Hard Road by Barbara D'Amato Page A

if he showed any guilt. If he'd chased Jeremy and me in the tunnels, he ought to react. But I could see no distress or change of expression.
     
     
He said, "Well, Grant Park Underground, for sure." He typed in a couple of commands and a dotted line appeared, showing the outline of the underground. "Tunnels— mm— I don't think even the City of Chicago knows where all the tunnels are," he said. "Some of the drainage tunnels ought to be in here. And maybe power cabling."
     
     
Another set of lines showed up on the map. The display was getting crowded and confusing, since at my request he had just superimposed one thing on top of another. But even so, seeing those tunnels gave me a chill. There were a lot of tunnels. One of them ran practically under the Flying Monkeys merry-go-round, or at least its planned location in this early sketch. It was disconcerting to realize that the park was so honeycombed underneath, and even more upsetting to understand that you could be down there underground, right under the feet of potential rescuers, but without any way to get their attention or to escape.
     
     
Taubman said, "Okay, let me show you how we use this software. Do you live in a house or apartment?"
     
     
"Apartment."
     
     
"Describe it. How big is it and what shape?"
     
     
"Well, it's about twenty feet long and about fifteen wide, not counting the bathroom and an eight-by-ten kitchen."
     
     
"That isn't very big."
     
     
I've often described it as being about the size of an average Chicago bus. It's a little wider but not as long, so it really does have about the same square footage. I said, "Freelance reporting is not a way to get rich."
     
     
"Okay," he said. By now the shape of my apartment had appeared on his screen with size markings along the sides. "Look at the bulb in the track fixture above you."
     
     
"I see it." It was a tiny bulb, half naked, held only by its power points and a clamp. My mother would hate it. She just loves lampshades, the bigger the better and some still in their store wrapping.
     
     
"That's a halogen bulb with a twenty-five-degree beam. I use that because I want to bathe this desk area in task lighting so I can read papers. The degrees just mean that part of an arc. If I wanted more of a narrow spotlight, I'd pick a fifteen-degree bulb. If I wanted a wider wash of light, I might pick a forty-degree light beam. You understand? Now what in your apartment would you like to spotlight?"
     
     
"Well, I have a parrot who's extremely fine. Long John's perch is right about here."
     
     
"Okay." Taubman clicked and a symbol representing a bulb appeared above Long John Silver's perch. Then an area of concentric circles grew around it.
     
     
"The center," Taubman said, "is where the light is strongest. The others just show you where the scatter goes and how intense it is. Now tell me where you have your furniture."
     
     
I did. A big pool from a wide-angle beam appeared over a reasonable simulacrum of my thrift-shop sofa and a medium twenty-five-degree pool of reading light over the really comfy chair that I had found discarded on the street and had slip-covered. He threw in a medium-beam light near the front door, which would be nice to have.
     
     
"Now you say you have a parrot?"
     
     
"Yes."
     
     
"Would he like this?" A boxlike shape representing just my living room appeared, then rotated, so that instead of looking down at the place from the ceiling, we were now looking at the back wall. He punched some buttons, muttered "macros" and "cyan" and some other incomprehensible stuff, and suddenly on the wall appeared a jungle! It was a projection, of course, and beautiful! But not beautiful enough for Taubman. He muttered some more, scrolling through menus on his left-hand screen. "Most of the furniture and whatever is canned," he said. "I don't have to build much from scratch anymore. This is actually one of the jungles they used in The Phantom Menace. " As I watched,