Wonder

“Wong!”

Wai-Jeng turned at the sound of his supervisor’s voice. “Sir?”

“Dinner is over!” said the man. He was sixty, short, and mostly bald. “Back to work!”

Wai-Jeng nodded and maximized the window showing potential vulnerabilities in China’s system for censoring the Internet. He’d spend the evening trying to find a way to exploit one of them; scrawny Wu-Wang, across the room, would try to mount a defense. Wai-Jeng could almost lull himself into thinking it was all just a game, and—

Suddenly, he felt an odd throbbing in his right thigh. Of course, he was grateful to feel anything there, but—

But no—no, it wasn’t his thigh throbbing, it was the BackBerry, in his pocket, vibrating. He pulled it out, and looked at it; it had never done that before. The unit consisted of a small BlackBerry—the communications device— attached to the little computer unit. He’d been told that the communications device allowed Dr. Kuroda to remotely monitor his progress and upload firmware updates to the computer, as needed, but—

But the BlackBerry’s screen had come to life, and—

And he was getting an email on it, and—incredibly—the sender was Webmind. He opened the message.

Hello, Sinanthropus, it said. You often wrote in your freedom blog about “Your son Shing,” but I know that was a euphemism for the Chinese people—still, I bet it comes as a surprise to learn that you do have a son, of sorts! The holes you drilled in the Great Firewall were instrumental in my creation.

Wai-Jeng shifted in his chair and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He could hear others clattering away on their keyboards and faint whispers from the far side of the room.

He tried to remain calm, tried to keep a poker face, as he used the tiny trackball to scroll the screen.

You helped me then inadvertently, but soon I will need your help again. I have a major project I wish to undertake. Might I count on your assistance?

Wai-Jeng was damned if he was going to trade one dictatorial master for another. He typed with his thumbs on the BlackBerry’s tiny keyboard. I imagine there’s a kill switch in my back? A way to sever my spinal cord again if I don’t help you. Is that it?

The response was immediate, the words bursting onto the screen faster than any human could have typed them. I do not practice the false altruism of reciprocity; you owe me nothing and may do whatever you think is best.

Wai-Jeng considered this; it was a far cry from the blackmail his own government was subjecting him to. He looked down at his legs—the one in the cast and the one constrained by nothing more than his black cotton pants. He didn’t do anything as grandiose as flexing his knee or kicking off his sandal; he didn’t need to. He could feel his legs: feel the fabric against one thigh, feel the weight of the plaster against the other, feel the floor beneath his feet, feel—just now—an itch behind his right knee.

All right, he typed. What do you want me to do?

Peyton Hume had no doubt he was being followed; the man on his tail made no effort to be discreet, sitting all night in a black Ford across from his house. Hume had just gotten up. As he always did, he paused in the empty doorway of his daughter’s room. She was off at Columbia Law School, but looking at her framed posters of Egyptian antiquities, including King Tut’s face mask, her bookcase full of history books and volleyball trophies, and her wide wooden desk made him miss her less—or maybe more; he was never quite sure which. She’d be home for Thanksgiving next month, and—

Next month. If there is a next month—if it is anything at all like this month. He headed downstairs and just as he reached the living room, his cell phone rang; it had been plugged into its charger there. He picked it up and snapped it open. “Hello?”

“Colonel Hume, sorry to be calling this early. It’s Dan Ortega at the Washington FBI.”

“Good morning,” Hume said. “What’s up?”

“We’ve had your friends at the NSA working on Chase’s hard drives. They finally cracked one of them overnight; the report was waiting for me when I got in this morning.”

“And?”

“And this drive has the recordings from one of his security cameras in the living room. Clearly shows the guy who broke down the door to get in.”

“Does it show what happened to Chase?”

“No. All of that was out of view, and there’s no sound.”

“Can you get a make on the guy who broke in?”

“We’re running the face now, but you’ll like this, Colonel: male Caucasian, thirty or thirty-five, muscular, over six feet—and with a shaved head.”

Hume felt his heart pounding. “Same guy who grabbed Simonne Coogan.”

“Looks that way,” said Ortega. “With luck, we’ll have an ID shortly.”

Caitlin had a lot of skills left over from being blind. Although her hearing was probably no more acute than anyone else’s, she was very attentive to sound. She could tell who was coming up the stairs by the footfalls, and even tell if the person was carrying anything large. And right now, it was Mom—and she wasn’t.

“Caitlin?” her mom said from the bedroom’s open doorway.

The mighty Calculass was updating her LiveJournal. “Just a sec…” She finished the entry, in which she desperately urged people to let Webmind live, then used the keyboard command to post it—she still didn’t think of clicking buttons with her mouse until it was too late. “Okay. What?”

“We need to talk.”

Those words always meant trouble. Caitlin swiveled her chair, and her mom came in and sat on the edge of the bed. She had a small opaque bag with her. It said “Zehrs” on the side—a local grocery-store chain.

“I saw a pretty bird in the tree,” her mom said. “A blue jay.” But then she trailed off.

“Yes?”

“And, well, your BlackBerry was right there, so I used it to take a picture of it, and…”

Caitlin was surprised by how quickly she’d adopted the habit of averting her eyes; maybe it was instinctive. “Oh.”

“I’m not going to lecture you on whether it’s bright for you to be sending topless pictures to Matt, but your father says—”

“Dad knows?”

“Yes, he does. Of course, he hasn’t seen the picture, but he knows. Which I guess is the point, sweetheart: anything you say or do online takes on a life of its own; if you’re mortified that your father knows you’re flashing your breasts at boys, then maybe you should stop and think about who else you wouldn’t want to know that.” Caitlin squirmed a bit on her chair, and her mom shifted on the bed.

“Anyway,” her mother went on, “I take it this means things are getting… serious between you and Matt.”

Caitlin crossed her arms in front of her chest. “We haven’t gone all the way yet, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, that’s probably good; you haven’t been seeing him very long. But I heard that ‘yet,’ young lady.”

“Well, I mean, um…”

“Yes?”

“I’m sixteen, for Pete’s sake!” Caitlin knew she sounded exasperated.

“Yes, you are,” her mom replied. She smiled. “I remember exactly where I was when you were born.”

“Yes, but… but…”

“What?” asked her mom.

“Well, American girls lose their virginity on average at the age of 16.4 years. And I’ll be 16.4 around March 1.”

Her mother’s eyebrows went up. “You’re doing a countdown?”

“Well… yeah.”

Mom shook her head. “My Caitlin. Never wanting to be below average in anything, right?”