Genius Squad

  Alias shrugged. To his credit, he looked slightly embarrassed.

  "Money," he replied. "I'm on the run. It's hard to find work."

  "Were you the guard who helped him to escape? The guard at the Coroner's Court?" Cadel wanted to know, and Alias nodded.

  "I was his lawyer, too. Some of the time." Alias began to paw through the pile of clothes in the bath. "I acted as the go-between, though he did set up a Reader's Digest sweepstake code. He'd get some of his information through fake junk mail. Ah." With a flourish, Alias produced a long, filmy skirt and padded bra. "Here you go."

  "I'm supposed to be a girl, am I?"

  "That's the idea. Just put those on, and I'll do your makeup."

  "Whose idea was the junk-mail code?" Cadel inquired, and Alias scratched his neck, grimacing.

  "I dunno if I should tell you that. Prosper hasn't given me clearance."

  "Was it Vee? Did Vee get into the prison network?" Kicking off his shoes, Cadel continued to pepper Alias with questions. "Did he change the protocols and let you walk out of the Coroner's Court? Did he set up the Genius Squad War Room?"

  "Hell no!" Alias seemed quite shocked. "Vee's had nothing to do with Genius Squad. Now, what do you think—should we shave your legs? They're getting a bit shaggy down there, but I've seen worse on many a hippy chick. And they'll be hidden by the skirt." He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe we'll risk it. You're still pretty enough to carry it off—though I think you should wear a turtleneck. And I might give your mustache a bit of a tweak. Thirty seconds with the tweezers should sort it out."

  "Alias." Cadel took a deep breath. "Did Prosper hurt Saul Greeniaus?"

  Alias blinked. Then he sighed. Then he pulled a wry face, his expression half sheepish, half impatient. "You know me, kid," he retorted. "If I were a violent man, I wouldn't be a master of disguise, would I? Do you see any blood on this shirt?" He plucked at one pin-striped sleeve. "We used chloroform. We didn't even use a gag. He'll be fine."

  "Truly? Please tell me the truth."

  "It's the truth, Cadel." Alias was certainly convincing—perhaps because he looked so much like Saul. "We were on a tight schedule, remember? We honestly didn't have time to rough him up."

  Cadel nodded. He pulled on his skirt as Alias reached into the bath for a sweater.

  "A word in your ear, though," Alias added. "If I were you, I wouldn't keep talking about that cop. He's a bit of a sore point, for some reason." Seeing Cadel's brow crease, he made haste to offer reassurance. "Not that Prosper's a man who'll lose his temper. I'm not saying that. It's just—well, we want him to keep a clear head. We don't want things getting too personal, do we?"

  "No," said Cadel. "You're right. We don't."

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  When Cadel emerged from the bathroom about thirty minutes later, he was sporting a plum-colored rinse in his hair. He was also wearing a pair of pink trainers, a mauve angora sweater, a long black skirt with an elastic waist, and masses of expensive makeup.

  At the sight of him, Prosper froze in his tracks.

  "What do you think?" said Alias. "Not a bad job, is it?"

  There was no immediate reply. Studying Prosper from between mascara-caked, kohl-encircled eyelashes, Cadel was at first confused to see nothing but a blank look. It wasn't until Prosper's gaze slid uneasily away from his own that Cadel realized.

  Of course.

  "Do I remind you of my mother?" Cadel asked maliciously.

  Prosper narrowed his eyes but directed his next remark at Alias.

  "You don't think he's too ... memorable?"

  Alias frowned.

  "Too much of a stunner, you mean? Not really" He scanned Cadel from top to toe. "If he was taller, perhaps. Or blond. But personally I think he's less noticeable when he's dressed as a girl. There are lots of pretty girls, after all. You just don't see too many boys with features like that."

  "Where's Sonja?" said Cadel. He had realized that she wasn't in the living room. "Where have you put her?"

  "In there." Prosper waved his hand. "Where the mattress is." Watching Cadel hurry away, he added, "She's under sedation."

  Cadel whirled around.

  "What?"

  "She's sedated. For the trip. It'll be a long one, and I don't want her braining somebody." As Cadel charged out of the room, Prosper raised his voice to insist that there was no need to panic. "Barbiturates won't do her any harm! Not in the correct dosage!"

