'Speaking,' said the voice.

'Oh.' Cadel took a deep breath. 'Look, I'm sorry to bother you,' he said, 'but I need to talk to Sonja. The girl in the wheelchair? She should be there now.'

'Sonja Pirovic?'

'Uh a yes. She told me she'd be there.'

'Hang on.'

Canned music intervened, and Cadel breathed a sigh of relief. The first hurdle was cleared. As the minutes dragged by, however, he began to grow nervous. What was going on? Wasn't Sonja at the library? Had something happened to her?

At last there was a click, and someone spoke.

'h.e.l.lo? Is that Cadel?'

It was Kay-Lee.

'Where's Sonja?' Cadel exclaimed. 'Isn't she there?'

'She's here.'

'I have to talk to her!'

'It's awkward, Cadel. She's right here, but that Dynavox a ' 'Did she get the photos? Did she see them?'

'Yes.'

'And?' Cadel couldn't keep the urgency out of his tone. 'Well? Were they the same guys?' A pause. At last Kay-Lee said: 'Yes. They were.' 'I told you! Didn't I tell you?' 'Hang on.' There was a brief interval, during which Cadel heard the m.u.f.fled noise of stilted conversation. Finally, Kay-Lee addressed him again. 'Sonja wants to know if that was you in the photo with the bald guy? You wearing boys' clothes?'

'Yes, of course, but a ' 'She says you ought to be an actor. She says you look like a movie star, in that photograph.'

'Well, thanks.' Cadel was somewhat taken aback. 'But that's not important. Right now I have to talk to her. Will you let me talk to her, please?'

'You know we're at the borrower's desk, here a '

'Yes, I know! But I have to talk to her! You don't understand! It's important.' Kay-Lee sighed. 'I'll have to hold the receiver up to her ear,' she said. 'So make it quick.'

'I'll try.' Cadel suddenly thought of something. 'And don't pretend!' he warned. 'Don't pretend, because I'm going to ask her something that only she would know!'

'Oh, for G.o.d's sake,' Kay-Lee growled. 'Don't get your knickers in a knot a she's not going to let me pretend, you idiot. She'd run me over if I did. All right, Sonja, it's okay. He wants to talk to you.'

Suddenly there was silence. Only it wasn't really silence. Listening hard, Cadel realised that he could catch the faint sound of someone's hoa.r.s.e breathing.

'Sonja?' he said a and she made a noise. It was a wordless noise, but it was unmistakable. 'Listen,' he continued, 'I'm going to tell you something. You can't tell anyone else. It's my father a my real father. The one in gaol. His name is Dr Phineas Darkkon, and after we're finished, you can go and look him up on the Internet. But not on your own computer. On the library computer a Kay-Lee can help you. Because if you do some research on Dr Darkkon, you'll realise why I'm acting the way I am. Sonja?'

'It's me,' said Kay-Lee, suddenly. 'She wants me to tell you something.' Another long pause, full of distorted voices. 'She says she knows who the man is,' Kay-Lee finally announced. 'And now I'm putting you back on.'

Again, the rasp of heavy breathing.

'Okay.' Cadel himself was breathless. He sat down on one of the filthy white couches. 'So you know who he is. Well that's who I'm trying to dodge, Sonja. That's who sent those two agents posing as policemen. Those two men are the man who adopted me and the man who's teaching me about computers. They're in Dr Darkkon's pay. You probably think I'm mad, but it's the truth. And he'll get you, Sonja, if he ever finds out we're still talking. That's why I have to . . . to get away. To find myself a hiding place. If I do that, maybe we can talk again. I'll be free then.'

His heart lifted at the thought. Free! He couldn't picture it a though he could imagine the feeling it would give him. Then Kay-Lee said: 'Sonja wants to know how she can help. Even though she shouldn't be a ow! Sonja!'

