Rayno was out of all the nets and powering down. He turned, slow, and looked at Georgie through those eyebrows of his. “You are still on The List.”
Georgie swallowed it ’cause there was nothing else he could do. Rayno folded up the microterm and tucked it back inside his jumper.
We got a smartcab outside the library and went off to someplace Lisa picked for lunch. Georgie got this idea about garbaging up the smartcab’s brain so that the next customer would have a real state fair ride, but Rayno wouldn’t let him do it. Rayno didn’t talk to him during lunch, either.
After lunch I talked them into heading up to Martin’s Micros. That’s one of my favorite places to hang out. Martin’s the only Older I know who can really work a computer without blowing out his headchips, and he never talks down to me, and he never tells me to keep my hands off anything. In fact, Martin’s been real happy to see all of us, ever since Rayno bought that $3000 vidgraphics art animation package for Lisa’s birthday.
Martin was sitting at his term when we came in. “Oh, hi Mike! Rayno! Lisa! Georgie!” We all nodded. “Nice to see you again. What can I do for you today?”
“Just looking,” Rayno said.
“Well, that’s free.” Martin turned back to his term and punched a few more IN keys. “Damn!” he said to the term.
“What’s the problem?” Lisa asked.
“The problem is me,” Martin said. “I got this software package I’m supposed to be writing, but it keeps bombing out and I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Rayno asked, “What’s it supposed to do?”
“Oh, it’s a real estate system. Y’know, the whole future-values-in-current-dollars bit. Depreciation, inflation, amortization, tax credits—”
“Put that in our tang,” said. “What numbers crunch?”
Martin started to explain, and Rayno said to me, “This looks like your kind of work.” Martin hauled his three hundred pounds of fat out of the chair and looked relieved as I dropped down in front of the term. I scanned the parameters, looked over Martin’s program, and processed a bit. Martin’d only made a few mistakes. Anybody could have. I dumped Martin’s program and started loading the right one in off the top of my head.
“Will you look at that?” Martin said.
I didn’t answer ’cause I was thinking in assembly. In ten minutes I had it in, compiled, and running test sets. It worked perfect, of course.
“I just can’t believe you kids,” Martin said. “You can program easier than I can talk.”
“Nothing to it” I said.
“Maybe not for you. I knew a kid grew up speaking Arabic, used to say the same thing.” He shook his head, tugged his beard, looked me in the face, and smiled. “Anyhow, thanks loads, Mike. I don’t know how to…” He snapped his fingers. “Say, I just got something in the other day, I bet you’d be really interested in.” He took me over to the display case, pulled it out, and set it on the counter. “The latest word in microterms. The Zeilemann Starfire 600.”
I dropped a bit! Then I ballsed up enough to touch it. I flipped up the wafer display, ran my fingers over the touch pads, and I just wanted it so bad!
“It’s smart,” Martin said. “Rammed, crammed, and ported.”
Rayno was looking at the specs with that cold look in his eye. “My 300 is still faster,” he said.
“It should be,” Martin said. “You customized it half to death. But the 600 is nearly as fast, and it’s stock, and it lists for $1400. I figure you must have spent nearly 3K upgrading yours.”
“Can I try it out?” I asked.
Martin plugged me into his system, and I booted and got on line. It worked great! Quiet, accurate; so maybe it wasn’t as fast as Rayno’s—I couldn’t tell the difference.
“Rayno, this thing is the max!” I looked at Martin. “Can we work out some kind of…?” Martin looked back to his terminal, where the real estate program was still running tests without a glitch.
“I been thinking about that, Mike. You’re a minor, so I can’t legally employ you.” He tugged on his beard and rolled his tongue around his mouth. “But I’m hitting that real estate client for some pretty heavy bread on consulting fees, and it doesn’t seem real fair to me that you… Tell you what. Maybe I can’t hire you, but I sure can buy software you write. You be my consultant on, oh…seven more projects like this, and we’ll call it a deal? Sound okay to you?”
