by Tom Clancy
David knew his own dad could lay down the law when he wanted to. It didn’t pay to argue with Martin Gray. David had a strong will, but how would he handle it if his father tried to cut something out of his life that seemed as important as breathing? Wouldn’t he rebel?
Then, too, David had seen Luddie and Battlin’ Bob standing face-to-face. That certainly hadn’t been pretty.
“Let’s take a moment to look at that struggle between father and son over Sabotine,” Leif suggested.
“What?” David couldn’t keep the defensive note out of his voice. “Luddie was bringing his sister into the twenty-first century. He felt he had to save her, just like he’d saved himself.”
“Yeah,” Leif agreed. “But a psychologist would have a field day with the underlying emotions in a conflict like that.”
“That’s a fine intellectual game, playing armchair psychiatrist,” David said. “But we’re talking about real people here—and the real world. Would any of the psychological mumbo-jumbo you’re spouting explain why Luddie would spy on people who buy his computers? What would he have to do? Write a secret-access trapdoor into the coding on selected vests—or all of them? And why? He’s losing money over these leaks, not making money.”
“He doesn’t want anyone to know how the vests work,” Leif pointed out.
“Yeah, but he’s got valid business reasons for keeping that secret,” David argued. “While doing what you’ve suggested— that would destroy his business—in fact, is destroying his business.”
Leif nodded, then said, “That is what seems to be happening right now, isn’t it? Maybe he gets something we don’t know about out of it if the company goes under. Or maybe he isn’t completely sane.”
David’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“Luddie is obviously a guy who wants to be in control. He divorced his family to control his own life. He sued his father for his sister, and in the end kidnapped her, to control her life. You told me how he acted when he thought Nick D’Aliso was out of control. Am I making any of this up?”
“No, even if I don’t like where you’re going with it,” David said.
Leif gave his friend a crooked grin. “And then of course, there’s that old saying. You know the one. There’s a fine line—’ “
” ‘Between genius and madness,’ ” David finished. “For some stupid reason people use that line around me all too often.” He scowled, not wanting to accept what Leif was suggesting. But, he had to admit, Leif had made a surprisingly strong case.
“Right from the beginning, Captain Winters considered this a case of young genius out of control,” David finally admitted. His tone wavered between dubious and half-convinced. “Lud-die MacPherson certainly is a young genius.”
He looked at Leif. “So what are you going to do with your new theory?”
“Do with it?” Leif seemed totally taken aback.
“Are you going to share it with anyone besides me?” David asked. “Like, say, Captain Winters?”
Leif’s negative headshake came almost by reflex. “Two reasons,” he said. “First, before the captain would act on it, he needs those two little words which he always complains about never getting from us.”
“Hard proof,” the boys said together.
“And second,” Leif went on, “if we treat Sabotine like a piece of cracked chinaware, isn’t it only fair to treat Luddie the same way?”
“Feeling sorry let us cover for Sabotine with her brother about leaving her driver and nearly getting kidnapped,” David said. “Of course, neither thing would have happened if she hadn’t gone to see us.”
“You’ve got a point.” Leif frowned. “Whoever is behind this leak thing hasn’t just broken privacy laws—there are at least two murders and an attempted kidnapping connected to the case, though it’s not real clear who is behind them.”
David gave his friend a skeptical look. “And does that mean that Mr. Symonds and the people at the Forward Group are now clean and upright citizens?”
“Oh, the Forward Group is in this, all right,” Leif assured him. “Whether they’re in up to their waists or up to their necks, I can’t tell.”
Leif paused for a moment. “As for Luddie—it’s not my job to rat him out.”
“When we joined the Net Force Explorers, we took an oath to respect the law—” David began.
