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  Something she hadn't really thought about came to her as the van stopped. That means Captain Ron doesn't know about Mister Sellars either—about how he came with us in our car, with that terrible boy, too. None of the army men know about it. That's why Daddy kept saying not to talk to anyone.

  She had to hold her breath, because the being-scared suddenly felt so big. She hadn't understood. She had thought Daddy was angry at Captain Ron, angry because Ron didn't want him to take time off from work. Now she knew that he wasn't angry, he was keeping a secret. A secret she might have told one of the army men if they had asked her.

  "Are you all right, honey?" her father asked. The van doors hissed open, and one of the soldiers stepped out. "Just take the man's hand when you get down."

  Mr. Ramsey leaned close to her ear. "I'll be right behind you, Christabel. Your daddy and I will make sure everything's going to be okay."

  But Christabel was beginning to learn a scary thing about grown-ups. Sometimes they said things would be all right, but they didn't know they'd be all right. They just said it. Bad things could happen, even to little kids.

  Especially to little kids.

  "Very slick," Captain Ron said as the door slid open in the garage wall, but he didn't sound happy. "Our own private elevator to the exec suite."

  What kind of sweet? Christabel started to cry. Exec. She'd heard the word before. She didn't remember just what it meant, but she was pretty sure it must mean something about executions. She knew about them—she saw more things on the net than her parents knew about. Execution sweet, that was what Captain Ron was really saying. She wondered if it was a poison candy bar or something that they kept just for bad kids—maybe a poisoned apple, like in "Snow White."

  Her father put his hand in her hair, touching the back of her head. "Honey, don't cry. Everything will be all right. Ron, does she have to come along? Can't we put this off until I can get hold of her mother or someone else to take her?"

  Christabel grabbed her daddy's hand, hard. Captain Ron just shrugged, a big, heavy movement of his shoulders. "I got orders, Mike."

  It was crowded and hot with all of them in the elevator—herself, her father, Mr. Ramsey, Captain Ron, and the two other soldiers—but Christabel didn't want the ride to end, didn't want to see what an execution sweet looked like. When the doors pinged and opened, she started crying again.

  The room inside wasn't what she expected, which had been something like one of the terrible gray-painted prisons she'd seen on netshows, like the one Zelmo and Nedra had been in on Hate My Life. Captain Ron had kept calling it a hotel, and that's what it looked like, a big, big hotel room with a floor as big as their lawn at home, covered in pale blue carpet, with three couches and tables and a wallscreen that took up one huge wall, and a kitchen at the far end, and doors in the other walls. There was even a vase of flowers on one of the tables. The only thing that seemed as bad as she had expected was the really big man in dark glasses who stood in the doorway waiting for them. Another man who looked a lot like him was sitting on one of the couches, although now he stood up. They both were dressed in funny black suits, tight and a little shiny, and both had things strapped on their chests and hips that looked like guns or something even worse and more complicated and scarier.

  "ID," said the man waiting at the door in a low slow voice.

  "And just who the hell are you?" Captain Ron asked. For the first time his unhappiness seemed like something else—like he was angry, or maybe even scared.

  "ID," the big man in the wraparound glasses said again, just the same, like he was one of the store window advertisements in Seawall Center. The soldiers with Captain Ron moved a little. Christabel saw one of them drop his hand to his side, near where his gun was. Christabel's heart began to go really, really fast.

  "Hang on," her daddy said, "let's all just. . . ." One of the doors on the far side of the big room swung open. A man with a mustache and short gray hair walked out. Christabel could see a whole other big room behind him, with a bed and a desk and a big window with the curtains drawn. The man wore a bathrobe and striped pajamas. He was smoking a cigar. For a moment, Christabel thought she had seen him on the net because even in such funny clothes he looked so familiar.

  "It's all right, Doyle," the man with the mustache said. "I know Captain Parkins. And Major Sorensen, too—oh, yes."

  The big man in black walked back across the room to the nearest couch. He and the other shiny-suit man sat down together, not saying anything, but there was something about them that made Christabel think of a dog pretending to sleep at the end of a leash, just waiting until a kid got close enough to jump at.

