Night Moves by Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik Page B

the AC control down a couple of notches. "Maybe your brain is froze. So how did Tyrone do in the boomerang thing?" It was not the most artful change of subject he'd ever heard, but probably Julio was right, he ought not to be worrying about this one guy in the desert. Go in with the protocols, hit their marks, and it would be a big anticlimax, they'd drag the guy in and let the head-shrinkers go to work on him. "Came in third."
"Really? That's pretty good for his first time, isn't it?" "Yes, it is. Beat his personal best, and he was prouder of that than he was the placing." "He should be. You're not so bad a father--for an old guy. I might have a few questions for you once I change my own status in that arena."
Howard smiled. He could imagine the first time Julio and Joanna's baby ran an unexpected fever, or spit up something green, or got colic. He'd made a few of those panicky late-night calls to his mother back when Tyrone had been a newborn.
"Something funny, John?"
"Oh, yeah. You at two in the morning with a crying baby. I'm going to have Joanna video it." Howard took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was normal operation jitters, he always got them before the guns went to lock and load. Maybe if he'd been in a real war zone with some battlefield experience under his belt, it would be different. He was sure it must be. Sunday, April 3rdQuantico, Virginia Jay Gridley sat in a motorized wheelchair, staring at two men playing Ping-Pong. His idea of lying around for weeks in a hospital if something happened to you was apparently behind the times. They had guys who'd had heart surgery last night up and walking today, pushing IV poles up and down the halls. Apparently, moving was better than lying still when it came to aftereffects of big problems. Some of them, anyhow.

His parents were on the way to see him. They'd be here this afternoon, and he wasn't really looking
forward to that. They'd be upset and wanting to take care of him, and he ... he ... uh ... What had he just been thinking?
Another surge of fear washed over him, coating him with another layer of sticky sweat. The physical thing, that was bad, yeah, but they said that would respond to treatment, and in a few weeks, he'd be his old self, could walk, talk, do the funky chicken; but his mind didn't seem to be working right. He kept running his thoughts together into a big hodgepodge, a slip sum and then losing them altogether. That scared the hell out of him. He could interface with VR with a bad arm and leg, hell, with no arms or legs at all, but if his brain didn't... if his brain didn't... Didn't what? He was afraid, and for a moment, he didn't even know why he was afraid, but then it came back. His mind. His brain. His thoughts weren't tracking. It was like trying to do calculus as you were falling asleep. You couldn't concentrate, couldn't keep the train on the track, couldn't... couldn't hold on to it! He had to get to a VR set and get on-line. He had to see if he could still do the most important thing in all the world. It wasn't just his job, it was his life. He couldn't imagine himself without being able to access computers.
He nagged one of the nurses passing through the rec room. He didn't try to talk, that still scared him, too, but he made the two-handed sign for a VR set: forefingers over his eyes, thumbs over his ears. She nodded.
"Sure. Just down that way and to the left. Come on, I'll take you."
He waved her off, then used his good hand to operate the wheelchair's joystick. He would find the computer himself. Plug in, and see what he could do. If he could do anything at all.
Sunday, April 3rdThe Yews, Sussex, England Major Peel leaned back in the chair in front of his desk in an office provided by his lordship in what had once been the groundskeeper's cottage. Three hundred years or so ago, during the Reformation, the cottage-cum-office had been built--as a Catholic church. In those days, with the Church of England cranking up to full steam,