Before I could shout yes, Rayno pushed in between me and Martin. “I’ll buy it. List.” He pulled out a charge card from his jumper pocket. Martin’s jaw dropped. “Well, what’re you waiting for? My plastic’s good.”
“List? But I owe Mike one,” Martin protested.
“List. You don’t owe us nothing.”
Martin swallowed. “Okay Rayno.” He took the card and ran a credcheck on it. “It’s clean,” Martin said, sounding surprised. He punched up the sale and started laughing. “I don’t know where you kids get this kind of money!”
“We rob banks,” Rayno said. Martin laughed, and Rayno laughed, and we all laughed. Rayno picked up the term and walked out of the store. As soon as we got outside he handed it to me.
“Thanks Rayno, but…but I coulda made the deal myself.”
“Happy Birthday, Mike.”
“Rayno, my birthday is in August.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. You work for me.”
* * * *
It was near school endtime, so we routed back to Buddy’s. On the way, in the smartcab, Georgie took my Starfire, gently opened the case, and scanned the boards. “We could double the baud speed real easy.”
“Leave it stock,” Rayno said.
We split up at Buddy’s, and I took the transys home. I was lucky, ’cause Mom and Dad weren’t home and I could zip right upstairs and hide the Starfire in my closet. I wish I had cool parents like Rayno does. They never ask him any dumb questions.
Mom came home at her usual time and asked how school was. I didn’t have to say much, ’cause just then the stove said dinner was ready and she started setting the table. Dad came in five minutes later and we started eating.
We got the phone call halfway through dinner. I was the one who jumped up and answered it. It was Georgie’s old man, and he wanted to talk to my Dad. I gave him the phone and tried to overhear, but he took it in the next room and talked real quiet. I got unhungry. I never liked tofu, anyway.
Dad didn’t stay quiet for long. “He what?! Well thank you for telling me! I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now!” He hung up.
“Who was that, David?” Mom asked.
“That was Mr. Hansen. Georgie’s father. Mike and Georgie were hanging around with that punk Rayno again!” He snapped around to look at me. I’d almost made it out the kitchen door. “Michael! Were you in school today?”
I tried to talk cool. I think the tofu had my throat all clogged up. “Yeah…yeah, I was.”
“Then how come Mr. Hansen saw you coming out of the downtown library?”
I was stuck. “I—I was down there doing some special research.”
“For what class? C’mon Michael, what were you studying?”
It was too many inputs. I was locking up.
“David,” Mom said, “Aren’t you being a bit hasty? I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”
“Martha, Mr. Hansen found something in his computer that Georgie and Michael put there. He thinks they’ve been messing with banks.”
“Our Mikey? It must be some kind of bad joke.”
“You don’t know how serious this is! Michael Arthur Harris! What have you been doing sitting up all night with that terminal? What was that system in Hansen’s computer? Answer me! What have you been doing?!”
My eyes felt hot. “None of your business! Keep your nose out of things you’ll never understand, you obsolete old relic!”
“That does it! I don’t know what’s wrong with you damn kids, but I know that thing isn’t helping!” He stormed up to my room. I tried to get ahe
ad of him all the way up the steps and just got my hands stepped on. Mom came fluttering up behind as he yanked all the plugs on my terminal.
“Now David,” Mom said. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh? He needs that for his homework, don’t you, Mikey?”
“You can’t make excuses for him this time, Martha! I mean it! This goes in the basement, and tomorrow I’m calling the cable company and getting his line ripped out! If he has anything to do on computer he can damn well use the terminal in the den, where I can watch him!”
He stomped out, carrying my smartterm. I slammed the door and locked it.
“Go ahead and sulk! It won’t do you any good!”
I threw some pillows around ’til I didn’t feel like breaking anything anymore, then I hauled the Starfire out of the closet. I’d watched over Dad’s shoulders enough to know his account numbers and access codes, so I got on line and got down to business. I was finished in half an hour.
