Shadows

22

Margaret Carlson wondered how much longer she could hold herself together. She was sitting on a chair in Hildie Kramer’s office, having ignored Hildie’s gesture toward the sofa when the housemother had ushered her in five minutes ago. Frank had disdained the sofa as well, pacing nervously around the office, finally standing at the window, his back to the room, as if by refusing to face Hildie, he could refuse to face what she was telling them as well. Margaret, though, had chosen to perch on the edge of a straight-backed chair, her spine held perfectly erect, as if the act of holding her body in complete control could cause her to master her emotions as well.

She was on the verge of hysteria.

She knew it, for all around her the tendrils of reaction to the news she had heard by telephone early this morning kept reaching out to her, curling around her, drawing her toward an abyss of grief from which she wasn’t certain she could ever emerge.

Until now she’d battled the hysteria by rejecting the facts, telling herself that it had to be some kind of mistake, that Amy couldn’t possibly be dead.

Throughout the long ride to the airport, inching along through the morning rush-hour traffic along the San Diego Freeway, she had clung to that single thought.

It’s a mistake. It’s not Amy at all. It’s someone else, another little girl with red hair.

On the plane to Monterey she had sat silently next to Frank, her hand clutching his, silencing him every time he spoke with a tightening of her fingers, until she could feel her nails digging into his flesh.

A shark attack.

Frank had told her what they had found on the beach, for immediately after talking to Hildie Kramer, he had called the Barrington Police Department, insisting on whatever details they might have.

Mutilated.

The body that had washed up had been mutilated almost beyond recognition. They didn’t know yet exactly how Amy had died.

“Ask them if they could be wrong!” Margaret had insisted as she hung close to Frank while he talked to the police, picking up the barest facts from his responses to whatever the man on the other end was saying. “Ask them if it’s possible there’s a mistake!”

They had reluctantly agreed that there was perhaps the slimmest possibility that the body wasn’t Amy’s. It was to that possibility that Margaret had clung, refusing to accept that her daughter — the only child she had, the only child she ever could have, since the cancer last year — was gone.

Now Hildie Kramer had destroyed that last, thin hope, telling her that there was no longer any doubt that the little girl who had been delivered up by the sea that morning was Amy. And yet the hysteria she had been battling for almost four hours was still at bay as a strange numbness began to spread through Margaret’s body, beginning somewhere in the pit of her stomach and spreading outward until a bloodless chill seemed to invade even her fingertips. “How?” she breathed. “How did it happen?”

Hildie Kramer shifted in her chair, carefully arranging her matronly features into the expression she habitually wore for sessions like this, when she had to project the feeling that the loss of the child was almost as devastating to her as it was to the child’s parents. “She was upset yesterday,” she began, knowing she was going to have to tell the Carlsons what had happened, but choosing her words carefully to put it in the best possible light Slowly, she related the experiment in which Amy had participated, stressing that Amy’s part in it had been purely voluntary. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that she burst into tears at the end of it. Apparently she thought she’d somehow failed, although the experiment wasn’t a test at all. It was simply an exercise in determining the manner in which people make decisions. At any rate, I talked with her for quite a while, and got her calmed down. But apparently she went off by herself after our talk. I’m afraid we lost track of her then.”

Frank Carlson turned away from the window, his eyes fixing on Hildie. “Lost track?” he echoed. “I’m sorry, but I think you’d better tell me exactly what that means.”

Hildie took a deep breath. “It means we couldn’t find her. She left the campus and simply disappeared. We had security guards searching for her all night, and several people on our staff were looking, too. Even one of the students was involved.”

Margaret Carlson’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You mean Amy was missing last night?” she demanded. “And you didn’t call us?”

Hildie shrugged helplessly. “I should have, though I’m not sure what it would have accomplished. The police were notified, but frankly, with the way things are now, it’s impossible to get any positive action from them unless a child has been missing for twenty-four hours, or there is immediate evidence of some sort of — well, foul play, if you will.”

“So you did nothing,” Frank Carlson said, his voice heavy. “You sat by while my daughter died.”

“We did everything we could, Mr. Carlson,” Hildie said, allowing a note of authority to creep into her voice as she tried to regain control of the conversation. “If it had been up to me—”

“But what happened?” Margaret broke in. “I still don’t know how she got into the water.”

