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               Tuck Season, Wabbit Season, Tuck Season!
                            Part 23
                              -*-
      Copyright 1999, 2012 by either Joel Lawrence or Ellen Hayes


Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual
persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when
used for satirical purposes.

This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and
possibly sex.  If you are legally not allowed to read materials
containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading
this.  I am not responsible.
Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it
in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally
allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish,
state, and country.

All rights reserved.  See the bottom for distribution rights.

***

     Tucker was starting to sweat as he followed Jane down the hallway
to some kind of hideous social torture chamber; it was over-full of
frilly fabric on over-delicate furniture, shelves and tables with
breakable 'art' things that looked like expensive crap to him, and a
rather old and fussy looking woman that barked, "Well, she's finally
here!"
     "Edith, may I present Valerie?  Valerie, this is Mrs. Edith White,
a very old and dear friend of mine."
     She looked very old to Tucker, and he recalled something about not
waiting for her to get up.  "I'm pleased to meet you," he said.
     The old woman's face twitched into sourness and he KNEW he'd fucked
up, even before Jane started in on him.

     "Well, at least this one has some dress sense," Edith finally said
to Jane about Valerie.  "You usually don't dress them so nicely."
     "Oh, Valerie picked that out all by herself," Jane purred, managing
to keep her irritation out of her voice, before sipping at her tea.
"Valerie, put down your cup for a moment so you can don your gloves to
show Edith."

     *Oh, BROTHER,* Melissa thought as the girl did what she was told,
completing the picture of what might've been Edith herself, way WAY back
in the day: sprayed blonde hair, almost invisible makeup except for her
red lips, big full skirt, short sleeves and almost-to-her-elbow white
gloves, large round white hat, and even a pearl necklace.  Entirely too
Fifties.
     *And this is working on my laptop?*
     "She's shown quite an interest in the vintage clothing field,
haven't you?" Mrs. Thompson asked the girl.
     Valerie's mouth quavered for a second before she said, "Yes ma'am."

     "Well, there's a vintage clothing store, near Providence," Tucker
sort of lied; he wasn't sure where the store actually was, but this was
Rhode Island, so everything was near Providence, as far as he could
tell.
     "You know, I think we still have some of my home eck patterns," the
old woman mused.
     "Home ec- economics?" Tucker half-guessed.
     "Yes!  Back when I was a girl-"
     *Back before dinosaurs evolved.*
     "-Girls had to take home ec and learn how to run a household!  Not
like most of the modern girls, who keep trying to act like MEN in
business," she sneered.  "I just don't understand why women don't
realize that their place is in the HOME."
     Tucker had a momentary involuntary vision of his mother picking up
the little tea table and hitting Edith White so hard with it that fleshy
bits flew off.
     But he noticed that the other, younger Mrs. White was starting to
steam.  He almost said something about needing two incomes in today's
world before he realized that since the elder White was obviously
loaded, she'd say something else nasty and stupid one way or another,
and it would escalate, and Tucker really didn't want to end up in the
middle of a knife fight; Jane would, one way or another, gig him for
being unfeminine.
     *Patterns,* Debbie said as she poked him.  *Stupid!*
     "Patterns?"  When everyone looked at him, his thoughts raced
desperately as he stuttered, "F-for th- the, the clothing?  Like you
made your own?"
     "Of course we did!  Or at least we had to learn how," she admitted.
Tucker managed to not nod; auld nobility like Edith White would put
entire towns to the torch before they would stoop so low as to actually
commit WORK.
     The older woman barked, "Dorothy!"
     *'Toto!'* Tucker couldn't help thinking, and then he had to hurt
himself to keep from laughing.

     "Well, Valerie," Jane said, cautious though trying not to sound
like it; there was no telling what Valerie would do, "wouldn't you like
some really vintage patterns?"
     "N-  Wouldn't that fill my sewing requirement?" she asked.
     "If done well," Jane agreed, relaxing a little.
     "Well, yah," Valerie replied, possibly trying and mostly failing to
remove the scorn from her voice.  Apparently, doing it poorly was
beneath her.
     "Hah!" Edith burst out, startling Valerie and Charlene into
rattling their teacups.  "I'd like to see you two girls in PROPER
clothing for once!"
     Before Edith could continue on one of her most cherished diatribes,
Valerie blurted out, "What's wrong with this?!"
     "Nothing!" Edith agreed before Jane could intervene, "But you never
see girls wearing such modest and attractive garments nowadays!  I'm
surprised you could even find THAT!"

     Tucker didn't like her tone; he thought that what he was wearing at
the moment was overly prissy and lots of other not-good things, but from
what he could tell, the old bat seemed to think he looked halfway like a
cheap street whore.
     *Maybe...* he reconsidered as she went off into some kind of hazed
clothing nostagia.  *Maybe she's just insane.  She seems to be
regretting the entire 20th century deeply.*
     *Note to self: do NOT let Mom meet this lunatic, or I'll have to
help cut the old bitch's body up and scatter the pieces.*
     He nodded to himself at the wisdom of avoiding anything that would
induce his mom to homicidal rage, which unfortunately seemed to
accidentally correlate with some point or another the old bat was
reciting, because she assumed he was agreeing with her.

     Jane had managed to deflect Edith into describing the fashions of
her day, which was far more pleasant than letting her complain about
modern clothing.  While Jane herself did look elegant and somewhat old-
fashioned most of the time, she also enjoyed the rare treat of wearing
jeans and a T shirt occasionally.  In one of her rare trips outside her
normal area, she'd managed to almost completely disguise herself from a
former student using nothing else.
     And, of course, the old styles of clothing were very often
impractical... and Edith seemed to be carefully not remembering such
things as 'house dresses', 'culottes', or even bloomers, which were all
reactions to the fact that women sometimes had to be - or WANTED to be -
un-dainty.
     Even if she didn't allow her students to wear such practicalities,
Jane knew why they existed.
     "Oh, you found them," Edith said as Dorothy came into the room
bearing a dusty cardboard box.
     "One of them, ma'am," she corrected.  "There were several other
boxes of patterns up there."
     "Well, let's see what's in this one," Edith said as she reached
over and patted the table.

     *Not entirely suck,* Tucker decided, after seeing a bunch of the
patterns Edith had pulled out of the box.  The envelopes were old,
overly-baked by heat and time, and fragile, but the pictures didn't look
too bad.  Of course, the front cover models were completely drawn, not
photographed, which meant you really had no idea what the thing would
look like when you were done making it.  But if they were anywhere near
close, like with the rough shape and where the seams went, he could
definitely see wearing some of these.  The crap like lace and ribbons
and overdone buttons and back zippers and fake pockets, he could hack.
     Making them would be another issue entirely, of course, but
apparently Miss Marie had a good workshop down there, and Tucker knew
just how much a set of professional-level tools made any task or craft
easier.  That was why his dad had half a basement of electronics lab.
     "Oh, this one," Edith said as she dislodged another dusty envelope,
and Tucker braced himself for the anecdote.