Leif faced him. “David, the last time I really stuck an oar in this case and went to Net Force, somebody got killed. I’m not going to go to Winters again because maybe— maybe — Luddie MacPherson is not of sound mind. I’ll leave it to the professionals to sort it out. If they catch Luddie, I think I’ll be sorry for him. I’ll certainly be sorry for Sabotine. I’d love to see Net Force nail the Forward Group to the wall, but I don’t have anything really solid—or really useful—there, either.”
David felt troubled, but he found himself nodding. “For rich folks, the MacPhersons have more than enough problems.”
Over next couple of days David tried to put the case of the leaking secrets out of his mind. And surprisingly, he succeeded. He had schoolwork to catch up on, and James had a project in his computing class where David was able to offer some useful advice and expertise.
He had finished the last batch of coding compression Hard-weare had sent him. And after the warm personal conversation he and Leif had had with Luddie, David didn’t expect to see any more work come pouring—or even trickling—in.
So he was surprised to find a download from Sabotine MacPherson when he looked in his virtual mailbox.
My brother can certainly be difficult, her message read, but I know you meant well. If you’re willing to continue working with us, Vm more than willing to keep working with you.
There were a few snippets of code—no big job, David thought, but apparently a peace offering.
Do I want to go back inside Hardweare? he asked himself. The money is good, but the headaches have been incredible. Before he’d joined Hardweare, shadowy men weren’t creeping around his family, spies weren’t attempting to blackmail his friends. He didn’t have to worry whether or not his employer was a mental case. He liked that feeling.
And all those nagging, unresolved questions that clustered around Hardweare? Could he leave them unresolved forever to keep the peace?
Maybe Leif is right, David thought. It’s not my job to find answers. Dad swore an oath to enforce the law. It’s the professionals, folks like him, who ought to be digging for the truth.
But something kept nagging at him. If it’s all that simple, so cut and dried, why do I feel guilty about turning my back on the whole situation?
He sighed, looking around his virtual workspace. Perhaps because space was so tight around the Gray apartment, David had designed himself a large, light, and airy virtual sanctum. There was plenty to look at. One wall, floor to ceiling, was just shelves, containing icons for programs David had bought, traded for, or created himself.
Unfortunately, none of the millions of lines of code represented by those icons could help him now. Was there someone he could talk to about this? He knew how Mom and Dad felt about Hardweare after all this trouble. The only other person who really understood everything that was going on was Leif. And he’d made his decision, bailing on the problem. Captain Winters? No, the captain would be just as glad to have David out of a potential trouble spot.
There we go, David thought. Four people, four votes for | ‘Run away!”
It was unanimous.
But still.. .
David jumped up out of his virtual chair. If he let himself, he could argue in circles for hours. What he needed was a decision, quick and clean.
Clean, he thought again, as in clean break.
He picked up an icon that looked like a stylized telephone. The program would let him make a call to any designated hologram system, listed or not. Sabotine had never given him the code to her personal veeyar space, but he had her work number. Of course, it was unlikely she’d be at work at this hour. That migh
t be a plus.
If I catch her in, I’ll just explain that life has gotten a bit too hectic to continue working for Hardweare, David thought. No need to mention that Hardweare itself was the main cause of his stress.
And if I don’t get Sabotine, I can just leave a message and download the programs back to her.
That was the ticket. Simple, direct, and he’d be out of there.
David activated the phone icon, and a virtual holosystem appeared in front of him. He input the code for Hardweare and waited for the connection.
It can get weird, calling someone who works at home, he thought. Sometimes they answered outside of business hours. For instance, Sabotine had gotten on the holo when he’d called on a Saturday morning.
On the other hand, people sometimes ignored business calls during what was supposed to be their personal time.
David realized he was sort of hoping that’s what Sabotine would do tonight. Was there a good holo-drama on? Or even a decent sitcom?
“Don’t answer, don’t answer,” he muttered, then quickly shut up. With his luck, he’d end up getting that recorded.
