Three
Richard judged the Victorian mansion to be large, but
far from the castle he had imagined. It was the hill itself that loomed
like some medieval fortress over the town nestled at its base.
Approaching the edifice, he drove through a largely boarded-up and
abandoned commercial district with a small residential area lurking in the
darkness behind it. Yellowish lights twinkled through the trees.
A wrought-iron gothic fence surrounded the base of
the hill, but a gate opened as they approached, hinting that the
twenty-first century had infiltrated the old Victorian property. Richard
put the car in low gear to negotiate the steep drive. The limousine
barely managed the sharp curves zig-zagging three hundred feet above the
highway to the mouth of a large, four-car garage protruding from a face of
rock below the house.
“Nice touch, don’t you think?” Sarah said with a
strained smile. “I always did appreciate the courage of the architect who
built this house.”
Richard pulled into the lighted garage and shut off
the engine. The machine closing in from behind turned away before
entering the circle of light cast from overhead fluorescents. The
glow seemed to come from cooling fins mounted on an electric motor on the
back of the machine. He had been briefed by Sarah about the Billy Trevor’s technological
prowess, but had thought the details of the briefing the forgivable
exaggeration of a mother trying to emphasize the best qualities of a
troubled son.
Sarah threw open the door to the limo. “Follow me.
I want to show you something before we visit Billy proper.”
Richard followed as instructed up a flight of cement
stairs rising along the left, inside wall of the garage, enveloped by the
wake of her perfume and captivated by the generous sway of her hips. The
click of her high heels echoed in the quiet.
The door at the top of the stairs opened onto a
ground floor hallway. The hallway, in turn, opened onto a lavishly
furnished reception room with ceilings that soared to third floor
skylights. Oak-framed doors positioned about the central room led into
adjacent libraries, dens, and parlors.
Two curving staircases wound along opposite walls to
the second and third floors of the mansion. Crystal chandeliers cast
sparkling light upon plastic tarps thrown over the exposed surfaces of
antique furnishings. Even paintings on the walls and knickknacks on
tables and mantles were neatly enshrouded in transparent cellophane.
Richard was puzzled. “Is the whole house sealed up
like this? Where does he live?”
Sarah glanced at him uneasily. “Wait until you see.
We have to go back down to the garage.”
They backtracked to the subterranean garage. Richard
had missed a ten digit keyboard mounted on the back wall. Sarah tapped
five digits during the time it took Richard to correct his initial
impression of the natural stone wall. He had been misled by a fiberglass
simulation. A portion moved aside, and he gaped in amazement at the
chamber that lay within. Indirect lighting from recessed fixtures shone
across walls of stainless steel and a floor of black marble.
“This is Billy’s hide-a-way,” Sarah explained,
“Billy’s way of controlling his environment, according to Doctor Freud.
And that’s Doctor Heinrich Freud, not the original Sigmund. Even the
Trevor fortune can’t bring back the dead, unfortunately. Or perhaps not
so unfortunately.”
Curiously, the walls didn’t quite reach the floor,
and from beneath the gap, a machine emerged, a half-foot high device with
tracked wheels and a single lens on a turret that spun once and focused on
the newcomers. Richard smelled burnt metal and spotted the same array of
cooling fins on the back of the device that he had seen glowing on the
remote-controlled roller skate.
A young-sounding voice echoed from hidden speakers.
“Mother. It’s nice to see you back so soon. Do you remember the way?”
“Yes, dear, I remember the way.”
Sarah made a quarter turn to face an opening door.
She led Richard down a mirrored corridor and entered a chamber resembling
a set from a science-fiction movie. Computer consoles, screens, and video
monitors lined walls of polished steel. The video monitors showed
views of the grounds outside, several in infrared. Some appeared to be
views of highway intersections in and about Silver Ridge. On one screen,
Richard caught a view of the deer carcass on an empty stretch of road.
Billy Trevor rolled into the room, a handsome young
man of medium height seated in a motorized wheelchair. He looked younger
than his photographs and stared up at his visitors with displeasure.
“Relax,” Sarah said. “You knew I wouldn’t be
traveling alone, certainly not without my private attorney. God forbid I
should say or do something that someone construes as a binding contract.
Without your father, it’s all I can do to hold onto what’s ours these
days. This gentleman is Richard Welk.”
Billy nodded acquiescence. “Welcome to my fun and
games, Mr. Welk.”
“Fascinating. What was that machine that followed us
in?”
“That was my mechanical legs taking my eyes and ears
where they otherwise can’t go on their own.”
“I’m impressed,” Richard admitted.
