Jack L. Chalker - Changewinds 1 - When the Changewinds Blow

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Jack L Chalker - When the Changewinds Blow

WHEN THE CHANGEWINDS BLOW

e-book ver. 1.0

For Eva

The Girl Who Was Afraid of Thunderstorms

There is something almost other-worldly about a huge shopping mall; enter it and

you leave heat or cold, night and day behind, and enter a futuristic Disney-like

vision of a future world which is all antiseptic, insulated, and artificial yet

somehow it caters to all your basic modem needs. It is the synthesis of the

ancient bazaar, the communal marketplace, the soda fountain, the drive-in, and

the town square and more. Its vast interiors with their wasted space, careful

fountains, phony waterfalls, plastic park benches and canned music which may be

The 1001 Strings Play the Best of the Rolling Stones but somehow sounds like the

same elevator music the parents and grandparents of those denizens of malls

heard in their day. To many of the youth who are too young to be allowed in the

adult bars and clubs and too old to be in by eight o'clock it is a massive

singles bar as well.

Wednesday night wasn't the best night out, even in the mall, and it was tough on

a school night to figure out an excuse to get there that parents might accept,

but teens have had many centuries of evolution to get to a point where they

instinctively know how to manage such urgencies when they have to, and Sharlene

"Charley" Sharkin certainly felt like she had to.

It wasn't anything to do with the mall itself, but rather what it filled in her

life. She was seventeen and due to graduate in five months, an occasion she was

looking forward to with great anticipation. She was bright, athletic, and had

good grades for the most part, but she hated school and all it stood for. Her

parents had all sorts of plans for her, all of which included college and

perhaps beyond, but the thought of four or more years of additional school was

just gruesome, that was all. She could see herself putting up with some

secretarial school-she was already a lightning typist and did some word

processing on the school computer for office brownie points-or maybe even a

medical technician's course, or paralegal, or something like that, but nothing

more. College wasn't like regular school in one way: if you didn't get it and

later regretted it there was nothing that said you had to be eighteen and not

twenty or even older to get in.

She had a nice, round face with just a bit of an overbite set off by mid-length

Clairol brown perm-curled hair, no beauty but cute and she knew it. She was

slightly chubby and thought she was fat and hated it but not enough to really

work at dieting or giving up all the nice foods that made life worthwhile. She'd

been a skinny, athletic kid but it had just started to come on and stay there,

particularly in the past year or two, but at five foot three and a hundred and

thirty-six pounds she didn't feel out of whack. She'd really let herself go

since-well, since Tommy.

She had just turned sixteen, and was real popular with the boys, and the night

of the junior prom Tommy Meyers had brought out this bottle of high-proof

whiskey he'd gotten someplace and before she knew it Tommy had popped her cherry

for good in his brother's borrowed conversion van, and while nothing had come of

it she'd gone through months of nervous fear wondering if she was pregnant, or

had caught something, or who knew what, and it'd scared her far more than all

that blood. The experience made her something of a leader among her friends, of

course, but it'd also given her a reputation among the boys as an easy girl and

she'd had more than her share of troubles from that.

She'd let herself go after that, giving up most of the athletics and pigging out

on whatever she wanted, particularly chocolate. If it hadn't been for Sam moving

into the city she might have gotten really depressed, but even though Sam was a

real straight arrow she didn't care and there was no closer friendship.

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And now Sam was gone.

Samantha Buell was certainly her best friend in the whole world and the only

person she felt she could confide in. Sam had needed a friend when she'd moved

here with her mother a little over a year ago and they'd hit it off, the

original thing they had in common being that they both went by nicknames that

sounded more boy than girl-although Sam just called it "unisex." They liked the

same rock bands, the same TV shows, they swapped romance novels-although Sam was

more of a reader than she was-and they both loved roaming the mall and trying on

all sorts of outrageous fashions. They spent a lot of free time together and

talking on the phone and all that. They were the same height, and while Sam had

a better figure she had a little bit of extra weight herself. Still, they looked

enough alike to be mistaken more than once for sisters, and they were both also

the only children of well-off professionals, spoiled without really realizing

it.

Not that there weren't real differences, the least of which was Sam's slight but

noticeable New England accent contrasted with Charley's southwestern twang.

