Cybernation

This drew a disappointed murmur.

He could understand that. It had been his hope all along that the programmers and weavers could do the job without resorting to cruder methods. That would be the real victory, to use the very tools of that which they sought to bring about and nothing more. The reality of it was, however, that there were still limits on what could be done electronically. The future had arrived, but there were still people out there who not only refused to log into it, they seemed to be heading back to the past. There were groups who still used typewriters, for God’s sake. Fountain pens were making a comeback. Handwritten letters weren’t going to replace e-mail, of course, but there were people who still corresponded that way. There were even people in the United States who not only refused to have answering machines or services, they didn’t have telephones!

You couldn’t reach people like that, couldn’t frighten them with worries of Internet problems. They didn’t care.

Fortunately, these Luddites were in the minority; but the computer revolution was not yet complete. Some things still had to be done the old-fashioned way. That’s why men like Santos were necessary. If you were doing surgery, you needed a laser scalpel, but now and again, despite medicine’s advances, you had to have a bone saw. Or, perhaps more accurately, a leech…

He was wandering. He drew himself back to the meeting at hand. “We are going to have to push up our deadline on Attack Omega,” he said.

That drew louder grumbles.

“I know, I know. You are already running as fast as you can. There is no help for it — the decision comes from on high. We will be coordinating with the other agents of change on this, and we can’t slip the deadline even by an hour. Whatever we have when Omega launches is what we have. I’d like for it to be as much as possible. Okay, let’s put on our question hats and get them all out in the open…”

Later, after they had filed out, Keller sat at the table, idly tapping his fingertips on the wood, thinking. His team would give him all they had. And he would roll up his sleeves and help them — Jay Gridley was the linchpin around which Net Force’s security operations revolved. Throw enough sand at Jay, and he’d grind to a halt, and if Jay was stymied, much of Net Force’s interference would also be slowed, maybe stopped.

Whatever Santos thought of him, all it would take would be for Keller to point a finger at Jay, and he’d be a dead man. That was the surest way of removing him from the picture. And probably it was safer for CyberNation to do it that way.

But…

Where was the honor in that? The skill? The knowing that he could take Jay on and beat him, using the weapons they had developed with their brains. Any thug could crack somebody over the head with a club. Beating Jay Gridley mano a mano, VR against VR, computer to computer, that was something to make a man feel good.

Kill Jay? No. Not with a gun or knife. Beating him at his own game, that was how he would do it. Defeating him intellectually, shattering his confidence, taking away what he thought he was, that was worse than death for a man like Jay Gridley.

Nothing less would do.

He took a deep breath. Well. Might as well get started. He had a couple of things he could give Jay to chew on. He smiled. Yes, indeed.

Santos finished his exercises. Drenched in sweat, he headed for the shower.

The workout had been good, but he was getting stale. It had been too long since he had trained against an expert. The solo dances were okay for maintaining muscle tone, to stay flexible and to keep alive the basics, but you did not learn to fight men by practicing alone. Mirror warriors were no threat. To keep a skill sharp, you had to hone it against another player of equal or better skill. Timing, distance, position, those could only be learned against dangerous opposition. The flow had to be there.

Soon, he would have to find players of enough ability to challenge him. There were none on this ship, none within easy travel range. Maybe in Cuba — he had heard there were some old-line players still there, hiding in the cane fields, practicing by moonlight, since the art was still frowned on, even after the Old Man was gone — but finding them would be the trick. There were some in the U.S., of course, even in Florida, but to get a real challenge, he would need to go home, that’s where the best players still were, and that was not in the cards in the near future — not until this job was finished.

He sighed. A man had to learn to put off his wants to deal with his needs.

He turned the cold water on full blast, shucked his pants, and stepped into the shower. The cold needles made him catch his breath, but it was a good feeling.

Then there was the problem of Missy Chance to consider. She was sleeping with Jackson Keller, at least, maybe others — who knew? One of the barmaids in the casino had told Santos this while she had been enjoying his body in her room, after he had returned from dispatching the vice president of the server company.

Santos soaped the long-handled and stiff-bristled brush and began to scrub his face and neck.

He saw no irony in finding out that his mistress was sleeping with another man from a woman he was screwing. Men were allowed to be with more than one woman, God had made men that way, but a woman who was unfaithful? That was wrong. He could not blame Keller for wanting Missy, though he, too, would have to pay. But if it was not rape, and he could not imagine that happening to her, then Missy must be made to… atone for her action.

He moved the rough brush down, scrubbed his shoulders, his armpits, his back.

Missy was expert in bed, but she was too sure that such ability made her superior to other women. It did not. In the dark, they were all the same, true?

She must be made to understand that some things could not be allowed by a man such as Santos. Not allowed.

Washington, D.C.

“A nightclub?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “More like a… roadhouse,” she said.

Michaels looked at Toni and raised one eyebrow.

They were in the living room. The baby was asleep, and so was Guru.

“We haven’t been out since Alex was born,” she said.

“Yes, we have,” he said.

“Not by ourselves,” she said.

“We didn’t have a baby-sitter,” he said. “And if we had had a baby-sitter, we wouldn’t have trusted her.”

“Well, we do now,” she said, smiling. “Guru.”

“She’s a witch, you know. She’s put a spell on our son. No baby should behave that well.”

“Alex…”

“So, what is the attraction of this roadhouse exactly?”

“The food is supposed to be terrific, and they have a great live band.”

“As opposed to a great dead band?”

“Has anybody ever told you how funny you are?”

“All the time.”

“Yeah, well, they lied.”

“Now who’s being funny?”

“Anyway, the band is called Diana and the Song Dogs.”

“What kind of music do they play?”

“Well, it’s kind of, well, uh… country/rock/folk/blues fusion.”

“Oh, please. Not another of those new-age bands playing touchy-feely elevator music—”

“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just the kind of music you can listen to while having a beer. Foot-stompin’, bug-squashin’ music.”

“Had a lot of that in the Bronx, did we?”

“We had radio. We had television. Why, we even had transportation that could take us to places outside our neighborhood.”