Once or twice during the next couple days Sandy remembers to ask casually about the industrial sabotage thing. It turns out that there are a whole lot of rumors about sabotage attacks on defense contractors—that they’re being made by members of the black economy’s extended family. But the rumors tend to contradict each other. No one but John Sturmond has heard Arthur’s name connected with it. Eveline Evans believes that the security chief at Parnell is behind it all, and that it’s all a manifestation of an intercorporations war. But Eveline is a big fan of intercorporate espionage videos, so Sandy is suspicious. This is a problem; filtering through rumors to real information is not an easy task. But Sandy keeps at it, when he remembers.

One night around 2:00 A.M. he’s talking with Oscar Baldarramma, a friend and a big distributor of the lab equipment and tissue cultures Sandy needs for his work. They’re out on Sandy’s balcony, near the end of the nightly party. And Oscar says, “I hear that Aerojet is going to get hit tonight by those saboteurs.”

“Is that right? How do you know?”

“Ah, Raymond himself was up here last night, and he let it slip.”

“Not very good security.”

“No, but Raymond likes to show off.”

“Yeah, that’s what Bob says. Is that all Raymond’s doing this stuff for, though?”

“’Course not. He’s doing it for money, just like he does everything. There’s lots of people happy to pay to see some of these companies suffer a setback or two.”

“Yeah.” And Sandy is thinking of Arthur, who left the party a couple hours before, after turning down an eyedropper of the Buzz, which surprised Sandy. And, for that matter, what happened to Jim?

Chapter 36

36

Hurrying to his night class Jim stops at Burger King for a quick hamburgerfriesandcoke. He picks up the little free paper, the Register, and scans it briefly. Among the personals and real estate ads that constitute the bulk of the paper is a small OC news section; the headline reads, AEROJET NORTH LATEST VICTIM OF SABOTAGE. Yes, that’s Jim and Arthur’s work again. Jim reads the details with interest, because just as at Northrop and Parnell, they never got to see the effects of their action. Appears the ballistic missile defense software program has taken a serious blow, according to the Aerojet PR people. Fantastic, Jim thinks. He throws the paper in the trash on the way out, feeling that he is becoming a part of history. He is now an actor on the stage of the world.