'Let me talk to her again.' Cadel waited until he could hear Sonja snuffling away at the other end of the line. 'Sonja? Listen. There's one thing I do need. One thing that you'll do much better than me. I need a conundrum. A mathematical conundrum. Something a something like the formula for pi, or a factoring puzzle. Something really, really clever, that will keep a brilliant mind fully engaged and distracted. Maybe something that one of your mathematician friends has been working on. But nothing widely known. Nothing that's been doing the rounds. Do you know what I mean?'

A pause. 'Yes,' Kay-Lee said. 'She's a hang on. She's saying "yes".'

'Put her back on.' 'I hope she didn't just agree to do anything stupid, Cadel.' 'It's a maths problem, all right? A maths question! Now put her back on!'

Kay-Lee obeyed. Cadel continued. 'I need it fast,' he said. 'As fast as you can get it to me. And you can't email it. You can't post it. Oh! Wait a minute a you can post it.' Cadel had remembered Abraham's post-office box. He gave the details to Sonja. 'My father doesn't know I have access to that address,' he explained. 'If I check it in a few days, I can always say . . . well, that I was doing it for someone else.' For Abraham, perhaps. 'And if everything works out, I might be able to email you sometime. Soon.' He found that he had suddenly run out of things to say. He had given her his instructions. Now all he had left was a strange, tired, weepy feeling. 'Is a is there anything you want to tell me?' he croaked. 'I wish we could talk properly. I wish we were on our computers.'

A clunk. A long break. After a lot of confusing noise, Kay-Lee addressed him again. 'She wants to know,' Kay-Lee sighed, 'if she can keep the photo. The photo with you in it.'

'Oh,' said Cadel. He couldn't help feeling pleased, even though it was an alarming request. 'The thing is, I don't know if that's a good idea. You really ought to destroy it. Just in case.'

More conversation: Kay-Lee's murmurs and Sonja's honks.

'She says she'll hide it,' Kay-Lee finally informed him. 'She says it's her payment. For whatever you've asked her to do a and I sure hope it won't get her into any trouble, my friend, because a what? Hang on.' Murmur, murmur. 'We've got to go, Cadel. We're hogging the line here.'

'Oh, wait!' Cadel cried. 'Tell Sonja a tell her . . .' Tell her what? 'Tell her I'll be in touch. I will. Tell her everything's different, now. I'll never do anything like Partner Post ever again.'

'Yeah, right,' said Kay-Lee, and hung up.

Cadel had planned to go to Strathfield next to check Abraham's post-office box. But that was now out of the question. He couldn't go there yet a not until Sonja had sent her conundrum. If he went anywhere near Strathfield post office, Thaddeus would hear of it, and the box might be plundered. He couldn't risk having Thaddeus find any sort of communication from Sonja.

So he headed straight back to the inst.i.tute. On the way, he reviewed his situation a something he was doing more and more. The trip to Abraham's house could be fully explained. Abraham had told him to fetch various possessions from the house and deliver them to the hospital. A trip to Strathfield post office could also be explained, if the occasion arose. And the trip to his old school? Well, that would fall under the heading 'Mrs Brezeck'. Thaddeus wanted Cadel to do something about her. Cadel would claim that the school trip was part of his cunning plan to sabotage Mrs Brezeck's attack on him.

Of course, having the excuse prepared was one thing. Presenting it to Thaddeus was another. While Thaddeus had often praised Cadel for being a good liar, Cadel dreaded lying to the psychologist. He had a feeling that Thaddeus would see right through him.

This was one reason why he had to get away. Quickly.

It was ten-thirty when Cadel arrived at the inst.i.tute. After letting himself through the front gates, he saw that everything was very quiet. Not a single figure was flitting across the rolling green lawn, or traversing the car park. The high walls surrounding the complex seemed to shut out every strident noise from the city that lay beyond them. 'C' block's steel roof shone like a flame in the sunlight, so brightly that it hurt Cadel's eyes. The seminary building, in contrast, seemed to absorb the light, its grey slate and brown stone providing a grave and dignified backdrop to one shimmering spray of water that arched across the lawn, jetting up from a concealed sprinkler head.