     Charlie debated saying anything to Valerie.  On the one hand, it
wasn't as easy to sew clothing as she was thinking it was, or as Mrs.
White was claiming.  On the other, she seemed like SHE wanted to do it,
AND Jane sort of wanted her to do it, and if they both agreed then maybe
they wouldn't fight so much.
     *Discretion is the better part of... something,* he decided.

     "You really think you could do this?" Melissa asked Valerie, unable
to keep quiet any longer.
     "Yes ma'am," she said.  "Well, not at first, I mean I won't be good
at first... but it's not that hard."

     Tucker didn't know why all the adults laughed at him, but he
managed not to kill any of them, nor did he throw up.  Instead, he
waited until they were mostly done, then put his cup and saucer down on
the table, grabbed his purse and gloves, and stood up while saying,
"Excuse me for a moment, I have to go check on that little problem of
yours," to the younger Mrs. White.
     "Valerie, you are NOT to excuse yourself unilaterally!" Jane
bitched.
     "Oh," the younger Mrs. White exclaimed, "but, please, Miz Thompson,
if she-  Let me go with her," she said as she stood up with the baby.
"We'll be right back.  Come on," she ordered Tucker as she started out.
     Tucker didn't want her along, but it was better than being in there
any longer, and if the disk was finished he could start another one and
get the rest of her data.  "Excuse us, please," he said as a parting
shot before he turned and fled.

     "Well," Edith said to Charlie after it was apparent that the two
had left.  "And what about you, Charlene?  You're going to be involved
in this sewing project as well, aren't you?"
     *NO!*
     But he already knew that Jane was going to say yes.
     "Perhaps," Jane said.  "She's already working very hard on her
academics as well as doing a great deal of the cooking lately, and I'm
not entirely sure she has enough time in the day to work on these as
well.  Valerie," Jane hesitated just barely long enough for Charlie to
catch it, "has a great deal of energy, and she needs some more to do."
     "Well, this could CERTAINLY keep her busy," Edith agreed.

     "Yes ma'am," Tucker explained, just managing not to roll his eyes
at the blonde woman, "I have to back it up first; then I disinfect your
computer; then I make another backup when it's clean."
     "Oh.  Oh, aren't you worried about the com- my laptop infecting
yours?"
     "No, I run Linux," fell out of his mouth before he could stop
himself.  "It's a professional grade operating system, not consumer-
grade like Microsoft puts out."  Actually, in Tucker's opinion Microsoft
was more 'fuck-you-up-the-ass-while-you-paid-for-the-privilege' grade,
but even HE knew he couldn't say that to a non-geek.  Especially someone
that was running it, and even more so because she'd paid him already.
     "And," he added, "anything that infects Microsoft won't infect
mine.  Anyway," he said to change the subject, "we came for tea; I don't
know if I can get it all done before we're supposed to leave.  Either I
need to take your laptop with me," he didn't pause because he knew that
wouldn't be acceptable, "or you need to get Jane to let me work on it
longer; either here, or we all go somewhere else.  I've got all I need
off the phone lines, I think," since his dad had had most of the drivers
her laptop might need, "but I need an electrical outlet.  It'll take
longer than the batteries'll last."
     "I think we could stay here..."  She narrowed her eyes as she
grabbed the baby again before it could escape.
     "I think the baby would like to go elsewhere, like a ice cream
place or something," Tucker suggested, smiling to show he wasn't
serious.
     "That is SO not on my diet," the woman snarled.
     "Well, my g- best friend says that stolen food has no calories,"
Tucker mentioned.  The laptop beeped and the CD writer's tray slid open
as he turned back to the computers.

     Melissa finally got Anthony and the rest of her baggage arranged
into something stable, as Valerie typed off and on, and then removed one
disk from the beige box's drawer and put in another and closed the
drawer before typing some more.  When the light came on and it started
whirring, she stuck the first disk on her finger and pulled out a marker
pen and started writing in code on it.

     "She's been a trial," Jane admitted.  "And then, I got a cold..."
     "Well, I certainly hope you're over it now!" Edith exclaimed.  "I
can't afford to get sick, not at THIS time of year!"
     "No, of course not," Jane agreed blandly.

     Tucker had to stop and breathe before he could walk back into the
gladatorial pit.  His instincts were telling him to run for it.
     "Oh, come on, she's not that bad," the woman said quietly.  "Well,
actually, she is."  That made him snicker.  "How much longer do you
think it'll take?" she asked over her shoulder as she walked into the
room, and then he had to follow her to answer.
     "Fifteen minutes on the second disk of the backup; about an hour or
so to actually disinfect the machine, depending on just how badly it's
infected. You've got at LEAST two, except I can get one out in about
five minutes. It's the other one..."  He shook his head; boot sector
virii could be tricky.
     "Oh, stop talking about such STUFF," Edith commanded.  "Valerie, do
you play bridge?"
     "Yes ma'am," he admitted before he could stop himself.  *Oh shit.*
"Not well, though," he semi-lied.
     "Well, good," she smiled, and he knew he'd fucked himself again.
     "I didn't know you played bridge, Valerie," Jane had to say.
     "There's a lot you don't know about me, Miz Thompson," Tucker said,
which made him feel a little better.

     That was entirely too true, Jane knew; and she didn't like being
reminded of it.  And Valerie had said it for just that reason, as the
hint of a smirk on her face showed.
     "Perhaps you could explain just what sort of experience you have in
playing bridge," Jane tried.
     That wiped the smirk away, instantly.  "Oh...  I... played with my
family a lot," she said hesitantly. "My family, especially my
grandmother, is big on cards."
     Edith asked, "Where is she?"
     "Montana," Valerie said.

     That was a complete lie, but New York was entirely too close, and
Tucker could smell the attempt to get him to rope in more bridge players.
He didn't know why; he could play, obviously Edith could, he'd bet Jane
could, and it couldn't be that hard to find a fourth.

     Jane thought the charity bridge tournament Edith was describing
would be ideal-
     "A tournament?  Is this for money?" Valerie asked.
     "Of course it's for money!  There's no point in-"
     "I can't play," Valerie interrupted.  "Not for money."
     "What?!"
     "And don't interrupt, Valerie!" Jane managed to stick in.
     Edith demanded, "Is this some kind of silly religion thing?"
     "What?" Valerie gasped.  "No!  It's just... I'm not good enough to
play for money, and I'm-"
     "Oh, posh," Edith snorted.  "It's just a hundred dollars, and-"
     "A hundred dollars!  No way!"
     "Valerie!" Jane admonished.  "Do NOT interrupt others when they are
speaking!"
     "I'm SORRY!"
     "Ladies!" Melissa called, sounding either desperate or amazed.
     As Edith turned towards Melissa, Jane said hurriedly, before Edith
could actually say anything, "Valerie, if your concern is the money
involved, I'm perfectly willing to back you."
     "It's not that, it's... when money gets involved," she said, "in
bridge, people get... ugly."
     "WHERE do you get such ridiculous ideas?!" Edith demanded.  "That's
the silliest thing I've ever heard!"

