Ann glared at me.
“What kind of trick are you playing on us?”
I held up my hands. “No trick. Honest.”
“If somebody even whispers a rumor that two different people match to a single identity, we can lock the doors and go home for good.” She held her head in her hands. “Let me think.” After a minute she straightened up. “Val, remove that image from the computer. Scott, get that photo and those reader sheets out of the office. Nobody can know about this until tonight, got it? Not your mothers, not your best friends, not your diaries. Not even Mr. Morgan.”
Ann walked out of Val’s office, slamming the door behind her.
Val stared at her screen. Then she started typing. After a minute she said, “I’ve removed the images and the log entries from the scanner, the printer, and the match program.” She frowned. “What’s going on?”
“Not what Ann thinks,” I said. “You’d know after twenty-six hundred years if identities were unique or not. I’d say your matching program is either busted or dishonest.”
She crossed her arms. “How can you be sure?”
“Let’s figure it out.” I went to the white board and grabbed a marker. “We know it’s spitting out a bad identity for either my guy or for Feret. Our next step should be to run a control against a known identity.”
“Do me,” she said. “Once with your program, and once with mine.”
I wrote ‘test Val’ on the board, followed by ‘test Archie.’ “I’m putting Archie there just in case this only happens with overseers,” I said.
“I’m sure the match program is fine,” she said. “But let’s verify Mr. Feret’s eyes and make sure his images match.”
“Good idea,” I said. “How do we get the images?”
“Overseers’ records are publicly available.”
I wrote ‘test Feret’ on the boad. “We can also check your database, and make sure Feret is tied to only one identity,” I said. I wrote ‘check Feret hash’ on the board.
“That gives us four things to check,” Val said. Then she slapped the desk. “With all this excitement, I forgot to tell you about the correlations I ran this afternoon.”
She was checking for abnormal soul seeker complaints to see if the match committee had been compromised. “Did you find anything?” I asked.
“I pulled all the complaints from the long gaps of no overseer matches, but there was nothing abnormal in the rates, the withdrawals, or the resolution times.”
I sighed. “That was a dead end. I guess the match committee is off the hook.”
Val nodded. “It would’ve been no fun if it was that easy to solve. Let’s get going and do my eyes.” She reached into her laptop bag and fished out a yellow reader that looked just like the one Bob had brought to my house. She read her eyes, then flipped open the top and plugged it into her laptop. She copied the images off and passed the reader to me.
I looked at her screen and saw she had her identity showing. “Jeez, you’re quick.” I entered in the reader’s serial number as the password, and images of Val’s eyes came up on the screen. I aligned the eyes on each axis, clicked the delta button, and fiddled with the slider. The computed identity came up. I positioned my laptop next to her monitor so we could compare the identities.
“You match,” I said. “So now we know that your program isn’t totally busted.”
She picked up
Berry
’s photo. “Are you sure that this guy isn’t really Andre Feret in disguise?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know Andre Feret, so I can’t say for sure.” I pointed at the white board. “But you’re jumping to conclusions—we need to test Archie.”
She put down the picture. “Humor me for a minute. If we did jump to conclusions, what would they be?”
I shrugged. “With only this much data, we can only make intuitive leaps. I’d probably conclude that your match program only works for girls.”
She smiled. “Or persons under thirty.”
“Or for redheads.”
“Or blue eyes.”
I looked at the photograph. “Wrong,
Berry
’s eyes are blue, and he didn’t match.”
She looked at me. “
Berry
?”
Oops, I didn’t want to tell anybody his name just yet. “Uh, yeah. His name is
Berry
.” Good thing it was his nickname.
“So who is he?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet, Val. I’ll tell you once we figure out what’s going on.”
She gave me a funny look. “Why the secrecy?”
I didn’t really want to tell her that I didn’t trust her. So I pointed at the ceiling. “I guess I don’t know who else might be listening to what we say.”
“So?”
She wasn’t buying it. I had to try harder—
Berry
told me he lost his eye in an accident, and now that sounded coincidental. “If somebody has stolen
Berry
’s identity, he could be in danger,” I said. “I know it doesn’t sound like a good reason, but I think we should play it safe.”
She stared at me for a few seconds. “Okay, Mr. Security Geek. This is your area of expertise, not mine.” She stood up. “Let’s visit Mr. Morgan and read his identity.”
