by Diane Duane
Tau rolled his eyes. “Sorry. But this was not the walkover we thought it was going to be, Dev. Our defenses were hard pressed: Mike wasn’t kidding you when he said this was a much worse attack than anything we’ve had before. There were some minor breakthroughs into the accounting routines, and though we cut them off fast, now the question is what those people on the outside learned. The attacker programs were adapting as fast to what we were doing as we were to them.”
“You think the attacks weren’t entirely machine driven?” Dev said. “They had people riding their routines the way we did?”
“Why not?” Tau said. “We thought of doing it. Why shouldn’t they?”
Dev let out a breath. “Okay,” he said. He looked out over the battlefield, which was clearing rapidly: all the forces of zombie-bot darkness had now been pushed well back from the river and were being forced right out toward the battlefield’s horizons. Behind them the pursuing Omnitopians were also flooding over into the real- world side of the battle, pursuing their enemies down the world’s networks to isolate the access gateways the enemy had used and lock them down. Others would doubtless open later, but these would not be used again.
Tau was watching the retreat of the dark forces with a grim look on his face. Most of the Omnitopians who had been behind them had now headed forward to help their comrades with the mopping up. Dev let out a breath. Then, startled by something seen out of the corner of his eye, he turned.
Something among the roots of the tree. Flitting, passing—gone—
And now, nothing. Dev became aware that Tau was looking at him strangely. “What?”
“Did you see that?” Dev said.
“See what?”
Dev shook his head. Now that Tau asked, it was hard to say. “It was like—” He shrugged. “A shadow.”
Tau turned an uneasy look on him. “A virus, maybe?” They had seen such things before when viewing the Omnitopia subterverse this way: introduced code, insufficiently or incorrectly described or camouflaged by the ones responsible, would display itself against the more fully realized background as something splotchy or inchoate.
Dev shook his head. “Down here? You were the one telling me how well this area’s protected.”
Tau scowled. “Usually, sure. But after what we’ve been through it’s not beyond possibility that something sneaked in. Or that this attack was used as cover to allow something to sneak in . . .”
“Have a security crew give the place a good scouring,” Dev said. He chucked the Sword of Truth into the air, and the system caught it and vanished it: when his hands were empty, Dev rubbed his eyes. “They can report off after we do our debrief.”
“Right,” Tau said. “See you in the Tower.”
He vanished.
Dev stood there looking at the trees and the shadows under them for some little while longer: then vanished as well.
Two hours later, Dev, Tau, Mike, and four of Tau’s senior security and infrastructure people finished their debriefing in the Tower room around the big dark table, while outside the last embers of sunset were burning down into darkness. Dev pushed his laptop away, sighing, and closed its lid on a long report that would need closer examination later in the evening. “So,” he said. “Bottom line: all the prep we did, all the ready-rolled attack strategies, turned out not to be more than enough—they were barely enough. And we’re going to get hit again, and we have no good answer to the question of whether we’ll be ready.”
“That about sums it up,” said Tau. He dropped the pen he’d been fiddling with and leaned his elbows on the table, running his hands through his hair. “At the end of the day, the strategies and responses improvised and executed on the fly turned out to be as effective, or more so, than the stuff we had in the can.”
“Which leaves me wondering yet again about what moles have been buried in the company waiting for this moment to arrive,” Dev said. “And how we haven’t found them by now, and how they got into the shot locker and sent news to their handlers about what we were getting ready to use on them. Something else for system security to investigate in quieter times . . . assuming the company survives to have any.” He leaned back in his chair, trying to stretch some of the stress kinks out of his back. “Later for that. For now: are we secure?”
“For the moment,” said Mike. It was strange to see him looking little and slim again after watching him fight in the Bloomberg suit—it had fitted him unusually well.
“And how long will the moment last?” Dev said.
Tau shook his head, bit his lip. “I give it six more hours, eight at the outside.”
“So what we just had was simply a feint.”