Hildie’s tongue ran nervously over her lower lip. “The police are still investigating the matter, but it appears that one of our teachers — Steven Conners — must have found Amy, late last night or early this morning.”

Margaret Carlson gasped. “He found her?” she breathed. “But if he found her—” She fell silent, suddenly confused. “Where is he? Why didn’t he—”

“I’m afraid what I have to tell you is very difficult,” Hildie broke in. “We believe that Steven Conners is dead, too.”

Frank Carlson’s eyes bored into Hildie. “Dead? What are you talking about? The police didn’t say anything about—”

“They haven’t found his body yet, but it appears that he and Amy were both in his car. Somehow, it went through a guard chain, over the precipice and into the ocean.” She related her carefully constructed story slowly, saying as little as she could, but implying everything she neglected to say. When she was finished, Frank and Margaret Carlson sat stunned, staring at her.

“What you’re saying is that this teacher may have molested our daughter,” Frank Carlson finally said.

The muscles in Hildie’s face tensed. “We’re still not exactly sure what happened,” she began. “But yes, I’m afraid that possibility can’t be ruled out.”

Margaret Carlson slumped in her chair, the full impact of her daughter’s death finally hitting her. She buried her face in her hands as a sob wrenched her body. “No,” she moaned. “Not Amy. Not my little Amy—”

Her words were abruptly cut off as her husband’s hands clasped her shoulders, steadying her, stilling the protest in her throat. “If what you’re telling me is true, Mrs. Kramer, you might as well close this school today. Because believe me, if you don’t, I’ll do it myself by next week!”

Hildie rose and stepped around to the front of her desk. “Mr. Carlson, I know how you feel, but until we know exactly what happened—”

“I think you’ve told us what happened,” Frank Carlson said, his voice rough with anger. As Hildie remained frozen in place in front of her desk, Frank drew his wife to her feet, easily supporting her with one arm. “Come on, Margaret. Let’s go find someplace to stay while we decide what to do about this.”

Hildie took a step forward, her hand extended as if to touch Frank Carlson, but he brushed past her. “We can make all the arrangements for you, Mr. Carlson,” she began, but Carlson, already at the office door, shook his head.

“We’ll make whatever arrangements are necessary,” he growled. “I think you people have done more than enough already.”

Then he was gone, and Hildie was alone in her office.

None of it had gone as it should have.

Both of the Carlsons, Frank as well as Margaret, should have been so shattered by the news of what had happened that they couldn’t even think straight. They should have been nearly paralyzed by the shock, as indeed Margaret was.

But Frank had gotten angry.

She thought quickly, trying to decide what she should do next.

Then she knew there was nothing she had to do, for despite his words, there was little Frank Carlson could do.

In the end, it would be Steve Conners who would be blamed for Amy Carlson’s death, not the Academy. Which, she decided, made things simpler for her than her original plan would have.

Frank Carlson, after all, could have made a case against the school had they failed to prevent Amy’s suicide.

Her murder, though, was something he could never blame the school for, since, until this morning, Steven Conners’s character had been totally unblemished.

No, Hildie thought to herself, satisfied, there was nothing Frank Carlson could do.

Late that afternoon, Josh lay on his bed, trying to think. The day he had just lived through seemed nothing more than a blur. Indeed, from the time he had turned and scurried away from Hildie Kramer while she talked to the police officer, his mind already rejecting what he had just heard, everything had begun to seem as if it had been happening to someone else.

Steve killed Amy?

It wasn’t possible!

Steve was Amy’s friend. His own friend!

He had instantly rejected the idea, telling himself that there had been some mistake.

Maybe it wasn’t Steve’s car in the water at all! Or maybe someone had stolen Steve’s car.

They hadn’t even found Steve yet. He might not be dead at all.

His mind had raced, ideas tumbling over each other as he’d stumbled across the beach, threading his way through the crowd, ignoring the questions that seemed to come at him from every direction.

Maybe Steve had stopped to pick up a hitchhiker, and the hitchhiker had beaten him up and left him by the road, then taken his car.

Steve could be lying somewhere right now, unconscious.