     Tucker was really feeling sick now, because Jane was siding with
Edith White, and even the other White looked like she thought Tucker was
a lunatic.  *Oh, gods, I am not getting out of this...*  The thought of
his grandmother actually playing bridge for that much money made him
sweat, and he vividly remembered the stories his parents had told, about
getting into a major brawl in college when someone had claimed his dad
had been cheating at poker.  Being hit with a chair HURT.

     *Every time I think I could guess at what she'll do next,* Jane
sighed internally, *she does something I NEVER would have guessed.*  The
girl was looking quite ill, as Edith continued explaining just how
civilized it all was and the pedigrees and reputations of some of the
other players.
     "Really, Valerie," Jane inserted when Edith had to pause for
breath, "I've been to several, and while it's a rather mannered group
and you would have to be on your best behavior," she couldn't help
adding, "no one has ever gotten out of hand, and certainly NEVER to the
degree you imagine."
     "So it's settled," Edith decided, and Valerie closed her eyes and
looked like she was debating whether to run to the powder room and be
sick, or be still and hope the nausea passed.
     "It's not actually that bad," Melissa assured Valerie, her bright
voice still managing to sound a little anxious.

     *Oh, well,* Tucker sighed to himself, *I thought I was going to
boot camp and getting the shit beaten out of me anyway... I just didn't
think it was going to be a bunch of bridge players.*
     *Not helping!*
     *I'll just bring knives... rich bitches don't usually think of
knives, and around here they won't be carrying pistols either.*  For
some reason, despite their revolutionary past, guns of all sorts were
deprecated in the Northeast, at least until you got up to New Hampshire
or Vermont or other polar locations.
     "Is that other disk done?" the younger Mrs. White asked.
     He looked at his wrist, which didn't have a watch because it
would've been covered up by the gloves that were sitting in his lap, and
gave up.  "Oh, yes, I'm sure it is."  *I hope.*
     "I really thank you, Grandma White, and especially you Miz
Thompson, for letting Valerie help me on this problem," the blonde said
smoothly as they both discarded tea-stuff, collected bags and baby, and
stood up.
     As Jane looked irked, Edith waved her hand and complained, "As long
as I don't have to hear about it!  These computer things," she shook her
head, "are just the most ridiculous..."
     Tucker left before he heard anything else.

     "Just keep them OFF MY ASS," Valerie intoned gravely to Melissa
before she started tapping on one laptop, then another.  "Oh, right,"
she said, and removed some cables from the beige box and plugged one of
them into her own laptop.
     "How long will it take?" Melissa asked.
     After several seconds, Valerie said, "Uh huh."
     "Valerie?"
     That got no response at all.
     "Valerie, answer my question," she said as she reached out and
touched the girl's shoulder.
     "What?" the girl snapped in irritation.  "How long?  Dunno, maybe
half an hour.  Lemme'lone."
     And that was all she said to Melissa, though she kept typing and
mumbling to herself, not loud enough for Melissa to catch.
     "Ehhhhhhh," Anthony whined, and Melissa recognized he was getting
tired and cranky.  *Just like me,* she thought sourly, as she hoisted
him to her shoulder and started stroking his back, which he liked.  
*Maybe the old bat has something like a crib...*  God only knew, she had
dozens or hundreds of relics from ancient history in the house, and she
was happy enough to show them off, at length and in detail.

     "Charlene, why don't you go with Melissa and assist her," Jane
ordered, and Charlie almost sighed out loud.  Valerie had managed to
grab most of the attention on herself, and he was happy with that; but
of course Jane wouldn't leave him alone.
     So he forced his face into something as pleasant as he could make
it and said, "Yes ma'am.  If that's alright with you?" he asked the
blonde, just in case she might let him escape.
     Melissa said, "Oh, well-"
     "She could use the experience in dealing with an infant," Jane
said.  "If you don't mind."
     "No, that would be fine," Melissa said to Jane like she actually
meant it, before she smiled at Charlie.  "It's Charlene, right?  Come
on," she ordered, and Charlie got up.  *At least I don't have to be in
here, with THEM...*

     "That other one, Valerie," Edith said, and Jane almost sighed.
     "Yes, but she's only been here... a short time," Jane substituted.
"Two weeks?  Less?"  It seemed like two months or more, but that wasn't
correct.
     "And is she REALLY interested in proper- I mean, 'vintage'
clothing?"
     "Oh yes," Jane nodded.  "And dance- you know, I usually have the
student take at least a minimal ballet class; Valerie instead wanted to
take swing dancing, wh-"
     "SWING DANCING?!" Edith almost shrieked.  "Good God, do they even
teach that any more?"
     "Apparently so," Jane nodded again.  "I'm taking her to the class
tonight; Darla took her to the previous one."
     "Gosh, it's been years," Edith reminisced to herself.  Jane did not
point out that it had actually been decades, and too close to half a
century; that would only make both of them feel old.

     "And a crib?" Melissa asked Edith's maid.  "Or a cradle?" she
thought belatedly, remembering which one was the smaller item.
     "Of course, ma'am," Dorothy said.  "I'll go get one for you.  Would
this room be suitable?"
     "Yes, thank you," Melissa said.  She couldn't shake the feeling
that Edith's 'maid' was somehow smirking at all of them; as if she was
actually running everything and merely playing a maid for her own
amusement, and laughing silently at everyone who didn't catch her at it.

     "What the hell..." Tucker commented.  He'd rewritten the Master
Boot Record, which got rid of Stoned and the other one; apparently the
other one had gotten there first and rewritten the MBR, and then Stoned
had moved THAT out to sector 7.  Usually virii didn't play nice with
each other; he'd have to send his dad a note about this unusual
compatibility, along with the byte-string copies of the two he was
already sending.
     He'd forgotten the 0x55AA end-of-sector marker at the end of the
MBR block, so of course the stupid thing hadn't booted, but that was
easily fixable, and now it came up in 95 - which was a separate problem,
but one he wasn't being paid to fix.  But there was an extra 150k of RAM
that shouldn't be in use but was, and wasn't showing up in the normal
listings.  "Three virii.  What a..."
     Apparently the woman was dumber than she looked.  A LOT dumber.
*Well, no backups,* he shrugged.  For some reason, the vast majority of
people were a lot dumber than they looked.

