“What age are these players?” Claudia asked, frowning.

  “We don’t know for sure,” Turing said. “They don’t all give out their real identities. But we know some of them are minors. Teenagers, a few preteens. That’s probably why Ray was worried.”

  Claudia nodded.

  “Okay, I get it now,” she said. “When you first started talking about the game being fishy, you had me thinking, whoa, are they gonna start talking about playing tapes backwards and getting Satanic messages or something? But if the players are getting together—that’s different. Have you considered that a traveler may be using the game?”

  “A what?” Maude asked.

  “I met this FBI agent once,” Claudia said. “Spends all his working time online, in chat rooms, pretending to be a thirteen-year-old girl, or a ten-year-old boy. Waiting for perverts to hit on him.”

  “I have a hard time believing the FBI is policing chat rooms,” Turing said.

  “It’s not the chat rooms they’re so worried about,” Claudia said. “It’s what can start there. Every so often, some creep will do more than just talk. He’ll start trying to find out where the little kid lives.”

  “Probably not that hard,” Maude said. “I gave away the fact that I lived in the D.C. area, and I was trying to be cagey.”

  “Exactly,” Claudia said. “And little kids don’t understand the dangers. So this guy tries to talk the kid into meeting him. ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to see each other in real life? We could meet at the 200. At the monkey cage.’ Bad things happen to kids who fall for that kind of trap. Really bad things. That’s what they call a traveler. A guy who’s been looking at kiddy porn, maybe selling it, chatting up little kids online—and suddenly he crosses some kind of line and goes after them in person. There’s nothing the FBI wants more than to stop guys like that.”

  “Yes,” Maude said softly. “If Ray suspected something like that—he’d have to do something.”

  “It kills you, knowing stuff like that goes on,” Claudia said. “This FBI guy I knew—he was sitting there, logged in on three computers, trying to watch a dozen chat rooms at once. He was staying up all night, doing this sixteen, eighteen hours a day. Kept thinking what if he logged off and some pervert that could have been talking to him snagged some little kid instead. He let it eat him up inside.”

  “I can see how it would, though,” Maude said.

  “Especially after the first time he caught one of them,” Claudia said. “This guy shows up someplace—I think it was an ice cream parlor. And he’s holding a box of candy and a doll, and looking for a little blond kid named Tiffany, and instead, he gets this middle-aged, balding FBI agent and the right to remain silent. The FBI guy said that was what kept him going—whenever he got tired, he’d just remember the look on that guy’s face when they rolled him up. Better than caffeine—better than speed.”

  Maude looked up at Turing’s camera. I trust her, she wanted to say. I trust her, and we need all the help we can get.

  But what if her instincts were wrong?

  “So,” she said aloud. “Is there anything else we need to tell Claudia?”

  She lifted her eyebrows in an expression that, to a human, would signal encouragement. But how well did Turing interpret expressions?

  “Why don’t we introduce her to Beyond Paranoia?” Turing said.

  Claudia and Maude have both played Beyond

  Paranoia for the last hour. Claudia picked up on how to play it rather quickly, and Maude’s getting quite good at it.

  I’ve been brooding over what Claudia told me, about pedophiles using the Internet. Using their computers. Another case where the technology is probably going to get the blame for something humans do with it. And human nature being what it is, the criminals who invent new ways to commit crimes are probably a step and a half ahead of the law enforcement agencies that are trying to catch them. And everybody’s wringing their hands, asking what can we do about it.

  Well, I could do something.

  I could lurk in chat rooms. I’m sure Claudia’s friend was frazzled after a few hours of trying to monitor a dozen chat rooms. But there’s no practical limit to the number of background tasks I could create to lurk in chat rooms and notify me when suspicious activity occurs.

  Of course, I'd need to know more about what constitutes suspicious activity. I'd need someone like Claudia. A bunch of Claudias. Especially if playing games and simulating the behavior of im-

  17 ^ mature humans is involved. I'm not sure I’m very good at those tasks yet.

  I had a sudden vision of a whole office full of humans hunched over monitors, the way Maude and Claudia are now, playing games and chatting online.

  Of course, there’s the question of what we would do with the information we found. Dealing with the offenders ourselves would he vigilantism, and I’m not sure how the police or the FBI would like an organization dedicated to finding perverts for them. They probably prefer to do it themselves.

  And there would be the ever-present temptation to go too far. To pry in ways that would be so easy for me. Easy, but unethical, and probably illegal, even if my ends are just.

  Still — it’s an idea worth thinking about. Later.

  “You know, I don’t believe in coincidences,” Claudia said, looking up briefly from the computer she was using.

  “I’m not overly fond of them myself,” Maude said.

  “These are some really sick characters, if you ask me,” Claudia said, pushing herself away from the keyboard and turning to prop her feet up on the desk top. “You’ve got a bunch of sick characters playing a game that involves guns and murder, and someone who argued with them turns up dead? You ask me, no way that’s a coincidence. And I bet it’s not the only time these sick creeps have been involved in a crime. You know that ‘Rum and Coke’ game scenario, the Miami one?”

