The Broken Window

to make me hard again, now the moment is dark and spoiled.
    I hate Them so much. . . .
    With quivering hands I close the cigar box, taking no pleasure from my treasures at the moment.
    Hate hate hate . . .
    Back at the computer, I’m reflecting: Maybe there’s no threat. Maybe it’s just an odd set of coincidences that led Them to DeLeon 6832’s house.
    But I can’t take any chances.
    The problem: The risk that my treasures will be taken from me, which is consuming me now.
    The solution: To do what I started in Brooklyn. To fight back. To eliminate any threats.
    What most sixteens, including my pursuers, don’t understand and what puts Them at a pathetic disadvantage is this: I believe in the immutable truth that there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with taking a life. Because I know that there is eternal existence completely independent of these bags of skin and organ we cart around temporarily. I have proof: Just look at the trove of data about your life, built up from the moment you’re born. It’s all permanent, stored in a thousand places, copied, backed up, invisible and indestructible. After the body goes, as all bodies must, the data survive forever.
    And if that’s not the definition of an immortal soul, I don’t know what is.

Chapter Seventeen
    The bedroom was quiet.
    Rhyme had sent Thom home to spend Sunday night with Peter Hoddins, the caregiver’s longtime partner. Rhyme gave the aide a lot of crap. He couldn’t help that and sometimes he felt bad about it. But he tried to compensate and when Amelia Sachs was staying with him, as tonight, he shooed Thom off. The young man needed more of a life outside the town house here, taking care of a feisty old crip.
    Rhyme heard tinkering in the bathroom. The sounds of a woman getting ready for bed. Clinks of glass and snaps of plastic lids, aerosol hisses, water running, fragrances escaping on humid bathroom air.
    He liked moments like these. They reminded him of his life in the Before.
    Which in turn brought to mind the pictures downstairs in the laboratory. Beside the one of Lincoln in his tracksuit was another, in black and white. It showed two men wearing suits on their lanky frames, in their twenties, standing side by side. Their arms hung straight, as if they were wondering whether to embrace.
    Rhyme’s father and uncle.
    He thought often of Uncle Henry. His father not so much. This had been true throughout his life. Oh, there was nothing objectionable about Teddy Rhyme. The younger of the two siblings was simply retiring, often shy. He loved his nine-to-five job crunching numbers in various labs, loved to read, which he did every evening while lounging in a thick, well-worn armchair, while his wife, Anne, sewed or watched TV. Teddy favored history, especially the American Civil War, an interest that, Rhyme supposed, was the source of his own given name.
    The boy and his father coexisted pleasantly, though Rhyme recalled many awkward silences present when father and son were alone. What troubles also engages. What challenges you makes you feel alive. And Teddy never troubled or challenged.
    Uncle Henry did, though. In spades.
    You couldn’t be in the same room with him for more than a few minutes without his attention turning to you like a searchlight. Then came the jokes, the trivia, recent family news. And always the questions—some asked because he was genuinely curious to learn. Most, though, asked as a call to debate with you. Oh, how Henry Rhyme loved intellectual jousting. You might cringe, you might blush, you might grow furious. But you’d also burn with pride at one of the rare compliments he offered because you knew you’d earned it. No false praise or unwarranted encouragement ever slipped from Uncle Henry’s lips.
    “You’re close. Think harder! You’ve got it in you. Einstein had done all his important work when he was just a little older than you.”
    If you got it right, you were blessed with a raised eyebrow of approval, tantamount to winning the Westinghouse Science Fair prize. But all too often your arguments were fallacious, your premises straw, your criticisms emotional, your facts skewed. . . . At issue, though, wasn’t his victory over you; his only goal was arriving at the truth and making sure you understood the route. Once he’d diced your argument to fine chop, and made sure you saw why, the matter was over.
    So you understand where you went wrong? You calculated the temperature with an