It was coming from Sark. He could tell by the way Sark's hunched shoulders were quivering.

Cadel waited. He sat and stared at Sark's back until the older student glanced around a and caught Cadel's eye.

'Oh!' Sark seemed surprised by his cla.s.smate's steady regard, but recovered quickly. 'Having problems?' he asked, with the utmost innocence.

'You know I am.' Cadel got straight down to business. 'So what's the deal?'

Sark seemed to debate something inside his head. Then he shrugged again.

'Second cla.s.s honours if you can start up,'he explained. 'It's one of the Virus's little tricks.'

'Is it a test?'

'Don't ask me. Ask the Virus.'

With a sigh, Cadel turned back to his computer. The power light was on. The keylock switch was off. He sat thinking for a while, running through a checklist in his head. He tried a few more unsuccessful commands, pondered for a moment, and tried a few more. Then, with a grunt, he scrambled for the VGA cable.

By the time the Virus entered, some fifteen minutes later, Cadel's machine was humming quite nicely through a series of downloads.

'He did it,' Sark announced in a flat voice. It hardly needed saying. The Virus, who was looking sweaty in a bright, short-sleeved shirt, peered over at Cadel.

'Oh,'he said.

'It was the monitor,' Cadel remarked.

'Yes.'

'I checked the pinout a'

'Yes, yes.' The Virus didn't seem interested. 'Well done.' Having reached his own desk, he began to remove various objects from his briefcase: the usual box of tissues, a packet of throat pastilles, a bottle of eye drops, an ergonomic back pillow. 'Sark, show the boy his computer, for G.o.d's sake,' he added testily, and waddled off to refill the humidifier.

'When Doozy first tried, he had the whole box opened up,' Sark informed Cadel, with a smirk. 'Had the capacitor dismantled, and everything. Thought something was wrong with the switcher supply.'

'Who's Doozy?' asked Cadel.

'He's a b.l.o.o.d.y idiot, that's who he is,' was Sark's answer. 'Here. This is yours. That other one ait's just a b.o.o.by trap.'

Cadel saw, with relief, that the new computer issued to him was of quite recent vintage, and well supplied with hard drive, RAM, and so forth. He was able to start it without difficulty.

When the Virus re-entered Hardware Heaven, Cadel put up his hand.

'Excuse me a uh a sir a '

'Call me Vee,' said the Virus. He threw himself behind his desk with a groan of relief. 'What's the problem now?'

'Nothing,' Cadel hastened to a.s.sure him. 'I just wanted to know, am I allowed to install my own security?'

The Virus's fat face immediately screwed itself up into a grin. 'What, you don't trust us?' he giggled.

'Well a '

'By all means, Cadel, do your worst. It won't make any difference. I'll still get in, if I want to.'

'Yes, sir a I mean, Vee.' Cadel had his doubts about that. 'So I can download some programs? Right now? I brought them with me.'

'Oh, you can do that later,' the Virus rejoined. 'When I'm not here. Right now, we should try and do something useful, for a change.' He coughed, sniffed, and jabbed a fat finger in Com's direction. 'Sark, will you re-boot that boy? I don't think he's online.'

'Hey! Wysiwyg!' Sark threw a stapler at Com, without eliciting any response. So he leaned over and yanked the plug from Com's mains socket.

Com let out a strangled bellow, and the Virus clicked his fingers.

'I'm uploading here, Com, pay attention,' he said. 'You listening, Sark?'

'Yes.'

'All right.' The Virus blew his nose, mopped it and continued. 'You've both met Cadel. He's Dr Darkkon's son. I've mentioned him. I've given you the protocol. Com? Are you processing this?'

Com nodded.

'Fine. Well, Cadel told me at our last meeting that he was interested in hardware a molecular electronics, to be exact.' At the sound of Sark's m.u.f.fled sigh, the Virus giggled. 'So I thought, as base-work, we might all dust off our synapses and have a fresh look at neural network models. Sark?' (Slyly.) 'You got a problem with that?'

'No,' Sark mumbled.

'All-righty.' The Virus fixed his twinkling eyes on Cadel. 'I presume you agree with me, Cadel? That this is a good place to kick off?'

'Uh a yeah. Sure.'

'Good. Because there's nothing like starting from scratch, I always say. If you can't wire your own neuron outputs, you can't call yourself a computer geek, in my opinion.' The Virus bared his pointed teeth at Sark. 'Sark's always had a lot of trouble with low-level digital integrated circuit design. You had a hard time getting past your first NAND gate, didn't you, Sark?'

Sark muttered something under his breath.

'Doesn't like to get his hands dirty,' the Virus remarked to Cadel. 'Believe it or not.' He t.i.ttered, and Sark threw him a black look. 'A lot of my boys here, they can't calculate to save their lives. Throw 'em a recursion equation and they run for cover. Sally was different...' The Virus paused for an instant, before continuing. 'Sally was different, but she had other problems. Personal problems. Pity, really. She wasn't afraid of hard work.'

'Look a are we going to do this or not?' Sark snapped, whereupon the Virus giggled yet again, wiping his eyes.

'Yes, yes, I hear you,' he said, and drew from his pocket a tattered slip of paper, well folded, which he waved in Cadel's direction. 'So. Cadel. You want to get us started on this?'

Obediently, Cadel rose and plucked the paper from the Virus's hand. Smoothing it out, he saw that it bore a single equation: duiuidt Ri Tij Ri fj (uj ) Ii Ri n Ci = a j = 1 'On the left, you've got an input current charging a capacitor Ci to a potential ui,' the Virus drawled. 'On the right, aui/Ri is a leakage current and Ii /Ri is an outside input. What else? Sum term is input currents from other neurons. Your fj(uj) is the output of an amplifier. Your Tij /Ri are conductances. Oh a and the numbers Ri aren't resistances, just scaling factors.'