I tied into Dad’s terminal. He was using it, like I figured he would be, scanning school records. Fine. He wouldn’t find out anything; we’d figured out how to fix school records months ago. I crashed in and gave him a new message on his vid display.
“Dad,” it said, “there’s going to be some changes around here.”
It took a few seconds to sink in. I got up and made sure the door was locked real solid. I still got half a scare when he came pounding up the stairs, though. I didn’t know he could be so loud.
“MICHAEL!!” He slammed into the door. “Open this! Now!”
“No.”
“If you don’t open this door before I count to ten, I’m going to bust it down! One!”
“Before you do that—”
“Two!”
“Better call your bank!”
“Three!”
“B320-5127-OlR.” That was his checking account access code. He silenced a couple seconds.
“Young man, I don’t know what you think you’re trying to pull—”
“I’m not trying anything. I did it already.”
Mom came up the stairs and said, “What’s going on, David?”
“Shut up, Martha!” He was talking real quiet, now. “What did you do, Michael?”
“Outlooped you. Disappeared you. Buried you.”
“You mean, you got into the bank computer and erased my checking account?”
“Savings and mortgage on the condo, too.”
“Oh my God…”
Mom said, “He’s just angry, David. Give him time to cool off. Mikey, you wouldn’t really do that, would you?”
“Then I accessed DynaRand,” I said. “Wiped your job. Your pension. I got to your plastic, too.”
“He couldn’t have, David. Could he?”
“Michael!” He hit the door. “I’m going to wring your scrawny neck!”
“Wait!” I shouted back. “I copied all your files before I purged! There’s a way to recover!”
He let up hammering on the door, and struggled to talk calm. “Give me the copies right now and I’ll just forget that this happened.”
“I can’t. I mean, I did backups in other computers. And I secured the files and hid them where only I know how to access.”
There was quiet. No, in a nano I realised it wasn’t quiet, it was Mom and Dad talking real soft. I eared up to the door but all I caught was Mom saying “why not?” and Dad saying “but what if he is telling the truth?”
“Okay Michael,” Dad said at last. “What do you want?”
I locked up. It was an embarasser; what did I want? I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Me, caught without a program! I dropped half a laugh, then tried to think. I mean, there was nothing they could get me I couldn’t get myself, or with Rayno’s help. Rayno! I wanted to get in touch with him, is what I wanted. I’d pulled this whole thing off without Rayno!
I decided then it’d probably be better if my Olders dind’t know about the Starfire, so I told Dad first thing I wanted was my smartterm back. It took a long time for him to clump down to the basement and get it. He stopped at his term in the den, first, to scan if I’d really purged him. He was real subdued when he brought my smartterm back up.
I kept processing, but by the time he got back I still hadn’t come up with anything more than I wanted them to leave me alone and stop telling me what to do. I got the smartterm into my room without being pulped, locked the door, got on line, and gave Dad his job back. Then I tried to flag Rayno and Georgie, but couldn’t, so I left messages for when they booted. I stayed up half the night playing a war, just to make sure Dad didn’t try anything.
I booted and scanned first thing the next morning, but Rayno and Georgie still hadn’t come on. So I went down and had an utter silent breakfast and sent Mom and Dad off to work. I offed school and spent the whole day finishing the war and working on some tricks-and-treats programs. We had another utterly silent meal when Mom and Dad came home, and after supper I flagged Rayno had been in the Net and left a remark on when to find him.
I finally got him on line around eight, and he said Georgie was getting trashed and probably heading for permanent downtime.
Then I told Rayno all about how I outlooped my old man, but he didn’t seem real buzzed about it. He said he had something cooking and couldn’t meet me at Buddy’s that night to talk about it, either. So we got off line, and I started another war and then went to sleep.
The snoozer said 5:25 when I woke up, and I couldn’t logic how come I was awake ’til I started making sense out of my ears. Dad was taking apart the hinges on my door!
“Dad! You cut that out or I’ll purge you clean! There won’t be backups this time!”
