Viral Attack - Chapter 10 - Half Past My Last Nerve
Danny awoke to a hand nudging him. Tucker Foley was lying awkwardly close in their shared hotel bed, his face almost touching Danny's.
"Roll over," Tucker muttered, "your breath is like ice."
He was about to move when the meaning of Tucker's words struck him.
"Tuck!" he whispered back. "That was my ghost sense. There's a ghost around here somewhere. You're facing the room, what do you see?" Danny's ghost sense usually manifested itself as a wisp of fog but that fog was caused by his breath turning super-cold.
"I'm not wearing my glasses, man," Tucker whispered back. Still, he lifted his head slightly to see over Danny. "Technus-clone is coming out of something on the desk."
Danny swore under his breath.
"It seems to be looking for something," Tucker added. "It's moving to the bathroom."
"Good."
Danny rolled off the bed and felt around in the dark for one of the gym bags piled up- between the room's two beds. A gym bag filled with Fenton gear. He couldn't go ghost here, now, with so many people not in on his secret but the bag ought to have a blaster and a clone was weak enough to go down from one of those.
The ghost came out of the bathroom. Danny froze as it gave the room another glance, then it walked into the vestibule between the adjoining rooms.
"Find out where it came from," he whispered to Tucker and, pulling out the blaster, he leaped up and went after the spectral visitor.
The ghost had walked right through the closed door to the girl's room but fortunately the door hadn't been locked so Danny was able to ease it open without trouble.
The only light in the room was the super bright dial of the hotel's radio/alarm clock. But that was enough to show the Technus-clone holding the Fenton Thermos in its hands. It was fumbling around with the controls.
"Drop it!" Danny shouted, then fired the blaster as the clone turned on him, raising a glowing hand filled with ectoplasm.
The ghost disappeared with an audible "pop."
The Thermos fell to the floor with a thud.
Screams filled the room.
In later days Danny would insist that it was his sister who screamed the loudest but truthfully it was hard to tell.
He felt behind him for the light switch and flipped it on.
"What are you doing in here," his sister demanded once she could see again in the light, "and where are your clothes?"
"There was a ghost--" he began then remembered that he had been sleeping in his underpants. And that was still all he was wearing. Danny backed quickly towards the door.
"That's it!" Jazz shouted. "Everybody up! Five minutes! We're having a meeting to end this once and for all. And Danny -- put some clothes on!"
Danny ran into Tucker who had found his glasses and was holding one of the Fenton Finders. He was wearing his red beret and Buzz Lightyear underroos.
"Jazz is having a cow," Danny told him. "Get dressed, we're having some kind of meeting." He relayed the information to Sid, who was sitting on the side of his bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He wasn't wearing any pants. That settled it for Danny. Henceforth he was sleeping in pajamas!
***
Danny pulled on his jeans and a Tee shirt then knocked on the girl's room's door. Jazz let him in. She was wearing last night's jeans and Tee. Her pretty red hair was in a jumble pulled back into a pony-tail.
Sam was sitting on her bed wearing black silk Chinese pajamas. It had gold buttons and red pipping. Altheria had on an oversized, orange Cook County Jail Tee shirt. She was sitting in the bed with the blankets pulled up to her waist. Without any of the rings and jewelry stuck in her face she had a plain, youthful look. As Danny sat down next to Sam, Abigail came out of the bathroom brushing her hair. She was wearing one of the hotel's courtesy robes, and from the way she was clutching it with her free hand, Danny suspected she didn't had anything on under it.
Tucker came in from the boy's room a minute later, still holding the Fenton Finder, though he had somehow gotten his pants and a Tee shirt on as well. Sid ambled in behind wearing just a raggety pair of cut-off jeans. He smiled at Jazz, who snapped. "Put a shirt on."
Jazz was sitting at the desk. She held some of the hotel's complimentary stationary on top of a copy of the hard-bound Hotel Services Guide. She was impatiently tapping a pen on its edge.
"Where's the ghost?" she asked once Sid got back with a shirt on.
"I'm here on the floor," Technus shouted from inside the Thermos. "Would one of your ever so nice children be a dear and pick me up?"
Danny picked up the Thermos and set it on the edge of the dresser.
"A-hem," the Thermos prompted. "Could you, perhaps, turn me over. I'm sitting on my head and I'm getting such a crick in my neck..."
"The other ghost," Jazz said. "The one that made you burst in on us in the middle of the night?"
"Destroyed." Danny said
"What time is it, anyway?" Tucker asked.
"Half past my last nerve!" Jazz snapped.
"Didn't know it was that late."
"Don't laugh, Danny. You said you had this all fixed. Everything was under control. And here you are shooting ghosts in our room in the middle of the night! I've had it with you."
"I didn't set it loose."
"No of course you didn't." Jazz was suddenly calm again. "So where did this ghost come from?"
"Ask him," Danny said pointing to the Thermos.
"What?" Technus squawked from inside the Thermos. "How could I do anything. I was inside this infernal device all the time."
"You hid a Technus-clone somewhere the other night when you were supposed to be shutting them down."
"Oh, that. What did you expect. It's in my nature. I'm a villain, it's what we do."
"Where was it, Tuck?"
"Inside the Fenton Finder that we used to sweep the area for left-over ghosts. Naturally it didn't pick up the ghost inside it."
"Are they any others?"
"I used this Spectro-analyzer we didn't take to T'Keisha's town to check the rest of our gear. The rest of the stuff in our room is clean but I'm picking up two more latent ghosts here in this room. One looks to be in Sam's cell phone and the other -- I'm having trouble locating. It's like it's in Altheria but how's that possible?"
