At a time like this, Maj thought grimly, there's only one thing Cluj's mind is going to be on. Weapons. He needs weapons.
And Dad said that the government there was beginning to look at Laurent's dad's work as something besides medical technology....
Maj shivered. "That's enough," she said to the computer. "Virtual call. Tag it nonurgent/accept if convenient. Leave as a message if unavailable or no response."
"Whom are you calling, boss?"
"James Winters."
"Working."
There was a pause.
A moment later, "Maj," James Winters said. "Good morning." He was at his desk in his office at Net Force--a plain office, with some steel bookcases and a laminated desk, covered with work as always. The Venetian blinds were pulled up to show the mirror-coated windows looking out onto a sunny day, and, with one exception, showed an inspiring view of the parking lot.
"Mr. Winters," Maj said. "Wow, you get up early."
"Actually I slept in this morning," he said, and grinned very slightly, so that it was hard for Maj to work out whether he was pulling her leg or not. "But congratulations for taking so long to make this call. You're learning the art of restraint."
Maj blushed. The last time they had worked closely together, Winters had upbraided her for being impatient. Maj didn't think she was particularly impatient--it wasn't her fault if she could figure things out faster than some people, and make up her mind much faster. Unfortunately she suspected James Winters of perceiving her as impatient...and perception was everything, in the game she was preparing to play in Net Force. Assuming they ever hired her...which would almost certainly be a decision that would have to pass across this man's desk.
"Restraint?" Maj said, playing the innocent for the moment.
"Must be at least a day since you found out what was going on," he said. "I would have thought you would have called to pump me yesterday."
Maj could only smile at that, and at the idea that this man could be pumped without his permission. "No," she said, "that's not what I'm interested in at the moment."
"Oh? What, then?" He glanced at the one window that didn't show the parking lot. Maj knew that window was tasked to show the view in Winter's backyard at home, where a small brown bird was currently pecking enthusiastically on an empty bird feeder.
"I didn't know you had clout."
Winters raised his eyebrows, looked at her sidewise. "I think I'll take that as a compliment...for the moment. 'Clout' how, specifically?"
"You got a whole spaceplane diverted."
"I did?"
"Oh, come on, Mr. Winters!" She gave him a look that she hoped wasn't too exasperated. "You were on the link to my dad early yesterday morning...and no more than half an hour later that flight came down two airports away from where it was supposed to be."
"Mmm," Winters said, "interesting, isn't it...."
His attention was on the little brown bird again. "Go away," he said, "it's summer, can't you see that? Come back in October."
Maj held her piece for the moment. After a breath or so, Winters turned back to her and smiled, just slightly. "Well," he said, "just so you know. I didn't divert that plane. But there was an air marshal on it," he said as Maj was opening her mouth. "On the spaceplanes, there always are. And I shoot with the air marshals and some of the FBI and Secret Service guys, once a month or so. This fellow knows me...and I was able to convince him to go have a word with the pilot and convince her that there was a need to land elsewhere. The airlines do this kind of thing all the time for much less reason. And when it happens, they're happy enough to send sky-jitneys for the passengers so that everyone gets where they need to be on time."
Maj nodded. "You were that sure that someone was going to try to intercept Laurent...."
"Not that sure," Winters said. "Let's just say that, after talking to your father, I didn't see any harm in throwing a wrench into the works, one that could possibly be mistaken for an accident. Assuming, of course, that there were 'works.' And I think it's safer to assume that there might have been. Some of the people we're dealing with here are...not nice." The grimness of his expression belied the casual phrasing.
"So Laurent's father is pretty important," Maj said.
"Not politically. No, I take that back. We're not sure how important he might be, politically. Scientifically, there's not much doubt he's irreplaceable. But either way, your father was very concerned...and let's just say that there are people who take your father's opinions seriously. Me, for one."
This was one of those things that Maj was still getting used to, and still occasionally finding hard to understand. She was uncertain exactly what it was her father had to do with Net Force, and he had not been very forthcoming about details.
"Anyway," Winters said, "how's Laurent doing?"
"He's okay," Maj said. "He's out with Dad at the park, running."
Winters raised his eyebrows. "I would have thought he might still be sleeping," he said. "Jet lag, or just general fatigue..."
"Not a chance. He was in here not twenty minutes ago, looking terrific. You'd think he hadn't just come six thousand miles at all. It's abnormal." Maj grimaced--she always suffered terribly from jet lag, especially traveling East to West. "Or just unfair."
Winters made a rueful face. "I know someone like that," he said. "His mother's a Nobel Prize winner in medicine--I think she must have fed him some magic potion when he was a baby...or just passed on a hereditary ability to ignore time zones. He flies halfway around the world and it doesn't even make a dent in him. Makes me sick just to think about it." He laughed a little. "But anyway, I see that you took the opportunity, while he was out of the way, yadayadayada..."
"Uh, yes."
The little brown bird was back at the feeder again--Winters looked at it with a resigned expression. "So, Maj," Winters said. "Is he a problem, this kid?"
"Not at all," she said. "Very nice, in fact. Maybe he acts a little old for his age."