  "And I even remember you, darlin'." The man in the mustache smiled and leaned forward to pat Christabel on the head. She remembered him then, the tan-faced man in her daddy's office. "What are you doing here, little girl?" Her father's hand tightened on hers, so she didn't pull away from him, but she didn't say anything either.

  The man straightened up, still smiling, but when he spoke again his voice was cold, like someone had just opened the freezer door and let the air puff out in Christabel's face. "What's this child doing here, Parkins?"

  "I'm . . . I'm sorry, General." Captain Ron had sweat stains under his arms that had got bigger since they had left the elevator. "It was a difficult situation—the girl's mother was out shopping and couldn't be located, so since you said this was going to be informal. . . ."

  The general laughed, a snort. "Oh, yes, informal. But I didn't say it was going to be a goddamn picnic, did I? What, are we going to have father-daughter sack races? Hmm? Captain Parkins, were you thinking we should have a picnic?"

  "No, sir."

  Mr. Ramsey cleared his throat. "General . . . Yacoubian?"

  The man's eyes swiveled across to him. "And you know what?" the general said softly. "I definitely do not recognize you, citizen. So maybe you should just get back on the elevator and get the hell out of my suite."

  "I'm a lawyer, General. Major Sorensen is my client."

  "Really? This is the first time I've ever heard of a military officer bringing legal representation to a casual meeting with his commanding officer."

  Now it was Ramsey who smiled, just a small one. "Clearly you have a broad definition of the word 'casual,' General."

  "I'm a brigadier general, sonny. I think you'll find that things have a way of being what I say they are." He turned to Parkins. "All right, Captain, you've done your job. Take your men and get the hell back to whatever you're supposed to be doing. I'll take it from here."

  "Sir?" Captain Parkins seemed confused. "But my men, sir . . . you said to bring a couple of MPs. . . ."

  "You don't think Doyle and Pilger can handle anything that might come up?" The general shook his head. "Those boys are carrying more armament than a combat helicopter."

  "Are they also US Army, General?" asked Ramsey loudly. "For the record?"

  "Ask me no questions, lawyer, and I'll tell you no lies," chuckled the general.

  Christabel's daddy's hand was trembling on her shoulder, which was making her almost more frightened than anything else that had happened today. Now he finally spoke. "General, there's really no need for either my daughter or Mr. Ramsey to be involved in this. . . ."

  "Mike," Ramsey said, "don't give away your rights. . . ."

  ". . . So I wish you'd just let them go," her father said, ignoring him. "Send them with Captain Parkins, if you like."

  The general shook his head. Although his face was very tan and his mustache was very small and neat, he had a crinkly look around his eyes that looked like pictures Christabel had seen of Santa Claus. But she thought that he was more like some kind of backward Santa, someone who instead of bringing presents would come down the chimney and take little boys and girls away in a sack. "Oh, no, I don't think so," he said. "I'm very interested to hear what everyone has to say—even the little girl. So you and your men just paddle off, Captain Parkins. The rest of us have some talking to do." He lean
ed past them and pushed the gold elevator button in its little frame in the wallpaper.

  "If it's just the same with you, sir," Captain Ron said suddenly, "I'll stay. Then if you need Major Sorensen or his daughter taken somewhere, I'll be available. Mike's a friend of mine, sir." He turned quickly to the two soldiers, who were looking very wide-eyed, but still not saying anything. "You and Gentry go down and wait in the van. If I'm not going to need you, I'll call and let you know you can head back to base."

  The door hissed open. For a moment everyone just looked at each other, the soldiers, the men in black on the couch, Captain Ron and Ramsey and her daddy and the general. Then the general smiled again. "Fine. You heard the captain, boys." He gestured the soldiers into the elevator. They were still staring out when the door slid closed. For some reason, seeing the young soldiers in their shiny helmets disappear, she felt like she had the first day her mommy had left her alone at kindergarten. She reached up and took her father's hand again and squeezed it tight.

