without anybody we talked to knowing about it.'
Jay smiled.
'Hey, you know who Dick Grayson is?'
'Robin, the boy wonder,' Michaels said.
Jay looked disappointed, but he continued: 'FBI field agents have
questioned Morrison's wife, and she doesn't know anything. Really.
According to the reports I just read, she isn't exactly the brightest
bulb on the string-she doesn't know what her husband does for a living,
and it is the opinion of the interviewing agents that she wouldn't know
HAARP from a harpoon.'
'What else?'
'Nothing else. We have a respected scientist who apparently figured
out how to drive people crazy using a giant walkie-talkie, then up and
did it. We know when, and we think we sort of know generally how, but
not why.'
'Conjecture?'
'I dunno. Boss. Doesn't make any sense to me. E
revenge, power, money--those are the big motivating factors that come
to mind.'
Michaels said, 'Anybody ever screw him over so bad he'd want this kind
of revenge?'
'Not that I've seen. His ex-wife lives in Boston. If he wanted to get
her, he missed by three thousand miles. No alimony, no kids, and the
new trophy wife is a lot prettier, anyhow. He lost his funding on a
research project, but got a higher paying job right after. '
'Power?'
'Never had an ambition to run things, far as I can tell.'
'Money, then?'
'How does zapping a couple of Chinese villages and then downtown
Portland get him rich? Extortion, maybe?
But that wouldn't be too bright, 'cause he'd have to know the
authorities would be on his tail forever for multiple murder. He'd
never be able to relax, it's too high-profile.
Too late for that now, anyhow, we have the gun. Ammunition is no good
without it, and he can't walk into another of these radio palaces and
ask pretty please to use the transmitter, can he?'
No, it didn't make a lot of sense.
Michaels had a sudden thought.
'Suppose you wanted to buy a new computer system, something
experimental, way ahead of what everybody else had?'
'Yeah?'
'How would you go about buying it if you weren't sure what it would
do?'
'Sit down and put it through its paces,' Jay said.
'Crank it up to high and let it fly, find out what it would do--ah.'
Michaels saw that Jay was going down the same path.
'Yeah,' he said.
'Maybe that's what Morrison was doing.
Maybe he was showing it to a potential customer. How much you figure