Sam's folks were divorced, and she lived here now with her mother who was a

lawyer who worked for some federal agency or another. Environment, she thought,

but she'd never really gone into it. Sam's dad was a contractor in Boston and

they still got along pretty good-Sam would fly out to stay with him part of the

summer and some of the long holidays and he called a lot-but maybe three

thousand miles was a lot of distance for so-called "joint custody."

But Sam's voice was, well, unique. She had one of the deepest, most asexual

voices Charley had ever heard in a girl, although not. unpleasant or irritating.

It was just, well, asexual, the kind of tonal voice that was stuck between the

half octaves and could easily belong to a boy her age although it didn't sound

wrong in her, either. Sam said that her grandmother- her dad's mothers-had the

same kind of voice. She could actually shift that voice even lower a bit and

you'd swear she was all male, too, or higher a bit and sound feminine and sassy.

Sam had hoped that this odd ability might get her into acting one day.

She'd always been something of a tomboy type, fooling around in Dad's workshop

as a kid. She particularly liked carpentry and was really good at it, but her

Dad had always tried to steer her away with some ingrained sexist ideas about

what was properly boys' work and girls' work while her mother, who wanted her to

be like the first female President or a great doctor or something was appalled

by Sam's taste for manual skills. Charley, on the other hand, wouldn't be caught

dead if not dressed in the latest style. Until she'd met Charley the only real

concession she'd made to unmistakable femininity was long, almost waist-length

straight black hair.

Still, under Charley's skilled eye and guidance, Sam had lately taken to trying

all sorts of new and feminine fashion, taken a real interest suddenly in perfume

and cosmetics and stuff like that, which somewhat pleased her mother and also

started getting her all sorts of attention from the boys. So far she hadn't done

much, though; Sam had some real hangups of her own. Back in Boston she'd gone to

this private all-girls' school, and two of her classmates had done it before

they were past sixteen that Sam knew about. It was sheer stupid bad luck, but

one of them had gotten pregnant the first time out and the other one had come

down with VD. The odds against both of 'em, or even either of 'em, having

anything like that happen was small, and maybe that was only the two Sam found

out about, but it had scared the hell out of her. She was still a virgin and not

real inclined to changing that in the immediate future. That was why a best

girlfriend was an essential. They protected and supported each other. Together,

somehow, they were safe.

And now Sam was gone.

At first she hadn't thought anything of it, when Sam hadn't shown up for school

on Monday. Charley had been away visiting relatives all weekend, and had been

too damned tired to feel sociable on Monday. On Tuesday she'd called over to the

house and gotten Sam's mother's answering machine and left a message. No big

deal. Maybe somebody got sick back east or something. Later, she heard it had

been in the news over the weekend and in the Sunday paper, but they'd thrown out

everything but the comics.

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But today, in school, she'd been called out of first period English to Mr.

Dunteman's office-he was the administrative vice principal-and waiting there had

been this strange man who introduced himself as Detective O'Donnell of the

Juvenile Division and said he wanted to know if Charley had heard from Sam in

the last few days.

"Huh? No. Why? Has something happened?"

"We-don't really know. When was the last time you saw or spoke to her?"

"Uh-Friday. Here. I went away that night for the weekend and didn't get back til

Sunday night."

"Uh-huh. And did she seem-different? I mean, did she seem out of the ordinary in

any way? Nervous? Irritable? Depressed? Anything like that?"

She thought a moment. The fact was, there had been something wrong. She'd sensed

it rather than been told it, but it was noticeable enough that she'd asked Sam

if there were any problems.

"She seemed-you know, tense. Yeah, maybe nervous. I figured at first it was just

her period or something but it wasn't like that, really. She looked, well, kinda

scared. But she said everything was okay when I asked her about it. She just

sorta' shrugged it off and said she was havin' some problems and that she'd tell

me when I got back. I did kinda get the idea that she wanted to say more but

when she found out I was goin' away, well, she just tried to laugh it off. Why?

What's happened to her?"

O'Donnell had sighed. He was big and craggy and built like cement block, with

curly red hair and real pale blue eyes. If you'd been ordered -to build an

Irishman he was about what you'd come up with.

"She left school normally-we know that much," he told her. "She caught the first

bus home, got a few things-her mother wasn't back from work yet-and then left.

We don't know anything beyond that. She simply-vanished." He paused as he

watched her look of horror grow. "These things do happen, Miss. All the time.

It's my job to piece everything together and see if we can find her before

something very bad happens to her."

"You think she-ran away? Not Sam! The only one she could run to would be her Dad

and he'd send her right back here. I know!"

