'Well, I do,' said Bob.

The Doctor showed no interest at all in this. He knelt next to the coffee table, peering at the Eridani's plastic toy. He turned it over in his hands, examining the configuration of the coloured rings. He tried moving them; they slid over each other, forming new patterns. He took odd-looking tools from the pockets of his suit and poked and prodded the device.

None of us had the slightest idea of what he was doing.

I followed Bob outside to the bridging box the grey-green box squatting on the corner of the street. 'I'm kind of hoping we find something in here,' he said. 'I don't wanna have to climb the pole.' I hoped so too. I could already see a couple of Bob's neighbours peering out of their windows at us.

The box turned out to be unlocked. Bob put down his crowbar and used his socket wrench to persuade the door to open for him. A moment later we were peering at a panel of wires and terminals that routed phone calls to every house in the street.

Bob unlatched the panel and let it fall forwards. Tucked behind it was a linesman's test set: a phone receiver that could be attached to any line by wires and clips. 'They often hide them here; he said. 'Since n.o.body's using this one, I'll just borrow it for now.'

He put the panel back in place, and ran a finger over the terminals until he found his own line. 'Oh, c.r.a.p,' he said.

'There we go' The wire pair for Bob's house was marked with thick red crayon. I'm no electrician, but even I could see there were a couple of wires attached to it that didn't appear anywhere else on the panel.

'That's not the same as the tap Mondy used,' I told Bob.

'He had a six-inch chunk of metal he said was stolen from the FBI.' And yet it was clumsy and obvious. If this was Mondy's work, he was trying to warn us that we were being watched.

Bob muttered something about skinning cats. He disconnected the offending wires from his home phone, and attached them to one of the other wire pairs in the box, apparently at random.

Back inside, Bob reported his find. Peri said, 'We can't stay here, can we? Somebody knows we're here.'

Bob sat cross-legged on the sofa, still clutching the crowbar, with one hand pressed to his fair hair. 'She knows.

She must have tracked us down.'

I said,'How do you know it wasn't Ma Bell who tapped your phone? Or the police?' But no-one took any notice of me.

'But how?' said Peri.

Bob poked the crowbar at me. 'You talked to her.'

'That was before I tracked you down,' I reminded him.

'I'm not about to inform on you to anyone. I'm here to cover the story; not to make it.'

'I'm sure Miss Swan has many ways of garnering information,' said the Doctor. 'Whoever placed that tap, Peri is right. Pack your things, Bob.

That night we drove to Baltimore, arriving close to midnight.

We crowded into the single available room at the motel, the staff lugging a spare bed into the room for me. I unfolded it and sat down. There were two singles and a double bed. Bob spread his bags all over the double bed, marking it as his territory.

Peri lay down on hers without taking off her clothes. I don't think it was modesty; we were all terribly fatigued.

I'd peeked in the trunk of Bob's car. He didn't just have his bags of computer equipment; there were a collection of neatly labelled plastic boxes which looked as though they always lived in the trunk. Computer parts, or tools, I a.s.sumed.

He shook his head. 'In case of nukes,' he said. 'Computers will be worthless after a nuclear strike. It's water and freeze-dried food and stuff.'

'Stuff?'

'Oh, you know. Torch and candles. My tent. Some pots and pans. A camp stove. First aid kit. Tool kit. A chemical toilet. Things like that.' Bob went on munching, unaware that we were all staring at him.

I was reminded of Mondy's stash: he'd once confided to me that he kept a pack of supplies in a disused building somewhere near his mom's house, phone equipment, running shoes and more kosher snax. He had memorised a map of his neighbourhood. If he ever heard the heat en route on his police scanner, he could vanish for days.

Mondy. Swan had got to him. He knew most of what was going on in the hacker and phreak communities at any given time: he was the obvious person to contact and ha.s.sle for details. And she had plenty of leverage over him.

Maybe it was the only way Mondy could think of to warn me. He might even have called the cops and told them someone had been fooling with the bridging box in Bob's street meaning himself.

I just wanted to believe the guy was still on my side.

Bob, as usual, had no trouble dropping off. The Doctor didn't seem as though he was planning to sleep; he sat cross-legged on top of his covers, apparently meditating. I closed my eyes, but didn't fall asleep just yet.

Peri tossed and turned. Understandably, she didn't seem too comfortable sharing a small room with three men. Finally, she whispered, 'Bob's really enjoying this, isn't he?'

