"Close enough to touch."

"Sheer extravagance." Nguyen shook his head ruefully. "I would expect nothing less from you. That puts us down onto the flat, which is where we'll need your expertise, Liz. How far will the s.h.i.tdogs range?"

"Impossible to predict," I said. "While they rarely go more than a couple of kilometers from the working pile, one of the Australian s.h.i.tdogs made a doc.u.mented run of over eight kilometers. Plus we don't know where they'll decide to start the next pile or how many they'll eventually build."

"Which means we may have to abandon the fixed base concept. If the s.h.i.tdogs were to eat his base generator, Wetherall here would find himself taking an untethered balloon ride on the prevailing winds. In the unlikely event that he made it over the Wasatch Mountains, he almost certainly would come to grief in the Southern Rockies."

"What if we bury the base?" said Wetherall.

"Expensive, but worth considering-although you still run the risk of having the s.h.i.tdogs destroy your access. Liz, suppose a s.h.i.tdog is in a hurry. How fast could it run?"

"Well, we haven't exactly been able to clock them in a race. But in short spurts, as fast as a man, maybe faster. Say thirty-two kilometers an hour."

"So a mobile base similar to my truck down there should be able to outpace a charging s.h.i.tdog?"

"One s.h.i.tdog is no problem. But if you were trying to escape a pack of them, there might be trouble."

"I didn't think they traveled in packs," said Wetherall.

"They did on the way here," I said.

"Here is my proposal." Nguyen waved at the hologram and it winked out. "Wetherall, I think we should begin design of your lifthouse immediately, using Laputa as a model. That part of the project ought to go forward, regardless of the final base solution-even if we decide to build you an airship. In the meantime, I'll be moving Laputa to Stateline to survey the site. Liz, I'd like you to come with me. We need to do some experiments." Nguyen pushed back from the table and walked across the room. "We'll have to make a more precise determination of the s.h.i.tdog's tolerance of incursions. What sort of activities and/or structures get their attention? What's the deepest they've dug underground? Exactly how fast do they move? What is the likelihood of cooperative behaviors?"

"I'll have to take a leave of absence." The idea would have been unthinkable a few hours earlier. Now I contemplated it with some enthusiasm. I guess I'd joined the team. "And the kind of research you're asking for is going to cost. . ."

"Don't worry," said Wetherall. "That'll be taken care of."

Nguyen opened a cabinet and brought out three crystal gla.s.ses and a winebell of Pommery & Greno. "We are agreed then?" He popped the cork, grinning. I wondered what he was so happy about. The design? The commission? The chance to a.s.sociate himself with Wetherall?

"To our mysterious visitors," said Nguyen, raising his champagne.

"And their jewels." I touched my gla.s.s to his.

"To solitude." Wetherall drained his gla.s.s, set it back on the conference table, and glanced at his datacuff. "Excuse me, but I've got to be in Munich, Islamabad and Cornwall, Connecticut in about fifteen minutes."

The pix on the back of the door of my room-or rather, my suite-at The Zones informed me that the fire escape was seven doors down the hall to my left. I asked it the nightly rate: eight hundred thirty dollars. I had once spent a week at Sebago Lake in Maine for eight hundred fifty dollars, but then the camp I'd rented hadn't come with a waterfall, a Steinway, or a bed the size of the District of Columbia. The room looked like a set for a gropie of The Thief of Baghdad.

When Wetherall had checked me in, he'd said he'd call later, that we'd have dinner. It was only after he'd left that I realized I didn't know what later or dinner meant to a billionaire. It seemed a safe a.s.sumption that we'd be going out somewhere, except that Wetherall clearly had an aversion to being seen in public. And I had no idea how long he'd need to honcho his avatars through their meetings. Would we be dining at eight? Ten? Midnight? Should I order room service in the meantime? Did I have time to go down to the casino, skim a couple of hundred off Wetherall's card and gamble? I kicked off my shoes, vaulted onto the bed and bounced.

I freely admit that jumping on beds that don't belong to me is a childish habit that has persisted far too long into my adulthood, but it helps settle me down when I'm on the road. Besides, I liked it that this was something no one knew about me.

Everything was happening so fast. I was probably going to get my picture in Eye with Wetherall. Although that kind of publicity would doubtless ruin my reputation in the department, I enjoyed picturing Saintjohn's reaction. That's right, Dr. Matthewson, I skipped the Curriculum Committee meeting for this. And freshmen don't need chip implants-they should be reading books. By authors.

