Part 13 (1/2)
Oilcan's? No, he probably wasn't home. Lain's? No, keep her out of this, whatever it was. Nathan's? He was most likely on duty. She thought of a dozen more places and rejected them. Tinker needed someplace with lots of people where, if these folks really turned out to be American agents, the U.S. government carried little weight. ”He's at a hospice just beyond the Rim.”
”What's he doing there?”
”Wargs attacked the sc.r.a.p yard at Shutdown. They downed a high-ranking elf. Tinker took him out to the hospice after Startup.”
”That was two days ago.”
”Tinker was hurt. One of the wargs messed him up, and the wound got infected.”
Durrack swore and took hold of her. ”Come on. I'm not letting you out of my sight until I have your boyfriend under my thumb.”
Tinker hunted for signs of squad cars responding to the tripwire distress call, but the police weren't showing. Pittsburgh police were spread too thin.
Their car was tucked out of sight, half a block down. A sleek late-model sedan, it looked out of place in Pittsburgh and especially in Tinker's neighborhood. It didn't need the D.C. plates to identify it as out of town. Briggs unlocked the car with a remote.
Durrack opened the back pa.s.senger door but held Tinker in check. ”Search her.”
Briggs moved Tinker so her hands were on the car roof and her legs were slightly spread. The woman combed fingers through Tinker's short, dark hair. The search went down the back of Tinker's neck, up under her s.h.i.+rt and into her bra. Durrack averted his gaze. Briggs' hands stayed impa.s.sive, but Tinker clenched her hands into fists on the car roof, until her knuckles showed white, as the search moved to her groin.
”You have no right to do this.” Tinker blinked to keep tears out of her eyes. ”I haven't done anything.”
”Sorry, kid, them's the breaks.” Durrack actually sounded like he was sorry.
Finally Briggs moved down to the less personal territory of Tinker's pants pockets. There the search slowed to a crawl. Tinker's pants had a half dozen pockets, and all of them held something. After the first handful, Briggs dumped the items onto the floor of the backseat.
”Please don't lose the nuts and bolts,” Tinker said. ”They're irreplaceable.”
The pockets empty, and double-checked, Briggs stepped back away from Tinker. ”If she kicks you with those boots, you're going to know it.”
”Take them off,” Durrack ordered Tinker.
Briggs sorted through the pile on the car floor, confiscating ”dangerous” items: three different-sized screwdrivers, a pocket acetylene torch, and her Swiss Army knife. They went with her boots into the trunk.
”Can I have the rest of my stuff back?” Tinker asked, nearly whispering in an effort to keep from showing how much she wanted her possessions.
”Just get in. You can pick it up while we drive.”
Tinker scrambled into the backseat. There was no lock switch, door handle, or com device.
Durrack slid into the pa.s.senger seat, letting Briggs drive. ”Where's the hospice?”
”You cut through downtown and go up past where the Hill District used to be.” Tinker stuffed away her things.
”Where?”
”Centre Avenue out of town. Corner of Old Center and Old Penn.”
”New roads named after old roads that don't exist anymore.” He programmed it into the nav system. It must have been tied to one of the few government satellites, because it actually seemed to be working.
Distantly a police siren rose, but they were already turning off her street. Tinker slumped back in the seat. If the police arrived at her place now, she wouldn't be there to be rescued.
”Who are you two, anyhow?” She contented herself with kicking the back of the front seat.
”I'm Corg Durrack. My a.s.sociate is Hannah Briggs. We're with NSA.”
”What's that?”
”National Security Agency.”
It just didn't make sense. What had she done to bring these guys down on her? ”What do you want with Tinker? He's never been in the United States.”
Durrack made a negation sound. ”He was born in the United States-someplace. He would have been five when the gate first moved Pittsburgh to Elfhome.”
Oh, this made sense why they didn't suspect her of being Alexander Bell. They were looking for someone nearly ten years older than her. They hadn't considered that Tinker was anything but a naturally inseminated child. Add in her male name, and they were obviously completely lost. Still, that didn't explain why they were looking looking.
”We want to protect Tinker,” Hannah Briggs said. ”He's in a lot of danger.”
”So you keep on saying.” It was a good line to have someone betray a loved one. ”Why would anyone want to hurt Tinker? He runs a sc.r.a.p yard. He keeps his nose clean. He's a good guy.”
Briggs gave a flat laugh and murmured, ”Yeah, right.”
Durrack gave Briggs a hard look. ”He's an extremely intelligent young man who apparently understands the working of the phase gate and in all possibility could build one.”
Understood it, yes. Build one? She'd never considered doing that, mostly because the parts were too exotic to find as sc.r.a.p in Pittsburgh. ”So?”
Durrack threw her a surprised look. ”Do you have any idea how rare that is?”
”Apparently not.”
”People like that can be counted on one finger. No one has been able to develop a hyperphase device since Leonardo Dufae's death. The Chinese figured out how to build it off the designs they stole, but they can't change it or improve it. If they could, we wouldn't have this little weirdness called Pittsburgh. Then up pops Tinker, son of the gate's inventor, trained by the same man, and one a.s.sumes privy to any family secrets.”
”Yeah. Energy equals ma.s.s times constant squared.”
Durrack turned in his seat now to consider her in a silent study. They crossed the heavy McKees Rocks Bridge, all stone and steel, hopping parts of the riverbank before crossing the Ohio River proper, still choked with barges. It would be a week before river traffic returned to normal. The roads, though, were clear, and minutes later they were crossing the Allegheny River on the Fort Duquesne Bridge.
”Tinker applied to Carnegie Mellon University last Shutdown. It took them a while to put all the pieces together and notify NSA. We've blacked it out, except letting them issue an acceptance letter. Hopefully, no one else put the pieces together either.”
”What pieces?”
”That Alexander Bell listed Leonardo Dufae as his father, and that according to the testing AI, he understood all the questions, even though he answered them wrong. That includes the filter questions on hyperphase that no one is supposed to be able to answer.”
s.h.i.+t. She hadn't considered that they would have an AI filtering the placement testing. Lain had explained that the test was just to see what courses she would need to attend: You can test out of the basics and only take advanced courses You can test out of the basics and only take advanced courses. By tracking eye movement, keystrokes, length of time per question-and correct answers changed to wrong ones-a good AI would easily have determined that she had comprehended all the questions and just chose to get them wrong. ”What an idiot.”
”If he meant to confuse people, he's succeeded. Why did Tinker bother to apply to Carnegie Mellon University?”
”He only applied to humor a friend. He doesn't want to leave Pittsburgh, so he tried to keep them from accepting him.”
Durrack made a slight noise of discovery. ”Why doesn't he want to leave?”