The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [40]
Van undid his rattling chain.
Fawn came inside. She studied the big plastic weight-lifting bench, which dominated Van’s small apartment. The grimy wall behind the bench was covered with posters of Full-Contact Karate champions, guys with staring eyes, flying sweat, and feet swathed in red plastic gauntlets. “Is all this yours?”
“I just moved in.” The apartment’s previous tenant had abandoned everything he owned, including his thong underwear, his girlie mags, and his size-twelve kung-fu shoes. Van was pretty sure the guy had gotten shot or arrested. No one seemed to know or care about that.
“Wow,” Fawn marveled, “that is one really cool chair!”
The magnesium chair was the only piece of furniture that Van had managed to bring from Merwinster. He’d grabbed the chair on impulse and thrown it into the Range Rover. His plan was to junk everything in the Washington apartment and replace it all—the Korean landlord said that would be just fine—but he had lacked the time.
Fawn Glickleister was definitely older than twelve. She was older than Helga, Van’s sad little fired au pair, but she was as restless as a sixth-grader. Her lips were badly chapped and her brown eyes looked red and puffy. She had a high, squeaky voice. “This chair doesn’t outgas any toxins, does it?”
Van stared at her. “How could magnesium outgas?”
Fawn sat down daintily. “Wow, it’s a lot more comfortable than it looks!” She pulled a thick pair of wireless specs from her canvas purse.
An ominous silence fell as she looked around the apartment.
“Can I tell you something, Derek? It’s even scarier in here than it is out in the hall. Are you sure you’re a computer geek? I know a whole lot of nerds, and most of them aren’t, like, weight-lifting, scary karate guys in the ghetto. Hey, wow, what happened to that kitchen?”
“You just sit in that chair for a sec,” Van commanded. He opened the door, stepped into the gloomy hall, and slammed the door behind him.
“Jeb,” said the phone.
“Jeb, what the hell is it with this girl you just gave me? She’s twelve years old, Jeb. She looks like a Muppet.”
“That would be Fawn Glickleister.”
“I know her name. If I need help, I know where to get it.”
“Glickleister!” Jeb insisted. “She’s not twelve, she’s twenty-six. She’s Glickleister’s daughter.”
Recognition dawned. “The Glickleister? Hyman Glickleister?”
“Do you know any other Glickleisters?”
Van took a breath. Hyman Glickleister. Legendary computer visionary. ARPANET. Packet-switching guru. A man thirty years ahead of his time. Glickleister had spent the last fifteen years of his life in a wheelchair, dying of some obscure neuromuscular disease, and that had only made him concentrate more fiercely. Van had been crushed when Glickleister had died. It was as if some vast blazing bonfire had gone out. There ought to be bronze statues to Glickleister in front of every router station in the world.
Van mulled it over, shaken. So weird to think that Hyman Glickleister had actually reproduced. Some woman had married Glickleister and borne Glickleister’s child. Once would pretty much do it for that activity, Van guessed glumly.
“Okay, so she’s his kid,” he admitted. Fawn looked just like Glickleister.
Jeb was eager to soft-pedal the situation. “Now, Van, you taught at Stanford. You get it about today’s young people. Fawn is bright, she’s a quick study. You can mellow her out.”
Jeb was old-fashioned. He still thought that college students were wild, crazy kids. Van’s students at Stanford had been sober workaholic Indian and Chinese software engineers with astronomical SATs. “Jeb, I don’t want her. I don’t like her.”
“Then I can get you another secretary. Some old lady from the Defense Department with her hair in a bun and a pencil through it. And you know what she’s going to do to you, Van? She’s going to tape all your phone calls to Monica Lewinsky, and she’ll betray you to some political operative. People do that kind of thing in this town. I’m trying to protect you here, Van. We raging supergeeks don’t have a lot of friends inside the Beltway. You’re my Deputy Director