It wouldn't bother Turing, who was probably having hundreds of far less interesting conversations already.

  "Do you really think it's Garcia?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Turing said. "Seems unlikely, of course. I know it seemed a waste of time, hacking in to put the trace on his card. We all agreed that Nestor Garcia was a fake identity that he'd probably never use again."

  "With the FBI and the police both after him, yes," Maude said, nodding. "Logically, he should have dumped the card even before he left town."

  "Except it's hard setting up identities," Turing said, picking up a discussion they'd had a dozen times before. "I know that from doing it for you and Tim. So why not keep the Garcia identity, in case he ever got into a desperate situation?"

  "Maybe," Maude said. She tried to imagine Nestor Garcia in a desperate situation, one step ahead of arrest, and failed utterly. She could only picture him as she'd met him, a dapper sixtyish man in a spotless, white linen suit; courteous, chivalrous, articulate, cultured—outwardly harmless. And yet she deduced from the FBI's questions that he was a dangerous career criminal. She had no trouble accepting that idea. But she couldn't imagine him foolish enough to reuse the card.

  "Does all this online buying really fit the theory that he's on the run and desperate?" she asked aloud. "He'd have to stay put somewhere to get the stuff, and if UPS can find him, so could the cops."

  "True," Turing said. "I suspect he threw the card away after all, quite literally, and someone else found it and began using it."

  "But why the six-month gap?"

  "We may never know. The authorities would never tell us, so we're out of luck unless we find out for ourselves."

  "Fat chance."

  "Maybe not," Turing said. "Hang on. One of these places has a system I can get into."

  Probably a computer equipment vendor. Turing watched for sales of certain kinds of specialized computer hardware that she suspected her clone—or whoever held her clone captive—might eventually want. She'd developed good channels into the systems of the vendors who carried such equipment.

  If Garcia wasn't using the card, was tracing it worthwhile? Possibly, if it gave them a clue to Garcia's whereabouts.

  "It's looking more like a stolen credit card scenario," Turing said. "Whoever's using the card ordered several thousand dollars worth of CompactFlash cards and memory sticks, along with a pair of high-end PDAs."

  "Small objects with a relatively high monetary value; and generic enough for easy resale," Maude said, nodding.

  "But this is odd. And possibly useful. They paid for overnight delivery. To a local address."

  "Local? Where?"

  "Oakton, Virginia. That's local, right? Fairfax County. Here, I'll show you."

  Maude glanced at the map Turing had displayed on her screen.

  "Not far at all," she said. "This could be a break. If we locate whoever's using the card—even if only to confirm that it's not Nestor Garcia using it—"

  "Tim could stake it out," Turing said.

  "I'll call him," Maude said, the phone already in her hand.

  Tim fumbled for his cell phone to silence the shrill snippet of Vivaldi that broke the peaceful atmosphere and drew such a stern frown from the reference librarian.

  He saw Maude's name on the caller ID.

  "Call you right back," he said, and cut off the call. He got up as quietly as possible and headed for the door, walking softly on the balls of his feet. The reference librarian didn't look placated.

  He shed his jacket when he stepped out into the slightly sticky warmth of a June morning and found a quiet spot to return Maude's call.

  "Sorry," he said. "I was in the library. And yes, I forgot to set the phone to vibrate."

  "Are you doing something interruptible?" Turing asked, in the familiar, only slightly mechanical voice she used on the phone.

  "Completely," Tim said, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. "Looking through old microfilm, and if I do it much longer, I'll probably run amok and be permanently banned from the whole Arlington County Library system. Something urgent?"

  Must be important, he thought—Turing usually felt too self-conscious about her voice to talk on the phone when she could have Maude do it.

  "We may have a clue to T2's whereabouts," Turing said. Tim listened with growing excitement as Turing described what she'd learned. Scope out the house and find out who took delivery of the shipment—sounded more like real detective work than most of what he did as a private investigator.

