"I'm a painter," I said. "That's what I really do. The computer stuff is a sideline."

"You really are an artist?"

"Yeah."

"Jack never told me," she said. She peered at me for a second, as if doing a reevaluation.

"Jack didn't know me that way," I said. "We mostly knew each other on the Net. I only met him twice face to face."

"He came here?"

"No, no, I saw him once when he was between planes, out at the airport, and once when I had some business out in Redmond."

" Redmond," she said, and, "Huh." She stepped over to a painting I'd propped against a wall. I'd finished it a few weeks before the fishing trip, a line of stone buildings dropping down a hill in the flat yellow light of a Minnesota September. The light is thin, then, but yellow-creamyalmost like the light you get in central Italy on hot summer evenings, although in St. Paul, it only lasts three weeks.

After a few seconds of peering at the painting, Lane cocked her head and did a little shuffle step to get a better look. "Only two dimensions and all that light," she said, "but it looks so like. it might be." I shrugged, and she said, "Jeez. I really like it."

I never know what to say, so I said, "The workroom's down this way."

An old cow-box Pentium was set up on a table at the far end of the workroom. A shoulder-high stack of Dell chassis were sitting on the floor, with a couple of big cardboard boxes. She looked at the chassis and asked, "What're you doing here?"

"Some people in Chicago want to build an America 's Cup boat," I said. "They need a supercomputer to design the hull, but they can't afford it, so I'm making one, with a friend."

"Yeah? Neat." She wasn't particularly impressed, as though she'd done the same thing a time or two herself. "What's the setup?"

"We're gonna chain sixty-four Dell Pentium Ills with an Ethernet array running through these stacked hubs"I whacked a stack of cardboard boxes with the palm of my hand"as a single distributed OS. We got the operating system off a freeware site."

"Love the freeware," she said.

". and my friendshe's really doing the numberswill come over and write whatever connections she needs, and. go to work."

"Cool." She looked around again, taking in the books. "Where's your Net hookup?"

I took her down to the cow-box machine. Some previous owner, or more likely the wife or girlfriend of a previous owner, had written "Fuck you, fat boy," on the beige front panel of the monitor, in pink indelible ink. "Top of the line, huh?" she asked.

"What can I tell you?" You don't need a workstation to read your e-mail. When we were up, I said, "Why don't you, uh, go look at the Dells?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm gonna dial a number I don't want you to see, and follow a procedure I also don't want you to see."

"Really?" she asked. "So it's out in the dark? Okay. I forgot."

"What?"

She smiled, for the first time, a smile bordering on greatness: "That you're a crook."

She wandered down to the end of the room, and I dialed Bobby's 800 number, a number I'm sure that AT amp;T doesn't know about, since ten digits follow the 800. I then waited through ten seconds of electronic silence; in the eleventh second, the modem burped and a "?" appeared on the screen. I typed eight digits, got another "?" and typed "k" and got a further "?" I typed "MALE," which was either a deliberate misspelling in the interests of security, or a joke. When the final "?" appeared, I typed "3RATSASS3." A letter popped up.

OH, FUCK: UNLESS I'M READING THIS MYSELF, I COULD BE IN DEEP SHIT.

KIDD: GET DOWN TO DALLAS AND FIND MEI MIGHT BE IN JAIL. THIS IS THE DEAL: I CONTRACTED WITH AMMATH TO OVERHAUL THEIR SYSTEM SOFTWARE, WHICH JOB I GOT BECAUSE I HAVE A DOD CLEARANCE FROM WHEN I WAS AT JPL. IT's ALL SUPPOSED TO BE SECRET, BUT EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT THEY'RE WORKING ON SOFTWARE FOR THE CLIPPER IIIT'S BEEN IN THE NEWSPAPERS. SO I FIGURE THAT'S NO BIG DEAL, BECAUSE CLIPPER II IS DEAD IN THE HOUSE AND EVEN DEADER IN THE SENATE AND EVERYBODY EXCEPT THE INTELLIGENCE GOOFS IN WASHINGTON KNOWS IT'S TOO LATE ANYWAY. BUT AROUND HERE, THEY'RE ACTING LIKE IT'S A NEW ATOMIC BOMB, AND THESE PEOPLE AIN'T GOOFS. in FACT, THEY SCARE ME A LITTLE BIT.

