Mindbenders, Page 2

Two

  Whick-whick went the trees along the highway, whick-whick like the frames of a movie flashing through the shutter. Whick-whick while the fields lazed in sunlight, the grass a little brown from too little rain and too much sun, water spurting from irrigation pipes wrapped in grape vines. Whick-whick, marking space, marking time. Marking time, which is all I’d done as long as I could remember, not that that was very long.

  I used to be good with words, I remember that. Words and me got along. They tell me I was a writer for Stars & Stripes, till my brains got rattled one time too many. I still play with them but all I get are phrases, flickers—whick whick—and each new one just drives out the old. In the end, it’s just light through the trees—pretty and whispering all kinds of promises but nothing real and nothing that’s a part of anything bigger. And that’s not enough.

  Mr. Dulles was driving. He was a lousy driver, real intense but never seeming to be where he was. It was like he was keeping real good track of traffic a hundred and forty miles ahead while just barely lurching through the close-up stuff.

  “The government?” I asked. “Their program, right?” It didn’t hurt to talk anymore; it just felt weird. It was so peaceful ignoring everybody once they accepted they weren’t getting much out of you.

  “They disowned it. Everybody was put out to pasture. Governments are not real interested in re-exploring their failures.”

  “But if it’s a failure—”

  “The guys who murdered Dave didn’t think it was,” Dulles said and it hurt to hear the word ‘murder’ out in the air. “The guys who hired them didn’t either.” He was glaring at the driver ahead of him. “Get moving, willya?” he snapped.

  “Those guys—part of the program?”

  He shook his head. “Too young. The programs ended years ago. But…they must have trained with people from the program. ”

  “Why?”

  “Just procedures they were using, defenses they tried against me.”

  “Are they dead?” I asked, buying time to think as much as anything else.

  “They’ll come around by morning,” he said. Seeing my reproach, he added, “They don’t matter anyway. If you want revenge, you want the guys who sent them.”

  “Big guns,” I said, though I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.

  “Guns are just their first line of defense. With guys like that, guns always are. They had more dangerous weapons, if they’d been a little more imaginative.” He swerved around the car in front of us, cursing a blue streak. “Who teaches them to stack up like this?”

  “Who?”

  “Look!” he said, gesturing out the windshield. It looked like regular traffic to me. “Three slowpokes, clogging all the lanes. They stack up right next to each other so you can’t pass them.”

  “The guys we’re warning—in the program—they dangerous too?” I asked.

  “With any luck,” he laughed—a nasty, harsh laugh. “Hopefully, they’re dangerous too.”

  I waited a long moment before the next question. “You?”

  “Yeah,” he said, with a half-smile that actually seemed genuine. “Yeah. You saw. Me too.” He banged at the steering wheel. “Okay, that’s enough, dammit,” he grumbled at the traffic. “Move!”

  His face turned red and I wouldn’t have wanted him looking at me like that. And as soon as he spoke, the car in front of us suddenly swerved out of the way, weaving and pulling to the right. We sped through the empty space and, for the next few miles, anytime anyone was ahead of us, they moved over as soon as we approached. Sometimes they jumped out of the way like something had startled them but Mr. Dulles wasn’t leaning on the horn and I didn’t see any reflection to suggest he was flashing his headlights or anything. The cars just seemed to be getting out of the way on their own, which didn’t seem a bit natural.

  “Dave was a spy,” I said, straight out. It just seemed like I knew all at once.

  “Not the way you’re thinking,” he answered. “Not James Bond.”

  I wasn’t thinking of James Bond. Well, maybe a little but not seriously. I turned on the radio. It must have been the original radio that came with the car because it had the rotary dial for the stations—you turned the knob to tune in. I hadn’t seen one of those before except in pictures.

  I didn’t like the music they were playing so we ended up with the news, the shooting of the Indian premier. The man who shot him was in custody and being interrogated; a state funeral was scheduled for the next morning. Most of the coverage wondered how the killer got through state security, close enough to fire at close range—and speculated about the next premier.

  There was the usual parade of all-male candidates but the headline was the premier’s daughter, a woman speaking with an eerie serenity (and Oxford English) to what sounded like a pretty unruly crowd. She proclaimed herself her father’s successor and said she would be meeting with party officials that afternoon to claim control. The experts didn’t think much of her—Western-educated and an engineer, an attractive face to put on the party, possibly, but untested and not ready for the hurly-burly of Asian politics, they concluded. Probably gone in a week, with the pack of experts and male politicians scrambling to take advantage.

  At the end of this, I realized we weren’t swerving or speeding any more. We were holding our place in traffic, maintaining a mere 60 miles an hour, Mr. Dulles more focused on the radio than I was. All he said was, “We need the newspapers.”

  We pulled off at the next exit and he bought every newspaper they had. “Read,” he ordered as we pulled back onto the highway.

  “Read what?”

  “The headlines. Everything. I’ll tell you what I’m interested in.”

  This was a torture. My mouth wasn’t used to three words in a row. It wasn’t used to two. Now he had me reading paragraphs. The muscles just weren’t in shape; the sounds were garbled half the time. I couldn’t figure out how he could understand what I was saying but he would bark at me to keep going every time I paused.

  The headlines were the usual: Gridlock in Washington, each side blaming the other, embargos and sanctions against our favorite enemies, unemployment and gas prices up, sales and real estate booming, some expert says now’s the time to buy something or other, if you’ve got any money. None of that did much for Mr. Dulles though he was paying attention to every line. Then I got to: POWERPLANT MISHAP ‘ONE-TIME GLITCH,’ SAYS OPERATOR.

  “Read me that,” he said immediately. And somehow, with him focusing on me, I could.

  “Second Sun Energy, operators of the Biggs Hollow nuclear powerplant, called yesterday’s radiation leaks ‘minor and harmless’ and blamed them on improperly calibrated instruments. State regulators, however, expressed concern at instrument readings that indicated a meltdown, leading to the plant venting radiation and the evacuation of three surrounding towns. After a ‘thorough and rigorous’ examination of the plant, no actual problems were found. ‘Instrument readings,’ said a source close to the state regulatory authority, ‘have to be foolproof. A false reading can cause as much chaos as a real crisis, as this incident proves.’ ”

  “Tear that out,” Dulles said. “Keep reading.”

  It took a while to find something else that appealed to him: MAYOR RESIGNS AFTER BIZARRE VIDEO SURFACES was the headline. “Read that,” he said.

  “Greta Kobel, Mayor of Copenhagen for twenty-four years, resigned today after a bizarre video surfaced on the Internet. The clip, which documented what her spokesperson called ‘a momentary breakdown,’ shows Mayor Kobel barking, clawing at the podium and spouting gibberish and racial slurs to an audience of Japanese businessmen at a reception yesterday. Among her statements was one characterizing Hindus as ‘the dogs of the world,’ which sparked riots in several countries last night. A statement from the Mayor’s office said she apologized for her behavior and called it ‘inexplicable, as the views expressed are not true to my own feelings or views. I take responsibility for my actions without, frankly, u
nderstanding them.” The Mayor announced that she was resigning, effective Friday, to seek counseling and medical treatment. Longtime friends and critics alike characterized the incident as out-of-character. Mayor Kobel has won numerous prizes throughout her stewardship for open government and human rights.”

  “Tear that out too,” he said. “If there are pictures, keep them.”

  “What’s in common?” I asked, tearing. “The Mayor of Copenhagen and a nuclear plant in Tennessee?”

  “There’s our turnoff,” he said and I saw the sign to merge onto 95. He pulled into the right lane and we waited in traffic for the exit.