Palm Sunday by William R. Vitanyi Jr. Page B

cover of a huge lilac bush. The men chasing him had come close, but they missed him. He waited on the wet ground for the sound of their car leaving, and then carefully sat up and felt his ankle.
    It wasn’t broken, but when he tried to put weight on it he could tell it had a bad sprain. He located his gun a few feet from where he had fallen, and hobbled back to the house, putting most of his weight on his good leg. When he reached the house he looked into the lower windows, and seeing no one, he went in.
    Gun in hand, he quickly investigated the ground level, although he knew the men sent after him wouldn’t tarry here. It wasn’t their style. Still, one couldn’t be too careful. His search revealed that he was alone. Even Bobby and his father had fled, or had been taken away. Probably they left on their own, he mused, since their car was missing from the garage. He looked at the computer desk. The palmtop was gone, as was the cable used for connecting it to the PC. Slocum smiled, realizing that Stanley must have taken it. The agency wouldn’t need the cable.   
    The PC was turned off. For reasons that he himself could not fathom, Slocum reached behind the computer, unplugged the monitor, mouse, keyboard, and power cables, and hefted the PC under one arm. Struggling along on his injured ankle, he limped across the street, placed the computer in his back seat, and got in and started the car. After a quick look down the quiet street, he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. 

    ***

    In the agency’s plush conference room, there was a buzz of eager anticipation. Analysis of the profile was complete, and the presentation of results was all that remained. Arriving after everyone else, as usual, Charles Mason walked into the room with several manila folders under his arm. He took his place at the head of the long oak table and called the meeting to order.
    “Before we get started, I want to thank everyone for a job well done. The profile would not have been possible without contributions from all of you. So thank you, one and all.”
    He looked around the room, making eye contact with each person. When he got to Norbert he threw in a paternal wink. Norbert, he knew, was like a puppy. He didn’t care whose slippers he was bringing, as long as you scratched him behind the ear and said ‘good boy’. He would need Norbert for what he had in mind later, so stroking the boy wonder now would be a good investment.
    “I want to hear first from computer ops, since nothing else matters if we have problems there. Norbert…”
    Norbert shuffled some papers and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “The final data stream was initiated at nineteen hundred hours. Database listeners were activated without incident, and the external interfaces were opened on schedule. Buffers attained operational status at nineteen oh three, with repository population commencing shortly thereafter.”
    “Norbert, layman’s terms, please.” Mason wanted to leave no room for misunderstanding.
    Norbert looked at his audience with disdain. “It started properly.”
    “Thank you,” said Mason.
    Norbert went on. “But there was a glitch several minutes later. There was a bottleneck at the buffers. Normally I like to maintain a five or six per cent cushion, just in case there’s a surge. You lose the buffers, game’s over.” He noticed the blank stares. “The window is too short, we’d never re-initialize the binary coupler in time.” Still the stares. “I had to do without my cushion in order to let the data pass through the wires.” He looked hopefully around the table. They understood wires. Close enough.
    “So anyway, we were approaching critical mass–the repositories were filling, but we were losing the buffers. If that happens it can start a cascade event that might be detectable on the outside. So I initiated shutdown. Fortunately the repository load completed just before I terminated processing.”
    Tom Snelling of the