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down here in the corner of the screen.”
    Most of the numbers were meaningless unless you knew the code sequences, though under “identity” it said “head.”
    “We rigged it to say head ,” said the engineer with the crazed look.
    “Now move around the room,” said the other one. I moved, and the readouts changed. “It’s following you,” he said.
    I stepped behind Maggie and looked over her head. It was still following me, and when I came out from behind her, continued to follow.
    “Your personal characteristics were read into the computer, so it followed only you. We have it programmed for a single target, or it would have picked up Ms. Kahn as a second target and started a separate reading on her, while registering that you were eclipsed behind her.”
    “Neat,” I said. “Listen, what is this audio thing, and what use can you make of audio pickups if you’ve got two planes on diverging courses, each at, say, Mach 2?”
    “Okay,” said one of the engineers, slipping into a professorial tone. “You have to understand . . .”
    Maggie and the director excused themselves after fifteen minutes of it. I stayed for another two hours looking at the machinery and talking about the software that would run the stuff. It was not my field at all, but I could see the concepts. If I started studying right away, it would only take six years to catch up with what they were doing. The AI and game-playing concepts were easier, and we got tangled in a complicated argument about gaming concepts.
    We gave up at lunchtime, and I went looking for Maggie. She was in the director’s office working with a business terminal. The director was hovering in the outer office, pretending to supervise a harassed-looking secretary.
    “Ah. There you are,” she said when I walked in. “All done?”
    “Yeah. We ought to get a cheeseburger or something.”
    The director fussed over her as we went out, and shook my hand. As he turned back and Maggie went out through the door, his face flattened in a distinct look of relief.
    “I think that guy was happy to see us go,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “I scare him. Can’t think why.”
     
    AT ANSHISER’S WE went through the wait-in-the-sitting-room routine again, and I spent some more time looking at the Whistler. When she came and got me, I thought I’d figured out how he did it.
    “Maggie said you were a little worried that I might be nuts,” Anshiser said cheerfully, when we walked into his office.
    I glanced over at her and she grinned. “Yeah, a little.”
    “Good. If you didn’t, we’d be worried about your stability. But we want you to understand how strongly we feel about this. I think about it constantly. I can’t sleep, I can’t do business. It might be crazy. But we’ve talked it out and we don’t think so.”
    “So what do I do? Specifically?” I asked, dropping into his visitor’s chair.
    “First, we want your agreement that if you decide not to take the job, what we discuss never goes out of this office.”
    I wouldn’t talk anyway. Talk wouldn’t get me anything but a conspiracy indictment. I relaxed and crossed my legs. “Sure. If you want to take my word for it.”
    “Our research indicated that we could.”
    “I’d like to know about that research,” I said. “How did you find me?”
    “Dillon found you. Dillon is the best researcher in the United States. The Library of Congress calls him,” Anshiser said. “When we found out what had happened, that String had been stolen, we knew we’d probably lose the competition for the contract. Oh, we wriggled and turned and twisted, and talked to lawyers and patent specialists, and the answer kept coming up the same. So I assigned Dillon to the problem. I told him to forget any parameters at all—just find a solution. As it happens, there is one. Maybe. It just isn’t legal.”
    I glanced over at Dillon and the gray man smiled again. “That’s true,” he said.
    Anshiser continued. “To save