Then there was the problem of carrying my course load with the fall semester already three weeks old. Wetherall would probably have to build an addition to the library to make up to the university for that. Meanwhile, I had just agreed to move to Stateline, Nevada with Nguyen O'Hara and his sly smile. Where was I going to stay? Stateline had no Sheraton.

It was a good bed for bouncing on.

Wetherall's avatar called at eight. I could tell it was the avatar by its witless smile.

"Hi, Liz. Are you hungry yet?"

"I could eat." I casually motioned for the hairdresser to stand in front of the coffee table, blocking the avatar's view of the Peking ravioli I'd ordered from room service.

"I've made reservations for eight-thirty. Is that all right?"

"I'll have to check my calendar. How dressed are we getting?"

"As you see." It was wearing a high-collared white shirt and a blue suit. It hit me that Wetherall wasn't bad looking, in a boyish way. "Can you be ready in twenty minutes?" It didn't wait for an answer.

The hairdresser was looking at me in awe. "That was Ramsdel Wetherall."

"Actually," I said, offering her Wetherall's cash card, "it was an array of electrons with an att.i.tude."

She stared at the card and then back up at me.

"If you're thinking glamorous, you've got it all wrong," I said. "He's-strange."

"I've heard that," she said. Standing behind me, she lifted the hair from the back of my head and sighed; her eyes met mine in the mirror. "You know, there's no reason for you to use your own hair. I can give you a smartwig."

I eyed the brown pageboy bob I had worn since grad school. "Thanks, but no thanks."

"Still-"

I shooed her away with a hundred dollar tip. There was nothing wrong with my hair and even if there was, I didn't need to know about it. I undressed, swept through the scanner in the closet door and activated the virtual Ragusa in the clothes processor.

A few minutes later I emerged in a long-sleeved black velvet gown that grazed my ankles. It had light boning and back smocking. The sweetheart neckline was just off the shoulders. I'm told I have good shoulders.

There was a knock at the door.

I paused in front of the mirror. So I might've looked better if I'd had an Arpels necklace dangling to my decolletage, but for short notice this would do. I was a professor, not a runway model. And the dinner was actually an appointment with a chill-crazed eccentric with a fear of heights, people, and who knew what else?

But to the world it would be a date with Ramsdel Wetherall. I wondered about the women he normally dated. Did any of them wear their own hair?

When I opened the door I was greeted not by Wetherall, but by a severe, angular man in a charcoal suit that looked like it cost more than my car. He tried to smile but didn't seem to have had much practice at it. "Good evening, Dr. Cobble. I'm Murk Janglish, Mr. Wetherall's lawyer. Perhaps he's mentioned me to you?" He slipped through the door like a watermelon seed. "I hope you don't mind my doing a security check before we go down." He took out a wand and, craning up and down on his knees like a human ironing board, ran it over the length of my body. Then he inspected my irises and hands.

"Do you want to check my teeth?"

"Your teeth are fine. Nice dress." He c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "I don't know about the hair, though."

I let that go. "I take it Wetherall sent you to pick me up?"

"Actually, he overlooked it. Details are not his strength-that's why I'm needed."

"I thought the point of all those avatars was to free him from the details."

"His avatars are too good, I'm afraid. They replicate the man himself and all his foibles. They generate almost as much trouble for me as he does. Look, I'd appreciate it if you didn't distract Mr. Wetherall. He's a little scattered at the moment."

"Distract him? In what way?"

He stared at me as if I'd just fallen off the barn. "That's all right. On second thought, I don't think there will be any problems. May I escort you down?"

His gesture at the door might have appeared polite if he hadn't also been hustling me out by the elbow with his other hand.

Murk Janglish showed me to the Rain Forest Restaurant in the Tropical Zone of the hotel. He led me to one of the rafts moored on the river that looped through the vastness of the restaurant. The raft had a circular palm-thatched roof from which hung a heavy curtain of mosquito netting-not that there were any mosquitos. Inside the netting was a table set for two. In gold.

"He'll be here," Janglish said. "Sign everything he gives you." And he left.

While I listened to the calls of exotic birds and admired the hordes of b.u.t.terflies flitting among the branches of the big trees, I ignored the grinding of my stomach and awaited Wetherall. After a few minutes, a tall, awkward-looking man in a safari jacket and khaki hat with a snakeskin hatband detached himself from the bar and sidled past the suddenly oblivious maitre d' toward the raft. He parted the netting, and took the chair opposite me. Immediately the raft nudged away from the dock and we were adrift.

"Excuse me . . ."

The man took off the bushman's hat and brushed his luxuriant brown hair away from his face. It was Wetherall.

"What happened to your blue suit?" I asked.

