Robert Sawyer - Wonder

The fact that WATCH kept an active eye on her was useful. Rather than calling Drakkenfyre directly, Hume used his cell phone to call WATCH and asked for Shelton Halleck, the analyst there who had first noticed that Caitlin Decter’s visual signals were being mirrored over the Internet to servers in Tokyo.

“Halleck,” said the familiar Southern drawl. “What can I do you for?”

“Shel, it’s Peyton Hume.”

“Afternoon, Colonel. What’s up?”

“There’s a hacker in Bethesda. Her online name is Drakkenfyre—D-R-A-double-K-E-N-F-Y-R-E; real name Simonne Coogan.” He spelled the name. “Can you tell me what she’s up to right now?”

He could hear Shelton typing—and it brought back a mental picture of the younger man’s forearm with the green snake tattoo encircling it.

“Got it,” said Shelton. “Quite a talented lady, it seems.”

“She certainly is,” said Hume. “I’ve got her dossier here on my laptop. She still with Octahedral?”

“Yup, and she seems to be at work right now, and… yes, yes, no question: she’s up to her old tricks. Been dyin’ to play Assassin’s Creed IV myself, but I was plannin’ to wait until it was officially launched next month.”

“You got an address for Octahedral there?”

“Sure.” Shel read it to him.

It was only about half an hour away at this time of day. “Thanks,” said Hume.

Masayuki Kuroda’s flight back to Japan wasn’t until early tomorrow morning, so he spent some time walking the streets of Beijing. The Chinese had no compunction about staring—and the sight of a Japanese who weighed 150 kilos and towered above everyone else clearly intrigued them.

The streets weren’t as crowded as those of Tokyo, nor were most of them as upscale. Still, here, in a big urban center, people seemed mostly happy—and why not? Their lives were measurably better with each passing year: their prosperity grew, their projected longevity increased, their standard of living improved.

And yet—

And yet they weren’t free to speak their minds or practice their beliefs or choose their leaders. Human-rights violations were rampant, and even setting aside the recent slaughter in Shanxi, executions were common. Yes, his own Japan was one of only three democracies left in the world that practiced capital punishment; the others were the United States and South Korea, although the latter had had a moratorium on it for years. But at least Japan’s executions were public knowledge, reported by the media, and subject to due process. Here in China, people like that young man who could now walk thanks to him lived in fear.

He was passing a street vendor’s cart. A foreigner—a white man—was trying to find out how much a bottled beverage cost. The wizened dealer replied with movements of a single hand. Kuroda knew the Chinese had a way of showing numbers up to ten using just one hand instead of two—admirable data compression—but he didn’t know the system, and so was unable to help bridge the communications gap. He did think about warning the tourist to check the expiration date; he’d yet to see a bottle of diet cola for sale here that wasn’t well past its sell-by date.

Masayuki always wheezed a bit as he breathed (not to mention snoring up a storm at night, according to his wife), but here his breathing was even more labored. At least his eyes had stopped stinging after the first day.

And whereas Tokyo was so ordered, so clean, and—yes—so capitalist, Beijing was chaotic, messy, and oppressive, with armed state guards everywhere. People crossed the streets wherever they wanted, vehicles—even buses—routinely ignored red lights, and bicycles weaved recklessly through the traffic; the Chinese had to revel in what little freedom they did have.

Tokyo always had an eye on the future—although to Masayuki, that meant it often seemed stuck in some 1980s sci-fi movie full of neon and chrome. But the echoes of Beijing’s long history were everywhere here, from odd little side streets that looked like they hadn’t changed in centuries to the opulent red buildings of the Forbidden City.

But the noise! There was a rumble behind everything, almost as if the 1.3 billion heartbeats of this giant land had blended into a continuous pounding.

Walking along, taking in all the sights, all the sounds, all the smells, Masayuki found himself feeling wistful; endings were always sad. Still, he tried to etch everything in his mind—so that someday he’d be able to tell his grandchildren what China had been like.

Hume entered the lobby of Octahedral Software. The receptionist’s counter was made of polished white marble, and behind her there was a large poster of the company’s logo: an eight-sided yellow die. Seeing it made Hume smile as he remembered his own university days as a D&D Dungeon Master. The logo, and the company’s name, were relics of a different era—when games were played with boards, cards, dice, and lead miniatures; all of Octahedral’s current games were first-person shooters, mostly for Wii and Xbox systems.

“I’m looking for Simonne Coogan,” Hume said.

“You just missed her,” said the receptionist, who had hair as red as Hume’s own although he doubted hers was natural given her olive complexion.

There was a large digital clock on the wall next to the logo. “Does she normally leave this early?”

“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist. “You are?”

Hume fished out his Pentagon ID.

“Oh!” said the receptionist. “Um, I could get Pedro to come down here; he’s the creative director for Hillbilly Hunt—he’s Simonne’s boss.”

“No, that’s okay. But do you know where she went?”

“No. Some guy came by not half an hour ago, and asked to see her—just like you did.”

“Anyone you’d ever seen before?”

“Never.”

“Did he sign in?”

“No. I have no idea who he was. But she left with him.”

“Willingly?”

“Um, yeah. Sure. Seemed that way, at least.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Big.”

“You mean tall or fat?”

“Tall. And buff. Tough-looking.”

“White? Black?”

She was finally getting the hang of it. “White. Maybe six-two, two hundred pounds or so. Mid-thirties, I’d say. Bald—shaved bald, not old bald.”

“Did you overhear anything he said to Miss Coogan?”

“Just one thing—as the elevator doors were closing.”

“Yeah?”

“He said, ‘It’ll all be over soon.’ ”

The Daily Show was taped in the afternoon, for airing at 11:00 P.M. the same day. Caitlin and her mother headed home after the taping; it was a short flight from New York to Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport.

Having heard Pearson’s name during her tour of the United Nations, Caitlin and Barb stopped to look at one of the busts of him inside the airport. Prior to serving as Canada’s prime minister, Pearson had been President of the UN General Assembly and had received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the preceding year’s Suez crisis.

It was dark by the time Caitlin and her mother got their car and started the boring seventy-five-minute highway drive to Waterloo. They had the car radio on—CHFI, “Toronto’s Perfect Music Mix”—which played songs that were agreeable to both of them, bopping between Shania Twain and Lady Gaga, Phil Collins and Lee Amodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Taylor Swift.

“Thanks for coming to New York, Mom,” Caitlin said.

“I wouldn’t have missed it. It’s been—God, twenty years, I guess—since I saw a Broadway play.”

“Wasn’t it wonderful?” said Caitlin.

“It was. Ellen Page was great as Annie Sullivan, and that kid they had playing Helen was brilliant.”