“I’m especially looking for anything about the Callivant family,” Leif said.
Megan gave him a look. What was this all about? He takes one look at a girl who insults him, and all of a sudden he’s digging into her family tree?
“We’ve got a couple of books—Lost Promise, about Steve, Will, and Martin.” Mom made a face. “That was family-authorized, so there are lots of interviews, but it’s also something of a puff piece for the Callivants.”
She went to the shelf and chose a book. “America’s Anointed has a lot of stuff about the Callivants, and it’s much more balanced. There’s a story about Will Callivant’s daughter—”
Leif nodded. “The one who got involved in that weird spring break incident with those guys. She’s been in a private sanitarium ever since.”
Julie O’Malley nodded grimly. “You know that one? While life has been hard on the Callivant men, the family curse seems to be just as hard on the female members of the clan.”
Leif dug a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I was wondering if you had A Death in Haddington, by Simon Herzen.”
Megan stared at the rude noise her mother made. “That piece of…writing?” Julie O’Malley shook her head. “I was in journalism school when that came out. The buzz about the book was tremendous. Everyone said Si Herzen was going to blow the top off a big cover-up.”
Leif leaned forward eagerly. “And?”
“Then it hit the stands and sank without a trace. I read it. Herzen had done a clip job, more or less cutting and pasting what the media had printed and broadcast about the Hadding case. The book stank, but we never knew why. Maybe the publisher’s lawyers got into the act, or the Callivants got to Herzen or the publishing company.” Megan’s mom looked disgusted. “I wouldn’t give that book house room.”
The library shelves did yield a few other volumes about the Callivants. A couple were pretty old. One had a couple of chapters on Priscilla Hadding’s death.
Leif thanked Megan’s mom. Then Megan led him into the kitchen to get some plastic bags to wrap up the books.
As soon as they were alone, Megan folded her arms and stood in Leif’s path. “You’re up to something. What’s all this about the Callivants?”
“It’s for Matt,” Leif said. “He’s in trouble, and the Callivants may be the cause of it.”
Megan listened to the story of how Matt’s mystery sim had spiraled out of control. “I guess we should be glad we didn’t get into this world to play,” she finally said. “What’s he going to do?”
Leif shrugged. “Right now he’s just watching the clock tick away.”
While Megan worked to make a good, waterproof package, her mother came back in. “Here are your shoes, Leif, but I think you’d be better off with a pair of Rory’s boots.”
She looked worriedly out of the kitchen window. “The snow has stopped, but now we’re getting freezing rain.” A car went skidding by on the street. “Snow’s bad enough in this town, but this may even be worse.”
Matt hadn’t even gone out of his house. He’d sat in the kitchen, explaining things to his parents…and watching the clock move ever closer to Ed Saunders’s deadline. How long would it take the Callivants’ lawyers to start badgering him and his parents?
Matt’s father was obviously thinking the same thing — and worrying about it. “I just don’t understand,” he said for what had to be the fiftieth time. “How could you sign an agreement like that?”
“It’s fairly standard, Dad. Don’t you read the fine print whenever you load in a new program?” Matt said gloomily. “It’s just never been an issue in any of the programs I’ve used.”
“I find it hard to believe that giving away those kinds of rights would be standard,” Gordon Hunter said.
Matt’s mom called to them from the living room. They came in to find her standing in front of the computer console. Some sort of document, much enlarged, floated before her in holographic display. “I’ve been calling up the agreements for various sims we’ve used,” she said. “Look here.”
“That’s my tennis game,” Matt’s father said, looking at the heading of the display.
“Read this bit of fine print.”
Word for word, it was the same as the clause in the agreement Matt had signed, giving the sim operator the right, if necessary, to reveal the identities of all participants.
Gordon was shocked. “I thought the Revised Privacy Act of 2013 was supposed to protect consumers against things like this.”
“And I suppose this little clause is what the lawyers came up with to get around that law,” Marissa Hunter said grimly. “It’s also in my flight simulator. As Matt says, it appears to be an industry standard.”
“I’ll bet we could challenge that in court,” Matt’s father said.
His wife merely gave him a look.
Sure, we could challenge it, Matt thought. If we had money like Leif’s father, we could even afford the time and the lawyers. But Dad was a teacher, and Mom a career Navy officer. Their income wouldn’t let them hire a fraction of the kind of legal talent the Callivants already had working on this.
Dad must have realized the same thing even as the words were coming out of his mouth. Silently he led the way back to the kitchen to watch the hands of the clock advance.
The deadline came, then dinnertime. Everybody in the Hunter family barely touched the food on their plates, waiting for…something. A call, a virtmail message — Matt had ordered his program to sound a special chime if anything came in.
There was only silence as they tried to eat, silence as they cleared the table, silence as they cleaned the dishes.
“You would think Saunders would let us know, one way or the other,” Matt complained as he stacked plates in the kitchen cabinet. “Unless it might have something to do with the weather?”
Marissa Hunter gave her son a wry smile. “They don’t usually declare snow days for legal problems,” she said.
Matt waited a little while longer, then finally said, “I’m going to call him.”
Going to the living room console, he recited the Net address that had engraved itself into his memory. The computer display blinked for a moment, then Ed Saunders appeared. “Can’t talk to you right now,” his image announced. “But you can leave a detailed visual or virtmail message — your choice.”
Disgusted, Matt cut the connection. “He’s not there! What would he be doing out on a night like this?”
“He could be hiding behind his automated answering system,” Matt’s father suggested, “using it to screen his calls.”
“You mean he doesn’t have the nerve to face us.” Matt angrily returned to the computer, giving it a new set of orders. The machine took a moment or two to sift through the Net. But it finally came up with a physical address to match the owner of the Net site.
Matt told the computer to plot the location on a map of D.C., marking the nearest Metro stations.
“What are you thinking of, Matthew?” his father asked, his voice concerned.
“I want to know where we stand with this mess,” Matt replied. “It looks as though Saunders lives only a couple of blocks from the Waterfront Metro station.”
“You’re not thinking of going out in this ice storm,” his mother said.
“I’m thinking of going under it.” Matt looked at his parents. “Do we really just want to sit here and wait for whatever it is to fall on us?”
In the end Matt and his father, bundled up like Eskimos, wound up setting off for Ed Saunders’s house. Several times on the long, slippery walk to the Metro station, Matt wished he hadn’t been so persuasive. The frozen rain was coming down in tiny pellets of ice, which flew along on a howling wind. And no matter which direction they walked in, the wind seemed to be gusting right into their faces.