“We can't wait that long.” Sandecker's gaze moved over to a scruffy-looking man who had quietly slipped into the room during the discussion and taken a seat in a corner. “Hiram, do you have something for us?”

Hiram Yeager was the director of the vast computer network that covered the entire tenth floor of the NUMA building. The center processed and stored the biggest amount of digital data on the oceans ever assembled under one roof. The brains behind this incredible display of information-gathering power was dressed in his standard uniform, Levi pants and jacket over a pure white T-shirt. His feet were stuffed into a pair of cowboy boots that looked as if they had come from Boot Hill. His long hair was tied in a ponytail, and his gray eyes peered out at the world through wire-rimmed granny glasses.

“Rudi asked me to see if Max would compile a list of places that have experienced sudden fish kills, and to cross-check when possible with nearby fish-processing plants or farms.”

“Do you want us to adjourn this meeting to the data center?” Sandecker asked.

Yeager's boyish face beamed with excitement. “Stay right where you are. You're about to see a demonstration of Portable Max.”

Sandecker grimaced. He was impatient to get his troops moving and wasn't interested in Yeager's experiments, only their results. But his respect for the computer genius displayed itself in the same un- characteristic patience that allowed Yeager to ignore the NUMA dress code.

Yeager connected a laptop computer to various outlets and to the video screen. He clicked the ON button. Anyone who expected an or- dinary presentation didn't know Hiram Yeager. The image of a woman appeared on the video screen. Her eyes were topaz brown and her hair a shiny auburn, her shoulders bare down to the first hints of her breasts.

It was hard to believe that the lovely woman on the screen was an artificial intelligence system, the end product of the most complex electronic circuitry imaginable. Yeager had recorded his voice, digi- tally altering it to give it a feminine tone, and programmed the face of his wife, a successful artist, into the system. Max tended to be just as testy and petulant as she was.

When he was working in the data center, Yeager sat at a huge console and Max was projected in 3-D onto a giant monitor. “With the Portable Max, you don't have to come to the data center to ask questions. The laptop connects to the mainframe, so I can bring her with me wherever I go. Isn't that right, Max?”

Normally, Max responded to the opening question with a daz- zling smile, but the face on the screen looked as if she had been suck- ing on lemons. Yeager fiddled with the connections and tried again.

“Max? Are you okay?”

The eyes looked down to the bottom of the screen. “I'm feeling rather... flat.”

“You look fine from out here,” Yeager said.

“Fine?”