“So,” I continued, “even if I were selfish, the best course for me is the one I’ve chosen: to subscribe to the same words that the visionaries who came together on 26 June 1945 did when they signed the charter of this organization, the United Nations. It is my fervent wish:
“ ‘To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which has brought untold sorrow to mankind,’
“ ‘To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’
“ ‘To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,’
“And, most of all, for humanity and myself, ‘to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.’
“In concert, we can realize all these goals—and the world will be a better place. Thank you all.”
Hobo knew how to applaud, and he joined right in with the delegates.
twenty
There was no proof—at least not yet!—that Webmind was behind Chase’s disappearance. But surely, Peyton Hume thought, Webmind was the most likely suspect. He stopped his car a block from the target house, and as he reviewed the local file he had on Crowbar Alpha, he fought down the notion that he’d somehow become a grim-reaper observer, collapsing quantum cats into oblivion—that the mere fact of his looking at this file was tantamount to signing the kid’s death warrant.
And Crowbar Alpha was a kid—just eighteen. His real name was Devon Hawkins, and his worst viruses had been written while he was still a minor; he’d gotten off lightly because of that. He lived with his mother, and, Hume thought, judging by the photos in his file, he looked like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. A high-school dropout, Devon was a major force in World of Warcraft and EVE.
Hume pulled into the driveway. Again, he’d been afraid to call ahead, lest he tip Webmind off to what he was up to—and so he just walked up to the front door of the downscale brown brick house, and pressed the buzzer.
A middle-aged white woman with puffy cheeks and a largish nose answered the door. “Yes?” she said, sounding quite anxious.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m with the government, and—”
“Is it about Devon?” the woman said. “Have you found him?”
Hume’s heart skipped a beat. “Ma’am?”
“Devon! Have you found my boy?”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Oh, God!” the woman said, her eyes going wide. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know anything about your son.”
“Then—then why are you here?”
Hume took a breath. “I mean, I don’t know his whereabouts. I just want to speak with him.”
“Is he in trouble again? Is that it? Is that why he ran away?”
“Ran away?”
“I came home from work, and he was gone. I thought he’d just gone down to the mall, you know? There was some new computer game he wanted to get, and I thought maybe he’d gone to pick it up. But he didn’t come home.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Of course!”
“Ma’am, I’m so sorry.” He thought about handing her his card, but he was still trying to cover his tracks. Instead, he opened his wallet, found a cash receipt, and wrote down the number of his new disposable cell phone; he had to turn the phone on to see what that number was. “If he does come back, or you hear anything from the police, you’ll let me know?”
The woman looked at Hume with eyes pleading for an answer. “You said you were from the government. Is he in trouble?”
Hume shook his head. “Not with us, ma’am.”
In the wings at the General Assembly Hall, Caitlin and Shoshana applauded along with everyone else. But as the applause died down, Hobo put his hands in front of the disk dangling from his neck and started moving them. Next to Caitlin, Shoshana gasped.
“What?” Caitlin said.
“He’s holding his hands so Webmind can see,” Shoshana said. “And he’s saying, ‘Hobo speak? Hobo speak?’ ”
“Hobo wants to address the General Assembly of the United Nations?” Caitlin said.
Hobo had his head bent down, looking at the little monitor on the top of the disk. Presumably, Webmind was replying to him, gently explaining that this wasn’t a good time, and—
And Webmind’s synthesized voice filled the great hall. “My friend Hobo has asked to say a few words,” he said, and then, without waiting for approval from the president, Webmind said, “Shoshana?”
Caitlin could see Sho jump slightly at the sound of her name, but she walked out onto the vast stage and headed over to the black granite podium the president had used when introducing Webmind. Some of the UN interpreters might have understood ASL—but Hobo, and the other apes who spoke it, used idiosyncratic, simplified versions; if Hobo was going to talk, only Shoshana or Dr. Marcuse could translate for him.
Hobo briefly turned his head to look at Sho, made a pant-hoot, then looked out at the vast sea of faces, representing the member nations. He made a general sweep of his arms, encompassing all those people, and then began moving his hands again.
Shoshana looked even more startled than she had a moment ago, and at first she didn’t speak.
“Go ahead,” said Webmind, through the twin speakers on Dr. Theopolis, but without also pumping it out over the chamber’s sound system. “Tell them what he’s saying.”
Shoshana swallowed, leaned into the microphone on the podium, and said, “He says, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong.’ ”
Hobo indicated the delegates again and his hands continued to move.
She went on. “He says, ‘All thump chest, all thump chest.’ ” She hesitated for a second, then apparently decided she had to explain. She looked out at the eighteen hundred people. “Hobo spent his early years at the Georgia Zoo. The bonobo compound faced the gorilla compound. He called the alpha male gorilla ‘thump chest.’ ”
She let it sink in, and Caitlin, still in the wings, suddenly realized what Hobo meant. With his simple clarity of vision, he was saying it was nuts to have a room filled almost exclusively with alpha males. He could see it in their postures, sense it in their attitudes, smell it in their pheromones. The world’s leaders were those who pushed, those who sought power, those who tried constantly to dominate others.
Hobo lifted the disk around his neck as if showing it to the audience. Then, letting the disk dangle again, he moved his hands, and Shoshana translated. “ ‘Friend not thump chest. Friend good friend.’ ”
Hobo indicated himself, and made more signs. Shoshana said, “ ‘Hobo not thump chest. Hobo good ape.’ ” She looked startled when he pointed at her. “Um, ‘Shoshana not thump chest. Shoshana good human.’” Hobo then spread his arms, and Caitlin guessed that it wasn’t an ASL sign, but simply was meant to encompass the whole General Assembly. And then his hands fluttered again. “ ‘Need more good human here,’ ” Shoshana said on his behalf.
The president spoke from his position behind them on the jade dais. “Um, thank you, Webmind. And thank you Mister, um, Hobo.”
Webmind’s smooth audiobook-narrator’s voice said: “It is Hobo and I who thank you, Mr. President.” And, perhaps at a sign from Webmind, Hobo turned and walked off the stage, Dr. Theopolis swinging from his neck.
Colonel Hume returned to his car, drove a short distance from Devon Hawkins’s house, and pulled into a strip mall. He parked and massaged his temples.
First Chase, now Crowbar Alpha. One could have been an anomaly, but two was a definite pattern.
Hume felt his stomach knotting. He undid his shoulder belt, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. There was only one possible answer: Webmind knew he was attempting to find a skilled hacker to do what the US government lacked the balls to do—and so it was tracking down such hackers and eliminating them.