Doctor Who_ Blue Box Part 22

Swan broke her search pattern and started jumping around randomly; that only meant it took him a little longer to track her down. Outside the fortress of her own mainframe, she was less like a G.o.d of the net and more like a rabbit on the run. In the end she sent him an obscene email and logged out in disgust.

'Are you really sure that was such a good idea?' said Peri.

'Won't she get mad and land Bob in hot water?'

'I can't let her hold that over us. I mustn't.

'But '

'I have no intention of letting her harm Bob,' said the Doctor. 'I must make her see that's she's helpless. As soon as she accepts that she needs my help, this miniature catastrophe will be over.'

'What about the Savant's grip on her mind?' I asked. 'Can she get past that?'

'Swan's an intelligent woman; said the Doctoe. 'Single-minded and malicious with a dash of megalomania, butintelligent. She must be aware of what's happening to her.

In a way, her demand for an instruction book is a cry for help.'

He looked up at his companion. 'We're almost there, Peri.

We're this this close.' close.'

My phone rang. I hit 'answer' and told the speakerphone, 'Shoot, it's your dime.' Then I flinched, expecting Mr Salmon.

Christ help me, it was she. 'Mr Peters,' she said, sounding a little hoa.r.s.e. 'This is Sarah Swan. I'd like your help with something.'

'Uhhhhhhh,' I said. It was the plummeting moment of stage fright when your lines are just gone gone.

'I don't trust the phone right now.' It should have sounded like knowing cynicism, but instead, it sounded like weary fright. 'Let's meet.'

The Doctor opened his mouth, and Peri just about shoved her fist into it. He subsided onto the couch. Swan had no idea they were there. I said, 'Uh, at your house?'

'No!' She named a shop at 'Tyson's Corner. 'Right now,'

she said. 'I'll be waiting for you.'

'I'll be there.'

I hung up the phone. The Doctor exhaled loudly. 'I'll go,'

he said.

'You know, I think it might be better if I go,' I said. The Doctor put his hands on his hips. 'She still thinks I'm neutral in all this.'

'And are you neutral, Mr Peters?' said the Doctor, looming over me. 'After everything you've seen?'

'I guess I am.' I lit up, obliging him to get out of my face.

'I'm still an observer.' The Doctor always looks grouchy, but Peri's disappointed glance cut to the quick. 'Someone has to be,' I insisted. 'Or there wouldn't be be any meeting with Swan. any meeting with Swan.

I'll see what I can get out of her.'

Mr Salmon dropped Bob off at my apartment, and Peri let him in. She said, 'How was your dad?'

Bob blew out a combination sigh and whistle and rolled his eyes. 'I think he'll let us live.' The Doctor showed Bob the email he'd received from an unknowing Swan. 'The more cautious she becomes, the more information she'll give away.'

He insisted on waiting until they heard from me, but the lack of action was driving the Doctor buggy. He straightened out the papers on my desk (wrecking my filing system), played a couple of games of chess with Bob (subst.i.tuting pennies for the p.a.w.ns missing from my set), inspected my fridge (a bottle of ketchup, half a lemon,a packet of cornflakes), scratched Stray Cat's rump while she dragged herself about on the carpet with her claws, and finally went back to the Apple, to try to trace Luis based on the information he'd given away during the MUD session.

Peri tried to comfort a depressed Bob. 'You could come with us, you know.'

Bob's eyes got very big. 'Really?'

'I don't think the Doctor would take much persuading.

We've got plenty of room.'

'You know, he asked me,' said Bob. 'Back in '77. He asked if I wanted to travel with him. It was a crazy question.

My mom would have had kittens.' Peri had to grin. Bob said, 'So he told me he'd return for me in a few years and ask again.

When you turned up at my office, I thought it was because he'd come back for me.'

Peri's grin softened into a smile. 'So how about it?'

'I don't want to miss the next ten years of computing!'

Peri thought about that. Ten years of living in the same place, watching it change around you a day at a time. She had never had ten years in a row like that. 'History is happening right now, and I've got my hands on it.' He mimed typing at a keyboard. 'It's too exciting to go right now. Maybe in ten years?'

