Unpopular Science

Chapter 19

It should have been impossible, but it was true. In the one brief moment Remo Williams had been using Mark Howard’s laptop computer he had somehow commanded it to dedicate all its hacking resources to downloading the vast library of video and photography from the website with the shameless lady who said, “I want to feel your iron hand.”

“Eight thousand JPEGs, six full-length AVI movies, holy Toledo,” Mark said.

“All with the same woman?” Remo asked. “She wasn’t that hot.”

The flight attendant must have been waiting for her cue, because she walked into the passenger area and sneered, “You wouldn’t know a hot woman if she buried your face between her breasts.”

She reached for Remo’s head and tried to illustrate her point, but Remo was out of there. The flight attendant thrust an un-asked-for glass of water at Mark and retreated to the galley. Remo emerged from the aircraft washroom to find Mark Howard absorbed by a new screen of data.

“I like it better when there were pictures,” he told the assistant director of CURE.

“Remo, listen,” Mark said. “Archibald Slate, indentured to the United States Army, 1905. Released 1928.”

“Indentured?”

“This is government stuff, still classified after all these years,” Howard said. “Nobody is supposed to know about this. Whoever is supposed to know must be long gone.”

“But does it say what he did?”

“No. These files are sparse. He served in an engineering capacity, to be expected, since he was an engineer. Says he succumbed to dementia and retired. He was memorialized in August 1932.”

“Meaning?”

“A memorial service, for the dead.”

“Shall I be remembered when I am dead?” wailed a pitiful old man in the back, whose pride and joy in Remo had been short-lived.

“Maybe, but not in a good way,” Remo said. “So did he die then or what? Why didn’t they just say he died?”

Mark searched again. “Birth and death records, Providence,” he explained. “No death certificate on file for Archibald Slate.”

“But there’s a lot of other Slates,” Remo noticed. “Look at them all. Look at how many lived at the same address. I bet she still does.”

He pointed to a birth record. It was just a name, Sarah Slate, born twenty-one years ago.

“Hold on,” Mark said, then did some key pounding and window swapping. “That’s the address for Archibald Slate in his military file in 1905.”

“Family house. Maybe they still own it.”

“Hold on. Yes, Sarah Slate’s address is the same.” Mark looked at Remo. “I’ll call Dr. Smith and let him know we’re diverting to Providence.”

“I have to go to the bathroom again,” Remo announced. He’d had enough of Harold Smith for the time being.