He trusted Thaddeus, and admired him. Thaddeus was the only one who seemed to understand. If Thaddeus thought he should speak to Dr Darkkon, then he would a no matter how nervous the prospect made him.

Besides, how else was he going to get a look at that DNA-wired transmitter?

FOUR.

When Cadel turned up for his next appointment, he discovered a curious little screen mounted on Dr Roth's desk. The screen was attached to a very small box of circuitry, which trailed an array of fine wires. Thaddeus directed Cadel to a chair in front of the screen and began to fiddle with connections and adjust frequencies. Cadel watched him with the motionless attention of a leopard waiting to pounce.

After about five minutes, a crackling noise issued from the plastic box. Thaddeus said 'Ah,' and rubbed his hands together. The screen in front of Cadel filled with light.

A face appeared, then broke up again. There was a roar of static.

'd.a.m.n,' muttered Thaddeus.

'Are there relay stations?' Cadel wanted to know. But before Thaddeus could answer, the shredded signal coalesced once again, and Cadel saw his father's face on the screen.

It was quite a shock.

'Good G.o.d,' croaked a disembodied voice.

'Are you reading us?' Thaddeus demanded. 'Dr Darkkon?'

'I can see him,' the fuzzy voice continued. 'It's Cadel, isn't it?'

'That's right,' said Thaddeus, and nudged his client. 'Say something, Cadel.'

Cadel, however, was struck dumb. Reception wasn't perfect, and the colour was poor; his father's face looked blue. It hung on the screen like a big, blue balloon, bobbing and weaving with every breath that Dr Darkkon took. Cadel saw first one eye, then another, each embedded in a nest of heavy creases. Dr Darkkon had a frog's mouth and liver spots. His expression was hungry, his breathing loud.

'Cadel,'he crooned. 'Cadel. I can hardly believe it. You really are the image of your mother. Thad, can you believe it? He's the spitting image.'

'Mmm,'said Thaddeus. 'How are you, Cadel? Thad says you've been having a lot of fun, lately.'A sly grin. 'Playing with trains, and so forth.' Cadel swallowed. Then he nodded and licked his lips. He didn't know what to say. (This man was his father!) 'Mucking around with computers,' Dr Darkkon added. 'You like computers, don't you?' Cadel cleared his throat. 'They . . . they won't let me use them,' he stammered. 'Not the way I want to.'

'I know. I'm sorry.'

'I don't even have one of my own any more!'

Dr Darkkon shook his head and clicked his tongue. 'It's a shame,'he murmured.

'Can you buy me one?' Cadel asked hoa.r.s.ely, deciding not to beat around the bush. His father owed him a computer, after so many years of missed birthdays. It was the least he could do. 'I've heard you have a lot of money.'

'Well, I do, but a'

'Can you give me one with DNA wiring?'

'Cadel, it's not as simple as that,' Dr Darkkon said softly. His face lurched about on the screen. 'I wish I could give you a computer, but if I did the Piggotts would wonder where it came from.'

'I could hide it. If it was small enough. If it had DNA wiring.'

Dr Darkkon laughed. Thaddeus said: 'Too risky. Suppose they did find it? Word would get out. The computer companies would get interested. You'd have the world at your door, Cadel, and you don't want that.'

'No, you certainly don't,' Dr Darkkon agreed. 'If there's one thing I've learned, Cadel, it's that you must keep a low profile. You should never attract too much attention. Let Thaddeus guide you a he's always been inconspicuous.'

'There's an art to it,' Thaddeus conceded.

'But I want a computer!' Cadel protested. Tears sprang to his eyes. He had hoped that his father, by suddenly appearing, would be able to solve all his problems. 'Why won't you give me one?'

'Because I don't need to,' Dr Darkkon replied. He didn't have a nice voice a not like Thaddeus. Dr Darkkon's voice was high and scratchy and nasal, made worse by the distortions of the transmitter. 'Someone with your brains, my boy, shouldn't have everything served up to him on a plate, even if it were possible. Think. Consider. Work your way through this. There isn't anything you can't get if you're smart enough.' With a flourish that sent colours bouncing wildly around the screen, he added: 'Just look at me. They tried to take my son away, and they couldn't do it. I'm too clever to go without. Why should you be any different?'

'Because I'm not a grown-up,' Cadel replied, in sullen tones. 'Because I'm not a billionaire. Because I'm not in charge of an international business empire.'

Dr Darkkon chuckled. It sounded like water gurgling down a drain.

'Don't worry, my boy,' he said, leering across the miles. 'You'll be all of those things soon enough. I guarantee it.'

And with that promise Cadel had to be satisfied. Dr Darkkon steadfastly refused to give him a computer. What's more, though Cadel tried very hard, he was never able to obtain even the most humble laptop for more than a day and a half, because his withdrawn behaviour always alerted the Piggotts. It was as if they could smell the electrodes firing.