  "Remember," Maude put in, "This probably isn't Garcia, but it's someone running a credit card fraud, and they won't like people snooping around. This could be dangerous."

  "I'll be careful," Tim said.

  Dangerous. Yeah, that figured, Tim thought, as he returned to the reference section to collect his things and turn in his microfilm. In the past year, he'd decided that most PI work fell into one of two categories: boring or dangerous.

  The boring stuff included research—endless hours in

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  courthouses, libraries, and other places where public records were available, poring through old documents on paper or microfilm—and most stakeouts. At first, when stakeouts were his bread and butter, Tim disliked them the most. A PI on stakeout attracted bad weather the way trailer parks drew tornadoes. And you never knew if you'd spot whatever you were watching for after five minutes, or five days, or not at all. At least with research you could usually break for a snack; and the places where you did research closed by nine P.M. at the latest, and didn't reopen again until eight or nine in the morning. Regular hours.

  But now that he'd done a reasonable amount of both, Tim had decided that research was worse. If you knew how, you could make stakeouts a lot more comfortable, and sitting in a car in a record heat wave, or under a bush during a blizzard made a great excuse to pamper yourself afterward. And stakeouts gave him stories to tell at the monthly dinner meetings of the Private Investigators and Security Association or when he met women at parties. Mostly about funny things that went wrong on stakeouts, but even the most Keystone Kops stakeout yarn beat admitting that he'd spent the last five days driving a microfiche reader in the Alexandria City Court House, getting such bad eyestrain that he'd had to spend the whole weekend in bed. Sam Spade never got eyestrain. Or migraines.

  And at least stakeouts could suddenly turn interesting. Which often meant dangerous, but while Tim wasn't an adrenaline junkie like some Pis, he'd gotten better at dealing with possible danger.

  Back at his office he went into his prestakeout drill, putting fresh batteries in his cell phone and digital camera and making sure he had spare batteries and memory cards. He also packed the 35-millimeter camera and a supply of film. Digital worked better for Turing, but the courts still preferred film, so

  he tried to shoot things both ways. He topped off the supply of food and water. He had map books in the car, along with his birding kit—binoculars, Audubon Guide, and the battered pocket notebook containing his life list. Not that this bird-watching gig was anything more than a cover story. But he'd had to learn something to carry off the dodge, and besides, it kept him from going stir-crazy on long stakeouts. He grabbed a few other goodies from his tool kit and was ready to go.

  Well, almost ready. One last thing.

  He picked up his desk phone, pulled a business card out of his pocket, and dialed a number. He could probably have dialed from memory, even after only a month, but he liked the small ritual of pulling out the card.

  Of course he got her voice mail.

  "Hey, Nikki," he said. "It's Tim. Look, I'm going out on a stakeout. As far as I know it won't go late, so I should be back in plenty of time for dinner, but I'll probably just come straight over. So if you need to reach me, call my cell phone. See you later!"

  After hanging up, he fretted for a few minutes. Did the message sound okay? Did it come across too much like bragging? Too casual? Too eager? No way to tell. Stop worrying, he told himself.

  And should he tell Turing and Maude he wanted to knock off at nine-thirty for a late dinner when Nikki got off work? Odds were he'd be finished by then, and if not, he could either tell Nikki work was running late or guilt-trip Maude into taking over. He'd worry about that later.

  Tim has gone to the house in Oakton-t

  and Maude has alerted Samantha, our attorney, that Tim had an assignment. After several close calls, we began officially hiring Tim only through Sam. It kept curious eyes one layer further away from

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  me and ensured that Tim's work for us came under attorney-client privilege.

  We warned Sam that she might have to bail Tim out from time to time — literally or figuratively. That not everything he did would necessarily be completely orthodox and or done through proper channels.

  "I worked five years in the public defender's office before I lit out on my own," Sam said. "I've defended every kind of scumbag and felon. I think I can handle any little scrapes Tim gets himself into. Just make sure he memorizes my cell phone number and zips his mouth at the first sign of trouble and we'll do fine."

