"That is an exaggeration," Jones said, his voice flat.

"But not much of one, right?"

"I am not in the habit of buying a pig in a poke," Jones said. "I understand what I have acquired. The jukeboxes are sealed units. Inside is an arrangement very much like that of a record jukebox. A robot arm selects the correct WORM disk from the disk array on command and places it on the carousel for reading. It is the perfect system for Wormwood Asylum."

"I thought you said this place was called Woodlawn."

Jones cleared his throat with such violence Buzz Kuttner clenched his teeth. It was a very nervous clearing of the throat. "I misspoke," said Jones. "I was thinking of the WORM drives."

"Yeah, anybody can forget the name of the place where he works," Kuttner said dryly.

Jones said nothing, so Kuttner continued installing. Going back to the jukeboxes-they looked like squat beige refrigerators all in a row-he noticed the ragged edge of the long niche where the mainframes stood. Bits of copper showed through the poured concrete. Grounded copper mesh, he realized. These mainframes had been practically walled in and Tempest shielded.

Woodlawn Asylum, or Wormwood or whatever it was, was no run-of-the-mill nuthouse, Buzz Kuttner decided. That was for damn sure.

SOMEWHERE in the hours before dawn-reading his watch was not easy in the dim light-Buzz Kuttner finished installing the last XL SysCorp optical WORM drive data-storage units.

They purred so softly that once the triple-locked door was locked, no one standing where he stood now would suspect that an incredibly powerful hybrid computer system was operating on the other side.