Evil Genius

by Catherine Jinks

  Carla was a small, neat, black-haired woman with bright red lipstick. She wore a white lab coat, and her expression was angry as she caught sight of Thaddeus – possibly because, with Thaddeus around, she could no longer scold the man who sat opposite her. This man, Art, was also small, but he appeared to be far more gentle and reasonable than Carla. He was quite old, with wispy grey hair and thick glasses. His teeth, when he smiled, were yellow and crooked. He wore a waistcoat, a bow-tie, and a gold ring on one of his pale, shapely fingers.

  ‘Thaddeus,’ he murmured.

  ‘This is Cadel,’ said Thaddeus. ‘He’s considering Axis as an option for the coming year.’

  ‘Is he indeed?’

  ‘And these are his parents, Stuart and Lanna.’

  Art rose to shake hands with Mr and Mrs Piggott, who were obviously reassured by this mild-looking, professorial man. Briskly, Carla also rose. She had left most of a chocolate croissant on her plate.

  ‘Afternoon,’ she said to the Piggotts. ‘Have you considered my proposal, Thaddeus?’

  ‘It’s next on my list, Carla.’

  She sniffed, and stuffed a cigarette packet into the pocket of her lab coat. Cadel felt Thaddeus recoil, then wondered if he had imagined it. Carla frowned at Art, adding: ‘Just don’t forget. All right?’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ Art responded peaceably.

  Carla turned. She marched off at a rapid pace, while Art and Thaddeus exchanged glances.

  ‘Quite a strong personality,’ Thaddeus remarked to Stuart, by way of explanation. ‘Brilliant mind, though.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of doing microbiology, are you son?’ Stuart inquired of Cadel, who shook his head.

  ‘Cadel might like to consider accounting, however,’ Thaddeus observed. ‘As a secondary elective. If he does, he’ll be taught by Brendan Graham, over there.’ Thaddeus pointed at a red-haired man in a white shirt and green tie, whose attention was fixed on a notebook in front of him. With one hand he was scribbling in the notebook, while with the other he spooned some kind of pudding into his mouth.

  ‘Brendan,’ said Thaddeus, ‘is a genius with numbers. An absolute genius. He has Asperger’s syndrome, which is a mild form of autism, so he lives, eats and breathes numbers. The whole world is a balance sheet, for him. We find him an excellent teacher, though quirky of course.’

  ‘Quirky?’ Lanna repeated.

  ‘Well, he often has trouble remembering names,’ Thaddeus confessed. ‘Especially students’ names. So he tends to call everyone by a particular number.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lanna. Intrigued, Cadel glanced up at Thaddeus.

  ‘What’s your number, then?’ he asked.

  Thaddeus looked down his long nose at Cadel.

  ‘Oh, he remembers my name,’ Thaddeus replied calmly. ‘He always remembers my name. And speaking of names . . .’ He suddenly reached out to catch the arm of a tall, blonde woman who was clicking across the room in stiletto heels. ‘You may remember Tracey Lane, who worked for channel seven a few years back. She’s on our staff now.’

  Cadel didn’t remember Tracey – he was too young – but Lanna and Stuart did. Lanna gushed and Stuart mumbled as Cadel studied Tracey’s make-up. It was even more heavily applied than Lanna’s. Tracey’s face was like a gleaming mask; it hardly moved, even when she was talking. Her carefully arranged hair looked as if it was held in place by a coating of lacquer.

  Cadel had never seen such long fingernails in his life.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Tracey murmured, after being introduced to Cadel. She had a deep, breathy voice. ‘Welcome to the Institute. I just know you’ll be happy here.’ Though she smiled and said all the right things, it was rather like talking to a robot. Her wide green eyes were perfectly blank. ‘Are you enrolled in my elective?’

  ‘Not this time, Tracey,’ Thaddeus replied. If Tracey was disappointed, she didn’t show it. Instead, she remarked that she had to be getting on, that she hoped they would enjoy the rest of their visit, that it had been so nice to meet them, that they would have to excuse her . . .

  ‘What a lovely person,’ Lanna sighed, watching Tracey clatter away. ‘I can’t believe she’s not on TV any more.’

  ‘Neither can she,’ said Thaddeus, lifting one eyebrow a fraction.

  ‘You’ll have to do her course one day, Cadel.’

