Dreams That Burn In The Night (14 page)

"What does he look
like? How will I know him when I see him?" I asked.

On a monitor beside
my head, a series of telephoto stills of Michael Bantam appeared on the screen, piped in direct
from Central. As the series of photographs flashed across the screen,
biographical information automatically printed out across the
bot­tom half of the screen. Central's computers were really on the ball.

"You'll know him
when you see him," said the old man with a smile that had no smile to it. "He's young, red hair
cut short. There's a scar over his left eye and his face is pale like dirty newspaper. You'll
know him when you see him. He'll be coming along grinning, he'll be laughing at me, but not for
long." Again the old man let his hand rest meaningfully on his overcoat pocket.

"If I see him, I'll
tell him you're looking for him," I assured him. I glanced at the monitors. A pretty accurate
description the old man gave. At least there was a record of Michael Bantam.

Why the hell am I
letting him go? What the hell is going down at Central? Have they gone soft in their computer
programs? I slammed my fist down on the console, punching in angrily to Central. I'm going to get
some answers! I've had about all I can take. I don't know what the hell is going on. This man's a
crimi­nal whether he's on file or not, and I got every right to burn him down.

I start to speak
but the old man cuts in and I listen and wait, choking on my own anger and
frustration.

"He'll never get
away with it! Nobody does that to me and gets away with it! I'll see him dead before the night is
gone." The old man was livid with rage.

The circuit
monitoring panels were all flashing emergency reds and I knew the computer system was pushing
toward an overload.

I punched a sharp
query at Central: "What the goddamn . . ."

"Why don't you
follow me," said the old man, beckoning the mobile unit toward him. "Just down this street and
left a little ways down the alley. Yes, why don't you follow me." He began walking.

I looked at my
sector chart. The alley was the cutoff point at the end of my patrol sector. That was someone
else's territory. I punched in this information. Awaited a go-ahead.

"Hartmann here.
Ignore boundaries. Follow without restriction or limitation. Full monitoring, automatic filing,
total surveillance."

I shrugged. It was
a day for breaking the rules. I activated the mobile unit and it began tracking and pursuing the
old man. To­gether, they moved down the street toward the alley.

I started to beep
in an acknowledgment of the order.

Suddenly,
everything went dead. Console, monitors, linkups, activation circuits. Everything. Nothing coming
in, nothing going out. Computer overload. It had to be. The existence of the old man with no
identity records, with no file tapes, was an insoluble problem. It wasn't supposed to be
possible.

The womb couch
cradled me like a hand, the release catches that would free me from its comfortable grip frozen
into place by the power failure. I sat in the dark, felt like a helpless stuffed animal in the
hands of a child.

I never felt so
useless in my life. I struggled against the lock in the couch web, trying to force it manually,
but it was impossible to shake loose. I was stuck there, helpless, like a butterfly stuck to a
display board with a pin.

I shouted my
frustrations at the darkened console in front of me. There was nothing I could do but wait.
Nothing, not one damn thing!

It wasn't a minor
overload. It must have been the granddaddy of granddaddies. My entire sector, from street unit to
computer master terminal, had blanked. Whoever was responsible for pro­gramming a computer
solution on this case ought to get burned down. It was an error on the scale of programming a
computer to find the square root of zero! Somebody was going to be up the computer without a
program!

There must have
been one hell of a lot of damage to repair. My wrist chronometer wasn't working. Just guessing,
I'd say I sat there maybe an hour or more. Probably closer to two.

The power came back
on around 0418 hours. Maybe 0419.

Central was on the
line while I was still blinking my eyes, try­ing to adjust to the console lights when they
flashed back on.

Commander
Hartmann's voice almost broke my eardrums. I winced under my audio helmet and turned down the
audio pickup.

"What's happening
down there?" he demanded.

I rubbed my eyes,
waiting for them to adjust. The monitors were flashing back on, focusing and retuning for maximum
image clarity.