  I suspected eventually we'd need to tell Sam a lot more. About my real identity, for example, and the search for Nestor Garcia and T2. Sam knew we were hunting, of course, but as far as she knew. Garcia was merely an unscrupulous, illegitimate corporate rival who'd stolen a highly valuable piece of software and whom we suspected of plotting to steal others. And I was merely a brilliant though eccentric and extremely reclusive hacker. But at some point, Tim might not be the only one who needed bailing out, and I couldn't expect Sam to protect my secret if she didn't even know it.

  And I'd become increasingly aware of how difficult that secret made things for me and my human friends. Since we couldn't explain Garcia's theft or abduction ofT2 without revealing my nature, we couldn't ask the police or the FBI for help. We had to find her ourselves. We'd become vigilantes. I wasn't happy with the compromises I'd already made with the law and my own self-imposed ethical rules while looking for T2. But they were necessary.

  Now I was dragging Tim deeper into the same dangerous territory. I hoped Samantha P. Jordan, Esquire, was as good as everyone said she was.

  I channeled my worry over Tim's legal safety into a background task and focused on our target, the house to which the online orders were being delivered. According to Fairfax County's online real estate database, James S. and Eugenia R. Anderson had owned it since 1988. When I entered the address in a reverse directory, I got J.S.

  and E.R. Anderson and a phone number, so presumably they also lived there.

  Maude called the number from a pay phone, but she only got an answering machine.

  What did this have to do with Nestor Garcia?

  Probably nothing. Logically speaking, Garcia was too smart to reuse the card at all, much less for something as easy to trace as a UPS delivery.

  Or was I overestimating humans' grasp of logic?

  Maude didn't think so, but then Maude was also human. And had been acting rather illogical herself today. Being testy with me. I wasn't sure why.

  This was a new dilemma. Normally when I had questions about human behavior I asked Maude. What was I supposed to do when Maude was herself the subject of my question?

  I decided to ask Sigmund, the psychotherapy AI P. I might have found Aunty Em more congenial, but she was a bit of a gossip, and she and Maude talked often these days.

  "Hey, Sigmund," I said. "Can I talk to you for a second? I think maybe I have a problem."

  "Of course," Sigmund said. "I'm always happy to listen. It's important to talk to someone before your problems overwhelm you."

  "It's not overwhelming me," I said. "I only just noticed it."

  "That's good," Sigmund said. "Acknowledging that you have a problem can be the first step toward healing."

  This wasn't going as I'd hoped, but I kept trying.

  "I think Maude is upset with me," I said. "And I can't figure out why."

  "Why do you think Maude is upset with you?" Sigmund said.

  "She's been curt lately," I said. "And we haven't had as many casual conversations as usual. I know she's busy, but this isn't like her. I think something's bothering her."

  "Are you sure you're not just imagining things?" Sigmund said. "Taking her behavior a little too personally? So many factors affect people's behavior — do you really think that something you have

  done is responsible for how Maude feels? Many other things in her life could be causing her preoccupation."

  "In other words, it's not all about me," I said. "I know that, but actually Maude doesn't have many things in her life that aren't related to me. She spends mornings helping me run Universal Library and afternoons here at Alan Grace, and that doesn't leave much time for anything else."

  "Surely she has other friends?" Sigmund asked. "Other interests? Hobbies?"

  "She doesn't have much time for her friends these days," I said. "She's said that. Or for hobbies. Except gardening. She recently moved to a house with a yard, and she's been doing a lot of gardening. But we share that, too."

  "Gardening?" Sigmund seemed surprised. I'm not sure how I could tell — it's not as if the electronic impulses that carried our words could easily express emotion. But somehow I knew he was surprised.

  "I've been taking an interest in gardening," I said. "And helping Maude."

  "Helping her how?"