The connection was made, and David didn’t get his wish. Sabotine answered. But this was a different Sabotine from the perfectly groomed girl in the one-of-a-kind outfits. Her face was pale, her hair tousled, and her wide, staring eyes seemed to leap right off her face at David.
“Sabotine?” he said doubtfully. Oh, man, he thought. Did I wake her up? Was this a really bad time to call? Maybe she had a fight with Luddie… .
Sabotine’s face was too close to the pickup, making her image too large. It seemed as it she were looking right through David, or peering nearsightedly to find him.
Then he realized her eyes were full of tears.
“D-David?” Sabotine’s voice squeaked, and her lips trembled.
“Sabotine, are you all right?” David felt like an idiot when he said that. Quite obviously, something was wrong on the other end of the connection.
“All right… ?” Sabotine’s voice trailed off as she glanced down at herself. “Yes,” she said vaguely. Then she looked back at David and seemed to blink into focus.
“No, I’m not all right,” Sabotine said. “Things are very, very wrong here. But it’s not me.” She swallowed very hard, the image of her face becoming distorted. “David, you helped me before. What am I going to do?”
David was trying to keep up with the girl’s sudden changes of mood. Judging by her appearance, what he was dealing with could be anything from an overdose to a nervous breakdown to a reaction to a very bad situation, he thought.
“What are you going to do about what?” he asked in his best nonthreatening voice.
“What am I supposed to do about this?”
Sabotine extended an unsteady hand to the holo pickup, moving the apparatus. The scene shifted sickeningly, as if David were following along in a sudden focus shift on a zoom lens. The image steadied on what was obviously the other side of a rather Spartan room, set up as a gym. The focus resolved on what David recognized as a weight-training bench with a rack for holding barbells.
Then he made out the bloody figure on the padded bench, the heavy bar pressed down across its chest…
Even from where he stood, David could see that Luddie MacPherson wasn’t breathing.
“No,” David was glad to say. “I just happened to call Sabotine after—whatever happened.”
“We’ll have to call the police,” the guard went on. “I’ll need your name and number. And you should keep yourself available. The cops will probably want to talk with you.”
Great, David thought. Just great.
“He’s David Gray,” Sabotine said with some annoyance. She recited his communications code from memory.
“Is that correct, sir?” The guard wrote the information down.
David nodded.
“Thank you, sir. I’m sure you can expect a call.”
The guard reached out and cut the connection.
David sank back in the chair where he was seated. Keep himself available for the cops? Why? What good could he do? Luddie’s death seemed to invalidate Leif’s latest theory on the source of the Net leaks—a theory, David had to admit, that he’d come to believe.
Sighing, he gave his system the code for the Andersons’ New York apartment. Leif might as well hear this right away instead of waiting for the news.
Leif’s image appeared. Sipping a steaming drink from a Waterford mug, he seemed the picture of well-heeled leisure.
“David! What’s up?” he asked.
“Luddie MacPherson is dead,” David reported. “I called Sabotine—she’d offered me more work—and she showed me his body. It must have just happened. He’d been working out—doing bench presses—and the barbell fell on him.”
Leif closed his eyes for a second. “That’s a hard way to go.” He frowned. “I have a weird, nagging feeling. Every time we think we’ve found the villain in this leak case, he’s died. I mean, Cetnik pokes up his ugly head and gets it cut off.”
“Well, thrown out a window with the rest of him,” David corrected.
Leif grimaced. “You know what I mean.”
David went on. “Then Nick D’Aliso comes across as a corporate spy, and somebody shoots him.”
“Finally, we get Luddie MacPherson, who may or may not be of totally sound mind.”
“You were willing to say ‘Not!’ based on his outburst the other day,” David said.
“I wonder why,” Leif retorted. “The guy does a nut-job act, threatening total legal war and scorched earth if he loses. Either he’s got problems, or some unpleasant secrets he’s hiding, or both.”
Leif’s image glanced hesitantly at David. “You don’t think . that—he, um—might have done it himself?”