“I’m not,” Sarah shot at him.
Billy smiled. “My mother considers my toys
irrelevant. I suppose that comes from a maternal point of view, when a
mother fears her son has gone off the deep end.”
“He’s trying to upstage me, Richard.”
“Want to see my machine shop?” Billy made the offer
with a grin, knowing full well he had already succeeded. “I have a few
projects underway this evening. Things are really humming.”
“Sure.” Richard tried to hold his growing excitement
at bay. “Is that it?”
He pointed to a monitor where a complex mass of
gleaming machines churned away at a succession of parts passing along an
assembly line.
“That’s where I do my stock die-casting and machine
work.”
“Did you do that all by yourself?” Richard asked as
casually as possible.
“No, of course not. The concept is mine, and all of
the key manufacturing techniques, but I had the construction farmed out
during the past three years. I’ve been in the hospital recovering from an
accident, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”
Richard knew about the accident. Sarah easily
anticipated his next question. “Billy is free to spend all the money he
needs to indulge in his hobbies. Howard saw to that. Even I can’t stop
him.”
Richard turned his attention to the boy’s
wheelchair. According to Sarah, Billy had taken a liking to a local girl
and had been terrorized by her three brutal brothers, one of which may
have caused the automobile accident that left both Billy and the girl
hospitalized. The girl’s injuries had been superficial. Billy had been
left a paraplegic.
Richard gestured with a nod to the camera on treads
still following them about like a living thing. “Why do they run so hot?
I can smell the heat. The one on the highway that followed us in actually
glowed in the dark. And what are they for?”
Billy touched controls on his wheelchair. He spun
about and taped a key on a console. Miniature machines poured from
beneath the walls, machines with lenses and machines with pinchers, and
others of unidentifiable purpose, some on wheels, others on tracks, and a
few on insectile legs. The room filled with the smell of ozone.
Billy gestured magnanimously. “Most of these are
security and self-defensive devices.”
“Weapons?”
“They can shoot darts and high voltage electrodes.”
“Like a stun gun.”
“Exactly. Others are maintenance and surveillance
drones and mobile tools.”
And each, Richard noticed, moved with a life of its
own. “Controlled by a central computer by radio?”
“For the most part, they operate independently,”
Billy said. “They have their own microchip programming, then some higher
executive programming from the mainframe computers to fall back on. I’m
at the top of the command hierarchy, of course. The fins aren’t as hot as
you’d think, just thin so they’ll radiate more efficiently. We came up
with this sulfur-lithium battery that suits our purposes except for the
excessive heat, but we modulate the infrared emissions for communications
purposes, so we’re not at a disadvantage.”
Sarah sighed in exasperation. “Told you so.”
Billy wheeled his chair about. “Follow me. This
will really freak you out.”
Already too stunned to react, Richard followed the
rolling chair through an opening door and down a dimly lit corridor. A
side door a few meters away slid open, revealing the scene Richard had
seen on the monitor, a densely packed chamber of machinery operating in
almost total silence. Partially assembled machines rolled by on a nearby
conveyor. No two were exactly alike. The extent of the miniaturization
and the complexity of the technology at hand left Richard feeling uneasy.
“Don’t be overly impressed,” Billy said. “It’s just
a trick of metallurgy. We use an alloy of magnesium, which is soft and
easy to machine. Exposed to gamma radiation, it hardens to a tempered
state that outperforms even titanium.”
“Gamma radiation?”
“A modified irradiation unit used in the food
industry,” Billy said evenly. “Most of the electronics I’ve had farmed
out, but some of the stuff I’ve had to assemble here, especially the
parallel programming processors. Modular components get assembled here by
the computers, rather like a mail merge program feeding names and
addresses to form letters.”
“You said we,” Richard reminded the boy. “We use an
alloy of magnesium, you said. Who’s we?”
Billy and his mother exchanged looks. “Billy, tell
the nice man who is helping you,” Sarah said gently.
“I find your attempt at an explanation endlessly
amusing, Mother. Be my guest.”
Sarah turned to Richard. “The doctors say it’s a
manifestation of MPS.”
“Multiple personality syndrome.” Richard tried not
to look unsettled. “He has some sort of alternate personality?”
“It’s more than that,” Sarah ventured. “It’s more
like possession, as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine
who or what is doing the possessing. I’m far from inclined to entertain
religious notions. Even Billy agrees that a certain degree of
neurological injury must be at the root of it all. There’s no simple
explanation for it, as you can see for yourself.”
Richard could feel his heart picking up its beat
again, not that it had returned entirely to normal since the glowing
roller skate had made its appearance.