'Maybe,' said Peri. She gave him a pat on the arm.

Bob hovered at the Doctor's elbow until he came out of his computer trance. 'Er,' said Bob. 'I drew this up for you.

For protection. Just in case.'

He handed the Doctor a slip of paper on which he had constructed an elaborate occult symbol. The Doctor unfolded the paper, raised an eyebrow, examined the complex diagram drawn with ruler and compa.s.s and ringed with angelic names and alchemical marks, carefully folded it up again, and inserted it into his coat pocket.

'Thank you, Bob,' he said. 'That was very thoughtful of you.'

'Uh, Doctor?' said Bob. He was pointing at the screen of the Apple. Letters and numbers were flowing across its screen in a flood of symbols. 'I have never seen anything like this.

What'd you do to it?'

'It's not me,' said the Doctor. 'It's something on Swan's Eclipse. I was trying to make her system crash to root, and suddenly something reached out and grabbed the modem.'

'Well, disconnect it!'

The Doctor caught Bob's hand before he could yank the modem's plug. 'Just a moment. Look at it. What's it doing?'

Bob said, 'It looks like it's running the same instructions over and over again. You know, it looks like a diagnostic test... a program checking out the Apple's system, poking into all the nooks and crannies. I do not like this.'

The scribble on the screen meant nothing to Peri.

Everything she had seen up to that point had been in kind of stunted English, the high-level command languages which let human beings talk to the machine: a translator takes words like PRINT or RUN and turns them into the microcode that the computer can understand. Now the Apple was receiving instructions in its own tongue, and gleefully running them through its little circuits just as fast as it could.

They watched as the program refined itself. 'It's using a sort of evolution,' said the Doctor. 'Inputting its best guesses, then running Them through 'natural' selection to refine them.

Each generation of the program is a little better than the last.'

'There's no way the Apple has enough oomph to do that,'

said Bob. 'The actual program that's doing this must be running on Swan's mini.'

'Using the Apple as its testing ground.'

'Well, what's it trying to accomplish?' said Peri 'A good question,' said the Doctor. He reached over and plucked the cord out of the modem. Instantly, the characters on the screen of the Apple froze.

Bob picked up a diskette and fed it into the slot. 'Let's do a core dump,' he said. 'Find out what Swan was trying to do to my machine.'

The big fear about the people who break into computers is that they could bring civilisation tumbling down. They're forces of chaos, pulling the rug out from under the order we've created with our machines. Trust me, the hackers aren't going to trigger World War III. They just don't think that big, even when their philosophy tells them to screw the system before it screws them. No, what they cause are little miseries. Dumb pranks, mostly against one another. A few thousand dollars bilked from Ma Bell or the credit card companies isn't enough to blow the walls down. Oh, in theory they might be able to kill a few people by blowing away 911 or messing up a hospital's records, but even that's not enough to end life as we know it.

I couldn't believe that Swan was as dangerous as the Doctor was making out. I could see her growing fat and ugly on petty thefts, petty revenge. But she'd always be a parasite, living around the edges instead of pulling strings from the centre. Let her keep the little monster; if the Ruskies really wanted it back, or the CIA really wanted to get their paws on it, Swan would just turn up missing one day, simple as that.

That's what I was thinking on my way to the mall.

I met Swan at a coffee and pastries shop. She had a junk look about her, a pale twitch. The thing that was sc.r.a.ping at her mind would soon be flaking away the health of her body.

'Tell me where the Doctor is,' she said.

'Hold on!' I said. 'What makes you think I know where he is?'

'I practically walked into you when you were with his pals.'

'But I was only interviewing them,' I bulis.h.i.+tted.

'Mr Peters,' she said, 'if you're not with me, you're against me. Is that clear?'

'Miss Swan,' I said, 'what's clear to me is that you're sick.

I do want to help you. Let me take you to your Doctor.'

Then Swan called me a name which made up my mind about her. 'You dumb f.a.ggot,' she said. 'Do you know how much trouble I'm going to get you in?'

