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“These friends of yours work for free?”

“Of course not, they’re getting part of the money.”

“You trust their discretion?”

“Obviously.”

“That explains why your initial contact with me came through Ukraine.”

“Yes.”

“It’s good to have that loose end tied up,” Wallace said primly. “But the biggest loose end of all is still loose.”

“And that is?”

“Why are you doing this?”

Peter was stuck for an answer.

“Just tell me you’re addicted to cocaine. Being blackmailed by your dominatrix. It’s perfectly all right.”

“I’m upside down on my mortgage,” Peter said.

“You mean on that hacker dump where you live?”

“It’s a commercial building in Seattle … an industrial neighborhood called Georgetown…”

Wallace nodded and quoted the address from memory.

Peter’s face got hot. “Okay, you’ve been checking me out. That’s fine. I acquired the space before the economy crashed. I use part of it as live/work space and lease out the rest. When the economy went south, vacancy rates went nuts and the property lost a lot of book value as well as not bringing in rent. But with this, I can make it right. Avoid foreclosure, fix a few things, sell it, be in position to buy…”

“A real house where a female might actually want to live?” Wallace asked. For Peter, in spite of willing himself not to, had let his eyes stray momentarily in the direction of Zula.

“You have to understand,” Peter began.

“Ah, but Peter, I don’t wish to understand.”

“Seattle is full of these people — no smarter than me — no harder working than me — ”

“Who are zillionaires because they got lucky. Peter! Listen to me carefully,” Wallace said. “I’ve already told you who I work for. How do you think I feel?”

That left Peter silent long enough for Wallace to add, “And did I make it clear enough that I don’t give a shite?”

“You give a shit about tying up those loose ends.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you for bringing me back to important topics,” Wallace said. He checked his watch. “I got here about half an hour ago. If you’d been watching the parking lot, you’d have seen two vehicles pull in. One is mine. Nice little ragtop, not so well adapted for these roads, but it got me here. The other a black Suburban with a couple of Russians in it. We parked on either side of your orange 2008 Scion xB. One of the Russians, a technical boy not much less talented than you, opened up his laptop and established a connection to the Internet using the lodge’s Wi-Fi network. He is sitting there now waiting for me. If we go through with this transaction, I’ll be in the backseat of that Suburban about thirty seconds later handing him this thumb drive. And he has got, what d’you call them, scripts that can go through your data and check those credit card numbers fast. And if he finds anything wrong, why then the retribution that I was warning you of, a few minutes ago, will have been completed before your liver has had time to metabolize that swallow of Mountain Dew you just enjoyed.”

Peter took another swallow of Mountain Dew. “I have the same scripts,” he said, “and I just ran them on this data a few hours ago. My friends in Eastern Europe have been keeping an eye on things too; they’d let me know if there was a problem. I’m scared of the people you work for, Mr. Wallace, and I wish I had never gotten into this; but one thing I’m not worried about at all is the integrity of the data I’m selling you.”

“Very well then.”

Peter set the thumb drive on the table and slid it across to Wallace.

Wallace drew a laptop from his bag and opened it up on the table. He inserted the thumb drive. Its icon appeared on the screen. He double-clicked it to reveal a single Excel file entitled “data.” Wallace dragged that folder into his “Documents” icon and watched for a few seconds as the little on-screen animation reassured him that the transfer was taking place. As this was happening, he remarked: “There is another way that this could go wrong, of course. Already alluded to in this conversation.”

“And that is …?”

“Perhaps this is not the only copy of the data? Perhaps you’ll double your money, or triple it, by selling it to others?”

Peter shrugged. “There’s no way I can prove that this is the only copy.”

“I understand. But your Ukrainian colleagues — ?”

“They’ve never even seen this stuff. When we ran the exploit, the files went straight to my laptop.”

“Where you have retained a copy, just in case?”

“No.” Then Peter looked a bit uncertain. “Except for this.” He ejected the DVD from his laptop. “Would you like it?”

“I would like to see it destroyed.”

