answer that made sense. 'Then a scientist, a doctor, noticed that in all the cultures he took of his patients' stomach ulcers, they all had this one bacterium present. Helicobacter, they called it, because it was shaped like a little helix. He worked with that bug for something like five years, until he was convinced that it was the cause of stomach ulcers, and that it could be killed, and the ulcers wiped out, just by using the right kind of antibiotic for long enough. He published papers, tried to convince everybody. They laughed at him. They said that the proof wasn't conclusive, that the evidence was all circumstantial. They wouldn't approve even animal testing, let alone human.' Charlie smiled a smile as grim as Winters's had been. 'So finally the guy swallowed a pure culture of Helicobacter and gave himself the fastest, nastiest case of bleeding ulcers anybody ever saw. Then he put himself on a course of antibiotics, and cured them.'
Winters just looked at him.
'A lot of doctors have done stuff like that,' Charlie said. 'Pasteur. Jenner. It's traditional.' He gulped, for Winters's look was not getting any friendlier. 'When you're sure you're right. But when it's a life-and-death thing… the only life you have a right to put on the line is your own.'
Winters just looked at him, like something carved from stone. 'Mark,' he said at last, 'would you excuse us?'
Mark threw Charlie one apologetic glance, and then removed himself from the room with a speed that suggested he had recently had ion drivers installed.
A moment's silence ensued. 'Now what the hell am I supposed to do with you,' Winters said at last, 'when you play the moral card on me like that.'
Charlie thought it wisest to keep his mouth shut for the moment.
Winters sighed and leaned back in his chair again. 'Your mother and father,' he said, rubbing his face, 'are going to have my hide off my bones if I don't come down on you hard for this dumb stunt. Which it was.' Charlie looked down. 'The 'morality card' aside. Morality starts at home, Charlie. You have not treated your folks very well. If you and the irrepressible Mr. Gridley hadn't had God's own luck, not to mention a sense of timing developed well beyond what people of your tender years should have, you could very well have been 'suicide' number seven. And maybe Mark and Nick for eight and nine. And regardless of the fact that the work and the evidence you left us would have made your death murder rather than suicide, and that your murderer would have been behind bars very quickly indeed, it would have shattered your parents' lives.'
Charlie sat there with the sweat bursting out all over him, because he knew it was true, and that one way or another, he was unlikely to hear the end of this for months.
The silence stretched out again for a long while.
'All right,' Winters said. 'We'll see what you work out with them. They've let me know that, after talking to Jay Gridley, they think you should be allowed to continue as a Net Force Explorer. You may have to get used to being, uh, monitored a little more closely. You threw quite a scare into them.'
Charlie swallowed. 'Yes, sir.'
'But there is this.' He gave Charlie a thoughtful look. 'If you hadn't done what you did… heaven knows who she might have killed next. How many more murders it would have taken to quieten her ghosts… and of course they wouldn't have stayed quiet, not for long.' He sat back, looking at his folded hands. 'Unfortunately, among the various kinds of serial killers, there are a few who `seal over' very effectively for prolonged periods between crimes. They're crazy as bedbugs, but either they're not crazy enough to let their symptoms show where people can see them, or there's no one to see. Living by herself, her son dead, her husband pretty much permanently out of thepicture, with no one to see how weird she got every April… this could have gone on for a long while. It could have caused Deathworld to be shut down, and left Bane fighting endless lawsuits that would not have been his responsibility. So an injustice has been prevented… though frankly, from what I've seen of the place, I wonder if-'
Then Winters stopped himself. 'No,' he said, sounding annoyed. 'Injustice is injustice, dammit, and artistic opinions shouldn't enter into it. That way lies tyranny. Now would you mind explaining why you're looking at me like that?'
Charlie had begun to smile, just a little. He couldn't help it. 'I think there's more to that place than meets the eye,' he said. 'And really, Mr. Winters, I think the media' ye overstated the case a little about Deathworld. It's not as kinky and cruel as they think. It's more a teaching exercise.'
'Oh, is it?' Winters said. 'Well.' He glanced down at his desk, reading something that had been manifesting under its surface for a while now.
He sighed. 'It was always forensics with you, wasn't it?' he said. ' 'The noblest use of science,' I heard one of my people call it. Well, some good has come of this aspect of your riffling of the records, anyway. There really should have been more cooperation among the various police forces handling the suicides. There are mechanisms set up for that, but they don't get used enough. This outcome will enable us to put bugs under some people's rumps, and have them look more closely at how to coordinate deaths that have similarities. A 'smart' system can be coached by forensic people and profilers to start handling and correlating data like this… as long as the cops put it in. And that a kid beat them to a serial killer might just shame them into using it.' He raised his eyebrows. 'Fine. But at the end of the day I suppose I might have known you'd do what you did, once faced with the evidence. Regardless of how earnestly you promised me you wouldn't jump the gun.'
Charlie blushed hot again. This is all I need. A rep as an incorrigible gun-jumper. With one of the two men who'll determine whether I ever work in Net Force at all. _ _
'Don't mistake my intent,' said Winters. 'I don't mindlessly push the 'team player' concept because some corporate-minded superior makes me do it. I do it because it is the sine qua non of this organization, the single thing that makes us effective. When you start working with other people in Net Force someday, assuming that you graduate medical school without incident and that you are somehow spared for that work by an overly kindly Universe which keeps you from getting your butt kidnapped or killed when you put it in harm's way'- Charlie began wondering whether it was possible to feel as hot and embarrassed as he presently did without actually running a clinical fever- 'then you are going to have to do what you tell them you're going to do, for the simple reason that they're going to act on that information, and when they do, if you're not doing what you said you were going to do, you may get them killed. They will be depending on you to keep your word. If you can't… you are no good to anyone. So get the polar bears and the Helicobacter out of your system now, because there'll be no room for them later.'
Winters looked at him.
'Uh,' Charlie said, 'yes, sir.'
There was a long silence. 'Good,' Winters said. 'Then we understand each other. Insofar as anyone my age can truly understand anyone yours.' He shook his head. 'Which is little enough. Especially after I just heard you defending Deathworld to me.' He raised his eyebrows at Charlie. 'I wouldn't have thought you'd care much for the music, for one thing. I thought you were all for tech-notrad.'
'The context,' Charlie said, 'makes other readings possible.'
Winters gave him a cockeyed look. 'I hear the sound of someone managing information on what he considers a 'need to know' basis.' He sighed. 'You should go away, now, because you're making my head hurt.' He glanced at the bird feeder stuck to his window, where a small brown bird was taking out one nut at a time and dropping it to the ground. 'Even more than he was,' Winters added, 'until I realized what he's doing. He's feeding two of his buddies on the ground. Possibly his kids. They're too big to tell.'
He made a shooing gesture at Charlie. Charlie got up.'… So get out of here,' he said.
In haste, Charlie got out.
School that day went by in something of a blur, mostly caused by Charlie having to refuse again and again to say anything about what had happened down at the public access place near the Square. The case was now officially sub judice and could not be discussed. By the end of the day he was thoroughly tired of not being able to say anything, and seriously relieved to see Nick.
'Are you okay?' Charlie said to him as they started to walk in the general direction of home.
'Uh, yeah.' Nick chuckled a little. 'I didn't realize whose son Mark was! James Winters called my dad.'. 'He did? Oh, no!'
'No, it was okay,' Nick said, sounding completely unconcerned… but then he didn't have to answer to James Winters. 'My dad was really impressed.'
'Winters didn't… say anything awful, did he?'
