But since then, it seemed he had been caught up in a hurricane, whirling from one thing to another with scarcely enough time to catch a breath. Perhaps that was good. Because if he stopped and took the time to think about things too deeply, dark thoughts started to intrude.

The door to the living room opened and Vienna emerged. Sam watched her walk over, noticing, not for the first time, the sway of her hips and the little movements her hands made as she walked. She had been different since arriving in Vegas, he thought. Softer. But he remained wary, feeling that she was still just as likely to cut him in two with a withering glance or a sharp-bladed comment.

"It's been two weeks," Vienna said, sitting on the other end of the sofa.

"I know," Sam agreed. "How's Dodge doing?"

"Says he's just about finished."

Sam nodded. If the software was ready, then it was time to move. To make a last run for the safety of Cheyenne Mountain. But what would they find out there in the real world? The same electronic isolation that kept them safe from Ursula meant that they were blind to events outside.

Anything could have happened in the weeks since they had cut themselves off from civilization. Or nothing.

He felt safe here. And the house was more comfortable than anything he was used to, even the hotel in San Jose, although he was getting sick of canned food. But they couldn't stay here forever. Ursula would find them eventually; he was sure of that.

Sam looked for a moment at the girl sitting next to him, and on an impulse said, "Tell me something about you, Vienna."

"Why?" she asked, and he could feel the shutters going up instantly.

"No reason," he said quickly. "It's just that I've worked with you for the last few months, and we've been together almost constantly for the last couple of weeks, but I just realized that I don't know anything about you."

"Good," she said, but then her voice softened a little. "You first."

Sam looked away and stared outside at the bottom of the pool. It was full of leaves and debris of the forest. On the far side of the pool, the lip was lower than elsewhere so that when the pool was full, water would have cascaded over the ledge to a catchment below. That side of the pool looked out over a small lake, and beyond that to the dark, brooding ma.s.s of the city. He tried to imagine what it would have been like for the owner of the house, when the pool was full of water and people and laughter and music, and the lights of Las Vegas lit up the sky.

"It's my birthday today," he said after a while. "I'm eighteen."

"That doesn't count," she said, and added, almost as an afterthought, "Happy birthday."

"Why doesn't it count?"

"You should tell me something I don't know or couldn't find out in five minutes from your personnel file. Tell me about your last birthday. What did you do? Did you have a party? Did you take your girlfriend out to dinner?"

"Neither," Sam said. "I got beaten up."

Vienna watched him, waiting.

"It was a kid from my history cla.s.s-a thug named Ray Mordon-and two of his j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. friends."

"Why?"

"Who knows? Because I was smarter than they were, probably. Or maybe they found out that it was my birthday. Or just because they could." He smiled briefly. "I got Ray back, though."

"Baseball bat in a dark alley?" Vienna asked with a sinister lift to one eyebrow.

Sam shook his head. "I hacked into the school computer system and changed his grades. Gave him straight As."

"And that's your idea of revenge?"

"Actually, I thought I was a bit hard on the guy," Sam said. "First his friends didn't want to hang around with a 'brain box' and figured that he had been just duping them all the time. Then he got shifted into the GATE cla.s.s-that's the Gifted and Talented Extension program at school-so he was stuck in a cla.s.s with all the smart kids that he despised. When the school found out that his grades had been altered, they naturally blamed him and he was kicked out."

Vienna laughed. "He deserved it, though."

Sam shrugged. "I guess." There was silence for a moment; then he said, "Your turn."

She said nothing.

"It's all right," he said. "If you don't want to-"

"I have a little sister," she said, and there was a slight dampness at the corners of her eyes.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked.

"You wanted to know something about me. I told you. I have a sister. Rebecca."

Sam looked at her, not sure if there was anything he should say or do. Not sure of the reason for the almost-tears.

Vienna glanced quickly at him and said, "She's much younger than me, and Mom was never around much, so I pretty much raised her myself. Made her bottles, changed her diapers. Everything."

"Where is she now?" Sam asked.

"She still lives with my dad in Chicago. She started school a couple of months ago. I would have liked to be there, but we were in lockdown."

Sam touched her gently on the arm. "You miss her, don't you?"

"She's one of the reasons we have to see this through," Vienna said with a tightening of her mouth. "I can't bear the thought of Rebecca getting brainjacked by Ursula and becoming some kind of neuro-slave to the meta-system."

"I know how you feel," Sam said. "I've been hoping that my mother is okay. She doesn't have a neuro-headset, so maybe Ursula hasn't got to her yet."

"Look," Vienna said suddenly, pointing.

The smoke obscured most of the sky above them, but over to the southwest, toward Los Angeles, it dissipated, and from that direction the first stars were starting to appear in the darkening sky.

It wasn't the stars that Vienna was looking at, though. Dark, fast-moving silhouettes of aircraft were streaming from the west, heading out over the desert, each marked with tiny flashing lights.

"Warplanes?" Vienna asked. "Has Ursula found us?"

"I don't think so," Sam said.

The silhouettes enlarged as the planes moved nearer, and Sam could just about make out the shapes in the dusky sky.

"Not warplanes," he said. "Too big for that. Those are commercial jets."

There must have been a dozen of the aircraft in the evening sky, and as they watched, the columns of planes split, then turned and started to spiral above and below one another in an intricate, rhythmical dance.

"What the...?" Sam breathed.