Altheria blushed. Sam had dug out her cell phone and tossed it to Danny, who shot it with the blaster. He handed it then to Tucker who waved the Spectro-analyzer over it and pronounced it clean. "But I'm still getting something from Altheria. Could it be in one of her piercings?"
"Is it here?" Altheria asked, pointing to the meaty part of the back of her neck. Tucker ran the analyzer over the place she pointed to and nodded.
"My mom had me chipped back when I was twelve. I'd started running away then and she thought this would be one way to track me down."
"You have a radio chip implanted in your neck?" Abigail asked, appalled. "I thought the old fart was crazy but that takes the cake! Of course if he wanted to chip me he would have done it while I was asleep so I wouldn't know anything about it. Does that gizmo find radio chips as well as ghosts?"
"Can you zap it with the blaster?" Sam asked.
"Not without hurting Altheria. Later, when I can get hold of Danny Phantom he can remove the chip. For now we're going to have to hope it won't come out on its own." As a ghost Danny Phantom could make his hand immaterial and reach inside Altheria's body and grasp the radio chip and pull it out. The evil Dark Dan had done something like to Danny to keep Danny in the future while Dark Dan tried to kill his friends and family.
"Geez," Altheria forced a hollow laugh. "My mom always said I was a ticking time-bomb. Who knew I'd literally become one."
"Don't worry, we'll take care of it," Sam assured.
Danny turned to the Fenron Thermos, "Are you in contact with the clones or were they timed to emerge."
"I don't know what you mean," Technus blustered.
Jazz hopped up and grabbed the Thermos, shook it ruthlessly for a minute before slamming it back down on the dresser-top. "You know what we mean!" she snarled.
"Are you in contact with these clones?" Danny repeated in a quiet voice.
"Oh, I know this game," Technus said. " 'Good cop -- Bad cop'. You ask questions and if I don't answer you threaten to give me back to your sister. What a clever boy. -- I'm not playing! -- Do your worst. There's nothing you can do to me while I'm inside your infernal little -- and the emphasis is on little -- prison that I fear!"
"I'm sorry. You thought Jazz was the bad cop? She's just cranky because you interrupted her beauty sleep. No, the bad cop is our dad. You remember him?
"Big guy, kind of dopey, has horrible taste in clothes?"
"That's him. Do you know what his biggest wish is in the whole wide world?
"Cheap Internet service?"
"No."
"Peace and love?"
"No.
"Fudge. That's it, a lifetime supply of hot fudge."
"Close, but -- no. Dad's biggest wish in the whole world would be to dissect a ghost. Would you like to be that ghost?"
"Whoa, what a minute, kid, that's a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions!"
"The Ghost Zone is not a signatory to the Conventions."
"Cruelty to animals?"
"You're not really an animal, are you?"
"We had a deal you ungrateful whelp! A deal! I helped you and now you're threatening me with vivisection? Where's your honor? Your decency? What about our deal?"
"Jazz, you want to do the honors?" Danny asked.
"You wouldn't really given him to your father, would you?" Sam asked.
Danny put a finger to his lips, telling her to quiet.
"Listen to the nice girl." Technus pleaded.
Jazz picked up the Thermos and got ready to shake it up again.
"I'll talk! I'll talk!" Technus cried.
Jazz put the Thermos back down.
"Are you in contact with the clones?"
"No. If I could reach anything outside of this Thermos I would have controlled the Thermos before this."
"When's the clone inside Altheria supposed to come out?"
"The pin-cushion girl? A couple more days."
"Who made the clones -- the original ones you shut down?"
"How would I know. I certainly didn't."
"When you took them over you must have read their programming, or whatever," Danny insisted. "You must have been able to tell where they came from and who they are since you keep saying that they're weren't you."
"But they are me."
"You said they weren't."
"That was before I absorbed them. They're some sort of horrid copy of me from a long time ago."
"Who created them?"
"Beaucoup Bucks,"
"We know that, but that's not his real name. What's his real name?"
"Look, kid, have pity on me," Technus said from inside the Thermos. Then he screamed: "I don't know! I never saw these clones before. All they know is this Beaucoup Bucks. I don't know any more than they do. Please don't give me to your father. We had a deal. A deal I tell you. You've got to set me free!"
"What a wuss." Altheria sniped. Danny scowled at her, hoping she would shut up.
"What about you," Danny asked. "Someone must have made a copy of you a long time ago, surely you recall someone trying to do something like that?"
"Technus lives for the Now, the past is so much -- old stuff."
"Think harder. Maybe Dad can help you unlock your memories...."
Sam was mouthing Danny's name and shaking her. He guessed that she didn't like his approach to questioning. He wasn't happy about it either. It was hard trying to maintain a hardboiled persona.
"Wait! I'm remembering something. Some old guy in a white coat, like a doctor, or maybe a teacher.. He was trying to become a master of technology but I told him to beat it, that gig was taken."
"Did he have a camera or something like a camera?"
"Maybe. I don't know. The memory is gone."
"Maybe if we shook him up some more it will shake another memory loose," Sid suggested.
"Nah," Danny shook his head. "I think that is all he remembers. He's not a very good ghost..."
"I'm right here!" Technus complained.
"Besides I think we know who it was."
"Beaucoup Bucks?" Jazz asked.
"No, that's just a pseudonym he used,. I'm thinking it was Beauregard C. Buchwald."
"Who's Beauregard C. Buckwald,"
"Well, he this dead guy...." Abigail started to explain
"Stop. Stop right there." Jazz was holding her hands up dramatically. "This isn't going to work with everyone just jumping in. Let's start from the beginning and work our away forward methodically. In my experience counseling that is always the best way to go."
