Ellington and Artie Shaw on the radio, watching the town move away and reform around her as she travelled the endless highways of memory and mind.
Continue with 658 hyperlink(s) connecting 'Teresa Ann Simons' to 'Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove'? Yes/No.
Teresa clicked on No. She scrolled back through the list, and paused on the name Katherine Denise Devore. Who the hell was this woman, that she was suddenly sigmificant to her?
She thought hard: Katherine, Kath, Kathy, Kathie, Kate, Katie? Had she ever known anyone with these names? Or Denise? Anyone at school, for instance? Teresa had repeatedly changed schools as her father was moved around from base to base. Most people grow up with a few old friends from their schooldays, but Teresa had hundreds of acquaintances and almost none she remembered as friends. Surely, somewhere, there would be a Katherine? Or maybe at one of her early jobs, at university, or at the Bureau? There had been a trainee on the ExEx course with her at the Quantico Academy, called Cathy Grenidge, whose full name was presumably Catherine ... but now she thought about it she had never seen her name written down. She might easily have been Kathenine or Kathy. What had happened to her?
Something shadowed the memory of Cathy Grenidge. Teresa thought hard, consciously using a memory technique she had been taught long ago. Federal agents have to be able to retain a lot of names and faces out of the hundreds they encounter, and there were ways of recalling them. What was the mnemonic for doing that? She cleared her mind, concentrated on the face, and then she had it. Agent Grenidge; she had graduated at the same time as Teresa, then was posted to Delaware, someplace like that? They'd lost contact, swept away to their own careers in the Bureau. No, Cathy married, then left the Bureau after a few years?
No, she hadn't quit. Teresa remembered that she and Cathy had married at about the same time, but Cathy was posted to somewhere in the Midwest soon afterwards. What had happened to her? She'd died in an accident, hadn't she? Or was it on an assignment? Who married her? Somewhere far away, a mental glimpse: Cathy and the guy she married, another agent, a practical joke at the wedding, something to do with a pack of cards and a trick, a brilliant piece of card manipulation that made everyone roar with laughter; a guy with large hands and a heavy body. Cal! Calvin Devore; Andy's friend Cal, the big guy with the large hands and the dainty movements that always amused and impressed her. Oh Jesus, Cal! His wife had been shot, trying to arrest a suspect in Dubuque, Iowa, hit in the head by a bullet, lay in a coma for a week, then died. Kathy Devore.
Continue with 658 hyperlink(s) connecting 'Teresa Ann Simons' to 'Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove'? Yes/No.
Teresa clicked on No, irritated with the program for seeming irritated with her.
Was she involved in Kathy's death? Was Grove? What was the link? She tried to think, clear her thoughts of all the sidetracks, all the extra information.
If she let this go on, if she went back again, there would be even more hyperlinks, hundreds more connections. How many more could there be? The sidetracks were endless. The crossover with Grove was growing as if alive: it was spreading through virtuality, dragging in more connections between them, perhaps creating them.
lt was that endlessness again, the lack of an edge or a boundary, only extremes.
She thought, It's enough. 1 don't want to know about Kathy Devore. Not now. It's too late for that. 1 have to concentrate on one thing. What 1 want, what 1 need. Hyperreality has broken down, and 1 can go to the extremes.
Continue with 658 hyperlink(s) connecting 'Teresa Ann Simons' to 'Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove'? Yes/No.
Teresa clicked on Yes. The seemingly endless listing resumed.
William Cook (one hundred and eleven main items, but with hundreds of others hyperlinked elsewhere), Charles Whitman (two hundred and twentyseven main items, but with thousands of others ad . acent), James and Michaela Surtees (two), Jason Hartland (thirtythree items), Sam Wilkins McLeod (fifteen), Deke Cannigan (who? anyway thirty), Charles Dayton Hunter (eightyone items), Joseph L. McLaughlin (twentyfour), Jose Porteiro (eighteen) ...
After the six hundred and thirtyfourth numbered scenario, the program paused, but Teresa could sense it working, searching the database, assembling, sorting. Then the screen shifted one more time, and the last twentyfour scenarios were listed.
They were all for Andy/Andrew Wellman Simons.
The video frame of the first scenario of the twentyfour showed Andy's bulky figure standing alert beside a car. He was holding a gun in both hands, looking back over one shoulder into the distance. He had on his FBI bulletproof vest, the Bureau's famous initials clearly inscribed.
The hierarchical information for this item was:
Participatory/ Operativeenabled/Noninteractive
State
or
County
PD/State
PD/Texas/Kingwood
City/Multiple
Murder/Spree/Guns/john Luther Aronwitz/Federal Agent Andrew Wellman Simons.
Andy was what she wanted, all she wanted.
Tears were welling in her eyes as Teresa moved the pointer to the ExEx box. She clicked on it, and a few seconds later the equipment delivered her phial of nanochips.
Holding in her hand the life and death of her husband, Teresa walked through to the simulator area of