     Charlie wasn't prepared for the baby to spit at him, but he had,
and now Charlie shuddered at the thought of what the brownish goo had
done to his clothing-
     "That's why I carry an apron," Melissa - she'd told Charlie to call
her that - said, sounding nearly as smug as Valerie would've, as she
wiped the rest of it off the high chair's table.
     But, he was wearing the apron, he'd just forgotten about it.  "Oh,
right," he breathed in relief.
     The baby screamed and thrashed around in the high chair, doing a
victory dance.
     "Does he even want to eat at this point?" Charlie asked Melissa.
     Melissa just sighed and carefully rubbed at her face with her
fingertips, like Darla had shown HIM how to do a few months ago so's not
to mess up his makeup.  *So women actually do that,* he noted.
     "Maybe we just let him calm down a bit," she said.  "Say, you know
that other girl, Valerie, right?"
     "Sort of?" he admitted.
     "Is-  Does she know as much about computers as she claims?"
     "Ah."  Not like HE really knew, but...  "Well, she knows more than
I do, she came here with that laptop, she's-  She's got some kind of
recipe program or something that does ingredients- I mean, you can type
in the number of people and it adjusts the amounts, and I think you can
search by the ingredients you have, too."  Though he wasn't entirely
sure that's what she'd been doing.  "And, she knows a LOT of stuff.
I've seen her hook it up to a pay phone and use it like a fax machine,
too," he remembered.
     "How'd she do that?"
     He had to shrug.  "I've no idea.  But she even had something where,
like, she could sit on the ground, and answer the pay phone without
getting up.  I figured, if she CARRIED that with her...  you know?" he
substituted, because he wasn't sure what he figured, except sort of a
general competency.  But she nodded, unlike Jane who would've complained
over his verbal shortcut.  "What was wrong with your computer?" he
asked.
     She started complaining about it, and he understood the first two
sentences, but she didn't stop there.  *Why do I ask these stupid
questions?*

     "Sweet," Tucker commented as he copied the surveillance program to
his laptop.  Any time something was saved into the usual user's data
directory - not like Microsoft had done anything sane, like calling it
/home - or a web page was loaded into IE's cache directory, it triggered
a copy to a sort-of-hidden directory, and added the filename to a list
(or appended the URL and datetime to a different file, for webpages).
Which lists were delivered to a specific IP address whenever the
internal modem was activated and if that specific IP answered a ping
from the laptop.
     There was another large file in the hidden directory, probably
either an overlay, or data from a different part of the surveillance
program in near-binary because it wasn't executable or text-readable,
and while he'd saved it as well, he couldn't tell what it was yet.  He
was going to have to try one program after another to see if they made
any changes in the file.  He COULD make some sense out of it eventually,
looking at it in a disk editor, but the brute-force way was sometimes
faster, at least for simple stuff.

     While Edith had gone off to bed to 'rest' before her evening out,
she'd given Jane and her girls the effective run of the house, asking
her only to be quiet.  Which took fifteen minutes of complaining, of
course, but Jane could put up with that.
     Dorothy, Edith's long-term maid, had asked what to do with the
boxes of patterns - and she definitely meant 'boxes', because there were
at least three of them - and Jane had been unable to give her the keys
to Jane's car because, Jane eventually remembered, Valerie had the keys.
     She'd come into the hall, where Valerie was still mumbling to
herself and typing away on one or the other portable computer, and just
watched the girl for a few minutes.
     Valerie never apparently noticed her.
     Eventually Jane became aware of the incongruity between Valerie's
outfit and hat (fifty years or so ago) and her activity (laptops hadn't
even existed until this decade, and Jane had never before heard of a
compact disc recorder).
     *How very odd...  Anachronistic.*  For a few moments, she wished
she had a camera.
     She shook her head.  *You're being silly, Jane.  Get the keys from
her and put those boxes in the car, then find out where Charlene went
to.*  "Valerie," she said.
     She didn't pause, look up, say anything, or, in fact, appear to
notice Jane at all.  Her hands blurred in a burst of typing.
     "Valerie!"
     "Go'way," she grumbled, without looking up or slowing her typing.
     "VALERIE," Jane intoned.
     "I'm BUSY!" Valerie snapped, again without looking up.
     Dorothy came past Jane, patting her on the shoulder as she did, and
said to Valerie, "Miss, we need the car keys."
     Valerie actually snarled, but turned aside long enough to dig in
her purse and retrieve Jane's keys before blindly tossing them over her
shoulder; before Dorothy caught the keys (in a neat and precise
one-handed catch, Jane noticed) Valerie had gone back to her typing.
     "Miz Thompson, why don't we just leave her there," Dorothy said
with a calm smile.  "She's obviously concentrating on whatever she's
doing.  My cousin's like that sometimes; you'd have to kick the chair
out from under him to get his attention."
     Jane's stomach churned, but she had to admit that there was some
wisdom in leaving Valerie alone.  She hadn't seemed entirely conscious
of what she was doing, and, honestly, she'd likely have a loud and
irritating fit if she was disturbed, which would undoubtedly give Edith
an excuse to have her own tantrum, and Jane REALLY didn't want to deal
with both Edith AND Valerie going off simultaneously.

[Jane is, of course, misinformed about when laptops existed - Ellen]

     Charlie could admit that Anthony, the baby, was pretty adorable
when he was asleep, like he was now, in the antique bassinet.  *If he
just stays that way...*  So it made sense when Melissa tapped him on the
shoulder and, when he looked at her, held her finger to her lips and
then pointed to the door.
     He was careful to turn the doorknob slowly and open the door just
as slowly, and Melissa did the same thing to close the door after she
came out.
     "Shew," she breathed when the door was shut.  "He is such a little
pill sometimes...  Let's go downstairs and see what they're up to."
     "You're going to leave him alone up here?" Charlie blurted; he
thought that was a Bad Thing.
     "He'll be fine in the bassinet," she assured him.
     *Well, I guess,* he thought.  *It's special baby furniture, so I
guess they made it for that.  And she knows what she's doing.*
     "And don't make any noise," she almost whispered as she turned
towards the stairs.
     *No!*

     "Hmmmm."  Valerie's large backpack was right there in the trunk,
and Jane could either go through it, or dispose of it, as she pleased;
Valerie wouldn't be able to object until later.
     *Of course, then the objection would be... 'strenuous',* Jane
finished the train of thought.
     "What's that for?" Dorothy asked.
     "Oh, Valerie... insists on taking it with her, wherever she goes.
Including shopping, apparently."
     "Kind of big for an attachment transitional object," Dorothy
commented as she put the first box into the trunk.
     Jane wasn't sure she'd heard that correctly.  "Excuse me?"
     She put the second box in behind the first and pushed it into
place, then turned and grinned knowingly at Jane.  "Just a big green
teddy bear?" she suggested.

