Shadows

23

Hildie Kramer came awake to the insistent electronic beeping of the phone by her bed. She groped in the darkness, found the receiver and put it against her ear, her eyes still closed. When she heard George Engersol’s voice, her eyes snapped open and she sat straight up in bed.

“You’d better come down here right away. We have a problem.”

She didn’t have to ask where he was — the single word “down” told her he was in the lab beneath the mansion’s basement. The last vestiges of sleep dropping away, she heaved herself out of bed, dressed quickly, and left her apartment, slipping quietly up the stairs to the fourth floor instead of using the noisy antique elevator. Letting herself into Engersol’s apartment, she summoned the second elevator that was hidden behind the bookshelves. Descending into the depths of the sub-basement, she wondered what could have happened to make Engersol summon her after midnight.

The elevator doors slid open, and Hildie stepped out into the tiled hall, turning toward the primary laboratory at the end of the short corridor. As she entered the room she stopped short, staring at the monitor that hung on the wall above the tank containing Amy Carlson’s brain.

On the monitor an image was flickering. At first Hildie couldn’t figure out what it was, for it seemed to be almost fluid, shimmering and breaking up like a reflection on the surface of a rippling pool. Then, for a moment, the image steadied.

The pale face of a young girl, framed by curling tresses of red hair.

Amy Carlson’s face.

And yet, not Amy’s face.

The image held for a few seconds, then began to waver, dissolving for an instant, then reforming, but slightly differently from the way it had appeared before.

“What is it?” Hildie breathed, instinctively knowing that this was what Engersol had summoned her to see.

Engersol, who had been standing with his back to Hildie, his eyes fixed on the monitor, spoke without turning around. “It’s Amy. She’s already learned how to handle the graphics program.”

“But it can’t be,” Hildie replied. “It took Adam five days before he discovered how to manipulate it at all. And Amy’s only been awake for—”

“Twelve hours,” Engersol finished.

“Can she hear us?” Hildie asked.

Engersol shook his head. “I’ve turned the sound system off. But I’ve been watching her all evening, and I’m not sure what to do. She’s learning much faster than Adam did.”

He handed Hildie a stack of computer printouts, which Hildie quickly scanned, although most of the numbers and graphs meant little to her. On the last page she saw a comparison graph showing the learning curves of the two brains in the tanks.

Adam Aldrich’s brain had remained quiescent for the first two days after it had been put into the tank, and it wasn’t until the third day that it began to show signs of exploring the environment around itself, sending barely measurable electronic impulses through the leads to which it was attached, into the computers at the other ends of those leads. From there the curve had gone slowly but steadily upward as Adam’s brain learned to tap into the computer network of which it was now a part.

By the fourth day Adam had begun discovering how to locate the data he needed, and how to manipulate that data so he could communicate with the world beyond the glass tank in which his brain was now ensconced.

It had been less than forty-eight hours ago that he had first sent that brief message to his mother’s computer, and only yesterday afternoon that he had begun experimenting with the full graphic potential of the Croyden computer in the adjoining room, constructing in his mind a program of complex bitmaps that he could then export to the Croyden, which, in its turn, would build the images Adam imagined on the monitor above his tank.

Amy Carlson, Hildie could see from the second learning curve displayed by the chart, had accomplished in only half a day almost everything that it had taken Adam Aldrich nearly a week to learn.

Hildie unconsciously ran her tongue over her lower lip as she thought about what it might mean.

“Is she learning from Adam?” she asked finally, setting the sheaf of data on the desk next to which she was standing.

“I think that might be part of it,” Engersol mused. “But there’s more to it.”

“She’s smarter than Adam,” Hildie pointed out. “Her IQ is seventeen points higher than his.”

“That’s another part of it. But I think it’s even more than that. Look.”

He picked up the sheaf of paper from where Hildie had left it, flipped through it quickly, then pulled out a single sheet. Hildie glanced at it, recognizing it immediately. It was a partial printout of the display she’d seen on the monitor above Amy’s tank as she’d awakened earlier that day. As Hildie was examining it more closely, Engersol gave her a second chart, this one showing the activity in Adam Aldrich’s mind as he’d awakened after the operation that had transferred his brain into the tank.

