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by John Varley

  She settled back in her chair and I re-filled her glass with white wine.

  "Are you sure you wouldn't like some more peas?"

  "I'd bust." She patted her stomach contentedly. "Thank you so much, Mister Apfel. I haven't had a home-cooked meal in ages."

  "You can call me Victor."

  "I just love American food."

  "I didn't know there was such a thing. I mean, not like Chinese or… you are American, aren't you?" She just smiled. "What I mean-"

  "I know what you meant, Victor. I'm a citizen, but not native-born. Would you excuse me for a moment? I know it's impolite to jump right up, but with these braces I find I have to brush instantly after eating."

  I could hear her as I cleared the table. I ran water in the sink and started doing the dishes. Before long she joined me, grabbed a dish towel, and began drying the things in the rack, over my protests.

  "You live alone here?" she asked.

  "Yes. Have ever since my parents died."

  "Ever married? If it's none of my business, just say so."

  "That's all right. No, I never married."

  "You do pretty good for not having a woman around."

  "I've had a lot of practice. Can I ask you a question?"

  "Shoot."

  "Where are you from? Taiwan?"

  "I have a knack for languages. Back home, I spoke pidgin American, but when I got here I cleaned up my act. I also speak rotten French, illiterate Chinese in four or five varie­ties, gutter Vietnamese, and enough Thai to holler, 'Me wanna see American Consul, pretty-damn-quick, you!' "

  I laughed. When she said it, her accent was thick.

  "I been here eight years now. You figured out where home is?"

  "Vietnam?" I ventured.

  "The sidewalks of Saigon, fer shure. Or Ho Chi Minh's Shitty, as the pajama-heads re-named it, may their dinks rot off and their butts be filled with jagged punjee-sticks. Pardon my French."

  She ducked her head in embarrassment. What had started out light had turned hot very quickly. I sensed a hurt at least as deep as my own, and we both backed off from it.

  "I took you for a Japanese," I said.

  "Yeah, ain't it a pisser? I'll tell you about it some day. Victor, is that a laundry room through that door there? With an electric washer?"

  "That's right."

  "Would it be too much trouble if I did a load?"

  It was no trouble at all. She had seven pairs of faded jeans, some with the legs cut away, and about two dozen T-shirts. It could have been a load of boys' clothing except for the frilly underwear.

  We went into the back yard to sit in the last rays of the setting sun, then she had to see my garden. I'm quite proud of it. When I'm well, I spend four or five hours a day working out there, year-round, usually in the morning hours. You can do that in southern California. I have a small greenhouse I built myself.

  She loved it, though it was not in its best shape. I had spent most of the week in bed or in the tub. As a result, weeds were sprouting here and there.

  "We had a garden when I was little," she said. "And I spent two years in a rice paddy."

  "That must be a lot different than this."

  "Damn straight. Put me off rice for years."

  She discovered an infestation of aphids, so we squatted down to pick them off. She had that double-jointed Asian peasant's way of sitting that I remembered so well and could never imitate. Her fingers were long and narrow, and soon the tips of them were green from squashed bugs.

  We talked about this and that. I don't remember quite how it came up, but I told her I had fought in Korea. I learned she was twenty-five. It turned out we had the same birthday, so some months back I had been exactly twice her age.

  The only time Kluge's name came up was when she men­tioned how she liked to cook. She hadn't been able to at Kluge's house.

  "He has a freezer in the garage full of frozen dinners," she said. "He had one plate, one fork, one spoon, and one glass. He's got the best microwave oven on the market. And that's it, man. Ain't nothing else in his kitchen at all." She shook her head, and executed an aphid. "He was one weird dude."

  When her laundry was done it was late evening, almost dark. She loaded it into my wicker basket and we took it out to the clothesline. It got to be a game. I would shake out a T-shirt and study the picture or message there. Sometimes I got it, and sometimes I didn't. There were pictures of rock groups, a map of Los Angeles, Star Trek tie-ins… a little of everything.