     "Oh, man, you fucking whore," Valerie growled, and Melissa almost
went over to slap the girl before she realized that Valerie wasn't even
looking up.
     "Valerie!" Charlene protested.
     "Piss off 'm bizz-" she spat before she looked up.  "Oh.  Miz
White, you've got a real problem."
     "I know that," she said, managing to stay almost calm.
     "No, I mean a REAL problem.  Someone's put in a surveillance
program in here.  It's been recording most of what you do, and sending
the records to someone."
     "What?"
     "Someone custom-wrote a program that would record most of what you
do on this computer, and send the details elsewhere.  And this computer
seems to have some kind of stock buy-and-sell program on it?"
     That was her husband's idea, so he could work from home or wherever
when his had been in the shop.  "Wait, what?"
     Valerie's jaw clenched.  "Miz White, someone's been spying on your
computer work, since I don't know when.  I'm writing notes, but I can't
print them out here; no printer."

     Tucker wished that the woman was tracking better.
     Melissa White apparently finished standing around with her mouth
open and said, "Someone's-  Someone's been spying on me?"
     Tucker sighed inside, but apparently the third clear explanation
had gotten through.  "Yes ma'am.  I don't know who."
     She looked around the hall, like she might find the person who'd
been doing it.  "Are you sure?" she asked.
     Tucker started to rub his forehead before he remembered he was
wearing makeup.  *I hate users.*  "Yes ma'am, I'm really sure.  If I'm
wrong," he added, "I'll give you all the money back.  But I'm not
wrong."  *Not two hundred dollars wrong.*

     Charlie just managed to get Melissa out the front door and shut it,
before the woman exploded in rage.

     "Well, yeah," Tucker said in reply to the faint screaming he could
just barely hear from outside, down the hall and through the door.
"That's a completely understandable reaction.  But it don't solve the
problem," he told the absent Mrs. White.  "Snip snip snip," he told
himself as he turned back to the computers.  Dad would be VERY
interested in this.
     Apparently, the monitor program wasn't related to the two boot
virii he'd found (or the Word macro virus he'd also found), but it had
disabled the 'anti-virus' program she'd had installed, which was likely
how the system had been double- or triple-infected.  And, of course, a
manually-triggered scan didn't find the monitor program, because it
wasn't in the signature database.
     Someone had gone to a fair amount of work to deliberately screw
whoever owned/used this laptop.
     One question was, 'Why?'  Another was 'Who?' but that was sort of
social engineering, and it wasn't too likely he'd ever find out.  'Why?'
might be because of the stock-transaction program; listening to someone
else's trades might be profitable, depending on whether the victim had
any clue as to what they were doing.
     The front door burst open and Tucker winced, because he was going
to have another immediate client meeting, and he wasn't good with
clients.

     "How sure are you of this?" Jane demanded.
     "I'll bet my fee on it," came the prompt reply.  "I'm gonna be
sending it- the program for analysis, 'cause this is an interesting
setup.  Oh, ma'am?" she asked.  "Are you a stockbroker or something?"
     "My husband is!"
     "That'd be it," Valerie nodded.  "You want to check his computers
at work, and his laptop if he has one."
     "Ooooooh-"
     "Mrs. White, you don't want to wake up the baby," Charlene said
desperately.
     "Or Edith," Jane couldn't help saying.
     Melissa choked her rage off, then stomped back towards the front
door.
     "You said," Jane said, "that you were sending it to someone for
analysis?"
     "Yes ma'am."
     "You will also give me a copy of whatever you are sending," Jane
ordered.  As the front door slammed, and before Valerie could open her
mouth and stick her foot into it, Jane added, "I have my own sources for
this sort of investigation."  *In fact...*  "Dorothy, may I use your
phone for a few minutes?"  She had a calling card in her wallet, which
would allow her to make a long-distance call from the phone here.
     "Of course, Miz Thompson."

     Charlie was left alone in the hallway with Valerie, who shrugged
and then went back to the laptops.
     "Are you SURE about all this?" Charlie had to ask.
     "Oh yeah, completely," she nodded without looking up.
     "How did you find out all of this?"
     She turned her head and gave him a look.  "I am a certified GEEEEN-
yus," she said, just like Wile E. Coyote in that one cartoon.

     "Fine, thank you," Jane said to Reggie (ex-Regina) on the phone.
"But I have a problem.  This new student claims that she's found a... a
surveillance program, on someone else's laptop.  Someone who- her
husband," Jane remembered, "is a stockbroker.  He's one of Edith White's
grandsons.  Valerie said that this program has been recording
information from a- a stock trading program, and sending it somewhere
else."
     "Oh sh-" Reggie cut himself off.  "Wait, this is one of YOUR
students claiming this?"
     "Yes, and I don't know if she's telling the truth or not."
     "And of course you've no way of telling yourself," Reggie said, and
Jane grimaced.  "Oh, excuse me, that was rude," Reggie realized.
     "At least you remembered," Jane allowed.
     "I haven't forgotten EVERYTHING I learned there, Aunt Jane," Reggie
said amusedly.  "Now, is there any way I can get a copy of this?"
     "Valerie is supposed to making a copy for me to give to you," she
said.
     "May I speak to her?"
     Jane debated for a moment.  "Yes, why don't you?  And you should be
able to tell if she's faking her knowledge, shouldn't you?"
     "Ohyeah," Reggie assured her.

     "Miss Valerie?"
     "Uh?"  Tucker looked up, and it was the maid.  "Yes ma'am?"
     "Miz Thompson asks that you pick up the phone and talk to her
expert," the maid said.
     "Okay...  Um-  D-  D-"
     "Val-"
     "Cork it!" he snapped at Charlene.  "I didn't say it!  Ma'am, could
I get something to drink?  Caffeinated soda if you have it, iced
caffeinated tea if you don't, or water.  Not coffee?"
     "I'll be right back.  Miss Charlene, would you like something?"
     Tucker disconnected from that and picked up the phone.  He started
to stick a finger in his other ear, but gouged himself with the
artificial fingernail and decided that piercing his eardrum was not a
good idea.  "Hello this is Valerie," he broadcast blind into the phone
mike.
     "Valerie," Jane said over the phone, "this is Reggie, a friend of
mine in computer security."  Tucker couldn't help going through a mental
list of people he knew, but of course he didn't know real names.  *And I
don't want to mention my handle either,* he realized.  *Any of them.*
"Please speak to him," she ordered.
     "Valerie?" an adult male asked.  "This is Reggie."
     "Mushi-mushi," Tucker said, for lack of something better.
     "Konnichiwa!"  *Cool.*  "So," the guy asked, "what IS this
program?"
     "Well, I found it when I was disinfecting the laptop- it's a Dell
Latitude XPi P133ST, running Win 95, 810 meg drive and 16 megs RAM," he
detailed, checking his notes.  "She'd been having problems with it..."  
Jane apparently hung up at that point.