I pressed the elevator button, and leaned toward Val. “Ann said we shouldn’t tell Archie,” I whispered.
Val nodded. “We won’t.”
James brought us to the third floor. Archie’s office door was open, and we walked in. He stood staring out his back window. I cleared my throat to get his attention.
He turned around. “Scott, Val. What can I do for you two?”
“We are testing the new systems, Mr. Morgan, and we need a volunteer,” Val said.
“Count me in,” he said. “What can I do?”
“We want to read your identity,” I said. “Val’s showing me the matching program.”
Archie nodded. “Other than at the depositary, I have not been read in almost sixty years. How long does it take these days?”
“About five seconds,” Val said.
His eyebrows went up. “That is all?”
Val nodded. “That’s how long it takes to capture the images. Then we’ll use the computers downstairs to calculate the identity. That’ll be another thirty seconds.” She pulled the reader out of her pocket. “You can stand right there, Mr. Morgan.” She read Archie’s right eye, then his left.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” he said. Archie headed back to his window as we left his office.
Val and I got in the elevator.
James looked at us. “You two ride with me a lot these days,” he said.
“We do,” I said.
“Would you be interested in joining my frequent traveler program?” he asked. “Make five trips, and we bump you up to first class.”
“Most people here take the stairs,” Val whispered in my ear.
“They’re missing all the fun,” I whispered back.
Val smiled at James. “Sign us both up.”
James pulled the elevator to a stop somewhere between the first and second floors. “Wonderful!” he cried. He handed us two slips of paper. “Just complete these applications and we can continue.”
Val took his pen and filled them out. I looked over her shoulder; the form asked for our favorite destinations. “I like the dungeon,” I said.
“And the depositary for me.” She handed the sheets back to James.
James put the applications in his pocket. He pulled out two plastic cards and wrote our names in the blanks on the front. “I’ll stamp the back each time you ride,” he said.
James restarted the elevator, and we dropped to the basement. He stamped our cards, we got out, and we walked down the hallway to the dungeon.
We sat in front of Val’s computer. “I’m thinking Archie’s eyes will check out fine,” I said. “He just used the goggles with me to verify his identity at the depositary.”
“Maybe you’re right.” She plugged the reader into her system, then handed it to me.
I took the reader and went through my manual steps. The identity popped onto my screen, and sure enough, it matched the one on Val’s monitor. “Told you,” I said. “Archie and you are both fine.”
“So where does this leave us?” she asked.
“In the same place as before—we still don’t know why my friend’s identity matches Feret’s.”
She pointed at the board. “Let’s check Andre’s records.” She clicked through some menus. “I just printed out his official reader sheet,” she said. “I’ll be right back with it.”
Val walked in a minute later with Feret’s reader sheet in her hand. “Here it is,” she said. “Let’s compare.”
I pulled
Berry
’s sheets out of my laptop bag and laid them on the table around Feret’s sheet. “The left ones are from your matching program. The right ones are Ann’s.”
She leaned over the table. “So which ones match?”
Feret’s eyes were different than
Berry
’s, but there was no question about it: Feret’s official identity matched the one drawn by Ann. To be sure about it, we both calculated Feret’s soul identity from his sheet’s eye images, and they both matched Feret’s official record.
I drummed my fingers on the desk. “We need a photograph of Feret to verify that these eye images are his.”
“You’re still doubting him?” she asked.
“I don’t know what else it could be.”
She nodded. “Maybe I can find a photograph in one of our newsletters.” She went back to her computer and started searching.
I walked around Val’s office while I waited. I saw a tiny hole on the wall opposite her computer. The paint around it looked fresh. “Was there a picture here?” I asked.
She looked over her shoulder. “This used to be a conference room. There was a fire evacuation sign hanging there.”
The nail hole seemed a little large. I looked in it, and saw a glint of light reflected from the back. Was somebody watching us? I scrounged the bottom of my laptop bag and pulled out an old toothpick. I pried at the shiny thing, but I wasn’t able to dislodge it.
Tomorrow I could come back with a small screwdriver. In the meantime I broke the toothpick in half and jammed the pieces into the hole.
“Okay, I’ve found several photos of Andre,” Val said. “But none of them have clean eye shots. He’s either wearing sunglasses or standing in the shadows in all of them.”
Could an overseer really be here for ten years without somebody capturing a picture of his eyes?
