Springboard

liked going out in RW that much — but here he was with a little defenseless person, and he was completely in charge. What if something happened to him? What would happen to the baby?

Come on, Jay, you can handle a walk in the park.

Well, maybe.

It was a new feeling for him, this responsibility. Maybe it was because he hadn’t yet had enough time with his son on his own. Saji was always there, ready to help out. God, was this what she went through when he was at work?

It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle the physical part of things. He was brighter than most people he knew — come to think of it, brighter than most people he didn’t know and would never meet. He could handle a bottle, and Saji had supplied some milk for the one in the little incubator bag at the back of the carriage. Plus he had a binky, if all else failed.

The pram looked like those seen in old movies set in the late 1890s, a big black carriage with huge wheels and a pullover top that protected the baby from the sun and errant looks from strangers. He and Saji had looked all over D.C. for one like it. Saji had read somewhere that babies felt more secure if they could look at their parents, so it had to be the pram.

No, it wasn’t the physical part of things that made him nervous. It was the thought that maybe something would happen from which he couldn’t protect his child. It was a heavy weight, and one that explained all kinds of things he’d seen in other people with children. He had been admitted to the secret fatherhood; the fatherhood of knowing just how terrifying the world really was.

Before, when he’d worried about things going to hell, it hadn’t been so bad — the world only had to last long enough to see himself and his friends through it. After that, nothing mattered much anyway. But that time period had now been extended another lifetime, and it added a certain amount of pressure.

His son gurgled a happy sound, and Gridley looked down, feeling a warm pleasure run through him. If there was a dark side to these new minefields of responsibility, there was also a light one. He’d never felt such unconditional love for anyone in his life. Whether he was up at five in the morning feeding the boy, or changing a dirty diaper, that pleasure didn’t diminish in the least. Part of him knew that this was purely biological, but he just didn’t care.

Amazing.

There was a pond at the center of the park, where ducks swam. He’d brought part of an old loaf of bread to feed them, thinking it might amuse his son.

But maybe not. No one had bothered to tell him that babies younger than about six months tended to just sit there, not doing anything. Well, if you didn’t count eating, crying, and filling diapers. All his life he’d seen pictures and vids of babies crawling or running, or sitting up and playing. He just hadn’t been told that there was a time frame around such things.

Oh, well. He could always just sit and hold him.

He glanced down again, and little Mark was looking up at him.

“What are you looking at, little tiger?”

The boy grinned a toothless smile. Daddy was talking to him.

Jay wished he could have this much fun at work. He’d been struggling to figure out his latest puzzle. It seemed so close sometimes, as if there was something that he just wasn’t seeing.

One of his old mentors had said more than once that his intuition was a plus for programming: that it could short-circuit hours of scut work with one sudden realization. This time, though, it just wasn’t coming.

Ahead was the pond. He looked at the water. The breeze pushed ripples across it. A pair of white ducks swam sedately along. He noted the details for future VR work, and looked for a likely place to park the pram.

“Wahhhhhhhhh!”

At Mark’s sudden wail, Jay went tense.

“What is it, pumpkin? What’s the matter?”

He leaned down and sniffed. It didn’t smell like a full diaper.

He quickly ran through the list. Hungry? Didn’t sound like a hungry cry. He reached in the little incubator bag anyway and produced the bottle, warmed to just the right temperature.

Nope. He didn’t want that.

The crying went on. Jay began to feel an edge of panic.

Binky, binky, fallback plan.

He lowered the gemlike plastic pacifier to his son’s mouth, which popped open and latched right on.

The crying stopped immediately.

Whew.

He pictured what he might have done if the binky hadn’t worked: running full-tilt across the park, heading home to get Saji.

Glad it didn’t come to that.

He looked down and saw that Mark had spit out the binky. His little arms flailed around for it in frustration. Jay could see that it had fallen just to the right of the boy’s head, and reached down to get it. Mark’s hands twitched, trying to find his lost comforter. The boy had such a look of irritation that Jay found himself thinking about his own problems.

Yeah, he thought, all I need is a little help from someone else, get them to reach down and hand me the solution.

And then the realization clicked, the situation spun around, and he saw how he might beat the locked-room mystery.

Yes!

Jay smiled at his son again, and stroked his head. Not bad — take the baby to the park, and cut the Gordian knot at the same time.

Mark’s eyes started to close. Get a binky, go to sleep. Must be nice…

Jay grinned.

Smokin’ Jay Gridley was about to ride again.

He turned the pram around and headed home. Saji would be done teaching her lesson by now, the boy would nap for at least an hour, and Jay could get on-line and run with his new idea.

10

Wormwood, South Dakota

Instinct was like inspiration. Neither were things they taught in computer school, though a few of Jay’s teachers had spoken about one or the other. Nor were they things you should depend upon with any regularity; then again, they weren’t things you should ignore when they tweaked you, either.

Jay felt that tweak again now — a sixth sense of somehow knowing he was close. It was different from wishful thinking — he’d experienced that often enough to recognize the feeling.

The scenario wasn’t a complicated one. It was an old standby he’d built years ago, a town in the Old West, with cowboys and shopkeepers and schoolmarms, and that atmospheric High Noon twang underlying it. He had changed names and places and upgraded the sensoria, and it was one of his favorites.

Jay strode along the boardwalk, tipping his hat to the ladies he passed, inhaling the odors of dust and horse dung. Tumbleweeds had gathered in the alleyways, and the sun-bleached storefronts and graying wood buildings baked in dryness.

Ahead, at the entrance to the town saloon, the Hickory Branch, a figure suddenly moved from the boardwalk and into the place.

Jay wasn’t sure who he was hunting, but he knew, he knew that this was his quarry. His realization at the park with his baby son had pointed him in this direction, and it felt right.

He hurried toward the saloon. There were two ways into the Hickory Branch — the front door, which, unlike so many movies, wasn’t a pair of useless swinging doors that did nothing to keep out the heat, dust, and flies, but a wooden-framed etched-glass panel that closed just like any other door. There was also a back door, plain old wood,