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sounded eerily like Dottie’s voice. Not Dottie’s normal voice, but the voice Dottie used when she was really upset with him. When Dottie was being very, very clear with him about something.
    The Macintosh was reading a text file aloud. The bedroom’s faded walls, wallpapered in yellow race cars, were piled with battered white filing boxes. Many of the boxes had ruptured, spilling thick heaps of blue-stenciled engineering paper.
    Van’s grandfather, wearing ratty pink slippers and a pale blue terry-cloth bathrobe, came shuffling from the open door of the bathroom. He settled himself with painful care on a plain metal stool in front of the desk. Then he clicked at his candy-colored one-button Macintosh mouse.
    “Step one,” the Mac said in its female voice. “Attach C-1, Instrument Panel F, and C-2, Instrument Panel R, to A-1, fuselage top.”
    Van’s grandfather raised the arm of the lamp and made its beam hover over the desk. It threw thick shadows over the model’s jigsaw bits of gray plastic.
    Van tapped at the window.
    It was no use. The old man was hard of hearing. His eyes were going, too. His hair was gone, a few untrimmed snowy wisps. The muscle had shrunk from his spindly legs. His once-thick neck was bent and baggy, and his face, once so round, so red and beefy, was pale and creased and liver-spotted. Van was gazing through the window into a time machine. It promised him a painful future of bypass surgery, of bellyaches and Rogaine.
    Van reached into his cargo pants and found his laser pointer. He beamed the laser’s red dot through the window.
    The old man caught on. He rose from the metal stool and teetered to the iron-barred window. Van waved at him.
    Grandpa Chuck turned down the cheap window latch and tugged at the dew-spotted frame. The window was jammed. Van got a purchase on it with the screwdriver blade of his Swiss Army knife. The window jerked open an inch and a half. They gazed at each other through the bars.
    “How are you, son?” said the old man.
    “I’m fine, Grandpa. You?”
    “Not too good, not too bad.” Van’s grandfather scowled. His scowl was scary. He had been an important man, once. A man who gave orders and had them obeyed.
    “I know why you’re here, son,” the old man said, his pale eyes slitting under pouchy lids. “It’s about those Boeings. The ones that hit those skyscrapers.”
    “That’s right,” Van admitted.
    “So the CIA wants you back now, Robbie? I always said those spooks would have to come running back to you, didn’t I?”
    “I’m not Robbie,” Van blurted. “Robbie’s my dad. It’s me, Van. I mean, it’s Derek.”
    The old man’s face gaped. “Little Derek? Robbie’s little Derek? Derek the computer kid?”
    “Yeah, Grandpa. The feds are all over me. They want me to take a job in Washington.”
    Grandpa lifted a liver-spotted hand and smoothed the remains of his hair. “Well, you’d better come in here, then.”
    Van shook the iron bars. They had been poorly installed, tucked into the stucco with cheap Phillips-head screws. Five minutes with a power tool would have them all down.
    “Did you ring the doorbell?” the old man said patiently. “Mrs. Srinivasan should be making her congee now.”
    Surprised, Van retreated. He brushed dew from the hems of his pants and rang the doorbell to Duplex B. It was answered by a stout older lady in a Hawaiian blouse, purple slacks, and rubber zoris.
    “Oh,” Mrs. Srinivasan said, looking him up and down. “You must be Chuck’s boy. I’ve heard so much about you.”
    “I’m his grandson.”
    “You look just like him.”
    “Could I talk to Dr. Vandeveer? It’s urgent.”
    She opened the door politely. Van stepped inside. A glossy Hindu calendar with a technicolor goddess flapped gently on the wall. The place smelled of cone incense, Lipton tea, and tandoori.
    “Sorry to be so, uh, soon,” Van said.
    “He’s no trouble, darling,” Mrs. Srinivasan said cheerily, leading Van down a