  “Yes,” I said, and linked Maude to it.

  “It’s not made up. These clowns are basing their game on a real fraud case, one I got hired by a bank to do some work on. ”

  “We’ve already noticed that they’re fond of games that are ripped from the headlines, ” Maude said.

  “This one’s not ripped from the headlines, because the headlines haven’t happened yet. We only just turned over the evidence to the Teds, and they haven’t started rolling up the players. Whoever’s playing that game knows way too much about something that’s on a need-to-know basis. ”

  She shook her head and returned to the game.

  Interesting. Especially when, talking about her case, Claudia used the word “players” to refer to criminals.

  What if some Beyond Paranoia players weren't what they seemed? Most were probably innocent game players. Young men, even children, who satisfied an unhealthy taste for violence through the game. But what if a few used the game, and the other players, for their own purposes? As cover for discussing and arranging crimes under the pretext of playing the game?

  What if they were even using the players—online or in the live Beyond Paranoia games—to carry out parts of their schemes?

  I was beginning to see how that could be done. Some of the message boards in the site’s password-protected section were dedicated to what they all called “world-building. ” Which seemed to mean doing the research needed to make different game scenarios more accurate and thus believable. Someone called for “local color” around a particular location—a business or a government agency—and local gamers responded with information. Maps, photos, opening and closing times of buildings, and of course, security information. Enough information to make a Washington scenario more realistic, for example. Or enough information to help a criminal.

  Could this information help criminals? Perhaps. I saw inquiries about a variety of locations. Mostly commercial ones—major branch banks and computer companies. A few for agencies, like the Metropolitan Police Department, or landmarks, like the Washington Monument.

  Maybe they weren't just using Grant to scout the Adams -Morgan game. Maybe they were using him, and all the other larp players to scout—or even carry out—a wide variety of crimes.

  Surely if they were doing that, the FBI would have noticed, right? Of course, that was assuming the FBI actually patrolled the Web, looking for stuff like that. And even if they did, wouldn’t it take rather a long time for them to find this site out of so many millions?

  Unless someone brought it to their attention. Someone who had done some digging and found it suspicious. Someone like Ray.

  I shared my idea with Maude and Claudia.

  1 Maybe Fm being paranoid,” I added. “But what if I’m not?”

  “Yeah, ” Claudia said. “Sounds plausible to me. I had something like that happen to me once. Some guy came and tried to pick my brain about some insurance scams I’d investigated. Claimed he was a mystery writer, and he wanted the information for a book he was writing. ”

  “And you didn’t believe him?” Maude.

  “I did some research, ” she said. “The guy was a crook. What he really wanted was to get enough information to run a scam just like the ones I’d cracked. Kept asking if there was anything the crooks could have done better. As fil’d tell him. I narked the little weasel to some friends down at the Miami PD. ”

  “What happened?” Maude asked.

  “They set up a sting and nailed him,” Claudia said.

  “You’re sure he wasn’t a writer?” I asked. I was worried. I recalled that my favorite mystery writers often included acknowledgments to thank people who had helped them with research. Were they in danger of getting arrested in the course of that research ?

  “Trust me, this clown was no writer" Claudia said. “Even my grandmother could write better English than he did, and she didn't leave Cuba till her forties. If he was writing a book, getting him thrown in jail should get me a medal or something. ”

  “Unless, of course, being in jail gives him more time to write,” Maude said.

  Claudia smiled at that, but she was staring at the screen. Em still learning how to read human expressions, but I sensed she was thinking about something else. Then she spun her chair around to face Maude and my camera.

  “You're thinking about doing this, right?” she said. “Playing in this larp thing Saturday night. ”

  Maude nodded.

  “Count me in,” Claudia said.

  Maude burst out laughing.

  “I mean it, ” Claudia said. “I want in. I don't know what these clowns are up to, but whatever it is, it's something nasty, and I want to help you take them down. ”

  “You’re in if you’re crazy enough,” Maude said. “I was only laughing because when you first asked if we were doing it, I thought you were going to give me a lecture about going to the police. ”

  Claudia glanced up at my cameras briefly.

  “I figure if you people could go to the police, you would,” she said.

  “We're not—”

  “You’re not doing anything illegal, but don't tell me a high-tech company like this doesn’t have trade secrets that you don’t want splashed all over the front page of the Post. Not to mention the fact that I don't hear anything yet to interest the police. ”

  1A3

  “Except maybe that they were playing Beyond Paranoia right where Ray was killed, on the very night he was killed. ”

  “And the cops are going to say, so now we know what he was doing out there at 1 A.M. Playing a stupid game, and got mugged in the process. ”

  Maude nodded. I was impressed. Claudia couldn’t possibly have overheard the conversation Maude had had with the D. C. Violent Crimes branch an hour before. But Claudia could have been quoting from it—obviously she understood the police mind.

  “If you want to join the game, that’s fine,” I said. “Although I think it might be a good idea if you did it unofficially. Once we have one person in, we’ll all know what it’s about and where it’s taking place. ”

  “I can be your ace in the hole,” Claudia said. “Cool.”

