The Blue Nowhere Part 29

"I was in college - at Berkeley. I'd been up hacking for about thirty-six hours straight and I went to this party."

"And what? You did it on a dare?"

"No, I fell asleep and woke up with it. Never did find out who did it to me."

"Makes you look like some kind of ex-marine."

The hacker glanced around - to make sure Jennie was gone and then walked to the counter, where she'd left the Pop-Tarts. He opened them up and took four of the pastries, offered one to Bishop.

"Not for me, thanks."

"I'll eat the roast beef too," Gillette said, nodding at Jennie's sandwiches. "It's just, I dream about these in prison. They're the best kind of hacker food - full of sugar and you can buy 'em by the case and they don't go bad." He wolfed down two at once. "They probably even have vitamins in them. I don't know. This'd be my staple when I was hacking. Pop-Tarts, pizza, Mountain Dew and Jolt cola." After a moment Gillette asked in a low voice, "Is your wife all right? That appointment she mentioned?"

He saw a faint hesitation in the detective's hand as he lifted the beer and took a sip. "Nothing serious... A few tests." Then, as if to deflect the course of this conversation, he said, "I'm going to check on Brandon."

When he returned a few minutes later Gillette held up the empty box of Pop-Tarts. "Didn't save any for you."

"That's okay." Bishop laughed and sat down again.

"How's your son?"

"Asleep. Did you and your wife have children?"

"No. We didn't want to at first... Well, I should say / didn't want to. By the time I did want to, well, I'd been busted. And then we were divorced."

"So you'd like kids?"

"Oh, yeah." He shrugged, brushed the pastry crumbs into his hand and deposited them on a napkin. "My brother's got two, a boy and a girl. We have a lot of fun together."

"Your brother?" Bishop asked.

"Ricky," Gillette said. "He lives in Montana. He's a park ranger, believe it or not. He and Carole - that's his wife -have this great house. Sort of a log cabin, a big one though." He nodded toward Bishop's backyard. "You'd appreciate their vegetable patch. She's a great gardener."

Bishop's eyes dipped to the tabletop. "I read your file."

"My file?" Gillette asked.

"Your juvenile file. The one you forgot to have shredded."

The hacker slowly rolled up his napkin then unrolled it. "I thought those were sealed."

"From the public they are. Not from the police."

"Why'd you do that?" Gillette asked coolly.

"Because you escaped from CCU. I ordered a copy when we found you'd skedaddled. I thought we might get some information that'd help track you down." The detective's imperturbable voice continued, "The social worker's report was included. About your family life. Or lack of family life... So tell me - why'd you lie to everybody?"

Gillette said nothing for a long moment.

Why'd you lie? he thought.

You lie because you can.

You lie because when you're in the Blue Nowhere you can make up whatever you want and n.o.body knows that what you're saying isn't true. You can drop into any chat room and tell the world that you live in a big beautiful house in Sunnyvale or Menlo Park or Walnut Creek and that your father is a lawyer or doctor or pilot and your mother is a designer or runs a flower store and your brother Rick is a state champion track star. And you can go on and on to the world about how you and your father built an Altair computer from a kit, six nights straight after he got home from work, and that's what got you hooked on computers.

What a great guy he is...

You can tell the world that even though your mother died of a tragic and unexpected heart attack you're still real close to your dad. He travels all over the world as a petroleum engineer but he always gets home to visit you and your brother for the holidays. And when he's in town you go over to his house every Sunday for dinner with him and his new wife, who's really nice, and you and he sometimes go into his den and debug script together or play a MUD game.

And guess what?

The world believes you. Because in the Blue Nowhere the only thing people have to go by are the bytes you key with your numb fingers.

The world never knows it's all a lie.

The world never knows you're the only child of a divorced mother who worked late three or four nights a week and went out with her "friends" - always male - the other nights. And that it wasn't her failed heart that killed her but her liver and her spirit, which both disintegrated at about the same time, when you were eighteen.

The world never knows that your father, a man of vague occupation, fulfilled the only potential he'd ever seemed destined for by leaving your mother and you on the day you entered third grade.

And that your homes were a series of bungalows and trailers in the shabbiest parts of Silicon Valley, that your only treasure was a cheap computer and that the only bill that ever got paid on time was the phone bill - because you paid it yourself out of paper-delivery money so that you'd be able to stay connected to the one thing that kept you from going mad with sorrow and loneliness: the Blue Nowhere.

Okay, Bishop, you caught me. No father, no siblings. An addictive, selfish mother. And me - Wyatt Edward Gillette, alone in my room with my companions: my Trash-80, my Apple, my Kaypro, my PC, my Toshiba, my Sun SPARCstation...

Finally he looked up and did what he'd never done before - not even to his wife - he told this entire story to another human being. Frank Bishop remained motionless, looking intently at Gillette's dark, hollow face. When the hacker had finished, Bishop said, "You social engineered your whole childhood."

"Yep."

"I was eight when he left," Gillette said, hands around his cola can, callused fingertips pressing the cold metal as if he were keying the words. / W-A-S E-I-G-H-T W-H-E-N... "He was ex-air force, my dad. He'd been stationed at Travis and when he got discharged he stayed in the area. Well, he stayed in the area occasionally. Mostly he was out with his service buddies or... well, you can figure out where he was when he didn't come home at night. The day he left was the only time we ever had a serious talk. My mother was out somewhere and he came into my room and said he had some shopping to do, why didn't I come along with him. That was pretty weird because we never did anything together."

