On Broken Wings (50 page)

Arkham stared at him. At first Svenson could read nothing from his expression. Then he noticed the tics traveling around the hollows of the smaller man's eyes. Arkham's neck was swelling, too, the blood vessels standing out thick and garish against his office pallor. Capillaries in both eyes were filling with blood. Svenson fancied he could see some of them burst.

If I could look past your eyes and into your brain, Terry, what would I see there? A host of demons jabbing pitchforks into the convolutions?

"You can't make it right," Arkham said, and turned away again. Svenson hesitated, then rose and trotted back to Christine's cubicle.

***

Christine was growing tired. She tried not to show it, knowing how Rolf's morale would suffer if he saw her wilting. But now, momentarily alone, she slumped in her chair, sighed and passed her hands over her eyes.

Wonder what Terry had to say to Rolf.

There would be no help from the Tactical team leader. Whatever his reasons, he'd elected to go limp on them. If the demo was going to be saved, it would be Christine and Rolf who would save it.

I need a matrix inversion routine. Where the hell can I find a matrix inverter around here?

Four days of continuous maximum effort had left her ready to try anything short of homicide to shorten her labors. She fished up the big search program she'd written last Monday, when they'd still had hopes of finding their files somewhere on the network, and started to tinker with it. Anything she could find that appeared reliable would stand in for her own work, until she had time and energy enough to readdress it.

She knew that a number of Terry Arkham's people were not only software engineers by trade, but also enthusiasts who played with all manner of problems and ideas that might be relevant to her needs. Normally, she wouldn't have dreamed of snooping private disks for useful material. It would have been too much an invasion of others' privacy. In her current, what-the-hell state, the impropriety of it seemed much diminished. She added all the private disk designators for the Tactical group to her search engine's inspection domain and set it off before returning to her current challenge.

About five minutes later, the search engine beeped success.

She closed her working file and brought up the results window. A strangely named file in Terry Arkham's area had cross-listed against eleven of the thirteen categories her program had been told to seek out.

The file's name was unpronounceable, a mix of alphabetic, numeric, and special characters. She brought up the containing directory and listed all the files in it. All had unintelligible names.

Has he taken to encrypting his file names?

The file that had triggered her search engine was many megabytes in size. Rather than call it up under the editor, which would have locked up her computer for half an hour if the file turned out to be binary rather than editable text, she used the system dump utility to display the first few kilobytes on her screen.

The names of all the files missing from the Simulation working account began to scroll down her screen.

***

Christine was pounding away furiously when Svenson got there.

"Everything okay?" She didn't slow or turn her head.

"I don't know." He slumped into her guest chair. "How about with you?"

"Five by five." She closed the file she was working on and spun her chair to face him. "Time to walk Boomer. Join me?"

He'd been doing that chore himself. "Sure. Where's the leash?"

"Got it right here." She clipped it to the Newfoundland's collar and the three of them made for the back exit, where there was a small grassy knoll that Boomer liked.

Boomer was content to roll in the grass while they stood with him. The night air was chilly, but there was a hint of spring's return in it as well. A few small clouds drifted across the face of the gibbous moon. No other activity was visible on the OA campus.

Svenson stood hunched against the chill, musing. Little about Terry's recent behavior made any sense, but he had nothing concrete to work with, just a sense of alarm. He longed to be beyond the dreaded demo, to be a mere engineering manager again, instead of a would-be co-savior of the company.

"Did Terry offer you our files back?"

Christine's question snapped him out of his reverie. She was watching her dog try to burrow backwards into the earth. "What are you talking about, Chris?"

"He bombed the project, you know. I thought he might be making his move."

"WHAT?"

"Rolf, he wants us to fail so badly that you can read it right off his face. Haven't you figured that out yet? I thought it would be obvious to you by now. He's done nothing to help, made no suggestions, and resisted Roger every step of the way."

"But Chris -- !"

She turned to face him.

"I'm not guessing, Rolf. I found the goods while you were talking to him. He had a complete copy of our working account on his private disk, under a meaningless name. The copy date was late last Sunday night." She scowled. "The little turd thinks he's clever."

The revelation was more painful than his discovery of the original disaster. If anyone but Christine had told him, he would have found some reason, any reason, to disbelieve it and wish it away.

"Why would Terry want to hurt us?" he whispered.

She shook her head. "No rational reason but one: he wanted something from you and planned to ransom our files back to us for it."

She spoke so calmly into the innocent night that he had no choice but to believe her.

Svenson turned away and ran both hands through his remaining hair. The fear their labors had begun to dispel was back in full force, but now it was without a focus, as if anything around him might turn lethal at any moment. A pride of hungry lions might dash out from behind a corner of the building. A squad of terrorists with automatic weapons might rise up out of a sewer grate and open fire. The skies might open and rain napalm upon him.

Terry's always thought of himself as Number One, and insisted on being treated that way. And he's gotten his wish for as long as I've been here. That hasn't changed. Was he afraid that it was about to? Surely not because of anything I've done.

There's only been one change of substance.

"Chris, can he sting us again?"