  "What's the L5 Society?" I asked her.

  "Guys that want to build these great big farms in space. I asked 'em if they were gonna grow rice, and they said they didn't think it was the best crop for zero gee, so I bought the shirt."

  "How many of these things do you have?"

  "Wow, it's gotta be four or five hundred. I usually wear 'em two or three times and then put them away."

  I picked up another shirt, and a bra fell out. It wasn't the kind of bra girls wore when I was growing up. It was very sheer, though somehow functional at the same time.

  "You like, Yank?" Her accent was very thick. "You oughtta see my sister!"

  I glanced at her, and her face fell.

  "I'm sorry, Victor," she said. "You don't have to blush." She took the bra from me and clipped it to the line.

  She must have mis-read my face. True, I had been embar­rassed, but I was also pleased in some strange way. It had been a long time since anybody had called me anything but Victor or Mr. Apfel.

  The next day's mail brought a letter from a law firm in Chicago. It was about the seven hundred thousand dollars. The money had come from a Delaware holding company which had been set up in 1933 to provide for me in my old age. My mother and father were listed as the founders. Cer­tain long-term investments had matured, resulting in my re­cent windfall. The amount in my bank was after taxes.

  It was ridiculous on the face of it. My parents had never had that kind of money. I didn't want it. I would have given it back if I could find out who Kluge had stolen it from.

  I decided that, if I wasn't in jail this time next year, I'd give it all to some charity. Save the Whales, maybe, or the L5 Society.

  I spent the morning in the garden. Later I walked to the market and bought some fresh ground beef and pork. I was feeling good as I pulled my purchases home in my fold-up wire basket. When I passed the silver Ferrari I smiled.

  She hadn't come to get her laundry. I took it off the line and folded it, then knocked on Kluge's door.

  "It's me. Victor."

  "Come on in, Yank."

  She was where she had been before, but decently dressed this time. She smiled at me, then hit her forehead when she saw the laundry basket. She hurried to take it from me.

  "I'm sorry, Victor. I meant to get this-"

  "Don't worry about it," I said. "It was no trouble. And it gives me the chance to ask if you'd like to dine with me again."

  Something happened to her face which she covered quickly. Perhaps she didn't like "American" food as much as she professed to. Or maybe it was the cook.

  "Sure, Victor, I'd love to. Let me take care of this. And why don't you open those drapes? It's like a tomb in here."

  She hurried away. I glanced at the screen she had been using. It was blank, but for one word: intercourse-p. I as­sumed it was a typo.

  I pulled the drapes open in time to see Osborne's car park at the curb. Then Lisa was back, wearing a new T-shirt. This one said A CHANGE OF HOBBIT, and had a picture of a squat, hairy-footed creature. She glanced out the window and saw Osborne coming up the walk.

  "I say, Watson," she said. "It's Lestrade of the Yard. Do show him in."

  That wasn't nice of her. He gave me a suspicious glance as he entered. I burst out laughing. Lisa sat on the piano bench, poker-faced. She slumped indolently, one arm resting near the keyboard.

  "Well, Apfel," Osborne started. "We've finally found out who Kluge really was."

  "Patrick William Gavin," Lisa said.

/>   Quite a time went by before Osborne was able to close his mouth. Then he opened it right up again.

  "How the hell did you find that out?"

  She lazily caressed the keyboard beside her.

  "Well, of course I got it when it came into your office this morning. There's a little stoolie program tucked away in your computer that whispers in my ear every time the name Kluge is mentioned. But I didn't need that. I figured it out five days ago."

  "Then why the… why didn't you tell me?"

  "You didn't ask me."

  They glared at each other for a while. I had no idea what events had led up to this moment, but it was quite clear they didn't like each other even a little bit. Lisa was on top just now, and seemed to be enjoying it. Then she glanced at her screen, looked surprised, and quickly tapped a key. The word that had been there vanished. She gave me an inscrutable glance, then faced Osborne again.