“Try it,” he growled.
I jumped out of my sleepsack, powered up, booted and—no boot. I tried again. I could get on line in my smartterm, but I couldn’t port out. “I cut your cable down in the basement,” he said.
I grabbed the Starfire out of my closet and zipped it inside my jumper, but before I could do the window, the door and Dad both fell in. Mom came in right behind, popped open my dresser, and started stuffing socks and underwear in a suitcase.
“Now you’re fritzed!” I told Dad. “I’ll never give you back your files!” He grabbed my arm.
“Michael, there’s something I think you should see.” He dragged me down to his den and pulled some bundles of old paper trash out of his desk. “These are receipts. This is what obsolete old relics like me use because we don’t trust computer bookkeeping. I checked with work and the bank; everything that goes on in the computer has to be verified with paper. You can’t change anything for more than 24 hours.”
“Twenty-four hours?” I laughed. “Then you’re still fritzed! I can still wipe you out any day, from any term in CityNet.”
“I know.”
Mom came into the den, carrying the suitcase and kleenexing her eyes. “Mikey, you’ve got to understand that we love you, and this is for your own good.”
They dragged me down to the airport and stuffed me in a private lear with a bunch of old gestapos.
* * * *
I’ve had a few weeks now to get used to the Von Schlager Military Academy. They tell me I’m a bright kid, and with good behavior, there’s really no reason at all why I shouldn’t graduate in five years. I am getting tired, though, of all the older cadets telling me how soft I’ve got it now that they’ve installed indoor plumbing.
Of course, I’m free to walk out any time I want. It’s only three hundred miles to Fort McKenzie, where the road ends.
Sometimes at night, after lights out, I’ll pull out my Starfire and run my fingers over the touchpads. That’s all I can do, since they turn off power in the barracks at night. I’ll lie there in the dark, thinking about Lisa, and Georgie, and Buddy’s All-Night Burgers, and all the fun we used to pull off. But mostly I’ll think about Rayno, and what great plans he cooks up.
I can’t wait to see how he gets me out of this one.
MILLENNIUM, by Everett B. Cole
Obviously, it had once been a precisely fabricated piece of equipment. But its identity was almost lost. A hole was torn in the side of the metal box. Knobs were broken away from their shafts. The engraved legends were scored and worn to illegibility, and the meter was merely a black void in the panel. Whatever had been mounted at the top had been broken away, to leave ragged shards. Inside the gaping hole in the case, tiny, blackened components hung at odd angles.
Klion Meinora looked at the wreckage and shook his head.
“I know it’s supposed to be what’s left of a medium range communicator,” he said, “but I’d never believe it.” He poked a finger inside the hole in the case, pushing a few components aside. Beyond them, a corroded wheel hung loosely in what had once been precision bearings.
“Where’s the power unit?”
Konar shook his head. “No trace. Not much left of the viewsphere, either.”
“Well.” Meinora shook his head resignedly. “It’s salvage. But we got it back.” He stood back to look at the communicator. “Someone’s been keeping the outside clean, I see.”
Konar nodded. “It was a religious relic,” he said. “Found it in an abbey.” He reached into the bag he had placed on the floor.
“And here’s a mental amplifier-communicator, personnel, heavy duty. Slightly used and somewhat out of adjustment, but complete and repairable.” He withdrew a golden circlet, held it up for a moment, and carefully laid it on the bench beside the wrecked communicator. Its metal was dented, but untarnished.
“Don’t want to get rough with it,” he explained. “Something might be loose inside.”
He reached again into the bag. “And a body shield, protector type, model GS/NO-10C. Again, somewhat used, but repairable. Even has its nomenclature label.”
“Good enough.” Meinora held a hand out and accepted the heavy belt. He turned it about in his hands, examining the workmanship. Finally, he looked closely at the long, narrow case mounted on the leather.
“See they counted this unit fairly well. Must have been using it.”
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack Page 24