David knew his friend was in shock, asking such a dumb question as that. “If I were going to commit suicide, I could j come up with lots of easier ways—and surer ways—to do it, than dropping 250 pounds on my chest.”
The image of Luddie’s still form swam up in front of Da- j vid’s eyes, and he shuddered. “It was a bad accident. Thej weights must have crushed his whole rib cage. It was pretty! ugly. No use calling an ambulance. A guard came in there and j immediately began talking about bringing in the cops.”
Now Leif was getting over his shock. Frowning, he started asking questions. “You say Sabotine had just found him?} Weird. Even with crushed bones, you’d think that Luddie would have survived long enough to make some noise. Why-didn’t he call for help?”
Leif looked sharply at David. “You told me about those I workout sessions. Wasn’t he usually wearing a Hardwearej; vest? Was he wearing a vest tonight?”
David thought back, trying to recall what he could of the’j body he hadn’t wanted to look at. “He was wearing one.”
“Then there’s something wrong here,” Leif said. “You told me he used the vest as a trainer. It monitored his physical v condition. Wouldn’t it have warned him against trying another rep if his muscles couldn’t handle it?”
David stared at his friend. “What are you saying?”
“I’m merely pointing out the obvious. Either that vest blew a few circuits—” Leif paused. “Or somebody disabled it when they disabled Luddie.”
“It might have been an accident,” David tried to insist.
“Maybe he decided to push for one more in spite of what the computer said.”
“If it were anyone else, I’d agree with you,” Leif said. “But this is Luddie MacPherson we’re talking about. The guy believed in his machine.”
He put the cup down. “I’ve got to talk to my folks. Maybe I can swing a ride down to Washington on my dad’s corporate jet.”
“You’re coming down here?” David said. “Why? I thought you were finished plugging leaks.”
“I thought I had an answer that I could never convince anyone about,” Leif said. “I had Luddie marked down as the bad guy. Now he’s dead under—to say the least—suspicious
circumstances.”
Leif looked grim. “At least we owe it to him and to ourselves to try and find some kind of answer.” He sighed. “Maybe this time it will turn out to be the right one.”
Leif arrived in D.C. the next morning. He dropped a bag at the apartment his father used when he was in town on business, then went to visit David.
He found his friend hadn’t been idle. “We’ve got to hire a cab for a long ride—your treat,” he said. “I was on the holo with Sabotine MacPherson. We have permission to get into Fortress MacPherson and pay a condolence call.”
The peace of the Maryland countryside ended abruptly outside the gates of the MacPherson mansion. Vans from several HoloNews networks and even entertainment syndicates clustered outside the closed gates, their microwave masts up and operating. Media types with microphones jockeyed for the best vantage points for their location shots.
Flatprint photographers took pictures of the bedlam, and people from Net newsgroups were setting up portable holo rigs to record the scene.
“What a mess,” Leif muttered.
David didn’t answer. He was staring at a battered old Dodge parked at the edge of the throng of vehicles.
“Stop the cab!” he ordered abruptly. The driver braked, and David nudged Leif. “I thought that car looked familiar. It cut off Sabotine’s limo when she was with Nick D’Aliso. That’s—”
Leif peered through the window and immediately recognized the man behind the steering wheel.
It was Battlin’ Bob MacPherson.
Grabbing the door handle, Leif was out of the car in a flash and walking over to the Dodge. David followed a little more warily.
The big man’s craggy face looked almost apprehensive as he saw someone approaching. Then his eyes met Leif’s face, and he opened the driver’s side window.
“I know you,” Battlin’ Bob said, snapping his fingers to try and stimulate his memory. “Ericsson? No. Leif Anderson.”
Leif nodded.
“I was pretty rough on you, as I remember,” the ex-wrestler said. “Well, here’s your chance for payback. I’m asking you—begging you—to take a message in there to my daughter. The guards won’t let me through the gate.”