The Doctor opened his eyes. 'Even as a young man he relished the thought of an emergency to deal with,' he said.

'As a child he probably played at being Robinson Crusoe.'

'This isn't a game,' said Peri. 'I've had about as much of this as I can take.'

'An entire world's safety may depend on our actions over the next few days. You're part of that work, Peri, and not for the first time.'

'This isn't an adventure,' she retorted. 'This is more like a nightmare. Like a screwed up version of normal life. I can't do this much longer. I mean, here we are back home this is my big chance just to go back to living a normal life.'

'Peri, said the Doctor softly 'you're thinking of leaving?'

'Yes: she said quietly.

He hesitated. 'You're tired,' he said. 'We're all a little fatigued.' Bob indicated his agreement with a wall-shaking snore. 'Let's talk again in the morning.'

Peri said, 'OK.' But from where I was lying, it sounded as though her mind was already made up.

We had driven past Swan without even realising. In her navy coat, she would have been an anonymous, dark figure walking in the snow. I don't think any of us even noticed her.

Swan watched us go. She waited until the police were finished cruising up and down Bob's street, looking for whoever had been tampering with the bridging box. She waited a little longer in case the telephone company sent someone to check things out. Then she walked up to Bob's front door and let herself in with the key Mondy had provided.

Inside, she snapped on the lights. She had brought a flashlight just in case, but it would look far more suspicious to the neighbours than a few lights around the house. Inside her mittens she was wearing black cotton gloves. Despite the burglar gear, she wasn't here to steal anything. Unless you count privacy as something that can be stolen.

Bob's study was Swan's first stop. She ran a gloved finger along the spines of the occult books. She had many of the t.i.tles at home herself. Magical systems are not unlike computer systems: both are attempts to change the structure of a world through the use of special languages. Hackers jokingly call their more abstruse bits of programming incantations incantations.

Swan was amused that computers ran on 'hex' code. And both are attempts to usurp power. The magician harnesses the powers of the elements or the spirits. The hacker borrows the power of the phone system, or the computer network.

Swan wasn't superst.i.tious; she read number theory and genetics as well as alchemy and astrology, and saw them all as reflections of programming. But a lot of hackers took the occult seriously. They'd try to hack any system if they thought it would bring them a little power, or better, a little kudos.

What was Bob's att.i.tude?

Swan went through Bob's filing cabinet and the drawers of his desk, jotting down numbers and details in her little notebook. Soon she had his banking details, his driver's licence number, his credit card details, and plenty more. She could have got a lot of this through hacking, of course, but the simplest solution is often the best. She had stolen plenty of pa.s.swords just by looking over someone's shoulder as they typed.

Bob's bedroom was a mattress on the floor, a couple of toolboxes, and a collection of stuffed animals cluttering a chipped dresser. On Bob's bed she found a sc.r.a.pbook open to a collection of newspaper cuttings. She sat down on the bed and turned the pages carefully with a gloved finger.

The military computer scandal had been all over the papers at the time. Despite his father's efforts to shield him, Bob's name and even his school photo turned up in print, one of a 'small group of civilians' who helped stop the navy's computers being cracked wide open by Xerxes' program. A foreign hacker named 'the Doctor' was mentioned as well, a man twice Bob's age. Nothing more was known about him, except that he'd been instrumental in uncovering the plot.

Swan had Mondy's ca.s.sette tape from our all too brief session of wiretapping. The Doctor was back, and alert to another danger to the world's computers. Swan smiled a sour smile. How much did he know?

Swan went into Bob's kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee. That was when she saw the metal cabinet sitting on the table.

Swan's mind went blank. She switched on the flashlight and pointed the dull circle of illumination at the beige cube.

The door was still open.

She stepped up to the table, dropping the flashlight onto it, and grabbed the cabinet, as if trying to convince herself it was real. She read the familiar warning stickers on the door twice.

The flashlight rolled off the table and bounced away across Bob's kitchen floor.

Swan reached down to grab it and found herself sitting on the linoleum, staring up at the violated cabinet. 'I'm gonna kill them,' she said. 'I'm gonna kill that kid and all of his stupid friends.'