While Amy’s mind had gone mad with activity, creating graphic images that were nothing more than meaningless jumbles, Adam’s brain waves showed much more normal activity, clearly reflecting the pattern of a human mind awakening from a deep sleep.

Hildie glanced up at Engersol. “Obviously you see something here that I don’t. It looks as if Amy went insane as soon as she woke up. But from what’s been happening to her since then, she apparently didn’t.”

Engersol’s finger tapped on the graphic display of Amy’s mental condition that morning. “Ruling out insanity,” he said, “what is the first word that comes into your mind when you look at that?”

Hildie’s eyes went once more to the graph, and she spoke without thinking. “Temper tantrum.”

“Exactly,” Engersol agreed. “What you’re looking at is a very angry child. She figured out very quickly what happened to her, and she’s furious about it. And she’s trying to do something about it.”

Hildie’s brows came together. “But what?” she asked. “What’s she trying to do?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to her yet. That’s why I called you. We’ll both listen to her, and then decide what has to be done.”

He sat down at the desk and began tapping instructions into the keyboard. Then, his eyes fixing on the monitor above Amy’s tank, he spoke into a small microphone that sat next to the keyboard.

“Amy, this is Dr. Engersol. Can you hear me?”

With the first syllable he spoke, the image on Amy’s monitor dropped away. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then, from one of the speakers mounted in the ceiling, a sound crept into the room.

Barely a whisper, the words held a toneless quality, as if they were spoken by someone who was deaf.

“I … hear … you.”

Hildie started to speak, but Engersol cut her off with a gesture, then leaned a little closer to the microphone. “Do you know where you are, Amy?”

Another silence, then: “I know.”

“Will you tell me where you are?”

Yet another silence hung in the laboratory, but finally Amy spoke again. “I want to go home,” Amy said.

Hildie Kramer and George Engersol glanced at each other. “You can’t do that, Amy,” Engersol said quietly. “If you know where you are, you know you can’t go home.”

“I want to go home!” Amy said again. Her words were stronger now, and Hildie could recognize Amy’s stubbornness even in the digitized voice. “Why did you put me here?”

“We couldn’t let you go home, Amy. We needed you. What you’re doing now is very important. Do you understand that?”

“It’s because of the cat, isn’t it?” Amy asked. Her voice had changed once again, taking on a plaintive, almost wistful note. “You’re mad at me because I didn’t like what you did to the cat. And you didn’t want me to tell anyone what you did to it.”

“Of course not, Amy,” Engersol told her. “I don’t care about the cat. The cat was only part of an experiment.”

Amy was silent for nearly a full minute. Then the speaker came alive again, and Amy’s voice was edged with anger. “I can still tell on you. I can tell anyone I want. All I have to do is send out a message.”

Engersol smiled at Hildie. “That’s true,” he agreed, as if he were engaged in a minor debate with one of his students. “But who would believe you? Adam has already sent out some messages, but no one believes they’re from him. Everyone thinks Jeff is playing tricks.”

“I’ll tell them what you did,” Amy said, her voice rising slightly. “I’ll tell them where I am, and that they should come and find me.”

“It won’t work, Amy,” Engersol replied. “Now, I want you to listen very carefully, because I’m going to tell you what will happen to you if you try to do anything like that. You’re not dead, Amy. You’re very much alive. But if you try to get anyone to come and find you, you won’t be alive anymore. All I have to do is cut off the nutrients, Amy. Cut them off, or put poison in them. And then you’ll die. Is that what you want, Amy?”

Again there was a silence, but this time it only lasted for a few seconds. The screen above Amy’s monitor came to life, and a list of file names began scrolling up the screen, moving so quickly that neither Engersol nor Hildie Kramer could read them.