THE OTHER DAY I WAS MANIPULATING A BUNCH OF STUFF IN A FILE CALLED OMS JUST TO SEE IF THE SYSTEM WAS RIGHT. I GOT TO READING SOME OF IT, AND FUCK ME WITH A PHONE POLE IF IT HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH CLIPPER. I WAS STILL READING THROUGH IT WHEN A SECURITY GUY CAME DOWN FROM CORPORATE AND ASKED ME WHAT I WAS DOING. I TOLD HIM, ACCESS TESTS, AND TOLD HIM I WASN'T REALLY READING ANYTHING, AND HE TELLS ME TO STAY OFF THAT LINK UNLESS I GIVE PRIOR NOTICE. I SAY OK. THEY MUST'VE HAD A TRIPWIRE ON IT.

SO ANYWAY, I'M GOING BACK TONIGHT WITH A BUNCH OF JAZ DISKS, I'M GONNA DISCONNECT THE TRIP WIRE AND DUMP THE OMS FILE. (OMS I FOUND OUT STANDS FOR OLD MAN OF THE SEA, BUT I DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING IN IT ABOUT HEMINGWAY.) ANYWAY, JUST IN CASE, I'LL STASH COPIES IN THE SAFEST POSSIBLE PLACE.

IF YOU'RE READING THIS, I'M PROBABLY IN A JAM. THE GUY TO WATCH IS A SECURITY ASSHOLE NAMED WLLLIAM HART. THERE ARE RUMORS THAT HE USED TO BE SOME KIND OF MILITARY SECURITY GUY OR SOMETHING, AND HE GOT KICKED OUT. ONE OF THE SECRETARIES TOLD ME THAT HE'D DONE TIME IN PRISON BEFORE HE CAME TO AMMATH, SO YOU WANT TO STAY AWAY FROM HIM.

SO, THAT'S IT. I HOPE TO HELL I'M READING THIS, AND NOT YOU. IF IT'S YOU, COME GET ME. SAY HELLO TO LUELLEN FOR ME. DON'T TAKE ANY WOODEN PUSSY.

JACK

That did not sound good. I looked at if for a couple of minutes, then buzzed Bobby: Bobby's always available. After I buzzed him, I got the "?" again, and went back with a "k." He was on immediately.

kidd, where you been?

fishing.

been trying to find you: saw airline to kenora and then lost you.

out of touch. what's happening?

you read about firewall?

i know nothing. just back now.

go out on net, look at papers, new york times, wall street journal, washington post. we need to find firewall and give them to cops. but firewall names are not good. you are not firewall. stanford is not. one2oxford is not. carlg is not.

i don't know what you're talking about.

read papers and get back. your name is on list.

do you know stanford is dead?

Stanford was Jack's working name. There was a pause; something you didn't get with Bobby.

dead? are you sure? when and where?

last friday in dallas. supposedly shot to death during break-in at software company called ammath.

did not know. will check immediately. stanford is on firewall list.

do you know lane ward?

no. i've heard name. computers at berkeley.

i need brothers and sisters for lane ward and also photo for ward. soonest.

wlll dump to your box one hour. you must go out on net!!! read firewall. i will check on stanford.

ok. will call back.

Dial tone and out.

I read down the screen once more, wiped out everything but the letter, printed it, and then said, "Hey."

Lane drifted back. "What?" she asked.

"A letter from your brother."

"Aw, jeez."

I pulled it out of the printer and handed it to her. She took a minute reading it, a little vertical line between her eyes. Then she read it again and a tear trickled down one cheek. Finally, she looked up.

"Why would he do that?"

"Curiosity. Jack was a computer guy. If you tell a computer guy not to look in a file, he'll look in the file."

"Especially if he thinks of himself as some kind of cool James Bond guy," she said. Like it was my fault.

"Do you know anything about a group called Firewall?" I asked.

She gave me a long look and then asked, "Are you working for the government?"

That took a while to sort out. I told her about Bobby's strange anxiety and she suggested that I do what Bobby wanted: that I look up Firewall in the papers and on the Net. I went back out, with Lane looking over my shoulder.