Danny worked hard to keep from coughing at that. Jazz's experience "counseling" amounted to one or two group therapy sessions, one of which had gotten wildly out of control.
"So how did this all get started?"
"Can't we put this off this morning when T'Keisha gets here and can tell her parts of the story?" Tucker suggested.
"No! We're staying here until we get this ghost thing taken care of. You say it was taken care of the night before last but here we are with ghosts sneaking into my bedroom. I won't stand for it, I won't."
" 'Your' bedroom?' " Altheria muttered with a rolling of the eyes.
"Whatever. You say this thing is like a computer virus, right? But instead of messing with your computer it spawns these ghosts." she asked.
"Yeah," Tucker answered. "It started with T'Keisha. She opened an email she thought I'd sent her and this Technus clone came out and started attacking her. She disabled it by busting her computer. We flew down --"
"In the Specter Speeder?"
"Yeah, anyway, when we got there another Technus clone attacked us. We destroyed it and thought that was that. Only we'd forgotten about the first clone who had been hiding untill this weel."
"But where did the infection come from?" Jazz asked, staring at Altheria who was absent-mindedly twisting a complicated shaped metal piece through one of the hole in her earlobe.
"T'Keisha said the email came from me, only I never sent her that message," Tucker added.
"Mine was, like, from Altheria," Sid said.
"While I can't be sure," Altheria said, "I don't recall sending Sid anything for a few days so I'm doubtful that it really was me. Who else was attacked? I remember someone else saying they'd been attacked.
"That would be me," Abigail spoke up. "It said it was from Danny but He'd just le--" she paused at Danny's sudden glare and hastily edited what she had been about to say. "I knew that he wasn't on-line at the time."
"So there were three ghost attacks from three different e-mails sent from three different computers. What does that tell us?" Jazz summarized.
No one had an idea.
"All three of you claim you did not send the e-mails," Jazz was looking at the group speculatively. "How can you send E-mail and not be aware of it? Tucker?"
Danny nearly snorted the pop he was drinking. He recognized how Jazz would ask questions then put someone on the spot to answer them.
"Well...It depends on the virus and the operating system you're using, Some viruses will open your mail program and copy itself to everyone on your address list and mail out a copy. I suppose one could make a virus that's more selective about who it mails out a copy to."
"So who has T'Keisha's E-mail address on their computer?" Jazz asked. Tucker immediately raised his hand. No one else did. After a moment Tucker said, "Come on, Danny, you've got her address, too?"
"I do?"
"Remember when I sent you those cheat codes for Killersaur 5000? I forwarded them from T'Keisha."
"I didn't know that."
"So we have Tucker and Danny for T'Keisha. Who has Sid on their E-mail lists?"
Altheria and Danny raised their hands.
"And Abigail?"
Danny felt very conspicuous being the only one to raise his hand.
"I'm sensing a pattern here," Jazz said.
"What?" Danny protested, "You think my computer is infected?"
"It's nothing to be ashamed of, it happens to the best of us," Tucker cracked.
"But, but, but. I've got the best anti-virus programs known to man -- and Dad's ectoplasm filters as well. Nothing could get on my computer!"
"Face it, Danny, you're our prime suspect." Altheria said.
"Why me? How could my computer get infected?" Danny was outraged as the accusation even though he know, intellectually, that getting a virus on one's computer was commonplace. "T'Keisha's E-mail was initiated in the Ghost Zone," Tucker interrupted. "It's all there in the routing information. It came from some kind of a relay within the Ghost Zone but I didn't know that one could send Email through a Portal."
"Buckwald's Ghost Zone Radio could," Abigail spoke up. "At least that was his claim. I'm sure if he could pick up radio waves from the Ghost Zone he could convert them to digital signals."
"Wait a minute, who's Buchwald," Jazz asked. "What happened to Beaucoup Bucks? I thought you said Beaucoup Bucks sent those E-mails?"
"See, that's the whole thing," Tucker tried to explain. "The E-mails that had the Technus virus were all sent from someone calling themselves "Beaucoup Bucks" but Abigail, here, says, Beaucoup Bucks was just a joke name some guy called Buchwald liked to use."
"And he was always pushing his invention of a Ghost Zone Radio. Said he could pick up communications from the other side." Abigail added.
Jazz looked hard at Abigail. "Do I know you," she asked.
"Abigail Farley-Smythe-Hyde," Danny explained, "We were at camp together. Her father's a Guy in White."
"Her father's a Guy in White -- and you invited her here?" Jazz was aghast.
"Jazz, you met her at Camp, and again two days ago when we arrived."
"I thought she was part of the crowd that was going to disappear after that night." Jazz continued to look at Abigail as if she had never seen her before.
"Ok. Jazz. After we had searched the Internet and even Dad's personal files on the Fenton Mainframe and came up with nothing about Beaucoup Bucks I decided to try one last place," Danny couldn't look at Sam as he said this. Sam was sitting stony faced. "So I called Abigail to see if she could find anything on her father's computer."
"From which she was thoroughly grounded, as I recall," Sam butted in.
"He changed his pass-word but it wasn't hard to guess. I can't help it if he's stupid with passwords.
"We never got that far because I had heard of Beaucoup Bucks. My Dad loved to tell stories about ther crackpots who would come in and try to pawn off on the government some crazy invention of theirs. One of those crackpots was Beaucoup Bucks, only that wasn't his real name. It was Beauregard C. Buchwald, a retired professor. Everyone called him 'Beaucoup Bucks' because he was always telling them how he was going to make beaucoups bucks -- beaucoup is Cajun for 'a lot' -- from all his inventions."
