treasure chest and armory. It held the tracking program he was going to lend Matt, and several tools that might make his visit to the Delaware Department of Motor Vehicles much simpler — and untraceable.
Leif’s first choice was an icon shaped like a fishhook. That was the program that would catch on and leave a line to the mystery virtmailer. Then he got one that looked like a miniature hand at the end of a stick, another that looked like a tiny statue of Dracula peeking over his cape, and last, a tiny gold badge. That one was a last resort. It was supposed to contain police codes for demanding information. That would get Leif in real trouble if somebody found it in his possession.
However, he’d have to be caught first, and he’d do his best not to be. Closing the door on his secret hideout, he went to the living room couch. Composing a virtmail message for Matt, he gave an order, holding out the fishhook. A second later there were two in his hands. He put one down, sent off the message with another order, and the icon in his hand vanished.
That was the easy part of the job. Next Leif commanded his computer to contact the long-term record storage system of the Delaware state government. “Maximum confusion,” he added, bracing himself.
The light show of the Net was hallucinatory enough when visitors traveled through it using their normal visualization techniques. Leif’s “Maximum confusion” order implemented a program designed to frustrate any attempts to backtrack his visit to the state government’s computers. To do that, the program bounced him at high speed from Net site to Net site to Net site, sending his connection randomly among millions of data and holographic transmissions. The experience was like participating in a really garish pinball game with a thousand paddles — as the ball.
Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, Leif’s virtual journey ended — right outside yet another of those blank-sided boxes where old, computerized information went to die. Leif didn’t want to try going in yet — if he had, his connection would have been tagged and recorded. Acting more on instinct than on any plan, Leif moseyed away from the front of the construct, heading around to the left side.
It was blank, of course — you weren’t supposed to come in this way. Leif got out the hand-on-the-stick icon. It represented a universal handshaking program, which he now inserted into the glowing neon wall in front of him. It sank in, and then so did Leif. The plan was to blend in with any regular information traffic and make his way to the records he wanted.
Along the way Leif activated his vampire program, which was supposed to make him invisible and help him suck up any information he wanted.
Now came the difficult part. Would there be any protection for information relating to the Callivants? Leif could imagine guarding sealed court records. But forty-year-old car registrations? It seemed safe enough. Still, the body count on Matt’s sim was getting awfully high — it might pay to be careful. And he’d hate to get caught hacking — it would get him booted out of the Net Force Explorers, at the very least.
The Callivant compound apparently was home to a fleet of cars at any given time. Tracking back through the old records, he came across a 1965 Corvette registered to Walter G. Callivant in 1981. Nothing in 1980. Nothing in 1982. No, wait — there was the transfer of registration — to Clyde Finch. A month later the car was junked.
Friday afternoon came, and Matt felt pretty pleased with himself. He was still alive, and none of the other sim participants had had any trouble. He’d aced a history quiz this morning, and during lunch he’d made the necessary plans with Megan and David for their visit tomorrow with Mrs. Knox.
The widow had sounded pretty harassed when he called. She’d answered on her wallet-phone, but what Matt had mostly gotten was an earful of wailing baby. On hearing that he was calling for Father Flannery, however, the woman had nearly broken down herself.
“It would be such a help,” Mrs. Knox said. “The bank won’t do anything over the phone, and with two kids, it’s hard to get down there. I don’t like computers, but we really need the stuff that was trapped in there.”
She eagerly agreed to having Matt and his friends over on Saturday afternoon. “You know where it is, right? I’ll take the kids out so there’ll be no distractions.”
If there was any in the house.
Matt pushed that downer of a thought away, determined to hold on to his good mood. Dismissal finally came, and he walked to the corner, ready to cross and wait for the autobus home.
A car pulled up at the intersection and honked at him. It was the bronze Dodge concept car. The driver wore oversized sunglasses. This time, however, Nikki Callivant had a khaki cotton hat crammed down on her head.
The horn sounded again, and Nikki beckoned to him. Sighing, Matt went round to the passenger side and climbed in.
“Where to this time?” he asked. “The park again?”
“I thought I’d give you a lift home,” Nikki Callivant said.
“How nice. Would it ruin the mood if I asked why?”
The girl slipped off her shades and gave him a look with those incredible blue eyes. “If you think it’s because I can’t keep my hands off you — you’d be very wrong.”
“A lot of guys think that around you?” Matt asked.
“Too many,” she said curtly. “Maybe it’s a rich-guy thing.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “I hear their feelings get hurt very easily. In fact, it happens with rich kids in general. Look at the way Priscilla Hadding stormed off on your grandfather, or vice versa.”
“Have you found out any more about that?” It was lucky they’d stopped at a red light. Nikki was staring at his face instead of the road.
“If I found out anything, you’d be the last person I’d tell,” Matt finally said.
A horn sounded behind them, and Nikki had to turn her attention back to traffic. “Why?” she asked as they started moving again.
“Flattered as I am by your attention, you’re the enemy,” Matt told her. “Your family is threatening me and everyone else connected with a dopey little mystery sim with nasty legal stuff for showing any interest whatsoever in what happened in Haddington forty years ago.”
“More than forty years now,” Nikki corrected. She sighed. “Why can’t people let the past be?”
Matt bit his tongue to hold back the traditional P.I. answer—“There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
“From what the senator — my great-grandfather — says, the media people were actually a bit more decent back then. They still knew some shame and weren’t quite as intrusive.”
“Oh? News feeding frenzies weren’t quite as frequent in the good old days?”
“It’s easy for you to laugh. You don’t spend half your life with your face in someone’s viewfinder. As long as I can remember, I’ve had people poking at me, training me how to behave in public. Don’t show too much emotion. Don’t get into fights. Before you do anything, think how it would look to eighty million people seeing it on a holo display. I can’t even go out on somebody’s yacht without being shadowed by some cameraman in a boat or copter, his telephoto lens at the ready, just hoping I’ll take off the top of my bathing suit.”
“Must be awful, trying to get a tan.”
“See? You just don’t understand!”
“I understand this much about celebrity,” Matt replied. “For fame, fortune, or public service — which is another way of saying power — people court public attention. They hire people to get them news coverage, they dream up publicity stunts. Then, when whatever they do is sure to be deemed newsworthy, they complain about the invasion of their privacy. If your name was Nikki McGillicuddy and you wanted to break into Hollywood, your manager would probably be telling you to drop the top of your bathing suit wherever you went.”
Dull red glowed on the tops of Nikki’s cheekbones. “I never asked—”
“No, previous generations have set up the publicity apparatus for you,” Matt cut in. “But you’re ready to use it — didn’t I hear you talking about being the first female Callivant in the family power-brokering business?”
“You make it sound — I’m a Callivant!”
