A siren up ahead, loud, almost musical. Spider slowed down, looking for the reflection of the flashing lights in the storefront windows. A police car, then another, made the big wide turn and ripped past him into the night. Watching them fade behind him in the rear view mirror, he relaxed his grip on the wheel and brought the car back up to speed. The light turned red ahead of him.

Dice wanted a copy of everything on the system. For his cousin, he said. For research, he said. Twenty-two grand on the seat next to him told Spider there was more to the story. Stanford grants didn't come in cash. But Dice said he was taking a cut, a little cut, yeah, but a cut. Maybe Dice was lying about that, maybe he was taking more. Probably. That makes sense, Dice keeping half. Spider could see Dice working it out that way in his head. Maybe it was a hundred grand and Dice wasn't even giving him half.

Maybe he should go to her, or to the B, just ask them for permission. They were reasonable people, more than reasonable. Spider knew how many times ZDI had paid for immigration lawyers to help employees who had family members in trouble; the company paid for night school too. And the medical bills, don't forget the medical bills. Why not just go and ask, say Dice asked me to do this thing and I want to be sure it's ok with you...

The envelope on the seat beside him had twenty two thousand five hundred dollars in it. And there was another one out there somewhere, waiting. And the money on the seat next to him was real, not a loan, not another false hope of another shot, it was legal tender. Spider knew legal tender answers all kinds of questions, Spider knew. He didn't very feel good about this, but then he hadn't felt very good about anything in a long, long time.

Spider pulled onto the entrance ramp to the highway, accelerating uphill, his engine knocking and complaining. The road sweeps along the shoulder of the foothills and then passes through a curving tunnel through the mountain, five miles to go. He stayed in the right lane, trying not to push it, his hands itching on the wheel, squeezing it.

The mouth of the tunnel came up, two of them, swelling round in the rocky side of the mountain, the granite-gray stones of the escarpment contrasting with the smooth green porcelain tile that lined the interior. Two thin rows of fluorescent lights stretched away down the tunnel, curving gently to the left. Construction had closed the southbound tunnel, and traffic was temporarily two-way through the other one, moving about thirty-five. Spider liked to get through the tunnel as quickly as he could, the thought of all that rock above him weighed on his mind; the fact that the tunnel curved so that when you were in it you couldn't see either end didn't help him. Brake lights ahead.

If Dice didn't want the backups for his cousin, what the hell did he want them for? Spider was at a loss, that seemed like a definite dead end. Who would want the kind of information anyway? No one else in the country was building anything like the Cat, nobody built zeppelins anywhere anymore. All that technical data, the accounting records, the memos and meeting notes; what good would that do Dice if it wasn't for his cousin? Spider coughed and shook his head, resisted the urge to touch the envelope again. He spit out the window.

Traffic was crawling now. There was an ambulance in the oncoming lane, all red and silver reflections, sirens off but lights flashing, inching along behind a brown pickup with a busted white bedcap. The driver was eating a sandwhich, staring ahead through the windshield. The spinning lights bothered Spider and he concentrated on the license plate of the truck ahead of him, throbbing white and then pink in the flashing wash. The truck started to move again and they left the ambulance behind, finally coming out of the fluorescent lights of the tunnel into the cool night air, almost driving right into the sky. Below him was the basin of the city, the sodium lights glittering like an open jewelry box.

Spider knew he would have to be very careful with Dice. Dice wasn't one to throw his own money around, he was no altruist, Dice.

Spider drove the rest of the way to the plant, keyed his code at the gate and parked the car. The parking lot was empty. He shut off the engine and took the keys out of the ignition. He set the parking break. He leaned over and tucked the envelope under the passengers seat, then reached up and locked the passenger door. He opened his door and got out, then pressed the lock down and closed the door. His shoes made a scratching noise in the damp grit on the pavement.

The offices were in a two-story building, with small windows set up high between the flutes of the precast concrete exterior. There were cameras in plastic bubbles high up on the corners of the building. Spider let himself in through a metal door, red with rust-scratched primer. He didn't turn on any lights. He walked down the hall to the stair, then went up and made a left turn to his server room. He unlocked the door and went in.

The noise of the fans and the twinkling lights in the dimness of the room always made him feel good, this was his place and he felt at home here. He went over to his desk and set his keys down and turned on the light, tapped the spacebar on his keyboard to wake up the screen, scanned his email. Nothing... nothing he wanted anyway. He double-checked his junk mail, just in case. Nothing there. It would have been forwarded to his phone, he knew that, but because reception in the tunnel could be flakey he always checked, and always came away empty.

He went over to the corner, picked up the first box and carried it over to the bench. This would only take an hour.



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