Private Lives

“To give my personal opinion, I’d be proud to serve beside any of the young people in the Net Force Explorers,” Winters finished. “They are a fine bunch of people, and I’m very proud of them. But they all have their own lives to lead. I’d never dream of trying to influence their choice of careers.”

“Maybe Net Force is for me,” Andy said.

“Dream?” Megan snorted. “Make that the captain’s nightmare.”

A car ad came on, and Megan got up to go to the kitchen and get sodas. Matt went to help.

“It’s nice to see the captain get a little credit for the job he’s doing,” Matt said as he picked up a tray full of glasses. He grinned. “I bet we could make a nice profit out of boot-legging copies of this holo.”

Megan shrugged. “If kids are that hot to see it, they can probably log on to the local HoloNet site.”

“It might be a good idea to get the word out. If there’s a big response, the show’s producers will know they did a good job.”

“I just wish it didn’t have to be so phony,” Megan complained. “Like that supposedly tough question that Jay-Jay guy asked.” She rolled her eyes. “As if anybody named Jay-Jay could act tough!”

“David always makes fun of that,” Matt said.

“I mean, do reporters think we’re stupid?” Megan thumped more glasses down on another tray. “Do they believe we can’t see through this act they put on, their eternal, life-and-death struggle for the truth…on a puff-piece interview show?”

“I guess it sells advertising,” Matt said.

“And advertising gives the people who watch a chance to go to the bathroom.” Megan picked up her tray. “Or to go and get a snack.”

They returned to the living room and passed out the drinks. By the time they’d settled down, the show was back on. Captain Winters played some recorded holograms of local Net Force Explorers in action.

“Hey!” P. J. Farris pointed. “That’s the exhibit we took around to all the senior centers, teaching about Net fraud and the elderly.”

Hoots burst out in the room. “Is that some old lady’s dog?” Catie crowed.

“No, it’s Moore’s hair!” Maj giggled.

Andy ran a defensive hand through his unruly thatch. “Nobody said they were recording that!” he complained. “That isn’t fair!”

David chuckled. “Welcome to the wonderful world of broadcast news.”

The segment was obviously coming to an end. Jay-Jay McGuffin shook hands with Winters. “Thanks, Captain. You give a very professional interview.”

Winters responded to the back-handed compliment with a quiet “Thank you.”

But the newsman didn’t offer a jolly farewell. Instead, he gave his guest a smile with an undertone that Matt found unpleasantly sly.

“I wonder, though,” Jay-Jay continued, “if you’d have been so cool and collected if you’d come in here knowing that Stefano ‘Steve the Bull’ Alcista was being paroled today? Isn’t he the organized-crime figure who was accused of conspiracy and murder in the car-bombing that killed your wife?”

For once, James Winters didn’t have an answer ready. He sat in shocked silence.

But Megan’s living room was anything but quiet.

“Did he say what I thought he said?” P. J. demanded at the top of his voice.

“What kind of cheap crap—” David stormed.

“I never even heard that Captain Winters had a wife,” Megan said.

Matt had never heard such a thing, either. But he was more struck by something he’d never seen before. On the holographic projection, caught in tight close-up, the still-silent James Winters fought to control his emotions and turn his face into an impassive mask.

But he was failing.

Matt couldn’t turn his eyes way. It was like watching the aftermath of a mammoth car wreck — horrible, but mesmerizing.

There was the face he’d seen at dozens of Net Force Explorers meetings, but now, for the first time ever, Matt saw it distorted by fierce, deadly — and possibly even murderous — fury.

2

Megan surged to her feet and snapped a command at her family’s computer suite. The holographic image of Captain Winters’s angry face disappeared like a popping soap bubble.

I thought she was recording this for Leif, Matt thought. But now was obviously not the time to bring that up.

“We don’t need to see any more of that,” Megan said angrily. “Or any more of that newsman’s smirking face.”

“I’m gonna call up HoloNews right now and see if I can get his butt fired.” Maj Green’s voice was too loud and her face was red.

Rummaging through her bag, she came out with her wallet. Maj flipped through IDs, transit passes, and credit cards until she came to a shiny silver surface. This was the foilpack keypad, a control center built right into the wallet. Hidden circuitry imbedded in the heavy plastic could be instructed to run in various modes.

Maj punched in the code to turn the wallet into a phone with short, emphatic gestures. Her fingers tapped through another code, and she glared at a readout.

“The station’s number is 555–1100,” she announced, extending her glare to everybody in the room. “What’s the problem? Am I moving too fast for you all? Where are those phones, people? We’ve got a career to fry!”

“I don’t know if I want to go that far,” David Gray said slowly, digging out his wallet. “But the question was cruel — and crude. We don’t need that kind of attack journalism. That’s what I’ll tell them.”

“These news-idiots don’t think. They just go for the hottest buttons to push,” Andy complained. Like David, he pulled out his wallet and began dialing.

“News-idiots is right,” Catie fumed. “Mass-media reporters have been at this for — what? Eighty years now? And they still ask the stupidest questions. I did a report on the early space missions. The clips of the flights I studied were amazing. You’d see these clowns shove a microphone in the face of some astronaut’s wife to ask, ‘How will you feel if the rocket crashes?’ Well, duh! What a surprise when the poor woman starts crying her eyes out!”

She came up with her wallet.

“What’s that number again?” she asked.

In moments, all the Net Force Explorers were in phone mode, calling the local broadcast station with various messages in mind. They mostly got busy signals.

“We’re probably overloading the local node,” Megan said with a sigh, cutting off her call.

“Maybe some of us should hold off and see if the others have more of a chance,” Matt suggested.

“Let the people who are really hot on talking to the station go first,” David said with a glance at Maj. “A couple of us could call round to other Net Force Explorers. Let’s see if we can’t get calls coming in from all over the city.”

Maj and Andy chose to keep pounding on the HoloNews switchboard. David switched his wallet circuitry to directory mode and began calling out phone numbers. Matt and Megan dialed those numbers in, calling on other Net Force Explorers and asking them to spread the word.

By the time Matt headed for home, the kids had created a new, growing — and very angry — grass-roots movement. Still, as he went to turn on the evening news, Matt hoped he wouldn’t see a story on the release of Stefano “The Bull.” It wasn’t that he expected to see James Winters’s disturbing reaction again if the reports were on the news. Or that he wanted to avoid looking at it, either. But he figured images of the capo getting out of jail would upset the captain. Matt hoped Captain Winters could be spared that pain.

Luckily, the usual turbulent politics of the Balkan Peninsula came to the rescue. NATO air power was moving