To the untrained eye, it was a serene and rea.s.suring sight. But Cadel's eye wasn't untrained. He saw the blinking electronic security lights embedded in the black steel fence posts that ringed the lawn. He saw the shrouded windows on the top floor of the seminary building. He saw the elaborate configuration of antennae attached to its turrets, and the black smudge beside one door, and the scowling faces of the gargoyles. He saw the glint of Clive Slaughter's memorial plaque, and the black van parked near the breezeway.

Cadel lowered himself onto one of the concrete seats placed on either side of the front path. From there, he had a perfect view of the whole campus. He watched as a small figure scurried from 'C' block to the seminary building, its shoulders hunched. Once again, Cadel's trained eye took note of a significant detail: the figure was dragging its right leg.

Yet another 'accident' among the inst.i.tute's rapidly diminishing student body, no doubt.

Cadel took a deep breath. This, he thought, is what I'm up against. This and the Yarramundi campus. I'll have to research that campus a perhaps even visit it.

Meanwhile, there was an entire teaching staff to master.

Hugging his backpack, Cadel gazed across the flawless stretch of green. There was a knot of apprehension in his stomach. He felt very small and isolated. He also felt as if the shadowy windows of the seminary building were staring back at him with a grim, hard-edged glare.

So he got up, and went to join Gazo in Maestro Max's cla.s.s.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Cadel missed half of the Maestro's cla.s.s, but behaved himself very well for the rest of the day. He listened patiently to everything Max said about genetic timeframes, and how the concept of aeons reduced the idea of good and evil to a mere nothing. He concentrated hard on the photographs presented to him by Alias, who wanted him to identify the same person in ten different disguises. (He managed eight.) He even earned Dr Deal's guarded approval by rattling off a quick but thorough description of the forensic applications of X-ray diffractometry, ICP spectrometry and infra-red spectroscopy.

'Very good, Mr Darkkon,' the lawyer drawled, eyeing Cadel in a quizzical manner.

'We've covered some of this stuff in Art's cla.s.s,' Cadel explained. 'Soft X-rays, gas chromatography . . .'

'Just because it's covered doesn't necessarily mean it's absorbed. I'm impressed,' said Dr Deal. 'Of course, forensic matters aren't the primary focus of this course. I'll be even more impressed if you can give me, at our next meeting, a one thousand word description of what const.i.tutes "reasonable apprehension" in the context of an a.s.sault charge, using at least three demonstrative cases. That goes for you too, Mr Kovacs.'

'Uh . . .' Gazo cleared his throat. 'Right a um . . .'

'It's all written down,' Dr Deal said smoothly, handing out his usual buff-coloured homework envelopes. Though never sealed, these envelopes were always used. Dr Deal seemed reluctant to expose any doc.u.ment to public scrutiny. Something to do with the legal mind, Cadel thought. 'I'll accept efforts up to fifteen hundred words,' the lawyer continued, 'but nothing longer. Thank you, gentlemen.'

Glumly, Gazo accepted the envelope. He wasn't coping well with the reduced size of the first-year cla.s.s. It left him very exposed, especially when Cadel was the only other student. The contrast between them was too stark. While Cadel was able to answer every question thrown at him, Gazo could barely manage to keep up.

'I'm gunna fail,' he'd said gloomily earlier that day after he and Cadel had been dismissed from Alias's lesson. 'I can't do nuffink right. I even missed the shoes.'

'They were easy to miss,' said Cadel, whose mind was on more important matters. 'I think I'll have lunch now. What about you?'

Gazo didn't seem to hear.

'Yeah, but what'll happen if I do fail?' he fretted. 'Will they send me back to England? Will they give me a job here? A cleaning job?'

'I don't know.' 'Cadel.' Gazo put a sheathed hand on Cadel's shoulder. 'Wait. I wanna ask you somefink.'

