Maggie introduced me as Mr. Lamb and told them I was cleared for all access. "What do you think?" she asked me.

I walked around the instrument package and shook my head. "Beats the shit out of me," I said.

"We could give you the Bigshot show," one of the engineers suggested. He had tape wrapped around the bridge of his glasses, which gave him a slightly crazed look. "It'd take about two minutes to rig up."

"Sure, why not?"

The testing equipment was quickly disconnected. The two engineers rolled in a dolly that carried what looked like a cartoon fishbowl, except that it bristled with short metallic rods. At the end of each rod was a glassy bubble. The engineers fitted the fishbowl around the String package like a Plexiglas jacket, and plugged in a half dozen multicolored flat cables.

"Okay," said one of the engineers. There was a keypad with a tiny digital LED panel on the side of the package. He punched a few buttons and peered at the readout, punched a few more, and nodded.

"Mr. Lamb, if you could stand right here." He pointed at a spot on the floor and I stood there. "Okay. Now look at this screen."

He turned on a monitor. It showed what looked like a head as painted by a two-year-old.

"That's your head as interpreted by high-frequency audio waves, infrared sensors, radar and laser rangers. Right now we're looking at the laser sensing. You can read it like a contour map. The brightest yellow part is your nose, then it moves through the red, green, and blue as it goes further back.

"Now here," he said, flipping on another monitor, "is a simulated three-dimensional readout of your head, and its direction, size, range, velocity, and probable identity shown down here in the corner of the screen."

Most of the numbers were meaningless unless you knew the code sequences, though under "identity" it said "head."

"We rigged it to say head," said the engineer with the crazed look.

"Now move around the room," said the other one. I moved, and the readouts changed. "It's following you," he said.

I stepped behind Maggie and looked over her head. It was still following me, and when I came out from behind her, continued to follow.

"Your personal characteristics were read into the computer, so it followed only you. We have it programmed for a single target, or it would have picked up Ms. Kahn as a second target and started a separate reading on her, while registering that you were eclipsed behind her."

"Neat," I said. "Listen, what is this audio thing, and what use can you make of audio pickups if you've got two planes on diverging courses, each at, say, Mach 2?"

"Okay," said one of the engineers, slipping into a professorial tone. "You have to understand.

Maggie and the director excused themselves after fifteen minutes of it. I stayed for another two hours looking at the machinery and talking about the software that would run the stuff. It was not my field at all, but I could see the concepts. If I started studying right away, it would only take six years to catch up with what they were doing. The AI and game-playing concepts were easier, and we got tangled in a complicated argument about gaming concepts.

We gave up at lunchtime, and I went looking for Maggie. She was in the director's office working with a business terminal. The director was hovering in the outer office, pretending to supervise a harassed-looking secretary.

"Ah. There you are," she said when I walked in. "All done?"

"Yeah. We ought to get a cheeseburger or something."

The director fussed over her as we went out, and shook my hand. As he turned back and Maggie went out through the door, his face flattened in a distinct look of relief.

"I think that guy was happy to see us go," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I scare him. Can't think why."

At Anshiser's we went through the wait-in-the-sitting-room routine again, and I spent some more time looking at the Whistler. When she came and got me, I thought I'd figured out how he did it.

"Maggie said you were a little worried that I might be nuts," Anshiser said cheerfully, when we walked into his office.

I glanced over at her and she grinned. "Yeah, a little."

"Good. If you didn't, we'd be worried about your stability. But we want you to understand how strongly we feel about this. I think about it constantly. I can't sleep, I can't do business. It might be crazy. But we've talked it out and we don't think so."

"So what do I do? Specifically?" I asked, dropping into his visitor's chair.

"First, we want your agreement that if you decide not to take the job, what we discuss never goes out of this office."

I wouldn't talk anyway. Talk wouldn't get me anything but a conspiracy indictment. I relaxed and crossed my legs. "Sure. If you want to take my word for it."

"Our research indicated that we could."

"I'd like to know about that research," I said. "How did you find me?"

"Dillon found you. Dillon is the best researcher in the United States. The Library of Congress calls him," Anshiser said. "When we found out what had happened, that String had been stolen, we knew we'd probably lose the competition for the contract. Oh, we wriggled and turned and twisted, and talked to lawyers and patent specialists, and the answer kept coming up the same. So I assigned Dillon to the problem. I told him to forget any parameters at all-just find a solution. As it happens, there is one. Maybe. It just isn't legal."

I glanced over at Dillon and the gray man smiled again. "That's true," he said.

Anshiser continued. "To save ourselves, we have to put their ass in a sling. Then, maybe, I can work some kind of deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"We'll have to see. An acquisition. Maybe we can buy them. Maybe a merger. I don't know. But I need an edge."

"I thought these guys were your blood enemies?"

"I can live with enemies. I just can't watch the company go down. If I can hustle them into a merger, I can take care of them later. Right now, there's no reason in the world they should talk to us. We need to give them a reason."

He turned back to the desk and picked up a black-bound typescript. "This is Dillon's report. In general, it says the best way to stop Whitemark is through their computer systems-design systems, accounting systems, information systems, scheduling, and materials. Altering them, destroying them, faking them out."

"This is a defense industry," I said. "If we're caught, they'll drop us in Leavenworth for the rest of time."

"Ah. Now that's something Dillon's report covers quite thoroughly," said Anshiser. "I will give you a contract outlining the kind of attack I want. If you are arrested, you will present the authorities with a copy of the contract. I will voluntarily confirm that I hired you to do this work. You will instantly become a very small fry."

"And you join me at Leavenworth."

"No. I don't think so. I'm not absolutely sure, of course, but I don't think so. If I am arrested, or any of my people are arrested, I will publicly discuss the contributions I have given our president over the past ten years. He's exceptionally popular, you know, and intends to run for reelection. The contributions I made were quite illegal, but they kept his political career alive at several critical junctures. I am confident that any investigation will be quashed."

"Blackmail."

"Exactly. You've been around politicians enough to know that it happens every day."

"It's usually not quite so blunt."

"Oh, there won't be anything blunt about it. If they get to me at the end of the investigation, they'll punch me into their computers and a flag will pop up. Some flunky will run over to the White House, and the whole investigation will disappear."

I grunted and thought about it. It could work, but I didn't intend to commit myself without more thought. "It's shaky. I'd have to think about it."