"We don't honestly know. She certainly hadn't made any long-range plans to bolt;

there's no sign of it. Everything points to a sudden decision to just take off.

She went home, packed a small suitcase, went down to the Front Street Bank's

automated teller with the backup of her mother's card and withdrew the maximum

three hundred dollars allowed by the machine."

"Yeah, her mom gave her the card just in case she needed money when her mom

wasn't around but I don't think she ever used it for more'n twenty bucks. Three

hundred ..."

"That's really not that much when you consider it," the detective had pointed

out. "Enough to buy a ticket to most places but only if you had money or people

at the other end.

We checked the airlines and bus stations-no sign, although that doesn't always

mean much. She didn't have a driver's license?"

Charley shook her head. "Nope. Flunked the test three times. She was just too

scared behind the wheel."

"And no boyfriends? Particularly new ones? No major infatuations? You're

positive?"

"Positive! She's not gay or nothin' like that-she liked boys and all, but if she

had anything going she'd'a told me. No way there was anybody she'd do this for,

not unless it happened between Friday morning and Friday afternoon."

"Stranger things have happened, but I admit it's unlikely unless it involved

someone in school and we can account for everyone but her. Very well-if she

contacts you let me know immediately. I'll give you a card, here, with my name

and number. It looks very likely that something scared her very badly. Something

she couldn't or wouldn't confide for any of a thousand reasons to either her

best friend or her mother. She panicked. She ran. No note, nothing. But her

resources are quite limited. If she uses any of her mother's charge cards we'll

find her and I think she's bright enough to know that. Her cash will be running

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low if it isn't gone already. She'll only have a few choices, and they're crime,

or falling prey to the seamier side of society, or she'll have to contact

somebody she trusts. You're a likely candidate for that. If she does, try and

get her what she needs and find out where she's staying and then call me. And,

if you can, find out what in the world could scare her so much that this was the

only way out."

She had promised it all, but the truth was that if Sam called she didn't know

what she would do, and she suspected O'Donnell knew that, too. What the hell

could have scared her like that? Caused her to run rather than go to her mom or

best friend? Had Sam been less honest than she seemed? Had she, like, gotten

knocked up? No, that wouldn't do it. Hell, she might get grounded for six months

but her mom would still have worked it all out and Sam would know that. Her mom

was pretty busy but she was all right deep down-much more modern than Charley's

parents, anyway.

Sam always said she wanted to be an actress; she'd been in the drama club and

was set for a pretty good part in the class play coming up in April, but she had

few other real interests. Setting off for Hollywood on impulse just wasn't her

style.

It was hard for Charley to imagine Sam out there on her own in any event. Hell,

she was scared to go out alone most times. Like, she was even scared of

thunderstorms. Well, maybe she'd find out now.

Charley had gone through the day confused and depressed and then went straight

home. She'd gotten the mail and found a small envelope addressed to her and

postmarked locally with very familiar handwriting and she'd torn it open.

Inside, on a piece of notepaper in Sam's handwriting, had been a nervously

scrawled message.

Dear Charley-Sorry to get you into this but I got noplace else to go. Can you

meet me at the mall at seven o'clock? Just go browse at Sears. Look normal, then

at seven go back to credit like you was going to the ladies room. Don't tell

nobody or let them see this note. Don't let nobody follow you. I'm OK so long as

you don't bring nobody. Love and kisses, Sam.

Charley was afraid at first that she wouldn't make it in time. . Her Dad had a

bunch of stuff to talk about and wasn't in any mood to let her out, but she'd

convinced him it wouldn't be long and that she really needed to pick up

something for school tomorrow. She barely had time to change into an outfit more

appropriate for the mall-the satiny blue pantsuit and the mid-calf boots with

the fold-down leather fringes. And it'd been like six-thirty when she'd gotten

the okay, and while it was only a ten-minute drive to the mall she had to park

and go to Sears and spend some time browsing, too, so it'd look natural when she

went to the jane. There was also the level of paranoia the note induced.

"Don't let nobody follow you. . . ."

Like, who would be following her? Well, okay, the cops, maybe-if they figured

one runaway teen was worth a stakeout. Or, maybe, whoever scared Sam so bad.

They might figure it like O'Donnell and keep an eye on her best friend, right?

Damn it, she's got me seein' cars and mysterious people in trenchcoats!