"Locate Pickup 27,
Monitor 7!" I shouted. The monitor for 7 had not focused properly yet. The blurred pattern on the
monitor merged and then refocused. The mobile unit that had been as-

signed to the
suspect had been stopped dead in its tracks just as it was turning into the alley. When the power
surged on, the unit completed the turn, its scanners probing the alley.

"Position," clacked
the computer. "Pickup 27, Monitor 7."

Mobile unit moves
forward into the alley. Scanners set. Audio punched in.

Tapes filing. Red
flash on my console. Mobile unit activates an emergency panel. Other units from other sectors on
standby with possible intercept patterns.

There's a body in
the center of the alley. My mouth drops open in shock. The computer frantically begins absorbing
data, counter-referencing, automatic alert all sectors.

That haggard face,
the sunken eyes, the old coat. A knife stick­ing out of the old man's chest.
Unmistakable.

I go to full zoom,
extreme close-up, lateral pan. Very clearly marked. A color-coded homicide tag attached to the
handle of the knife. I punch in for a close-up on the card. It tells me that the victim was
murdered, unmonitored, discovered by first shift of sector 8, assignment G, shift 1 carry-over,
that the body was overdue for pickup by sanitation. There was a blue sticker on the end of the
tag that meant preserve body for evidence, autopsy mandatory.

Sweet
Jesus!

The computer reads
out:
"decedent
. . .
farris,
Jonathan
FRANKLIN. MALE.
CAUCASIAN. AGE 57.  BIRTH DATE  2053/03.09.

causation:
Knife wound through right ventricle,
estimated time expiration
... 3 hours, 27 minutes, 55 seconds when
first discovered,
update est. t. exp.
this scan: 6 hours, 19 minutes,
31 seconds,
death
. . . instantaneous,
conclusion
. . .
homicide, motives
. . .
unknown, suspects
. . .
unknown.
Actual crime
unmonitored. No more information available without request through proper channels to sector 8.
Case jurisdiction . . . sector 8. System breakdown factor in loss of information. Suggest
alter­nate . . ."

I cut the computer
off and sat on the switch that hooked me into Central. Commander Hartmann appeared on a video
monitor to my right. My console camera automatically plugged me into his office.

We just sat there
and stared at each other, too shocked to even speak. I felt sick, physically sick.

"When a man dies,
they take his identity file off record," said Commander Hartmann. His face was pale with shock.
"The com­puter was able to correctly identify Farris . . ."

"But..." I started
to say.

"From information
already on file in the Death Register," he continued.

I got a cold
feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Are you trying to
tell me the reason we couldn't get a make on him is because he was already dead? Are you saying
he was dead when I picked him up in my sector? That we had no tape records of him because his
files listed him as deceased?"

Commander Hartmann
shuddered and stared down at the blank surface of his desk. "I don't have an explanation. I'm not
sure I want one. Christ! Christ!" A nervous tic jerked one side of his face grotesquely. He was
struggling to maintain his grip on re­ality.

Jesus! I turned
away from Hartmann's monitor and stared at the corpse of Farris.

"He was dead three
hours before I punched into my shift! But . . . but. . ." Words failed me. I couldn't move,
couldn't think. I sat in my womb couch, paralyzed.

I'm just a womb
cop, an extension of my computers, the driver of the car. My job's driving, punching in, and
doing what I'm trained for, not explaining the engine. This was out of my league. I only know
what the computers know. Then I act on it. That's my job. That's all I want to do.

Commander Hartmann
was on the edge of hysteria.

"Command decision!"
he ordered, his voice ragged. It was a di­rect order.

I was confused.
Hell, I was scared. I was terrified. I knew the decision he expected me to make. I just sat there
stunned. I wanted to pretend I couldn't hear him, to pretend that I didn't know what the hell he
was talking about.

"I SAID COMMAND
DECISION!" repeated Hartmann, shouting, his voice cracking with emotion.