“Then what?” he said. He looked to Billy for an
answer.
Billy shrugged and grinned meekly. “I was in a coma
for a few months. That’s where I met him. In my dreams. Corin, he calls
himself. He’s from the future, from the twenty-third century,
originally. From his point of view, I’m supposed to be a past
personality, someone he once was and still has some connection with. I
don’t know what he wants with me. He hasn’t been too specific as yet.
But he helped with my toys, as mother calls them.”
Richard glared at Sarah with unspoken accusation.
This was more than she had prepared him for, more than he was qualified to
handle.
“I have no complaints,” Billy said. “These little
gadgets keep me company. They give me something to occupy my mind and my
time. The real key to our success is the programming that goes with the
parallel processors. That’s Corin’s doing. The functioning of nervous
systems of living things has more to do with fractals and collections of
simple algorithms and a science called chaos than anyone imagines. Or so
Corin says. His programming technique does seem to give my toys a
respectable level of autonomous intelligence. At the same time, it’s
simple modular logic, once you get the hang of it. It’s incredibly
elegant.”
Richard reeled with disbelief and confusion.
“We’re not here for explanations that go beyond a
basic business education,” Sarah said angrily. “Richard, tell Billy why
we’re here.”
Richard had difficulty switching tracks. “Billy,
your mother wants you to return to Massachusetts with us. You were in
therapy. Legally, if you refuse to cooperate, she can have you committed
for psychiatric evaluation.”
Billy grinned. “You gonna help her do that to me?”
“I came along for the ride. And to lend some weight
to your mother’s wishes.”
“Mr. Welk, doesn’t it seem odd that my mother hasn’t
already gone through the usual legal channels to have me declared unfit to
spend my father’s inheritance as I please? Instead, she brings her
personal lawyer along to intimidate me. Want to know why?”
Richard looked to Sarah for an explanation. Sarah
looked away, defeated.
“We’ve already undergone psychiatric evaluation.
Corin was kind enough to keep a low profile. It’s true that I’ve been in
therapy, but only for my physical disability. I’ve been declared legally
sane.”
Richard turned to Sarah. “Is that so?”
“Judge for yourself,” she said bluntly. “How can I
be expected to tolerate this situation?”
“If you’re legally helpless,” Richard said, “why did
you allow me to believe you still had options to exercise?”
Sarah drew close and spoke softly, trying to exclude
Billy from the conversation. “Richard, I was after the human element. I
was hoping Billy would see you as something of a father figure. What else
was I to do? I don’t want to leave Billy here by himself!”
Richard looked back to the boy for his feelings on
the matter.
Billy held both hands out in a gesture of
helplessness. “As long as you’re here, I guess we’re both going to be
looking to you to mediate our conflict of interest.”
“Billy, you’re planning on taking revenge on those
horrible Darker brothers,” Sarah said a bit more stridently. “And it’s my
guess that you’re even planning on getting back together with that skinny
little sister of theirs!”
Billy raised an eyebrow. “All this for that? What
for? Look at me?” He turned the chair to face Richard. “Hysterical
paralysis, they claim.” He slapped his thigh. “Numb as a slab of meat.
They tell me it’s all in my head.” He chuckled nervously. “Mother’s
right in a way. I’ve got problems, but I’ve got to work most of them out
for myself. Even Dr. Freud agrees. That’s why I’m here. Still, I
understand your concern. And Mother’s. From your point of view, I would
guess Corin’s a bit hard to swallow.”
“I’d have an easier time swallowing a Mack truck,”
Richard said with a raised eyebrow of his own.
Billie chuckled. “Nicely put, but I’m not planning
on being here long. Give me some time and I’ll go back to Boston
peacefully.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. I just need to be alone for a time.
Consider it part of my therapy. This is where it all started. This is
where I’ll end it.”
Sarah whirled Billy’s chair around to face her.
“They’ll just hurt you again!”
The boy sighed. “Mother, I don’t want revenge on the
Darker brothers. And I don’t think Evie would want anything to do with me
in this condition.”
Richard took Sarah’s arm. “It’s going to do more
harm than good to try to force the issue. Perhaps we can bargain, reach
an accord of some kind.”
“What?” Sarah cried. “What in God’s name do you have
in mind?”
Richard looked about the room again. “All of this is
pretty impressive. I don’t think we need to be too concerned with your
security set-up here, Billy. How much time do you need to do your thing?”
Billy considered in silence. “Not long. A month or
two.”
“How about four weeks?”
Billy shrugged. “Maybe. What happens in four
weeks?”