"Did this Buchwald person ever bring in any of his inventions?" Jazz asked.
"Dad did talk about Buchwald's Ghost Zone Radio, which he said never worked."
"Go on," Jazz encouraged.
"Not that I ever saw it, this was just the old man talking. He said it was the size of a microwave with a doughnut on top. He would plug it in and invite people to listen through a pair of headphones. Most of the time people only heard static but occasionally there would be what sounded like a word or maybe even a phrase. But no one was ever convinced that what they were hearing was voices from the other side."
"That's it?" Jazz asked.
"Well they did give him money, I found out later, when I looked him up in the computer system. Someone higher up in the bureaucracy must have believed him because they insisted that he be given contracts to improve his machine. They were several follow up reports but none ever said that his device ever worked any better. And then he died. And a year later published an article in the International Review of Spectral Manifestations."
"After he died?" Jazz asked, puzzled.
"Danny caught that after I'd E-mailed him a bunch of papers about Buchwald. He was an old man who, I guess, everyone just figured he'd die eventually so they didn't pay any special attention when he did. Danny, I guess, was sorting the papers chronologically, when he noticed that Buchwald's last paper came after his obituary."
"I - uh - called the editors of IRSM and they confirmed that the paper was submitted for review six weeks after Buchwald's reported death. They hadn't heard that he had died at all."
"Are you saying that Buchwald's GHOST submitted that paper?" Altheria asked.
"It sure looks like it." Tucker answered for Danny who had become absorbed about something else."
"You hadn't mentioned the story about the Ghost Radio before," he asked Abigail.
"I hadn't? Sorry."
"You just said everyone knew Buchwald as Beaucoup Bucks."
"Yeah, they did."
"Was that 'doughnut' on the Ghost Radio really round or could it have been six or eight sided?"
"I never saw it. This was my dad's story. Does it matter?"
That was the million dollar question, thought Danny. While Sam and Tucker knew that his parents had worked on a prototype Ghost Portal back when they were in college, they didn't know that the device wasn't the full size Portal the Fenton's had in the basement of FentonWorks but a smaller desktop size model with a roundish frame around the portal. The portal had malfunctioned the one time they tried it, exploding into the face of their friend and colleague, Vlad Master, the second wealthiest man in the world today, but then just as much a humble student of Spectral Physics as Danny's parents were. Vlad Master was infected with a virulent form of Ecto-Acne that took years to clear up. What only Sam, Tucker and Danny knew was that the accident, like Danny's accident twenty years later, had turned Vlad Masters into Vlad Plasmeus, a half-man, half-ghost monster, bent on world domination. Danny had traveled back in time courtesy of Clockwork, the Ghost Master of Time, in order to prevent that accident. Danny had learned the hard way that Destiny could not be easily changed. But that wasn't the point. Danny realized that Abigail's tale of the Ghost Zone Radio sounded a lot like that first proto-type ghost portal. Was Beaurgard C. Buchwald someone his mother and father knew?
For an instant he had a vision of what the connection must be. It was a clear as a map. Then someone spoke his name and the vivid map turned into so many sparrows fleeing at the approach of a cat. He tried to recover the thought but it was gone. Utterly and totally gone.
"What?" he asked, looking up.
"Jazz was asking if you had found any physical evidence of Buchwald's existence -- an address, or telephone number, E-mail account, stuff like that," Tucker explained. "It seems to me that if this Ghost Zone Radio exists then it could be the relay from the Ghost Zone for this Zombie-bot viruses."
"And if we could destroy the Radio then we've eliminated the menace." Altheria put in with a grunt. Sid had fallen asleep and toppled over onto her. Or maybe he had intended to do that all along. She pushed at his heavy body, finally whacking it with her elbow, waking Sid. He sat up with a jerk and immediately slide off the edge of the bed. He hit the floor with a thud and a round of laughter from the others.
"Yeah, said Danny, thinking about the plan. "I think it would work. So where's the Ghost Zone Radio?"
"We don't know. It's beginning to look like Buchwald doesn't exist either," Abigail put in. She had pulled out her laptop by now and was studying something it was displaying.
"What do you mean? Your father met the man. How can you say he doesn't exist?" Danny demanded, suddenly dismayed that what had promised to be a quick end to this problem was just getting worse.
"After Tucker mentioned that this Ghost Zone Radio must be the relay letting in these ghosts I tried to find where Buchwald might have lived because he would have had to leave the relay somewhere," Abigail said. "So I when back over all his correspondence with the Guys in White. No addresses, no telephone numbers. Just his E-Mail address and his in-person visits. Even his obituary didn't given an address, not even a city where he lived.
"So I logged into the Social Security Death Notices index. There was nothing there. Even after I widen the search by a couple years either side of his obit. So I tried Lexus-Nexus. Again nothing."
"What's Lexus-Nexus? Sounds like a car." Sid asked, trying to blink away his sleepiness.
"It's an index of newspaper articles," Abigail explained. "You have to be a member to use but it gives pretty complete coverage. The Guys In White have a blanket membership so I could slip in under my old man's account and run a check."
"Wouldn't you get in trouble doing stuff like that," Sam asked mischievously.
Abigail shrugged, then grabbed for her robe which had started to slip when she'd taken her hands off it. "He'll never notice my use of Lexus-Nexus. Nobody ever checks on the usage. It's like with credit cards, no one ever looks at the bill, they just pay the amount due.
"Don't count on that." Sid muttered with what appeared to be guilty knowledge.
"A--hem!" Jazz coughed, getting everyone's attention. "Let's not get distracted, ok? So you're saying," she directed to Abigail, "that in none of the places you've checked was there any record of a Beauregard C. Buchwald. Or for a Beaucoup Bucks?"