     "A friend of mine who is in the computer security field is talking
to her right now," Jane explained to Melissa.  "If she's lying..."  *If
she's lying about that, she's going right to jail,* Jane vowed.
     Melissa just shook her head.  "I..."  She sighed.  "This is-  This
is unbelievable.  I mean, you READ about stuff like this happening,
but-"  She laughed sourly.  "I guess I sound like every other crime
victim out there, 'But I didn't think it could happen to me!'  Damnit.
Is Valerie really good enough to, to fix this?"
     "Reggie will tell me, and I ASSURE you I'll tell you," Jane
affirmed.

     Reggie had a whole bunch of questions to ask Jane, like 'WHY did
you let some student of yours play with a laptop instead of taking tea
with Edith White?'  HE hadn't been offered that choice, and his memories
of tea with Edith White still made him shudder.
     But Valerie had answered all of the computer questions she could,
and accurately enough that Reggie thought she knew what she was talking
about.  He was also a little hurt that Jane hadn't mentioned that her
newest student was there for computer crime, or at least that was far
and away the most likely reason.  *Could've been alcohol or drugs, I
guess,* he admitted, as he waited for Jane to come back to the phone.
He'd gotten fucked up with friends more than once before he'd gone to
Jane's, though that wasn't what had gotten him in legal trouble.
     So basically the only thing left was to talk to Jane again, then
wait for Valerie to burn another copy of the hard drive - though she'd
altered it from its original state, she said she had enough CD-Rs and a
powerful enough laptop (and where did she get a LAPTOP?  AND a CD
recorder?) to make another copy of the original backup, the one she'd
made before she started.  And then Jane could FedEx the disks to him.
     He wished like hell that Valerie could get to a T1, somewhere in
Rhode Island, but he didn't know where one was, or how she could get
access to it, and he was NOT going to wait for a 650Mbyte compact disk
to churn through a 0.00336Mbyte/second modem.  *Hrm, how-*
     202,971.something seconds, said his calculator.  Which was 3,383
minutes, or about 56.4 hours.  And that was assuming no disconnects or
line noise errors, which was unbelievably optimistic.

     Jane checked her watch, and time was starting to press, especially
if she took the children to a restaurant so they could eat before they
had dance class.  Edith had served low tea, of course, but that wasn't
all that filling or nutritious.  "Would tomorrow be acceptable?" she
asked Reggie.
     "Oh, yes, that'd be fine, Aunt Jane," he agreed.
     "What about," Jane remembered, "her suggestion that 'someone' look
over the other computers that might be involved.  Her- Melissa's husband
Julian has an investing firm that I recall uses computers."
     "Oh."  *That does NOT sound good.*  "As soon as is practical.  Ah,
I don't think I can come out there until, oh, God, Wednesday at the
earliest-  Hey, put Valerie back on for a minute."
     "What?"
     "I had an idea," he said.  "Let me talk to her."

     "Well, sure," Tucker agreed.  "You still want me to make the copy
of the original disk disks," which made him smile, "right?"
     "Miz Thompson said she'd FedEx them tomorrow, so you can do it by
then, right?"
     "As long as she knows I have to watch the recorder.  I mean I
don't literally, but you know how sensitive they are to vibration and
stuff, not to mention what happens if some jackass turns-"
     "Valerie!"
     He yanked the handset away from his face and yelled, "Sorry!"
"-Turns the power off or unplugs it, or bumps it" he said to Reggie.
Then he realized that Jane was actually on the phone circuit, not
physically in the hallway.  *Whoops.*
     "Right right," the guy agreed.
     "So, as soon as you give me a phone number, I can send the notes
and the program to you, I think.  I don't have all the registry entries
copied yet, you want that too?"
     "Yeah, that, an- was there anything in the boot files, like
AUTOEXEC.BAT or IO.SYS, or-"
     "No, those all checked out as original, byte-for-byte, for 95,"
Tucker said.  "I mean the binaries did; the config files looked okay,
nothing strange in 'em."  There hadn't been much good in them either;
Dell was apparently run by lamers.  "Also, everything referenced in the
config files w- I mean, the DOS config files, was legit, no byte diffs.
I was gonna run a diff on the Windows files, but I haven't had time
yet."
     "Right," Reggie agreed.
     "The MBR was kinda borked, but I think that was from the other
virii; the surveillance trojan ran without complaining or choking that I
could tell, after I redid the MBR."
     "Okay."
     "You're taking notes, right?" Tucker asked.
     "Duh!  But you're gonna mail me a log, right?"
     Tucker groaned.  "Yes, but if you complain about my English grammar
and stuff I'll SWEAR I'll fdisk your brain with a Marx generator."

     Jane had opened her mouth to verbally lash Valerie for threatening
Reggie, but she hadn't even UNDERSTOOD what Valerie was threatening him
with.  And then she heard Reggie's laugh, before he said something else
in a retort that she didn't understand either, and then he was giving
them the phone number Valerie would have the computer call to send the
information she had at the moment.
     "Miz Thompson?" Melissa asked loudly from the side.  Jane moved the
phone away from her ear, and she requested, "May I speak to your expert?
Please?"
     "Just a moment," Jane said to her.  "Reggie, would it be possible
for you to talk to Melissa for a few minutes?"
     "Not unless she has a cellphone or there's another phone line in
the house," he said.  "I need to use the modem for a while."
     "I could wait to send the stuff?" Valerie offered.
     "No, I need that A.S.A.P.," Reggie countered.
     Jane moved the handset away from her mouth and asked Dorothy, "Is
there a second phone line in the house?"
     As Dorothy was shaking her head, Melissa offered, "I have a
cellphone in my car."
     "She says she has a cellphone in her car," Jane repeated into the
phone.
     "Perfect," Reggie said,  "Give me the number and I'll call in say
five minutes?  Valerie, whenever they all hang up, can you start the
transfer from yours?"
     "Aye-aye," Valerie said, which Jane thought was agreement.  "As
soon as the line's clear.  Miz Thompson, could you ask everyone to stay
off the phone for a while?  If anyone picks it up, it'll interrupt the
transfer."
     "How long will it take?" Jane asked.
     "Um-"
     "Valerie!" Jane admonished.  "Proper ladies do not go 'um'!"

     Tucker winced, but held the ear-side of the headset away from his
ear until he thought she was done.  "Yes ma'am, sorry ma'am."  Now he
couldn't remember what she'd asked.
     "About forty to sixty minutes," Reggie said.  *Oh, right, transfer
time.*
     "That's too long," Jane sighed.  "I don't think there's any way to
keep Edith off the phone that long."
     Tucker didn't really care, one way or the other, which was kind of
nice; but what he wanted to do was start picking this thing apart, and
dealing with clients and everyone else was keeping him from doing that.

     *If I'm not terrified, I'm bored,* Charlie realized, not for the
first time.  He didn't enjoy going to see his grandparents' relatives
either, or standing or sitting around in their houses while the adults
talked about things he knew nothing about.  *I wish we could go do
something else...  Even dance class would be-*
     "Miz Thompson?  Dance class?" he reminded her.