  "Make yourselves at home," the general said cheerfully. "I have a rather important conference to finish, but I'll be done in half an hour or so, and then we'll all have a long chat." He turned toward the two men in black. "Make sure our guests are comfortable. But make sure they remain our guests until I'm offline. Gently, though. Gently."

  He turned and began to head back toward the bedroom.

  "General Yacoubian, sir," Christabel's daddy said. "I want to ask you again if my daughter and Mr. Ramsey could be released. It would just be a lot easier for everyone. . . ."

  The general turned around, and Christabel thought his eyes were as bright and strange as a bird's. "Easier? It's not me who has to make things easier, Sorensen. It's not me who has to answer the questions." He started toward the room, then stopped and turned again. "See, someone named Duncan from your office copied me on a request for labwork—something I should have been copied on automatically, but for some reason you held it back from me. Made for interesting reading, I have to say. A bit of scientific analysis you had done on some sunglasses. Very interesting sunglasses, they were, too. Ring a bell?"

  Captain Ron looked completely confused, but Christabel's daddy turned as pale as if something had leaked out of him.

  "So just sit tight and keep your mouth shut until I'm ready for you." The general smiled again. "You might say some prayers, too, if you know some." He turned and walked back into the bedroom, then shut the door.

  There was a long silence. Then one of the men in black, the man called Pilger, said, "If the kid's hungry, there's some peanuts and chocolate in the minibar," before turning back to watch the wallscreen again.

  The thing is, Dulcie told herself, I don't really know him all that well

  She was surveying the routine maintenance levels of Dread's system, which he kept in a state rather similar to his household decor—sparse and colorless. Where her own system had the equivalent of notes and unfinished projects lying around everywhere, not to mention all kinds of strange coding bric-a-brac—everything from long out-of-date utilities and code-busters which she'd hung onto just in case she ever bumped into such a system again to algorithmic representations so interesting she saved them almost as objects of beauty—Dread had nothing out of place, nothing that was not absolutely necessary, nothing that gave any hint of his personality at all.

  He's so guarded. One of those anal-retentive types. Probably rolls all his socks the same way. But after spending her childhood in her mother's aggressively bohemian care—most mornings young Dulcinea Anwin had not only needed to clear plates of spoiling food from the previous night's dinner party off the kitchen counter before making her own breakfast, but also had to make a circuit of the house putting out candles that had been left burning and evicting guests who had fallen asleep in strange places—she thought that a certain rigidity about order was not the worst trait a man could have.

  She had finished running diagnostics on their project's house system, which, despite the rather uncommon strains Dread was putting on it at the moment, was holding up nicely, and she was busy making records of some of the events from their incursion into the Grail system for future study when she bumped across something odd.

  It was a partition of sorts in Dread's own system, a boxing-off of data, but that wasn't the unusual thing about it. All systems were divided for organizational purposes, and most people who spent a lot of time working directly online were as idiosyncratic about how they arranged their system environments as they were with their RL homes. What she had seen of Dread's space was in fact so nonidiosyncratic she was almost disturbed by it: he had never bothered to change any of the settings, names, or infrastructure of the original system package, for one thing. It was a little like realizing the pictures on your manager's desk were the fake ones of smiling catalog models that had come with the frames. No, there was nothing unusual about partitioning your storage. What was interesting about this partition was that it was invisible, or supposed to be. She checked the directories, but there was no listing to correspond with the fairly extensive secured area onto which she had stumbled.

  A little secret door, she thought. Why, Mr. Dread, you do have some things you want to keep private after all.

  It was sort of cute, really—a boy thing, like a hidden treehouse. No girls allowed. But of course, Dread was a beginner with this stuff, and Dulcie was a very, very hard girl to hide things from.

