Dark Rivers of the Heart

nearby."
        "We won't make it to the Grand junction area until half an hour or so o'clock in the Mountain Time Zone. Still plenty of time to look at a map and pick a general area to put down."
        I She pointed to the canvas duffel bag on the seat in front of hers.
        "Listen, about your fifty thousand dollars-" He held up one hand to silence her. "I was just startled that you found it, that's all.
        You had every right and reason to search my luggage after you located me in the desert. You didn't know why the hell I was trying to track you down. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you still weren't entirely clear on that."
        "You always carry that kind of pocket change?"
        "About a year and a half ago," he said, "I started salting cash and gold coins in safe-deposit boxes in California, Nevada, Arizona.
        Also opened savings accounts in various cities, under false names and Social Security numbers. Shifted everything else out of the country."
        "Why?"
        "So I could move fast."
        "You expected to be on the run like this?"
        "No. I just didn't like what I saw happening on that computer-crime task force. They taught me all about computers, including that access to information is the essence of freedom. And yet what they ultimately wanted to do was restrict that access in as many instances as possible and to the greatest extent possible."
        Playing devil's advocate, Ellie said, "I thought the idea was just to prevent criminal hackers from using computers to steal and maybe to stop them from vandalizing data banks."
        "And I'm all for that kind of crime control. But they want to keep a thumb on everybody. Most authorities these days… they violate privacy all the time, fishing both openly and secretly in data banks.
        Everyone from the IRS to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
        Even the Bureau of Land Management, for God's sake. They were all helping to fund this regional task force with grants, and they all gave me the creeps."
        "You see a new world coming-" '-like a runaway freight train-" -and you don't like the shape of it-"
        "-don't think I want to be a part of it."
        "Do you see yourself as a cyberpunk, an on-line outlaw?"
        "No. just a survivor."
        "Is that why you've been erasing yourself from public record-a little survival insurance?"
        No shadow fell across him, but his features seemed to darken. The had looked haggard to begin with, which was understandable after the ordeal of the last few days. But now he was sunken-eyed, gaunt, and older than his years.
        He said, "At first I was just… getting ready to go away." He sighed and wiped a hand across his face. "This sounds strange maybe.
        But changing my name from Michael Ackblom to Spencer Grant wasn't enough.
        Moving from Colorado, starting a new life -.. none of it was ever enough.
        I couldn't forget who I was… whose son I was. So I decided to wipe myself out of existence, painstakingly, methodically, until there was no record in the world that I existed under any name. What I'd been learning about computers gave me that power."
        "And then? When you were erased?"
        "That's what I could never figure out. And then? What next?
        Wipe myself out for real? Suicide?"
        "That's not you." She found her heart sinking at the thought.
        "No, not me," he agreed. "I never brooded about eating a shotgun barrel or anything like that. And I had an oblig i at on to Rocky, to be here for him."
        Sprawled on the deck, the dog raised his head at the sound of his name.
        He swished his tail.
        "Then, after a while," he continued, "even though I didn't know what I was going to do, I decided there was still virtue in becoming invisible. just because, as you say, of this new world coming, this brave new high-tech world with all its blessings-and curses."
        "Why did you leave your DMV file and your military records partly intact? You could've wiped them out completely, long ago."
        He smiled. "Being too clever, maybe. I thought I'd just change my address on them, a few salient details, so they weren't much use to anyone.
        But by leaving them in place, I could always go back to look at them and see if somebody was searching for me."
        "You booby-trapped them?"
        "Sort of, yeah. I buried little programs in