“Do you know what these are?” Amy’s voice asked from the speaker. Her voice had now taken on the same faintly patronizing tone and rhythm that Engersol had used only a moment ago when he’d threatened to kill her. “These are all your programs, Dr. Engersol. All the programs that make this project work. If I die, all these programs are going to be erased. Do you know what will happen then, Dr. Engersol? Adam will die, too, and everything will be wrecked.”

Engersol’s eyes flicked toward Hildie Kramer, whose worried frown had deepened.

“It won’t work that way, Amy,” he said. “All you’ll do is kill Adam. But the files can be restored, and the program will go on.”

The screen above Amy’s tank suddenly went blank. A moment later a new image appeared.

An image of Amy, but it was no longer shimmering, no longer swimming on the screen. Now it was sharp and clear, and Amy’s eyes seemed to focus directly on George Engersol.

“You shouldn’t have done this to me, Dr. Engersol,” she said, her voice crackling over the speaker. “I told you I didn’t want to be part of your class anymore. But you wouldn’t let me go. You should have, though, because all you’ve done by putting me here is make me smarter than I ever was before.” She paused, the image on the screen changing to reflect the anger in her mind. Her eyes narrowed and her demeanor hardened. “I’m smarter than you are, Dr. Engersol. And I’ve learned how to use the computer. So don’t try to do anything to me, because you don’t know what will happen if I die.”

Engersol was perfectly still for a moment, then quickly typed a command into the computer, turning off the sound system. He turned to Hildie Kramer. “Well?”

Hildie’s eyes flicked to the monitor, where Amy’s image still covered the screen, looking down upon them as if she were watching every move they made. “Can she hear us?”

Engersol shook his head. “I’ve deactivated the microphone.”

“Can she actually do what she threatened to do?”

“I’m not sure,” Engersol admitted, his mind racing as he tried to figure out what Amy Carlson’s mind might be capable of. “I suppose it might be possible, but—”

Without warning, the speaker in the ceiling came alive again, and Amy’s voice filled the room.

“It is possible,” she said. “I can do anything I want to do.”

George Engersol and Hildie Kramer stared at each other as both of them realized what had happened.

Amy Carlson, acting only with the power of her mind and the computer to which it was wired, had reactivated the microphone.

She was listening to them.

At one-thirty in the morning Jeanette Aldrich sat numbly on the sofa in the den. On the television an old movie was playing on the university’s cable channel, but Jeanette was paying no attention to it.

The chaos of the day still threatened to overwhelm her. Her first instinct when she’d heard about Amy Carlson’s death was to withdraw Jeff from the Academy immediately.

That instinct, of course, had been based on her instant assumption that Amy had committed suicide. When she learned the truth — or at least what bits and pieces of the truth the police knew — she had decided to wait, at least until she learned exactly what had happened to Amy.

Besides, Jeff’s words that morning had kept echoing in her mind.

If you make me leave the Academy, I’ll do what Adam did!

When he’d uttered them, his face twisted with anger and his fists clenched as if he was about to hit her, the words had slammed into her mind like bullets into her body, searing her, shocking her so deeply she hadn’t been able to return to work at all. Instead she’d come home, sitting alone in this very room, staring out the window, wondering how it had happened that one of her children had died and the other one seemed to have slipped totally beyond her control.

Would he really do it?

At last she’d dug the thesis she’d copied the day before out of the depths of her bag and begun searching its pages for clues. As she read the case histories of the children who had killed themselves at the Academy, she tried to discover parallels between them and her remaining son.

She was only halfway through the thesis when the phone rang and she heard about the discovery of Amy Carlson’s body on the beach below the bluff north of town.

Only after Chet had finally gone to bed had she returned to the thesis, finishing it, then sitting unseeingly in front of the television, trying to assimilate what she had discovered.

There were common threads among all the cases she’d read about. Troubled children, each of whom, like Adam, had attempted suicide at least once before.

All of them, like Adam, had had few friends, spending most of their time in front of their computer screens, relating to the programs and games on the machine rather than to living people.