Val pointed at the white board. “We need to check the database.”
I watched as Val opened the database program. “This join table holds current members, their eye images, and the soul line identifier,” she said.
“Where’s Feret?” I asked.
Val typed on her keyboard. “Right here.” She moved her finger over her screen. “And there’s just one record for him.”
I looked. The soul line identifier field showed 26, the same number that came up for
Berry
’s identity. “Can you see if there’s anybody else listed on the soul line identifier?” I asked.
“I sure can… the only 26 is Mr. Feret’s record.”
“We have to see your hash table, I guess, to look for duplicates.”
She pulled up another screen. “This is the matching table, the one with fifty million records. It’s got the identities and soul line identifiers.”
“Let’s search for soul line 26 again.”
She ran the search. “Just the one record. No problems here.”
I sighed. “I was hoping we could just write this off to a database problem.”
“My database doesn’t have problems,” she said.
“Your database looks fine.” I walked over to the white board and erased it. “Our four bright ideas are done and we’ve come up empty. How about looking at the match program’s source code? We can check out what it’s doing.”
Val printed out a copy of the code. We spread it out on the table and went through it line by line, but we didn’t see anything obvious. It looked similar to the code I had written to calculate the bluefish identity.
“The code looks fine,” I said. “But are you sure that this is the same stuff running on your system?”
“I can check.”
“Check the binaries, just to be sure.” I looked at my watch. “I’m going to have to go.”
She looked at me. “Don’t we have a date tonight?”
I grimaced. “I didn’t know contractors needed black uniforms. This is my second day in these clothes. I need to do some shopping. I got kind of tied up yesterday, if you remember.”
“I didn’t tie you up.” She smiled. “I’ll verify the program while you do your shopping.” She stacked up the source code papers. “See you at eight fifteen, okay?”
“Cool.” I got up to go, took a peek into the hall to make sure nobody was there, and gave her a quick kiss. “Are you interested in stopping by my place after Ann’s dinner?” I asked.
She kissed me again. “
Konyeshno.
That’s
of course
.”
“Wow.” I waved goodbye and left.
Bob sat across from
Elizabeth
at the reception desk. They seemed to be engaged in a serious conversation. “You guys need some time?” I asked.
He stood up. “No sir, we’re done. What can I do for you?”
“I’m on day two with this outfit. I need some more clothes.”
“There’s a mall fifteen minutes from here,”
Elizabeth
said. She gave us the directions, and Bob and I headed out.
“Can you help me understand something?” I asked Bob as we returned from the mall. I sat up front with him. Two pairs of black jeans and shirts lay in the back next to a box of cut roses and a vase that I had picked up at a florist.
“Yes, Mr. Scott?”
“Archie said that tonight’s meeting tonight was more than just a dinner.”
“Mr. Morgan told me that too,” he said.
“He also told me that others will be there. Val, George, and Sue.”
“That’s right. The whole team.”
“Which team is that?”
“Just a second, sir.” He pulled the limo onto the road’s shoulder and stopped. Then he shut off the engine and the lights. We were in a forest, and it was pretty dark.
“You’re getting me spooked,” I said.
I could see only his teeth as he smiled at my comment. “Sir, the six of us were hand-picked by Mr. Morgan. We’re a secret task force assigned to help him defend Soul Identity.”
I thought about this as Bob drove me back to the guest house. It was a risky strategy to rely on the total trustworthiness of all your team members. I wondered if Archie was aware of how Val viewed his stance on technology.
We reached the guesthouse at seven fifteen. I put the box of roses and the vase on the table and went into the bedroom to change.
I decided to ensure there would be no repeats of this morning’s cold shower. The water was fine, the pressure was great, and when I was done I wrapped the towel around my waist.
I filled the vase and carried it over to the table, but then almost dropped it when I stubbed my bare toe on a chair leg. Half the water sloshed out of the vase and onto the floor. I used my towel to sop it up, then left it hanging to dry out in the bathroom. I got more water and put the dozen roses in the vase.
My game plan had Val and me returning here after Ann’s, sitting down in the gadget room with a glass of wine, and listening to some music on the sound system. The roses would add a touch of class and show what a sensitive guy I was.
I carried the vase to the gadget room door and was careful with my toes. I reached in and switched on the lights.
