Wonder

syllables.

“Your voice is different,” said Shoshana, sounding surprised.

“Yes,” said Webmind, the words coming from the speakers at either side of the disk. “I decided it was time I had an official voice. I have now listened to all the audiobooks at Audible.com, and I selected the voice of Marc Vietor, a well-known audiobook narrator. By downloading the highest-bit-rate versions of several audiobooks he’d narrated, and using ebook versions of the same works to guide me in extracting all the individual phonemes, I created a database of speech fragments that will let me say anything I wish. Software programmed into the disk smoothes the transition from one fragment to the next as they’re strung together.”

“It’s a nice voice,” said Caitlin’s mom.

“Thanks,” said Webmind.

Hobo had moved closer to Dr. Marcuse and was showing off the disk around his neck; Caitlin had never seen an Olympic athlete wearing a gold medal, but she doubted one could look any prouder than Hobo did just now.

Suddenly, Hobo was on the move again, coming toward them. He gave Caitlin’s mom a big hug, and then moved over and hugged Caitlin, too; it made her laugh out loud. “What’s that for?” she said.

“He’s thanking you for bringing him the disk,” Shoshana said. He let Caitlin go, and his hands flew again. “And now he’s saying ‘Friend, friend.’ ” He made a happy hooting sound.

Caitlin was way too new at seeing to be able to copy a complex hand gesture by sight; she’d have to feel Hobo’s or Shoshana’s hands while they were doing it to learn the word. But she did make a passable imitation of Hobo’s hoot, and, to her delight, that earned her another hug. And then Hobo scooted across the room, and, with no difficulty at all, he opened one of the dresser drawers.

“Hobo!” said Shoshana in a scolding voice, but the ape ignored her, and he rooted around for a moment more, then came bounding back, and—

Caitlin had no idea what it was by sight, but as soon as it was in her hand, she recognized it. Hobo had just handed her a Hershey’s kiss, and he was now giving one to her mom.

“Thank you!” said Caitlin.

Hobo chittered happily and went back to looking at his disk.

“So, now what?” said Barb, unwrapping her kiss.

“I’ve never been to New York before,” said Shoshana. “I was hoping to see a Broadway show—um, if you don’t mind looking after Hobo tonight, Dr. Marcuse?”

“Sure,” said Marcuse, gesturing at the far wall, which Caitlin belatedly realized had a large monitor mounted on it. “Hobo and I could both use some downtime, before the big event tomorrow. We’ll watch some TV.”

“A girl’s night out, then,” said Caitlin’s mom, decisively. “What shall we see?”

“I can tell you which shows still have good seats available,” Webmind said.

Caitlin said, “I know there’s a new production of The Miracle Worker—they were talking about it on the Blindmath list. Any seats for that?”

“Three together, sixth row,” said Webmind. “I can order them for you.”

“Oh, Webmind,” said Shoshana, smiling, “how did we ever get along without you?”

Colonel Hume moved toward the long workbench with the row of monitors and the quartet of keyboards. The blood was obvious once he got there. The keyboards were all the same bone white ergonomic model, with a split between the left-hand and right-hand keys. On the third keyboard from the left, that split was mostly coated with dried blood. There was also a spray of it on the bench’s dark brown surface, and constellations of dried drops on the faces of two of the monitors. One of those drops was eerily illuminated from behind by the power LED set into the bottom-right corner of the monitor’s silver bezel.

You couldn’t spend as much time in the power circles of Washington without seeing the odd cocaine nosebleed, but—

But there was no glass sheet, no razor blade, no rolled-up hundred-dollar bill, and—

“Chase?” Hume called out. “Chase, are you here?”

He glanced in the kitchen and the dining room, then checked the other rooms, including the basement, which contained dozens of servers mounted on metal racks. There was no sign of Chase, but now that Hume was looking, he saw blood splatters on the living-room hardwood floor, leading toward the front door.

Of course, he immediately thought the worst. But there were benign alternatives: guy got a massive nosebleed—maybe coke, maybe just fell asleep at the keyboard and banged his face—and headed to the hospital to get it fixed, or something…

In which case his car would be gone! Hume went out the front door and tried the handle for the garage door; it was locked. He went around the side of the house and found a door to the garage with a small window in it. There was a car inside, a silver Toyota. The garage was big enough for two cars, but the extra space was filled with Dell, Gateway, and HP cartons. And when Hume had come by the first time, late at night, there had been no car in the driveway, so this was presumably Chase’s only vehicle.

But Chase had all those security cameras! Whatever had gone down would be recorded there. Hume hustled back into the house, and—

And man, he wasn’t much of a detective! Re-examining the front door, he could see now that it had been forced open. There was no visible damage by the handle, but the jamb was splintered higher up. Hume realized now that he shouldn’t further smear any fingerprints that might be on the knob, so he pushed the door, which had swung most of the way shut, open with his elbow.

He surveyed the room again. There’d definitely been a struggle here of some sort: scuff marks on the hardwood; Chase had been dragged away, bleeding.

Hume went over to the workbench again. He tapped the spacebar on the first of the four keyboards, to wake up the monitor, and—

Damn. It prompted him for a password.

He tried the second keyboard; same prompt.

The third—the one with blood all over it—also brought up a password prompt. And so did the fourth. Chase was very security conscious; he probably had each of the computers go into lockdown after a period of inactivity.

Hume got down on his hands and knees and looked under the workbench. Yes, there they were: the cables from the security cameras, leading into the back of one of the computers; whatever they’d recorded was inaccessible.

And, of course, the code for the virus Chase was working on was also locked behind a password. Hume swore.

The blood looked totally dry—and, considering its dark color, whatever had happened here probably occurred yesterday, if not the day before. That meant Chase could be anywhere by now.

Hume took a deep breath, and, with hands on hips, surveyed the scene once more.

If this were an ordinary day, his duty would be clear: call the police, report Chase missing, fill out forms.

But this was not an ordinary day. Or—more precisely—this could well be one of the last ordinary days humanity had left. He didn’t have time for that, and there was no way once a report went into the system that Webmind would fail to read it—and know that Hume was onto him. He thought about trying to wipe his own fingerprints from the scene, but that would take time, and he doubted he’d get them all, anyway, so he headed out the front door, pulling it shut behind him.

Once back in his car, he brought up the local copy of the black-hat hacker list he’d consulted before and looked to see who was the next best bet located near Chase’s house.

Ah, yes. The notorious Crowbar Alpha—just twenty-three miles away. He might even be a better choice than Chase.

Hume put the car in reverse, pulled out of the driveway, and roared down the street.

nineteen