  But Cadel wasn't listening. He had already reached Sonja and had dropped to his knees beside her motionless body She was sprawled across a soiled, queen-sized mattress, which lay directly on the carpet. Her eyes were closed and her mouth hung open.

  She still wore her pajamas.

  "Sonja?" said Cadel.

  There was no reply.

  "Sonja?" When Cadel shook her, she grunted and moved her head. But she didn't wake up.

  He checked her pulse and was relieved to find it reassuringly strong.

  "She must have been pretty tired," Prosper remarked from the threshold. "She had an empty stomach, too, I daresay. Makes for rapid absorption."

  Cadel didn't raise his eyes. He kept them lowered while he stroked Sonja's arm, trying desperately to control his jagged breathing.

  "She'll be all right," Prosper continued. He strolled over to where Cadel knelt. "Look at her color. It's perfectly healthy Look at her fingernails—pink as your shoes." Receiving no answer, he tried again. "What's wrong? Are you sulking?" He bent down, to get a better view of Cadel's expression. "Don't cry, or your mascara will run."

  "I'm not crying!" Cadel exclaimed fiercely. And he wasn't. He was enraged. "I'm sick, if you want to know! Sick to my stomach! You make me want to throw up!"

  "Ah." Prosper straightened. "Well, if you could throw up into the toilet before we leave, I'd be grateful. Because I don't want you being sick while we're on the road."

  "What road?" Cadel still wouldn't look up. "Where are we going?"

  "You'll see."

  "Will Judith be there?" Cadel almost hoped that she would be. He almost hoped that she was employed by Prosper English. Because she was the only person—besides Cadel himself—who could be trusted to take care of Sonja.

  "My dear boy." Prosper tugged playfully at Cadel's ponytail. "You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. I told you, I hired Dot, not Judith. I had nothing to do with the creation of Genius Squad. It was already up and running by the time Trader approached me—or rather, by the time he approached his old mate Alias and made inquiries about me. I gather Rex Austin asked Trader to sound me out, just in case I had any dirt on GenoME. So Alias passed on the message, and I agreed to supply Rex with information. In exchange for which, of course, I made a few requests of my own." When Cadel lifted his gaze at long last, startled into reacting, Prosper smirked down at him. "I requested that Trader expand his team to include you, Dot, and your crippled friend," Prosper explained. "He wasn't too happy about Sonja, but I couldn't be sure that you'd agree to sign up unless she came with you. We had to provide a little extra motivation—I knew you wouldn't be able to resist living in the same house. And it's not as if she isn't useful, in her own way."

  Cadel swallowed. A great weight seemed to settle onto his shoulders, like a heavy iron chain. He suddenly realized that he had been living a life of illusion—that, despite appearances, he had never really escaped from Prosper English.

  Prosper's peculiar genius was to create misleading scenarios. Cadel had thought that in joining Genius Squad, he was securing for himself a certain amount of freedom, away from the restrictions imposed by Hazel Donkin and the police.

  But he had actually been walking into a trap.

  "So—I mean—who else knows about this deal of yours? On the squad?" Cadel stammered. (Had everyone been lying?) "Trader and who else?"

  "Dot," Prosper replied. "I told you. As it happens, she was in my debt. Because I helped her brother to skip the country."

  Cadel's heart sank. "What?" he spluttered, followed b
y, "When? When did you help him?"

  "Oh, before my arrest. When the institute started to collapse." Prosper went on to explain that, although "dispensing with" Com might have expunged a potential witness, it was never a wise policy to throw away really useful and intelligent tools like Com. "Waste not, want not," Prosper said with a smile. "If I'd got rid of Com, I would never have secured Dot's services. Though needless to say, she's not immune to the lure of a big payoff. Not since her stockmarket reverse."

  "But I don't understand." Cadel was almost reeling with shock; he couldn't get things straight in his head. "Why would Trader even want to break into the GenoME system? Why bother with Genius Squad when you were around to dish up all the dirt on Earl Toffany?"

  "Because I didn't have much dirt to dish," Prosper admitted. "To be honest, I've never been terribly well informed about Earl's activities. He was always a bit of a problem, was Earl. A bit of a maverick. I used to say as much to Phineas, but he wouldn't listen." Something about Prosper's flattened tone suggested that this hadn't been an unusual state of affairs. "At any rate, keeping tabs on GenoME was difficult. Earl is rather paranoid about me—that's one reason why his security is so tight. He seems to think I'm a threat."

