Of the women around the Baladine pool two days ago, the most approachable seemed to be Global magnate Teddy Trant’s wife. Maybe I could catch up with her someplace in the morning.

It was a pain having all my computing capability at the office. If Carnifice took over my little operation, I suppose Baladine would pay me enough to install a terminal at home. Until then I had to trundle down to Leavitt to look up the Trant family. I didn’t want to spend the time or money on the kind of search I’d done on Baladine yesterday—all I wanted was Mrs. Trant’s name and home address. Her first name was Abigail, she used her husband’s last name, and they lived four miles northwest of the Baladines with their nine–year–old daughter, Rhiannon. I packed binoculars, picked up a couple of daily papers and a copy of Streetwise from Elton, and once again pointed the Rustmobile toward the Eisenhower and the western suburbs.

As soon as I got to Thornfield Demesne I realized the Skylark was badly suited for surveillance. For one thing it stood out hideously against the Range Rovers and other all–terrain vehicles needed to navigate the perilous ground between mansion and mall. More to the point, you can’t park on these leafy winding roads in front of the gated communities out here. The demesne’s entrance was protected by a guard station that would have put the old Berlin Wall to shame. Not only that, a private security patrol—probably from Carnifice—periodically sent out a cruiser, no doubt to pick riffraff like me up and throw us back across the border.

I drove to a curve in the road about fifty feet from the entrance and pulled my maps out—I could probably pretend one time to the security patrol that I was lost. With the maps propped up on the steering wheel, I tried using my binoculars, but all I could see were tree leaves. If I was really going to survey the place, I needed a horse, or maybe a bicycle. I was on the point of driving to the nearest mall to see if I could rent one—preferably a bike, since I’d never been on a horse—when I had a bit of luck. The great wrought gates of the demesne opened, and the Mercedes Gelaendewagen with the GLOBAL 2 plates shot out.