George and Sue were on the reclining couch, watching the large screen television. Actually, George was watching, and Sue was on his lap facing him with her skirt bunched up around her waist. I had interrupted a very private moment.
Things happened pretty quickly after that. I shoved the vase and roses down to my waist to cover myself up. Water from the vase splashed all over my chest. Sue jumped up, turned away, and buttoned her blouse. George grabbed a couch pillow and put it in his lap, then stood up and turned around and fixed his pants.
I looked at the television screen. “I didn’t know you got those kinds of channels here, George.”
He grabbed the remote and clicked off the screen.
“I told you we shouldn’t use this room when a guest is here,” Sue said. She looked at me and smiled. “What pretty roses, Scott.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know who should be more embarrassed.”
“No need to be embarrassed,” George said. “We’ll be going now.” They headed for the door and I stepped out of the way.
Sue stopped in front of me. “I must smell these beautiful roses.” She bent down and sniffed.
“That’s enough, Sue,” George said. “We need to get ready for Ann’s party.” As he walked by, he winked at me. “Sixty-one years old, and still going strong.” He pointed at the roses. “May I?”
I nodded. “I’d say you earned it.”
He pulled out a rose and held the stem with his teeth. He started humming a tango, then caught up to Sue, put his arm around her, and danced her out of my quarters and into the hall.
I threw on some clothes and refilled the vase with water. I went back to the gadget room, put the vase on the coffee table, and raised the couch back to its sitting position.
It was ten minutes before eight, and I needed to get ready to intercept the phone call. I opened up the communications center and turned on the radio. I set its scanner to the cell phone frequencies and hurried to get my laptop set up and plugged into the signal.
I planned to use the scanner to grab the call and use the laptop to decrypt and play the message. Cell phone encryption sounds secure, but all it really protects against is direct listening by scanners. Any security geek with half a brain can decrypt and listen in on most mobile conversations.
The scanner locked onto the incoming call right on schedule. My laptop kicked in, and after three seconds I had enough data to decrypt. I clicked record and turned up the volume.
“…make this quick, as I have a meeting. Did Waverly get the present?” The man had a strong French accent:
Deed Wavehrly get zee pwezent
?
“No, sir, not yet.” That voice was the same as yesterday.
“Why not?” the French voice demanded.
“Tonight, sir. After his little party, he’ll have a big surprise.”
“Good.” The voice paused. “Make it bigger, he’s getting too close.”
“Yes, sir. It seems he found the camera.”
“Take care of it—now.
Quod sum eris
.”
“I can’t wait, sir.”
The call was over. I saved the recording in a file and put the laptop in my bag. Then I called my parents.
Dad answered. “How’s the work going?”
“Fine. These guys are in some dire straits. They may be bankrupt soon.”
“I’m glad they paid us up front,” he said.
“Hey, do you still remember your high school Latin?”
“Of course,” he said. “
Sola lingua bona est lingua mortua.
”
“What’s that mean?”
He chuckled. “
The only good language is a dead language
. You need something translated?”
“
Quod sum eris
.”
“Sometimes you see that carved into gravestones. It means
I am what you will be
. Where did you see it?”
“I overheard it,” I said. “Thanks, Dad. I’ve got to run.” I hung up the phone just as Val knocked on the door.
Val had dressed in shorts, sandals, and a halter top. She looked ravishing. “I need to see something on television,” she called as she walked into the gadget room.
A second later, she asked, “Are these flowers for me?”
I came in behind her. “Yes, but you’ve gone and ruined my surprise. They were for later on tonight.”
“Oh, Scott, they’re beautiful.” She gave me a big hug, then held my cheeks in her hands. “You are so sweet.” She kissed me and my disappointment evaporated as I returned the kiss.
She broke away. “I’ve really got to watch this.” She turned on the television and stared at the adult television channel. “Is this what you watch?”
“No, no, that wasn’t me.” I pointed at the screen. “I caught George and Sue on the couch in almost that exact same position just a half hour ago.”
She laughed as I described what happened. She counted the eleven roses, and said, “Actually, it’s good that George took the twelfth rose. In
Russia
, living people get odd numbers of flowers. Only dead people get even numbers.”
“So George did us a favor after all.”
“He may be keeping us alive.” She changed the channel. “One of our friends from
Maryland
is being interviewed today on the financial channel, and I told her I’d watch.”
