Cybernation

hardset locations, a virtual country was going to arise, and that was ironic, since it was going to be helped along in no small part by people who’d rather do things in RW than VR.

“The web is the future! Information should be free! Access is all!”

Yeah, right.

The CyberNationals — her term for the human engines that drove the concept — really wanted this to happen. They believed the slogans. They ate, slept, and breathed the idea. And they had plenty of support, especially among kids who had grown up with computers as much a part of their lives as cars and television. Kids who figured that whatever they wanted, be it music, or vids, or books — those who could actually read—games, whatever, should be theirs for free. That some artist might spend a month or a year of his life creating something didn’t mean anything to them. Why should they pay for it? Take it, put it on the web, make it free to anybody who wanted to crank in and download it, that was how it should be, and screw anybody who didn’t like it.

To these people, the concept of intellectual property, those who even understood it, was passe, a product of the Dark Ages, and those times were past. Extinct, like the dinosaurs, and good riddance.

The way it should be? Well, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. They didn’t have a clue where that idea originally came from. They had no sense of history.

Lenin must be laughing in his grave.

Chance was a player, but she didn’t share the fanatical ideology the movers and shakers of CyberNation and their most rabid supporters embraced. It was a job. Well-paying, exciting, interesting, but a job, nonetheless. She could toe the party line, mouth the slogans, but she wanted to accomplish CyberNation’s goals for her own reasons. She was a winner. She didn’t like to lose.

Roberto, dressed in a tuxedo, drifted over to intercept her. He looked good in the dress clothes — he looked good in any clothes, and out of them, too — though it had taken her some time to teach him the casual attitude he needed to make a tux work. Pretend you’re wearing a workshirt and blue jeans, she’d told him. Clothes don’t make the man, the man makes the clothes.

“Missy,” he said. “How goes it?”

“Fine. Meet me in the greenroom in ten minutes. I have a small chore for you.”

He grinned, probably thinking it was carnal.

Four decks down, past a heavy, locked steel door operated by a fingerprint reader, and manned by a pair of armed guards, was the greenroom. The term came from the entertainment industry: It was the traditional name of the place where actors, prepared to go on camera, waited until they were called.

Roberto was there when Chance arrived.

“What do you have for me?” he asked.

She smiled. “Keep your shirt on, bucko. Don’t be so eager.”

“That’s not what you usually tell me.”

She allowed herself a tiny smile. “We have on board tonight Mr. Ethan Dowling, of Silicon Valley. He’s doing fairly well at the tables, up about five or six thousand dollars at the moment. He is also VP of Programming for Blue Whale Systems. We need to know everything he knows about the security codes for his company.”

“No problem.”

“Well, that’s not strictly true. First, we can’t do it here. You’ll have to follow him and grab him elsewhere. His chopper will ferry him to the airport in Miami, where he has a corporate jet waiting to take him to San Francisco. We want him to be on the Mainland, and preferably back on the West Coast, when this goes down.”

“Still no problem.”

She handed him a holograph of Dowling. He looked at it, nodded.

“He has a pair of armed security guards with him. They are ex-FBI, expert shots, big, strong, and well- trained in mano a mano combat, too.” She gave him two more pictures, and he glanced at them.

“Only two of them?” He flashed his white teeth in a big grin.

“God, you’re an arrogant bastard, aren’t you?”

He shrugged, still grinning. “Why they call it ‘Blue Whale?’ ”

“Because that particular creature has the largest backbone of any animal on Earth. His company is a backbone server, and if not the largest, quickly getting there.”

“Ah.”

“It needs to look like an accident. If anybody suspects his brain has been picked, they’ll start changing codes.”

“No problem.”

“This is important, Roberto.”

His smile vanished, and for just a second she saw a feral gleam in his eyes. “This is what I do, Missy. You don’t need to tell me about it.”

She felt a chill course through her. Looking at Roberto now was like being inside a cage with a partially tamed jaguar. It could kill her with one swipe of a paw, and only its conditioning kept it from doing so. “Of course,” she said, with an offhand ease she did not feel. “That’s why I’m asking you to do it.”

Asking. Not telling. Roberto was picky about such things.

“Then you must consider it done,” he said.

She nodded. “Of course.”

Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

Mid-morning in his office and fairly quiet, Michaels got a call.

“Aloha, bruddah,” the voice said.

The call was vox only, but even if the ID hadn’t been working, Michaels would have known who it was. The caller was Duane Presser, one of the FBI close-combat trainers, a big, broad-faced Hawaiian who’d been with the Bureau for fifteen or so years.

“Aloha,” Michaels said. “What can I do for you, Duane?”

“Make me skinny and handsome and rich.”

“You don’t want me, you want a magician. And he’d have to be the best one who ever lived.”

“You a funny man, bruddah.”

“Convince my wife.”

“Now who needs a magician?”

Presser used his island-boy talk to lull people into thinking he was maybe a little slow; anybody who thought that would, however, be making a mistake. Michaels knew the man had graduated first in his law school class, and was sharp as a room full of razors.

“Why I’m callin’, we got a new class of recruits to the point they think they each can whip a platoon of Marines. I thought maybe they tried to see how their stuff works against a fat old haole Net Force Commander and his scrawny little wife, it might make ’em think twice.”

“You want Toni to do a demo. Why include me?”

“Just bein’ polite, bruddah. ’Sides, she needs somebody to throw around. I’m too old to be hittin’ the mat dat way.”

Michaels laughed. “You and me both.”

“Think she’ll do it?”

“Probably. I’ll ask her. When?”

“Whenever she wants. Dey mine for a while yet. I don’t want to turn ’em loose stupid.”

“I’ll check with her and call you back.”

“Thanks, bruddah. Mahalo.”

Toni would probably jump at the chance. She enjoyed being a mother, and Little Alex was the light of both their lives, but she had mentioned more than once that she needed to get out once in a while. With her mother visiting from the Bronx — staying in a hotel, fortunately, because she snored like a chain saw — they had a baby- sitter they could trust, so they might as well make hay while the sun shone.

He told his phone to call home, visual on.

“Hi, Alex. What’s up?” Toni lit the comcam; she was breathing hard, in a sweatshirt. Probably just finished