     "So we'll go home, Valerie can set up her computer there- and don't
forget to do your check-in at that time," Jane told Valerie.  Valerie
had been very vague about what would happen if she failed to check in
daily, which was probably deliberately calculated to be more worrisome
than any direct threat.  Unfortunately, it worked.  "Then you can send
the files to Reggie, he checks them, and if it checks out, Reggie will
call Melissa and then us.  Right?"
     "Yes ma'am," the two said at about the same time.
     *So do we go out to eat, like I'd planned, or do I call Marie from
here and tell her to expect another three for supper tonight?*

     *Suuuuure I'll check in when we get home, hours early,* Tucker
thought but didn't say; there was no way he was going to give Jane even
ten minutes extra head start on torturing him.  *Not like she has so
far,* he was forced to admit to himself, *but 7 P's.*

     "I dare you to wear jeans or shorts down to supper," Kenneth
grinned, and Darryl glared back.
     Until he remembered a pair of shorts he probably should've returned
but hadn't, and started to grin instead.  "I'll take that dare, but you
have to wear shorts too," he smirked.
     Kenneth frowned.  "I'm not sure I have a pair with me...  Maybe..."
He got up to go look through his baggage.
     "You could borrow a pair from ME," he suggested.
     Kenneth stopped and glared at him.  "And they would undoubtedly be
hot pink and almost as short as Valerie's bikini bottom."
     Darryl gasped, "I wouldn't do that to you!"  They were lime green,
and they did have actual legs.  Kind of.
     "Besides, anything you have is NOT going to fit me nowadays,"
Kenneth said as he stood up and pulled up his shirt.
     "Wow," Darryl said, as he looked at Kenneth's abdominal six-pack.
"I guess not..."

     "Dance cl-  Oh, right," Tucker said as he remembered.  "Oh, and I
need to change...  Should I go find a bathroom and do it here?"
     "No," Jane said, "we'll be leaving home again to go out to eat,
after you do your computer things and change clothes."  Tucker had to
repress his grin at her 'computer things'.

     "Miss Jane and entourage will be returning for a few minutes,"
Marie announced to the other three.  "Apparently Valerie did something
to a computer, and she needs to come here and use the phone and some
other things.  They'll be leaving almost immediately, and going out to
eat and then to dance class."
     "Her computer?" Darla asked.
     Marie had to shrug.  "Jane sounded rather rushed.  Ask her when she
arrives."

     "No, someone else's-  Look," Tucker complained, "I have to set this
up, then we have to beat it to make a reserv- a dinner reservation," he
explained, "and then we have to go to dance class.  I don't have time.
Could you ask me later?  Please?" he just barely remembered to say.
     Darla looked like she was going to argue with him, but he didn't
have time for that either.  And maybe she realized that at the last
instant, because she didn't start.

     "That's a bit mature for you," Jane judged, "but I suppose it will
do."  Valerie was wearing a black shantung silk princess-seamed cocktail
dress that had a short A-line skirt, three rhinestone buttons on the
bodice, and cap sleeves.  Jane wasn't entirely sure when the dress had
been made, but with the white gloves, the gray and black cocktail hat,
and the black vintage-looking pumps she'd gotten from the dance clothing
store, along with the sparse but bold makeup, it did look rather
wartime.
     "Thank you Miz Th-"
     "Oh, weren't you wearing that Tuesday night?" Darla commented as
she popped in.
     "We didn't have a chance to go shopping for dresses again," Valerie
told her, sounding aggrieved.  "Besides, it's not actually illegal to
wear the same thing twice," she added, sounding more aggrieved.
     "Maybe you should take her to that shop again, Momma-Jane," Darla
smiled.
     "Indeed, I think we shall, as soon as we can.  Valerie, do you
remember where the shop was?"
     "Nnnnno," she admitted hesitantly, "but..."  She started digging in
her purse.  "I think I took a biz card.  Oh, it's upstairs-"
     "Well, we'll look later, as I'm sure we won't have time tonight to
go.  Still, you do look much more collected than usual."
     "Thank you Miz Thompson," she smiled momentarily.  "Oh, Darla,
don't touch the computer, alright?  If it's disturbed, it'll go bad, and
bad things will happen.  Okay?"
     She stared at Darla until Darla sighed and agreed, "I won't touch
it."
     "And don't use the phone, either."
     "We won't!  You already said that twice!"
     "Just making sure!" Valerie complained back.
     "Valerie!" Jane warned.  "You are to be pleasant, not combative,
when dealing with others."

     *It's not like any of these people have any sense...* Tucker
grumbled to himself.  If they did, they'd be staying home and eating
something cheaper and quicker than a restaurant.  Also probably better
food for anyone on a diet, which women usually were.  Which didn't quite
include him; he didn't actually need to lose or gain any fat, as long as
he kept what muscle he DID have.
     "And here's Char-  Oh, excellent," Jane said as Charlene, unasked,
twirled around mostly on one foot to show off her outfit.  She'd gone
with a sweater and a sort of sweater-blouse underneath, both in pink,
and a long white pleated skirt.  She'd gotten Tucker's vintage white
purse, and short gloves and tall shoes, but-
     "Whot, no hat?" Tucker asked.
     "I don't need one with this outfit," she smiled at him.

     At least that was what Darla had told Charlie as she was helping
him pick the clothes out.
     "No, you don't," Jane agreed, which made Charlie smile in relief.

     *Well, shit,* Tucker thought with envy.  *I need to get back to
that store with someone's credit card again, and clean 'em out this-*
     "Oh," he said as he remembered, "did someone bring the boxes of
patterns in?"
     "Yes," Jane said, "and they're in the sewing room.  We'll have to
look at some of them to decide what fabrics to get, and what other
notions we'll need for them."
     *Yet another list...*  Tucker sighed; he was beginning to have just
a tiny bit of sympathy for Susan, because she'd been compelled to do the
girly feminine things by whatever pact she'd made with Satan, and then
the family made her learn all the useful things like radiation
protection and ham radio stuff; and Tucker was having problems keeping
both sets of data in his head.  *Still doesn't seem fair, since I DID
learn the useful stuff...*

     "So did you find out what Valerie is doing on that computer?" Marie
asked Darryl when they went back into the kitchen.
     "Something about a program, that was spying on her- Edith White's
grandson's wife, Melissa.  It was her laptop," Darryl explained.

     "We have a reservation for six o'clock," Jane said, as Tucker tried
to be calm with everyone in Rhode Island looking at him.  *Well, maybe
they're looking at Charlene a little too.*  He couldn't manage to look
up and survey where the gazes were pointed, exactly.
     *Times like this,* he thought, *I'd be willing to trade a little
more acrophobia for a little less stage fright...*  He was having to
concentrate on breathing deeply and not moving too much, because his
body was revved up at least to the yellow arc on the tachometer and his
instincts were telling him to shoot the lights and run like hell and not
stop.

