Ian sat beside her, holding his coffee cup against the boat's gentle sway in the crook of one folded leg. "I've been looting the libraries at Cleveland State," he said. "And you?"

"Case Western," she said. "I and about six others. Two of them are hackers. They brought a truck into the data storage center at the main library and ran cables into the building and took everything they could get their hands on."

"I sent records from the Library of Congress to this fellow in Virginia," Reuben said. "And other stuff. I recruited Trevor Hicks." Neither Ian nor the woman knew who Hicks was. "Have you met any of the ones below the bosses—the humans I've heard on the network, giving orders?"

"I have," the woman said. "One of them's my husband. We were separated, filing for divorce, when we were both possessed. I've had to work with him, and take orders from him, the last two months. He works for the State Department."

Cleveland was no longer visible to the south. There was nothing but blue ice-dotted lake and a fast-disappearing mist from horizon to horizon. They had been on the water for over an hour.

"Do you think there's anybody who's got the whole picture?" Ian asked. "Any human, I mean."

"I haven't met one if there is," Reuben said.

"My husband gives orders, but he doesn't know everything."

Ian licked crumbs and sugar from his fingers. "I hope they have a bathroom on this tub," he said, walking aft.

The boat's motors cut back to a throaty gurgling rumble. The water had taken on a slight chop and as they circled, Reuben felt queasy. I'm going to regret that doughnut.

"All right," Donovan called on the loudspeaker from the pilot house, "this is where we're supposed to be. Anybody getting messages?"

"Not me," the woman said, standing and brushing doughnut crumbs from her coat.

"Christ," Donovan commented dryly.

They had circled for ten minutes when Ian sang out, "Thar she blows!" He had ascended to the upper deck and now leaned over the railing beside the pilot house, pointing east. Reuben and the woman returned to the bow and followed his point and saw a dead gray block rising from the water, about the size and shape of a moving van's trailer. The pilot gunned the motors and moved them closer to the protuberance.

"What is it?" Ian shouted. "A submarine?"

"I don't know," Reuben said, half laughing. He was excited and more frightened than ever. The woman's face was a stiff mask, but her wide-eyed, glassy stare gave her away.

The boat came to within a few yards of the gray block. The bow wash slapped against it.

A square hatch about as tall as Reuben opened in the smooth dull surface at the level of the boat's bulwarks.