F. Paul Wilson - All the Rage

Not yet, anyway. He was making headway, but at a glacial pace.

"Need a break," he muttered as he rose and rotated his aching back.

He walked around the study, stretching, punching at the air to loosen up. He felt tired but wired. He was getting the hang of the GEM security codes. Whoever had set them up was good, but Doug was pretty good too. He'd pulled his share of all-nighters with the computer nerds back in college, hacking into various corporate and academic systems and leaving prank messages in the sysops' mailboxes. Nothing vicious, more like the cyber equivalent of water paint graffiti.

He glanced at the clock. Damn—almost eight and he had a couple of calls scheduled for late morning, plus he was delivering lunch to the staff of a group practice in Bay Shore.

He hated quitting now, but if he didn't get a little shut-eye he'd be useless the rest of the day. But then, why should he worry about sales calls and feeding nurses and receptionists if sales had no relationship to his commissions?

Good question, but it wasn't his style to blow off appointments. And besides, he had tonight and a three-day weekend ahead to complete the hack.

Reluctantly he shut off his laptop and staggered to the bedroom. He set the alarm for nine-thirty, then toppled onto the bed like a falling tree. The sheets still smelled vaguely of Nadj. He dozed off with a smile on his face.

3

"See!" said Abe, jabbing a juice-coated finger at the Daily News spread out on the counter before him. "See!"

"See what?" Jack said.

Breakfast with Abe again, back in their customary positions on either side of the counter. Jack had brought a couple of papayas this time. Sipping coffee, he watched as Abe quickly and expertly began quartering and seeding them, amazed that his chubby, stubby fingers could be so agile.

"Right here. More congested spleen being vented. It says some high school teacher in Jackson Heights tossed two unruly students out a second-story window."

"Probably a physics lab and they were having trouble with the concept of gravity."

"One's got a broken arm, the other a broken leg. Four cops it took to arrest the teach. Know what he said when they finally subdued him? 'They were talking while I was talking! Nobody talks when I'm talking! Next time they'll listen!'"

"Somehow I doubt there'll be a next—hey, what are you doing?"

Abe had just dumped a mass of black papaya seeds and their gooey matrix on the sports section of the Times .

"What? I should dump them on my nice clean counter?"

Jack wasn't going to get into that—the counter was anything but clean. "What if I wanted to read that?"

"Suddenly you're Mr. Yankee Fan? A jock you're not."

"I used to be a star hitter in Little League. And what if I wanted to know who won the Knicks game?"

"They didn't play."

"All right. The Nets, then."

"They lost to the Jazz, one-oh-nine to one-oh-one."

Jack stared at Abe. He believed him. Abe listened exclusively to talk radio. He'd probably heard the scores a dozen times already this morning. But Jack wasn't giving up. He rarely read a sports section outside of World Series time or Super Bowl season, but a principle was at stake here. He wasn't sure which one, but he'd come up with something.

"But sometimes I like to read about a game."

Abe had freed up the orange papaya fruit but left the crescents lounging in their rinds. Now he was cross-slicing the crescents into bite-size pieces.

"You know the score already. You need more? For why? You're going to read some self-styled mavin's postulations on why they won or why they lost? Who cares unless you're the coach. Team A won; Team B lost; end of story; when's the next game?" He gestured at the papaya with his knife. "Eat."

Jack popped a piece into his mouth. Delicious. As he reached for another piece, Abe gestured to where Parabellum was eyeing the gloppy mass on the sports section. The parakeet cocked his head left and right with suspicion, hungry for the seeds but not sure what to make of the goo.

"Such a fastidious bird I've got."

"You kidding?" Jack said. "You plopped that stuff down on George Veczy's column, and now he can't read the end."

Abe fixed him with a silent, over-the-reading-glasses stare.

Jack sighed. "All right then, hand me the Post, will you—unless you've messed up its sports section too."

Abe's hand started toward it then stopped. "Well, well, well. Here's something that might interest you."

"Something about the Mets, I hope," Jack said.

"A different kind of sportsman—your preppy rioter friends are in the news again."

"Sent to Sing-Sing, I hope."

"Quite the contrary. They're walking—all of them."

Jack's mood suddenly darkened. "Let me see that."

Abe gave the Metro Section a one-eighty spin and jabbed his finger at a tiny article next to the lottery numbers box. Jack scanned it once, then, not quite believing his eyes, read it again.

"None of them booked! Not one! No charges against any of them!"

"Due to 'a new development' in the case, it says. Hmmm… what do you think that could mean?"

Jack knew what Abe was getting at: Well-to-do guys, some of them undoubtedly with a connection or two in City Hall or Police Plaza, get a few strings pulled and sail home as if nothing had happened.

And one of them was Robert B. "Porky" Butler. The bastard who'd damn near killed Vicky hadn't spent a single night in jail—wasn't even being charged with anything.

"I've got to make a call."

Abe didn't offer his phone and Jack wouldn't have used it if he had. Not with so many people using caller ID these days.

Jack had retrieved Butler's phone number from his wallet by the time he reached the pay phone on the corner. He plunked in a few coins and was soon connected to the home of Robert B. Butler, alumnus of St. Barnabas Prep and attacker of little girls on museum steps.

When the maid or whoever it was answered the phone and asked in West African-accented English who was calling, he made up a name—Jack Gavin.

"I'm an attorney for the St. Barnabas Prep Alumni Association. I'd like to talk to Mr. Butler about the unfortunate incident Wednesday night and his injury. How is he doing, by the way?"

"Very well," the woman said.

"Is he in a lot of pain?"

"Hardly any."

Damn. He felt his jaw muscles tense. Have to fix that.

"May I speak to him a minute?"

"He's with a physical therapist right now. Let me check."

A minute later she was back. "Mr. Butler can't come to the phone right now, but he'll be glad to see you anytime this afternoon."

Keeping his voice even and professionally pleasant, Jack said he'd be over around one.

Scaring Vicky, endangering her life, and then skating on any charges…

He and Mr. Butler were going to have a little heart-to-heart.

4

Nadia sat in the sealed, dimly lit room and stared at the 3-D image floating in the air before her. The first thing she'd done upon reaching the GEM Basic lab was light up the imager and call up the Loki structure from memory: the Loki molecule—or rather its degraded form, which she'd begun thinking of as Loki-2—had appeared.

Changed, just like her printout.

OK. That could be explained by someone tampering with the imager's memory. But she had an ace up her sleeve. Before leaving yesterday she had scraped a few particles of the original Loki sample from the imager.

She removed the stoppered test tube from her pocket and dumped the grains into the sample receptacle. Something about the color… she couldn't say exactly what, but it wasn't right. She sat back and waited, then punched up the image. Her mouth went dry as the same damn molecule took shape before her.