"Yes, ma'am." Abigail replied. Danny didn't recall Abigail calling anyone 'ma'am' before. He was impressed -- with his sister!
"So -- Beaucoup Bucks, who sent out these E-mails ghost viruses, doesn't exist. He's really Beauregard C. Buchwald -- who also doesn't exist! Someone is sending out these E-mails. Who? Any ideas -- Danny?"
And Danny was on the spot. "It looks like we're dealing with someone who likes to play name game," he suggested.
"Obviously," Jazz sneered but Tucker had a thought:
"What about those ATM receipts T'Keisha mentioned," he said. Every one of them ended with a name -- "u-b-h-q-v-a-v." Maybe there's a clue there.
"What kind of a name is 'ub-quav'?" Altheria asked.
Tucker explained about the receipts -- the lotto numbers, the stock market tips and all.
Abigail asked Tucker to repeat the letters again and typed them into her laptop.
"It's not an anagram," Sam said. "Too many weird consonants, not enough vowels. Tucker and T'Keisha think it's some kind of cipher but none of their programs have been able to crack it."
"It's probably something so simple that you've overlooked it because it's too simple," Abigail said.
"Exactly!" Tucker explained, "and it's driving me mad because I can't think of any encrypting programs we haven't tried."
"What is the simplest encrypting technique?" Abigail mused to no one in particular as she typed furiously on her laptop. She looked up, waiting for an answer from Tucker."
"Pig Latin?" Sid suggested. "Nix-nay on the ig-pay atin-lay. Right?"
"That only works on sentences." Altheria sniped. "Upid-stay."
"I think Sid may ne on to something," Abigail said, drawing sharp claims of "No!" from Altheria, Danny and Jazz. Sam muttered, "of course."
"Look, pig latin is a form of letter substitution. You take the first letter of a word, move it to the back and add 'ay.' Letter substitution is the simplest form of encryption. Depending on the algorithm used for the substitution it can be easy or hard to crack."
"ROT-13" Tucker exclaimed. "This is in ROT-13 and we never noticed!" Tucker actually did slap himself on the forehead.
"What's ROT-13?" Danny asked.
"Rotation-13," Tucker told him. "You replace each letter with the letter 13 spaces away. 'A' becomes 'm', 'b' becomes 'n' and so. Since the alphabet is 26 characters long, ROT-13 swaps all letters with other letters without need for blanks for fillers." He turned to Abigail, "So what is u-b-h-whatever?"
"Houdini."
"Houdini" Tucker and Danny said together.
"What does Houdini have to do with electronic ghosts?"
Abigail smiled smugly. "Already thought of that. From Wikipedia it says that later in life Houdini became involved in spiritualism, debunking fake mediums by exposing the tricks they used to produce ghostly activity during seances. But Houdini apparently wasn't an agnostic about the afterlife since he promised his wife that if there was an afterlife he would try to get in touch with her, and left a secret word only she would know to prove that it was he and not some faker."
"You think 'ub-qav' was houdini's secret word?" Sid asked.
"No! well it could be, no one knows what the secret word Houdini told his wife was," Abigail said. "It could have been 'u-b-h-q-v-a-v,' it could have been 'rosebud.' It could have been anything. I think the point is that he's saying 'I'm calling from the other side.' Don't you think so, Danny?" Abigail flashed him a smile.
"So what," Sam snapped, her arms crossed in disgust over her chest. "Beaucoup Bucks as a joke name. Beauregard C. Buchwald was a fake name. Knowing that the inventor of the viral ghosts is sending them from the other side doesn't tell one damn thing about him."
Danny noticed that everyone seemed to be looking at him, rather than Abigail, whom Sam had been lambasting. Were they expecting him to have an answer to that? He shrugged his shoulders because he really didn't have an answer.
"If this Houdini guy is dead," Sid suggested, "not the magician but the guy behinds these ghosts, isn't that some kind of a clue?"
"Clue about what?" Danny snapped sarcastically as Sid suggested just seemed to be going over the obvious all over again.
"Somebody had to die. How many people could have invented a Ghost Radio?"
Danny was about to say something, then stopped, closed his mouth and thought.
"You think Sid is right," Altheria asked incredulously.
"He has a point. We're not going to find out who's responsible by chasing after Beaucoup Bucks or Buchwald or whoever. We're going to have to figure out who could have done this and run each one down to earth."
"That could take forever, man," Tucker protested.
"Maybe not. How many people could invent a ghost radio? Not many. We just have to make up a list of them then find out which ones have died recently.
"Where are we going to get a list like that?" Tucker persisted.
"Mom and Dad." Jazz answered for Danny.
"Exactly. They know everybody who's involved with ghost research."
"How are you planning to ask them," Abigail wondered. "I'd love to see that. I ask purely from a professional point of view since asking my Dad anything about his work has failed."
"It's not getting Mr. Fenton started," Tucker cracked, "It's getting him to stop."
"Are we done yet," Danny asked. "It's settled that we're going to have to talk to our folks about who could be Beaucoup Bucks. The Technus-clones have been stomped out except for the one in Altheria's chip and we'll take care of that later. We have Technus on ice. I think we can all go back to sleep, Jazz."
Jazz was still writing furiously on the borrowed hotel stationary.
She looked up and pointed to the Fenton Thermos. "Take that with you," she barked and went back to writing her notes.
Sid lumbered to his feet and tried to give Altheria a quick kiss, which she dodged by pulling the blankets up around her. Abigail folded up her laptop and set it down but remained sitting on the edge of the bed holding on to her robe. Sam had been sitting on top the cover so she got up to fold them down. As she passed Danny she said, "she's not the only one who would like to be there when you ask your father that. Then again I like your father." She smiled and slipped in beside Altheria.
