“Of him, yes. He’s vice president in charge of special projects or something. He must be related to someone.”
Bobby remembered to grin at the lame attempt at a joke.
Cojensis’ sense of humor was not only dry but often desiccated. Bobby cleared his throat.
“Did you go over my paper on Thorne’s quantum gravity model?”
“Not yet. I looked at the first couple of pages. Looks solid.
I’ll get to it this week.”
After you’ve figured out how to lift all the useful material out of it and rewrite it as your own, Bobby thought bitterly.
“Thank you,” he said, rising. He folded up his own laptop.
“You have the makings of a first-rate mathematician, 90
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Porter, but you have to get a handle on these leaps of faith you keep making.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me know when you decide to do this interview.”
When…cocksure son of a bitch…
As he left Cojensis’ office, Bobby was convinced that the dean had made no such request. Cyberdyne’s headhunter had come directly to Cojensis. Bobby believed his denials about as much as he believed the praise Cojensis meted out in dribs and drabs. Cojensis recorded such conversations, probably for his memoirs, or perhaps to cover his ass in review meetings prompted by a student’s complaint.
Not a bad mathematician…could be first-rate if…Bullshit.
I’m better now than you ever were, you self-serving bastard…
That Cojensis would hand him over to a corporate headhunter Bobby did not doubt. The question was why. If he engineered Bobby’s move to the corporate world, he would lose his current source of material to pillage.
Unless that was the payoff. Maybe the deal with Cyberdyne would be that Bobby’s work would be classified but passed under the table to Cojensis, so he could continue to use it. It might be simpler that way. No chance that Bobby would complain to the dean or blow the whistle on what Cojensis was doing. The work Bobby would do for Cyberdyne would belong to them, he could never publish it. But Cojensis could and no doubt Bobby’s contract with Cyberdyne would bar him from suing.
Not for the first time, Bobby considered changing advisors. The hitch, of course, was that Cojensis knew who he really was. He knew Bobby was attending Caltech fraudulently, posing as his cousin. How he, of all people, had found out Bobby had no idea. It would not be all that hard, really, but background checks for scholarship students usually ended at Admissions. It was hard to pass up any funding that came with the scholarship, so the questions only went so far. As long as the checks came and cleared, they cared little about who you might actually be.
If Cojensis exposed him, that funding would end. After 91
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that, it did not matter how good a mathematician he might become.
What I need is something to hold over Cojensis…
Taking bribes would do it. He wondered if he could find that out. Was Cyberdyne paying him?
He reached the parking, the raw outlines of a plan taking shape.
92
NINE
Lee Portis followed the secretary into the neat, plant-strewn office. The woman behind the desk stood, smiling, and extended a hand in greeting. He clasped it briefly.
“Ms. Goldman,” he said. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Portis,” she said, gesturing for him to take a chair. “I got your message, but I’m not entirely sure I understand what it is you wish to do.”
“Basically, I’d like to oversee your day-to-day database operations.” He opened his briefcase and removed a folder.
He laid it on her desk. “My firm is conducting a national survey of efficiency with our systems. I understand you had your network installed three years ago?”
“Two and a half.” Ms. Goldman drew the folder closer but did not open it. “We’ve had excellent support from your tech people. Is there a specific problem?”
“Not a problem, as such,” Portis continued smoothly. He had worked on this presentation for days. He moved through the lines and gestures with ease. “It’s a large system. We have representatives at other universities across the country, even in Europe and Asia, going to the extra effort of making sure there will be no problems. Previously, we’ve only served small enterprises—municipal governments and medium-sized corporations for the most part—and we’ve 93
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gleaned a great deal of expertise from those systems, but the university interface is our first foray into nationwide network service.”
She frowned slightly. Portis recognized the skepticism—she was not accepting it entirely. He continued, unworried. “So I’m here to meet with your people, see how they move through the system, work out any difficulties or answer any questions of a less technical nature. A system this size develops idiosyncrasies of its own, I’m sure you’re aware.”
“Certainly. But—”
“That gestalt is vital to the proper, smooth operation of the program. Rapport is as important as specific keying knowledge.”
Now she appeared openly dubious. “So you’re here to troubleshoot the system’s aesthetics?”
“That’s a good way to look at it. You understand perfectly.”
“I understand that I have a problem with your request. I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Portis, but you have to realize that we have a great deal of confidential information on this system. We can’t exactly open it up to an outsider—even the agent of the company from which we bought it in the first place—just so you can go poking around to see if there are any problems.”
“I assure you, this has been cleared at the highest level.”
He removed a wallet from his jacket, flipped it open, and extended it. He made her reach for it. She had to rise halfway from her chair to lean across the desk. Her hand came forward. Portis shunted a small colony of ’coders to his fingertips, waited. When she was a few centimeters from touching the wallet, he leaned forward and brushed her fingers with his own as she clasped the ID. She sat back down slowly, gazing at the fake federal identification card and shield. Her eyes lost their suspicion. “You understand perfectly now?”