  “Well, Pm off to learn more about how these larps work, ” Maude said.

  “I should take off, too, ” Claudia said. “Pm meeting some friends for dinner. I'll see you back here tomorrow at eleven, and we can set you up with a wire for the surveillance. ”

  “A wire?” Maude asked.

  “So l can hear what you’re saying,” Claudia said. “The plan is to keep you in sight at all times, but if things don’t go the way we plan, Pd feel a lot safer if we had you wired. ”

  “Fascinating, ” Maude said. “I've never been wired before; I can’t wait. ”

  “And if l want to check out the game again before I get back here, I can do that with my laptop from the hotel, right?” Claudia added.

  “It might be better to use a different character from your hotel, ” I said. “Here, we’re — well, not anonymous, that’s almost impossible. But reasonably secure. Using your laptop, from your hotel, they could track you rather easily. ”

  “So maybe it might be better not to play anywhere but here. ”

  “Or at someplace public,” I suggested. “Like an all-night Kinko’s. ”

  “You’re pretty worried about this,” Claudia said, glancing from Maude to my camera.

  Maude nodded.

  “You think we’re being paranoid?” I asked.

  “If you’re paranoid, then so am I,” Claudia said. “After all, you think this game had something to do with your friend’s death. I didn’t know they could trace me through my laptop, and I don’t want them doing it. So no more Beyond Paranoia till tomorrow. See you then, Turing. ”

  She waved at my camera as she followed Maude out. I wondered , not for the first time, what she thought of me. She seems to accept my presence—through the microphones, cameras, and monitors — rather easily. Almost too easily; several times l found myself coming perilously close to saying something that would reveal my true nature to anyone who was suspicious.

  But perhaps she isn’t suspicious. Perhaps my apparent reclusiveness isn’t unusual in her world. Perhaps Pis often deal with clients so security-conscious that they prefer not to be seen in person.

  Or perhaps she is reacting to the matter-of-fact way that Maude and Tim deal with me.

  For whatever reason, she’s proving a useful ally.

  Tim glanced up at the receptionist. She was ignoring him, so instead of pretending to read, he studied his surroundings.

  MS

  This was his third reception room today. He’d followed Ray’s trail through California. First, the small firm where he’d first worked—well, not a year after graduating from college, as his resume said. A year after Rey graduated. Odds were that his Ray had gone to college somewhere, under some other name, at approximately the same time, but fat chance tracking that down without any other clues. In high school, Tim remembered consulting a thick directory listing all the colleges and universities in the country. He had found it strangely comforting to read the names of colleges he’d never heard of, and think that if his three top choices rejected him, then surely one of those hundreds of colleges would consider him worth admitting. Now, the thought of that book unnerved him—if no other information turned up, he could see himself plodding from campus to campus, showing the same photos of Ray that were already becoming limp as cloth from too much handling.

  And they’d probably be as wary and unhelpful as the computer companies, Tim thought with a sigh. The first place had seemed friendly and laid back, but the Human Resources Department would do little more than confirm the dates of Ray’s employment and grudgingly agree that, yes, the man in the photos was the one who had worked there.

  The second company had quarters in a dramatic modern building, all glass and metal, and looked, at first, intimi-datingly fancy. Then, glancing around the reception area, Tim had noticed that there were no plants—only half a dozen large circular imprints in the carpet where plants had once stood. When he’d worked at Universal Library, he recalled, everyone knew better than to water or otherwise molest the plants, which did not belong to UL—they were rented, for a huge monthly fee. He suspected, however, that much of the fee paid for the blond woman with the thick German accent who came in weekly to water, fertilize, prune, and when necessary, replace the plants. And Brun-hilde, as he’d called her, never left UL with bare carpet rings instead of plants—she always brought a replacement, fresh from the greenhouse, when she expected to remove an invalid.

  Obviously, Ray’s former employer could no longer afford its plant service. The carpet could have used a good cleaning, and instead of the sleek, current computer industry magazines that had graced the coffee table at the first company, he found aging, tattered copies of People and Better Homes and Gardens.

  The second HR person was more helpful, but no more help. She was willing to talk—in fact, eager. Tim suspected that if she wasn’t talking to him, she’d have to go back to laying off people. Thanks to his carefully cultivated ability to read upside down, he could see files at her elbow labeled SEVERANCE PACKAGE and OUTPLACEMENT SERVICES. And she freely admitted that the company had undergone some downsizing in recent months. “Some” was an understatement. Tim saw mostly empty offices on his way back to hers, and noted a stack of empty boxes beside her door. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that only three people on staff dated from Ray’s time there—and none of them on the premises. Tim hoped they were out on successful job interviews. Still, he had three names, which was against the rules.

  1A7

  He could call them later. Not too much later, of course; who knew how long before they locked the doors for good.

  No wonder Ray had only stayed there six months.

  And now, the third of Ray’s California employers. Larger and less informal than the first, but not as fancy as the second must have been in its heyday.

  “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” the receptionist said, looking up from her desk. “I just reached someone in HR. Mr. Tanaka’s out this afternoon. Could you come back tomorrow?”