There's a van crammed with equipment parked outside the buildings of the Coolidge Institute. Inside, the following conversation is going on ( Read more... )

This hasn't exactly been the most fruitful of nights, but so far nobody's been shot, which Bishop is counting as a net plus. He and Liz and Carl have managed to make it to the roof. As they dash in and out of the range of the spotlights, heading for the fire escape, he pulls out his walkie-talkie. "Crease," he says urgently, ducking, "we're on the ( Read more... )

Marty's at a concert right now, so to speak. Mother... well, Mother's got an overdeveloped sense of danger that comes in really handy sometimes. Since they can't trust the company offices, they've got to be somewhere- and he's almost certain that nobody's spooks've compromised his own apartment.

This week.

Yet.

Nothing puts a guy on edge like meeting with government agents that know your past, with the possible exception of having to explain that past to people who thought they knew you. Martin Bishop has been rehearsing his lines for this discussion all day, and he still wants to break out the bottle of Maalox from the company medicine cabinet and start ( Read more... )

If the puppet-wave reached the room nearest the top of the stairs, Whistler hasn't noticed. He's busy playing tug-of-knotted-rope with the puppy, since he's not going to take apart the new cell phone and re-cap the number keys with Braille until Suzi gets back. Taking things apart is a joint endeavor.

Sometimes there are things best done without the co-workers or the visitors or anybody else around. A day trip out to Great America Amusement Park is one of them. Sure, it's amazingly early in the season, but the way Whistler figures it, that's not such a bad thing. There'll be short lines and nobody's likely to bother them too much ( Read more... )

Marty Bishop's team of sneakers doesn't exactly work a standard nine-to-five by any stretch of the imagination, but there's usually a time in the morning when all of them are there and going to work. This is one of those times. Right now, Crease is on the phone, Bishop is composing one of his reports on their most recent job, Carl is out on a human ( Read more... )

Whistler's found that the unease he still feels in the Bar is dispelled by working on things that he enjoys, or by Suzi's company. Right now, so far as he knows, Suzi's downstairs and Joy needs puppysitting. Thus, he's in the room nearest the stairs, installing the sound-control hack circuitry in another CD player. He's thinking it might not be a ( Read more... )

New Year's Eve in the room nearest the stairs isn't the gigantic production it would be elsewhere; for one thing this is Milliways, and New Year's still waits in San Francisco. But that's to be celebrated with the guys, and right now Whistler wants to concentrate on celebrating with someone who's never marked the New Year with the kind of ( Read more... )

Even the smallest organizations have an orientation of some kind when somebody new gets hired, and Martin Bishop's security testing firm is no exception. Carl Arbogast's first day on the job begins with the mandatory Grand Tour of the premises, such as they are. Bishop's conducting the tour himself, despite Mother's offer. He's well aware that his ( Read more... )