Toni relaxed. Aloud, she said, “Yeah, little Alex, the demon child from the lowest pit of Hell.” But she was already on her way into the bedroom, and at the baby’s crib before he could get through the second outraged scream.
“Hey, hey, hey, baby boy, what’s the matter? Mama’s here, it’s okay.”
He stood balanced precariously on his little fat feet, holding onto the rail.
She picked the baby up, put him over her left shoulder, and patted him gently on the back.
He gave out one more half-hearted yell, just to let her know he wasn’t happy it had taken her all of thirty seconds to get from the living room to pick him up, then trailed off into a quiet burble before shutting up completely.
“Oh, you’re happy now, are you? Brat. Monster.” She leaned him away and cradled him, smiling with a fierce possessive joy at him. She hadn’t slept for more than four hours at a stretch for what seemed like forever, but he was such an angel when he smiled his new-toothed grin at her, as he was doing now. He was a beautiful child. Yeah, yeah, she knew that every mother thought that about her babies, but objectively speaking, he really was. Objectively speaking. Anybody with eyes could see that.
She smiled at that thought and at Alex Junior — a name his father had fought against but lost. Yes, she had agreed, a junior had a lot to live up to, and no, it wasn’t necessarily the best thing to tag a baby with that. The choice they’d agreed upon was “Scott,” giving him his paternal grandfather’s middle name. But when the nurse had come in with the little flatscreen to log in the newborn baby’s stats, Alex hadn’t been there.
“What’s the baby’s name?” the nurse had asked, ready to log it into the system.
And Toni had smiled and given it to her. Alex hadn’t really been that upset. Secretly, she was sure he was actually very pleased.
Little Alex made sucking noises, but it was not time for his feeding yet. He had gotten off the breast and was taking milk and some solid food full-time now. And she no longer leaked milk when he cried, thank God. That had gotten a little embarrassing while sitting in a restaurant or even just out pushing the stroller.
She walked into the living room, cooing at little Alex, looking for his binky. They had half a dozen kinds of different pacifiers, but somehow, the baby could tell the difference among them, and would spit out all but his favorite. This had caused some not-so-funny moments while they turned the house upside down looking for it against the background of unhappy baby squawls. Unfortunately, the favorite binky had come as a baby shower gift from somebody, and neither Toni nor Alex had been able to find a match for it anywhere. There was no brand name on it, and nobody remembered who had given it to them. A web search came up empty, and friends with babies were no help, either. Normally, they had the thing strapped to a clip attached to the baby’s shirt so they wouldn’t lose it, but somehow, they managed to lose it anyhow.
Jay Gridley had come up with a tiny responder that could be hooked to the clip strap. All you had to do was say “Binky!” in a loud voice, and the electronic device, about the size of a penny, would say “Here I am!” over and over until you could find it and squeeze it off. Jay had put the thing inside a little sleeve of waterproof silicone, just in case little Alex managed to somehow get that part into his mouth.
Life since the baby was just full of these kinds of problems, and they only sounded little to people who didn’t have children of their own.
And being a full-time mama was a far cry from being a Net Force operative second in command to her now- husband, or working for the mainline FBI as a special liaison to Net Force.
Just then, the baby distinctly said, “Da da.”
Toni stared at him, astounded. “What? What did you say?”
Little Alex smiled and said it again, repeating it a third time for good measure: “Da da da.”
She had to call Alex! He had to hear this, this child was a prodigy, a genius!
She hurried to the phone, picked it up, and punched in Alex’s number.
But naturally, the phone wasn’t working.
Okay, fine, she’d tell him when he got home. Meanwhile, she could bundle the baby up, put him in the stroller, and go for a nice long walk. It was chilly out, but at least the sun was shining, no rain in the forecast. Some fresh air would do them both good.
“Want to go for a walk, sweet babboo?”
He understood her, and she was sure he nodded, a little bit. Of course. He was a prodigy, after all, wasn’t he? The smartest, prettiest, best baby in the world. Without a doubt — none at all.
2
The summer’s day was scorching in Madrid, time for siesta.
Jay Gridley sat in the shade of a wide awning at a sidewalk cafe, sipping warm red table wine, waving flies away from the dirty checkered tablecloth, and watching a sleeping dog under a nearby table twitch as it dreamed its mysterious canine dreams.
Isabella II, eldest daughter of Ferdinand VII, still sat upon the Bourbon throne on this hot day, but her rule, balanced precariously as it had always been on a high wire, was finally about to come to an end. Isabella had sporadic popular support, she changed her cabinet as often as she changed her underwear, and the lumpy stew of monarchists, moderates, progressives, and radical unionists in late 19th-century Spain was about to come once again to a roiling boil. Her military politicians, the generals Ramon Maria Narvaez and Leopoldo O’Donnell, were both dead by now. Led by Serrano y Dominguez, the Duque de La Torre, who had run things before Isabella’s ascension, and Juan Prim y Prats, the prime minister, Isabella was about to be booted out of the country in the Revolution of 1868. She would flee to Paris, where she would stay until her son, Alfonso XII, eventually ascended the Spanish throne some six years later, but even then her influence upon him was to be minimal. She would, however, outlive the leaders of the revolt against her by long margins. Prim would be assassinated a mere two years after the revolution, and while Serrano lived until 1885, Isabella lasted until 1904.
Living long enough to spit on your enemy’s grave was a certain kind of revenge.
Jay sipped his not-too-bad wine and grinned. Well, what was the point of creating a VR scenario if you couldn’t make it sing and dance and do tricks like you wanted it to do? Being a history buff could be a lot of fun, if you let it.
In the Real World, Jay sat in his office at Net Force HQ, part of the almost four-hundred-acre FBI compound at Quantico, plugged into full wirelessware haptics, including top-of-the-line optics, otics, reekers, droolers, and the brand-new version of spray-on WeatherMesh, which could be set and controlled by your computer to plus-or-minus one degree Fahrenheit, and none of the Madrid afternoon was the least bit real. But it looked, sounded, tasted, smelled, and
Sure, you could still input everything into a computer with a keyboard or voxax, or read words scrolling up a holoprojic screen if you wanted to, but with VR software as good as it was, why would anybody
A short, balding man wearing a clean but out-of-date summer suit strolled toward Jay, mopping his florid face with a handkerchief he pulled from one jacket sleeve.
“Senor Gridley?” His name came out as “Greed-lee.”
“Si.”
“Por favor, Senor, I have a message for you.”
Jay nodded. He indicated the chair across from him. “Have some wine, Senor…?”
“Montoya. Jaime Montoya. Muchas gracias.”
The little man sat. A waiter appeared with a glass, plunked it down, and sauntered away. Montoya poured himself a glass of the wine, took a long sip, then sighed.
“Ah, good. Hot today.”
“Mucho,” Jay said.