"Not even if he could afford to. I've got everything on removable disks now." The corner of her mouth turned up. "And he's got a surprise coming if he tries it again."

I don't think I'll inquire any more deeply into that.

"Can we slack off, then? Just reintroduce the old material and be done?"

"Nope." She faced him again. Even in the darkness, her anger was impossible to miss. "We can't trust it. He's not as good as he thinks, but he's good enough that he might've poisoned the code. We'd have to detoxify it too carefully to make it worth while. Better just to keep on as we've been going. We'll finish in time."

"What do we do about him?"

The grin that spread across her features was the perfection of malice.

"He gets his the day after the demo. Leave it to me, Rolf."

"You're going to turn him in to Orloff?"

"Naah," she snorted. "He's got too many allies and too long a track record. We'd never be believed."

I should have known she'd be smarter than that.

"So what, then?"

"I said leave it to me. Just control your expression when you have to look at him, okay? You won't be sorry."

Rolf Svenson studied his nominal subordinate's face and was grateful that he wasn't Terry Arkham.

"Okay, Chris."

***

Christine and Boomer got home a few minutes past midnight. For the first time that week, Malcolm was awake to meet them. He sat in his usual place on the sofa, one of Louis's books open in his lap. She unclipped Boomer's leash, and he ran up the stairs to her bedroom.

"Which one this time?"

"Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
He held it up, and she nodded.

"A lot of good stuff in there."

"Especially if you're feeling too optimistic. Would you like some coffee?"

She thought a moment. "Better not. I need to sleep. Tomorrow's more of the same."

He beckoned to her to come sit with him, and she did. There was concern in his face, a rare visitor to that grim countenance.

"How long is this likely to go on?"

"About ten days more. After that, it's back to business as usual."

He nodded. "How are you bearing up?"

She emitted a note of weak laughter. "I could probably sleep for a week. It's okay, Malcolm. I'm strong. And it's not like this is going to go on forever."

"I hope not." He grinned. "I have only one more lesson for you. I assume we won't be going over it this Sunday?"

"Right." She yawned. Fatigue was catching up with her. "Mind postponing my graduation ceremony by two weeks?"

"If I must, I must." Loughlin paused. "Chris, whatever it is you're working on, is it worth all this?"

She chuckled again. "Malcolm, you've got me fixed so that's the first and last question I ask about everything. Yes, it's worth it. Not for itself, but because justice is involved."

His face began to darken. "Are you taking on a sideline, now? Great Deeds For Hire?" She could hear him pronounce the capitals. "I thought Louis taught you to program computers, not to go out and right wrongs, assuming you could recognize them."

What the hell -- ?

Stay calm, Christine.

You know, Nag, that's the only thing you've had to say for about a month.

Maybe it's the only thing you've needed to hear.

Why should he be upset about what I said?

Why should he be? Or why is he?

All right, why is he?

He's worried for you.

What?

He's worried for you, Christine. Ask him!

"Malcolm," she said, choosing her words carefully, "are you concerned that I'm about to hurt myself?"

"In a sense, yes."

"What sense?"

He drew a deep breath.

"To make justice is to make enemies, Chris. If that's what you're really doing."

Jesus Christ, Nag, you were right.

Thank you, Christine.

At least the invisible advisor didn't rub it in.

"It's what I'm doing, Malcolm." She tried to keep her speech soft and measured. "And yes, I'll have at least one enemy afterward, but I think I can cope with him." She hesitated. "Is there anything I could tell you that would help lay your worries to rest?"

The muscles in his face drew tight.

"Yes. That you won't do it again."

"Ah. I can't promise that."

"I know." He rose, tucked the book under his arm, and headed for his bedroom.

"Malcolm."

"Yes?" He stopped halfway up the stairs and turned toward her.

"It'll be okay, I promise."

He shook his head, his habitual grim visage restored. "No. You can't promise that either."

====

Chapter
46

It went on, and on, and on, one sixteen-hour day after another. From eight each morning until the following midnight, Christine, Rolf and Boomer were seldom apart for an interval more than five minutes long. Rolf continued to organize the assault and test the intermediate stages. Christine continued to code and debug. Boomer kept them company, took their infrequent breaks with them, and let them pet him as necessary, providing the uncritical love and reassurance designed into him by two centuries of selective breeding.

At Thursday's dinner conference, over wienerschnitzel with braised red cabbage and spaetzle, Morrison asked them for the odds once more. Rolf looked a question at Christine, and she nodded her assent. He marshaled his thoughts.

"Present trends continuing, we'll be finished by noon Saturday. All features are in except the display and the automatics. We didn't have to drop any of the working parts. The original demo script will work."

Morrison's eyes were as large as saucers.

"That gives us a day and a half to test against Terry's current flight software and fix any residual problems." Svenson turned to Arkham. "Terry, are you ready to go into the lab and integrate with us?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." The Tactical team leader appeared to be struggling to swallow something.

Svenson nodded. "Then we're set. Unless we get derailed sometime in the last phase of development work, we gather in the lab after lunch Saturday and fire this sucker up."

"Rolf? Are you absolutely, positively sure?" Morrison's voice betrayed a quaver of excitement.