“Does that gadget work?”
“What—” Then he understood and he felt another flash of guilt. She knew about the word processor, of course she did. Seth’s DELETION had not affected Roger and the track that Roger’s family had been on. “Oh. Oh, no. It doesn’t do anything.” She nodded, satisfied. “That nephew of yours. Head always in the clouds. Just like you, Richard. If you weren’t such a mouse, I’d wonder if maybe you’d been putting it where you hadn’t ought to have been putting it about fifteen years ago.” She laughed a coarse, surprisingly powerful laugh—the laugh of an aging, cynical bawd—and for a moment he almost leaped at her. Then he felt a smile surface on his own lips—a smile as thin and white and cold as the Amana freezer that had replaced Seth on this new track.
“I won’t be long,” he said. “I just want to note down a few things.”
“Why don’t you write a Nobel Prize-winning short story, or something?” she asked indifferently. The hall floorboards creaked and muttered as she swayed her huge way toward the stairs. “We still owe the optometrist for my reading glasses and we’re a payment behind on the Betamax. Why don’t you make us some damn money?”
“Well,” Richard said, “I don’t know, Lina. But I’ve got some good ideas tonight. I really do.” She turned to look at him, seemed about to say something sarcastic—something about how none of his good ideas had put them on easy street but she had stuck with him anyway—and then didn’t. Perhaps something about his smile deterred her. She went upstairs. Richard stood below, listening to her thundering tread. He could feel sweat on his forehead. He felt simultaneously sick and exhilarated.
He turned and went back out to his study.
This time when he turned the unit on, the CPU did not hum or roar; it began to make an uneven howling noise. That hot train transformer smell came almost immediately from the housing behind the screen, and as soon as he pushed the EXECUTE button, erasing the HAPPY BIRTHDAY, UNCLE RICHARD! message, the unit began to smoke.
Not much time, he thought. No… that’s not right. No time at all. Jon knew it, and now I know it, too.
The choices came down to two: Bring Seth back with the INSERT button (he was sure he could do it; it would be as easy as creating the Spanish doubloons had been) or finish the job.
The smell was getting thicker, more urgent. In a few moments, surely no more, the screen would start blinking its OVERLOAD message.
He typed: MY WIFE IS ADELINA MABEL WARREN HAGSTROM He punched the DELETE button. He typed: I AM A MAN WHO LIVES ALONE.
Now the word began to blink steadily in the upper right-hand comer of the screen: OVERLOAD OVERLOAD OVERLOAD. Please. Please let me finish. Please, please, please… The smoke coming from the vents in the video cabinet was thicker and grayer now. He looked down at the screaming CPU and saw that smoke was also coming from its vents… and down in that smoke he could see a sullen red spark of fire.
Magic Eight-Ball, will I be healthy, wealthy, or wise? Or will I live alone and perhaps kill myself in sorrow? Is there time enough?
CANNOT SEE NOW TRY AGAIN LATER Except there was no later.
He struck the INSERT button and the screen went dark, except for the constant OVERLOAD message, which was now blinking at a frantic, stuttery rate.
He typed: EXCEPT FOR MY WIFE, BELINDA, AND MY SON, JONATHAN Please. Please.
He hit the EXECUTE button.
The screen went blank. For what seemed like ages it remained blank, except for OVERLOAD, which was now blinking so fast that, except for a faint shadow, it seemed to remain constant, like a computer executing a closed loop of command. Something inside the CPU popped and sizzled, and Richard groaned.
Then green letters appeared on the screen, floating mystically on the black: I AM A MAN WHO LIVES ALONE EXCEPT FOR MY WIFE, BELINDA, AND MY SON, JONATHAN He hit the EXECUTE button twice.
