Bobâs car. âCan you drive?â
âOf course I can drive. Even if you Yanks insist on using the wrong side of the road.â
âNo,â she said, âI meant, could you drive to the airport? Iâm kind of out of practice.â
âOh. Sure.â
We wove over slushy roads through morning traffic. âSeems like the boys are leaving you out,â I commented, watching Peri out of the corner of my eye. She had put the passenger seat back a little and stretched her legs out. âForgetting about you while they play with their computers.â
âOh, this is pretty standard,â said Peri, bitterly. âThe Doctor always knows more than I do about everything. Heâs a lot older than I am. Heâs travelled a lot more. Heâs even finished college. You should hear him lecture me on how thereâs so much I could learn from him! Could learn, if he ever bothered to tell me anything!â
âSeems like being the Doctorâs sidekick is hard work,â I said.
âIt sure is, sometimes. Sometimes itâs great. You get to see things nobody else has ever seen.â
Peri seemed happy to have someone to talk to â though from time to time I noticed her catching herself before giving too much away. She didnât let it turn into a one-way interview: she wanted to know all about my American dad, why Iâd decided to come back to the States when I grew up. âIâve had some bad fights with my stepdad,â she admitted. âBut we still talk. Weâre still friends. I guess Iâm lucky.â
At the airport we tried to call the motel, just to check on the Doctor and Bob, but the phone line was busy. âFigures,â said Peri.
âGuess I should call my dad anyway,â I said. âWish him merry Christmas and that.â
Peri looked stricken. âIt must be tough being away from your folks like this.â
âNo . . . no, actually, itâs OK. They wonât be worrying about me. You go ahead and make that call.â
âSee you at the newsagent in a few minutes.â
As soon as Peri was out of earshot, I called Mondyâs beeper. It never failed: a few minutes later, he called the other end of the loop-around pair we always used.
No sense in wasting time. âDid you talk to Swan?â
âAh, shoot,â said Mondy. âLike I had a big fat choice.â
âYou little bugger,â I hissed.
âYou know what she did?â
âI shudder to think.â
âShe put everything back the way it was, Chick. My credit rating. My record. My
phones, mazel tov
. I have my life back. Wasnât that worth a teensy weensy bit of data?â
âYeah, well, you chucked me in the deep end, mate.â
âLook, Swan doesnât have enough info to get Bob into realtrouble. Trust me. Sheâs just trying to get you guys to panic, to make a mistake.â
âI donât think itâs gonna happen. The Doctorâs really careful.â
âSo are you, man. Stay careful. Listen, you know you canât tell me anything now.â
âYou bet I know!â
âI canât give away something I donât know. But she can still find things out, things you wouldnât believe.â We both knew what he meant. âTry and stay out of it, Chick. Really donât get involved.â
It was already the middle of the night in Melbourne. If I had actually called my Dad, he would have slammed the phone down before I could contaminate it.
The Doctor and Bob were having a whale of a time. The Doctor set up his Apple II in the motel room, plugging the modem into the phone socket. They had a list of email addresses, people Swan had mentioned the Eridani device to. Judging by the content of the messages, they were fellow collectors, people she was hoping to swap goodies or bits of information with to increase her collection of legal and illegal technology. (What I had seen at her
John Grisham
Ed Ifkovic
Amanda Hocking
Jennifer Blackstream
P. D. Stewart
Selena Illyria
Ceci Giltenan
RL Edinger
Jody Lynn Nye
Boris D. Schleinkofer