Surprised, Cadel turned his blue gaze on his companion. He saw Gazo glance around fearfully. Although they were standing outside, halfway between 'C' Block and the seminary building, Cadel understood his friend's caution. At the Axis Inst.i.tute, every blade of gra.s.s could be wired for sound.

'You don't fink I'll get the chop?' Gazo inquired, as quietly as he could in his sound-absorbing headdress. 'They wouldn't ... you know . . . do somefink? Just because I failed me courses?'

Cadel blinked. The possibility had never crossed his mind. Nothing, however, would have surprised him about the inst.i.tute. 'Why?' he said cautiously. 'Have you heard anyone say anything?' 'No.' Gazo sighed. 'It just worries me. Well, you know.'

'I know,' said Cadel, with complete understanding. He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then he shook his head. 'I can't remember my father ever implying that good grades were a matter of life or death. Not once. Thaddeus either.' Again, he looked up at Gazo. 'I wouldn't put it past them, though,' he confessed.

Gazo hissed through his teeth. 'What am I gunna do?' he muttered, his hands tucked beneath his armpits. 'I dunno what to do. If I run away, they'll find me for sure.'

Cadel suddenly felt a profound sympathy for Gazo. He knew exactly what Gazo was going through, because his own feelings were identical. When he squeezed his friend's insulated arm, he wasn't surprised by the startled look he received. It was the first time that he had ever touched Gazo.

'Hang in there,' he advised. Unable to explain himself further, he tried to inject as much meaning as possible into his voice and expression. 'Just hang in there, and it'll work itself out.'

Then he turned a before Gazo could reply a and went off to buy himself some lunch. Already he was regretting his friendly gesture. From a distance, it would have looked suspicious. Who else at the inst.i.tute would deliberately touch someone else's arm unless searching for a concealed weapon? At the inst.i.tute, people kept themselves to themselves. It was safer that way.

Cadel didn't linger long in the refectory. He was afraid that Gazo might corner him there. So he bought a can of soft drink and a ham sandwich, and took them up to Hardware Heaven, where he was surprised to find himself utterly alone. Even Com was absent. Cadel couldn't believe his luck.

The timing was perfect.

His first job was to scan the Axis network. It had been some time since he'd last piggy-backed on Dr Vee's regular sweep, and he needed to know the latest a particularly on Terry, Luther, Art and Alias. He was aware, now, that Terry had the vial. He was also aware that Luther and the Fuhrer knew this; Abraham had confessed to telling them. As a result, Cadel discovered, the Fuhrer had recently placed a 'code red' status on Terry, as well as on Terry's current girlfriend, Tracey Lane. A code red status meant that you were followed everywhere, your phones were bugged, your mail was X-rayed and your possessions were searched. Clumsily, sometimes. Cadel found several emails discussing a meeting that was to be held on Friday afternoon, involving Tracey, Luther, Adolf and Thaddeus. The subject of the meeting was to be Tracey's complaints about Adolf's 'intrusive behaviour'. Her office, she'd told Thaddeus, had been 'trashed' by the Fuhrer's Grunts. She therefore wanted to make an official complaint.

Cadel committed the details of this meeting to memory. Friday, three o'clock, at the Yarramundi campus. It might be important. He wondered what Luther was making of all the attention being focused on Terry. It must be awkward, because there was something going on between Luther and Terry. Cadel realised this as he sifted through their emails. The two men had become involved in some kind of secret experiment. They were sending cryptic, encoded little messages to each other. They were talking about 'poetic justice' and blood counts and tissue proteins. They even mentioned a 'perp', whatever that meant.

Could the experiment have something to do with Carla's vial? Cadel tried to calculate the probability factors, but didn't have enough data. If the vial was the subject of this mysterious experiment, it could certainly explain why Luther didn't seem to be putting any pressure on Terry to surrender the deadly thing. In fact he had even warned Terry, in a private email, to 'watch his back'. Luther, in other words, was undermining the Fuhrer's efforts.