  "If you recall, you brought me in because all your own guys were getting was a lot of crashes. This system was brain-damaged when I got here, practically catatonic. Most of it was down and your guys couldn't get it up." She had to grin at that.

  "You decided I couldn't do any worse than your guys were doing. So you asked me to try and break Kluge's codes without frying the system. Well, I did it. All you had to do was come by and interface and I would have downloaded N tons of wallpaper right in your lap."

  Osborne listened quietly. Maybe he even knew he had made a mistake.

  "What did you get? Can I see it now?"

  She nodded, and pressed a few keys: Words started to fill her screen, and one close to Osborne. I got up and read Lisa's terminal.

  It was a brief bio of Kluge/Gavin. He was about my age, but while I was getting shot at in a foreign land, he was cutting a swath through the infant computer industry. He had been there from the ground up, working at many of the top research facilities. It surprised me that it had taken over a week to identify him.

  "I compiled this anecdotally," Lisa said, as we read. "The first thing you have to realize about Gavin is that he exists nowhere in any computerized information system. So I called people all over the country-interesting phone system he's got, by the way; it generates a new number for each call, and you can't call back or trace it-and started asking who the top people were in the fifties and sixties. I got a lot of names. After that, it was a matter of finding out who no longer existed in the files. He faked his death in 1967. I located one account of it in a newspaper file. Everybody I talked to who had known him knew of his death. There is a paper birth certificate in Florida. That's the only other evidence I found of him. He was the only guy so many people in the field knew who left no mark on the world. That seemed conclusive to me."

  Osborne finished reading, then looked up.

  "All right, Ms. Foo. What else have you found out?"

  "I've broken some of his codes. I had a piece of luck, getting into a basic rape-and-plunder program he'd written to attack other people's programs, and I've managed to use it against a few of his own. I've unlocked a file of passwords with notes on where they came from. And I've learned a few of his tricks. But it's the tip of the iceberg."

  She waved a hand at the silent metal brains in the room.

  "What I haven't gotten across to anyone is just what this is. This is the most devious electronic weapon ever devised. It's armored like a battleship. It has to be; there's a lot of very slick programs out there that grab an invader and hang on like a terrier. If they ever got this far Kluge could deflect them. But usually they never even knew they'd been burgled. Kluge'd come in like a cruise missile, low and fast and twisty. And he'd route his attack through a dozen cut-offs.

  "He had a lot of advantages. Big systems these days are heavily protected. People use passwords and very sophisti­cated codes. But Kluge helped invent most of them. You need a damn good lock to keep out a locksmith. He helped install a lot of the major systems. He left informants behind, hidden in the software. If the codes were changed, the computer itself would send the information to a safe system that Kluge could tap later. It's like you buy the biggest, meanest, best-trained watchdog you can. And that night, the guy who trained the dog comes in, pats him on the head, and robs you blind."

  There was a lot more in that vein. I'm afraid that when Lisa began talking about computers, ninety percent of my head shut off.

  "I'd like to know something, Osborne," Lisa said.

  "What would that be?"

  "What is my status here? Am I supposed to be solving your crime for you, or just trying to get this system back to where a competent user can deal with it?"

  Osborne thought it over.

  "What worries me," she added, "is that I'm poking around in a lot of restricted data banks. I'm worried about somebody knocking on the door and handcuffing me. You ought to be worried, too. Some of these agencies wouldn't like a homi­cide cop looking into their affairs."

  Osborne bridled at that. Maybe that's what she intended.

  "What do I have to do?" he snarled. "Beg you to stay?"

  "No. I just want your authorization. You don't have to put it in writing. Just say you're behind me."

  "Look. As far as L.A. County and the State of California are concerned, this house doesn't exist. There is no lot here. It doesn't appear in the assessor's records. This place is in a legal limbo. If anybody can authorize you to use this stuff, it's me, because I believe a murder was committed in it. So you just keep doing what you've been doing."

  "That's not much of a commitment," she mused.

  "It's all you're going to get. Now, what else have you got?"

