Skeleton Crew

"Go home," he croaked. "Go home or go to California and find a Roger Corman movie to audition for." A plane droned somewhere far away, and he fell into a dozing fantasy: We are reported missing, the four of us. The search spreads outward from Horlicks. A farmer remembers being passed by a yellow Camaro "going like a bat out of hell." The search centers in the Cascade Lake area. Private pilots volunteer to do a quick aerial search, and one guy, buzzing the lake in his Beechcraft Twin Bonanza, sees a kid standing naked on the raft, one kid, one survivor, one— He caught himself on the edge of toppling over and brought his fist into his nose again, screaming at the pain.

The black thing arrowed at the raft immediately and squeezed underneath—it could hear, perhaps, or sense... or something.

Randy waited.

This time it was forty-five minutes before it came out.

His mind slowly orbited in the growing light.

{do you love yes I love rooting for the Yankees and Catfish do you love the Catfish ves I love the (Route 66 remember the Corvette George Maharis in the Corvette Martin Milner in the Corvette do you love the Corvette (yes I love the Corvette (I love do you love (so hot the sun is like a burning glass it was in her hair and it's the light I remember best the light the summer light (the summer light of) afternoon.

Randy was crying.

He was crying because something new had been added now—every time he tried to sit down, the thing slid under the raft. It wasn't entirely stupid, then; it had either sensed or figured out that it could get at him while he was sitting down.

"Go away," Randy wept at the great black mole floating on the water. Fifty yards away, mockingly close, a squirrel was scampering back and forth on the hood of Deke's Camaro. "Go away, please, go anywhere, but leave me alone. I don't love you."

The thing didn't move. Colors began to swirl across its visible surface.

(you do vou do love me) Randy tore his eyes away and looked at the beach, looked for rescue, but there was no one there, no one at all. His jeans still lay there, one leg inside out, the white lining of one pocket showing. They no longer looked to him as if someone was going to pick them up. They looked like relics.

He thought: If I had a gun, I would kill myself now.

He stood on the raft.

The sun went down.

Three hours later, the moon came up.

Not long after that, the loons began to scream.

Not long after that, Randy turned and looked at the black thing on the water. He could not kill himself, but perhaps the thing could fix it so there was no pain; perhaps that was what the colors were for.

(do you do you do you love) He looked for it and it was there, floating, riding the waves.

"Sing with me," Randy croaked. "I can root for the Yankees from the bleachers... I don't have to worry 'bout teachers... I'm so glad that school is out... I am gonna sing and shout " The colors began to form and twist. This time Randy did not look away He whispered, "Do you love?" Somewhere, far across the empty lake, a loon screamed.

 

 

Word Processor of the Gods

At first glance it looked like a Wang word processor—it had a Wang keyboard and a Wang casing. It was only on second glance that Richard Hagstrom saw that the casing had been split open (and not gently, either; it looked to him as if the job had been done with a hacksaw blade) to admit a slightly larger IBM cathode tube. The archive discs, which had come with this odd mongrel, were not floppy at all; they were as hard as the 45's Richard had listened to as a kid.

"What in the name of God is that?" Una asked as he and Nordhoff lugged it over to his study piece by piece. Nordhoff had lived next door to Richard Hagstrom's brother's family... Roger, Belinda, and their boy, Jonathan.

"Something Jon built," Richard said. "Meant for me to have it, Nordhoff says. It looks like a word processor."

"Oh yeah," Nordhoff said. He would not see his sixties again and he was badly out of breath. "That's what he said it was, the poor kid... think we could set it down for a minute, Hagstrom? I'm pooped."