Neal Stephenson - Interface

Down the street, set anachronistically into the sandstone facade of an old bank, was an ATM machine with a familiar logo. Mel took off his jacket, ambled slowly down the street, trying not to get hotter than he was, and stuck his bank card into the slot.

The video screen said PLEASE WAIT.

An alarm bell began ringing on the side of the bank.

A siren began to sound from the direction of the police station in downtown Miami, two blocks away.

Mel lurched back down the street, got to the car, and turned on the ignition.

"Hold it right there, hot shot," said the kid. Mel looked over and was astounded to see a twelve-gauge pump shotgun cradled in the kid's hands. "You might as well wait for Harold to come."

The Miami P.D. patrol car, an aging Caprice, swung around the corner. Mel knew that he could easily outrun it. But it wouldn't be a good idea. Instead he shut off the ignition, and, as a good faith gesture, took the keys out of the ignition and tossed them up on the dashboard, in plain sight. He rolled the window back down and put both hands on the steering wheel.

A lean, small, pox-faced cop emerged reluctantly from the Caprice, winced from the heat, and walked over toward Mel, moving with exaggerated slowness.

"Harold, I presume." Mel said, when he got close enough.

"What we got here li'l buddy?" Harold said to the kid.

"Looks like it's credit card fraud to me," said the kid.

"Come on out of there, fellow," said Harold, shooting a mean, judgmental look at Mel. "Don't make a bad thing worse for you."

Mel was pissed off, hopelessly out of any chance to control things. He eased out of the car, frustrated, frightened, feeling helpless for the first time in years, and said, "I don't know what the hell has happened."

"Nothing yet, and nothing will, unless you do something stupid."

"All I want is to pay for my gas and go to Cacher."

Harold looked at the kid and said, "Why in the name of God would anybody want to go to Cacher?" Mel knew what was coming next, Harold said it anyway. "Ain't nobody there, but a bunch of loony-tunes."

Mel said, "Let me talk to you straight." He had spent enough time downstate to know that this attitude might be appreciated. "I'm not trying to pull a fast one, and I don't know why none of my cards don't work. Look, take the AMEX, call the eight hundred number and you'll see I've got a huge line of credit, and Texaco's been all paid up, and I don't know why the ATM went crazy."

Harold looked at him and then at the kid. "He broke any laws?"

"Not exactly."

"Fella, you look decent enough. Let's go rescue your bank card and send you on your way out of town."

They strolled down to the bank, which had closed at three o'clock. Harold banged on the front door, and a Big Hair Girl peered out the door.

"Honey, your machine's done eaten this man's card. Think you could dig it out so's he could leave to go to" - and here Harold could not keep a straight face - "Cacher."

"Cacher," she shrieked, "who the hell would want to go there?" Mel by this time had heard all he wanted to about the deficiencies of Cacher and simply said, "I've got some relatives out there."

Honey retreated into the bank, opened up the machine from the back side, and retrieved Mel's card. "Before I can let you have this, mister, I got to make sure you're who you say you are," she said. She sat down at a desk, called Chicago, asked a few questions, whistled, shook her head in wonderment.

"Buddy," she said, handing the card over, "I'm going to treat you with a lot more respect. You're one rich sucker."

Mel relaxed, realizing for the first time that he was probably going to get out of Miami alive. "Could I get change for a hundred so I can pay off boy wonder over at the Texaco?"

Harold didn't like that. "Now slick, you just be careful. That's my nephew over there, and you bad-mouth any of my kin, you might be spending a night in jail."

Mel fumed at his own stupidity, considered a number of replies, and decided to shut up.

Honey gave him his change. Mel thanked her and resolved to get out of Miami as quickly as he could, saying as little as possible. He handed boy wonder a twenty.

"Seriously mister," the kid said, getting Mel's change, "take care of yourself. We had people go out there and not come back. Those shafts go down a couple of miles, and those crazy people are not accountable."

Mel got back in the Mercedes and drove carefully out of town, accompanied by Harold and his radar gun. That's all I need, he thought, to fall into one of Harold's speed traps. As soon as he got out of radar range, he turned the car toward Cacher and put the hammer down.

As he drove, the vegetation thinned away and vanished, and the rolling hills took on a steep, foreboding quality. The road itself was potholed asphalt that shook the Mercedes' frame. In the distance he could see the malevolent tips of the mine tailings, looking much like the Welsh coal tips that periodically unloaded and covered small villages in sad valleys. There were no farms, no ranches, only ancient weather-beaten abandoned shacks, a legacy of the thirties. Running along the road was a single telephone line. There was no evidence of electricity. On the road was regional roadkill: armadillos, 'possums, the occasional dead cat. As the evening approached, the whole scene made Mel want to turn around and go back home.

And as he approached the scattered buildings of the town, he did just that. He stopped half a mile short of Cacher, turned directly north on to a section line road, and drove north at a hundred miles an hour, turning up a rooster-tail of yellowish lead-saturated dust. Mel prided himself on being a rational man. Usually that meant controlling his fear. Today it meant giving into it.

The faster he drove, the more frightened he became, and as the crossroads flashed by every six miles, he did not look either way. He was convinced that he was being pursued, and not until he crossed the Kansas line did he begin to slow down. His heart was pounding dangerously and his forehead was stiff from sweat, which poured out of his body and was dried to a crust by the air conditioner running full blast.

Cacher was made up of an old two-story brick school tilted at a precipitous angle, undermined by a mine shaft that went to close, or a water table that was drained. There was no sign of life, no dogs, no cats, no lights. Gas stations were boarded up. The only inhabited building was a shabby general store, the paint long since blistered away from its rough, knotty wooden siding. In front was a set of thirties-style, manually powered gas pumps, and, as an afterthought, a U.S. post office zip code sign bearing the WE DELIVER FOR YOU emblem.

Inside the store, it was as dry and hot as a sauna. The heat strengthened the smell of stale urine that emanated from Otho Stimpson, who was sitting in an old wooden swivel rocker with the canes busted out. His son, Otis, was standing by the entrance holding a small 9mm automatic weapon with a long clip. It was a crude and awkward device, almost as clumsy as Otis himself, but he had gotten good at using it. He would take it out among the mine tailings and fire clip after clip, lead thudding into lead. No one was around to complain about the noise.

If Mel Meyer had pulled into Cacher, the gun would have turned his Mercedes into scrap metal in seconds. Otis would have pushed the car down a mine shaft. It would have fallen a mile or two into the earth and never been seen again.

"Looks like the little Jew got scared," Otis said. "Got some sense in his head. Won't have much more trouble with him."

Otho said nothing. A couple of decades ago he would have sighed hopelessly at the racial slur, but he had long since reconciled himself to the fact that his son was a product of his environment and would never be as cosmopolitan as Otho was, with his fancy education at the Lady Wilburdon School for Mathematical Geniuses on the Isle of Rhum. "He's good," Otho said. "He's gotten closer to us than anyone."