Read Runaway Heart for Free Online Page B

Average.
          Sometimes she cried for her father as she watched him standing alone
against huge corporate bullies and government tyrants, sick and bloodied, but
unbowed. A squat little warrior with a runaway heart who wouldn't back down no
matter what; not when he was protecting the weak, not when the cause was just.
And yet somehow, despite all of his courage, she knew that to most people who
bothered to look, he came off as old-fashioned, silly, and more than a little
bit corny.
          Susan sat on the stone bench in the courtyard and watched the windows of
Cedars-Sinai Hospital turn orange with the reflected sunset. She couldn't let
her father die. She couldn't let him risk his life, but she didn't know how to
stop him. When he was committed there was no turning him back. She had tried
everything in the past: tears, begging, prayers, but he would just hold her
hand and smile sadly, because he wanted her, above all others, to understand.
He wanted her to get it.
          "Honey," he would say. "Some people are unlucky, and you
know why?"
          "Why, Daddy?" But she knew.
          "Because they have second sight. Or maybe it's just that they have
a better view. They can really see what's going on, while the rest of society
is out buying a new, hip wardrobe. But if you've been given this gift of sight
you must use it. It's bigger than any one life, certainly bigger than
mine." That was what he would tell her. If she went up there now and
pleaded with him to ask the court for a continuance so he could get the radio
frequency ablation, he would just smile sadly—mildly disappointed that she didn't
understand. Then he would tell her all over again.
          Herman Strockmire Jr. is the last great knight, she thought
proudly.
          She turned and trudged to the elevator for the ride back up to the
cardio unit, thinking that if she lost her father she would just as soon die
herself.
     
     
     
     
     
FIVE
     
    R oland Minton had taken a room in the new
Fairview Hotel, on the thirty-second floor, with a spectacular vista of the San
Francisco Bay. He always stayed at the new Fairview, because he thought the
place looked like a huge rectal thermometer jutting up into the San Francisco
sky, round and silver-tipped, its lone, mirrored spire flipping off the whole
town.
          He was
planning to hit the bricks later in search of some prime female tatta, but
first he decided to pursue the downloads he had cracked from Gen-A-Tec. Trouble
was, the more he studied the stuff, the lamer it looked to him. The bio-corn
file seemed like it was just low-grade PR, not the kind of sophisticated
technical material you'd put in a secure computer.
          So what gives? he wondered. He had just clicked over to the
e-mails and was fast-scanning the messages when something got his hackles up.
He couldn't pin it down at first, but something was definitely skeevy here.
          What was it? He slowed his scan and began to page the e-mails one
sheet at a time.
          Hold it! Stop!
          The e-mail he was looking at was a communique from the head of
personnel. He'd seen that e-mail before, somewhere else. He selected a
different e-mail box and searched through it.
           There it was again. The same
request to submit credit forms for reevaluation.
          What is going on here? Roland wondered. He tried a few more boxes,
and each one of them had the same e-mail loaded in with a bunch of other
worthless clutter. Come to think of it, none of these e-mails looked legit.
There were no letters containing specific project names, and that same, damned
e-mail from personnel was in a half-dozen inboxes. Okay, he thought. So
maybe the company sent this same request to a bunch of employees. Roland
switched to the outbox files and started scanning.
          There it was again!
          The same e-mail requesting credit forms. What is going on? He
could see how a group of employees could all have