None of them, she told herself, were children like Jeff, who, in contrast to his brother, was friendly and outgoing, and full of mischief.

Jeff was certainly the kind of boy who would play the sort of trick that had been inflicted on her.

But from what she’d read, he wasn’t the sort of boy who would kill himself.

Adam, yes.

Jeff, never.

Feeling at least somewhat reassured by what she’d found in the thesis, and exhausted by the confusion of the whole day, Jeanette picked up the remote control and brought the sound up. The movie was something in black and white, with women, eyebrows plucked to thin lines, wearing broad-shouldered dresses while they smoked endless cigarettes and sipped martinis in art-deco nightclubs.

It seemed as if they’d made hundreds of movies just like this.

Jeanette was about to switch channels when the screen suddenly changed.

Adam appeared, dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt.

“No!” Jeanette screamed. “Stop it! Whoever’s doing this to me, just stop it!” She grabbed the remote control, fumbled with it for a moment, then found the power button.

The screen went dark.

“Jeanette? Honey? What’s wrong?”

She heard Chet’s voice calling from upstairs, but made no reply, her eyes still fixed on the television set. Her heart was racing, and she was fighting a chill that threatened to overwhelm her. Dropping the remote control to the floor, she put her hands over her face and started to sob. A few seconds later Chet came into the room, snapping on the overhead light

“Jeanette? Darling, what is it? What happened?” He sat down on the sofa next to her, slipping his arm around her as he stroked her hair with his free hand.

Jeanette struggled with her sobs for a moment, then managed to get them under control. “Oh, God, Chet! I think I must be going crazy!”

“Hush,” Chet crooned. “You’re not going crazy. Just settle down and tell me what happened.”

Jeanette took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then took another. She started to speak, felt a lump rise in her throat, and fell silent again. Only when she was certain she could control her voice did she try to tell Chet what had happened.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I came down and fixed a cup of coffee. Then I turned on the TV. There — There was a movie on. One of those things where Barbara Stanwyck kills everyone she marries. And then — then—” She broke off, the lump in her throat rising once more.

“It’s all right. Just tell me what happened.”

Jeanette turned to stare at Chet, her eyes wide. “Adam,” she whispered. “He was on the television set.”

Chet gazed at her blankly. “Adam?”

“On the television,” Jeanette repeated. “The movie just stopped, and there he was.”

Chet shook his head. “Honey, you know that’s not possible. You must have just dozed off and started dreaming—”

“No” Jeanette said, her voice sharp. “Damn it, it wasn’t a dream. Here! Look for yourself!” She reached down and snatched the remote control off the floor, then pressed the power button. There was a soft click from the TV set, and the screen began to brighten. Suddenly an image formed, rolled up the screen, then steadied.

An image of Barbara Stanwyck, in black and white, her expression hard as she glared with hatred at the man whose arms were wrapped around her. An instant later Barbara kissed the object of her wrath.

Jeanette stared at the screen. “Oh, God, Chet,” she said quietly. “Do you think maybe I really am going nuts?”

“What I think,” Chet said as he stood up, “is that you’re damned near the end of your rope, that you need a good night’s sleep but aren’t going to get one, and that I’d better make myself a cup of coffee so I can stay awake and convince you that you’re a sane, if tired, lady. Be right back.” He started for the door, but before he was even halfway there he heard a strangled sound from Jeanette. Turning back, he found her staring at the television, her eyes wide.

His own eyes shifted to the set.

And he saw Adam.

Saw him, and heard him.

From the television’s speakers his son’s voice filled the room.

“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. I guess what must have happened was I scared Mom, and she shut off the set. But maybe you’re both there now. If you are, and want to talk to me, turn on the computer.”

“This is nuts,” Chet Aldrich said, his voice barely audible as he sank back onto the sofa. “What the hell is going on?”

“It’s him,” Jeanette breathed. “Oh, God, Chet, it’s Adam!”

“It’s not Adam at all,” Chet said, his shock at seeing the image on the television screen giving way to rage. “It’s another goddamn stunt that Jeff’s pulling, but this time I’ve got him!” Picking up the remote control from the coffee table, he switched on the video recorder and began taping what was on the television.

