I stared at McGlade. “ID chip?”
“Yeah. The transmission zoomed in with electromagnetic radiation.”
I picked up my DT and tuned in to CNN. They were playing the video of Aunt Zelda’s death. But not the early one; the one I assumed Teague made. They were playing mine, which showed the close-up of Alter-Talon’s ID chip.
Sata? Had he given his copy of the transmission to the police?
No. The channel cut to the wreckage of my beautiful Corvette, the newscaster saying they took my TEV out of the trunk and found the recorded footage. Teague came on next, talking to a reporter. His arm was in a sling, and he looked seriously pissed. I switched from closed captioning to sound.
“The woman is still unidentified, and I just spent the last two fucking hours chasing a fucking raccoon. But it doesn’t matter. I’m a timecaster. I’ll follow him like a bloodhound until his ass is mine.”
“Is that Teague?” McGlade said. “He looks seriously pissed. I thought you guys were buddies.”
I switched off the sound, then accessed uffsee.
“Franklin Debont, inventor of UFSE, bio,” I told the voice command.
Uffsee brought up the file on Debont. It was an extensive biography. I glossed over the early years, his fifteen search-engine patents, the global utilization of uffsee on the intranet, and got to his eventual retirement. No mention of his gender change, of becoming Aunt Zelda, or of living on Wacker Drive.
“Franklin Debont, living relatives.”
It came up with one. And it wasn’t Neil. It was Franklin’s nephew, a man named Rocket Corbitz.
“Rocket Corbitz bio.”
Rocket had a one-word intranet entry.
Disenfranchized.
“He’s a dissy, huh?” McGlade asked.
I didn’t answer, momentarily lost in thought. I still believed Teague had set me up, but I had no idea how. Hopefully Sata would be able to figure that out.
But why didn’t the intranet have any record of Debont’s sex change? Or of his nephew Neil? That was impossible.
Then again, Debont was the creator of the greatest search engine in the history of mankind. He could have easily altered the entry about himself. Maybe he was a private person, and wanted to live his new life out of the spotlight.
It still didn’t make sense why Neil didn’t know his aunt was really one of the richest men on the planet. And Neil had mentioned he went to Teague before coming to me. Were they in this together somehow?
I needed to talk to Teague, but I doubted I’d be able to get any quality one-on-one time with him. He was probably already tracing my steps, and as soon as he learned my whereabouts he’d call for backup. Neil might also be compromised, and Teague could very well be using him as bait.
I called Sata on my headphone, to see if he’d figured out anything about the TEV transmission. I got his voice mail.
That left only one lead to follow up on. Rocket Corbitz.
“You still have ties to the dissys?” I asked McGlade.
“You need a tracer?”
“Rocket Corbitz. He may know something.”
McGlade stroked his elephant’s trunk in a vaguely obscene manner. “My standard fee is a thousand credits a day, plus expenses. And if Teague is on your ass, it will lead him here, so expenses are going to include disappearing me until this shit all blows over.”
“My Vette was insured. Two hundred thousand credits.”
He bowed. “Harry McGlade, tracer extraordinaire, at your disposal.”
McGlade smiled. Penis farted. I rubbed my eyes, figuring with McGlade’s help I had maybe a 10 percent chance of clearing my name.
Penis farted again. I waved away the foul air.
“It’s all the beans he eats. This elephant is crazy for beans. I know I shouldn’t keep giving them to him, but after a while you get used to the smell. It’s actually kind of aromatic.” McGlade took a large sniff. “Like elephant fart incense.”
Make that a 5 percent chance.
TWENTY
The Mastermind is nervous.
It will work. The math is good. The tech is solid. He’s not worried about witnesses, because even if he is seen, no one will know who he is or what he’s doing.
So why the dry mouth and the sweaty palms?
Perhaps it is simply a symptom of incipient genocide.
But then, it isn’t really genocide. Not technically. Or, at least, not immediately.
He muses about the mouse. Talon is doing well. Better than expected. Still not close to figuring it out, but the clues are difficult.
Perhaps he’ll never figure it out. Perhaps he’s not good enough.
Perhaps he’ll die first.
The Mastermind hopes he’ll have a chance to meet with Talon. To explain himself.
He doesn’t care how history judges him. He can pick the history that suits him best.
But he wants respect from his adversary. Wants him to appreciate the breadth and scope of his genius, the depth of his determination, the brilliance of his plan.
If you play chess against yourself, you’ll always be the winner.
Where’s the fun in that?
He buys his ticket. Sits in his seat. Double-checks his settings; the world shrinks.
He envies Talon, in a way. The joy of discovery is such a pure pleasure. The unknown happens to everyone, but so few quest to discover it.
That fool Sata never understood that simple point. Debont whored it for wealth.
As he looks down over humanity, he recalls a poem by T. S. Eliot.
Do I dare disturb the universe?
Yes. I dare.
I dare in a big fucking way.
TWENTY-ONE
The fence was beaten to hell by weather, neglect, and mistreatment. Made of steel mesh, it stood about twenty feet high, and stretched off in either direction, cordoning off the street. Someone had stuck a large, plastic sheet on the fence, and graffiti announced:
DISSYTOWN HOME OF THE DISENFRANCHIZED DISINTERESTED DISILLUSIONED DISMISSED DISSERTED DISTROYED
“Abandon all hope, youse who enter here,” McGlade said.
We’d taken McGlade’s biofuel bike, me riding bitch, and he’d chained it to the fence. Every major metropolitan area had a dissytown. These were the people who didn’t pay taxes, and were kicked out. The abolition of welfare was one of the reasons, though welfare was replaced with workfare programs that allowed those of lesser means and with disabilities to continue being taxpaying utopeons and upstanding members of society.
Bleeding hearts and human rights crusaders bemoaned the slum-like conditions in many dissytowns. They made frequent trips inside, trying to persuade folks to join regular society, trying to show the children born there