And this was the kind of tasty detail that Cadel could use.

He thought for a while. Then, after adjusting his calculations slightly to take into account various recent developments, Cadel switched off his computer, turning his attention to Sark's instead. It was by far the easiest prospect in Hardware Heaven because Sark was sloppy. Though he was blessed by the odd flash of brilliance, Sark's boredom with the drudgery of daily housekeeping routines and security procedures meant that he often hung onto the same pa.s.swords for far too long, and was always leaving his encryption keys lying around. As a result, Cadel managed to bypa.s.s his firewalls without too much trouble. It took about ten minutes, during which time Cadel kept one eye firmly on the door. Though he only wanted to type a letter using Sark's word-processing function, the security measures employed in Hardware Heaven meant that this was far more easily said than done. Especially since he wanted to delete all trace of the letter from Sark's databanks.

At last, however, the job was finished. Cadel carefully wiped down Sark's desk and keyboard. There was every chance that he might have been filmed (the inst.i.tute being what it was), but at least the hard copy in his pocket had left no electronic echo on Sark's hard drive. It would be impossible to prove what he had actually been doing on Sark's computer. And raiding the programs of fellow students was a common practice at the inst.i.tute.

Having completed this final task, Cadel drained the last few mouthfuls from his can of soft drink, heaved his backpack onto his shoulder, and caught a lift up to the labs. His heart was beating too rapidly; he was thankful that the inst.i.tute didn't monitor physical changes in its students, or he would have been identified as a possible arsonist. There was too much sweat on his hands.

He wiped them as he stepped out of the lift, immediately aware of an unmistakable smell from the labs: a smell that hinted at disinfectant, ozone, harsh chemicals and blood. Cadel swallowed.

All around him, the hallways and gla.s.sed-in rooms looked deserted. He could see no one and hear nothing, except the hum of the air-conditioning system. Because he had no intention of searching the labs themselves (even if he could get into them), he headed for Terry's office.

Before he could reach it, however, Terry suddenly banged through the door that led to the fire stairs. He was carrying a box under one arm and a marking pen between his teeth.

'Cadel,' he said, after removing the marking pen. 'What are you doing up here?'

Terry's white coat was smudged and splattered with stains: brown stains, red stains, black and green stains. Cadel tried not to look at them. Instead, he concentrated on Terry's face, which was the nicest thing about him, all clear eyes and white teeth and laugh lines and chiselled cheekbones.

'Abraham wants his stuff,' Cadel replied. 'I went to see him yesterday, and he told me he wants his notes and things. His work.'

Terry blinked. He stared at Cadel for a moment, wearing an odd expression. Then he said, 'Just let me put this down,' and staggered towards his office.

As soon as he arrived at the door, his box hit the carpet with a thump. He fumbled through his pockets, produced a set of keys, and spent the next half a minute punching b.u.t.tons and swiping cards. At last the door clicked open.

'Come in,' he said, nudging his box over the threshold with one foot. Reluctantly, Cadel followed him in.

But the office, as far as Cadel could see, held nothing particularly sinister. It was just an ordinary office, full of filing cabinets. The only sour note was struck by a dead pot plant in one corner. It was a brown, shrivelled fragment in a block of parched soil.

'So you saw Abraham yesterday, did you?' Terry asked. 'Visited him at the hospital?'

'Yes.'

'I see.' Terry cast around, apparently looking for a place to put his box. Then he turned back to Cadel. 'The thing is, Cadel, Abraham died this morning. They got hold of me about an hour ago. It's very awkward, I can tell you. They're talking about the coroner's court, because they don't know what killed him. Thaddeus is throwing a fit.'

Cadel dropped his gaze to the floor. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Abraham, dead!

But the news wasn't entirely unexpected.

Cadel didn't quite know how he felt. Sick? Sorry? Sad? Scared? When you thought about it, Abraham had been a pathetic figure, chasing his unattainable dream.