Back in their room Sid stretched out on his bed without undressing and was snoring in seconds. Danny and Tucker lay in their bed staring at the ceiling for a bit.
"Do you really think your father knows who Beaucoup Bucks is?" Tucker asked,
"The more I think about it, the more I think he does. Of course not as Beaucoup Bucks, Beauregard C. Buchwald or any other names we know him by. Remember what Technus said: the guy that tried to take his picture or scan him or whatever it was he did, he looked like a teacher. A professor of ghost science who's died within the last five years. I'm sure Dad knows someone like that."
"And if we close off his Ghost Zone Radio, will that really stop the ghost invasion?"
"It would be nice to have an anti-ghost computer virus program just to be sure, but yeah, I think so. At least until the next ghost figure out how to get into our world and tries to take it over."
"Lovely," Tucker sighed. "Is this how the rest of our lives going to be?"
"If there's one thing I've learned from Clockwork, it's that it's better not to know what the future contains."
"You got that right," Tucker said, rolling over. Danny rolled over, too, then opened his eyes and found them staring into Tucker's. "Oops" he muttered and rolled over facing out from the bed. As he hovered at the edge of the queen size bed Danny wondered if girls -- Sam -- had trouble sleeping two to a bed.
***
When T'Keisha arrived in the mid-morning no one felt like getting up. Jazz's mid-night session had left everyone tired, cranky and sleepy. No one felt much like doing anything.
"What about the hotel's pool?" Jazz suggested. Of course she and Sid had bought swimming suits the night they arrived. The others hadn't and didn't want to spent the little remaining of money on cloths they wouldn't need once they got home.
Still Danny kind of liked the idea since it didn't involve a lot of walking. "It could be fun,"he said. "I'll pick up a suit for you, Sam."
"No way, Danny!" Sam cried. "You are not going to buy any bathing suits for me!"
"Why not?"
"You have bad taste, If I let you pick out a bathing suit you'd end up picking out something that would make a porn star blush."
"I would not!" Danny protested. "I would never pick out anything that would embarrass you!"
"You don't know what would embarrass me."
"Sure I do."
"Hey I want in on this," Altheria broke it. "Twenty bucks says Danny can find a suit you'd like."
"What!" Sam cried, "I thought you were my friend? How could you do something like that."
"What? Making a bet? It's not like we'll force you to wear whatever Danny picks out. Come on, be a sport." Altheria laughed,
"I don't intend to be the butt of your jokes," Sam said, pushing past the punk girl.
"What's going on?" Jazz asked, while filling a handbag with an assortment of pencils, notepads, maps, medicine and so on.
"We're having a bet," Altheria began.
"We are not," Sam rejoined.
"Sam says Danny can't pick out a nice bathing suit. I've got twenty bucks that says Danny can," Altheria finished.
Jazz laughed. "I'm in. I say Danny can't."
"You're not helping," Sam scowled at Jazz.
"What do you mean?" Jazz asked, "I agree with you, Danny doesn't have any clothes sense. Look at what he wears -- all the time!"
"I don't care to be the subject of anyone's bet."
"Bet?" Sid asked as he came into the girl's room. "What are we betting on?"
"We're not!" Sam declared. "You have been sadly misinformed." Unfortunately Altheria had Sid's other ear and was explaining the nature of the bet. Sid pulled out his wallet and withdrew a twenty dollar bill. "I'm in."
"For or against?"
"For, of course, Danny's got good taste."
"Think you could pick out a good suit for me?" Altheria teased.
Sid blushed. "Nah, I'm not good with clothes."
"Geez!" Sam started pushing her way out of the room. "Next you'll be asking the bimbo!" she declared.
"Ask me what?" Abigail asked from the window where she had been watching the sun rising over the dimly seen Lake Michigan.
"Nothing! No body wants your opinion."
"You realize, Sam," Altheria called out as Sam was pulling the door to the hallway open. "It doesn't matter if you're there or not. We'll just decide by vote whether the suit is a winner or not."
Sam slammed the door as she left.
"Ask me what?" Abigail asked again.
"Whether Danny can pick out a swim suit that Sam would like." Altheria explained. "You in?"
"Forget Sam, I can pick out a suit that Danny would definitely like?"
"Electrician's tapes does not count as a bathing suit," Altheria returned. "I remember the suits you brought to Camp."
Abigail stuck out her tongue at Altheria. "It's a mug's game," she declared. "Sa-MAN-tha Manson will never accept anything Danny picks out.."
"So, twenty bucks against?" Altheria asked. "OK, who's left?"
"Tucker and T'Keisha" Danny said.
"Left for what?" Tucker asked as he came into the girl's room. "What was Sam in such a snit about."
"I offered to buy her a bathing suit and she said anything I'd pick out would embarrass her."
Tucker broke out in a fit of laughter. "She's got that right."
"Oh, come on, Tucker, I've got taste."
"Danny, have you ever looked at your wardrobe?"
"Why do people keep saying that?" Danny complained.
"I think Danny could pick out a nice swim suit," T'Keisha suggested.
"Girl, you don't know Danny as long as I have."
"I think I've known him long enough." T'Keisha crossed her arms. Tucker, recognizing the gesture from when his mother was POed at him, closed his mouth.
"So who's going to put some money down on this?" Altheria asked? She put a twenty on top the twenty Sid had dropped on the bed. Jazz and Abigail threw in twenty each. T'Keisha shook her head, "Daddy's opposed to gambling." Tucker breathed a sigh of relief since he didn't have an extra twenty bucks on him.