The interviewer came on screen. “Our feature story tonight shows how a family-operated hometown business successfully repelled a takeover bid.”
The image cut away to a reporter standing on the side of a highway. “
Kent
Island
,
Maryland
. It’s the home to—”
“Hey, that’s my town,” I said.
“Shush, I want to hear this.”
The reporter continued. “This is Madame Flora’s, a fortune telling business located along the busy Route Fifty.” The image flashed to the front of the palm reading joint.
Madame Flora spoke on the screen. “They offered me a boatload of money, but I told them to stick it,” she said.
“Who offered you the money, ma’am?” the reporter asked.
“WorldWideSouls. They’re thugs, either swallowing up us little independents or forcing us out of business. And they’re fakes. Not the real thing at all.” Madame Flora put her face right into the camera. “I’m talking to you, WorldWideSouls! You’re fakes!”
The news show editors switched from the live interview to a previously taped background story on Madame Flora’s establishment. We saw pictures of the palm reading room and a small segment on the growing fascination that people had with learning about their future and their past. Then we were live again with the twins, standing on the highway a couple hundred yards east.
“Rose and Marie are Madame Flora’s granddaughters,” the reporter said.
They both giggled and nodded their heads. “We’re really proud of Grandma for standing up to WorldWideSouls,” Rose said.
Marie pointed behind her. “This morning they came and put these nasty billboards on both sides of Grandma’s business.” The camera zoomed out, and we saw the advertisements for WorldWideSouls, reading ‘Don’t trust your future to an itty bitty local. Go World Wide for the real Truth.’ The signs had an unflattering picture of Madame Flora with a big red ‘X’ marked through her face.
“Grandma fought back, and tomorrow the signs are out of here.” Marie grinned. “But the guys who put them up were really cute.”
“Hopefully they’ll be back to take them down,” chimed in Rose. They both waved at the camera as the image faded out on them and in on the news room.
Val shut off the remote. “These guys are terrible.”
“WorldWideSouls?” I asked. “Both Archie and Ann mentioned them to me today.”
She nodded. “They’re tough competitors. Flora may have stopped them this time, but they’ll be back. They’re ruthless.”
So I’d been hearing. “How do you know Madame Flora?” I asked.
“I use her equipment for secure video conferencing with my team here in
Sterling
.”
I shook my head. “No way. I saw that super duper communications device she has. It’s just a fax machine.”
She laughed. “She showed you her fax machine?”
I thought about that. “Did she pull a fast one on me?”
She laughed even harder. “Flora has her own communications center.” She grabbed a rose, broke off the stem, and stuck it behind her ear. She put a mock serious expression on her face. “Believe it or not, this rose is a secret Soul Identity camera.” She smiled. “Did you believe that?”
“No, Soul Identity uses only yellow equipment, and that rose is red.” I grinned. “See? I’m not as gullible as I look.”
She pointed at me. “And what color was the fax machine?”
It was beige. I groaned. “How did I miss that?”
She sat on my lap and draped her arms around my neck. “I’m still pretty impressed.” She had a mischievous look on her face. “Was this how George and Sue were sitting when you walked in on them?”
“Almost. Hold on.” I shifted her just a little bit to the left and pulled her in closer.
“Like this?” She was rocking her hips ever so gently.
I closed my eyes. “Just like that. Wow.”
I felt her lips nibbling my ear. “Was there anything else?” she asked.
“There was. Can you take off—”
The doorbell interrupted us.
I sighed. “Talk about bad timing.”
She got up and arranged her clothes. “George and Sue must have thought the same thing,” she said.
I opened the door, and
Elizabeth
smiled at me. “Time to go, Mr. Waverly. We can’t keep Mom waiting, you know.”
“Okay, we’re ready.” I grabbed my laptop bag, and the three of us headed out to the limo.
Elizabeth
got in front. Val and I climbed in back and found George and Sue sitting on the couch. “Thought we’d catch a ride with you,” George said.
Sue and Val looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
Sue held up her rose and pointed at the one still behind Val’s ear. “Now we know who shared that cold shower with you, Scott.”
Val laughed. “And we know how that twelfth rose was earned.”
Elizabeth
turned around and smiled. “Look at the two happy couples in the back, Bob,” she said.
Bob beamed. “Yes,
Elizabeth
. And we’re another happy couple up front.” He leaned over and gave
Elizabeth
a kiss.