Josh had run up the stairs and started along the road, approaching each curve with rising hopes, certain that just around the bend he would find Steve lying next to the pavement, just waking up.

By the time he got to the village, though, those hopes had faded away. He had started back to the Academy, trying to convince himself that when he arrived, Steve would be waiting for him.

But even if it happened — and it hadn’t — it wouldn’t bring Amy back.

Amy.

The image of her mutilated body was still vivid in his memory, the bones showing through where her flesh had been torn away.

But most vivid of all was the empty cavity where her brain had been.

For the rest of the day, as he tried to answer the questions that the rest of the students at the Academy and then the police had asked him, that image seemed to be burned into his eyes. Even as he repeated, over and over again, the story of the body washing up at his feet, all he could see was that enormous hole in the back of Amy’s skull, and the odd emptiness of the place where her brain should still have been.

Should have been, but wasn’t.

He remembered what the police had said, that some animal, maybe a sea otter or a seal, had scooped it out and eaten it.

But even through the confusion of the questions he tried to answer, he found himself always coming back to that one thing. At last, an hour before dinner, he had escaped to his room, insisting even to Jeff Aldrich that he wanted to be by himself.

Now, lying in his room, he wondered if he ought to call his mother. Would she hear about what had happened? And if she did, what would she do?

Come and get him, and take him back to Eden.

But he didn’t want to go back to Eden.

Not yet, anyway.

Not until he’d found out what had really happened to Amy, and to Steve Conners, too!

Because something in his brain, something he couldn’t quite get hold of, told him that none of what the police thought had happened was true.

He lay on his back now, holding his body perfectìy still, willing himself to calm down, to concentrate on the thoughts that were just out of reach, to bring them to the front of his mind and examine them.

Dimly, words began to echo in his mind.

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.

His computer. But what did it mean?

Once more an image of Amy’s empty skull rose up in his mind, but then another memory took its place.

The cat.

The cat they had been working on all morning.

Its skull cut away, parts of its brain destroyed by lasers.

The cat was blind, and deaf, and couldn’t feel anything.

But it was still alive.

Now he heard Dr. Engersol’s voice:

By far the majority of the creature’s brain is occupied with the simple tasks of accepting stimuli and maintaining bodily functions.

Engersol’s voice continued to drone in Josh’s head as he recalled what the scientist had said that morning, word for word. Like a blue-white lightning flash, in a moment of brilliant clarity it all came together in Josh’s mind.

The experiment on the cat didn’t have anything to do with artificial intelligence. It was only meant to get them thinking about how much of their own brains were taken up with keeping their bodies alive.

But if someone didn’t have a body …

Josh’s mind sped, the implications of his thoughts quickly taking hold.

If a brain could be taken out of a body and still be kept alive …

Jeff’s words rang once more: Adam didn’t want to die. The only thing he liked was Dr. Engersol’s seminar and his computer.

Was it possible? Was that what Adam had done? Let Dr. Engersol take his brain out of his body and hook it up to a computer?

An icy chill seized Josh, and he shuddered as he thought about it. It wasn’t possible — it couldn’t be possible.

Could it?

The cat.

The cat’s body had essentially been cut off from its brain, but the brain was still alive.

And he’d actually seen Amy’s body, with the brain missing from her skull.

Josh nearly jumped off the bed when he heard a soft tap at the door, followed by Hildie Kramer’s voice. “Josh? It’s Hildie. May I come in?”

Josh’s mind raced. What should he do? Should he ask her all the questions that were suddenly churning through his mind? But what if she knew what had happened to Amy?

What if she’d helped Dr. Engersol?

He had to pretend he hadn’t figured out anything at all! If she knew what he was thinking …

He got off the bed and went to the door, opening it a crack. Hildie, her eyes looking worried, reached out to push the door farther open. “Are you all right, Josh?”

Josh, shaking his head, took a step backward from the door, letting Hildie come into the room.

“I–I just don’t feel very good, that’s all,” he said, his voice faltering under the housemother’s gaze.

“Of course you don’t,” Hildie said in her most soothing tones. “And I know how you must feel right now. Amy was one of your best friends, wasn’t she?”