  Cadel grunted. He realised that, as far as Lanna was concerned, the Axis Institute was the right place to be. If Tracey was on staff, how could anyone fail to benefit? Lanna’s doting expression said it all.

  ‘Right,’ Thaddeus remarked. ‘Anyone want to purchase anything while we’re here? No? Let’s proceed, then.’

  They moved out of the refectory and back towards the seminary building. Thaddeus indicated the dormitory wing as they did so, but could see no reason to inspect it since Cadel wouldn’t be using those particular facilities. Their next stop was the library, which was in the basement. Thaddeus decided to take a lift. Positioned to the right of the seminary’s main rear door, the lifts appeared to be constructed entirely of grey metal plates, bolted together. Inside each lift was one glass indicator panel, and push-buttons that looked like rivets in a ship’s hull.

  ‘Very modern,’ said Lanna, casting an appraising eye over the décor.

  ‘They were only installed last year,’ Thaddeus rejoined, punching a button. The doors closed. After a short, smooth ride, they opened again.

  Cadel stepped out into a vast space that smelled of books and hot computers.

  He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment. He felt instantly at home.

  ‘We’re very proud of our library,’ said Thaddeus, with a sweeping gesture. ‘Below us are two more floors of book-stacks. Our catalogue is fully online. We subscribe to just about every English-language publication there is, plus a great many foreign-language ones. We have our specialties, of course, but that doesn’t mean we don’t cover all the subject areas. That’s the copying room,’ he remarked, with a nod at the door they were passing. Beyond it, a man in overalls was tinkering with one of at least ten photocopiers. ‘We do have an occasional problem with vandalism,’ Thaddeus admitted, ‘though mostly our breakdowns are due to technical faults. We have some extremely advanced and complicated machines in there.’

  ‘Uh – I have to make a phone call,’ Stuart interposed. ‘Can I use a mobile down here, or will I have to go upstairs again?’

  ‘You don’t have to use a mobile at all,’ Thaddeus replied graciously. ‘Feel free to use one of our phones.’

  Gratified, Stuart took advantage of the offer. Lanna retired into the ladies room. Thaddeus guided Cadel back to the lifts, promising to return in ten minutes. (‘We’ll just have a quick look at the stacks,’ Thaddeus explained.) As they stepped into one of the little steel boxes, he murmured: ‘It really is an excellent library. The genuine article. The stacks are a high-security area, by the way; certain people aren’t allowed in. You will be, of course. It’s a good place to do your research. Very quiet.’

  The lift doors closed. Cadel watched the indicator panel. They descended one floor, two floors. Finally, the metal doors in front of them slid apart.

  Cadel was suddenly propelled into a dimly lit aisle that threaded its way between rows and rows of metal bookshelves. There was a musty smell. It was utterly silent, except for the buzzing and clicking of a faulty fluorescent light.

  ‘We have an interesting collection,’ Thaddeus continued quietly, leading Cadel off to the left. Their shoes slapped against a bare cement floor. ‘Some of it, as I said, isn’t easily accessible. There’s a code you’ll need to break if you want to consult any of our more, shall we say, controversial texts. Some have to be kept at Yarramundi, in the armoury.’

  All at once he froze, and stopped talking. Cadel nearly collided with him. Listening hard, Cadel realised that the heavy silence was being disturbed by a faint, snuffling, shuffling noise.

  ‘Hello?’ said Thaddeus. His voice seemed very loud.

&n
bsp; No one answered.

  He advanced a few more steps, with careful deliberation, peering down a few of the shadowy aisles. Cadel stayed put. The ranks of silent, closed books unnerved him; they seemed to be protecting an ominous secret.

  Then something tugged at the corner of Cadel’s vision – something dark and swift, like a curtain flapping. He turned his head. The adjacent aisle was wrapped in darkness. But was there a movement – a faint movement – on the floor? A shadow unfolding against more shadows?

  ‘Thaddeus!’ he gasped.

  ‘I’m coming,’ said Thaddeus, and muttered under his breath. A few long strides brought him back to Cadel, who was now huddled against the wall beside the lift.

  ‘I thought I saw something,’ Cadel faltered, and Thaddeus frowned. ‘It wasn’t a person. I don’t think so, anyway. It was more like a – a – I don’t know. Like a snake, or a crocodile . . .’