The worst part of it was, she had to wear her glasses and she hated that. Made

her look like some dumb librarian. But she was fairly nearsighted and needed

them to drive, and she'd had her contacts in all day at school. Not like Sam-Sam

only needed glasses to read close up, and she'd look like an idiot, face at

arm's length from a book, rather than wear them in school.

The mall was pretty crowded for a winter Wednesday, maybe because it was

unusually warm tonight for this time of year, and Charley saw one or two kids

she knew, but the time didn't allow for her to be anything but single-minded. If

somebody was following they'd just have to follow, that's all. What the hell

could happen in a place crowded like this, anyway?

She made her way to Sears, then went and looked at some of the clothes mere. She

knew she didn't have Sam's acting talent and she probably was giving the most

unconvincing show of her life, but she had to try. She glanced at her watch-five

after seven! Past time to go to the bathroom.

Had she delayed long enough? Had she delayed too long? She went on back to the

business office and then around the corner toward the restrooms. You sure knew

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where they were in a big mall. Most times the biggest department stores had the,

only bathrooms in the place.

The restrooms were near the end of a corridor that wound up at an "Employees

Only" door to the warehouse part, and there was a branch corridor just before

them leading to some offices. She went into the bathroom expecting Sam to be

there, but it was empty. She wasn't sure if she should just stay there or not,

but she sure as hell wasn't gonna stay there all night. She really did have to

go-this Jane Bond shit didn't really make it at all-and so she decided to just

do everything normal. Maybe Sam wasn't there tonight. Maybe something happened,

or Sam figured the note would come earlier, or maybe this was just a way for Sam

to check and see that she wasn't being followed.

She gave it fifteen minutes, during which one pregnant lady came in and nobody

else, and men decided to get out of mere. She opened the door and heard, behind

her, in a loud whisper, "Charley! In here-quick!"

She turned and saw a small, chunky figure in boys' blue denim jeans and matching

jacket holding the employee door open. She hesitated a moment, then went to the

door and out just before the pregnant lady exited.

Charley stared at the other. "Christ, Sam-is that really you?"

"Yeah! Come on! I want to get us out of here and someplace where we can talk.

Hurry up!"

As close as she'd been to Sam she wouldn't have recognized her from any

distance. Gone was the long, straight black hair, replaced with a slightly curly

sandy brown cut, extremely short, like a boy's, and combed straight back with a

side part. She was also wearing a man's style rose-tinted pair of glasses and

dressed in the stiff denim that completely concealed her figure and some cheap

sneakers and high black socks. It was a fairly simple disguise but by its

subtlety very effective. No fake beard or shit like that that would never be

convincing. The fact that Sam was one of those people whose face by itself could

be either male or female depending on the hair and body and the like helped,

too. It was also a natural disguise-her voice was already unusually low, and it

didn't take much effort to get it low and raspy enough to sound like maybe a

thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy.

They wound up outside, then walked across the parking lot to the theater

entrance. Sam bought two tickets to the newest Disney cartoon, knowing that for

the late show there'd be very few people there and none they would know. Not

with a "G" rating.

Sam was right. There were like a dozen people in there for the Wednesday late

show. They took seats on a side aisle near the back, away from the rest. Sam put

her arm around Charley. "Just act like we don't care about the movie, which we

don't," she said. "Nobody ever notices much about a boy and a girl makin' out in

the back of a theater."

"Okay, I'll play along," Charley whispered back, "but what the hell is this all

about? Why'd you run? Where you been? Everybody's worried sick. ..."

"Long story," Sam responded. "I'll tell you as much as I can. Some of it'll

sound crazy and maybe I am, but it's damned real."

It hadn't been all that sudden, only the final act. For months, almost since

moving out west, she had been having strange experiences. First it was the

dreams-lots of them, long and elaborate, sometimes several nights in a row with

no break, and always involving the same things although never quite the same.

Charley knew about the dreams. The most frequent one involved the demon and Sam,

who was always driving a red sports car around a twisting mountain road along a

coast, "although Sam couldn't drive and they were hundreds of miles from any

coast.

It always began with a dark figure, sitting alone in a comfortable-looking room

that none the less resembled more a medieval castle than anything modern. There

was a low fire in the fireplace and a few goblets about, but everything was

indistinct, as if in a dream. She saw his form, but not really his face, masked

in shadow, but it was a strange form of a fairly large man in flowing robes and

wearing what might have been a helmet with two large, crooked horns emerging

from each side. She saw him, though, not as a vision, or a completed scene, but

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