Jack L. Chalker Wonderland Gambit 1 The Cybernetic Walrus

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It was impossible to know.
Everything you think you know is wrong...
That was no longer true. Knowing what you didn't know was quite important in
any exercise.
The next morning dawned cooler and wetter, with a chill mist coming off the
lake. It was still beautiful in the area, and the kind of place that both of
us probably wouldn't have minded living in permanently under other
circumstances. I described it to Angel, who nodded and smiled.
I was afraid we might have to go west all the way to Port-land to cross over,
but it turned out that we came ucon a ferryboat not too many miles west of
where we'd spent the night.
It was a funny place for a ferry, and it was a Washington State double-ender
of the sort you'd expect up around Pugel Sound, although it connected a
two-lane U.S. route that didn't seem all that big a deal.
Not only was it a pretty weird place to find it, but it had one other major
difference with the others: it was free.
There was a fair amount of traffic waiting for it, but we knew we wouldn't
have much of a problem getting on with the motorcycle. We didn't take up a lot
of space.
A fellow in a Bronco who looked local explained it as we watched the boat come
in.
"They finished this road back in the thirties, with federal money," he
explained. "Then they finished Grand Coulee Dam that's just down there a
piece, creates the lake and flooded all the roads including the one they just
built and paid for. Only thing they could do was either give back the money or
put a ferry on. Been a ferry ever since. Can't charge 'cause it was federal
money. Funny, huh, even sixty years plus on? Since then, any state officials
who want to take it off and find a loophole get to be former officials, I tell
you."
I didn't argue. The price was right, and, it turned out, we were pretty much
in Washington State as it was.
I even managed to get some rough directions to Yakima from there, although we
still managed to get lost a couple of times on back roads until we figured it
out.
It didn't really matter. We still rolled into Yakima in midafternoon.
It definitely looked the same, and, more importantly, I took a run up to the
old apartment blocks and saw that they were still there and people were living
in them, and there was still definitely a road back to the campus.
More than that, we could feel the place, feel the energy that was now constant
and that, apparently, others could not feel. Maybe Stark and the others could,
but not the vast population that also lived here, the population of what?
Ghosts? Ci-phers? Were they real
, or were they all like solid holograms or audio-anamatronics absolutely
convincing even to them-selves, but created entirely within the Sim program
and exist-ing only for it?
"Betcha Walt thinks so," Angel commented. "That's how he could shoot 'em and
not bat an eye."
"I think you're right," I answered, "but that doesn't excuse it. How does he
know? And if we can't tell who's who here, and are dependin' on them not bein'
able to recognize us, then how can you ever be sure? Besides, what's
'alive'? I don't want to write off Cory's family, his friends, his work-ers,
just
'cause they might've been created based on other realer folks. They're real to
me, and I got a real suspicion that they think, they act independently, and
that makes 'em real as far as I'm concerned."
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She didn't want to dwell on it, or dredge up that awful memory right now any
more than we already had. Instead she asked, "So, where are we gonna live
while we figger out what we're gonna do?"
"We got money to last a few weeks, but it won't last a long time, and we got
gas and oil and stuff to buy, too. On the other hand, if we're still here at
Christmas we got bigger troubles than runnin' outta dough. Gonna be too cold
and wet to camp regular, though. Let's see if we can rent somethin'
basic for cash, month to month, maybe week to week. All places got some places
like that, and startin' now the seasonal folks'll be goin'."
That wasn't quite the case. In fact, the place was filled with people doing
apple harvests, including a lot of temporary workers, some from as far south
as maybe Mexico although none of 'em would admit it. A bunch of
'em were some sort of American Indian. It was, on the whole, though, honest
and aboveboard, at least in the way they treated the people, not sleazy like
in some places, and they had a fair amount of work for somebody like me
willing to work cheap and be paid under the table.
Their temp quarters were about filled up, but they found us a big old tent
with a floor in it and sleeping bags and cots and all that, and it was almost
like being back in the log road camp only a lot nicer and cleaner. You did
have to go to a porta-potty to crap, and they had worker's changing rooms in
the big storage barn that had warm group showers men at one time, women at
another.
I was surprised that, because of my size, they wanted me for security rather
than for heavy labor. Seemed that there was some problems with these various
groups coming in and not all of them mixing well, and breaking up fights,
cooling people off, or just general peacemaking was needed. I had al-ready
discovered, to my delight, just how strong I was, and the word spread quick
that I really was a Hell's Angel on the run for something mean done in
California I don't know where that started but I
did nothing to stop it and that gave me a lot of authority. I mean, the tough
ones really thought I'd kill 'em without a second thought...
Of equal or greater importance to us was that we were working, by the second
week, in the very fields next to the campus. I'd routinely go over that way,
at least as far as the fence, and look across through the trees and see the
cars and heavy traffic there.
I could also feel the pulsing energy from the place, day and night, but not so
I could use it, grab it. I wasn't getting any visions or major flashbacks at
all; whatever power I had been able to draw from it seemed to have vanished.
It was supposed to take years for cataracts to completely blind you, which was
why it was never an emergency, but Angel had noticed very rapid deterioration,
greater blurring, graying out, and the splitting up of just about all bright
lights and brightly lit things into multiple images and often as a full
spectrum rather than as a point of light. Within a week of us moving on to the
property next to the campus, she couldn't see much of anything at all.
"It's that
power, " she said firmly. "Like what they say happens to folks who get too
near that 'tomic stuff."
"Radiation? The power's caused the blindness? Could be. It sure speeded it up.
But why you and not me?"
"I dunno, but "
"Yes?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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