?”

“I was the one who found Amy.” Josh’s voice was barely audible as his eyes fixed once more on the remains of his friend. “I was with Jeff. We were looking for Steve.”

Before Hildie could respond, there was a crackling sound as one of the police radios came alive. Both Josh and Hildie turned to listen. One of the officers spoke into his unit, listened a moment, then promised to send two men right away. Putting the radio back into its holster on his belt, he glanced at Hildie, recognizing her immediately from the investigation of Adam Aldrich’s death. “One of my men just found a sweater,” he said. “Up on the promontory, you know? Where the viewpoint is?”

Hildie put on a puzzled expression. “A sweater?” she asked. “What—”

Before she could finish her question, the officer spoke again. “It has her name in it. It was on the ground, like someone had dropped it.”

Hildie’s frown deepened. “At the viewpoint?” she echoed. “Why would it be up there?”

The officer’s eyes clouded as he realized Hildie hadn’t yet heard what else had happened. “There’s a car in the water, Mrs. Kramer. We haven’t gotten to it yet, but we were able to spot the license number. It belongs to one of your teachers, Steve Conners.”

“Dear Lord,” Hildie breathed. “You don’t suppose—”

“We’re not supposing anything yet, Mrs. Kramer. But we’ll be wanting to know everything you have about his background.”

Hildie shook her head. “He just started this term. He seemed to be so fond of the children.”

The officer’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe a little too fond, if you know what I mean.”

Hildie nodded. “I’d better go call Amy’s parents.” She sighed. “Josh, I think maybe you should come back to school with me.” But when she turned to where Josh had been standing only a moment ago, he was gone.

At a little after noon, Hildie Kramer once more took the elevator down to the laboratory hidden beneath the mansion’s basement. Stepping out into the bright glare of the white-tiled corridor, she ignored the scrub room and operating theater, which had been fashioned from the chamber that in another time had served as the dining room for Eustace Barrington’s son, and walked quickly to a door at the end. Behind this door had once been the younger Barrington’s lonely living room. Pressing her security code numbers into the keypad at its side, she let herself into the remodeled room that was now the lab housing the heart of George Engersol’s artificial intelligence project. In a room next door — once a sleeping alcove, but now completely separated from the lab by a glass wall — was the ominous-looking form of a Croyden computer. The twin black arcs that contained its vast range of microprocessors stood alone, forming a broken circle that was nearly six feet high. It was the only piece of equipment in the small room, crouched in lonely splendor in the center of its perfectly air-conditioned, dust-free environment. The most powerful computer in the world, the Croyden was as sensitive as it was fast, and when Alex Croyden, who had developed the computer, had designed its setting in this room, he’d seen to it that the smallest amount of contamination possible would be allowed to affect it. Other than Croyden himself, George Engersol, Hildie Kramer, and the head of one of the major entrepreneurial companies of Silicon Valley, no one knew the computer was there. And no one but Alex Croyden himself was competent to fix it in the event that it failed.

The room had been designed to see to it that the Croyden did not fail. So far, it hadn’t. Controlled from a keyboard in the room in which Hildie now stood, its only connections to the outside world were through a series of thick cables under the floor, and a hermetically sealed door that Alex Croyden alone had the codes to open.

Where his supercomputer was concerned, Alex Croyden didn’t even trust George Engersol.

The room in which Hildie now stood comprised the rest of the artificial intelligence lab.

It, too, was filled with an array of computers, all of which were concerned with maintaining the contents of two glass tanks that stood in a special case at the end of the room.

Each of the tanks contained a living human brain.

Filled with a saline solution, the brains floated weightlessly in their environment.

From the stems of the brains, plastic tubing connected the main arteries and veins to machines that continually recirculated a blood supply, oxygenating it and cleaning it, eliminating wastes and adding nutrients. Every aspect of the blood supply was continuously monitored by the computers, its chemical balance kept in perfect stasis by the complex programs that determined the correct level of every element needed to feed the organs in the tanks.

Each system had several backups, and as Hildie stood just inside the door, watching the machines at work, she was once more astonished that it could work at all.

And yet it did. A pump worked silently, keeping the blood flowing, while a dialysis machine acted as artificial kidneys. Much of the equipment in the room had been designed by the Croyden computer in the adjoining room, which had processed volumes of data before determining precisely the equipment and programs that would be needed to keep a brain alive outside its natural environment.

Not only alive, but functioning.

For the plastic tubes were not the only things attached to the brains in the tanks.

Bundles of tiny wires, each of them attached to a separate nerve, also emerged from the brain stem, a flexible spinal column that connected the brains directly to the Croyden computer in the next room.