"It wouldn't be strange," Winters said, rather quietly, as if more to himself than to her. "It's not exactly a peaceful environment he's been growing up in, though superficially it may look that way. There's a lot of stress...a lot of fear. And it's going to be worse for him, now that some of the pressure's off."
"He's pretty worried about his dad," Maj said. "Though he's trying to cover it up."
"He has reason to be worried," Winters said. "How much has your dad told you?"
"Most of it," Maj said, feeling it smarter not to be too specific.
Winters nodded, and to Maj's disappointment, refused to be drawn on the subject. "The country from which he's been taken," Winters said, "is not exactly a friendly one. They've been smarting under technology and trade sanctions for a long time, and it's not a situation that's likely to change. They will not take this lying down." He paused. "I think your father may have mentioned that some extra security is in the offing...."
"Yeah."
"Good. I'm thinking about what else we can do. Meantime, keep an eye on Laurent. I wouldn't let him run around town by himself."
"It hadn't occurred to me. Anyway, he doesn't seem interested in that...he's a lot more interested in our Net setup."
Winters grinned a little. "Yes, I would expect he might be...their Net back where he comes from isn't anywhere near as involved as ours. The government there keeps a pretty tight stranglehold on communications, generally. It wouldn't do to have the people get any clear idea of how much greener the grass is on the other side."
Maj made a face. "Well, I'm trying to break him in gently. Not that it's easy...he wants to dive right in. When we finished a six-hour battle last night, he wanted just to jump right back in again as soon as he'd gone to the bathroom."
"I just bet. Well, again, keep an eye on him--you wouldn't want him to overdo it."
"That's what his dad said, supposedly."
"Oh?"
"To my dad, yeah. He wants to spend some time helping Niko find his way through our Net whe
n he gets here, apparently."
"A wise parent," Winters said, and leaned back at the chair, looking at the brown bird, which steadfastly refused to notice that no amount of pecking at the feeder was producing any food.
"You don't suppose..." Maj blinked, trying to sort out a sudden new thought.
"What?"
"That his dad hid anything important in his son's Net space when he had it cloned here...."
Winters paused visibly, then gave Maj an approving look. "That's the first thing we checked," he said. "No."
Maj's heart sank a little--she had hoped the idea was original. "But then I guess," she said, "that it would have been the first thing the other side would have thought of, too."
Winters nodded. "We moved his material onto one of our secure servers from the one to which it had originally been ported," he said. "We've been through that space with a fine-tooth comb, Maj, and there's nothing there but some private writing--not in code--some simple games, and some schoolwork. Though your boy's quite a linguist."
"Yeah," Maj said. "I think he's been holding back to make me feel less ignorant."
Winters laughed out loud at that. "Stings, does it? I'm not surprised. I know a couple of people who have the language gift, and it makes me feel like a dolt when I hear them being so fluent. Never mind...I'll have more time to start studying languages when I retire. And your whole life's before you...you've got plenty of time."
"It won't be before me if I stay on here much longer," Maj said, for her mother suddenly put her head into the kitchen, from the hall, and Maj could see her through one of the doorways in her work space, mouthing words which probably translated into something like "Get in the shower now or you'll be late for school." "Captain Winters, thanks for your time. I just wanted to check with you myself."
"Always pleased to help," he said, and turned his eyes back to the piles of work on his desk. "Give a shout if you need me."
"Right. Off," Maj said, and Winters's image flicked away to blackness, followed a moment later by her work space. She was sitting in the kitchen again, looking at her mother.
"The phone company called," she said. "I can't believe your father told them anyone here would be conscious at this hour."
"He was," Maj said.
"Yes, and look who got to answer the call when it came," said her mother. "Well, they're sending their people over this morning. I just hope they'll be gone by the time you get home." She looked annoyed. Maj suspected this was because her mother, not being able to leave well enough alone, would stand over the installers and watch everything they did all day, and then afterward complain that she had lost a day's work. There were few things better calculated to fray her temper.
Maj got up, stretched, glanced up at the repeater and did the little interior "blink" that shut her implant's connection to it down. The work space behind her went away, leaving her in a kitchen rapidly growing brighter with the new day. "Yeah, I hope they're gone by then, too," she said. "Oh, one thing I have to do before I leave...order some sweats for Niko...."
"I'll take care of that, honey."
"Have fun. He takes a size thirty-six sneaker."
"Is that a real size?" her mother said suspiciously.
Maj made her way down to the shower, chuckling.
Maj spent all that day thinking more about Laurent than about anything else. Her morning went by in a strangely disoriented way, and she had trouble concentrating on her class-work, which was unusual for Maj. She plunged through math and physics with no difficulties, but when she hit history, she found that the Teapot Dome scandal seemed unusually remote. Somehow, the history with which she had been dealing at home, the more recent events of a place thousands of miles away, seemed far more concrete and important. In her house, drinking her tea, was someone who had escaped from that history--a particularly nasty piece of it. And will he ever go back? Maj wondered. She couldn't imagine wanting to go back to the place where he and his father had been forced to live in such fear. But at the same time, home was home. He may even love the place, Maj thought.