     "What are you so worried about?" Charlie asked Valerie quietly, as
they were led into the dining room.
     "Shut up," she snarled back, though just as quietly.

     Tucker could NOT get his mind off the computer puzzle he'd left at
Jane's house.  At least, not after he sat down and the entire world
wasn't staring at him and mumbling comments any more.  And SMIRKING.
     "Valer-"
     "What?!" he snapped.  "Sorry!" he pleaded, hoping Jane would, just
this once, not jump his shit.
     "Perhaps you would come back in a few minutes," Jane told the
waiter.  Tucker closed his eyes and waited for the lecture to start.

     Charlie decided that listening to one of Jane's lectures directed
at someone else was only slightly better than having to listen to one
aimed directly at him.
     At least the food on the menu looked interesting.  And EXPENSIVE,
to the point he shuddered and didn't want to look any more.

     Tucker was debating whether he should eat or throw up, but the
steak cobb salad caught his eye, and then he noticed he could get
lobster instead of steak.  *Hrm...*  That was what he'd wanted when he'd
ordered 'lobster salad' a month ago.
     He glanced at Miz Thompson, and calculated the chances of her
trying something stupid like drugging him.  He had NOT made his check-
in like she'd told him to do, because that was just stupid; why give her
the twenty-four hours?  *But does she know it was too stupid for me to
do?*
     He slid his hands along his skirt, as if he was nervous, to check
that the knives were still there; they were.  *Good thing they aren't
watching me get dressed any more,* he thought, relieved.
     He decided to take the risk of trusting her - because he could
always cut himself if he got too woozy, and the blood would wake him up
and put him in the kind of Bad Mood that allowed his mom to throw
furniture - by eating something and not switching it with Charlene's or
sending it back to the kitchen.  *Unless it's fucked up, of course,* he
amended.

     "Miz Thompson, may I order freely?" Valerie diffidently asked Jane
when the waiter came around to her (again).
     "Within reason," Jane said cautiously.  "You only need to order
enough for tonight, not for a week."  The waiter chuckled and Charlene
smiled; Valerie did neither.  "Go ahead."
     "The lump crab Louis wraps to start," she said to the waiter, "then
a steakhouse Cobb salad with lobster, and the ranch-  What was the ranch
dressing?"
     "Tarragon ranch," the waiter told her.
     "That's it," she nodded.  "Plus the grilled mushrooms?" she asked
Jane.  Jane nodded approval to both the waiter and Valerie.
     "Excellent choices," the waiter smiled, and Valerie smiled
hesitantly back.
     *WHY is she acting so nervous NOW?* Jane wondered.

     Despite the constant stream of interruptions, Tucker had done some
good thinking on the surveillance program, but he couldn't do a damned
thing about it now.  The four times he'd tried to pull out something to
make notes on, Jane had bitched, increasing each time to the point he
wasn't even going to try unless he could get to a bathroom alone.

     *Next time I do this, I am taking someone civilized with me,* Jane
grumbled internally.  While the children weren't being awful - even
Valerie was acting restrained tonight, which unusual behavior was
probably part of the reason Jane was on edge - they were not being
entertaining dinner companions.  She had made Charlene give an oral book
report, which had been barely adequate - children were not taught to
think on their feet nowadays, but Jane did not believe that she should
simply allow poor previous education to hobble one of her girls - and
Valerie had been abstracted all evening, forgetting to eat several times
and having to be reminded.

     "No, thank you," Tucker said to the waiter and Jane at the same
time.  "I think I'm as full as I ought to get, since we're dancing
later."  He'd only thought about warning Charlene about the perils of a
high-protein meal just before exercising AFTER she'd gotten her small
steak, when it was way too late, so he hadn't bothered.

     "Thank you, and please come again," the valet chirped as he handed
Jane the car keys.
     "Very well," Jane nodded, before glancing over to make sure Valerie
hadn't vanished into the gathering twilight.  She hadn't... or at least,
her body was still here; her mind looked like it had gone far away
again.

     Apparently Jane couldn't see Tucker popping those mind-burning
notes off his brain stack and onto paper, because he was doing a
tolerable job considering he was in a moving car and working by
red-lensed Mini Maglite, and she hadn't gone into a frothing fit yet.
Which she would have.

     "Ah," Doug said when he saw Valerie again.  She looked like she was
in a trance, and was blonde today, just like she'd threatened two days
ago.
     She looked up at him, and said, "Oh, hey," as she bobbed her head
at him and gave him something like a smile, and then drifted off again.
     "Valerie!" Miz Thompson barked, and Doug flinched just like Valerie
did.  "You are not to ignore your dance partner, even during simple
lessons; it is extremely rude and insulting..."
     She continued on, about how badly Valerie had hurt Doug's feelings
without bothering to ask Doug how he felt about it - he'd been happy to
just get the friendly 'hey' instead of the usual disgusted look he got
from girls - and Valerie looked like she was getting ready to tell Miz
Thompson off, or just maybe punch her, by the time the bitch session
finished.
     "Excuse me, Doug, I didn't mean to be so rude to you," Valerie
recited without prompting, but her voice held the same sincerity that
you'd expect from someone being forced into apologizing.  "I apologize."
     "Ah, that's okay," he managed.

     "I mean, it's-  I got a neat little computer problem," Tucker
explained when he could get away from Jane and her razor tongue and her
mostly-seeing eye.  "And I've got to come out here and do dance lessons
instead of dealing with it.  It's not personal."
     "What kind of problem?"
     "Oh...  You know what a key logger is?"
     "Yeah... it's a program that- it runs hidden, somehow, and it
copies every keypress.  Probably the releases too, on those keys," he
guessed, and Tucker's eyebrows went up, because very very few people
knew about key-RELEASE codes.
     "Yeah!  So, this is sort of like that, except it's logging other
things, like files.  And some data from a specific program."  By habit
and practice, Tucker was deliberately skipping details.  "I found it
when this woman- we had to go to tea with some friend of Miz Thompson's
today, and she had a laptop-"
     "Miz Thompson?"
     "No!  The other-  I think she's like a daughter or...  I'm not
making any sense," he realized.  "Never mind, I just ate, and I'm kind
of stupid while I digest things."  *This is why I don't eat when I'm in
Deep Hack; can't afford it.*  "Anyway, my body's here, but my brain
keeps going back to the computers at home.  Where it belongs," he
grumbled.  "No offense."

     "You definitely look Fifties tonight," Brad told Charlene.
     "That's good, right?" she asked, uncertain.
     He shrugged.  "If you want to look Fifties, I guess..."
     She laughed a little, which made him laugh a little at the stupid
thing he'd just said.

***


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+ @>--,--'-----   Ellen Hayes   o===[--------      __      vicki .sig  +
                  -=[1990]=-                       \/      virus 12.2
+      http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes     PGP key: EFC9 5D55 (1996) +




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