“Almost certainly. Not at all big enough to be the main attack.” Tau scowled, his eternal doing- math-in-his-head expression. “Oh, they took forty or fifty million off us, yeah—”
“Not nearly enough to repay the effort and the danger they went through to stage this,” Mike said. “They’ll be back for more. Lots more.”
“Besides, tactically it makes sense for a bigger attack to follow this one,” said Tau. “This was meant to make us think we’re out of the woods. But also we’re supposed to think that nobody could possibly follow up with another attack of the same intensity.”
Everyone around the table sat morosely silent for some moments. “And the second one,” Dev said, “will not only be far worse, but probably entirely different.”
“What I hate is that all we’ve got to determine the timing by is guesswork,” Tau said.
They looked at each other. “If it was me planning all this,” Dev said, “it’d still happen inside the attack window we originally worked out. Tactically, in terms of access to our hardware, it’s still the best time.” He scowled for a moment, thinking. “And this too: the ego junkies among the hackers who’ve designed this will be expecting us to put out some PR about how we beat off this attack. Then they get to come back at us, rip us off properly, and brag that we’re twice as stupid as they thought we were.” He grinned. “So. Let’s start damage control. Has everyone who took part been messaged with instructions to keep quiet about what’s been going on?”
“Those e-mails went out within minutes of the battle being over,” Tau said.
“Good,” Dev said. “If there are leaks, I want them tracked back to the source.”
Donna and Mal, the security people, both nodded. “Also,” Dev said, “make sure the space we were fighting in today is checked for any little presents our visitors might have left us. I saw something down there that I couldn’t identify.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Mal assured him.
“Thanks,” said Dev. He stood up and stretched. “Anything else?”
Tau and the others got up too. “I had a call from shuntspace security just before we sat down,” Tau said. “They’ve been seeing some operational anomalies tonight. Tomorrow morning can you find some time to go over to the Palace and have a word?”
“Sure,” Dev said. “Call Frank, have him schedule it. The earlier the better, if you think we’ve got trouble within the next six hours . . .” He yawned. “Make sure I’m called if something starts. Thanks, folks.”
Mike and his security people waved good night and headed out. Dev, meanwhile, waited until the lift door closed behind them, then said to Tau, “Want to come up for a beer?”
“Don’t tempt me,” Tau said, looking down into the courtyard. “I’ve got too many things to do before I go to bed: I don’t dare take the edge off.”
“Well, walk me back, then,” Dev said. They went over to the elevator. “Anything from Jim?”
“He says there’s nothing to get too excited about yet,” Tau said. “The news got out too late to do anything to the North American business news cycle. But almost as soon as the attack started, our PR people on the Asian side of the dateline started papering the wire services with news about how the attack had been sidelined.” He sighed. “Tomorrow’ll be worse, Jim says: the Asian markets are open now, the
y hate insecurity worse than anyone else, and they’re going to take other markets down the slide with them. But for tonight, for the moment, we’re okay.”
The door slid open; they stepped in. “All right,” Dev said as the door closed and the elevator headed down. “I’ll get up to Castle Scrooge in the morning if I can.”
“Why?”
“So he can yell at me,” Dev said, resigned.
The door opened and they stepped out into the downstairs lobby. The doors to the courtyard were open: the scent of warm evening was flowing in through them, a baked-pavement smell fragranced with bougainvillea, jasmine, and magnolia from the flower beds in the middle garden. Dev breathed it in gratefully as they went out and headed for the doors to the residence side. “Jim’s not going to yell at you,” Tau said, sounding surprised.
“Oh, yes, he will,” Dev said, “because you did, and you told him you did.”
“How do you know I told him?” Tau said, sounding faintly outraged.
“Because it’s what you’d do,” Dev said as they stopped by the downstairs doors.
Tau gave him a look in the dimness, but didn’t deny it. “So,” Dev said. “Call me in the morning as soon as anything new starts to happen. Don’t give me that look! Yes, detail me a bodyguard this time, whatever. And, Tau, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Tau said, “you idiot.”