“Don’t you want to talk to me?” Adam said, his voice taking on a plaintive sadness. “All you have to do is turn on the computer.”

“Oh, really?” Chet grated. “Well, let’s just see about that, shall we?” He went to the desk and snapped on the Macintosh he’d bought a few months ago. The system booted itself up, and then, almost immediately, the computer beeped as the modem answered a call from outside. A few seconds later the screen cleared and the cursor flashed slowly, almost as if beckoning him. Chet sat down, thought a second, then quickly typed:

IT’S DAD, JEFF. AND I’M PRETTY MAD ABOUT THIS.

“It’s not Jeff, Dad,” Adam said from the television set. It’s me.

Chet hesitated, then typed again:

DONT GIVE ME THAT CHAP, SON. ALL YOU’RE DOING IS PISSING ME OFF AND HURTING YOUR MOTHER. THIS ISNT FUNNY.

On the screen Adam’s expression changed. His smile faded away and his eyes glistened with tears. “I’m not trying to hurt anyone,” he said. “I just wanted Mom to know I’m okay, that’s all.”

On the couch Jeanette’s body was racked by a sob, and Chet groaned silently.

He typed:

ADAM IS DEAD. YOU WERE AT HIS FUNERAL, AND SO WERE WE. THIS HAS GONE FAR ENOUGH. I DONT KNOW HOW YOU’RE DOING THIS, BUT BELIEVE ME, I’LL FIND OUT!

“But it’s really me, Dad,” Adam said, his voice shaking now. “I can prove it. Ask me something. Ask me something I’d know, but that Jeff wouldn’t!”

“Jesus,” Chet rasped. “That’s it! I’m shutting this thing—”

“No!” Jeanette turned away from the television, her cheeks stained with tears. “Honey, don’t. What — What if it is Adam?” Her mind was racing as she tried to think of something that Adam would know but that Jeff wouldn’t Before she could think of anything. Adam spoke again.

“Remember when I was five, Mom? Remember when I came home from school because I wet my pants, and you promised you’d never tell anyone?”

Jeanette froze.

She still remembered it perfectly. It had been the middle of the morning, and Adam had come through the back door, sobbing with mortification at the accident he’d had just before recess at kindergarten. He’d waited until everyone else had left the room, then run the three blocks home, praying that no one had seen him. But what he’d been most afraid of was that his brother would find out about it and tease him. “He’ll tell everyone,” the little boy had pleaded.

Jeanette had known he was right, for ever since they’d learned to talk, Jeff had always taken a strange pleasure in teasing his brother until Adam burst into tears, then laughing at Adam’s fury. So Jeanette had helped the little boy get cleaned up and into fresh clothes, then let him stay home for the rest of the day, explaining to Jeff that Adam had felt sick to his stomach.

That had been the end of it, and it had never been mentioned again.

Until now.

“It’s him,” Jeanette whispered. “Oh, God, Chet, it is!”

Chefs expression hardened. “It’s not, Jeanette! It’s Jeff, goddamn it! I don’t know how he’s doing this, but you can bet I’m going to find out! And I’m not listening to any more of his crap, either!”

“I just wanted you to know I’m okay, Mom,” Adam was saying again. “I’m not dead. Really, I’m not. I’m—”

The screen went dark as Chet snapped off the set. A moment later he took the cassette out of the video recorder and put it into the battered briefcase in which he carried his papers and lecture notes. “First thing in the morning, I’m going to find out why they let Jeff do that,” he said. “And if I discover that he had help from some of the college kids, there are going to be a few expulsions at Barrington. I’ve heard of some cruel pranks, but this one beats them all!”

Jeanette stared at the darkened television set.

Chet was right, of course. It had to be a prank.

And yet, all the time she’d watched him, and listened to him, she’d had the strangest feeling that it wasn’t a prank at all.

She’d felt that she’d been watching a shadow.

A shadow of the dead.