But he did achieve all kinds of other things, thanks to the encouragement he received from Thaddeus and Dr Darkkon. They opened up new worlds for Cadel. After that first conversation, there were many others. Cadel, Thaddeus and Dr Darkkon discussed all manner of interesting things, from gambling to international smuggling laws. Cadel's various hobbies were thoroughly examined. His ambitions were applauded. Clever suggestions were made. In fact, it was thanks to Dr Roth's advice that Cadel began to take an interest in Sydney's traffic flow a a far more complex, difficult system than the rail network, owing to its random and organic nature. Traffic jams in particular were a challenge to Cadel. He only gradually came to understand that a traffic jam is not the sum of the cars inside it. On the contrary, just as a human body can replace all its cells and remain a human body, so a traffic jam can have all its cars replaced by different cars, as some leave it and others join it, while remaining, in essence, the same traffic jam.

'Like my parents,' Cadel remarked to Thaddeus, on one occasion. 'You could replace them with two different people, and they'd still be my parents.'

'Your adoptive parents,' Thaddeus corrected.

'Whatever.'

'Meaning they're never around?'

'Hardly ever.'

'Just as well, don't you think?'

'I guess.'

'If they were around more, they might notice how interested you've become in the traffic reports on the radio. Not to mention automotive engineering.'

Cadel grunted. Though he was used to rattling around in the Piggotts' gigantic house, which had six bedrooms and five bathrooms, and lay hidden at the end of a long, leafy driveway, he could never get over the feeling that he deserved more attention. Not necessarily from Mr Piggott a who was just a corporate cog, uninterested in anything except a.s.set securitisation a but from Mrs Piggott, who was supposed to be Cadel's mother. Sometimes he wondered why she had decided to adopt a child at all, before remembering that all her friends had children (loathsome children, Cadel had discovered). It was possible that Mrs Piggott, being an interior decorator, had also wanted to try her hand at a nursery in her own house. She had certainly lavished a lot of care on Cadel's latest bedroom, covering the walls with storage boxes in shades of plum and mustard, designing a round 'dart board' rug, and converting an old wooden dinghy into a wardrobe. She seemed more interested in Cadel's bedroom than she was in him.

Cadel, who didn't feel comfortable in the room, spent most of his time in the library, or in the little guest-house on the south side of the pool. At least these s.p.a.ces had sensible, adult colour schemes and a calming arrangement of furniture. The colours in his bedroom made his eyes water, and all the Play School soft cubes and sailing-boat bed linen set his teeth on edge. Cadel had never sailed a boat in his life. He never wanted to, either. It was as if his bedroom belonged to another boy.

Cadel's interests were more unusual.

Over the next year and a half, Cadel amused himself in various ways as he mastered Sydney's road network. Such mastery was hard-won for someone with no drivers licence and only limited access to a modem. He made do by asking his current nanny to drive him around town every afternoon and weekend; by plundering the Road and Traffic Authority's information service; and by requesting several helicopter flights for his ninth birthday present. These flights, needless to say, were always taken during the city's rush hour.

He also kept a calendar, marked with events such as football matches, parades, races, festivals and school holidays. He paid particular attention to beach suburbs when the weather was hot, and tried to monitor roadworks on arterial routes. Busy points like the Harbour Bridge and tunnel were often his chosen destinations when they were most likely to be jammed up; stuck in a gridlock, his nanny would pound the steering wheel and give vent to explosive sighs, while Cadel studied the tunnel's electrical system or the bridge's signal array.

Meanwhile, his teachers had begun to notice a curious pattern in his behaviour. He would suddenly become intensely interested in a particular subject a mathematics, say, or chemistry a which he would pursue in great depth for several weeks before dropping it in favour of another subject. His teachers would find themselves dodging questions about the table of elements or modular algorithms, and once again the issue of Cadel's promotion to high school would be raised at staff meetings. One teacher in particular was very impressed by Cadel; he had twice given the boy a lift home, and had been astonished at his knowledge of, and interest in, the car's engine. But there were disagreements about Cadel among the teaching staff. Though he had a sweet little face, his mode of speech was very odd. He would calmly advise a teacher on playground duty that she was 'paying insufficient attention to nodes of activity in the north-east sector'. He would station himself beside the playground equipment and carefully note down every accident or injury that took place on it, explaining that he was 'interested in the energy flows'. When asked to write a composition about a cla.s.s visit to Taronga zoo, he produced a ten-page essay on the movement of visitors around its many meandering pathways.

'He shouldn't be here,' his cla.s.s teacher declared. 'Cadel just doesn't fit in. He never will.'

'You think he should be transferred to a state school?' the princ.i.p.al responded. 'A gifted and talented program?'

'I think he should be sent off to Harvard University. MIT. Somewhere like that.'

'Somewhere far away,' another teacher said and, upon receiving a quizzical look from the princ.i.p.al, added: 'I don't like the way he hangs around the office at lunchtime.'

'He's probably trying to grab a bit of time on someone's computer,' the princ.i.p.al suggested. 'Or he might not feel welcome in the playground. He doesn't have many friends, you know.'

'He doesn't have any friends.'

'It's a problem,' the princ.i.p.al admitted. 'But I prefer to regard problems as challenges. After all, it's not as if Cadel has ADD, or a personality disorder, or learning difficulties. Imagine how rewarding we'll find it, trying to unlock all his potentials.'

