“He’s different,” said Spider. “You were supposed to look after him-”

“All that stuff he downloaded into his brain, no wonder-”

“I’m-I’m not talking about that,” sputtered Spider. “Leo’s more than capable of massive data transfers, it’s the rest of him that’s different. You saw what he was like when you two left. Naïve, full of fear and bluster-”

“He was a pain in the ass,” said Rakkim, squinting. “I spent the first week pissed off at you and Sarah for saddling me with him, but the Belt…it changes people. When we left he was a burden…but, he grew up on me. He saw things there, good things, beautiful things, and terrible things too…he did things, Spider, things neither you nor I would have believed him capable of. I’ve seen it happen fast before. I’ve seen it happen overnight. In a single moment-”

“He wants to get married. He wants to move to the Belt and marry some girl he spent less than twenty-four hours with.”

“Leo’s a man now, and he made a man’s decision.”

“Easy for you to say.” Spider slumped in his chair, wrapped the blanket tighter around himself. “Wait until Michael grows up and wants to marry a stranger.”

Rakkim turned his face toward the sun. Not a cloud in the sky. “That’s a long way off.”

“Not as far away as you think.”

Rakkim heard a dog barking, the sound setting off others. “Where is he? Have you checked on him today?”

Spider started to speak. Stopped. Waiting for the shakes to subside. His eyes were clear now. “He’s at your place, talking with Sarah. I thought you knew.”

Rakkim straightened up. “I thought we decided he was to stay put.”

Spider’s hand twitched. “I can’t stop him anymore. He’s a man now, remember?”

Al-Faisal checked his watch for the hundredth time, glanced out into the cloudless sky. A beautiful day. From the minaret of the Grand Saladin mosque he could see the whole city spread out before him, helpless as a kafir on Judgment Day.

He had met last night with Amir Kidd, reassured the Fedayeen that today’s actions were in complete accordance with the Quran. That obedience to the Old One superseded all of his previous oaths and commitments.

Pigeons circled the minaret, wheeled off to more inviting perches in nearby buildings. Filthy birds, may Allah strike them from the sky and shatter their eggs in the nest.

Al-Faisal had sensed uncertainty in Amir last night. After all this time, the young officer still felt the gossamer strands of loyalty to his father, the Fedayeen commander. Such weakness disgusted al-Faisal. He had spent over two years getting close to Amir. Two years of the most gentle persuasion…a comment uttered by a trusted fellow Fedayeen, a sermon by a battlefield imam, a rumor shared by a concubine during a night of lust that questioned the president’s judgment. Al-Faisal had waited a long time before making direct contact with Amir. He had played the youth masterfully, appealing to his youthful idealism, his passion, his faith and courage…and, most of all, to his mixed feelings about his father. Love and ambition were dangerous weaknesses, and al-Faisal had exploited them mercilessly.

So this is the famous Lion of Boulder, al-Faisal had greeted him, kissing Amir on both cheeks, after his Fedayeen unit beat back the Mormon attack into Colorado. Amir had dismissed the phrase, credited his men for the victory, but al-Faisal could see it pleased him.

Even after Amir swore allegiance to the Old One, he insisted that his father not be harmed. His father was no apostate, he assured al-Faisal, but a noble warrior whose piety was beyond dispute. General Kidd’s only failing was that his devotion to the president had left him blind to the man’s deficiencies. Against al-Faisal’s counsel, the Old One himself had decreed that General Kidd’s sin would be overlooked, and the warrior allowed an honorable exile in his native Somalia with his wives and estates.

Two years al-Faisal had worked on Amir. The Old One had spent even longer turning al-Faisal from the Black Robe’s hierarchy. Al-Faisal had no regrets. He would stand at the right hand of the Old One in this life and the right hand of Allah in the next. The Old One had assured him that nothing would be denied the righteous warrior. Al-Faisal glanced at his watch. Turned his face into the blinding sun. A glorious day, inshallah.

Sarah touched the remote, did a rapid turn behind Eagleton’s straining thighs, then darted out the open window. Nothing. The line of headlights had been transformed to a line of flaming torches, Eagleton’s leering face was a cubist nightmare, but there was still no hint of what had drawn his attention for all those hours as he sat at his desk.

The control chip for the Digi-Sketch was compatible with Eagleton’s holo display card, of course, and one of the twelve screens from the Digi-Sketch keyed perfectly to the card’s program. It was a whole new porno show. Some joke. Sarah had been chasing her tail for days trying intricately engineered screens to search for clues, but the answer had been in the opposite direction: using the simple, basic graphics chip of a baby’s toy. Somewhere in hell, Eagleton was amused.

Since downloading the Digi-Sketch screen, Sarah had spent a half hour scanning the card without success, looking in all the corners, inside out and upside down. The screen showed Eagleton with a barbed penis, a monstrous member that drove through the back of the young woman’s skull, spurting flowers from the tip. She followed each bud of the flower, expanding the frame farther and farther, until she was certain there was no useful information there.

“Is everything all right?” called Leo through the closed door.

“Not now.” Sarah’s fingers hovered over the control pad. She needed to slow down. Unpleasant as it was, she had to think like Eagleton. She let the image run, Eagleton’s barbed penis pistoning back and forth.

She closed her eyes, opened them, taking in the whole wall that Eagleton had looked at, the porno card the most important part, but not the only part. High-gloss cars…motorcycles…speed and reflected light…a surfing beach, waves stacked up…a young man with his eyes rolled back in pleasure…a college girl with a charm bracelet. The bracelet was the first thing she had gone over, looking for some symbolic meaning in the charms. It was just a photo, her innocence the basis of her appeal. She forced herself to relax…looked down, then up. Eagleton was supremely arrogant. What would confirm his sense of superiority? What could he see on the wall that no one else would notice? It would have to be obvious. Everyone would have to be proven a fool for Eagleton to be as brilliant as he knew he was.

She went back to the holo card, looking for patterns, light and dark. The young woman’s face drew her attention…but she had already studied it from every angle. She looked at the face again, forced herself not to stare, but just look, the way Eagleton had. What was that? Sarah tilted the holographic image, saw a tiny gold gondola among the strands of the woman’s hair. Just like the gold gondola on the college girl’s charm bracelet. It had been a bead of sweat on the original, without the toy screen. Sarah’s excitement faded as she inspected the gondola without seeing anything.

There. Another gold charm in the young woman’s hair, this one a tennis racquet. A car. A heart. An airplane. A seashell. A rose. All of them in the exact order as the charms on the college girl’s wrist. All of them so artfully placed among the hair that Sarah hadn’t noticed them before. She zoomed in on them one by one, blowing each of them up until they filled the screen, turning them over and around, making sure no surface was unexamined. Halfway through the hidden charm bracelet, she came to the gold airplane.

“Oh…shit.”