“We’re into TRW, the credit-reporting agency,” one of the twin Spielberg look-alikes said with obvious delight.
Nora saw data flickering across the green screens, but none of it had any meaning for her.
“They’re creating solid credit histories for our new identities,” Travis told her. “By the time we do settle down somewhere and put in a change of address with the DMV and TRW, our mailbox will be flooded with offers for credit cards-Visa, MasterCard, probably even American Express and Carte Blanche.”
“Nora Jean Aimes,” she said numbly, trying to grasp how quickly and thoroughly her new life was being built.
Because they could locate no infant who had died in the year of Travis’s birth with his first name, he had to settle for being Samuel Spencer Hyatt, who had been born that January and had perished that March in Portland, Oregon. The death would be expunged from the public record, and Travis’s new identity would stand up to fairly intense scrutiny.
Strictly for fun (they said), the bearded young operators created a military record for Travis, crediting him six years in the Marines and awarding him a Purple Heart plus a couple of citations for bravery during a peace-keeping-mission-turned-violent in the Middle East. To their delight, he asked if they could also create a valid real-estate broker’s license under his new name, and within twenty-five minutes they cracked into the right data banks and did the job.
“Cake and pie,” one of the young men said.
“Cake and pie,” the other echoed. Nora frowned, not understanding.
“Piece of cake,” one of them explained.
“Easy as pie,” the other said.
“Cake and pie,” Nora said, nodding.
The blonde with copper-penny eyes returned, carrying driver’s licenses imprinted with Travis’s and Nora’s pictures. “You’re both quite photogenic,” she said.
Two hours and twenty minutes after meeting Van Dyne, they left Hot Tips with two manila envelopes containing a variety of documents supporting their new identities. Out on the street, Nora felt a little dizzy and held on to Travis’s arm all the way back to the car.
Fog had rolled through the city while they had been in Hot Tips. The blinking lights and flashing-rippling neon of the Tenderloin were softened yet curiously magnified by the mist, so it seemed as if every cubic centimeter of night air was awash with strange lights, with an aurora borealis brought down to ground level. Those sleazy streets had a certain mystery and cheap allure after dark, in the fog, but not if you’d seen them in daylight first and remembered what you had seen.
In the Mercedes, Einstein was waiting patiently.
“Couldn’t arrange to have you turned into a poodle, after all,” Nora told him as she buckled her seat belt. “But we sure did ourselves up right. Einstein, say hello to Sam Hyatt and Nora Aimes.”
The retriever put his head over the front seat, looked at her, looked at
Travis, and snorted once as if to say they could not fool him, that he knew who they were.
To Travis, Nora said, “Your antiterrorist training… is that where you learned about places like Hot Tips, people like Van Dyne? Is that where terrorists get new ID once they slip into the country?”
“Yeah, some go to people like Van Dyne, though not usually. The Soviets supply papers for most terrorists. Van Dyne services mostly ordinary illegal immigrants, though not the poor ones, and criminal types looking to dodge arrest warrants.”
As he started the car, she said, “But if you could find Van Dyne, maybe the people looking for us can find him.”
“Maybe. It’ll take them a while, but maybe they can.”
“Then they’ll find out all about our new identities.”
“No,” Travis said. He turned on the defroster and the windshield wipers to clear the condensation off the outside of the glass. “Van Dyne wouldn’t keep records. He doesn’t want to be caught with proof of what he does. If the authorities ever tumble to him and go in there with search warrants, they won’t find anything in Van Dyne’s computers except the accounting and purchasing records for Hot Tips.”
As they drove through the city, heading for the Golden Gate Bridge, Nora stared in fascination at the people in the streets and in other cars, not just in the Tenderloin but in every neighborhood through which they passed. She wondered how many of them were living under the names and identities with which they had been born and how many were changelings like her and Travis.
“In less than three hours, we’ve been totally remade,” she said.
“Some world we live in, huh? More than anything else, that’s what high technology means-maximum fluidity. The whole world is becoming ever more fluid, malleable. Most financial transactions are now handled with electronic money that flashes from New York to L.A. -or around the world- in seconds. Money crosses borders in a blink; it no longer has to be smuggled out past the guards. Most records are kept in the form of electrical charges that only computers read. So everything’s fluid. Identities are fluid. The past is fluid.”
Nora said, “Even the genetic structure of a species is fluid these days.”
Einstein woofed agreement.
Nora said, “Scary, isn’t it?”
“A little,” Travis said as they approached the light-bedecked southern entrance to the fog-mantled Golden Gate Bridge, which was all but invisible in the mist. “But maximum fluidity is basically a good thing. Social and financial fluidity guarantee freedom. I believe-and I hope-that we’re heading toward an age when the role of governments will inevitably dwindle, when there’ll be no way to regulate and control people as thoroughly as was possible in the past. Totalitarian governments won’t be able to stay in power.”
“How so?”
“Well, how can a dictatorship control its citizens in a high-tech society of maximum fluidity? The only way is to refuse to allow high tech to intrude, seal the borders, and live entirely in an earlier age. But that’d be national suicide for any country that tried it. They couldn’t compete. In a few decades, they’d be modern aborigines, primitive by the standards of the civilized high-tech world. Right now, for instance, the Soviets try to restrict computers to their defense industry, which can’t last. They’ll have to computerize their entire economy and teach their people to use computers-and then how can they keep the screws tight when their citizens have been given the means to manipulate the system and foil its controls on them?”
At the entrance to the bridge, no northbound toll was collected. They drove onto the span, where the speed limit had been drastically reduced because of the weather.
Looking up at the ghostly skeleton of the bridge, which glistened with condensation and vanished in the fog, Nora said, “You seem to think the world will be paradise in a decade or two.”
“Not paradise,” he said. “Easier, richer, safer, happier. But not a paradise. After all, there will still be all the problems of the human heart and all the potential sicknesses of the human mind. And the new world’s bound to bring us some new dangers as well as blessings.”
“Like the thing that killed your landlord,” she said.
“Yes.”
In the back seat, Einstein growled.
12
That Thursday afternoon, August 26, Vince Nasco drove to Johnny The Wire Santini’s place in San Clemente to pick up the past week’s report, which was when he learned of the murder of Ted Hockney in Santa Barbara the previous evening. The condition of the corpse, especially the missing eyes, linked it to The Outsider. Johnny had also ascertained that the NSA had quietly assumed jurisdiction in the case, which convinced Vince it was related to the Banodyne fugitives.