“Plagiarism,” Megan contradicted. “I hope this clown isn’t using any of my dad’s characters.” Her father was a well-known author of mystery novels.
“That reminds me,” Leif said. “I picked up your father’s latest. Is he really going to go through with a title for every letter in the alphabet with this character?”
“What?” Megan demanded. “You don’t think he’ll last long enough to make it all the way through?”
“I thought somebody else had used that gimmick.” Andy ducked as Megan swung round at him.
“Gimmick?” she said. “You think my father relies on gimmicks to sell his work?”
“Let’s just hope he gets up to X,” David said. “I want to see what he uses for the title.”
“About this sim. Can we check it out?” Maj asked.
“I don’t know,” Matt replied. “I think Ed has all the sleuths set up.”
“‘Sleuths,’” Megan mocked.
“Well, it’s set in the 1930s,” Matt quickly explained. “Although I think some of the detectives may come from later eras.”
“Maybe there are openings for bit players,” David suggested. “Like cops.” His father was a homicide investigator for the D.C. police.
“Or stool pigeons,” Megan said, hooking a thumb at Andy Moore.
“I’ll check with Ed,” Matt promised. He had no chance to say more. While he and his friends had been talking, quite a crowd had gathered in the virtual meeting room. Now one wall vanished to reveal a small stage with a military-looking figure standing on it.
Even though he was now a civilian working for Net Force, one glance at Captain James Winters said “Marine.” He faced the Net Force Explorers in a relaxed parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back as he gave his usual opening. “Welcome to the national meeting of the Net Force Explorers.”
The captain smiled. “I’m happy to say I have nothing of particularly earth-shaking importance to report today. The Net is running as smoothly as we could hope. No emergencies or baffling mysteries.”
As he spoke, Winters glanced over to where Matt and his friends stood. Matt sort of ducked his head. Well, they did have something of a reputation for leaping into Net Force cases. With nothing going on, at least that wasn’t likely to happen this time around.
“This year marks the FBI’s ninetieth birthday,” Winters went on. “Although the Justice Department has had investigators since 1908, we didn’t officially become the Federal Bureau of Investigation until July 1, 1935.
“To mark the anniversary, the Bureau is setting up some historical simulations. The first of them opens this week, commemorating the antigangster successes of the 1930s.”
“The glory days of the G-men,” Megan muttered. “Before the first director gave in to megalomania.”
Matt couldn’t help contrasting Captain Winters with the nasty, fleshy virtual G-man he’d encountered in Ed Saunders’s sim. Even J. Edgar Hoover hadn’t been that ugly.
2
Sometimes Matt’s friends hung out after the official Net Force Explorers meetings, switching through the Net to one of the kids’ virtual workspaces. Tonight, however, Matt headed straight back to his own computer domain. He wanted to see if he had a chance of catching Ed Saunders.
No sooner did he synch in to his own space — a slab of black-and-white marble floating unsupported in the night sky — than he saw that one of the items scattered across the flying desktop was blinking determinedly. It was the tiny sculpture of an ear — an icon for Matt’s virtmail account. Somebody had contacted him.
Judging from the intensity of the blinking, the message appeared urgent.
Matt vocalized a command — he could have simply thought it, but speaking helped him to concentrate. The virtmail program projected the titles of his latest messages in the air in front of him. The urgent one had little virtual flames flickering around its edges. It came from Ed Saunders.
He gave the command to play the message. But instead of the sim-master’s face, letters appeared.
The bottom line of the message was a Net address.
Matt got his answer the next evening. With his homework finished and his parents both late for dinner, he was completely free for the virtual meeting. He linked in precisely at six, giving his computer Ed Saunders’s Net address. In the course of the day he’d repeated it so often, he’d memorized it.
Closing his eyes, Matt found himself flung through a kaleidoscope of spinning lights, the vast glowing structures of cyberspace streaming past him. Matt swung suddenly and headed for a compact neon-adorned office building — the sort of virtual address a small-scale entrepreneur might use.
Some of these lesser operations were housed in featureless cubes. Ed Saunders, in keeping with his interest in the period, had found a site that looked like a building from a century before.
Another swoop, and Matt found himself standing in a shadowy virtual workspace. A huge half-moon window overlooked darkened, but definitely mean, streets. The traditional battered wooden desk stood in front of the window, just as it had for every movie detective from Sam Spade on. The walls of the office, however, rose three times the height of a man. They were completely covered with bookshelves holding everything from leather-bound volumes to tattered paperbacks. Matt squinted. Each book he focused on held the title of a famous mystery. High above, a ceiling fan revolved creakily, sending gusts of warm air down on Matt.
“And who are you?” a nasal voice inquired from behind him.
Matt turned around to find the one element that didn’t fit in this combination detective’s office and library. A tall, skinny guy now sat behind the desk. Lank blond hair fell across his high, pale forehead. A pair of washed-out blue eyes stared at Matt from behind wire-framed glasses. Ed Saunders — who else could it be? — wasn’t exactly up on the latest fashions. His shirt was a color that had never occurred in nature, and his bony wrists stuck out of too-short sleeves. Matt would have bet that the cuffs of Saunders’s pants were a tad short, too.
The storklike nerd behind the desk asked again, “And you are…?”
“Matt Hunter. In the sim, I’m—”
“Monty Newman, yes.” The sim creator looked even more like a bird as he cocked his head to one side. “I have to say, you’re a bit younger than I expected.”
Matt didn’t know how to answer that. His first step toward getting into the sim had been filling out a pretty comprehensive online questionnaire. Ed Saunders had asked about Matt’s knowledge of the mystery field, what historical eras he liked, and lots of personal data, including how old he was. Matt had entered his proper age. If stork-boy here couldn’t pay attention—
Right then another figure appeared in the office — a tall, thick, balding man who supported his massive weight on a thick ebony cane. A perfectly tailored black suit covered his bulk, and his face was square rather than jowly. But he was definitely a heavy man, the image of Lucullus Marten, reclusive private eye. In fact, he was the Lucullus Marten whom Matt worked with as Monty Newman.
A second later a tall, slender, hawk-faced man appeared. He also had a cane, a thin bamboo accessory which he leaned against negligently as his sharp blue eyes took in the room. “Milo Krantz,” he announced in a clipped voice.
An instant after that a couple popped into existence on the other side of the room. They, too, were dressed in 1930s finery. The man wore a tuxedo. He had a thin mustache on a good-humored face — except for a certain ruthlessness in his gray eyes. The woman wore a white silk evening gown, her short-cropped brown hair bobbing as she glanced inquisitively around.