Somehow, that promise seemed to clear her overloaded mind. Swan pulled herself to her feet, got the lights on, and made herself that cuppa. Her hands moved automatically as she considered what to do. The unique device she had gone to such great lengths to obtain was gone, stolen out from under her nose. (One slip! One! One hint of the device's location in an email!) She could make this good. She could make it better than before. If we wanted the device, she figured, we might have the others as well, or know how to find them.

Swan rinsed out her coffee cup and laid it in the drainer by the sink. She picked up the flashlight and stuffed it back in her coat pocket. She went into Bob's study, took a clean sheet of paper out of the printer, and found a black felt-tip marker in the desk drawer.

She left her message stuck to the fridge with a smiley-face magnet. On her way out, she noticed the clock. It was Christmas Day.

50.

One.

The Doctor took us out for breakfast at a scary vegetarian cafe somewhere in downtown Baltimore. The other patrons gave us the kind of curious glances they were used to getting themselves. Picture the four of us: the Doctor in his black suit, tucking into a hill of eggs and mushrooms and baked beans and toast; Peri slumped over a stack of organic pancakes; Bob, chain-slurping chocolate milkshakes like an enthusiastic b.u.t.terfly; and me. The little black-haired Aussie in the crumpled dark-grey suit, wrapped defensively around a bottomless mug of black coffee.

Ladies and germs, there is nothing in this world to compare to good old bad paint-stripper American coffee, trapped in a percolator jug and mercilessly boiled and reboiled into a thin black fluid of evil. Every gulp fills your nose with the aroma of nailpolish remover. You end up peeing the same smell. Add a few spoons of sugar to take the cruel edge off the stuff, and you have a confection equal parts foul and sweet.

Mercifully, the hippie restaurant was selling the real thing instead of some p.u.s.s.y subst.i.tute. I had three cups and Peri had four. Bootstrapping our brains.

'Today,' announced the Doctor, 'we'll return to Washington, and deliver the device we have to the Eridani.

My explorations have yielded as much information as they're going to. Then it's only a matter of locating the final component, and the Eridani can be on their way.'

'What about the wiretap?' said Peri. There were deep patches of dark under each of Peri's eyes; she wore no makeup, and her hair was still damp from the hotel shower.

She dropped her voice. 'What if the police know what happened at TLA?'

'Perhaps it would be best to stay clear of Bob's home for a little while.' conceded the Doctor. 'Until we establish just how much the authorities know.'

Everybody looked at me. 'Don't be ridiculous,' I said, stirring more sugar into my coffee. 'Why would I wreck my own story?' Boy, did I want to talk to Mondy. It was never hard to get him on the phone problem was, how did I make a call without the other three noticing? There was a payphone in back of the restaurant, but you could see it from our table.

'How do we find the final component?' said Peri.

Bob pointed a finger at her. 'Swan's email,' he said.

'That's right,' said the Doctor. 'She emailed a number of people, fishing for information about the Eridani components.

Individually, the messages give away very little; she wasn't careless. But when you have the complete set, there's information which I believe can lead us to the final component.'

We finished up breakfast. (The Doctor paid in cash; no sense leaving a credit card trail behind us.) Outside the womb of the cafe it was a crisp, quiet Boxing Day. Growing up in Canberra, I'd seen snow fall just once wet flakes that disintegrated as they touched the front lawn. If we wanted to go tobogganing, we had to drive up into the mountains. I still love what snow does to the air, making it dry and cold, smelling of clean water. Besides, Washington was built on a swamp, and winter there beats the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l out of summer. out of summer.

'Ah, Peri,' said the Doctor, putting a hand on her shoulder.

'I have a mission for you.' She brightened up a little. 'Would you take Bob's car to the, airport and leave it there? Rent another, and drive it back to the motel.'

'I think I can handle that.'

'Hmmm.' He didn't seem to notice her sour expression.

'Take Mr Peters with you.'

Peri glanced at me as I flicked my Bic. I couldn't read her face, but she didn't look too happy about her pa.s.senger. Bob didn't look exactly ecstatic either at the prospect of losing his wheels. 'Don't worry,' Peri tried to rea.s.sure him. 'We can leave it in the long-term parking lot it should be safe. I guess it'll throw off anyone trying to find us, too.'

'Lemme get some of my stuff out of the trunk first.'

Moments later, Bob was babbling excitedly to the Doctor as they jumped into a taxi, already plotting their next move.

Peri and I looked at one another over the roof of Bob's car.

'Can you drive?'

'Of course I can drive. Even if you Yanks insist on using the wrong side of the road.'