'Ri-i-ght,' said Cadel, his mind working furiously. 'So what do I do with this?'

'What you do is sit down and knock off a nice, simple layout of a basic electronic circuit for a neural network chip implementation, using that equation,' the Virus continued, clearing his sinuses. 'Nothing fancy. Just a sketch. Something we can all understand. In fact . . .' With a smile, the Virus surveyed his other two students. 'In fact, why doesn't everyone give it a go?'

'Oh, but Vee,' Sark protested, and Com sagged in his seat.

'No, no.' The Virus raised his hand. 'Fair's fair. This is good. It'll keep us on our toes. And if you don't like it, you know who to thank.'

Another tiresome giggle. As Cadel shuffled back to his desk, he intercepted a poisonous glance from Sark, and wondered if Thaddeus's message had found its way back to the Virus's students.

Did they know that Cadel was off limits?

Cadel profoundly hoped so.

SEVENTEEN.

'So how was it?' Dr Darkkon wanted to know.

Cadel rubbed his eyes. He was very weary. After four hours in Hardware Heaven, he had rushed straight to Thaddeus's office for his usual appointment. The Piggotts had given him money for a cab.

'It was fine,' he murmured. 'The Virus was great.'

'Ah yes.' Dr Darkkon nodded, so that his face disappeared from the screen for an instant. 'Vee's a talented man. I thought you might find him interesting.'

'Was he a did he have anything to do with my computer phone?' Cadel asked, and his father grinned.

'What do you think?'

'I'm not sure. Maybe a the early stages?'

'Maybe.' Dr Darkkon didn't seem eager to elaborate. He made a show of retching at the screen, which was floating in the bottom of his toilet bowl. His tongue looked like a blind, puffy, grey eel darting out of a hole. 'What were the other students like?'

Cadel grimaced. Thaddeus leaned forward.

'Surely Vee's weren't disappointing?' he pressed. 'I've heard some good things about them.' 'Oh sure.' Cadel shrugged. 'They were all right.' 'Some of the first-year intake is decidedly experimental,'

Thaddeus admitted. 'Gazo Kovacs, the twins, Clive Slaughter a they're a gamble, I must confess.'

'They're dumb,' said Cadel, flatly.

'Well, yes. But that doesn't mean they won't be useful.'

'We can't all be as clever as you, son,' Dr Darkkon wheezed. 'I hope you found it stimulating, though?'

Cadel nodded. He had found it stimulating. Almost too stimulating. He was exhausted a and confused. The Axis Inst.i.tute, though interesting, had also been . . . odd. Skewed. Off-kilter. Cadel sensed that he was failing to grasp it, fully; it was like an alternative universe, constructed according to a different set of natural laws that he was unable to define.

'What's all that stuff in your bag?' Thaddeus asked.

'Embezzlement texts, mostly.'

'What did you think of Brendan?'

'I don't know.' Cadel tried to sort out his impressions. 'We didn't talk much.'

'What about Deal?'

'He was cross. Because of the sprinklers.'

'Ah, yes.' Thaddeus made a face. 'It's hard. We'll have to fine-tune that emergency system.'

'Uh, Dad?' said Cadel. He didn't know quite how to phrase his next question. 'Do you a I mean, why do you think I should do Embezzlement?'

Dr Darkkon, who had been glancing over his shoulder, turned back to the screen and narrowed his pale froggy eyes.

'Why?' he echoed. 'Why not? Do you have a problem with it, Cadel?'

'Oh no.' Cadel retreated. 'Not really.'

'Because if you have a problem with it, then perhaps that's reason enough for you to be doing it. There's no gain to be had from an easy ride.'

'Cadel,' said Thaddeus. He waited until Cadel was looking at him before continuing. 'Brendan isn't giving you any trouble, is he?'

Though the psychologist's tone was casual, Cadel's heart skipped a beat.

'Oh, no!' he exclaimed. 'No, nothing like that!'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes!' Cadel had the feeling that if Thaddeus got the wrong idea about Brendan, Luther Lasco might soon be recounting another case study to his first-year cla.s.s. Brendan didn't deserve anything so drastic. 'I was just wondering why I'm doing Embezzlement instead of a I don't know, Explosives, or something. That's all.'

'Explosives are for grunts,' said Thaddeus. 'You know what your father thinks about bombs, Cadel.'

'Money,' Dr Darkkon added, 'is important. If you don't understand money, Cadel, you're at the mercy of your accountants. And they'll either rip you off or you'll have to hire other accountants to keep them honest. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.'

'Money can be very interesting,' Thaddeus concluded, watching Cadel closely. 'Some people find it the most fascinating thing in the world: the ebb and flow, the ups and downs. It's a system like any other.'

'I suppose so,' said Cadel.

'He's tired,' Thaddeus informed Dr Darkkon. 'It's been a big day.'

Dr Darkkon agreed. It was time for the boy to go home, he said. 'You'll be fine, Cadel. As soon as you get the hang of it, you'll be disembowelling banks and hijacking the International Monetary Fund like there was no tomorrow. You'll see.'

Cadel smiled, in a half-hearted fashion. For once, he didn't think his father was right. But he nodded and changed the subject, and was finally allowed to go home. Again, he used a taxi.

Upon reaching his bedroom, he immediately sat down in front of his computer.

Then realised that he didn't know what to say.

He was too tired to pretend that he was Eiran Dempster. In fact, Eiran was beginning to annoy him. The guy was useless a a lazy slob. Why did Kay-Lee like him so much? It occurred to Cadel that he was actually becoming jealous of Eiran, and he groaned.

What kind of idiot becomes jealous of one of his own fictional creations?