'I don't know . . .' Cadel's cla.s.s teacher shifted uncomfortably. 'It's not so much his fads, or his questions, or even his manner. It's just that sometimes, when he talks to me, it's as if he's studying some form of alien life.' She shivered. 'Have you read The Midwich Cuckoos?'

'Oh, don't be ridiculous,' the princ.i.p.al snapped, and the meeting moved on to other, safer topics.

Shortly afterwards, school broke up for two weeks. On the first day of the new term, the teachers arrived back to discover that every pupil was absent a except Cadel. When the a.s.sembly bell rang, only Cadel appeared, a small figure standing in the middle of a vast stretch of grey concrete. The sleeves of his jacket fell over his pale hands. The hems of his trousers were puddling around his ankles.

The sight of him there roused his cla.s.s teacher's suspicions. While the princ.i.p.al and deputy princ.i.p.al made frantic phone calls, she approached him across the asphalt, arms folded.

'What's happened, Cadel?'

He gazed up at her with innocent eyes.

'Nothing,' he said.

'Where are the other kids?'

He looked around. 'I don't know,' he replied, and shrugged.

'Did you tell them something?'

'What do you mean?'

'Cadel, how come you've turned up when no one else has?'

Cadel put a finger to his chin, scanning the grounds with a blank expression. 'Because I don't have the flu?' he suggested. Within an hour, the teacher discovered that a newsletter from the previous term had been tampered with. At the back, near the sports results, a notice had been inserted warning parents that the first day of the next term would be set aside for teacher training.

No one could ever work out how that notice had been slipped into the newsletter. 'It was on a disk I sent for printing,' the princ.i.p.al fretted. 'Could someone have messed with the disk?' 'Probably.'

'But why? Because someone wanted an extra day's holiday?'

'Which rules out Cadel as a suspect. He came to school.'

'Yes, he did. You don't find that suspicious?'

'I don't know. Do you?'

'I find it hard to see how anyone else could have pulled this thing off.'

Despite the concerns of the teaching staff, it was never proven that Cadel had sabotaged the newsletter. Of course the princ.i.p.al invited Cadel into her office, and pressed him for the truth. She flattered him, rea.s.sured him, and finally threatened him aall to no avail. Cadel knew better than to admit to anything. Thaddeus had warned him against it, over and over again.

So he simply sat there smugly, his feet in their expensive running shoes dangling a good ten centimetres off the floor.

Finally, the princ.i.p.al had been forced to shelve her suspicions. Three weeks later, she told one of her staff to do the same thing when he accused Cadel of siphoning the petrol out of the tank of his Nissan Pulsar.

'I filled it up yesterday morning. It was full. But I ran out on my way home. I was on the highway, near my turn-off a'

'Could there be a leak in your tank?'the princ.i.p.al suggested.

'No! I always check for leaks! Someone stole my petrol!'

'I see.' The princ.i.p.al frowned, drumming her fingers on the literacy reports. 'And what makes you think it was Cadel?'

'Because I've been giving him lifts home! Because he borrowed my owners manual!'

'Still . . .'

'I know it was him. I know it was. This morning he asked me if I was stuck in yesterday's traffic jam, like b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth.' The distressed teacher scowled at his boss. 'After all these years, I think I know when a kid's been up to something. It's an instinct. Believe me a I know.'

The princ.i.p.al sighed. She too had been caught in the previous afternoon's traffic jam, which had been of monstrous size. Almost three-quarters of the city's main roads had clogged up, for just over three hours. Footage on the evening news had shown impa.s.sable intersections, trapped commuters a even a car left abandoned in a three-kilometre gridlock.

It occurred to the princ.i.p.al that running out of gas on the Pacific Highway certainly could not have improved matters. But she didn't for one second connect Cadel with the chaos that had overtaken the city a few hours before.

Only Thaddeus knew who was really to blame.

'So,' he declared, when he next admitted Cadel into his office, 'I hope you realise that I was caught in your G.o.dawful mess, young man. I was stuck in my car for three hours on Tuesday night.'

Cadel blinked sleepily, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. It was hard to conceal his own delight in what he'd done a the colossal feeling of satisfaction. But he tried. 'Oh,' he said. 'I was told by a friendly policeman that the Harbour tunnel was closed because of a bomb scare.'

'Really?'

'That's why I couldn't believe, at first, that you were responsible.' As Cadel's smile faded, Thaddeus peered at him with hooded eyes. 'A bomb scare? Another bomb scare? Cadel, have I told you what modus operandi means?'

Cadel stared, his expression sombre.

'It means "method of operating",' Thaddeus continued. 'It's Latin. Perhaps you haven't come across the term. It's a favourite way of establishing who might have done something. A modus operandi, Cadel, is like a signature. You might as well have spray-painted your name across the tunnel wall.'

'That's not true,' Cadel muttered.

'It is true. Suppose someone connects the traffic-jam bomb scare with the rail-delay bomb scare? Have you thought of that?'

Cadel's chin dropped, in a characteristic gesture.