Probes were inserted into the brains as well, and their leads, too, ran through holes in the tanks to join the other cables that snaked away into the conduits beneath the floor.

Now, finally, it was all happening, all the plans that had been laid years ago were coming to fruition, for as Hildie scanned the monitors above the twin tanks, she could see by the graphic displays that the biological conditions of the two organs were precisely as they should be.

George Engersol glanced up from the keyboard, a frown forming as he saw the expression on Hildie Kramer’s face.

“Something’s happened, hasn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question.

Hildie nodded abruptly. “Josh MacCallum found Amy Carlson’s body this morning.”

“Josh?” Engersol echoed, his face paling. “What happened?”

“He was looking for Steve Conners. And Amy’s body washed up on the beach, in the cove where we have our picnics.”

Engersol’s expression hardened. “Why was Josh looking for Steve Conners on the beach? Isn’t he here?”

Briefly, Hildie told Engersol what had happened that morning. As she spoke, she saw Engersol’s face pale even more, and the muscles of his jaw clench with anger.

“I told you it was too risky,” he said when she was done. “We should have kept Amy’s body here and—”

“It’s all right,” Hildie broke in, her words sharp enough to silence Engersol. “They’re already assuming that Conners got his hands on Amy, probably intending to molest her, and something went wrong. They haven’t found his body yet, and judging from the condition of Amy’s, it won’t make much difference if they do.” She smiled thinly. “It seems that sharks got to her, and there isn’t much left. When I asked one of the policemen what happened to her brain, he suggested that a sea otter might have taken it. ‘Like an abalone out of its shell,’ is the way he put it, I believe. And they found Amy’s sweater at the viewpoint. What with the note I left on her computer, and Steve Conners’s accident, they’ll assume he either left the note himself or found her sometime during the night. I don’t think there’ll be much question about what happened.”

The tension in George Engersol eased slightly. “Have you told her parents?”

“They’re on their way up,” Hildie replied, nodding. “I imagine they’ll be here sometime this afternoon. I don’t think it will be pleasant, but we can deal with it. I suspect we’ll lose a few more students, though. Two deaths in two weeks is going to be hard for some of them to take.”

Engersol smiled. “I suspect you’ll manage. If we lose a few, it won’t matter, so long as we keep the ones I need.”

“I wish I could guarantee it,” Hildie replied. “But I can’t.” She shifted her attention to the tank on the left. “Everything is still stable?” she asked anxiously, remembering what had happened last year, when Timmy Evans’s brain had been transferred into one of the tanks, only to die suddenly when it was on the very verge of awakening. Though Engersol had insisted that the problem had lain with Timmy’s brain itself, Hildie herself was all but positive that what had truly happened was some kind of error in programming. Hildie was convinced the data that had been fed to Timmy Evans’s mind had been at fault, somehow killing his brain instead of bringing it back to consciousness.

Exactly what had happened to Timmy, though, neither she nor Engersol would ever know. But Adam, unlike Timmy, was surviving. “No signs of deterioration?” she pressed.

“Adam isn’t turning into another Timmy Evans,” Engersol replied icily, letting her know that he understood exactly what she was asking. “In fact, he’s doing even better than I could have hoped for. Look.”

He tapped at the keyboard, and an image of a brain came up on the monitor that sat on Engersol’s desk. “That’s the way Adam’s brain looked twenty-four hours ago. But look what’s happening.” He pressed some more keys, and a second image appeared on the monitor, superimposed over the first. “Right there,” Engersol said, tapping on the screen with the tip of a ballpoint pen. “See it?”

Hildie studied the screen for a moment, then shook her head. “What am I looking for?”

“Just a second. Let me enlarge it.” Using a mouse, Engersol drew a small box around part of the image, then clicked a couple of commands from the bar at the top of the screen. “There. See?”

Hildie’s eyes widened as she finally saw what Engersol was talking about.

The brain in the left-hand tank — Adam Aldrich’s brain — was growing.

“I didn’t think that was possible,” Hildie told him.

“Nor did I,” Engersol agreed. “And I’m not sure yet exactly why it’s happening. But it’s the frontal lobe that’s growing, the part of the brain that is responsible for thought. It’s not just staying alive, Hildie. It’s actually growing. We’ve done it. We’ve succeeded in wiring a human brain into a computer. One that’s still living, and still functioning.”

Hildie’s eyes were suddenly caught by activity on the monitor above the tank on the right. As she watched, lines that had been quiescent only a moment ago began to waver, then form peaks and valleys. Then two other lines also came to life, one of them suddenly shooting up to the top of the screen before leveling off, another spiking quickly, easing off, then spiking again.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happening?”

“It’s Amy,” George Engersol replied. “She’s waking up.”