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wouldn't be such a cult figure.
You know you have your own bulletin board? I've logged a few hits there
myself." I raised my eyebrows at this remark. It was hard enough for me to
imagine Mouse condescending to surf a commercial board, but then to hang
somewhere so kitschy truly surprised me. When he noticed my reaction, his
smile broadened. "You've got some choice bytes. A boy can't help himself."
Heat rose on my cheeks. I leaned back in my chair, hoping the shadows would
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conceal my schoolgirl blush. "Mouse," I said sternly. "Business."
"What?" He shrugged with faux innocence. "This is business."
I kept my face stony and hidden.
"So serious all the time," he whined. When even this attempt got no reaction,
he pursed his lips. Finally, he conceded. "All right, give me the names."
"Michael Angelucci, and the other is some Mafia tough going by the handle
'Morningstar.' "
"Oh, one of those," Mouse remarked with a quirky smile.
"What do you mean?"
"There's a whole cult of people taking fallen angel names, especially among
criminals and rebellious kids.
Although most of them aren't as biblically savvy as your guy. They're all
calling themselves Lucifer or, even more creative, Satan." He wagged a finger
at the screen. "You should know this stuff, Dee. It's part of your business.
See, this is the problem with being cut off from the LINK and living in
sheltered
Christendom. ..."
"Not yet, we're not," I protested.
"If you elect Grey, you will be."
"Grey is a rabbi," I countered. "He would never join Christendom."
"Grey is a wimp," Mouse said in disgust. "He'll do what the people want."
I laughed. "Isn't that what an elected official is supposed to do?"
Mouse gave me a grimace. "America is a sinking ship, Dee. You have never
recovered from the war.
What America really needs is a benevolent dictator. Someone to guide wisely
and steadily, not fluctuate with the tide of opinion polls."
"You're scaring me, Mouse. That almost makes sense." I laughed. "But, America
is not Islam. We're kind of stuck on this democracy thing. Anyway, I'm
surprised at you. How friendly would a dictator be to mouse.net?"
"Mouse.net is beyond single-country control."
"Ah-ha! Finally! World domination, eh, Mouse?"
He smiled, but there was a touch of sourness in his face. "You should give me
more respect, Dee. I wield more power than you know."
"Enough power to get me information on two men sometime this week?"
Mouse blinked, then laughed. "All right, Dee. All right. Now then," Mouse
said, with a wicked smile on his lips, "for payment. . . underwear. Confess.
What kind?"
"Couldn't I give you some other information?" I stalled. It wasn't so much
that I cared if the public knew this kind of detail, but that I was giving it
to Mouse. "There must be something else you could sell?"
"Of equal value?" he asked. After I nodded enthusiastically in agreement, he
smiled darkly. The lines of his face looked tighter, and, for a brief moment,
he looked older more serious. Squinting past the screen into the sun, he said,
"Sure, McMannus. Tell me what really happened between you and Daniel the night
before the Pope was murdered."
"White, bikini-cut, Hanes, size 6."
His gaze slid back to mine. There was something different behind his eyes,
disappointment, maybe. Or, if
I allowed myself the thought, hurt or rejection.
"Bikini-cut, no lie?" he asked, picking up his airy persona like a feather
mask. "Kind of tawdry, don't you think?"
"I'm an eternal optimist." I shrugged.
My saucy comment was rewarded with a genuine smile.
"Someday, Dee . . . maybe you and I will both get lucky . . . real-time." He
wagged his eyebrows at me suggestively. "Got to run. I've got info to sell.
I'll have the page ring you about the boomerang source,
okay? Usual channels though, don't expect a telephone call. Sheesh."
After rolling his eyes at me, he was gone. When I found myself still smiling
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at the blank screen, I reached over and flicked the phone off.
Mouse's boomerang was my ace in the hole. The boomerang program was, as Mouse
would put it, one wicked string of code. It followed a trace back to its
originator, slammed them with a simple but irritating virus, and then returned
with the information. Now, I just hoped Mouse would see fit to be generous
with whatever information the boomerang provided; I was fresh out of good
bartering material.
I smiled. Mouse was a paradox. With one hand, he raked in the dough through
illegal, and often amoral, information brokering. Meanwhile, as if the right
didn't know what the left was doing, the other hand busily redistributed that
ill-gotten gain to the less fortunate around the globe.
Mouse provided wet ware or exoware to anyone, anywhere, no questions asked.
Also, he allowed free access to his shadow of the LINK mouse.net. If people
were as creative and devious as Mouse himself, they might hack their way onto
regular LINK channels, but more often they were content to talk amongst
themselves. This irritated the international governments and Christendom
especially. Not only was mouse.net not regulated, Mouse's people also did
their business with their own strange barter system, which operated
independently of any economic system. Fortunately for Mouse, he was clever
enough to remain mostly harmless. Though many governments might prefer to shut
Mouse down, his subscribers were mainly outcasts with little or no social,
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