AI - Alpha Part 41

She held up five fingers.

He smiled. "I think she meant more years than that, Moppet."

"Maybe. Mommy cried."

"Cried?" That didn't sound right. "Why?"

"She said for me not to grow up too fast. Daddy took me to one of his cla.s.ses."

Thomas gaped at his granddaughter. She'd gone to Karl's cla.s.s? He was teaching calculus with a.n.a.lytic

geometry this semester. "You understood all that?"

"Not much," she confided. "I liked the pictures, though. Lots of squiggly lines and how fast do they change."

"My G.o.d," Thomas said. That she even understood the concept of second derivative change stunned

him. Was his granddaughter some sort a genius? It actually wasn't that surprising, given her parents, but even so.

"Grampy?" she asked, looking worried. "Are you still sick?"

He laughed softly. "Not at all. Just surprised."

She watched him with concern. "Mommy says you can't go to work."

"For a while." A thought came to him. "Jamie, do you remember the day you came to work with me?"

"I got a badge! And we went under the ghost arch."

"The Hughes arch, yes. Do you remember when you stayed with General Matheson?" C.J. had kept an eye on her while Thomas went to call Senator Bartley. Although Jamie had claimed she heard the call, security had never found any problems. Thomas had a.s.sumed she misunderstood something he said. But perhaps she understood better than he realized. He kept thinking about Matheson. Could C.J. have been eavesdropping and not have realized Jamie overheard? It seemed unlikely, and he didn't want to believe it of Matheson, but he couldn't think of a better explanation.

"I drew pictures," Jamie said.

"That's right." He thought back to what she had told him in the car. "You heard me talking. You were in one room and I was in another. Do you remember?""I didn't hear that," Jamie said.Relief surged in him. He had misunderstood. "You didn't hear Senator Bartley?""He said I could call him Bart."That stopped him cold. Bart? The only one he knew who used that name was the EI in Sunrise Alley.

"You talked to him?"Her eyes were wide like large blue b.u.t.tons. "Was that bad?""No, Moppet, no." Thomas knew he had to keep his questions low-key. If she sensed he was upset, she might be afraid to answer. "I just didn't know you had met him."

"He came to my desk."

"But you were sitting at a box." He remembered the chair they had set up for her at a packing carton,

like a miniature desk.

"It had a screen on it." She pointed to a stack of holoboards on his console-table. "Like those."

Thomas couldn't remember the specific carton, but many of them had holo-labels with packing

information. It was conceivable that someone with a sophisticated enough mesh could transmit rudimentary images to such a label. But sending it to someone inside the NIA was a whole other story.

For Bart to rove the NIA meshes, he had to break some of the toughest security in the world. If Sunrise

Alley could crack the offices of the Director of Machine Intelligence, they could get in almost anywhere -.

Including the safe house.

A chill went up Thomas's back. "What did Bart say to you?"

"He asked me about an Alpha. I said I didn't know that."

Thomas felt as if he were in quicksand. Had the Alley helped Alpha escape and capture him? To what d.a.m.n purpose? Yes, they wanted the NIA to stop him from investigating them, but Thomas had already agreed to a moratorium, besides which, they had to know that eliminating him wouldn't stop any probes.

He needed more than the words of a three-year-old to go on, though. Jamie could be mistaken or he might still be misunderstanding her.

"What else did Bart say?" Thomas asked.

"I don't remember." She beamed at him. "I can sing the alphabet backwards. Want to hear?"

The buzz of his mesh glove came from somewhere not too close. He looked around, but he couldn't

remember where he had left it.

"Dad?" Leila came into the room, holding a spatula in one hand and a box of macaroni in the other.

"Isn't that your comm?"

He started to lever up from the couch. "I left it upstairs."

Karl walked out of the kitchen. "Thomas, you relax. I'll get it."

"Thanks." Relieved, Thomas let himself back down on the couch.

As Karl went upstairs, Thomas turned back to Leila. "Is it true about Jamie, about the testing?"

"Yes. Dad, you were right!" Leila shook her head, as if she still had a hard time believing it. "She's even

more advanced than we realized."

The melody of a comm page suddenly played in the kitchen.

"Hey!" Leila swung around, which sent macaroni flying out of the open box. "That's mine." She bustled

back into the kitchen, leaving bent noodles scattered across the floor.

"Mommy made a mess," Jamie said.

Karl was coming down the stairs with Thomas's glove. He walked over with that subdued look he

always got when something reminded him of Thomas's status in the military. He offered the glove. "It's General Chang."

Uneasy, Thomas pulled on the silvery-black glove and spoke into the comm. "Wharington, here."

Chang's brisk voice snapped out. "They put up a d.a.m.n blasted holo. By the time we found out, it was all over the mesh."

"A holo of what?" He was almost certain he knew, though. Then he realized she couldn't talk about the

"what" over an unsecured line.

Leila came out of the kitchen wearing her own glove, a white mesh. She had a strange expression, as if Thomas had grown a second head.

"Go look," Chang said, and gave him a site name.

"I'm going to the console now," Thomas told the general. As pulled himself up off the couch, he gave Leila a questioning look.

"It's one of my girlfriends." Leila sounded bewildered. "She wants to know if you're really my father and

are you single."

"What the h.e.l.l?" Thomas said.

Karl offered his arm, but Thomas said, "I'm okay." It was just a few steps to the console and he could

walk in the cast. At the table, he lowered himself into a chair in front of the screen. "United News Service," he said and gave it the site Chang had provided. The article came up immediately-and when Thomas saw the headline, he swore out loud.

Air Force General Brings Ultra-Fighter into Airport.

If Jamie and Leila hadn't been there, he would have cussed down the wall. The article included a holo that had been sharpened until the scene was clear, though the shot had been taken at night in the rain. It showed Thomas next to Alpha, his hands in the pockets of his flight jacket. He was smiling. The image didn't look doctored, but smiling was the last thing he had felt like doing last night. The Banshee was behind them, a wonder of modern aerodynamics. Alpha was as gorgeous and as deadly as the jet, her clothes plastered to her body, her dark eyes furious.

Then Thomas remembered; he had smiled when Alpha came out of the Banshee. Cameras had flashed.

He looked more confident in the image than he remembered feeling, his legs planted wide, his wet hair tousled on his forehead. He had been standing that way to balance on his injured leg, but the splint was hidden by Alpha and the angle of his body.

"Good Lord," Leila said. She leaned over the table to see better. "Dad, who is that woman? And good grief, what are you doing, looking like People Magazine's choice for s.e.xiest Man of the Year? You're a grandfather!"

Karl came up on his other side, and Jamie squeezed in between him and Leila so she could see, too. "Grampy is happy," Jamie said. "The bad lady is mad.""That's the woman who took you hostage?" Karl asked.

Thomas spoke into his comm. "General, I'm looking at the holo."

"I don't want you to leave your house," she said. "If the publicity gets bad, we may move you out to the safe house."

"I understand."

"Good. Stay home. No going out."