“I am happy you are here,” Toni said. “You should have called. I would have come to the train station and collected you.”
“And miss the look on your face when you saw me? No.”
Toni smiled again. Guru had been family since Toni had begun learning the martial art of silat from her more than sixteen years ago. Toni had been thirteen when she’d seen the old lady, past retirement age even then, clean up her front stoop with four thugs brave enough to threaten an old pipe-smoking granny. Guru had come from Java with her husband as a young woman, raised a family, and been widowed before Toni had been born. Her husband had taught her the family martial art usually reserved for men, and she in turn had passed it along to Toni.
It would not be polite to ask the old woman why she had come nor how long she planned to stay, but as usual, Guru was ahead of her. She said, “I will take care of the baby while you work.”
“Thank you, but, uh, I wasn’t planning on going back to work,” Toni said. “Not for a while, at least.”
“Plans change, best girl. I think maybe you will go back very soon.”
“I don’t see how—”
The phone jangled. Toni was tempted to ignore it, let the computer take a message, but Guru waved at her. “You should answer that,” she said. “I will go and check on the coffee.” She smiled.
Toni shrugged. As she reached for the com, she saw the ID.
“Hey, Alex. What’s up?”
“Trouble here in River City,” he said. “Got a major blowout on the web. It’s like somebody poked a stick in a nest of fire ants, they’re running around, mad as hell, biting everybody close. You know, I wish your mother hadn’t gone home, I could sure use your help on this.”
Toni stared into the kitchen at Guru, who was pouring the coffee from the pot into a carafe, humming to herself.
It had to be a coincidence. Had to be.
But deep in her soul, Toni didn’t believe it. What she believed was, Guru had known!
She couldn’t have known that Alex would say that. And yet, there she was, making coffee, as if Toni had called and asked her to come up and watch the baby. She had come here, knowing Toni could use her help.
How was that possible?
“Toni?”
“Um. Yeah. Guru is here.”
“Really? That’s great. How is she?”
“Fine. She came to watch Little Alex so I could go back to work.”
Alex didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Coincidence,” he finally said.
“She said I’d be going back to work sooner than I expected. She got here ten minutes ago.”
There was a long pause. “Coincidence,” he said again. “I have to believe that. It’s too spooky otherwise.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Coffee is ready,” Guru said from the kitchen. “Hello to Mr. Alex.”
“Guru says hello.”
“I heard.” Another pause. “Well, you might as well come on down here. I really do need all the help I can get.”
Michaels cradled the receiver and shook his head. Someday, he was going to have to sit down with that old lady and ask her how this tenaga dalam, the “inside magic” she claimed to know, worked. There was probably some scientific explanation, but damned if he could figure out what it was.
Meanwhile, he had bigger problems. He voxaxed Jay Gridley.
“Talk to me, Jay.”
“We got it tracked to Blue Whale,” Jay said.
“Which is?”
“Major West Coast backbone server. Couple-three big nodes there.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t know yet, boss.”
“Go find out.”
“I’m gone.”
Michaels stood and headed for the door. His phone was going to ring in a minute or two, and the director of the FBI would be on the other end of the connection, wanting to know what the hell was going on. Since he didn’t have anything he could tell her, he wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.
His secretary looked up at him as he passed her desk. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said. “When the director calls, tell her I’m indisposed.”
Becky said, “Take your virgil with you. I don’t want her yelling at me.”
Virgil was short for Virtual Global Interface Link, a device slightly larger than a cigarette-pack that was a phone, modem, computer, weavewire fax, GPS, credit card, scanner, clock, radio, TV, and emergency beacon all in one. They weren’t common devices, not in the version Michaels had, and it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that the FBI had his virgil monitored and sat-tracked 24/ 7. They said this was for the safety of high-level personnel. If you had a powered FBI-issue virgil attached to your belt, you could run, but you couldn’t hide, and unlike the civilian models with fudge-factors built in to keep terrorists from using them to guide ballistic missiles to targets, the military GPS was accurate to within a couple of feet. Michaels was fairly sure it would work even if it was turned off.
If you actually went to the rest room and took the virgil with you, they could tell which stall you were in.
“Battery is dead,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Becky said. “Right. And there aren’t a half-dozen new batteries in your top desk drawer where they always are?”
“I’ll replace it when I get back.”
“Chicken.”
“That’s me. Bye.”
The night was alive with flashing lights, fading sirens, and the crackle of fire dining on everything it could chew and consume.
The building, a five-story job built after the big quake of 1906, was burning like, well, like a big house on fire. Black smoke poured from the upper two stories, flames shot out through imploded windows on the third floor. Pumper engines filled the street with red lights and throaty mechanical drones. A hook-and-ladder with a mounted inch-and-halfer giraffe line blew water into the upper story, while ground-based hydrant-fed three-inchers as stiff as wooden beams spewed water into the third and fourth floors. Cops kept the lookie-loos back, and firefighters ran back and forth, moving hoses, gearing up with air tanks and masks, doing what they were supposed to do.
Jay Gridley, dressed in a stiff and clumsy fireman’s turnout suit — coat, bunker pants, gloves, boots, and helmet, light reflecting off the glo-flex strips on the clothing — stood with a group of other firefighters near one of the building’s entrances.
A captain stood there in front of a chart on a stand. He listened to a handheld tactical radio, looked at the team, and said, “Okay, here’s the situation. We got the building cleared of people so far as we know. Fire started on the third floor, which is two-thirds engulfed, and is spreading laterally and going up fast, but the first two floors are still cool. I want your line here.” He pointed at the chart. “Baker and Charlie squads are entering the structure from the east and south, and setting up here, and here.”
Gridley wasn’t up to speed on real fire fighting tactics. He’d started creating this scenario a few days back, but hadn’t had time to do the research, so he doubted this was how it would work in RW. Would they go into a building on the ground floor if the floors above it were burning? Not something he’d want to do. His scenario was based on entertainment vids he’d seen, and everybody knew the movies never let truth get in the way of a story.
Fortunately, in VR, it didn’t actually have to mirror reality. It didn’t even have to look that good, unless you wanted to invite somebody else in to play. It was only the anal-retentive types like Jay who wanted the scenario to be as real as possible — most people didn’t bother. For Jay, the test of his creation would be to bring in a squad of real firefighters and have them look around, nod, then say, “Yeah, this is how it really is.” He figured if you could fool somebody who really knew what it was like, you had a decent scenario.