“Of course.” She handed back the wallet.
Portis held it, still open and facing her. “You won’t 94
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remember much of this part of our interview. What went before was necessary, because you will remember it, clearly, and you will accept it. You’ll be aware that it’s a cover story, of course, but you’ll believe I am a legitimate government agent and will afford me all the cooperation you can.
I assure you—I give you my word—that I will do nothing to your university, your database, or any of your people. All I want is open access to the student database for a few days.
When I find what I need, I’ll be gone. Until then, I’ll be a welcome guest of the university.”
“We’re happy to cooperate,” Ms. Goldman said. “Anything you need.”
“An introduction to some of your key people, a small office, and the passwords and accesses to your system.”
She nodded, smiling. Portis said nothing, but continued to hold the wallet open, and waited. Gradually, her expression stiffened, her eyes seemed to refocus on him. She swallowed, frowned slightly.
“Are we clear about this, Ms. Goldman?” Portis asked.
She shifted her gaze to the open wallet, which he then snapped shut and pocketed.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “We’ll be happy to cooperate, Mr. Portis. Would you care to meet the people you’ll be working with?”
“That would be excellent,” Portis said, standing.
She touched her intercom. “Mike, would you have Alli from Resources meet me in the data center?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She winced, then smiled. “I wish somebody would come up with a new pronoun for us. ‘Ma’am’ feels so archai
c.”
“I agree. I’m always uncomfortable with ‘sir,’ myself.
Makes me feel I should be riding a horse and carrying a lance.”
Ms. Goldman grinned and led the way out of her office.
One of the computer staff was out on maternity leave, so they gave Portis her office. He assured them he would be no more than two weeks, if that.
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The door closed and he was alone. Three large screens dominated the long desk, before which a castered chair rested on a plastic mat. Portis shrugged out of his jacket, sat down, and accessed the system. He opened his briefcase and retrieved a CD wallet. As he ran through the menu of the university database, he flipped through the discs he had prepared. When he found the program he wanted, he slipped the disc into the drive, and pressed ENTER. He folded his arms and waited.
In the last few weeks, Portis had moved from place to place, improving his position in society with a speed that, in time, would draw unwanted attention. After leaving the shelter, he took a small apartment in a section of Clovis on the verge of decay. From there, he found a job with a local construction contractor. Through that, he had access to a credit union, and a company computer by which he continued to tailor his image in public databases. At the end of a week, he worked in their office. He changed addresses then, moving into a better apartment in a more upscale part of the city, bought a car, and created a resume with which he established a “history” extending back several years in the computer industry.
While working on his ability to position himself in any job he wanted, he learned about this world. The details seemed more complex than he expected, the small niceties by which human interaction proceeded, but he found a path to where he needed to be. After ten days at the construction company, he applied for and obtained a job at a computer consulting firm. Backdating his credit history, Portis put money down on a condominium and moved a third time.
With each move, he altered his electronic identity, covering his tracks against all but the most direct scrutiny.
Nothing needed to be perfect. What he was here to do he had to do quickly. He had weeks, maybe a couple of months, though he doubted it. If his identity constructs fell apart over time, it did not matter. People were, he found, remarkably blasé about verification. He had not expected that, but he suspected the relaxed security had come about 96
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as reaction to the panic-driven atmosphere that had existed a few years earlier. Their collective paranoia had been stretched to the limit and now collapsed into a new period of openness. A shame, really, that such extremes marked the history of states—a bit of moderation might prevent so much.
Like Skynet.
This now was the final step. The disc ran a diagnostic program of his own devising which would scan the system for trapdoors and infiltrations. Once he established a secure environment within it, he could start a comprehensive search for Jeremiah Porter. He should be in school if Portis’s knowledge was remotely accurate. This university “interface,” as the designer called it, linked all the universities on the continent and provided immediate access to research programs, staff, and students—especially student profiles.
The size of the database and the relative slowness of the system meant the search might take days. He could not worry about that. It took as long as it took.
Still, Portis felt a growing anxiety as time passed. The longer it took to find Jeremiah, the less chance of a successful intervention. Skynet’s creatures had been here for a long time—by some estimates since 1982, though the first clear evidence came in 1984. No one knew how deeply into this society they had burrowed, or where they were, or how they had chosen to disguise themselves. The only edge Portis brought with him was the lack of autonomy these machines possessed—not so much that they were restrained from doing certain things but that they lacked imagination. They were more reactive than proactive, although they could, some of them, formulate conclusions and initiate programs based on them. Not as versatile as a human, but certainly dangerous.