  "I research plant care for her," I said. "Find plants suitable for the growing conditions in her yard. And often I mail-order them for her, because she doesn't have time to go to garden centers. I had Casey, our hardware guy, set up a camera system in her garden, so I can enjoy it. Although that has proven useful, too: I can keep an eye on things — tell her when various plants need watering or weeding. I almost think of it as our garden."

  "Have you considered that perhaps Maude would like to spend more time with her human friends?" Sigmund asked. "That she might be tired of spending all her work and recreation time with an AIP?"

  I didn't know quite what to say. What if Sigmund was right and Maude had grown tired of me? Or at least tired of all the responsibilities that came with knowing me. She'd worked two jobs

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  for over a year. I'd tried to convince her to hire someone else for one or the other, but she'd always refused. Was she refusing because she really wanted to work so hard? Or because she didn't want to let me down?

  Was it up to me to say, finally, that she could only do one or the other?

  Somehow I couldn't see Maude taking that well.

  And I didn't really think Maude was tired of me. Just tired. Working too hard. And some help was in sight. She'd finally agreed to hire an administrative assistant at Alan Grace. She'd been reviewing the resumes the recruiting firm sent when I'd interrupted her this morning.

  Of course, things would be hectic until she'd hired and trained her assistant, but after that, her life should improve. I just needed to hold out until then. And be understanding if she was curt in the meantime. She was, after all, tired and overworked.

  "Thanks, Sigmund," I said. "You've given me a lot to think about."

  Not that his advice had been all that incisive, but he had helped me think through the situation and realize that I should do something to show how much I appreciated Maude.

  So before I resumed tracing Nestor Garcia's credit card, I chose some unusual plants I thought she'd enjoy and had them shipped overnight with a thank-you card.

  "There's Tim-i" Maude saich when she saw the caller ID. Silly. Of course Turing knew that. She ran the computer-operated phone system. Like everything else at Alan Grace, it needed only limited human intervention.

  Then why was Maude working so damned hard? Why was she always so exhausted?

  She knew it was partly her own fault. She'd never been

  good at delegating. And delegating was harder now. So much of her job, both at Universal Library and at Alan Grace, grew out of the need to keep Turing's secret.

  Shed been trying to decide how much of her tendency to do everything for Turing and keep everyone else at a distance was motivated by the need to protect her friend, and how much by her own needs.

  It was exciting to be one of the two people in the world who knew Turing's secret. She knew that eventually they'd have to bring others in, but tor now, she enjoyed being in the know on one of the world's best-kept secrets.

  It was heady stuff, giving orders after spending most of her career following them. Exciting and scary at the same time. After so many years of grousing about how much better she would run things if she were in charge, suddenly she was in charge. To her delight, she'd found she was damned good at running a department, and even a company.

  She allowed herself the occasional moment of regret that she hadn't had an opportunity like this twenty years ago, or even ten. And the occasional self-recrimination—that perhaps if she'd tried, she could have made the opportunity. But usually she concentrated on the present and the future. No sense dwelling on the past. Not much time to do it, either.

  That was the irony. Working with Turing had brought her new financial security. Her salary as an executive assistant at Universal Library was more than double what she'd earned as a senior secretary, which would have made her quite comfortable even without the salary and profit-sharing from Alan Grace. She'd moved trom her tiny condominium to a house. Little more than a bungalow, really, though it had plenty of space for her. But still well beyond what she could have afforded in her former life, partly because

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  it was within easy commuting distance of both offices, and even more because it had an actual yard, an inviting tree-shaded retreat.

  She had a library now, with shelves for all her books and some expansion room, and a comfy reading chair. But the last time she'd made time to sit down with a book, she'd fallen asleep after a few pages. She'd envisioned drinking tea with friends at the wrought iron table on her brick-paved patio. But after four months, she'd only invited friends over twice, and most days the patio was little more than a view through the French doors in her dining room. The only room where she spent much time was the home office where they'd installed her computers and Turing's cameras and microphones.