B003J5UJ4U EBOK (24 page)

I grabbed a pencil and sketched while they battled over the keyboard and looked at the files. Eventually, they both sighed and walked over to me.

“Anything?” I asked.

“He’s running a couple dozen experiments,” Cheater said. “But not for the military. They’re for some companies. But there’s nothing in here to help us find him quickly. There are hundreds of documents. I have no idea which ones to look at first. This could take days.”

“We don’t have days,” I said. “Lucky needs us.”

“It might not be in code any more, but it’s still gibberish,” Martin said. “Contractors, subcontractors, holding companies, subsidiaries, non-disclosure agreements, sealed bids. I don’t understand all this business stuff.”

“The only business I understand is funny business,” Flinch said.

“You know I don’t have a clue,” Torchie said.

“Even I don’t understand business,” Cheater said. “I think
it’s a secret language adults use. What the heck is
binding arbitration?”

“That’s just when two parties agree to have a dispute settled by a third party instead of going to court.” As soon as the words left my lips, I found four guys staring at me.

“How’d you know that?” Cheater asked.

“I think it’s in my blood,” I said.

taking care of business

I PUT ASIDE
the sketches and walked over to the laptop. I didn’t know a thing about the military or the government. And I sure didn’t know about checksums and encryption keys. But I knew the business world. I thought about the phrases Martin had mentioned. The sound of familiar terms got my pulse pumping. Dad had been telling me stuff about the business world all my life. I grew up surrounded by proxy statements, balance sheets, and corporate flow charts. We ate dinner with tales of price-earnings ratios, executive stock options, and leveraged buyouts.

Maybe I’d inherited some of his talent. Dad could take apart a company and restructure it the way a good mechanic could rebuild an engine. I didn’t always pay attention, but I guess a lot of it had sunk in.

I started to sort through the documents. It took me almost an hour to get a handle on everything. Finally, I closed the lid of the laptop and slumped back in my chair.

“Bowdler’s company, Psibertronix, wasn’t just getting money from the government,” I said. “Like Cheater noticed, Bowdler has a couple dozen experiments running, all being
paid for by other companies.” I remembered the box in the lab, and the note that mentioned “our next round of contracts.”

“What kind of experiments?” Martin asked.

“Mostly attempts to find paranormal stuff. But here’s the thing. Every single one of the companies was getting paid by the government to run experiments. They’d all gotten government research grants.”

Martin shook his head. “I still don’t get it.”

“Me, either,” Flinch said.

I pointed to the laptop. “Can you print a file out for me?”

“Sure,” Cheater said. “Uncle Ray has an office downstairs, next to the kitchen.”

“It’s called ‘test_sites.doc’ I cut-and-pasted it together from the information in the research contracts.”

Cheater grabbed the laptop and dashed off.

“How can the government waste all that money?” Martin asked.

“They almost have to,” I said. “Suppose you had a ten-million-dollar research budget and you only spent fifty thousand. How much money do you think you’d get next year?”

“Fifty thousand?” Martin guessed.

“Right. That’s the rule. Use it or lose it. And there are so many different departments, divisions, and agencies in the government. Each one has a budget they have to spend.”

When Cheater returned, I pointed to the first entry on the printout. “Look at this. Ganelon Corp. Trace-metal sensitivity to paranormal emanations.”

“I’ve heard of Ganelon,” Cheater said. “They were in the
news last year for making defective ammunition for the military.”

“Hang on. There’s lots more.” I continued to read from the list. “Vidkung, Limited. Clairvoyant monitoring of dissident movement. Tichborne and Fawkes Industries. Investigation of Kirlian photography as a quantitative means of judging character. It goes on and on. Twenty-four experiments, running at nineteen different companies.”

“Vidkung was in the news last year, too,” Cheater said. “Something about bribery.”

Torchie yawned. Flinch was pacing. I could see from the way Martin was looking all around the room that he was starting to lose interest. Most kids didn’t care about politics or business. Put the two together and you got a deadly combination. I decided to give them the short version.

“They’re all owned by the same company.” I spread out the three pages of the printout. “Ganelon, Vidkung, Tich-borne and Fawkes. All nineteen of them. They’re all part of Roth-Bullani Enterprises.”

“I’ve heard of them, too,” Cheater said. “Aren’t there a couple former senators connected with them?”

I nodded. “Yeah. They’re one of the biggest government contractors around. Bowdler is providing them with a way to make a ton of money. And he’s making out nicely himself. He sells them the equipment. And he charges a fee for analyzing the results, along with a monthly consulting fee. As far as I can see, it’s all pretty worthless research.” I looked over at Martin, who knew more than any of us about psychic
phenomena. He’d been studying it ever since he first suspected we had talents back at Edgeview.

“Yeah, those experiments sound sketchy,” he said. “They were doing that Kirlian stuff more than half a century ago. There’s supposed to be some sort of mystical aura around people when you take a picture with a special camera. Nothing ever came of it. But I still don’t see how this helps us get Lucky back.”

