Charlie swallowed. "Workspace access," he said. "Address 77356936678822-847722-"
He rattled the number off as fast as he could, having to stop once or twice, because it wasn't one he normally had to remember. The whiteness around him flickered-
Charlie found himself standing in the middle of Grand Central Terminal in New York. This was his father's desperate joke about the state of his own schedule, which he described as being like living in Grand Central, though without being able to go downstairs to the Oyster Bar whenever he liked. The terminal's great main concourse was gloriously lit, with sun pouring down in great diagonally striking rays from the tall windows on the Vanderbilt Avenue side. But there were no people in it… and more to the point, to Charlie's despair, his father wasn't in it, either. Normally he had a big desk, made of the same creamy polished terrazzo of the floor, standing just west of the circular information kiosk with its polished brass knob-clock, but the desk was missing.
"Damn," Charlie whispered to himself. There was no point in leaving a message, no time "Home system," Charlie said. "Workspace, new access, address, 77356936678822-8472086633-"
Another flicker. A second later Charlie was standing in his mother's space, which for reasons she had not explained to him was currently a huge stretch of sand just east of the Pyramids. The view was spectacular, until you turned around and saw that the suburbs of Cairo were directly behind you, and in fact you were standing in someone's backyard, with a picnic table and a swingset off to one side, and a lawn that was scrubby not for lack of water, but because some kids and an overenthusiastic dog or two had dug or worn it nearly flat. Charlie looked at the picnic table and saw a scatter of his mother's paperwork all over the top of it, stuff from the hospital, her computer pad, a bunch of flowers stuck in a crude vase that Charlie had made her from clay a long time ago. "Mom?" he said softly.
Her simulacrum appeared immediately. "Hi, honey," she said, but Charlie let out a breath of pure desperation, for she was canned. "Guess what? The best-laid plans have ganged agley after all. I'm going to be late again tonight, sorry… they needed some more warm bodies down in ER, they were short of staff. When you get home, be a sweetie and put some more white wine in the marinade for the ribs, okay? Otherwise, if you need me for something, call the hospital and have them page me, they '11-"
Damn. "Home system," Charlie said, racking his memory, and then shaking his head in frustration, for he couldn't remember James Winters's commcode or the code for his office. "Emergency call. Net Force headquarters-"
Suddenly he found himself looking at a uniformed lady, a cool-looking blonde, sitting behind a desk. "Net Force. How can I help you?"
"This is an emergency," Charlie said. "My name is Charlie Davis. I am a member of the Net Force Explorers. I need to talk to James Winters immediately!"
She smiled at him, an understanding expression, and Charlie was instantly angry enough to spit, for the look was that of someone humoring a child. He then instantly felt guilty for his anger, for there were thousands of Explorers scattered all over the North American continent, and there was no reason for this woman to believe that he had anything important going on in his life at all. "I'm sorry, but he's not available right now-"
"Then let me leave a message for him," Charlie said. "Please tell him that I have the data he asked me to correlate for him, but if I don't hear from him shortly, the body count may have increased by one. Tell him he can reach me here for the next fifty minutes-" And he rattled off the address of the Net center and of the present workspace. "Thank you! Workspace, new access address, 8846396677336-"
This number he knew well enough from having to input it about thirty times two weeks ago, when his address-filing facility had developed a fault that it took him the better part of an afternoon to put right. Charlie gulped, and then let out a breath of pure relief as the sunlight spilling in through the roof of the VAB appeared all around him, but grayed out, as if through a veil. "You are entering a restricted space," a harsh robotic voice said. "Access is forbidden. Track and trace protocols are in operation."
"Mark, it's me, it's Charlie!"
Thegrayness vanished immediately. He rushed out into the sunlight across the concrete, looked around him. The Rolls-Skoda was sitting in the middle of the floor. High above him, he heard the buzzards softly squeaking and cheeping to one another as they worked the in-building updraft. "Mark?" he shouted, and to his embarrassment his voice broke in mid-word.
"Jeez," Mark said, though Charlie couldn't see from where, "what's up with you? You sound like a chicken."
There were about ten possible answers to that. "Mark, where are you? I'm up the creek!"
Mark appeared immediately in the middle of the floor, over by the Rolls. "Sorry, I was doing some maintenance," he said, heading over to Charlie. "What's up?"
"I'm stuck in a public access near the Square," Charlie said, "and somebody just tried to grab me off the street!"
"I'll call the cops," Mark said.
"Don't!"
Mark looked at him as if he was nuts. Charlie could entirely understand why. "You do that," Charlie said, "the minute they turn up there, whoever tried to grab me will just play it innocent and vanish, and we'll be no better off than we have been-either they'll come after me again later, at a better time, or else some other poor kid's gonna get grabbed instead. And probably killed! We've got to do something now. But we've got to keep whoever's chasing me on the hook, until the Net. Force people can catch up with him, with me-"
"I'll hit the panic button," Mark said. Immediately the whole space filled with an astounding howl of klaxons. He looked around him with intense satisfaction.
"It's not going to help," Charlie said, "Winters isn't available!"
"I bet my dad is, though," said Mark. "He'll call the cavalry." He looked around him, then, with some concern, because nothing but the klaxon seemed to be happening. "Or he would if he was in his office-" he muttered.
"Mark, we have to do something now!"
"That'll go through to his pager," Mark said. "No point in us sitting around waiting."
"The guy chasing me," Charlie said, "it's a fair bet he'll realize what I've done. If he has any brains at all, he'll be in some other Net access place right now, trying to find out where I am online. Then he'll try to trace me-and I'm on limited time, all I had was a valuecard. I only have about forty-five minutes now before the door of my booth opens up-"
"Then we'd better get where you're expected to be," Mark said, "and stall."
Charlie stared at Mark. "You mean Deathworld-"
"Where else? How else is he going to track you if you're in a public access except by your Deathworld ID? And you've got a hot-pursuit situation, haven't you? Well, you don't want to lose the guy, do you? You just said you didn't want him to go to ground! He will, if he loses you." Mark looked at him, a challenging kind of look. "You've got to keep him chasing you until the cavalry comes over the hill, Charlie!"
Charlie gulped.
"But you won't be alone," Mark said. "Come on, Charlie… the game's afoot. And it's us. But we won't be the ones who get caught. Let's go where you're expected to go when you panic."