"They're being controlled from the ground," Vienna said, her eyes entranced by the twirling shapes. "What's going on?"

Sam watched for a moment, then said, "I think Ursula is playing with her toys."

He rose and walked to the big picture window to get a better view. This close, his breath frosted the gla.s.s, giving halos to the dancing stars, turning them into distant fairy lights. He was conscious of Vienna's presence beside him.

"What did we do to deserve all this?" Vienna asked. "Why us?"

Sam opened his mouth to say something, but it was lost as her hands slipped around his shoulders and drew them together.

His arms found their way around her, and her head dropped onto his shoulder. They held each other, watching the planes.

"Vienna-" he began, but the word wedged between his lips as she raised her head and kissed him lightly on the side of his mouth.

"Don't say anything," she said.

The moment was long but seemed like barely an instant; then there was a noise from the direction of the door, and they split apart, red-faced, before it opened.

It was Dodge. "Tyler's escaped," he said.

45

THE DESERT

The Geiger counter clicked constantly on the car seat beside Sam. The reading was high enough to worry him, but according to the manual, they could handle this level of radiation for an hour or two. Still, the less time they spent in the more radioactive areas, the happier he was.

"Take the next right," he said, trying to match up the streets in front of them with the maps in the book on his lap.

It was easier said than done. Few street signs had survived the blast, and buildings that might have served as landmarks were scattered in pieces across city blocks.

The pickup had a GPS, and he was tempted to use it. Even in Las Vegas, the satellite-based GPS system should work. The problem was that Ursula might well wonder what a GPS-equipped vehicle was doing roaming through the supposedly deserted streets of Vegas.

"We might be just wasting our time," Dodge said, maneuvering the pickup around a pile of rubble to take the turn. "If Tyler has any brains, he'll be watching and listening out for us, and he'll take cover the moment we get close."

"Still gotta try," Sam said, scanning the roadside for any sign of movement. A pair of binoculars sat on the seat beside him, but they were of little use in the built-up areas. "If he makes it to the outside world, we'll have no chance of getting to Cheyenne Mountain. Our only hope is to stop him before he reaches somewhere with phones that work."

It was their third day of searching. They took it in shifts, two out searching while the third person remained at the house, in case Tyler should turn up there for any reason.

Dodge said, "Maybe we should just make a break for it now. Try and get to Cheyenne before he gets to Ursula."

"There's no way out of Vegas on foot," Sam said, and added, "Try a left at the T-intersection."

"Tyler's a member of the Tactical team," Dodge countered. "They're highly trained and very resourceful. I really think we need to give up looking for him and head to Colorado."

"Without a vehicle, without water, he's going nowhere," Sam said. "But if we don't find him today, then we'll start making tracks. How's the Plague coming along?"

"It's finished," Dodge replied. "Just a little testing to do."

"It's taken a while," Sam said, hoping that didn't sound critical.

Dodge nodded. "When I started working on it, I realized that I had to do more than just take out the time limiter. Ursula has seen this virus now. That means she will have had a chance to build defenses against it. So I've had to rewrite a lot of the virus to make it different, hopefully different enough that by the time Ursula recognizes it, it will be too late."

"Let's hope," Sam said.

Dodge pulled up at the end of the road and said, "Where to now?"

Sam consulted his map. "Okay, if he stayed in Vegas, I don't think we've got any chance of finding him. It's too big and too much of a mess. He could be anywhere. If he's headed out of town, he would be easier to spot. But we've already tried all the main highways out."

"So we give up and head to Cheyenne?"

"Let's try Highway 95 one last time. We didn't go far that way yesterday because of the wind. It's worth another shot."

The wind had come in from the north the previous day, while they had been searching, pushing back the haze that covered the area. They had dared not venture under the open sky because of the risk of being spotted by a satellite, so they had quickly returned to the safety of Vegas.

"How's the gas?" Sam asked as they wound a tortuous route back to Highway 95.

"We're okay today," Dodge said. "Vienna found a treasure trove yesterday. Three vehicles in a concrete garage, all intact. Two had full tanks, and the third was at least half full."

Sam put the binoculars to his eyes as they left the built-up area of the city. This end of Vegas had suffered little from the bomb, and the going was relatively clear.

He watched the road in front of them, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tyler before he realized they were behind him. The highway stretched ahead for miles, completely empty.

He scanned the desert to the left and right. It was brown and desolate, just a few sc.r.a.ppy bushes offering nowhere for a human being to hide.

A billboard advertising free credits at one of the casinos appeared to his right, and he examined it carefully as they pa.s.sed. It stood on tall posts, too narrow to hide behind, and he let it slip past without comment.

"You've known Vienna a long time?" he asked after a while, trying to make the question sound casual and innocuous. It still sounded forced and deliberate to his own ears, but Dodge didn't seem to pick up on it.

"A few years," he said. "Since she came to CDD."

"Always just friends?" Sam asked, still as casually as he could.

Dodge looked sideways at him. "No romances allowed in the office. It's in the rules. Didn't you read that?"

"Must have missed that bit."

"You got your eye on her, Sam?" Dodge laughed suddenly.

Sam felt his cheeks redden. He turned away from Dodge and raised the binoculars to hide it.

"She's a hard nut to crack, that one," Dodge said, still laughing. "Think you're up to it?"

Sam said truthfully, "No."

"Still," Dodge said, "I suspect that if you ever managed to get through that tough outer sh.e.l.l, she'd be all sweetness and light on the inside."