"So, two for and two against. Fenton, you've got a job set out for ya."Altheria headed towards the door, pushing Danny ahead of her.
"You know, I don't want to get Sam mad. I think we ought to call the whole thing off. Shee seemed pretty angry."
"Danny, this is the most fun we've had this weekend," Altheria declared. "You can't back out now."
With a sigh he let them push him around.
***
They passed Sam in the coffee shop having a bagel and orange juice. The others pushed Danny into the Gift Shop and herded him into the corner where the bathing suits were displayed. With six pairs of eyes hanging over his shoulders Danny felt very uncomfortable, like the times his mother had asked him to fold laundry and there was some of hers in the basket. Finally he had to tell them to back off so he could choose in solitude. There were numerous two piece outfits, some so small Danny wondered who in their right mind would wear them. There were a smaller selection of one-piece suits that he knew Sam favored, and another section of almost dowdy suits with skirts that he imagined were for grandmothers.
Now that people were betting on him this whole idea seemed a lot less fun than it did originally. He had just wanted to do something nice for Sam. For being Sam. And now....
Danny shuffled along the racks of suits. Some were too large, or too small. Too bright, too drab. What if he couldn't find a nice suit for Sam? That might actually be a solution. If HE couldn't find a suit that he thought that Sam would like then there was no question of whether Sam would like it. The whole question would be moot.
Then he saw it. It wasn't black but a bluish indigo. Parts of it shimmered rainbowy, like oil on water. The legs were cut kind of high but the top ran all the way to the neck. Seams ran cross the front to make it look like a bustier but it was all very discrete. You had to be looking for it to see the stitching. There are times when you know that you have found exactly what you've been looking for, even when you never knew what it was you were looking for. Danny picked up the suit and joined his friends.
Altheria went to bring Sam back. She took one look at the suit and stalked off.
"Fork it over," Jazz demanded, holding out her hand, "Sam obviously did not like it."
"Not so fast," Sid interrupted, "The law they say 'silence means consent'. Since Sam didn't say anything we have to assume she likes it."
"When did you ever learn anything about the law," Altheria demanded.
Sid whispered embarrassingly "Juvie." After a moment he added, "Never trust your buds to back up your alibi when there's serious jail time involved."
Abigail snagged the money out of Sid's hand. "I think I called it correctly," she declared. "I said Miz Manson would never admit to liking anything Danny picked out, and she didn't. Now if you don't mind, I've got a bathing suit to buy with my winnings."
"The electrical tape is over here!" Altheria called to her.
***
Danny slipped between the others and made his way outside. He found Sam around the corner, leaning against a pylon ringing the parking lot.
"I'm really sorry, Sam" Danny began. "I just wanted to do something nice for you. I didn't know it was going to turn into a circus. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
"I could listen to your apologizes all day," Sam said with a sly smile. "It's OK. I'm not mad."
"You're not?"
"I was earlier. Look, I don't like to be the butt of anyone's joke and when this turned into a contest over whether you could pick out a nice outfit, that's when it stopped being funny. So the next time I ask you to stop, just stop, OK? I don't try to tell you what to do--"
"Sam, you do that all the time," Danny protested.
"No, I advice you not to do what you're thinking of doing but I don't tell you not to do it."
"I'm pretty sure what you tell me is not to do something. not that it's unwise." Danny persisted. "But I get it, I don't try to force you to do something you don't like."
"Something like that."
"But did you like the suit? You didn't say one way or the other in the store."
"And I never will. They will argue about whatever suit you picked out for the rest of the weekend. By not giving them the satisfaction of an answer they can't talk about me! They can only talk about you or the suit, and they will, but they can't talk about me."
"But you can tell me. I am pretty good about keeping secrets, after all."
"Are you kidding? You've told me so many embarrassing things about Tucker that if he knew, he'd never speak to you again!"
"But, they were so funny!"
"Well, yeah, but still you shouldn't have told me all of them."
"I just wanted to do you a favor you know." Danny said after a moment, quietly.
"I know. And I'm touched, but seriously, Danny, what do you see here?" Sam had pulled out her wallet and flipped through cardholder tabs.
"Uh -- credit cards?"
"And how many do you have in your pocketbook?"
"One."
"Danny, I can afford to buy any bathing suit here."
Danny was too embarrassed to comment. Sam rarely flouted her parent's wealth. She'd hidden it from he and Tucker for months after they'd met the first day of High School. She was the goofy Goth girl no one wanted to hang out with. Danny and Tucker were nerdy outsiders no one wanted to hang out with. So they had started hanging out together. And from there had grown into real friends.
"If you want to do something nice for a friends, you could slip Tuck fifty bucks so he can buy a suit for T'Keisha." Sam suggested.
"I thought we weren't going swimming?" Danny asked puzzled.
"It's going to be a long day. I want to go exploring in the morning. When we get tired of that and come back to the hotel, then swimming will sound like a good idea."
Danny colored slightly. "I don't have that much cash left over."
Sam pulled out her wallet again, extracted a bill and handed it to Danny. "And now you do."
"How much do you have in there?" Danny asked since her wallet seemed rather thich with green. More money than he had ever seen.
"It's not a competition," Sam snapped, slipping her wallet back into her pants.
"I can't take your money."
"It's not for you. It's for Tucker -- if he needs it.
"I'll pay you back."
"It's for Tucker, don't bother."
"Well, thanks. You know, I think I know exactly which bathing suit Tuck will pick out for T'Keisha."
"You think?
"Yes. I'm known Tucker most of my life. I think I know what he'll pick out."
"Is this a bet?"
"Yes -- no -- I thought you didn't like betting?"