“We return in four weeks to check on your welfare and
negotiate a new deal. In the meanwhile, if Sarah has no objections, I’ll
give you a call now and then, just to assure your mother that everything
is going smoothly.”
Sarah looked displeased and suspicious. “You
mercenary bastard, you’re more interested in Corin’s toys than in my son’s
mental or physical well-being.”
Richard faced the woman, puzzled that she could take
Corin so lightly. “These toys as you’ve called them may have more than a
few patentable applications among them.”
“And what about Billy, may I ask?”
“Allow me and Billy an open line of communication. I
need time to make sense of all this. I’m out of my field of expertise,
but so may be your illustrious Heinrich Freud.”
“What form of communication do you have in mind?”
Billy said quietly.
“Surely you’re not out of touch with the outside
world,” Richard said.
“Certainly not. I use e-mail to order things I need
and exchange information with people who have been helping me with
technical matters.”
Richard nodded his understanding. “Then we can
communicate in that fashion.”
Sarah shuddered in horror. “Richard, didn’t you hear
his change of voice? That’s not Billy. It’s that horrid Corin. We can’t
leave him like this.”
Richard hadn’t noticed any change in the boy, except
perhaps a slightly more serious attitude. “Sarah, if Billy has already
passed a psychiatric evaluation, I won’t be able to get a judge to order
another one without good cause. What do you want me to do?”
Sarah threw her arms up and turned away, pacing in
the background while Richard handed
the boy a business card. “My phone number, e-mail and fax. Don’t let any
of these toys and that manufacturing process of yours get away from you.
When you’re finished doing your thing here, let me put you in touch with
Trevor Industries’ engineering department. In the meanwhile, keep a low
profile. There are people who would take this all away from you, if you
let them.”
Sarah reacted to Richard’s cold-blooded attitude with
shock. Billy took the warning in stride. “Give me my four weeks.”
“What if the Darker brothers find out you’re here
alone?” Sarah asked of the boy.
“They can’t get through my security, Mother.”
“You’re going to invite Evie up here. I just know
you are. You’re going to start a relationship with that frayed little
trollop again.”
Billy put his hands on his legs. “What would I do
with her? I haven’t even been able to masturbate since the accident.”
Sarah’s countenance smoothed over to one of solemn
determination. “Stay away from the townspeople. If I detect the
slightest hint of trouble, I swear I’ll find a way to have you put away
for your own good.”
Billy remained unperturbed. “As you say, Mother.”
Sarah turned about and stormed from the chamber.
Richard gave a final glance at the silent machinery churning about him.
“If Corin’s not for real,” Billy said quietly, “where
did this all come from? Is that what you’re thinking?”
Richard decided not to take the bait. “That’s out of
my field of expertise.”
Billy wheeled his chair closer. “I may need someone
to call in case of trouble, someone with a level head.”
“I’m at your disposal, as long as you’re not here to
hurt anyone, or risk your own welfare.”
“I’m not here to hurt anyone,” Billy said. “I just
need to sort out my feelings. This used to be our summer home. We were a
family once, Mom and Dad and me. I came back for some peace and quiet.
And some privacy.”
Richard nodded satisfaction. “I can buy that.”
“Can you calm Mother?”
“I can calm Sarah, but your mother does her own
thinking.”
“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Billy smiled. He
turned the wheelchair aside and led the way back to the garage, stopping
at the edge of the concrete floor. “I’m glad Mother has you for a
friend.”
“It may be wise to allow her to be a mother from time
to time, Billy. I don’t think she feels she’s been a good one.”
Billy nodded agreement. “I won’t take this any
further than it has to go. When it’s over, I’ll come home.”
Once in the car with the engine idling and Sarah at
his side, Richard took stock of the situation. There was nothing more to
accomplish. In order to help Sarah cope with the young man, he’d have to
wean his way into Billy’s confidence. He still had no clear idea of what
was happening beneath the old mansion.
Richard backed the car from the garage, leaving the
boy in the wheelchair a silhouette against the light of his underground
fortress.
Sarah wept quietly as Richard wove his way down the
hill and drove swiftly away from Silver Ridge. “I should have you fired,
Richard Welk!”
Richard steered the car along the meandering road in
the night. Even the moon had hidden behind towering clouds. “You would
have difficulty replacing all my many talents and useful functions,” he
said, trying to keep the mood light, wondering what more she had expected
of him. “Where would a new man begin?”
“Damn you, Richard Welk! Damn you and Billy to
hell!” She took a deep breath. “And back again!” she added quickly.
“I’ll drag you both back by the scuff of your necks myself!”