I punched into
Central, pressed the automatic filing code. I tried to stay calm but my hands shook as I dialed
in.

It was the hardest
thing I ever did, the most difficult command decision I ever made.

My voice sounded
distant and cold, as if it belonged to some-

one else, as I
punched in the only command decision I could pos­sibly make,
"arrest michael
bantam for the murder of
JONATHAN FARRIS. CAPTURE AND EXECUTE ON SIGHT. VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL CODE, SECTION 81-4.
THIS IS A PRIORITY COMMAND. IMPLEMENT IMMEDIATELY."

The report goes to
Central. The first time, I hope the only time in my life, I've made a decision that isn't based
on cold hard facts. You tell me what my decision was based on. An eyewitness account of a murder
from the victim? I'm not sure I know.

I waited for a
decision from Central. They have all the evi­dence I have. Trouble is, the information I acted on
will never compute, and I know it. They could have my head for a thing like that. I'm a mass of
jelly, a shock cube of raw nerves, waiting, just waiting.

The seconds crawl
by slowly. I can feel the sweat pouring from me, seeping into the soft cushion of the womb couch
at my back. An hour goes by like an eternity bathed in my own sweat.

Central links up.
"subject:  command decision of womb

COP 345-45,
STEVENS, ROGER DAVIS, CASE NUMBER 87-41 la (SECTOR 8, JURISDICTION SUPERSEDED, APPROVED TRANSFER
COMMAND DECISION TO SECTOR 7), HOMICIDE, DECISION ON AP­PREHENSION AND EXECUTION OF MICHAEL
BANTAM .   .  ."

There was a pause.
Oh God no, I thought, here it comes . . .

Central continued
"approved, michael bantam appre­hended
DISTRICT 9. EXECUTED FOR
VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL CODE, SECTION 81-4. CONFIRMED. SPECIAL CITATION OF MERIT ISSUED THIS DATE,
WOMB COP 345-45, STEVENS, ROGER DAVIS, FOR INDIVIDUAL EFFORT WITHOUT AID OF COMPUTER ASSIS­TANCE
.   .   . CONGRATULATIONS."

What really
happened that rainy night? I'm not sure I really want to know. As a very good computer friend of
mine once said, it simply does not compute.

Down deep, I kind
of hope it stays that way.

There are some
things that computers are not meant to know.

Koda was a twin
with a brother. Koda, the seeker of the first light, was good. But Moka, his many-eyed brother,
had a bad face. Before they were born they asked the swimming birds how they might enter into the
world of their mother.

The swimming birds
could give them no answer, for Koda and Moka were sorcerers, sorcerers come in eggs of the sky
with burning colors.

Koda, of the
sky-color star egg, said, "I am born as others." And he came from the bottom of his mother,
covered in shiny af­terbirth. Born walking, he shed the shiny afterbirth like a snake its skin.
And his face was a man face.

But Moka, the too
proud, came through his mother's side and his afterbirth was dirt-colored and black. And it hung
upon him and he walked and his face was hidden from man.

And Koda's egg
healed its wound of birthing and became a cir­cle again and its life continued in the great life
of all. But Moka's egg had great fire cracks in its side and it caught fire and burned with
strange colors. And the watchers knew that surely evil had lived through the life of Moka's egg
and that it was accursed.

Moka destroyed his
egg mother and thus it was thought that he would destroy the egg of his brother. But the sun
spirit took Koda's egg in its hands and lifted it on a tree of burning back into the sky, where
its light was continued in the light of the stars of all the nights of the world.

This is the tale of
Koda and Moka, the strange gods who could not stay. I am Saksis, the teller of men's dreams. And
this is Saksis' own dream, this tale of Koda and Moka. And as a story is passed from the mouth of
one to another and then to another hi wakefulness, this dream is passed hi my sleep to another in
his
sleep and then to another until the
day of its telling by one whose face is too far from my dreams for my seeing.