  ‘If it was a crocodile, I’ll have someone’s guts for garters,’ Thaddeus announced crossly. ‘There’s a rule about crocodiles. And snakes. And anything else that might be venomous or carnivorous.’

  Then he pressed the ‘up’ button, and a lift arrived.

  TWELVE

  From the library, Thaddeus took Cadel and his adoptive parents up to the first floor. Here they went in search of Dr Vee, the man described by Thaddeus as a ‘computer whiz’. Proceeding down a long corridor, they passed two oddly placed scorch marks, some evidence of water damage, enough digital and laser-alarm locks to furnish the Pentagon, and many doors bearing the names of teaching staff. Thaddeus knocked at the door closest to the emergency exit, but there was no reply. The nameplate above the peephole was inscribed with the letter ‘V’, and nothing else. Underneath it, someone had taped a cartoon which showed a packet of cornflakes standing with a suitcase in one hand and a ticket to Alpha Centauri in the other. The words Universal cereal busport were written below this drawing.

  Cadel laughed.

  ‘Computer joke,’ he explained to Stuart. Thaddeus sighed.

  ‘No one home,’ he said. Continuing the search, he led them up a step, around a corner and through a stairwell, until he came to the entrance of what he called ‘Hardware Heaven’. A pair of swinging doors opened onto a wide, white room full of computer equipment.

  Cadel sucked in his breath.

  ‘Fantastic!’ he exclaimed.

  Two people were at work in the room, hunched over keyboards. One was the pasty youth from the canteen; he had brought a can of Coke back with him. The other was a fat man in a faded shirt. He had quite a lot of lank, grey hair flopping over his forehead; his face was mottled; there was a sty in one of his little muddy-green eyes, and he smelled strongly of eucalyptus oil. Lined up on the desk in front of him were a box of aloe vera tissues, a bottle of nasal spray, a jar of Vicks VapoRub and some pills in a plastic card.

  He kept sniffing and blinking as Thaddeus introduced him to the Piggotts.

  ‘This is Dr Vee,’ Thaddeus informed them. ‘We’re lucky to find him here – he does a lot of consulting work.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Lanna.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Stuart.

  Dr Vee shook hands with them, giggling nervously. Then he turned to Cadel.

  ‘Is this the one?’ he asked.

  ‘This is the one,’ said Thaddeus.

  Another giggle. Mr and Mrs Piggott glanced at each other. Cadel didn’t know what to make of this fat, unhealthy-looking man. He had fingers like sausages. Could he really be a computer whiz?

  ‘So you’re the baby hacker?’ said Dr Vee, blinking furiously at Cadel. ‘Thaddeus told me about you.’

  Cadel didn’t know how to reply.

  ‘I do a lot of firewall customisation,’ Dr Vee went on. ‘Bet you’ve never got through one of mine.’

  ‘That depends,’ Cadel retorted, ‘on which ones they are.’

  ‘Oh, I usually concentrate on port and protocol filters. I’ve done some neat little stateful inspection devices – viruses are my specialty.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cadel.

  ‘You weren’t writing viruses, though, were you?’

  ‘No,’ Cadel admitted, conscious of Mr and Mrs Piggott hovering at the edge of his vision. ‘Mostly I was doing application backdoors, remote logins, tracking down personal keys, information gathering. No bombs or anything. No viruses.’

  ‘Right. Hmm.’ Dr Vee coughed, and reached for a tissue. ‘Interesting thing to study, viruses. That’s where the money is. Stuff like denial-of-service attacks – they’re all sewn up, now. There’s hardly a firewall that can’t auto-apply blocking. But with viruses, it’s a constant battle.’ Dr Vee giggled again. ‘You should try to break the Axis firewall sometime. No one’s ever done it. Our file transfer protocols around here are like Fort Knox.’

  ‘Really?’ said Cadel.

  ‘Just warning you in advance.’ Dr Vee blew his nose. ‘Take a tip from Richard, over there. He tried to design a cookie-hopping application – spent months on it. Waste of time. Work down the drain. Now he’s doing something useful, trying to write an encryption technology bug.’

  Cadel looked with interest at the pasty youth with the can of Coke. Then he focused his attention on Dr Vee. Somewhere behind that heavy, moist, giggling facade, Cadel sensed, was an intellect of sly and formidable power. He was half repelled, half fascinated by it.