"I don't mind making bets on other people. I just don't like bets being placed on me."
"So -- this fifty is on what Tuck picks out?"
"Oh, I'm thinking of something much more serious."
"Serious?" Danny repeated.
"If you're wrong you have to take me to a movie of my choosing."
"We go to movies all the time."
"We go to movies that we all agree on. I'm saying a movie I want to see."
"A chick flick?" Danny gulped.
"Could be."
"And if I'd right you go to the move I want to see?"
"Sure, why not."
Danny paused for a moment, confused. It sounded like he'd just made a "date" date with Sam. How did that happen?
"Ok, when I was going through the racks I saw a suit that I thought was perfect for T'Keisha. It was a leopard print that looked really nice and the middle was just this mesh fabric so it looks like a bikini but it's really a one-piece. When I saw it I thought that with a necklace of fangs and a six foot spear she'd give Raquel Welch a run for it as The Cave Girl babe -- what are you laughing at?"
It took Sam a moment to control her laughter. "That is so hilarious," she said almost breaking into laughter again. "That is exactly the same outfit I was thinking about. It's perfect for T'Keisha. But lose the bone necklace, that is too stereotypical.
"So did we both just win the bet, or lose?"
"Tucker still has to buy it, but that we were both thinking of the same suit -- that is outrageous."
After a bit Sam suggested they go back in and collect the others if they wanted to explore the city any that day. The first person the met coming into the hotel lobby was Tucker. He held up a package and said, "Look what I got T'Keisha!" He pulled out a bit of a leopard print bathing suit. For some reason the sight of it sent Danny and Sam into paroxysms of laughter.
***
Sam was able to drag the others outside, where the caught a bus taking them a couple miles north to Grant Park. This was an enormous park, like Central Park in New York, stretching from Michigan Ave to the lakefront. On the south end, were the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Observatory. To the north were endless lawns, flower gardens, statues and fountains. All well designed and carefully attended.
They circled the Buckingham Fountain, made famous by that TV show, grabbed some hotdogs and ice cream bars and picnicked in the shade of some tall trees. Danny and Tucker told T'Keisha about the late night/early morning brain-storming session. "Of course!" T'Keisha exclaimed when they told her about Houdini's name being hidden by a ROT-13 cipher.
Afterwards they wander further north, finding a splash park for children between two glass towers onto which were projected pictures of people. The colossal images would wink, grimace and smile. Every so often they were purse their lips like they were about to spit and a huge jet of water would come out of their mouth. The children would go wild at that, trying to crowd into the stream. Further on was a fifty foot doughnut made of chrome steel, polished to a mirror finish. It was like a giant fun house mirror.
By then Jazz was getting hungry and from one of her tourist books found a restaurant that did deep-dish pizza. Stuffed and foot-sore they caught a bus back to their hotel. On the bus Sam threatened to buy Danny a pair of skimpy Speedos as punishment for that morning but relented in the gift shop and let him buy what he wanted. As if turned out Danny and Tucker bought the same color and model of baggy suits, leading Sid to called then the Bobbsey twins for the rest of the day. Sam picked out a shapeless black suit for herself. Danny had hoped she would pick the deep-blue suit he had selected then remembered that she wouldn't buy even if she did like it.
T'Keisha was stunning in the leopard print suit Tucker had bought her. It was obvious that the suit was cut for someone larger in the top and bottom then T'Keisha was but the design had lacings in the front at the top and on the sides of the hips that could be tightened and made the suit fit her well.
Abigail had found a tiny red bikini that flattered her red hair. From time to time she would tease Danny to give her swimming lessons since, has had been discovered at Camp, she wasn't a good swimmer. Danny declined, of course, but a couple of middle-aged businessmen were quick to offer their help. Even Abigail found that a little too creepy and soon retired to the hot tub with Jazz.
Danny had laid down on a lounge next to Sam meaning to catch his breath before diving in but kept slipping off to sleep so much that he was beginning to think he needn't have bought a suit at all. It was strange. He was close his eyes "only for a moment" and when he opened them again Sam was gone, out in the pool. His eyelids would slide back down -- only for a moment -- and Sam would be back on the lounge next to his. And a blink later Tucker might be in her seat, or T'Keisha. He had given up trying to stay awake when strong arms suddenly grabbed him up and throw him out into the pool. Danny came up sputtering to find Sid at the edge of the pool laughing. Danny lunged out of the water, grabbed Sid's elbow and pulled him in. It went downhill from there. But by the time Sid and Danny called a truce and climbed onto the edge of the pool Danny wasn't feeling sleepy a all.
***
Tucker tried talking T'Keisha into staying the night, their last night in Chicago, but really, all the beds in the girl's room were already taken. In the end the black girl took any early train home and Tucker went with her, to meet her parents. He got back late that night, admitting he'd missed one train because he had been too busy kissing T'Keisha!
They had decided it would be too much trouble for her to come up the next morning just to see them off.
It was just as well. Everyone woke up later, fought over their turns on the showers, fought over picking up the trash. Fought over who had brought what with them, who had bought what and more. By the time Jazz got them downstairs and turned in their room card passes the friends were a sullen group rather happy to be going their separate ways. Nonetheless there was a round-robin of phone calls that evening and a shared sense of sadness that their grand adventure was over.
With a delicate grinding of gears Jazz eased the ancient Chevette out of the parking lot and onto the highway. Danny was given the bag of quarters for the toll booth. Sam and Tucker linked up their Game Boys and began playing "Cheats" where the object was to beat their opponents through the way of various cheat codes.
"Next time," Jazz said as she forced the transmission into third gear and let the clutch out with a jerk, "You're driving!"