  As Prosper's lip curled, Cadel felt a chill run down his back like a trickle of cold water. For someone who frequently (and without difficulty) passed himself off as a mild-mannered professor of cultivated habits, Prosper could be remarkably menacing when he let his guard drop.

  "So what kind of information did you give to Rex, then?" Cadel inquired, and Prosper shrugged.

  "Oh, a few choice tidbits. Naturally I spaced them out, so that Trader wouldn't be tempted to renege on our deal." Prosper's sneer became more pronounced. "Let's see. What did I tell him? I told him that Fountain Pharmaceuticals is just NanTex under a different name. I told him about the faulty brain implants—"

  "I knew it!" Cadel cried. "I knew Trader never worked that out for himself!"

  "I was half afraid he wouldn't believe me," Prosper confessed. "The brain-implant project was a joke. A fiasco. I could hardly believe it myself when I first heard about it." He shook his head in disgust. "Needless to say, it was one of Darkkon's little pet projects. Darkkon's and Chester Cramp's. It had something to do with mind control, but I can't be more specific because they didn't choose to pass on the details. Not to me, at least. No doubt they were anticipating ... shall we say ... an unfavorable response from this quarter?" And he laughed.

  Cadel frowned. He rubbed his forehead. "So you made a deal with Rex and Trader," he said. "And you hired Dot to keep an eye on me, as a condition of the deal."

  "In a nutshell. Yes."

  "And they're the only ones who know about it? Trader and Dot and Rex Austin?"

  "The only ones."

  "But how did you find me in the first place? Was it Trader who told you where I was?"

  Prosper's disappointment showed in his exasperated air. "Give me a little credit, Cadel. I've always known where you were," he said. "Since the day you arrived in Australia, I've been monitoring the Department of Community Services. Or Vee has, anyway. He set up the department firewalls, so it wasn't hard for him to get in."

  "You mean—"

  "Originally, when you were much younger, I had to make sure that your status wasn't being questioned by the authorities. I had to stamp out any fires. Then, when I was arrested..." Prosper shrugged. "Let's just say I didn't want to lose track of where the department had put you."

  "So you knew about the Donkins? From the very beginning?" Cadel croaked.

  "Yes. And I'm sorry I didn't get you away from them sooner." Prosper sounded genuinely apologetic. "There was a communication problem. It was lucky that Trader and Alias had worked together once, or I might never have heard about Rex Austin's plans at all. Because no one on Genius Squad could ever have risked approaching me directly. Not in jail. As I said, it had to be done through Alias."

  Cadel wasn't listening. He was thinking about Sonja, and how he had led her straight into a lion's den. Saul, too; by making friends with Saul, Cadel had effectively painted a target on the detective's back. And Gazo...

  "Gazo's all right, isn't he?" Cadel cried, aghast at his own stupidity and negligence. Thanks to him, Gazo was in serious danger—because Prosper was now free to eliminate anyone who might testify against him. "Gazo's no threat to you. Not now you're out of prison," Cadel insisted breathlessly. "He can't be a witness if you never go on trial!"

  Cadel was prepared to defend this position with the full force of his considerable intellect. He owed it to his friend. But he wasn't given the opportunity; Prosper interrupted, sighing and shaking his head in an irritable manner, as if Cadel was being deliberately perverse.

  "I've never understood your attachment to that noxious, dim-witted freak," Prosper complained. "Why do you have such a taste for the company of all-around losers?First Gazo Kovacs. Then Sonja Pirovic. Then Saul Greeniaus, who strikes me as being sadly deficient in brains."

  "He's not!"

  "Clever people don't end up hog-tied and shut in storage cupboards," was Prosper's disdainful response. "I honestly despair of you sometimes. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with people like Hazel Donkin and that ludicrous Currey creature? Or are you trying to annoy me, because you've entered your rebellious teenage phase?"

  Slightly winded by this accusation, Cadel struggled to comprehend Prosper's outlook—which was so different from his own. The contrast between their views of the world was stark enough to make Cadel dizzy, as if he were trying to peer through somebody else's prescription glasses.

  How could such a bright man have such a blinkered attitude?

