Midnight

to do anything that broke the rules. Twelve-year-old boys reveled in breaking the rules, challenging authority. At their worst, twelve-year-old boys were naturally lawless, on the verge of hormonal-induced rebellion.
    But he was more than lawless. He was a boy flying on cactus candy that had been eaten long ago but that had left a psychic if not a physical residue. He was a boy who knew that he was a god. Any boy's potential for cruelty paled in comparison to the cruelty of gods.
    To pass the time until midnight, he imagined what he would do with his power when the last of Moonlight Cove had fallen under his command. Some of his ideas made him shiver with a strange mixture of excitement and disgust.
    He was on Iceberry Way when he realized the Indian was with him. He was surprised when he turned his head and saw Runningdeer sitting in the passenger seat. Indeed he stopped the van in the middle of the street and stared in disbelief, shocked and afraid.
    But Runningdeer did not menace him. In fact the Indian didn't even speak to him or look at him, but stared straight ahead, through the windshield.
    Slowly understanding came to Shaddack. The Indian's spirit was his now, his possession as surely as was the van. The great spirits had given him the Indian as an advisor, as a reward for having made a success of Moonhawk. But he, not Runningdeer, was in control this time, and the Indian would speak only when spoken to.
    "Hello, Runningdeer," he said.
    The Indian looked at him. "Hello, Little Chief."
    "You're mine now."
    "Yes, Little Chief."
    For just a brief flicker of time, it occurred to Shaddack that he was mad and that Runningdeer was an illusion coughed up by a sick mind. But monomaniacal boys do not have the capacity for an extended examination of their mental condition, and the thought passed out of his mind as quickly as it had entered.
    To Runningdeer, he said, "You'll do what I say."
    "Always."
    Immensely pleased, Shaddack let up on the brake pedal and drove on. The headlights revealed an amber-eyed thing of fantastic shape, drinking from a puddle on the pavement. He refused to regard it as a thing of consequence, and when it loped away, he let it vanish from his memory as swiftly as it disappeared from the night-mantled street.
    Casting a sly glance at the Indian, he said, "You know one thing I'm going to do some day?"
    "What's that, Little Chief?"
    "When I've converted everyone, not just the people in Moonlight Cove but everyone in the world, when no one stands against me, then I'll spend some time tracking down your family, all of your remaining brothers, sisters, even your cousins, and I'll find all of their children, and all their wives and husbands, and all their children's wives and husbands … and I'll make them pay for your crimes, I'll really, really make them pay." A whining petulance had entered his voice. He disapproved of the tone he heard himself using, but he could not lose it. "I'll kill all the men, hack them to bloody bits and pieces, do it myself. I'll let them know that it's because of their relation to you that they've got to suffer, and they'll despise you and curse your name, they'll be sorry you ever existed. And I'll rape all the women and hurt them, hurt them all, really bad, and then I'll kill them too. What do you think of that? Huh?"
    "If it's what you want, Little Chief."
    "Damn right it's what I want."
    "Then you may have it."
    "Damn right I may have it."
    Shaddack was surprised when tears came to his eyes. He stopped at an intersection and didn't move on. "It wasn't right what you did to me."
    The Indian said nothing.
    "Say it wasn't right!"
    "It wasn't right, Little Chief."
    "It wasn't right at all."
    "It wasn't right."
    Shaddack pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. He blotted his eyes. Soon his tears dried up.
    He smiled at the nightscape revealed through the windshield. He sighed. He glanced at Runningdeer.
    The Indian was staring forward, silent.
    Shaddack said, "Of course, without you, I might never have been a child of the moonhawk."

11
    The computer lab was on the ground floor, in the center of the building, near a confluence of corridors. Windows looked out on a courtyard but could not be seen from any street, which allowed Sam to switch on the overhead lights.
    It was a large chamber, laid out like a language lab, with each VDT in its own three-sided cubicle. Thirty computers—upper end, hard-disk systems—were lined up along three walls and in a