Thirst No. 5 Read Free Page B

and they feel they are the final authority. My point is that these agencies don’t cooperate with each other, not easily. They are loath to share information, and when they do, they seldom trust that the information they’re getting from another agency is accurate.”
    “We have nothing to do with their internal disputes,” Seymour says.
    “That’s true,” Brutran says. “But the Cradle’s program is clever. It knows how to take advantage of this blind spot. By flooding the various agencies with false information about us, it has created a hysterical wave of paranoia that no single agency—and no single person—can stand up and dispute. Remember Hitler’s famous line, ‘The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.’ It’s only been twenty-fourhours since the explosion and already this lie has tremendous momentum.”
    “What you’re describing is all smoke and mirrors,” Seymour says.
    “Yes. But it’s rooted in the hard cold fact that hundreds of kids have been murdered. You keep forgetting that. Someone has to pay for that evil deed, and, once again, the authorities are under tremendous pressure to produce suspects. Imagine how pleased they must be that, seemingly out of nowhere, they are receiving all kinds of intel on us.”
    “Receiving it from whom?” Seymour demands. “It makes no sense they should believe a torrent of information being fed to them by some wild program.”
    “You haven’t been listening,” Brutran says. “The FBI doesn’t think this information is coming from a computer program. To them, it appears to be coming from local police. In the same way, Homeland doesn’t think it’s getting this intel from a foreign source. They probably believe it’s coming from the CIA or the NSA. That’s why I stressed the problem with these agencies not talking to each other.”
    “You’re saying the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,” Matt interjects.
    “Exactly,” Brutran says.
    “But eventually the truth has to come out,” Seymour insists.
    “Probably,” Brutran says. “But that will take time. TheCradle’s program has its tentacles wrapped around every computer in practically every government agency. From what I can tell, even the White House is being fed a stream of false updates. If we’re lucky, and the president eventually realizes that his people have been duped, then he will still be left with the fact that these children died and we were seen leaving the area of the crime.”
    “This is ridiculous,” Seymour says. “What are we supposed to do? Sit here and rot and wait until the storm blows over?”
    “Funny you should say that,” Brutran says. “That was going to be my final piece of advice—”
    “We cannot sit here and do nothing,” I interrupt.
    “Why not?” Brutran asks.
    Matt holds up his hand. “We’ll get to that in a minute. For now I want to finish discussing this program. Cindy, exactly when did it become active?”
    I have never heard Matt call Brutran by her first name before. The woman appears to respond well to his questions, to his command. With me, she has always been a little snide.
    “Yesterday morning. The instant we blew up IIC’s headquarters and wiped out the Cradle,” Brutran says. “That act immediately triggered the program’s attack on us.”
    “So there must be someone left alive who is controlling the program,” Matt says.
    Brutran shakes her head. “It may be on automatic.”
    “That’s a freaky thought,” Seymour says.
    Brutran disagrees. “In a way it doesn’t matter if there’s still a living hand at the helm. The program is awake and it’s intelligent. The instant we leave this motel, we’ll be exposed and it will begin searching for us again. Think of the resources at its command. It just has to give the word and hundreds of thousands of police and government agents will try to converge on us. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if the program goes so far as to use the military’s