“Easy enough.” Peter bent the disk into a U and squeezed it hard, trying to snap it. This required a surprising amount of effort. Finally it made an explosive crack and fell apart into two halves, but several shards went flying onto the table and the floor. “Fuck!” Peter said. He dropped the two jagged semicircles onto the table and held up his right hand to display a cut on the base of the thumb, about half an inch long, with blood welling out of it.

“Do you think you could try to be a little more conspicuous?” Wallace asked. He had opened up the new “data” file and verified that it consisted of line after line of names, addresses, credit card numbers, and expiration dates. He scrolled all the way to the end and verified that it contained hundreds of thousands of records.

Then he pulled the thumb drive out of his machine and flicked it into the fire burning a few feet away from them. Peter, who was sucking on his self-inflicted laceration, couldn’t help glancing over in the direction of Richard and Zula.

With his foot, Wallace shoved a small duffel bag across the floor until it contacted Peter’s ankle. “Should pay for a few Band-Aids with enough left over to buy Uncle Dick a new thumb drive. But how you’ll pay off your mortgage with hundred-dollar bills I’ll never know.”

“Turns out Uncle Dick knows something about it.” Peter had taken his hand from his mouth and now pressed the bleeding wound against the icy cold side of his Mountain Dew glass.

“You know this of your own personal knowledge, or Wikipedia?” Wallace asked.

“Just so you know, he has a lot of problems with his Wikipedia entry.”

“As would I,” Wallace said, “were it mine. Answer my question.”

“Richard doesn’t talk about the old days. Not to me anyway.”

“What, he doesn’t think you’re worthy of his niece?” Wallace said in a tone of mock wonderment. “Richard Forthrast went straight a long time ago. He’ll not help you with your embarrassment of hundred-dollar bills.”

“He found a way,” Peter said. “So can I.”

“Peter. Before we part ways, hopefully forever, I’d like to speak with you briefly about something.”

“Go ahead.”

“I can see that you’ve spoken forthrightly. So now I want to respond in kind and tell you that all that stuff about the Russians was just BS. A scare tactic, pure and simple.”

“I figured that out already.”

“How, exactly?”

“A minute ago you said you were going to give the thumb drive to a Russian hacker in the backseat of the Suburban. But just now you threw it in the fire.”

“Clever boy. So I needn’t tell you that there is no Suburban in the parking lot. You can look for yourself.”

Peter did not look. He was almost excessively ready to believe Wallace.

“I am in business for myself,” Wallace said. “A small-timer without the muscle to back up my business, and so I have to play these mind games sometimes, as a way of judging people’s sincerity. It worked in this case. I can see that you have played me straight. Otherwise it would have come through in your eyes.”

“That’s okay,” Peter said. “We used to watch this stupid program called Scared Straight. I think you scared me straight just now.”

“Oh really!” Wallace drawled. “You’ve turned a new leaf! This was your last big score! You’re getting out now. Going on the straight and narrow path, like Richard Forthrast.”

“He did it…” Peter began.

“… so can you,” Wallace finished. “I think that is all bollocks, but I shall take my leave now and wish you luck.”

“IS PETER A drug user?” Richard asked.

“No, he’s straight edge,” Zula said with a quick roll of the eyes and air quotes. “Why?”

“Because that looked like a drug transaction to me.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “Really? In what way?”

“Just something about the psychological dynamic.”

She gave him a penetrating look through her glasses.

“Which I admit doesn’t explain the antics with the thumb drive and trying to kill himself with a DVD,” he allowed.

She averted her gaze and shrugged.

“Never mind,” he continued.

“So D-squared lowered the boom on Skeletor about the apostrophes.”

“Yeah. A well-planned attack, I’d say. And it led to, among other things, the change where D’uinn became Dwinn.”

“Gosh, the way people talk about it on the Internet…”

“You’d think it was a much bigger deal. No. Not at the time, anyway. But this is how history is done now. People wait until they have a need for some history and then they customize it to suit their purposes. A year ago? Only the most hard-core T’Rain geeks would have heard of the Apostropocalypse and it would be considered a footnote. Maybe amusing at most.”