  She hesitated for a few moments—not very long at all, really—reminding herself that it was wrong, that not only did her boss have a right to his privacy, he was also a man who did a lot of dangerous things for dangerous people, people who took their security very seriously. But Dulcie (who almost always lost these arguments with herself) found the idea more a challenge than a discouragement. After all, didn't she run with a dangerous crowd herself? Hadn't she shot someone only a few weeks ago? The fact that she was having regular nightmares about it, and now wished she had invented an excuse not to do it—faulty gun, jammed door lock, epileptic seizure—didn't mean she was suddenly unfit to run with the big boys.

  Besides, she thought, it will be interesting to have a peek into his mind. See what he really thinks about. Of course, it might just be his account books. Anybody this much of a neat freak might be pretty serious about hiding their double-entry stuff.

  But the small bit of poking and prying she allowed herself failed even to turn up a keyhole, let alone a key. If there was something interesting on the other side of the door, she was not going to find it out so easily. With the faintly shamed feeling that had visited her as a young girl rooting through her mother's bureau drawers, she erased all records of her investigations and dropped back out of the system.

  Her employer's secret compartment was still nagging at her half an hour later as she stood over his sleeping form, which lay nestled like a piece of dark jewelry in the while padding of the coma bed.

  It's true—I really don't know anything about him, she thought, looking down at his heavy-lidded eyes, at the minute movement of his irises between the mesh of black lashes. Well, I know he's not the most stable person in the world. It was hard not to remember each and every one of his flashes of anger. But there's something else in him, too—something calm, something knowing. Like a big cat, or a wolf. It was hard to avoid animal analogies—Dread's compact grace somehow did not seem quite civilized.

  She was watching the way his cocoa-colored skin took and softened the clinical glare of the overhead lights when Dread's eyes popped open.

  "Hello, sweetness," he said, grinning. "Bit jumpy today, aren't you?"

  "My God. . . !" She fought to regain her breath. "You could have warned me. You've been out of communication for almost twenty-four hours."

  "Been busy," he said. "Things are hopping." His grin widened. "But now I'm going to show you a little something. Come join me."

  It took her a moment to understand it was not an invitation to climb into the coma bed—an unpleasant thought even had her feelings about the man him
self been less ambivalent: the low murmur of its engines and the constant slow movement of the bed surface made her think of some kind of sea creature, an oyster without a shell. "You mean . . . on the network?"

  "Yes, on the network. You're a bit slow today, Anwin."

  "Just a few thousand things to do, that's all, and about two hours of sleep." She tried to keep her voice light, but this teenage jocularity was making her tense. "What do I do. . . ?"

  "Access the way I did, and make sure you're in full wraparound—you're going to need it. When you hit the first security barrier, your password is 'Nuba.' N-U-B-A. That's all."

  "What does it mean?"

  He was smiling again. "One of our abo words, sweetness. Comes from up north, Melville Island."

  "What, is it insulting or something?"

  "Oh, no. No." He closed his eyes as though drifting back into sleep. "Just the term they use for an unmarried woman. Which you are, right?" He chuckled, savoring something. "See you when you get there." He visibly relaxed, dropping back into the system like a swimmer sliding under the water.

  It took her a long moment to realize that she was still shaking a little, startled by his sudden appearance. Like he was watching me, she thought. Just standing behind me, watching me, waiting to give me a little scare. The bastard.

  She poured herself a glass of wine and drank it off in a couple of swallows before lying down on the couch with the fiberlink.

  Dulcie had barely uttered the code word when the nothingness of the first system level abruptly took on color and depth. The initial dazzle was so bright that for a second she wondered if she was staring into the sun, then the huge bronze door in front of her swung open and she stepped through into darkness.

  The darkness was not complete: the far end of the corridor had an unsteady glow that drew her forward. A dull murmur washed out to her, deep and slow as an ocean pawing at a stony beach. As the light grew and she began to glimpse the large chamber beyond, a shadowed space filled with tight-packed, round shapes like a field of sunken megaliths, she could not help feeling that she had stumbled into a dream. A look at her own legs and bare feet, muscular and bunioned from years of dance class, told her otherwise. Who ever saw their own feet in a dream? Her hands, too, were recognizably her own, the freckles on her long fingers visible even in the dim light.