Dev grinned at him, weary. “Guilty as charged. Good night.”
“Night, Dev,” Tau said, patted him on the shoulder, and headed off across the plaza.
Dev sighed and went upstairs. He paused briefly by Lola’s quarters, finding the place in nighttime mode and Crazy Bob holding down the front office, eating a burrito and watching a foreign soap opera on the screen next to the monitor that showed Lola’s bedroom.
“Hey, Dev,” Bob said. “Busy day?” He was a big blond man, a former Olympic shotputter, huge across the shoulders and looking like the archetypal jock—which made the doctorates in child psych and so on all the more surprising for those who weren’t expecting them.
“You have no idea,” Dev said. “How was hers?”
“Active but otherwise uneventful, I’m told,” Bob said. “Ate a good dinner, and only needed two reads of Wuggie Norple to get to sleep tonight.”
“Great. Thanks,” Dev said, and headed back to Lola’s bedroom. He slipped into the darkness and found her engaged in her eternal war with her blankets, having knotted them around herself in such a way as to avoid actually getting any warmth out of them. Dev leaned over the bed, unwound the blankets somewhat and rearranged them, then bent over his daughter and just looked at her a moment, listening to her breathe. The silence, the moment of doing nothing but being there, was balm.
He yawned, keeping it silent: then kissed Lola night- night, straightened up, and headed out. A wave for Bob, out into the corridor, down to his own quarters: the thump of the door shutting behind him . . .
The weariness came down on Dev all at once. The living space was on nighttime lighting: Mirabel hadn’t waited for him. Dev sighed—why would she? She knew what his hours were like. He headed straight back for the bedroom, opened the door softly, went in.
The bed was empty.
He stared at it and for several moments simply wasn’t able to understand what he was seeing. “Miri?” he said.
Nothing.
After a moment Dev summoned up enough presence of mind to go over to the house phone and wave it awake. “Night concierge,” he said to it.
“Yes, Mr. Logan?” It was Ian, another of the household staff who couldn’t seem to get casual. But then Ian had been a butler once, and Dev supposed that butlering tended to leave too deep an impression of formality for a mere few years of other employment to erase.
“It’s okay, Ian,” said the voice from behind him. “He’s looking for me.”
Dev turned, saw the shape standing in the doorway, smiled wearily. “Sorry, Ian,” he said.
“No problem, Mr. Logan.”
Dev waved the phone back to sleep. “I was over in your office,” Mirabel said as she came in. She was wearing a large floppy Omnitopia T-shirt over her most beat-up jeans, and she was holding something in her hands. “And where have you been?”
“Oh, God,” Dev said, “don’t ask.” He sat down on the bed and dropped his head into his hands for a moment, then rubbed his face. “What a day. And it’s going to get worse.”
“You’re so right,” Mirabel said, sitting down next to him.
He looked at her in complete confusion. “What?”
She showed him what she was carrying. It was a plate. On it was a forlorn-looking bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich that was curling up at the corners.
“Oh, God,” Dev said.
Mirabel scowled at him. “I should make you eat this one,” she said. “Are you insane? No, don’t answer that, I know the answer already! You are a crazy person! You’re trying to run a Fortune 500 company on an empty stomach! What do you think your blood sugar is doing? How are your brains supposed to work? Don’t even try to tell me: you don’t have any brains to answer with at the moment!”
She shook the sandwich under his nose. Dev made what he hoped would pass for a contrite face and reached out for it. But Mirabel snatched it away from him. “You are a nut case,” she said, and put the plate down on the bedside table. “Who knows what’s growing in that mayonnaise by now? One of the cats can have what’s in there, maybe, but you’re not getting it.” She opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out another BLT, this one still wrapped. “Here. This is fresh. Eat it right this minute or I will never speak to you again until tomorrow.”
