Out loud, he just cleared his throat. “I’ll be Ed Noonan, and you’ll be Cathy Carty. Here’s some ID and your clearance.” He handed over a couple of other icons.
“Cathy — sounds like Cat. Good thinking,” Caitlin said. “Is the name you’ve chosen close to your real one?”
Matt just gave her a sour smile. “These people don’t exist, so there’ll be nothing to connect us to them — or to the real newspaper. I’ve chosen Irish names, because I figured that’s the kind of journalist who’d want to go to an Irish kid’s press conference.”
“What’s he going to talk about?” Cat wondered.
“I have no idea,” Matt admitted. “We’ll just have to go, wave a pair of recorders around, and try to keep a straight face, no matter what.”
“It will be different,” Caitlin admitted.
“The conference will be held tomorrow afternoon after school,” Matt said. “What do you want to do, meet here?”
Caitlin deactivated the proxy program, transforming back to her natural self. “Might as well,” she said, coiling her long blond hair around one finger. “But we won’t go directly to the veeyar from here.”
She gave Matt another one of her bitter smiles. “I’ve got a list of good cutout locations. Tonight, I’ll choose one and set it up. It should cover us in case someone takes it into his or her head to backtrace people coming in.”
“Good thinking,” Matt said, his voice flat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
When he arrived at Cat’s veeyar the next day, she was already wearing the Plain-Jane virtual form Matt had engineered for her.
“Oh, it’s me, all right,” she assured Matt, her bony face squinching up in disgust as she looked down at herself. “Trust me. None of the guys would want to wear this.”
Caitlin picked up a virtual tote bag — an awful-looking thing that fit right in with her unfashionable appearance. “Ready to go?”
Matt had already adopted the Ed Noonan proxy before arriving. “Why not?” he said.
Caitlin held out her hand, and Matt took it. They flashed across the Net, coming to rest in a large, very realistic simulated room with a series of stone-topped tables facing a raised platform with a lecture desk, also stone-topped.
Matt released the girl’s hand. “Wait a minute!” he said. “This is the virtual chemistry lab at Bradford!”
Caitlin chuckled. “You aren’t the only one who can foozle the school’s computers.”
Matt gave a wordless grunt. The guy had managed to route a request through the school’s system. Whoever was behind the virtual vandals had completely invaded the computers in Bradford Academy!
“Come on!” Cat checked the dowdy old-fashioned watch her proxy was wearing. “We’re going to be late if you keep fooling around.”
Sighing, Matt took Caitlin’s hand again as she routed them to the press conference using the clearance protocols he had obtained.
Matt had wondered if the Irish embassy’s Net node would turn out to have shamrocks, or be designed in the shape of a quaint cottage. It was almost a disappointment to find that the official site was a typical ultramodern virtual office setup.
They were quickly routed to Sean McArdle’s veeyar, which was configured as a large lecture hall. Matt was impressed at the number of young journalists who had gathered. “We’re going to wind up at the back,” he whispered to Caitlin.
“All the better,” she muttered.
Matt blinked. Then again, Cat was probably right. They could just hang out and listen, away from all the action.
Even so, he was surprised that Cat didn’t take a seat, just standing in the rear.
Exactly on the dot of the hour, Sean McArdle appeared at the podium. He was a tall, intense, shy young man who was obviously terrified at the idea of getting up to speak in front of a crowd. But for some reason — maybe to get over that terror — here he was, conducting a general interview.
McArdle’s voice cracked as he introduced himself, and he gave a sudden, disarming grin. “Don’t think I’ll ever get this speech-making thing right,” he said. “A terrible failing if I ever hope to become a politician.”
But as he went on to talk about Ireland and its economic achievements, Matt had to admit that if McArdle wasn’t a politician, he made a great cheerleader. The young man was definitely proud of his country and where it had gone. “When my father was growing up, we were still accepting handouts from the members of the European Economic Community,” he said. “The joke in those days was, ‘Thank heavens for the German taxpayers,’ because they were paying for the roads and infrastructure to bring us up to speed. I know quite a few of you are descended from Irish immigrants. So I think you’ll know what I mean when I say that certain people — certain countries—always pushed the idea that our people were shiftless, lazy. But thirty years ago, we ‘lazy Irish’ had some of the best-educated young people in Europe. We were getting some of the plum jobs in that country which will remain nameless, becoming involved in computer design, even working on parts of the American space program.”
McArdle gestured around the virtual meeting hall they now occupied. “We’ve been very involved in the Net. All the constructs at this node — including this veeyar — were programmed by Irish engineers. If you like this meeting setup, I’m allowed to give you a copy.”
Now that he was up and talking, a flush of color appeared on his high, prominent cheekbones.
“An affluent economy led to some problems we’d never have anticipated — like a flood of illegal immigrants. We aren’t a large country, and for centuries we’ve been a single people. That’s made it difficult for would-be refugees to fit in — and everyone hasn’t had the training to share in our prosperity. I know that’s led to some bitterness from people fleeing the strife in the Balkans. But especially in recent years, Ireland has taken the lead in bringing development money to that region, helping to build up the business climate as our economic partners did for us.”
As he began to bring on the holo clips, images, charts, and graphs, young Sean McArdle now seemed completely comfortable with his speech-making.
Maybe he will make it as a politician back home, Matt thought. But now I’m getting bored.
He glanced round at Caitlin to see how she was taking the presentation. With her political family, she probably heard stuff like this all the time.
She stood with her back to the rear wall, half hidden in the shadows, not even bothering to listen.
In fact, she seemed to be fiddling with something in her hands. Matt looked a little closer. What was that? A sticky label?
That seemed to be exactly what she was fooling with. Even as he took a step toward her, she peeled the backing from the label and slapped it onto the wall behind her.
Matt strained his eyes, trying to read whatever it was she’d stuck up.
It seemed pretty silly to him, pushing so hard to get in somewhere if all she wanted to do was a bit of petty vandalism. It would probably turn out to be some nasty anti-Irish slogan spouted by Gerald Savage. What would it do? Glare out in intolerable brightness? Or maybe give off smoke?
Instead, the slapped-on label did something even weirder. Its color shifted, chameleon-like, until it matched the dark green of the wall itself. Rather than standing out, the sticker seemed to be hiding itself.
Matt came closer, trying to find the blasted thing.
But the label was vanishing…not blending in against the virtual paint job, but melting in to become part of the wall itself!
Chapter 8
“What is it?” Caitlin hissed as Matt dashed up — and roughly pushed her aside. “What are you doing?” she demanded, sounding more scared than angry.