the mocking program

Her unhappy expression showed that she understood. "Then there's nobody who can order this gram to terminate itself?"

"I was there. I spoke to it. It insists that termination of the gram can only be accomplished by input of 'a command paradigm compiled by Cleator Mockerkin'-her father."

"But-her father's dead," Fourhorses exclaimed. The Inspector nodded. "Then, there's no one left to bring closure to the program."

"Maybe one." Cardenas turned back to face Katla Mockerkin. So did Minerva Fourhorses.

His spirits sank at her reply to his unasked question.

"I can't do it."

"Why not?" His heart went out to her; to this poor, abused, brilliant girl who had had no real childhood. She deserved better. Anyone her age deserved better.

"Because I don't know the paradigm. Just like the order to kill, my lepero of a father must have compiled and inputted it after Mom and I ran away with Mr. Brummel."

They were left with no choice, he saw. He would have to give the order to disable the molly still spi

She was gesturing shyly at him, interrupted his sad reverie. "What is it, Katla?" he asked as gently as he could.

"I can't input the paradigm, because I don't know it. But there is something else I think I might be able to do."

"What's that, Katla?" Forgetting that she was supposed to keep to the background for the duration of Cardenas's visit, Fourhorses had come up to stand alongside the federale.

Young but far from i

Cardenas's thoughts whirled. Wiping The Mock's box would surely eliminate the gram that persisted in ordering her abduction or assassination, but it would also result in the loss of information of incalculable value to the NFP's central office. Names, figures, statistics, locations, histories of crimes committed, plans for crimes expected: all would be lost. He said as much, and in so doing, drew a dirty look from Minerva Fourhorses.

Katla Mockerkin begged to disagree. "You won't lose any of that, Mr. Cardenas. The Federal Police can have it all. I'm only going to try and wipe the box." Meaningfully, she put the tips of her fingers to one side of her head. "The rest of it, all the other muy malo stuff- it's still up here."

In his immediate concern for her safety, he had forgotten about her capabilities, and why The Mock had valued her so highly in the first place. He vowed he would not do so again.

"Tell me what kind of facilities you need."

She gestured at the wall unit. "It can be done from here, I think. As long as I have uninterrupted access to a megaspeed co

Reaching out, he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Why not, Katla?"

She continued to avoid his eyes. "My mom's dead. I don't have any brothers or sisters. If I have any cousins, I don't know who they are or where they are. Now my father's dead, too. I didn't like him very much. He did bad stuff to a lot of people. But-he was my dad. The stuff in the box is all that's left of him. Wiping it-it'd be kind of like killing him myself."

"The gram he compiled is responsible for the death of your mother."

"I know!" Suddenly, she was near tears. "Don't you think I remember that? Don't you realize that if I had been paying more attention to the box, I might have come across this rotten, terrible gram and been able to do something with it or to it before Mom was murdered? If I had been monitoring like I should have been, she might not have been killed. But I stayed away from Dad's system. I didn't want to go near it, or have anything to do with it. I thought-I thought if I probed too much, it might tricktrack me, and find out where we'd gone. But I should've done just the opposite. I should have stayed on it. It's my fault. She didn't have to die! She didn't have to die!"

Sobbing, she fell into his arms. He held her tight, held her close. Looking up, he saw that Fourhorses was eyeing them strangely.

I know there's a bond here, he called out to the woman even though he knew she could not sense his thoughts. You see it, and I feel it. But, God help me, I've never had a kid of my own, and I'm not sure what to do. Thirty years of intuit training, and I'm not sure what to do.

Fourhorses knew what to do. Gently, she disengaged the weeping twelve-year-old from Cardenas's compassionate but awkward grasp and slowly rocked the tearful girl back and forth, murmuring reassuringly to her all the while. His thin shirt stained dark by tears, Cardenas sat back and watched. When he felt enough time had passed, he addressed the girl as empathetically as he could.

"I realize how this could be difficult for you, Katla. But if you don't stop this program now, it's going to keep sending out orders telling people to catch you. That wouldn't be so bad. But the orders might also be for people to do something worse." He leaned forward imploringly. "You're the only one who can put an end to this, Katla. And I have to disagree with you about what you just said. It's not like you'd be killing anyone. The Mock's box is only a system compilation, a collection of soulless embedded grams. Just like any other box."

Fourhorses's tone reflected careful control. "You're asking a twelve-year-old girl who's been under tremendous emotional strain to dive right back into the middle of the source of her discomfort."

"It's-it's all right, Ms. Fourhorses." Katla pulled back and wiped at her eyes with the backs of both hands. "Mr. Cardenas is right. I'm the only one who can do this. It has to be done." She sniffed between sentences. "It should have been done a long time ago. Maybe if it had, my mom would still be here." Rising, she walked back to the little desk in the corner of the room. Picking up the vorec, she twirled it round and round in her hand, manipulating it with her fine, diminutive fingers the way a conductor would warm up a baton prior to leading a concert.

As Fourhorses and Cardenas looked on, the social worker leaned toward him and whispered apprehensively, "If the child suffers any adverse effects as a consequence of this, I'm going to have to hold you and the NFP responsible."

"I've been accepting responsibilities for serious happenings for a long time, Minerva." He nodded in the girl's direction. "The only one who can save her from this is herself." A paraphrase from an old read leaped into his mind. The bad grams that men program live after them; the good ones are oft interred with their old mollys. He moved a little closer to Katla.

"Can you really do it from here?" He indicated the vorec that was co

Light glinted off the tears that were still drying on Katla's face as she shook her head briskly. Her reply was full of confidence. "Huh-uh. No problemo, federale." The small smile she managed to muster made her look much younger than her dozen years. Her expression was heartrendingly childlike.

Both were in striking contrast to her words and actions, which were those of an experienced prober and eeLancer. As Cardenas rejoined Fourhorses, the two adults lapsed into silence, marveling at the speed and skill with which the girl first accessed and then began to burrow deeply into the Big Box. Commands that were often as incomprehensible as they were complex spilled effortlessly from her lips. Images flowed and morphed so rapidly within the tu