Cell

'At midafternoon, businesspeople are usually out doing whatever it was that brought them to Boston. So you see, we have the place almost to ourselves.'

As if to contradict this, there came another thump from above them, more shattering glass, and a faint feral growl. They all looked up.

'Clay, listen,' Tom said. 'If the guy up there finds the stairs . . . I don't know if these people are capable of thought, but—'

'Judging by what we saw on the street,' Clay said, 'even calling them people might be wrong. I've got an idea that guy up there is more like a bug trapped between a window and a screen. A bug trapped like that might get out—if it found a hole—and the guy up there might find the stairs, but if he does, I think it'll be by accident.'

'And when he gets down and finds the door to the lobby blocked, he'll use the fire-door to the alley,' Mr. Ricardi said with what was, for him, eagerness. 'We'll hear the alarm—it's rigged to ring when anyone pushes the bar—and we'll know he's gone. One less nut to worry about.'

Somewhere south of them something big blew up, and they all cringed. Clay supposed he now knew what living in Beirut during the 1980s had been like.

'I'm trying to make a point here,' he said patiently.

'I don't think so,' Tom said. 'You're going anyway, because you're worried about your wife and son. You're trying to persuade us because you want company.'

Clay blew out a frustrated breath. 'Sure I want company, but that's not why I'm trying to talk you into coming. The smell of smoke's stronger, but when's the last time you heard a siren?'

None of them replied.

'Me either,' Clay said. 'I don't think things are going to get better in Boston, not for a while. They're going to get worse. If it was the cell phones—'

'She tried to leave a message for Dad,' Alice said. She spoke rapidly, as if wanting to make sure she got all the words out before the memory flew away. 'She just wanted to make sure he'd pick up the dry cleaning because she needed her yellow wool dress for her committee meeting and I needed my extra uni for the away game on Saturday. This was in the cab. And then we crashed! She choked the man and she bit the man and his turban fell off and there was blood on the side of his face and we crashed!'

Alice looked around at their three staring faces, then put her own face in her hands and began to sob. Tom moved to comfort her, but Mr. Ricardi surprised Clay by coming around his desk and putting one pipestemmy arm around the girl before Tom could get to her. 'There-there,' he said. 'I'm sure it was all a misunderstanding, young lady.'

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and wild. 'Misunderstanding?' She indicated the dried bib of blood on the front of her dress. 'Does this look like a misunderstanding? I used the karate from the self-defense classes I took in junior high. I used karate on my own mother! I broke her nose, I think . . . I'm sure . . .' Alice shook her head rapidly, her hair flying. 'And still, if I hadn't been able to reach behind me and get the door open . . .'

'She would have killed you,' Clay said flatly.

'She would have killed me,' Alice agreed in a whisper. 'She didn't know who I was. My own mother.' She looked from Clay to Tom. 'It was the cell phones,' she said in that same whisper. 'It was the cell phones, all right.'

14

' So how many of the damn things are there in Boston?' Clay asked. 'What's the market penetration?'

'Given the large numbers of college students, I'd say it's got to be huge,' Mr. Ricardi replied. He had resumed his seat behind his desk, and now he looked a little more animated. Comforting the girl might have done it, or perhaps it was being asked a business-oriented question. 'Although it goes much further than affluent young people, of course. I read an article in Inc. only a month or two ago that claimed there's now as many cell phones in mainland China as there are people in America. Can you imagine?'

Clay didn't want to imagine.

'All right.' Tom was nodding reluctantly. 'I see where you're going with this. Someone—some terrorist outfit—rigs the cell phone signals somehow. If you make a call or take one, you get some kind of a . . . what? . . . some kind of a subliminal message, I guess . . . that makes you crazy. Sounds like science fiction, but I suppose fifteen or twenty years ago, cell phones as they now exist would have seemed like science fiction to most people.'

'I'm pretty sure it's something like that,' Clay said. 'You can get enough of it to screw you up righteously if you even overhear a call.' He was thinking of Pixie Dark. 'But the insidious thing is that when people see things going wrong all around them—'

'Their first impulse is to reach for their cell phones and try to find out what's causing it,' Tom said.

'Yeah,' Clay said. 'I saw people doing it.'

Tom looked at him bleakly. 'So did I.'

'What all this has to do with you leaving the safety of the hotel, especially with dark coming on, I don't know,' Mr. Ricardi said.

As if in answer, there came another explosion. It was followed by half a dozen more, marching off to the southeast like the diminishing footsteps of a giant. From above them came another thud, and a faint cry of rage.

'I don't think the crazy ones will have the brains to leave the city any more than that guy up there can find his way to the stairs,' Clay said.

For a moment he thought the look on Tom's face was shock, and then he realized it was something else. Amazement, maybe. And dawning hope. 'Oh, Christ,' he said, and actually slapped the side of his face with one hand. 'They won't leave. I never thought of that.'

'There might be something else,' Alice said. She was biting her lip and looking down at her hands, which were working together in a restless knot. She forced herself to look up at Clay. 'It might actually be safer to go after dark.'

'Why's that, Alice?'

'If they can't see you—if you can get behind something, if you can hide—they forget about you almost right away.'

'What makes you think that, honey?' Tom asked.

'Because I hid from the man who was chasing me,' she said in a low voice. 'The guy in the yellow shirt. This was just before I saw you. I hid in an alley. Behind one of those Dumpster thingies? I was scared, because I thought there might not be any way back out if he came in after me, but it was all I could think of to do. I saw him standing at the mouth of the alley, looking around, walking around and around—walking the worry-circle, my grampa would say—and at first I thought he was playing with me, you know? Because he had to've seen me go into the alley, I was only a few feet ahead of him . . . just a few feet . . . almost close enough to grab . . .' Alice began to tremble. 'But once I was in there, it was like . . . I dunno . . .'

'Out of sight, out of mind,' Tom said. 'But if he was that close, why did you stop running?'

'Because I couldn't anymore,' Alice said. 'I just couldn't. My legs were like rubber, and I felt like I was going to shake myself apart from the inside. But it turned out I didn't have to run, anyway. He walked the worry- circle a few more times, muttering that crazy talk, and then just walked off. I could hardly believe it. I thought he had to be trying to fake me out. . . but at the same time I knew he was too crazy for anything like that.' She glanced briefly at Clay, then back down at her hands again. 'My problem was running into him again. I should have stuck with you guys the first time. I can be pretty stupid sometimes.'

'You were sca—' Clay began, and then the biggest explosion yet came from somewhere east of them, a deafening KER-WHAM! that made them all duck and cover their ears. They heard the window in the lobby shatter.

'My . . . God, ' Mr. Ricardi said. His wide eyes underneath that bald head made