Even so, they were adept at observation. At some point they would learn about him and understand what he was and perhaps even why he had come. The longer this took, the likelier his discovery, the fewer options he would have.
After an hour, his program informed him that the system 97
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was compromised. Portis felt himself smile, recognizing the trap. Someone had inserted a watchdog program that seemed to be looking for the same things as he. He checked the report his own software generated. The code was familiar. He could deal with this. He knew about them, now, but they still did not know about him. He selected another disc and went to work.
Portis pulled into the carport below his second floor condo.
He made a quick survey of the other cars in the lot.
Recognizing all of them, he ascended the balcony stairs and entered his condominium. He deactivated his alarm and shrugged out of his jacket.
He owned little furniture. The living room contained nothing. Late afternoon light flooded the picture window, followed him into the dining room where a desk stood. He draped his jacket over the chair and sat down before his own computer.
He ran through the search programs he kept running, electronic agents prowling the web searching for specific persons, keywords, odd news items. This evening, the names’
search came up with four hits. All were former employees of Cyberdyne. Three now lived in other cities. One had an address two miles from him.
Odd that they would be left loose this way. He opened another window. He compared the newly found names with the master list he had compiled of all Cyberdyne personnel present at the Colorado Springs site in 2001. He had found obituaries on a number of them. Many of the deaths were listed as natural, though statistically it seemed unlikely, especially as at least five of them had been under thirty. A few were still in federal penitentiaries.
Oscar Cruz had been released. He was once more working for Cyberdyne. Portis’s information suggested he had been infected by a TX-A, as well as others. Cruz and Charles Layton. Layton’s death had been classified an accident, but it seemed implausible—he had died in a Maryland suburb, at the same time as several police officers. The two incidents 98
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had been ascribed to different parts of the same community, to different actions. Taken separately, the deaths, while tragic, made rough sense. But knowing what Layton had become, the official stories fell apart. Cruz and Layton had gone to Washington together, to meet with their federal liaison. The day after Layton’s death, Cruz was in custody.
A week later, he was in solitary confinement in an institu-tion in Idaho. The charges were violations of SEC regulations, conspiracy to sell weapons technology outside the borders of the United States, and obstruction of justice.
Something had changed. He had been released six months ago, all charges dismissed.
Of the people Portis suspected of being infected, these four were the first to turn up outside of Cyberdyne.
The address for the one here in Clovis suggested that things had not gone especially well for Mr. Franklin Eisner.
He had been an IT tech at Cyberdyne, head of a cell group within the department, pulling in a respectable income for that time and place. Portis had explored Clovis in the weeks since arriving and he knew that part of town. Declining, the locals would say. Low rent, but not yet considered a
“bad part of town.”
Portis checked the time. After six. He had spent several hours at the university annex, setting up his search protocols in their system. Most people on dayshift had probably been home for nearly an hour. He dialed Franklin Eisner’s phone number and waited through eight rings before disconnecting. He opened another window, and sent an inquiry to the Social Security Administration, asking for current employment. He had constructed a shell for these brief forays into the federal database, disguising his computer as
one from a local IRS office. Within seconds an answer came up.
Franklin Eisner had been released from prison six months ago, and for four months now he worked for New Town Municipal Services as a night attendant at one of their parking facilities.
Evening shift…
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Portis closed down the window, breaking the link. He did not worry about being traced, but he preferred taking as little chance as possible. If a line trace did come looking for the source of the inquiry, it would find a pay phone on the other side of town.
He took a disc from his cd wallet. After loading it into his system, he dialed another number, to a different, local, ISP and waited for the connection. Once in, he initiated the program on the cd and waited. The University of New Mexico logo appeared. The routine continued automatically, connecting him from place to place until it found the nested program he had left on the university server. After that, he established a real time link with the university database.
He felt pleased. The university deployed a lot of very sophisticated defense around its computer network.
Worming his way in proved tricky. As it was, all he could do from here was receive. The search protocols he had left on the system would do the actual digging and sorting, while this station passively monitored and accepted what was handed to it.
Portis checked his own security. Satisfied, he left the machine.
He showered, made coffee, and sat in the living room on a kitchen chair, watching the day fade to night.
He dressed in dark clothes, set his home alarm system, and locked the door behind him as he stepped into the evening. He walked the distance to Eisner’s apartment.
The duplex showed its age in its cracked stucco and worn front steps. Lights were on in the right-hand unit. Portis explored the neighborhood. He heard TV sets, a couple of stereos, three arguments raging, and saw no one outside.
A car rolled down the street, disappeared around the corner.
Portis squatted in a gangway between two buildings across the street from Eisner’s apartment.
At 10:44, the lights went out in the right-hand side of the duplex. A few moments later, the front door opened and a couple emerged. Arm in arm, they headed up the street.
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