"Privacy is always worth the effort." He stuck his leg out from beneath the tablecloth, pulled up on the knee of his pants. "Leg extenders," he said, grinning loonily. He touched his face. "Skin polarizer." He grabbed a strand of his hair and shook it. "Smartwig."

The hair twisted out of his hand and tucked itself back behind his ear. Wetherall slung a backpack from off his shoulder and pulled out a folder. "I have a few things for you to sign."

His savoir-faire took my breath away. "Right," I said. "The liability waiver."

Wetherall looked momentarily fuddled. "d.a.m.n, I forgot. Janglish will have my head. No, this is about your avatar. Is it hot in here?"

I waited to open the folder because I could see the sommelier paddling towards our table. Actually, she was being paddled by a busboy. She stood in a dugout canoe, cradling a bottle of wine. Other diners looked down at us from tables perched on platforms in the trees that lined the river. The sommelier ducked through the netting to present the wine to Wetherall.

"Tokay is sweet, almost like syrup." Wetherall sniffed the taste the sommelier had poured for him and waved his approval. "It's the only wine I can drink with dinner. You know, it is hot in here."

"Shall I open the netting?" said the sommelier.

"No, no," said Wetherall. "It's just me. I'll be fine."

The sommelier filled our gla.s.ses and headed for sh.o.r.e. I opened the folder and scanned the form on top. "An avatar is more trouble than I want to get into."

"It only takes a few hours. They take a psychological inventory, run some perceptual tests. Oh, and you'll have to allow them access to some of your personal databases." His expression was innocent. "Don't worry, it's all very secure." I could see how some women might find those deep, guileless eyes-not to mention two hundred and thirty-eight billion dollars-s.e.xy.

"But what do I need one for?"

"To teach your cla.s.ses. To handle the press. To order materials, manage your research team, search databases. To remember why you thought what you're doing now was such a good idea. Believe me, in a few weeks it'll be hard to imagine how you got along without one."

"What do you mean, teach my cla.s.ses?"

"I had to promise your Saintjohn Matthewson and the dean that there would be no academic disruption."

"What gave you the right to interfere?"

"I told you everything would be taken care of."

I glared at him.

"Liz, I need your expertise. When I see talent, I go after it-you know that now. I like to keep my top talent focused. As long as you work for me, I'll try to see to it that you . . .." A bright green parrot dropped out of the trees and landed on the rail of our raft. ". . . that you live in a worry-free . . ." The parrot bobbed its head, turned sideways to examine us with a l.u.s.trous black eye. Wetherall hunched over and put his hand to his face.

"What's wrong?"

"I think that bird might be rigged for pix."

"Naah. Looks more like a bomb to me."

For a second I thought he might dive under the table.

"Oh, that was joke," he said. "Perhaps you could signal when you are making an attempt at humor?" He spun his hat at the parrot and it bounced off the netting. "Hey, you bird! Raaah!" At this, the parrot squawked and flew away.

"Anyway," he said, picking up the hat, "since I have access to certain resources, I was in a position to ease your transition from the university to my project."

"How many resources did it take?"

He shrugged. "When you get back, there should be a warm body sitting in the Wetherall Chair for the Study of Twentieth Century Popular Music."

"You mean like jazz? Rock and roll?"

"I have every record the Kinks ever made-on the original vinyl."

I was a little dizzy. The thought of Saintjohn being pushed around like a baby in a stroller was vastly satisfying, and I couldn't help but feel a little exhilarated. With a wave of his hand Wetherall had made the job and the people I spent most of my days worrying about dissipate like a cloud of smoke.

On the other hand, I felt annoyed that, for a pile of cash and a pop-culture sinecure, the university would release me from rules they had never stopped telling me were inflexible. Here was a lesson in where I rated in relation to the world of money.

I set the avatar authorization aside for the time being and glanced at the next doc.u.ment. There was a cash card attached to a personal services contract. I separated the card and checked the balance. It was twice my annual salary.

"Wait a minute. I thought this was going to be a quick little consultancy. I'm a teacher. I'm not giving you more than six months, tops."

"I'm not asking you to," he said. "Six months should be more than enough. This is your first month's pay. In advance."

"You can't buy me, Wetherall," I said weakly, even though he knew that I knew that he already had.

The raft b.u.mped against a waiter's station, guided by some unseen system. Our waiter stepped aboard briskly, set a plate in front of me and uncovered it with a flourish. "For you, Madam, Tranches de Jambon Morvandelle. And you, sir, a Mochalicious Jolly Freeze." He topped off our gla.s.ses. "Enjoy your meal."