I tapped the sheet. “About half of these experiments are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Delaware. A couple are right in Philly. We can get to a lot of them. If there’s one thing I know, it’s business people. I sat through plenty of dinners with company presidents, board chairmen, and majority shareholders when Dad brought them home. The guys who own companies—there’s only one thing they understand.”

“A free meal?” Flinch said.

“Nope.” I rubbed my thumb and fingers together. “Money. If Bowdler’s experiments start going wrong, and costing those companies a lot of money, they’re going to stop doing business with him. Right now, he has a nice little scam going. If all of that starts to disappear, he’ll be happy to release Lucky just to get rid of us and patch things up with Roth-Bullani.”

“So you’re saying we should start destroying stuff?” Martin asked.

“Especially anything with this on it.” I pointed to the last sheet, where I’d pasted a JPEG of the Psibertronix logo at the end of the list.

“I’m in,” Flinch said. “Not that I have any way to wreck
stuff, but I’ll be happy to watch you and Torchie cause some damage.”

I glanced out the window. “We just don’t want anyone else watching us. We’d better wait until dark.”

“Which means we have time for some food,” Martin said. “Right?”

“Yeah. We might as well eat. It’s going to be a long night.”

“I’ll see if Livy wants to join us.” Martin ran out the door.

“I’m not sure if that’s really sweet or really sad,” Flinch said.

“Maybe both.” We went down to dinner, but I behaved this time. I figured Martin had it tough enough without getting splattered by food. If he really wanted to try to get Livy to like him, I wasn’t going to mess things up for him. But even without my help, he managed to knock over his water glass twice.

When we got back to the apartment, I picked up the list of experiments. “He’s got something running on a cargo ship in the port. I’ll start with that. There’s a warehouse just south of the city. How about Flinch and Torchie go there while I go to the piers with Martin. Cheater can stay here in case we need to get in touch.”

Cheater and Martin nodded.

Flinch looked at the address on the printout. “No problem. I can find that.”

Torchie stared at me. “What do you want me to do at the warehouse?”

I grinned. “Do what you do best.”

“You want me to burn it?”

“Just whatever area has the experiment. You need to be quick. We have to make sure the fire is over with before any firefighters get there. I don’t want innocent people hurt. That’s rule number one.”

“But how will I know what area to burn?” Torchie asked.

I looked over at Cheater. “Got any binoculars?”

“Nope. But you can buy them cheap all around here.”

“Great.” I knew from my own experiments that I could move stuff I saw in the distance. I wondered whether Torchie could use his power the same way. “Guess we’d better get two pair.”

“Let me get them,” Cheater said. “I know where the best prices are.”

I gave him some money and he dashed off again.

When Cheater returned with the binoculars, I took them and handed a pair to Torchie.

He headed toward the window, then raised the binoculars in the direction of the building with the fireworks.

“No!” I grabbed his wrist. “Not in here. Take them with you.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. “Go out and destroy.”

“But I’m trying not to start fires,” he said.

Cheater patted him on the back. “Just do it. I’ll explain Utilitarianism to you when you get back.”

“Well, that gives us one good reason not to come back,” Flinch said.

We headed out the door and down the steps. “Be careful,” I said to Torchie and Flinch as they walked off toward the corner. “People are looking for us.”

“You, too,” Flinch said.

“Yeah, us, too,” Martin said. “So, we’re going to go destroy a ship?”

“For starters.”

first blood

AROUND 9:00 PM
,
we caught a bus toward Columbus Boulevard, which runs along the piers. “You really think this will work?” Martin asked.

“It will definitely get some attention.”

“Speaking of attention, I think Livy likes me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. She keeps coming over.”

“Maybe that’s because you keep knocking on her door.”

“But do you think she likes me?”

“Hard to tell. You could always use your talent to make her like you.”

“I sort of tried that. She doesn’t seem to care about compliments. Besides, it would be nice if she liked me for myself. What do you think?”

“I imagine it’s possible she could like you for yourself.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” He nodded and sat back. A moment later, he said, “I hope Lucky’s okay.”

“Me, too. I think he was in bad shape even before Bowdler grabbed him. It’s only going to get worse. Bowdler’s medicine cabinet contains all kinds of nasty stuff.”

“How can people do things like that?”

I shrugged. “Ever read a history book?”

“Not unless there was a gun at my head,” Martin said.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I guess I do. We’ve been killing each other ever since we figured out how to throw rocks.”

We changed buses and made our way to the piers. We couldn’t get too close to the ships, but I spotted the one that was on my list. It was a cargo ship. Bowdler was running an experiment that was supposed to try to detect any form of aggressive attack before it happened—I guess like an electronic version of Flinch. There were parts of the world where cargo ships were at the mercy of modern-day pirates. The first phase of the experiment involved using a bunch of different instruments to record measurements. It was total nonsense.