Josh nodded, saying nothing, but his eyes remained fixed on Hildie. Why had she come up to see him? Was she really just worried about him, or was it something else?

“I thought you might want to talk about it a little,” Hildie explained, seating herself on the bed and patting the spot next to her in an invitation for Josh to join her. “Finding her like that was a terrible thing to have happen to you.”

Josh stayed where he was. “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just — it’s just hard to get used to Amy being dead.”

Hildie nodded sympathetically. “And I guess we didn’t really know Mr. Conners very well, did we?”

Josh hesitated, then managed to shake his head. “I guess he was just being nice to me so Amy would trust him.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Hildie’s reaction to the words he’d made himself say.

Was it only his imagination, or did she seem to smile just a little bit?

“It’s terrible,” Hildie sighed. “But things like that happen sometimes.”

“But Amy—”

“Amy was a wonderful little girl,” Hildie said. “We all loved her, and none of us will ever forget her.” She hesitated just a moment, then looked deep into Josh’s eyes. “Have you called your mother yet?”

Josh shook his head.

“Wouldn’t you like to?” Hildie asked.

Josh took a deep breath. “I–I don’t know,” he stammered. “I’m afraid if I tell her what happened, she might make me go home.”

“And you don’t want to go home?”

Josh shook his head again. “I want to stay here,” he said. “I like it here.”

Hildie held her arms out. “And I like having you here,” she declared. “And I think maybe you could use a hug right now.” She smiled at him. “I certainly know I could, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have it from than you.”

Josh felt another icy chill of fear go through him.

She was lying.

There was something in her voice, or her eyes, that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

She didn’t want a hug at all. She just wanted him to think she did.

But why?

And then, in an instant, he knew. What she really wanted was to find out if he’d actually give her a hug, or if he was already so suspicious of her that he’d avoid it.

Forcing tears to come into his eyes, he made himself run to Hildie Kramer and throw his arms around her neck. As her own arms closed around him, a shudder ran through his body, but it wasn’t a shudder of grief for Amy Carlson at all.

It was a shudder of fear for what Hildie Kramer might have done to her.

And might do to him, too, if she knew what he suspected.

That night, long after he should have been asleep, Josh MacCallum was at his computer.

All evening he’d been thinking about the idea that had come to him in the minutes before Hildie suddenly appeared at his door. The more he thought about it, the more the idea grew in his mind.

If he was right, then somewhere, buried deep in the computers that were all over the campus, there would be files that were used to keep Adam’s brain — and Amy’s, too — alive, despite the fact that their bodies were dead.

All he had to do was find them.

But how?

His eyes fell on the virtual reality apparatus that had been issued to him when the new computer had been installed in his room the day he’d enrolled in the artificial intelligence seminar.

The same apparatus that Adam Aldrich had been so interested in.

Could he somehow use it to search the files of the computers?

He began setting it up, using his modem to tap into the large mainframe that was housed in the A. I. lab in the new wing next door. He called up the directories of the various virtual reality programs that were stored there, and studied the list.

The third one from the bottom caught his eye.

“Microchip.”

What could that be? Some kind of trip inside the computer?

Or maybe not a trip. Maybe a new way of operating the computer!

His pulse quickening, Josh began running the program, then put on the virtual reality mask, headphone, and glove.

A strange world opened before his eyes, a world composed of shimmering images of strange mazelike corridors. Josh felt as though he’d been dropped into the middle of the maze. Everywhere he looked, paths led away from him, paths that led into other paths, interconnecting, crisscrossing, twisting around each other in a pattern far too complex for him to understand.

He turned his head, and the illusion of changing his perspective within the maze was perfect. And yet in every direction there were only more paths, more turns of the maze.

He reached out with his gloved hand. On the screen, only inches from his eyes, another hand appeared, a hand that seemed to react as if it were his own. Now he could touch the walls of the maze.

He moved his hand close to one of the surfaces. As it approached the shimmering wall, he felt a tingling, as if a charge of electricity had run through him.

Something changed, and the pattern of pathways before him shifted.

He touched another wall, and everything shifted again.

Switches.

Everything he touched was a switch, and every switch he touched caused a series of changes to take place.

It was like the interior of a computer chip, where masses of information were stored in digital form, accessed, arranged, and rearranged by nothing more than millions and millions of electronic switches.

