Maj held her piece for the moment. After a breath or so, Winters turned back to her and smiled, just slightly. “Well,” he said, “just so you know. I didn’t divert that plane. But there was an air marshal on it,” he said as Maj was opening her mouth. “On the spaceplanes, there always are. And I shoot with the air marshals and some of the FBI and Secret Service guys, once a month or so. This fellow knows me…and I was able to convince him to go have a word with the pilot and convince her that there was a need to land elsewhere. The airlines do this kind of thing all the time for much less reason. And when it happens, they’re happy enough to send sky-jitneys for the passengers so that everyone gets where they need to be on time.”
Maj nodded. “You were that sure that someone was going to try to intercept Laurent….”
“Not that sure,” Winters said. “Let’s just say that, after talking to your father, I didn’t see any harm in throwing a wrench into the works, one that could possibly be mistaken for an accident. Assuming, of course, that there were ‘works.’ And I think it’s safer to assume that there might have been. Some of the people we’re dealing with here are…not nice.” The grimness of his expression belied the casual phrasing.
“So Laurent’s father is pretty important,” Maj said.
“Not politically. No, I take that back. We’re not sure how important he might be, politically. Scientifically, there’s not much doubt he’s irreplaceable. But either way, your father was very concerned…and let’s just say that there are people who take your father’s opinions seriously. Me, for one.”
This was one of those things that Maj was still getting used to, and still occasionally finding hard to understand. She was uncertain exactly what it was her father had to do with Net Force, and he had not been very forthcoming about details.
“Anyway,” Winters said, “how’s Laurent doing?”
“He’s okay,” Maj said. “He’s out with Dad at the park, running.”
Winters raised his eyebrows. “I would have thought he might still be sleeping,” he said. “Jet lag, or just general fatigue…”
“Not a chance. He was in here not twenty minutes ago, looking terrific. You’d think he hadn’t just come six thousand miles at all. It’s abnormal.” Maj grimaced — she always suffered terribly from jet lag, especially traveling East to West. “Or just unfair.”
Winters made a rueful face. “I know someone like that,” he said. “His mother’s a Nobel Prize winner in medicine — I think she must have fed him some magic potion when he was a baby…or just passed on a hereditary ability to ignore time zones. He flies halfway around the world and it doesn’t even make a dent in him. Makes me sick just to think about it.” He laughed a little. “But anyway, I see that you took the opportunity, while he was out of the way, yadayadayada…”
“Uh, yes.”
The little brown bird was back at the feeder again — Winters looked at it with a resigned expression. “So, Maj,” Winters said. “Is he a problem, this kid?”
“Not at all,” she said. “Very nice, in fact. Maybe he acts a little old for his age.”
“It wouldn’t be strange,” Winters said, rather quietly, as if more to himself than to her. “It’s not exactly a peaceful environment he’s been growing up in, though superficially it may look that way. There’s a lot of stress…a lot of fear. And it’s going to be worse for him, now that some of the pressure’s off.”
“He’s pretty worried about his dad,” Maj said. “Though he’s trying to cover it up.”
“He has reason to be worried,” Winters said. “How much has your dad told you?”
“Most of it,” Maj said, feeling it smarter not to be too specific.
Winters nodded, and to Maj’s disappointment, refused to be drawn on the subject. “The country from which he’s been taken,” Winters said, “is not exactly a friendly one. They’ve been smarting under technology and trade sanctions for a long time, and it’s not a situation that’s likely to change. They will not take this lying down.” He paused. “I think your father may have mentioned that some extra security is in the offing….”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I’m thinking about what else we can do. Meantime, keep an eye on Laurent. I wouldn’t let him run around town by himself.”
“It hadn’t occurred to me. Anyway, he doesn’t seem interested in that…he’s a lot more interested in our Net setup.”
Winters grinned a little. “Yes, I would expect he might be…their Net back where he comes from isn’t anywhere near as involved as ours. The government there keeps a pretty tight stranglehold on communications, generally. It wouldn’t do to have the people get any clear idea of how much greener the grass is on the other side.”
Maj made a face. “Well, I’m trying to break him in gently. Not that it’s easy…he wants to dive right in. When we finished a six-hour battle last night, he wanted just to jump right back in again as soon as he’d gone to the bathroom.”
“I just bet. Well, again, keep an eye on him — you wouldn’t want him to overdo it.”
“That’s what his dad said, supposedly.”
“Oh?”
“To my dad, yeah. He wants to spend some time helping Niko find his way through our Net when he gets here, apparently.”
“A wise parent,” Winters said, and leaned back at the chair, looking at the brown bird, which steadfastly refused to notice that no amount of pecking at the feeder was producing any food.
“You don’t suppose…” Maj blinked, trying to sort out a sudden new thought.
“What?”
“That his dad hid anything important in his son’s Net space when he had it cloned here….”
Winters paused visibly, then gave Maj an approving look. “That’s the first thing we checked,” he said. “No.”
Maj’s heart sank a little — she had hoped the idea was original. “But then I guess,” she said, “that it would have been the first thing the other side would have thought of, too.”
Winters nodded. “We moved his material onto one of our secure servers from the one to which it had originally been ported,” he said. “We’ve been through that space with a fine-tooth comb, Maj, and there’s nothing there but some private writing — not in code — some simple games, and some schoolwork. Though your boy’s quite a linguist.”
“Yeah,” Maj said. “I think he’s been holding back to make me feel less ignorant.”
Winters laughed out loud at that. “Stings, does it? I’m not surprised. I know a couple of people who have the language gift, and it makes me feel like a dolt when I hear them being so fluent. Never mind…I’ll have more time to start studying languages when I retire. And your whole life’s before you…you’ve got plenty of time.”
“It won’t be before me if I stay on here much longer,” Maj said, for her mother suddenly put her head into the kitchen, from the hall, and Maj could see her through one of the doorways in her work space, mouthing words which probably translated into something like “Get in the shower now or you’ll be late for school.” “Captain Winters, thanks for your time. I just wanted to check with you myself.”
“Always pleased to help,” he said, and turned his eyes back to the piles of work on his desk. “Give a shout if you need me.”
“Right. Off,” Maj said, and Winters’s image flicked away to blackness, followed a moment later by her work space. She was sitting in the kitchen again, looking at her mother.
“The phone company called,” she said. “I can’t believe your father told them anyone here would be conscious at this hour.”
“He was,” Maj said.