"To begin with, Dr. Taylor, my hearing is a year away, and I'm going to prevail… It's a no-brainer. But even if I don't, some kind of writ of goddamnus on appeal would tie up the State Bar for two more years, and by then our butterfly case will be history." He held her gaze, then got up. "Excuse me for a minute." He lumbered out of the office hoping he could make it to the men's room, but he had to detour at Marty Castle 's secretary.

"Excuse me, could I borrow your wastebasket for a moment, please?" he asked.

She glanced up, wrinkled her Barbie-like features, and handed Herman the round plastic container.

Herman, still teetering from dizziness, promptly vomited into her wastebasket. "Thank you." With as much dignity as he could manage, he set it down. "Got a bad Egg McMuffin, I think." He turned, and weaving dangerously, made his way back to his office. As he neared his closed door, he heard Susan inside, reading their ex-clients the riot act.

"You people don't know what you're throwing away," she said hotly. "Where else will you find an advocate who is so damned committed to his cases that he works most of them pro-bono, even spends his own money? The damages he's suing for were incurred by him, not you. If you can look at him and not see how great-how beautiful he is, then you don't deserve him!"

Herman heard chairs scraping inside.

"And one other thing," Susan said. "My father is right. This is not your case, it's ours. It's being filed by the Institute for Planetary Justice. It doesn't belong to you. It doesn't belong to any of us. It belongs to the people of the United States of America, and it is in the very capable hands of Herman Strockmire Jr."

The door opened and, while Herman slumped pitifully against the doorjamb, they filed out, not acknowledging him, their eyes down, sparking anger. Susan followed, but stopped in the threshold and looked at her father.

"Y'know, baby, I think maybe I do need to go to the hospital," Herman the German admitted sadly.

Roland Minton parked his white, piece-of-shit rental Camry across from the shiny, blue-tiled, windowless buildings that looked like five huge blocks of ice scattered randomly across three or four acres of manicured lawn. The property was fenced and had more digitized security than the Midwestern Federal Reserve. A monument sign out front announced:

GEN-A-TEC

A BIO-SCIENCE CORPORATION

Roland stuffed his new purple hair into his white phone company hard hat, glancing at himself in his rearview mirror as he tucked the last strands up under the hatband. God, he loved this new shade. It was Technicolor-tight. The gay hairdresser at the San Francisco beauty salon had mixed some awesome red-and-blue streaks in with the purple, and Roland thought the do rocked majorly. He pulled the bill down on the hard hat and grabbed his computer cracking kit out of the backseat: a tool belt with screwdrivers, pliers, wire cutters, lines, and alligator clips. He checked his phony ID badge made with his new CD-ROM computer package. His picture, geeky and proud, grinned back at him; pacific bell was in block sans-serif letters underneath. Roland clipped it on, grabbed his computer packed in its expensive Cordura case, and again turned his attention to the shimmering, blue, fortress-like science lab. "Bet you assholes got a load'a pixel-dust security," he muttered, "but I is de Dustbuster."

Roland Minton looked up the street at the rest of the block. The science lab was in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco. From where he stood he could just barely see the top of the Golden Gate Bridge fading away into the late afternoon mist, the orange-red suspension cables arching like the top of an amusement park devil ride.

Gen-A-Tec was in a commercial neighborhood a mile from Sausalito 's shopping district. Several small, low-roofed factories and warehouses lined the remainder of the street. Gen-A-Tec was the only secure layout on the block, but he knew from previous research that they had enough security to make up for everyone else. Roland could hardly wait to try his skill against the Gen-A-Tec systems administrator. The guy was probably money. Roland was ready to put his game in play. He loved going up against cream because he knew he was boss dawg. The ultimate big guy- master of the game.

He backed the rental car out of sight of the blue tile buildings, then got out dragging his cracking equipment with him. He buckled his utility belt around his bony hips and started up the street, looking for the telephone company junction box. Usually it was located somewhere around the middle of the block and pretty easy to spot. Halfway down the street he found it in the ivy: a four-foot high, one-foot deep, green metal rectangle that served the telephonic needs of the entire neighborhood. It was camouflaged behind a scraggly hedge near a warehouse park, under the shade of an old pepper tree.

Roland stepped carefully through the ivy and kneeled down next to it. "We be strollin' with Roland," he whispered as he opened the box. He wanted to do his hacking from a number that seemed like it originated inside the Gen-A-Tec building. To do that, he had decided to work from here because the junction box had the easiest terminal access. He had elected to do this hack in the late afternoon in broad daylight for two reasons: First, most electronic security shifts turned over at 5:30 p.m., and during the first half hour after the changing of the guard the new crowd would not be up to speed. They'd be getting coffee and checking attendance logs. Second, phone company techs normally work around junction boxes only during daylight hours. To attempt the crack at night would automatically arouse suspicion.

Roland studied the box and its myriad of terminals. Using his lineman's handset to connect to each phone jack, he phreaked the terminals, breaking into them in sequence to find out which lines belonged to whom. After five minutes he had the Gen-A-Tec phones isolated. Their lines were in a block of numbers beginning with 555-6000-the main switchboard line, and going to 555-6999. Roland unzipped the Cordura case, lovingly took out his laptop computer, and hooked it up to one of the science lab's phone lines.

Earlier that afternoon he had visited Gen-A-Tec's website and downloaded the company prospectus. He now pulled it out of his pocket and laid it on top of the junction box where it would be handy. He had memorized most of the important corporate officers, the cheese who would have unlimited access to the computer system and had written down their e-mail addresses-that were also thoughtfully supplied by the same prospectus.

Before driving out here, Roland had logged on to Gen-A-Tec's e-mail host and asked it what version it was. When the host answered he quickly logged off. Now, as he crouched behind the hedge, he began looking for several notorious security holes in that particular software version; holes that sometimes went unpatched by lazy dick-smack systems administrators. But he didn't really expect to find any, because Gen-A-Tec seemed so security-conscious. He was sure this systems boss had probably patched them all over, but he was wrong. Roland was surprised and delighted to find several unpatched holes in the software.

"Bust on, Super Daddy," he murmured to himself as he picked one, wondering at the stupidity of having full-boat security and leaving such easy access through systems defects. He accessed the Gen-A-Tec home page, but instead of signing on with them he went through one of the security holes. It let him slip past all of their warning alarms and access the company e-mail system. "Kickin' ass," Roland smiled as he crouched in the bushes and worked. But he was also slightly let down. This systems administrator was whack. Their security was a joke. He liked to ply his trade against the best, but this SA wasn't going to present him any challenge. Bummage.