  ‘I had a look at your course outline,’ he said. ‘I’m interested in hardware design, but you seem to be concentrating on software.’

  Dr Vee blinked at him. ‘We’re very flexible,’ he answered. ‘You can concentrate on whatever you like, as long as it’s not the Axis firewall.’

  ‘You can help me with hardware design?’

  Dr Vee’s face was suddenly serious. He regarded Cadel with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Depends what you’re interested in,’ he wheezed.

  ‘Molecular electronics. DNA-directed assembly. That kind of thing.’

  Once more Dr Vee giggled. ‘Nanoboy!’ he crowed. ‘Oh, I’ll be in on that! Big time!’

  ‘I’m also trying to develop a predictive software program,’ Cadel continued, ‘but it’s tricky. Organising the data – there’s so much . . .’

  ‘You need more flash memory?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We’ll take a look at it.’

  ‘Assuming Cadel decides in our favour,’ Thaddeus observed, and Dr Vee shrugged. Abruptly, almost rudely, he twirled his chair back to face his computer monitor again. His big, fat fingers began to flutter with surprising delicacy over his keyboard. Click, click, click.

  Thaddeus retreated, beckoning to the Piggotts.

  ‘We might duck up to the labs,’ he said softly when they had exited through the swinging doors. ‘Then down to ground level, and that’s the lot.’

  ‘Strange sort of bloke,’ Stuart remarked, glancing back at Hardware Heaven. ‘Can’t say I took to him.’

  ‘Was he sick?’ Lanna asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s always sick,’ Thaddeus rejoined, with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s a permanent condition with him. Doesn’t affect his work, though.’

  ‘I didn’t think much of him,’ said Stuart. ‘What did you think, Cadel?’

  ‘I think he must be pretty good,’ Cadel replied. And since no one else wanted to express an opinion, Thaddeus headed for the labs on the second floor. Here the Piggotts were allowed to peer through glass windows at rooms full of steel-topped benches and esoteric equipment. Cadel recognised an atomic force microscope.

  Very few people were about, and most of the rooms shown to Cadel were empty.

  ‘A few graduate students,’ Thaddeus explained. He grimaced as they hit a very nasty smell, which was hovering around one of the closed doors marked with a ‘Hazmat’ (hazardous material) sign. Cadel had noticed a lot of closed doors. ‘Dear me,’ said Thaddeus. ‘Someone’s been busy. I have to admit I don’t come up here, as a rule – too many noisome odours.’

  ‘So what do they do here?’ Lanna asked f
aintly, flapping her plane ticket in front of her face.

  ‘Microbiology. Some biometrics. A little genetic research. Ah.’ Rounding a corner, Thaddeus spotted a tall, slim man in a lab coat, who was punching his pass-code into a digital lock. ‘Just the person I was looking for. Terry! Come and introduce yourself! Terry is in charge, here,’ Thaddeus revealed. ‘He’s better placed than I am to explain what goes on.’

  Terry was quite young. He wore blue jeans under his lab coat, and his long, brown hair hung in a ponytail down his back. He had an olive complexion, and his teeth were very white; when he smiled, his eyes crinkled pleasantly at the corners. Lanna was obviously charmed by him, especially when he addressed her in a rough-edged baritone, and Stuart was pleased when Terry confessed that he had recently read about Stuart’s firm in the papers.

  Cadel decided that his adoptive parents must have missed the young scientist’s hands. They were long and fine-boned, but covered in scratches, nicks and bandaids. There was something dark under two of the fingernails, and a reddish smear on one thumb.

  Terry’s hands didn’t seem to match the rest of him.

  ‘Stuart and Lanna would like to know what goes on here,’ Thaddeus informed his colleague, who immediately launched into a rambling description of his department’s activities, using lots of words like ‘erythrocytes’ and ‘bacteriorhodopsin’. Naturally, Mr and Mrs Piggott were unable to follow him, and stood with glazed expressions, trying to be polite. Cadel couldn’t follow Terry either, but not because he couldn’t understand the words being used. The words were perfectly clear to Cadel – they were just being put together in sequences that made no sense.

  Catching the scientist’s eye, Cadel saw him wink, and realised what was happening. Terry didn’t want Mr and Mrs Piggott to know what was really going on in the labs.