She wished the elevator would just continue down through the bottom of the building and into the muddy delta earth, burying her in the dark quiet.

Time, Ramsey thought. We're running out of time here. What have we got left? Less than forty-eight hours until the weekend is over and someone notices Olga isn't with her shift when they come back on—not to mention the fact that the building will be swarming with employees again. . . .

"Damn!" He sat and stared at his pad, feeling hopeless. Sellars and the boy Cho-Cho were unconscious, maybe dying in the next room, and Catur Ramsey had inherited sole responsibility for the safety of Olga Pirofsky . . . but he couldn't find her telephone number.

"We can't just be . . . cut off!" He turned imploringly to Sorensen. "We must still be connected to her."

"Didn't Sellars tell you what to do?" Major Sorensen peered at the readout on Ramsey's pad with the expression of a shade-tree mechanic about to admit he never did know what a ring valve was in the first place.

"He barely told me anything. He said, I don't know, that the system was collapsing or something. That he'd call me right back. But he never did." Ramsey put his head in his hands. He hadn't done anything more strenuous in the last four hours than help carry the birdlike, comatose form of Sellars, but he had never felt more exhausted in his life. "He's got the connection to Olga channeled through some weird merry-go-round of repeaters—he told me he did it for security. But I can't find it! I just don't know anything about this stuff. You must have someone back at your military base who can fix this for you, Sorensen."

From the expression on his face, Michael Sorensen was not having any better a day than Ramsey was. "Haven't you been paying attention? We're goddamn fugitives right now, or might as well be—we can't risk acting any other way. And we don't know how widespread Yacoubian's little private network is inside the base. I know one old boy in my own office I don't trust at all, just for starters. So I'm supposed to call them and ask someone to help me figure out how to restore communications to our spy in the J Corporation tower?"

"Well, how about the guy who helped us already. Your friend, Parkins?"

Sorensen laughed sourly. "Ron knows about as much about this kind of information gear as I know about ballet dancing. Not to mention the fact that he already said he doesn't want to be involved."

"Jesus, we're all involved!" Ramsey put the pad down and went to wash his face in the sink, trying not to look at Sellars and the boy lying side by side on the bed, disaster victims waiting to be identified. He could feel the slipping of time as a physical thing; it made his fingers twitch. Sellers' voice on the wire, the apocalyptic warning about the death of the network, had gotten into Ramsey like a virus.

"Look, we're not either of us doing any good right now," Sorensen said when Ramsey came back into the main room, face dripping. "I've got one seriously upset wife right now and my little girl is barely holding it together. I'm worried that any minute Kaylene is going to march out of here and head for the nearest police station. I'm going back next door and spend some time with them. If you think of anything, call me."

Ramsey waved his hand. "Go on, yeah. Tell them . . . tell them I'm sorry."

"Isn't your fault." Fatigue showed in his failed smile. "Isn't really mine either, but I don't think I could convince Kay of that just now."

When the major had shut the connecting door, Catur Ramsey went to the minibar and found himself a tiny whiskey in a tiny bottle. He took it into the bathroom, this time shutting his eyes as he passed the bedroom door, emptied the bottle into a drinking glass and filled the glass halfway with water. Back in the main room, he lowered himself into the chair. He was so tired he felt he might fall asleep sitting up, and he knew the alcohol was a bad idea, but sometimes bad ideas were the only ones you had left.

We helped that poor woman get into that building when she'd probably never have made it on her own, then, just for added value, put a ring on her finger that will make a fine piece of incriminating evidence. Now we've abandoned her. That was what the whiskey was for—to dull the pain of betrayal, of failure. It's like defending someone for jaywalking and they wind up getting a lethal injection. My best legal advice, Olga? Get a different attorney.

It was a ridiculous thing to get stuck on—a mere problem of sorting through some telecom mumbo-jumbo and reestablishing the connection. There were probably a hundred bright high-school kids living within fifty miles who could do it. The boy Orlando Gardiner could probably have managed it in a matter of minutes. But it was not Catur Ramsey's world, and the need for secrecy was going to make it very difficult to find anyone who could help him, especially in the short time before things got very, very bad.

So that's your alternative, he asked himself, staring at this still-untasted drink. That's your big solution? Just bring Orlando Gardiner back from the dead?

Ramsey upended the glass and took a measured swallow, thinking of darkness and death, thinking of empty wires.

Before the whiskey had finished burning in his stomach, Ramsey remembered someone he could call.

He had not used the number in what seemed a very long time. When the tone sounded twelve times without an answer, his worst suspicions were confirmed. Then, just as he was about to give up, someone answered.

"Hello? Who's this?" The screen stayed dark, but the intonation was unforgettable.

"Catur Ramsey. You remember me, don't you?"

"I don't recognize the line you're calling on." There was a pause. "In fact, it's a pretty weird connection."

Sellars' defenses, Ramsey realized. Their outgoing calls from the hotel must be routed all over hell and Kansas, as his dad had been fond of saying. "It's me, I swear. Can't you . . . can't you do voice recognition or something?"

"Yeah." The speech seemed a little slower than Ramsey remembered. "But I'd have to run it through this police department system that . . . that a friend of mine arranged. It would take a while."

"I don't have a while. Look, do you still have my old number? Call me on that. But all I'm going to do is say, 'It's me,' then hang up and call you back. Got it?" Surely even if his regular line was tapped, that wouldn't give anyone a chance to do more than notice a strange little exchange, would it?

Two minutes later, the electronic pas-de-deux successfully completed, Ramsey called back on the shielded line.

"Satisfied?"

"I guess," the other growled. "But I may still run you through that recognition gear anyway."

Ramsey couldn't help a weary smile. So it had come to this, had it? Having to prove your identity to untrusting machines. "How are you, Beezle?"

"Okay, I guess. No word from Orlando in a long time."

Even alone in a room, talking to a jumped-up kid's toy, it was impossible to repress a flinch of guilt and sorrow. Beezle didn't know?

But how would he? It's not like anyone would have remembered to contact Orlando's gear and let it know that its master was dead, now would they? In fact, his parents were trying to find Beetle and shut him down. No wonder he's out of the loop.

"I need you," he said, sidestepping the issue entirely, but he couldn't help wondering if it was immoral to lie to a machine, more forgivable if it was only by omission. "I'm still trying to get the answers—the things you and I were working on together—but I'm in trouble."

"I don't know." The cab-driver voice still seemed to lag a bit, as if Beezle had taken the electronic equivalent of a few Saturday afternoon beers and was finding it hard to get started on short notice. "I need to keep my lines clear in case Orlando tries to reach me."