Dev sighed and pulled the plastic wrap off the plate. “It’s almost tomorrow already,” he said.
“I wouldn’t try to produce any logical statements just yet if I were you,” Mirabel said. “You’ll just get yourself in more trouble. Shut up and eat.”
Dev ate, and rather to his surprise went from not feeling particularly hungry to feeling ravenous in about six bites, that being how long it took him to finish the sandwich. Mirabel watched with scowling approval, then took the plate away from him.
“Is there another?” Dev said.
“Not for you. You’ll get indigestion if you overdo it this late. You can go get a glass of milk, but that’s it.”
“Yes, Mommy.”
She cuffed him lightly behind the head. “Speaking of whom, that’s from Bella. She told me to tell you to stop acting like a big shot and do as you’re told.”
Dev sighed and stretched. “My life is completely owned and operated by women,” he said, and let himself fall backward on the bed.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Mirabel said, and more or less fell over beside him, winding up leaning on one elbow and looking down at him.
“Did you get down to Coldstone finally?” Dev said.
Mirabel nodded. “Lola insisted that I bring you an ice cream, despite the fact that there’s already half a ton of it in the pantry freezer. So if you see a waffle bowl full of half-melted double chocolate chip in the little freezer by the coffee bar, you know what that’s about. Make sure she sees you eat it tomorrow or she’ll worry.”
He nodded and closed his eyes.
“What time is get-up time?” Mirabel said to him.
“Five . . .” Dev muttered. Oh, God, please don’t let things get any worse between now and then.
Except they will. You know they will.
“Six,” Mirabel said.
“Five . . .” said Dev. . . .
He never heard himself start to snore.
“You sold your soul,” the voice said conversationally. “Or, no, okay, you pawned it. But then did you lose the pawn ticket, or throw it away?”
With a shock like falling out of bed, his eyes flew open.
Darkness . . .
Phil lay there gasping for breath: his heart was racing. A dream, he thought at last. Just a dream.
He boosted himself up in b
ed, leaning back on his elbows to look around the darkened room. Everything was as it should have been: no sound to be heard anywhere but the soft, never-ending crash of the waves outside on the beach. This time of year, regardless of the mosquitoes, he liked to leave the upstairs windows open to the night and the sea: the on-grounds security was more than adequate to make sure that nobody would ever climb up onto the terrace and come strolling in the bedroom’s open French windows.
You sold your soul, said the voice again, calm, conversational, as it had sounded in his ear a moment before. Which was strange, because there had been nothing conversational about that dream. In the dream, it had been a shout, a cry of anguish—as it had been in reality, years ago.
It was a long time since he’d dreamed about that. It had become like one of those adolescent anxiety dreams that you grow out of, where all your teeth fall out or you haven’t studied for a test and everybody laughs at you. Yet despite the long respite, Phil actively shied away from the memory. Let the past be the past. No point in letting it run your life! It’s done.
But now, as sometimes happened, Phil was wondering whether it ever really was done. When he and Dev had still been friends, they’d never really fought. Oh, sure, casual squabbles about stuff that wasn’t important. But this one time, when they’d really fought over something serious, they had screamed and nearly come to blows. Even now, when he was in private, the memory made Phil go hot with shame and rage. It wasn’t my fault! It should never have happened! If we were such good friends, one really big fight shouldn’t have been enough to break it up! It can’t have been much of a friendship to start with!
But that was a lie, and he knew it.
Phil cursed, threw the sheets and the light blanket aside, and padded across the polished teak floor toward the French windows. By the center window he paused, pushing aside the gauze curtains that stirred in the sea breeze. Outside, a fainter darkness than the room’s was wrapped around everything, and that dark was featureless. As so often happened in mid-June before the South Fork weather had come fully up to summer temperatures, the mist had rolled in off the water a couple of hours after midnight and now lay blanketing everything. No stars tonight, no moon; and if there was any boat traffic out on the Sound, any fishermen out for the predawn catch, their lights were invisible in the mist.