  "I like to think that underneath all this silly acting-out, you fully grasp your situation," Prosper went on. "You're not stupid—you must see that I'm the only one who can offer you any kind of life. What can you look forward to otherwise? More foster homes? Extradition to my cousin's pig farm? A dreary existence spent looking after all the rejects you've managed to collect along the way?" Before Cadel could protest, Prosper hammered home his argument, point by point. "What makes you think I'll allow you to waste your talents? You know perfectly well that you're a shining star. I'm not about to let you hide your light under a bushel."

  Deeply discouraged, Cadel gazed up into Prosper's clever, confident face. It looked implacable. But Cadel remembered when he himself had believed what Prosper believed. Surely there had to be some small chance of convincing Prosper that his reasoning was flawed? That it didn't take certain things into account?

  "You don't understand," Cadel began. "I know you want the best for me, but you don't understand how I feel—"

  "Of course I do." Prosper wouldn't let him finish. "I realize you must have felt abandoned over the past few months. It was unfortunate, and I'm sorry. Though, if it hadn't been for your actions, I would never have been locked up in the first place." His lips twisted into a reluctant smile. "But that's all water under the bridge for me. And for you, too, I hope. My point is that I never lost sight of you, or stopped working to improve your situation. I've been watching your back, Cadel." Suddenly his smile turned wolfish. "Do you think that your friend Mace would have received his just deserts if it hadn't been for me?" he said. Cadel gasped.

  "Come now," Prosper chided, as Cadel struggled to draw breath, "surely you must have worked that out?"

  "How—how—"

  "My dear boy, I can't tell you how many complaints have been lodged against that deplorable child, by various parties—your social worker, for one. It was in the system: Vee found out what Mace had been doing, then passed it on to Alias, who passed it on to me. So when I happened to encounter your antagonist's brother in the prison exercise yard, I struck up an acquaintance." Prosper shook his head, as if the sheer depths of human ignorance continued to sadden and astonish him. "What a fool. He was actually under the impression that you had been tormenting Mace—what with the magazine incident and so forth."

  Pro
sper went on to explain, with a glint of cold malice in his hooded eyes, that Mace's brother had sought advice as to how Mace might engineer his revenge against Cadel. Whereupon Prosper had suggested "planting evidence," in the sure and certain knowledge that Mace would be caught by the police surveillance team if such a ploy was ever attempted.

  "I even proposed encouraging that other kid—the little one—to ask for your address," Prosper smugly revealed. Then his smile faded suddenly; his expression became serious. "Because I've always looked after you, Cadel, and I always shall," he concluded. "I'm your father. You have to come to terms with that. You have to understand what it means."

  There followed a long pause, during which Cadel had to wrestle with his conscience. Prosper was so persuasive. So self-assured and articulate. So proud of his only son.

  Defying him seemed not only ungrateful, but oddly churlish. Especially for someone like Cadel, whose life had never been exactly well stocked with doting family or friends. In holding fast to new loyalties—in choosing to trust Sonja and Saul—he had to pull against a strong, dark undertow of attachment.

  He had to fight against his own heart.

  "Prosper?" It was Alias who finally broke the silence—or at least, it was Alias's voice. But the figure standing in the doorway didn't look like Alias at all. When Cadel turned, he saw only a fat, middle-aged woman with lots of graying hair, and egg stains on her cardigan.

  The transformation was so complete that Cadel peered past her as he tried to locate Alias. Then she spoke again, and he realized who she was.

  "What do you think?" said Alias. "Best I can do, at short notice."

  "Very impressive," was Prosper's opinion. "In fact, you're making my skin crawl."

  "Your own stuff's laid out," Alias declared. "But you'll probably need my help with it." He cast a troubled glance at Cadel. "Unless you don't want him here on his own. Only, I'm not sure we'll all fit in the bathroom..."

  "Don't worry about Cadel," said Prosper, with absolute certainty. "Cadel wouldn't leave his little friend in my tender care—would you, dear boy? And he knows that he wouldn't get far if he tried to take her along." Without waiting for a response, Prosper began to exit the room, tossing suggestions to Cadel over his shoulder as he did so. Why not indulge in a short nap? Or watch a little TV? Prosper would be busy for a few minutes, but when he had finished disguising himself, they would all be ready to hit the road.