He began exploring the maze, touching his fingers first to one wall, then to another. With every touch, the pattern changed once again, but after a while Josh began to see a form to the pattern, began to find ways to make the patterns repeat themselves.

Then, from behind him, he heard a voice.

Jeff Aldrich’s voice.

Josh spun around, forgetting the mask in his shock at hearing Jeff’s voice, expecting to see Jeff standing at the door of his room.

But what he saw was more of the electronic maze that seemed to spread away to infinity all around him.

And in one of the strange, shimmering corridors, was suspended a face.

The face of Adam Aldrich.

Frozen, Josh MacCallum stared at the face of the boy who was supposed to have died more than a week ago.

Adam smiled at him, a strange grimace that sent a chill through Josh.

“You figured it out,” Adam said.

Without thinking, Josh found himself replying to Adam’s voice out loud.

“Adam?”

“Yes. I wondered if anyone in the class would figure out where I went.”

“H-How can you hear me?” he stammered.

Adam smiled again. “There’s a mike in the V.R. mask. The computer digitizes it and sends it to me.”

“B-But your body’s dead,” Josh breathed.

A chuckling sound came through the headphones, then died away. “Is it?” Adam asked. “You see me, don’t you?”

“B-But it’s not real!” Josh protested.

“Of course not,” Adam agreed. “It’s just an image on the screen. I figured it would be easier for you if you could see me instead of just talk to me. So I generated an image. It wasn’t any big deal.”

Josh felt himself sweating now, and tried to swallow the lump of fear that had formed in his throat. “Th-This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?” he pleaded, knowing even as he uttered the words that it wasn’t.

“It’s not a trick at all,” Adam replied. “It’s where I live now. I’m part of the computer.”

Josh felt his heart sink as he realized that in spite of his certainty that he’d figured out what they’d done to Adam and Amy, part of him had still hoped he was wrong. “I–I don’t believe you,” he stammered, his voice quavering.

Adam’s smile broadened. “You want to see?”

“See what?” Josh’s heart was racing now, his mind spinning. Part of him wanted to take off the mask, rip the glove from his hand, and run as far away from whatever was happening as he could get. But another part of him wanted to keep going, wanted to find out what actually was happening.

“Anything you want, Josh,” Adam told him, his voice dropping slightly, taking on a conspiratorial tone. “Everything is in the computers, Josh. Everything in the world. And I can show it to you. What do you want to see?”

“I–I don’t know,” Josh whispered.

“Snakes. What if I show you snakes?” Instantly, everything around Josh changed. In front of him a large cobra suddenly raised its head, its tongue darting in and out. Gasping, Josh instinctively turned away, only to find himself facing a coiled rattìesnake, whose vibrating tail buzzed menacingly in his ears.

“No!” he screamed. “Stop it!”

The buzzing died away, and he heard the sound of Adam’s laughter as the image of the rattìesnake dissolved into another, this one of Adam himself.

“It’s even better if you’re here,” Adam whispered. “From where I am now, it isn’t just an image, Josh. It’s real. It happens inside your brain instead of on a screen in front of your eyes, and it’s as real as if it were actually happening. You don’t need eyes and ears, Josh. You don’t need any thing. Everything you want is right there, and all you have to do is think it to make it real.”

“H-How?” Josh breathed. “How does it work?”

Adam smiled at him again. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “The only way to know is to do it yourself. And you can do it, Josh. You can come here, too.”

Josh’s heart was pounding. It was all impossible. Everything he was hearing and seeing was impossible.

And yet it was happening. Adam was there, an image of him so perfect that Josh felt as if he could actually touch him.

His gloved hand went up, and the image of his hand on the screen rose with it. He reached out, but just as he was about to brush his fingers against Adam Aldrich’s face, he froze as another voice came through the headphones that covered his ears.

“Help me, someone help me …”

Josh’s blood ran cold as he recognized Amy Carlson’s voice. He tore the mask from his face and jerked the glove from his hand. But as he reached out with his trembling fingers to turn off the computer, he knew without a doubt that what he had heard had been real.

Amy was still alive somewhere.

But whom could he tell?

Who would believe him?