In VR, fire walls came in all kinds of configurations.
Well, yeehaw, Michaels thought. Welcome to the shallow end of the gene pool, boy.
“Ain’t open,” Overalls said.
Michaels nodded. “Uh huh. Guess I’ll have to come back later.”
“Reckon so.”
Michaels smiled and walked away. He retreated to the small dock, got into his boat, cast off, and cranked the motor. Around the next bend in the bayou, maybe three hundred yards farther upstream, he put back into shore, tied the bateau to a low-hanging willow tree branch, and hiked back toward the Dewdrop Inn. He circled around behind it, being careful not to let Overalls see him.
The back door was of unpainted wooden planks, crude, but solid. He fished around his pocket and pulled out a skeleton key. In reality, the key was a password provided by Dr. Morrison, but one couldn’t expect to have a coded keypad lock in this kind of scenario; it wouldn’t be appropriate.
The spring lock clicked open. Michaels quickly stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The inside of the place was pretty much a match for the outside, a 1950s backwoods bar. There were scarred wooden tables, beat-up cane-bottomed bent back chairs, and a row of stools in front of a bar that had seen decades of spilled beers and misplaced cigarettes. Two big rectangular coolers marked with beer logos were behind the bar, and a single shelf under a long, cracked mirror held bottles of bourbon, gin, sloe gin, scotch, and vodka.
It took only a minute or so for Michaels to find the built-in lockbox under the bar, a steel plate with a huge Master Lock padlock on a finger-thick brass hasp.
Michaels had a key to the padlock, but since he didn’t know what was normally in the lockbox, it wouldn’t much matter what he’d find in it if he bothered to look. If something was missing, he wouldn’t be able to tell by looking.
It was dim behind the bar, light shining through two grimy windows on the sides of the building, hardly enough to see by. He pulled a small flashlight from his back pocket and shined it at the lock.
Sure enough, there were fresh scratches on the lock and on the hasp. Somebody had been at it, trying to pry or pick it open. No way to tell if they had managed it, but it confirmed Morrison’s story, at least in part.
Michaels stood, brushed off his hands, and started for the back door. Morrison could have done it, of course. Somebody yelled “Fire!” a big part of the time he was the guy with the match. Then again, why bring it up? Nobody would have noticed without Morrison’s report, at least nobody in Net Force. And Morrison had access to the lockbox — which was, of course, nothing more than a protected set of files inside the HAARP computer system. He could open it whenever he wanted, there was no need for him to break into it.
Well. At least it gave Michaels something to go on. He’d have to call Morrisoh back, get some more specific information. It didn’t seem particularly vital, whatever was in the box, no reason to break a leg hurrying to get to it. There were people he could pass it off to, or he could wait until Jay got back from his vacation; he was only going to be gone for a week.
It had been a nice little exercise, maybe helped keep his VR muscles from atrophying completely, but nothing earthshaking.
He could drop out of VR now and unplug, but what the hell, might as well finish the bateau ride, enjoy the sights a little more, hey?
John Howard smiled as the guide turned the lights off and the inside of the cave went black, a darkness deeper than most people had ever seen. The only things visible were phosphorescent or tritium watch dials, and they seemed really bright against the inky jet so tangible you felt it hang on you like a damp coat.
In the gloom, the guide said, “No sunlight ever gets down here, and yet people explored this cave much farther along than we are now using only candles and burning torches. Before the electric lights were wired in, everybody carried a lot of spare batteries and bulbs for their flashlights, believe it.”
The tourists, unseen in the dark, chuckled nervously. Somebody punched a digital phone’s keypad and a green light went on; somebody else tapped a control on his or her wristwatch and lit the face up.
The guide switched the lights back on, and there was a collective sigh of relief to be able to see again. She said, “We guides have a standing bet that anybody leading a tour group that doesn’t light a phone or watch or even a cigarette lighter or key ring flash during the thirty seconds of darkness here gets treated to lunches for a week. Nobody has won the pool in six months.”
Again, the small crowd laughed, a little less nervously this time.
Howard looked at his wife and son, saw Tyrone smile at his girlfriend, Nadine — who just happened to have the same name as Howard’s wife. Howard resisted the urge to smile at how cute they looked. Besides, early teens were dangerous, they were either a million miles — or a single step — away from adulthood at any given moment. Right now, Ty and his friend were boomerang-throwing buddies. A month from now they could be either indifferent or trying some entirely new game that Howard knew they were much too young to be trying. Not that it had stopped him from trying at their age.
Nadine — his Nadine — slipped her hand under his arm. “Where’d you go? You just developed the long stare.”
He did smile at his wife. “Just watching the kids.”
“Feeling old?”
“Oh, yeah. But that’s only half of it. Feeling helpless is the hard part. I have all this accumulated wisdom—”
“You wish.”
“—okay, experience, then, and Tyrone doesn’t want to take advantage of it.”
“You still talk. He still listens.”
“Mostly on autopilot. I don’t think he’s paying much attention to the actual content.”
“Of course not. Did you pay much attention to what your parents had to say at his age? Every generation has to reinvent the wheel, hon.”
“It seems like such a waste.”
“But that’s how it is. Rain’s gonna come down no matter what you want, you can’t stop it. You can stay inside, go out and get wet, or take an umbrella, the rain doesn’t care.”
“I knew there was a reason I married you,” he said. “Your mind.”
“That’s not what you used to say.”
“Well, I suppose you had a couple other attractions.”
“You mean you used to think so before I got fat and ugly?”
He turned and looked around behind him.
“What are you looking for?”
“For whoever you must be talking to. You sure ain’t talking to me. You better lookin’ than the day we met. Going senile and losing your mind, maybe, but fat and ugly? Sheeit, woman, gimme a break.”
She smiled. He liked making her do that. Even after more than fifteen years, it still made him feel good.
“It’s good for us to get away for a while,” she said. “I’m having a good time.”
“Me, too,” he said. And he was. He hadn’t thought about Net Force for the better part of an hour, easy.
Morrison pushed an electronic card across the table to Ventura. “Here is the retainer. A hundred thousand.” He’d had to drain his savings and take out a second mortgage on his house to get the money. Ventura’s services weren’t cheap — thirty thousand a month for the basic plan, and it went up from there — but he was supposedly the best there was, and Morrison knew he needed the best. He’d be broke by the end of July if the deal didn’t happen, but there wasn’t any real doubt that it would, only with whom and for how much. He needed to stay alive until then, of course.