Now, he thought. Now I will type: ALL THE BUGS IN THIS WORD PROCESSOR WERE FULLY WORKED OUT BEFORE NORDHOFF BROUGHT IT OVER HERE. Or I’ll type: I HAVE IDEAS FOR AT LEAST TWENTY BEST-SELLING NOVELS. Or I’ll type: MY FAMILY AND I ARE GOING TO LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Or I’ll type-But he typed nothing. His fingers hovered stupidly over the keys as he felt—literally felt—all the circuits in his brain jam up like cars grid-locked into the worst Manhattan traffic jam in the history of internal combustion. The screen suddenly filled up with the word: LOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVERLOADOVER-LOAD There was another pop, and then an explosion from the CPU. Flames belched out of the cabinet and then died away.
Richard leaned back in his chair, shielding his face in case the screen should implode. It didn’t. It only went dark. He sat there, looking at the darkness of the screen.
CANNOT TELL FOR SURE ASK AGAIN LATER.
“Dad?” He swiveled around in his chair, heart pounding so hard he felt that it might actually tear itself out of his chest.
Jon stood there, Jon Hagstrom, and his face was the same but somehow different—the difference was subtle but noticeable. Perhaps, Richard thought, the difference was the difference in paternity between two brothers. Or perhaps it was simply that that wary, watching expression was gone from the eyes, slightly overmagnified by thick spectacles (wire-rims now, he noticed, not the ugly industrial horn-rims that Roger had always gotten the boy because they were fifteen bucks cheaper).
Maybe it was something even simpler: that look of doom was gone from the boy’s eyes.
“Jon?” he said hoarsely, wondering if he had actually wanted something more than this. Had he? It seemed ridiculous, but he supposed he had. He supposed people always did. “Jon, it’s you, isn’t it?”
“Who else would it be?” He nodded toward the word processor. “You didn’t hurt yourself when that baby went to data heaven, did you?” Richard smiled. “No. I’m fine.” Jon nodded. “I’m sorry it didn’t work. I don’t know what ever possessed me to use all those cruddy parts.” He shook his head. “Honest to God I don’t. It’s like I had to. Kid’s stuff.”
“Well,” Richard said, joining his son and putting an arm around his shoulders, “you’ll do better next time, maybe.”
“Maybe. Or I might try something else.”
“That might be just as well.”
“Mom said she had cocoa for you, if you wanted it.”
“I do,” Richard said, and the two of them walked together from the study to a house into which no frozen turkey won in a bingo coverall game had ever come. “A cup of cocoa would go down just fine right now.”
“I’ll cannibalize anything worth cannibalizing out of that thing tomorrow and then take it to the dump,” Jon said.
Richard nodded. “Delete it from our lives,” he said, and they went into the house and the smell of hot cocoa, laughing together.
The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
Stevens served drinks, and soon after eight o’clock on that bitter winter night, most of us retired with them to the library. For a time no one said anything; the only sounds were the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the dim click of billiard balls, and, from outside, the shriek of the wind. Yet it was warm enough in here, at 249B East 35th.
I remember that David Adley was on my right that night, and Emlyn McCarron, who had once given us a frightening story about a woman who had given birth under unusual circumstances, was on my left. Beyond him was Johanssen, with his Wall Street Journal folded in his lap.
Stevens came in with a small white packet and handed it to George Gregson without so much as a pause. Stevens is the perfect butler in spite of his faint Brooklyn accent (or maybe because of it), but his greatest attribute, so far as I am concerned, is that he always knows to whom the packet must go if no one asks for it.
George took it without protest and sat for a moment in his high wing chair, looking into the fireplace, which is big enough to broil a good-sized ox. I saw his eyes flick momentarily to the inscription chiseled into the keystone: IT is THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT.
He tore the packet open with his old, trembling fingers and tossed the contents into the fire. For a moment the flames turned into a rainbow, and there was murmured laughter. I turned and saw Stevens standing far back in the shadows by the foyer door. His hands were crossed behind his back. His face was carefully blank.
I suppose we all jumped a little when his scratchy, almost querulous voice broke the silence; I know that I did.