If that was the case, she wondered how he managed it. Maj tended to be very sensitive to the emotional atmosphere around her; a fight or a disagreement in the Green household would make the hair stand up all over her until it was resolved, and even then she would be twitchy about everything everyone said for a day or so afterward. He must have known, she thought, that they were watching him and his father all the time. I could never stand something like that. Yet at the same time, possibly it was something you could get used to, like air pollution.
Laurent certainly didn't seem particularly damaged; though maybe this was simply because he was smart. Intelligence, applied to your daily circumstances, was probably a big help. And it was also possible that Laurent was simply a lot tougher than he looked. His slightly delicate appearance could very well be hiding a much more robust personality than you might expect at first glance.
Nonetheless, Maj fretted about him on and off all day, as if her mother wasn't perfectly capable of taking care of Laurent while Maj was going about her own business. He's only thirteen, she kept thinking; and yeah, said the back of her mind, a thirteen-year-old who is perfectly capable of being shipped thousands of miles away from his normal life at the drop of a hat, and hardly turning a hair. Maybe you should get used to the idea that there are other people at least as competent as you are, even if they are three or four years younger....
But the end of the school day still couldn't come soon enough for Maj. She felt antsy enough to take the local bus home from her high school and walk the two blocks to the house, rather than walking the whole two miles as she preferred to. The last few steps, the last half block or so, she found herself hurrying, and she took the steps up to the front door nearly at a run.
But when she bounced in the door and looked around, everything was quiet. She wandered down the hall and saw that her mother's office door was slightly open. Her mother was sitting quietly with her hands folded in her lap. "Mom?" Maj said softly.
Her mother looked over her shoulder, stretched, and yawned. "Oh," she said, "you're back. I wasn't expecting you for another hour yet."
"This late in the year," Maj said, "there's not as much to do as usual...."
Her mother looked at her with barely concealed amusement. "I would have thought," she said, "it might have more to do with our guest."
Maj gave her mother her own version of what her mother described as "an old-fashioned look."
"Oh," Maj said, "I don't know." But she wandered farther down the hall before her mother could get any more of her guesses right.
"Nice try, honey. He's online," her mother called after her. "In the den."
"Why does this not surprise me?" Maj said softly as she turned back to her mother's office and leaned against the door. "Are the phone people done?"
"With the concrete part of the installation, yes," her mom said. "They said we might lose service once or twice this afternoon before business hours are over--it seems they have to do some tweaking at the exchange. It shouldn't affect us too much, though. I wouldn't start anything vital right now, that's all."
"Wasn't planning to."
Maj wandered down the hall again and looked in the den door, saw Laurent sitting there quietly in the implant chair. The Muffin was sitting in his lap.
Maj smiled a little and went into the kitchen. She dumped her book bags and the light jacket she had brought home from school with her, rooted around in the fridge briefly for some milk and a peach, and sat down at the table to line her own implant up with the doubler over the sink.
From her own work space she opened the transit door and looked through into the Muffin's. Sure enough, in the midst of the ancient Cambrian rain forest, all waving with giant horsetail ferns and club mosses, there was Laurent, with a crowd of dinosaurs sitting or standing around him, while the Muffin sat a little elevated on a nearby rock and read to them all.
"'Ay,' Puck said. 'I'm sorry we lost him out of Old
England--'"
Laurent looked up at the slight rustling the dinosaurs made at Maj's approach. He was wearing the new sweats Maj's mother had ordered for him, and looked extremely relaxed.
"All right, you guys," Maj said, "shove over..."
She pushed a couple of the larger tyrannosaurs out of the way and sat down on the grass next to Laurent, composing herself for the Muffin to resume.
"I was nearly done," Muf said with some dignity. "You almost missed everything."
"Well, go on," Maj said. "I'll just have to fill in the blanks. It'll be suppertime soon, and you'll need to wash up. But I'd love to sit here and listen to you finish this first."
It took about another twenty minutes for the Muffin to plow through to the end of that chapter of Rewards and Fairies. Maj and Laurent kept quite still through this--the fierceness of the Muffin's concentration was impressive, and none of the dinosaurs dared to move. Finally, when she was done and closed the book, Laurent applauded a little. The Muffin beamed at him.
"You are very young to be reading that," he said. "You're doing very well."
"I'm not that young," said the Muffin, with the air of a grand dame explaining that she wasn't that old. "Daddy started reading when he was three. So, what else do you want me to read you?"
"Nothing right now, Muffaletta," Maj said. "Mom is going to want to give you supper, and then Daddy will be home."
"Oh, good," the Muffin said. "I'll come back later, then." She put down the book and vanished.
Maj and Laurent looked at each other with amusement. "She really is reading above her age level," Maj said, "but it's traditional in the family. Have you read that one before?"
He shook his head. "It was not familiar."
"Kipling," Maj said. "It's never too late. I'll lend you a paper copy."
"They would not have let us have such literature at home," Laurent said, leaning back and looking up at one of the dinosaurs. "It has kings in it."
"Presidents, too," said Maj, "of wicked foreign countries. That part did, anyway."
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