STARSCAPE BOOKS(57)

“I’ve heard of Ganelon,” Cheater said. “They were in the news last year for making defective ammunition for the military.”

“Hang on. There’s lots more.” I continued to read from the list. “Vidkung, Limited. Clairvoyant monitoring of dissident movement. Tichborne and Fawkes Industries. Investigation of Kirlian photography as a quantitative means of judging character. It goes on and on. Twenty-four experiments, running at nineteen different companies.”

“Vidkung was in the news last year, too,” Cheater said. “Something about bribery.”

Torchie yawned. Flinch was pacing. I could see from the way Martin was looking all around the room that he was starting to lose interest. Most kids didn’t care about politics or business. Put the two together and you got a deadly combination. I decided to give them the short version.

“They’re all owned by the same company.” I spread out the three pages of the printout. “Ganelon, Vidkung, Tich-borne and Fawkes. All nineteen of them. They’re all part of Roth-Bullani Enterprises.”

“I’ve heard of them, too,” Cheater said. “Aren’t there a couple former senators connected with them?”

I nodded. “Yeah. They’re one of the biggest government contractors around. Bowdler is providing them with a way to make a ton of money. And he’s making out nicely himself. He sells them the equipment. And he charges a fee for analyzing the results, along with a monthly consulting fee. As far as I can see, it’s all pretty worthless research.” I looked over at Martin, who knew more than any of us about psychic phenomena. He’d been studying it ever since he first suspected we had talents back at Edgeview.

“Yeah, those experiments sound sketchy,” he said. “They were doing that Kirlian stuff more than half a century ago. There’s supposed to be some sort of mystical aura around people when you take a picture with a special camera. Nothing ever came of it. But I still don’t see how this helps us get Lucky back.”

I tapped the sheet. “About half of these experiments are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Delaware. A couple are right in Philly. We can get to a lot of them. If there’s one thing I know, it’s business people. I sat through plenty of dinners with company presidents, board chairmen, and majority shareholders when Dad brought them home. The guys who own companies—there’s only one thing they understand.”

“A free meal?” Flinch said.

“Nope.” I rubbed my thumb and fingers together. “Money. If Bowdler’s experiments start going wrong, and costing those companies a lot of money, they’re going to stop doing business with him. Right now, he has a nice little scam going. If all of that starts to disappear, he’ll be happy to release Lucky just to get rid of us and patch things up with Roth-Bullani.”

“So you’re saying we should start destroying stuff?” Martin asked.

“Especially anything with this on it.” I pointed to the last sheet, where I’d pasted a JPEG of the Psibertronix logo at the end of the list.

“I’m in,” Flinch said. “Not that I have any way to wreck stuff, but I’ll be happy to watch you and Torchie cause some damage.”

I glanced out the window. “We just don’t want anyone else watching us. We’d better wait until dark.”

“Which means we have time for some food,” Martin said. “Right?”

“Yeah. We might as well eat. It’s going to be a long night.”

“I’ll see if Livy wants to join us.” Martin ran out the door.

“I’m not sure if that’s really sweet or really sad,” Flinch said.

“Maybe both.” We went down to dinner, but I behaved this time. I figured Martin had it tough enough without getting splattered by food. If he really wanted to try to get Livy to like him, I wasn’t going to mess things up for him. But even without my help, he managed to knock over his water glass twice.

When we got back to the apartment, I picked up the list of experiments. “He’s got something running on a cargo ship in the port. I’ll start with that. There’s a warehouse just south of the city. How about Flinch and Torchie go there while I go to the piers with Martin. Cheater can stay here in case we need to get in touch.”

Cheater and Martin nodded.

Flinch looked at the address on the printout. “No problem. I can find that.”

Torchie stared at me. “What do you want me to do at the warehouse?”

I grinned. “Do what you do best.”

“You want me to burn it?”

“Just whatever area has the experiment. You need to be quick. We have to make sure the fire is over with before any firefighters get there. I don’t want innocent people hurt. That’s rule number one.”