I sat back in my little plastic chair and stared at her.

'This is the biggest opportunity I've ever had,' she told me. I wasn't sure if she thought I knew everything, or if she just didn't care to explain It to me. 'I'm sorry, but I'll break anybody to make the most of that windfall. Does your editor know the LAPD still want you for bas.h.i.+ng your editor there?'

'Lady' I said,'I didn't bash anybody. Someone throws a punch at me, I throw it right back at them. Seem fair to you?'

'You won't be throwing any punches at me.'

'I won't be throwing any crumbs your way, either.'

'Can't you guys understand?' Swan's voice was creaking.

'I'm going to wreck you. I'm going to crush you. Anybody you like, anybody you love, I'm going to take them down too.'

'You'll try. And we'll push back three times as hard as you push us. You don't know when you're outcla.s.sed.' I stood up. ''Scuse me. I've got some shopping to do.'

It only took three tries with the air gun to shoot out the camera above Swan's doorway. I managed it easily from the sidewalk.

From our little expedition into Swan's security setup, I knew I was invisible where I stood. Through the curtains of the house next door, I could see a family eating miniature chocolate bars from a bowl and playing with a new chess machine. They took no notice of me. It gave me the creeps to be standing by their front yard with a toy gun, and them all unawares.

Swan was back at the office; I'd phoned before I'd driven out to McLean, hanging up when I heard her voice. The broken camera would warn her anyway: I didn't have long to take the obvious step of busting a window and making off with her prize.

Swan had absolutely isolated herself. She never spoke to her neighbours, she was friends with no-one at her office. She had bullied every hacker and phreak in the greater DC area, but now she couldn't trust any of them, even her old pal Luis.

She couldn't even use social engineering to rustle up some support from unsuspecting technicians; Swan's style was strictly antisocial. She was on her own. That made her very safe in one way, and incredibly vulnerable in another way: she couldn't even have someone guard her house. I wrapped my hand in my pocket, and busted the window on the porch.

I had a rough map of Svian's house in my head built out of glimpses. I only wish I'd had a genie, like the Doctor's guide in the mud, to carry me straight to my goal. There wasn't a lot of light inside, but I knew the areas she was watching had to have their bulbs lit. I crept up the stairs not an easy thing to do, when you're in a blazing hurry and located the bathroom where Swan was keeping her prisoner.

The air gun claimed another camera as its victim. The shape in the tub didn't even flinch when I shot the lens out. It wasn't easy to see in the dim yellowish light and behind the grubby shower curtain, but then, I wasn't looking at it too closely.

There was no putting it off. I held my breath and ripped back the slimy plastic barrier between me and the monster.

It didn't look at me, too busy with the guts of a pushb.u.t.ton phone and a hand-held football video game to care. I could see its fur rippling with tiny appendages, like the legs of a caterpillar or a wormy slice of meat, keeping a firm and elegant grip on the components it was toying with.

It never looked up, but I still had an intense feeling of being watched, of being looked back at. The longer I stood there, the more intense that feeling got, as though I was the most important thing in its little echoing bath-tubby world. It was the kind of warm and important feeling you get as a kid when you're the centre of everybody's attention. All that, and it never so much as glanced at me.

The thing was about the size of a six-year-old, and as light as though it really was just a stuffed animal. When I bent and scooped it up out of the tub, it just kept right on playing with its new toys. I had expected it to be warm, but its fur was as cool as the tub it was sitting in.

I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror, holding the thing, and almost dropped it. It looked so b.l.o.o.d.y wrong wrong.

There isn't anything on Earth that's shaped like a Y with banana-yellow fur for fingers. If it had been a trained monkey or a mutant crocodile or even a disfigured human child it wouldn't have been so disgusting. If you've ever got a big spider, like a huntsman, on the end of a broom, only to have It run right down the handle into your hands, you know the feeling I had at that moment. I wanted to throw the thing away from me while my whole body shrugged back in the opposite direction. But that nauseating flinch was overridden by a new and different feeling: I wanted to hold onto the thing, grip it tightly, keep it as close to me as possible.