2085555430.'
'Can you locate the source of that call?'
'Well, let's see, we can git the F-1, which is the primary distribution point and that turns out to be .. .'
He typed and waited.
'That turns out to be the Bell Substation at Custer County, in central Idaho, near a town called Mackay.'
'Mackay,' said Solaratov.
'Custer County. Central Idaho. Is there an address?'
'No, but there's an F-2: 459912.'
'What's that?'
'That's the secondary distribution point. The pole.'
'The pole?'
'Yeah, the pole nearest wherever they are. That be the pole that the phone wire is directly wired to. It can't be more than one hundred feet away from the house, probably closer than that. They got all the poles labeled, man.
That's how Ma Bell do it.'
'Can I get an address on that?'
'Not here. I don't have access to their computer from here. What you got to do is go to that little phone substation and break in somehow. You got to get into their computer or their files and get an address for F-2 459912.
That'll put you there, no problem.'
'I can't do computers. You come with me. You do it.
Much money.'
'Yeah, me in Idaho, with the dreads and the 'tude.
That'd be rich. Man, them white boy five-Os arrest me for how I be looking. No, man: you got to do it yourself. You want that address, you break in. It ain't no big deal. You may even get it out of the Dumpster. But you break in, you check the files, you find the F-2 listings. You might even find a map with the F-2s designated, you dig? Ain't no big thing, brother. I ain't shitting you.'
'You could call, no? Bluff them into giving you information?'
'Here, no sweat. In any big city in America, no sweat.
You can social engineer the shit out of these boys. But out there: they hear a brother in a place where there ain't no brothers, I think you got problems. I don't want to risk blowing your caper, man. What I'm telling you, it's the best way, it really is. You'll see, you be chilling in no time.'
Solaratov nodded grimly.
'You can do it, man. It ain't a problem.'
'No problem,' Solaratov said.
CHAPTER forty-two.
In the graduate degree ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 132 men and women were awarded their PhD's in assorted academic and scientific specialties. But only one received the Ball Prize as the Institute Scholar, for only one was the ranking member of the class.
He was a tall young man, prematurely bald, of surprising gravity and focus. He took his degree--'Certain Theories of Solar Generation As Applied to Celestial Navigation' was his dissertation--in quantum physics from the clean and was asked to speak some words, and when he assumed the podium, his remarks were short.
'I want to thank you,' he said, 'for the chance you have given me. I have been a scholarship student since my undergraduate years and even before that. I came from a poor family, my mother worked hard, but there was never enough. But institutions such as this one--and Yale University and Harvard University and Madison High School--were kind to me and doors were opened. Without your generosity I could not be here and I am honored by that, and by your faith in me. I only wish my parents could be here to share this moment. They were good people, both of them. Thank you very much.'
He stepped down to polite applause and went back to his place in line as the ceremony--interminable to an uninvested outsider--went on hour after hour. It was a hot day and cloudless in Boston. The Charles River was smooth as blackened, ancient ivory, a thin veil of clouds filtered the sun, but did nothing to help the heat. The Orioles were in town, to play the Red Sox in a four game series, the president had just announced a new attempt to curb welfare growth, the international news was grave--the Russian election had the pundits worried, with everybody's favorite bad guy leading by a seemingly unassailable margin--and the stock market was up four points. None of this meant anything to the tall man in the khaki suit who sat in the last row of the graduation ceremony.
He waited impassively as the minutes churned by until at last the crowd broke up and families rejoined, old friends embraced, the whole litany of human joy was reenacted.
He walked through the milling people toward the podium and at last he spotted his quarry, the young man who was the Ball Prize winner.
He watched him, the young man accepted the attentions he had earned somewhat passively and seemed not to respond to them with a great deal of enthusiasm. He accepted the embraces of colleagues and professors and administrators, but after a while--surprisingly quickly, as a matter of fact--he was alone. He took off his cap and hung his gown over his arm to reveal a nondescript, almost shabby suit, and began to leave. He had, in fact, the look of a loner, the boy who's ever so rarely at the center but prefers to blur through the margins of any situation, is uncomfortable with eye contact or attempts at intimacy, and will lose himself readily enough in the arcane, be it quantum physics, Dungeons & Dragons or sniper warfare.