  She turned to her keyboard and typed for a while. Pretty soon a printer started, and Lisa leaned back. I glanced at her screen. It said: osculate posterior-p. I remembered that oscu­late meant kiss. Well, these people have their own language. Lisa looked up at me and grinned.

  "Not you," she said, quietly. "Him."

  I hadn't the faintest notion of what she was talking about.

  Osborne got his printout and was ready to leave. Again, he couldn't resist turning at the door for final orders.

  "If you find anything to indicate he didn't commit suicide, let me know."

  "Okay. He didn't commit suicide."

  Osborne didn't understand for a moment.

  "I want proof."

  "Well, I have it, but you probably can't use it. He didn't write that ridiculous suicide note."

  "How do you know that?"

  "I knew that my first day here. I had the computer list the program. Then I compared it to Kluge's style. No way he could have written it. It's tighter'n a bug's ass. Not a spare line in it. Kluge didn't pick his alias for nothing. You know what it means?"

  "Clever," I said.

  "Literally. But it means… a Rube Goldberg device.

  Something overly complex. Something that works, but for the wrong reason. You 'kluge around' bugs in a program. It's the hacker's vaseline."

  "So?" Osborne wanted to know.

  "So Kluge's programs were really crocked. They were full of bells and whistles he never bothered to clean out. He was a genius, and his programs worked, but you wonder why they did. Routines so bletcherous they'd make your skin crawl. Real crufty bagbiters. But good programming's so rare, even his diddles were better than most people's super-moby hacks."

  I suspect Osborne understood about as much of that as I did.

  "So you base your opinion on his programming style."

  "Yeah. Unfortunately, it's gonna be ten years or so before that's admissible in court, like graphology or fingerprints. But if you know anything about programming you can look at it and see it. Somebody else wrote that suicide note-somebody damn good, by the way. That program called up his last will and testament as a sub-routine. And he definitely did write that. It's got his fingerprints all over it. He spent the last five years spying on the neighbors as a hobby. He tapped into military records, school records, work records, tax files and bank accounts. And he turned every tele
phone for three blocks into a listening device. He was one hell of a snoop."

  "Did he mention anywhere why he did that?" Osborne asked.

  "I think he was more than half crazy. Possibly he was suicidal. He sure wasn't doing himself any good with all those pills he took. But he was preparing himself for death, and Victor was the only one he found worthy of leaving it all to. I'd have believed he committed suicide if not for that note. But he didn't write it. I'll swear to that."

  We eventually got rid of him, and I went home to fix the dinner. Lisa joined me when it was ready. Once more she had a huge appetite.

  I fixed lemonade and we sat on my small patio and watched evening gather around us.

  I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating. I sat up, thinking it out, and I didn't like my conclusions. So I put on my robe and slippers and went over to Kluge's.

  The front door was open again. I knocked anyway. Lisa stuck her head around the corner.

  "Victor? Is something wrong?"

  "I'm not sure," I said. "May I come in?"

  She gestured, and I followed her into the living room. An open can of Pepsi sat beside her console. Her eyes were red as she sat on her bench.

  "What's up?" she said, and yawned.

  "You should be asleep, for one thing," I said.

  She shrugged, and nodded.

  "Yeah. I can't seem to get in the right phase. Just now I'm in day mode. But Victor, I'm used to working odd hours, and long hours, and you didn't come over here to lecture me about that, did you?"

  "No. You say Kluge was murdered."

  "He didn't write his suicide note. That seems to leave murder.''

  "I was wondering why someone would kill him. He never left the house, so it was for something he did here with his computers. And now you're… well, I don't know what you're doing, frankly, but you seem to be poking into the same things. Isn't there a danger the same people will come after you?"

  "People?" She raised an eyebrow.

  I felt helpless. My fears were not well-formed enough to make sense.

  "I don't know… you mentioned agencies…"

  "You notice how impressed Osborne was with that? You think there's some kind of conspiracy Kluge tumbled to, or you think the CIA killed him because he found out too much about something, or-"