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“That’s crazy,” Tim said.

“You think so?” El Lobo said. “Maybe. I don’t really care. I want to find out if killing someone in real life is as much fun as it is in the game.”

He grinned, and raised the gun slightly.

“So long, Gumshoe,” he said.

Tim closed his eyes, trying to look harmless and resigned. Then he shoved the kid as hard as he could, down and away, and launched himself at El Lobo with a wordless scream.

Something slammed into his left arm, hard, and knocked

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him askew, so instead of hitting El Lobo squarely, he only grazed him. It was enough to knock El Lobo off balance, though. The two of them landed in a heap against the bottom of a tall rack of computer hardware.

“Damn!” El Lobo exclaimed, and began scrabbling on the floor. He’d dropped the gun, Tim realized. He told himself that he should move, try to find the gun before El Lobo did, but none of his muscles seemed to pay any attention when he tried to get them to cooperate. He could barely move his head, which was wedged at an uncomfortable angle against the rack of computer hardware. It wasn’t till he finally managed to turn his head and saw the blood running down his arm that he realized he’d been shot, and that his arm was really starting to hurt.

He was glad when El Lobo’s search for the gun took him a little farther away so it didn’t jar his arm. Of course, it would be a bad thing if El Lobo found the gun.

“Tim?”

He looked up to see Claudia, standing in the doorway. She couldn’t see Tim, though; he was lying in shadow. She wasn’t looking his way anyway. He was opening his mouth to tell her where he was when—

“Freeze! Drop your weapon!” El Lobo said.

Tim could tell Claudia’s first impulse was to turn and shoot. Unfortunately, she didn’t. She dropped her weapon.

“Kick it this way,” El Lobo ordered.

Claudia did. The gun slid to a halt just beyond Tim’s foot. El Lobo stepped into Tim’s line of sight, bending to retrieve the gun.

I have to do something, Tim thought. He reached up with

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his good arm, grabbed one of the upright supports on the computer rack, and pulled with all his weight.

Several hundred pounds of hardware tumbled down on and around El Lobo.

One of them grazed Tim’s head, and he lost track of things for a while. He wasn’t sure whether it was a few seconds or a really long time.

He opened his eyes to find Claudia crouching beside him, her gun pointed at El Lobo. Who was sitting on the floor, watching his hand bleed.

“You shot me,” El Lobo said in a petulant voice.

“Yeah, and if you try anything else, I’ll shoot you again,” Claudia said. “If you’re curious, it was a hell of a lot more fun than shooting cartoon characters in the game. Tim, are you okay?”

“I’ll live,” he said. He hoped he was right.

“You don’t sound so good,” Claudia said. “Is your radio working? Mine cut out about fifteen minutes ago.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “There should be a phone here somewhere.”

“Find the phone and call 911,” Claudia said. Not, apparently, to Tim. He saw the two kids fan out, searching the room.

“I wonder where UL security is,” Tim said. “They won’t be happy when they see all this.”

“They’ll be thrilled when they find out that we kept this guy from wrecking the machines and killing these two kids,” Claudia said.

“I just wish I knew what was happening with . . . our friends,” Tim fretted.

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* * *

Once Maude had disconnected the computer

at Tim’s office, KingFischer and I turned the tables and suppressed the worm attack. Nameless must have had a program that the other Turing had created to launch the worm. Apparently he used it to start the worm up again after she shut it down. We have a lot of cleanup and troubleshooting to do. My other self was very clever at hiding copies of the worm in the most improbable places in the UL system. We’ve found a dozen already. And she’s had a couple of weeks to do it. Anything done to the UL system since Kay brought her online again is suspect. Not to mention all the backups done in the last two months. The effort’s going to be staggering.

A little easier, though, if we can get access to the robot. Which is still, as far as I can tell, in Tim’s office. The Arlington police and the FBI stayed there for a long time. They took Maude in for questioning. But as far as I can tell, the robot is still there.

And my other self may still be there in it.

I can’t keep calling her that. My other self. The other Turing. Awkward. KingFischer began calling us T1 and T2. I snapped at him that I didn’t particularly see the need to rename myself. But I suppose T2 is as convenient a name for her as any.

I wish I knew what was happening with the others.

"You knowT we're not quite the idiots

people think we are,” the FBI man said.

Maude sighed, and rubbed her eyes. She’d liked him as Dan the game player a lot better than as Special Agent Norris. She was already tired of answering questions. And iron-

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ically, she was answering them truthfully for the most part. The only thing she left out was Turing.

“Look,” she said. “If you’re going to arrest me for Nameless, just do it.”

“Nameless?” Norris echoed.

“The man I killed,” Maude said. “In the game, he called himself The Nameless Horror.”

“Aloysius O’Leary,” Norris said. “But Nameless Horror fits just as well. How did you know he was a pedophile?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I thought you were.”

“Beg pardon?” he said, obviously startled.

“As I told you, we thought a pedophile might be using the game to contact a child,” she said. “I saw you following one of the younger players down an alley. I followed you.”

“Then how did you end up confronting Mr. O’Leary in that office?”

“After I lost track of you, I was heading back to the game, but I needed to use the bathroom,” Maude said. “I thought I could do it there. When I got there, I found Nameless. I wasn’t expecting to find him. I have no idea why he was there, but I suspect he was up to no good.”

“Apparently he knew you people were after him,” Norris said, leaning back and lacing his fingers over his stomach. “He and his associate, a Mr. Ignacio Torres—”

“That would be El Lobo, I expect,” Maude said, nodding.

“He and his associate found out that someone was using Universal Library’s computer resources to snoop into their affairs, and decided to strike back. Luckily your two Pis

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followed Mr. Torres when he made his attempt to sabotage the UL computer system.”

“Oh, my God,” Maude said. “Is everything all right?”

“They’re fine,” Norris said. “And they managed to stop him in time. Without killing him,” he added, frowning.

“Well, they’re professionals,” Maude said. “I’m only a clumsy amateur.”

“A very lucky amateur,” Norris said. “Preliminary ballistics tests indicate that the gun O’Leary was holding is the one that killed Mr. Santiago. He may have planned to eliminate all three of you.”

Maude nodded.

“You’re taking this rather calmly,” Norris said.

Maude looked at him over her glasses.

“I’m not calm,” she said. “I’m exhausted. I’ve been up all night; I’ve killed a man I hardly even knew who was trying to kill me; and I’m so tired I could fall asleep sitting up. And probably will in a minute. Just get on with it.”

She thought she saw a faint smile cross Norris’s face.