Gillette took a breath, tried to calm himself. His fingers keyed a silent storm against the soda can.

P-E-A-C-E O-F M-I-N-D... P-E-A-C-E O-F M-l-N-D...

"We were living in Burlingame, near the airport, and my father and I got in the car and drove to this strip mall. He bought some things in a drugstore and then took me to the diner next to the railroad station. The food came but 1 was too nervous to eat. He didn't even notice. All of a sudden he put his fork down and looked at me and told me how unhappy he was with my mother and how he had to leave. I remembered how he put it. He said his peace of mind was jeopardized and he needed to move on for his personal growth."

P-E-A-C-E O-F...

Bishop shook his head. "He was talking to you like you were some buddy of his in a bar. Not a little boy, not his son. That was really bad."

"He said it was a tough decision to leave but it was the right thing to do and asked if I felt happy for him."

"He asked you that?"

Gillette nodded. "I don't remember what I said. Then we left the restaurant and we were walking down the street and maybe he noticed I was upset and he saw this store and said, Tell you what, son, you go in there and buy anything you want'."

"A consolation prize."

Gillette laughed and nodded. "I guess that's exactly what it was. The store was a Radio Shack. I just walked in and stood there, looking around. I didn't see anything, I was so hurt and confused, trying not to cry. I just picked the first thing I saw. A Trash-80."

"A what?"

"A TRS-80. One of the first personal computers."

A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G Y-O-U W-A-N-T...

"I took it home and started playing with it that night. Then I heard my mother come home and she and my father had a big fight and then he was gone and that was it."

T-H-E B-L-U-E N-O-.

Gillette smiled briefly, fingers tapping.

"That article I wrote? 'The Blue Nowhere'?"

"I remember," Bishop said. "It means cybers.p.a.ce."

"But it also means something else," Gillette said slowly.

N-O-W-H-E-R-E.

"What?"

"My father was air force, like I said. And when I was really young he'd have some of his military buddies over and they'd get drunk and loud and a couple of times they'd sing the air force song, 'The Wild Blue Yonder.' Well, after he left I kept hearing that song in my head, over and over, only I changed 'yonder' to 'nowhere,' the 'Wild Blue Nowhere,' because he was gone. He was nowhere." Gillette swallowed hard. He looked up. "Pretty stupid, huh?"

But Frank Bishop didn't seem to think there was anything stupid about this at all. With his voice filled with the sympathy that made him a natural family man he asked, "You ever hear from him? Or hear what happened to him?"

"Nope. Have no clue." Gillette laughed. "Every once in a while I think I should track him down."

"You'd be good at finding people on the Net."

Gillette nodded. "But I don't think I will."

Fingers moving furiously. The ends were so numb because of the calluses that he couldn't feel the cold of the soda can he was tapping them against.

O-F-F W-E G-O, I-N-T-O T-H-E.

"It gets even better - I learned Basic, the programming language, when I was nine or ten, and I'd spend hours writing programs. The first ones made the computer talk to me. I'd key, 'h.e.l.lo,' and the computer'd respond, 'Hi, Wyatt. How are you?' Then I'd type, 'Good,' and it would ask, 'What did you do in school today?' I tried to think of things for the machine to say that'd be what a real father would ask."

A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G Y-O-U W-A-N-T...

"All those e-mails supposedly from my father to the judge and those faxes from my brother about coming to live with him in Montana, all the psychologists' reports about what a great family life I had, about my dad being the best?... I wrote them all myself."

"I'm sorry," Bishop said.

Gillette shrugged. "Hey, I survived. It doesn't matter."

"It probably does," Bishop said softly.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Then the detective rose and started to wash the dishes. Gillette joined him and they chatted idly - about Bishop's orchard, about life in San Ho. When they'd finished drying the plates Bishop drained his beer then glanced coyly at the hacker. He said, "Why don't you give her a call."

"Call? Who?"

"Your wife."

"It's late," Gillette protested.

"So wake her up. She won't break. Doesn't sound to me like you've got a lot to lose anyway." Bishop pushed the phone toward the hacker.

"What should I say?" He lifted the receiver uncertainly.

"You'll think of something."

"I don't know..."

The cop asked, "You know the number?"

Gillette dialed it from memory - fast, before he balked - thinking: What if her brother answers? What if her mother answers? What ifa"

"h.e.l.lo."

His throat seized.

"h.e.l.lo?" Elana repeated.

"It's me."

A pause while she undoubtedly checked a watch or clock. No comment about the lateness of the hour was forthcoming, however.

Why wasn't she saying anything?

Why wasn't he?

"Just felt like calling. Did you find the modem? I left in it the mailbox."

She didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, "I'm in bed."

A searing thought: Was she alone in bed? Was Ed next to her? In her parents' house? But he pushed the jealousy aside and asked softly, "Did I wake you up?"

"Is there something you want, Wyatt?"

He looked at Bishop but the cop merely gazed at him with an eyebrow raised in impatience.

"I..."

Elana said, "I'm going to sleep now."

"Can I call you tomorrow?"

"I'd rather you didn't call the house. Christian saw you the other night and he wasn't very happy about it."