Cyberspy Read online

  Young genius … there was that phrase again.

  David Gray didn’t feel like a young genius. He would admit to having a good touch with computers, to being able to solve programming problems that baffled others—even professional programmers. But if this interview went right, he’d be working with some of the best minds—and sneakiest hackers—his age.

  Just assembling this group showed Luddie MacPherson’s unorthodox thinking. Some companies—especially those involved with computer security—used the more notorious hackers as consultants to probe for clients’ security problems, and sometimes even to find weaknesses in their own security setups. But they didn’t hire them to work within the company.

  Hardweare did. Their recruiting program offered selected young programmers top-grade machinery and a chance to hone their skills on the sharpest part of technology’s cutting edge. What the company got in return was excellent programming— and the chance to spot the next Luddie MacPherson.

  Either the guy is incredibly generous, David thought, or he wants a line on possible competition before it even starts to blossom.

  David himself didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with his talents. He’d thought of law school, but he’d also been fascinated by space. In veeyar simulations he’d shown the necessary abilities—physical and astrogational—to pilot spacecraft. And recent events had uncovered a certain flair for investigation. Maybe it was his cop heritage showing, but Net Force could always use sharp technologists.

  But all those career decisions could wait. He was still a kid—he had years to go before he had to make up his mind. And in the meantime he would see how he measured up against the rest of the best and brightest. If he got a consulting job, Hardweare paid top dollar. Which was sure to help if he didn’t get the scholarships he needed. Whatever he decided to do with his life, college was sure to cost a ton. And his dad’s salary as a cop wasn’t going to cover it.

  He sighed, squirming back against that too-soft seat. Better not think that way. He didn’t want to go into this meeting feeling half-defeated.

  Just for a second in the rearview mirror David thought he caught a grin on the face of the driver. But he couldn’t see the man’s eyes under their dark sunglasses, and he could have been mistaken.

  This guy must ferry a lot of hopefuls to the head office, David thought. Who knows? Maybe this whole over-luxurious setup was some sort of test, to shake me up before seeing the big cheese.

  David turned from the driver to the view again. They seemed to be light-years instead of miles from downtown Washington. This was far from the beltway that girdled D.C. For David’s taste, the buildings were too far apart—there was too much green, too many trees.

  The limo slowed, leaving the main road. They seemed to slip back in time, rolling along a winding country lane. On one side David saw a white split-rail fence with a field beyond. There was no view on the other side—it was cut off by a high fieldstone wall.

  Horses roamed in the green pastures. An eager colt began running beside the fence, racing the limo. David was so busy watching, he was caught by surprise when the big car slowed and began to turn away from the pasture and toward the stone wall. Where had those big iron gates come from?

  The driver braked sharply in front of the massive gateway, beside one of the huge stone pillars flanking the entrance. A metal box was set in the stone with a large holo pickup sweeping back and forth over it. The pickup froze, studying the car. As David looked more closely, he could see multiple cameras inset in the fence as far as the eye could see, all of them carefully hidden, nearly invisible until he looked for them. He imagined that there was plenty of other security equipment scattered throughout the grounds—motion sensors, pressure plates, and other high-tech stuff he didn’t even know about, much less know what to look for. This setup went way beyond a simple burglar alarm system.

  Removing his sunglasses, the driver leaned out of the window to give the holo pickup a good view of his face. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Gray?”

  David scooted across the seat to the left-hand window. By the time he got there, the window was down. He stuck his face out, watching as the driver placed his hand against a glass plate on the box.

  Visual ID and palmprint.

  Then it was David’s turn. He presented his hand and face to the scanners, though he had no idea what his prospective employer planned to compare the scans to. Then the driver backed the car up to present himself to the holo pickup again. What did they want now?

  The driver leaned forward, muttering something into a grille inset in the box. A password? A voiceprint? A DNA analysis of molecules in his expelled breath?

  David found himself glancing nervously around. What did Luddie MacPherson have to back up such an elaborate system? Armed guards? Computer-controlled artillery?

  In complete silence the big black bars swung open. The limo passed through, and David glanced at the gates. Something caught his eye—from any distance at all, they looked like fancy wrought iron. But up close, where the uncorroded glint of premium metal could be seen in a few small scratches and chips in the paint, it was clear that those suckers were made of solid stainless steel. It would take a reasonable amount of C-4 or a lot of time and a high-end blowtorch to get through them.

  The gates closed as silently as they had opened, but David couldn’t shake the image of prison bars swinging shut. Either Luddie MacPherson was very fond of his privacy, or he thought he had some serious enemies.

  The limo moved along a crushed-shell driveway that cut through a manicured lawn toward a low fieldstone mansion. The vast field of green was obviously carefully tended, but the sort of landscaping David expected to see on grounds like this was noticeably absent. Nothing more than three inches high grew inside the walls. Looking at the flat expanse of greenery, David remembered Captain Winters talking about military tactics and zones of fire.

  After bringing the car smoothly to a stop, the driver hopped out to get David’s door. Looking at the man with new eyes, David detected a bulge in the driver’s suit jacket—under the left armpit. The guy was carrying a gun!

  David stepped out of the car. “Thanks for an . .. interesting ride,” he said.

  The driver responded with another lightning grin. Then he

  glanced at the front door of the mansion, and David turned. Thick oak strapped with black iron, the door would have looked at home on a medieval castle. But it swung inward as silently as the gates, leaving a dark-haired, petite girl about David’s age framed in the entranceway. She was pretty in a sort of exotic way, reminding David of HoloNet actresses portraying French girls, and she was wearing a Hardweare vest that fit her perfectly.

  The girl beckoned. “I’m Sabotine MacPherson,” she said. “Luddie will be with you in a minute.”

  David stepped inside, and the door swung shut without anyone touching it. Sabotine shrugged. “Luddie saw an old flat-screen TV show where the doors did that trick,” she said. “When he found a company that could duplicate the arrangement …” She shook her head. “My brother buys into all sorts of strange technology.”

  Sabotine led the way from the stone entrance hall through an arched hallway painted to look like the sky, complete with clouds.

  David saw paintings, sculptures on shelves, art objects in niches so they looked as if they were floating in air. He couldn’t tell how they were lit—that was something beyond the cutting edge of high tech. But the artworks were all masterpieces … and all hand-worked.

  They came to a living room or parlor—David didn’t know what to call it. Sabotine sat down on a deceptively simple-looking wooden stool, gesturing to a leather couch nearby. As soon as the cushions detected David’s weight, some sort of mechanisms deep within the piece of furniture were activated. It was as if the couch were a big animal snuggling him into the most comfortable position.

  David squirmed, not comfortable at all, and caught Sabotine’s apologetic smile. “Another technology your brother bought into?” he asked.


  She nodded. “I try to keep him from taking our home completely into the twilight zone.”

  The room showed the same sort of strange conflict as the rest of the house David had seen—one-of-a-kind pieces of handmade furniture beside stuff that was almost bizarrely high-tech. Sabotine brushed a hand over the flashing Hard-weare vest she wore, and the lighting in the room changed, darkening except for a pair of spotlights circling where they sat.

  David’s attention, however, was caught by the rest of her outfit. It was some kind of natural fabric—maybe a sanded silk—and it was obvious that Sabotine hadn’t picked it up in any mall. The garment’s perfect fit spoke of hand tailoring.

  “You try to balance the technology with all the handicrafts?” David asked.

  Sabotine nodded. ‘There’s something … soulless about machine-made stuff. Once upon a time I made all my own clothes—before Luddie recruited me into his software division.” She laughed at David’s expression. “Yeah, I’d be your boss. You’re doing fine—asking all the right questions.”

  David rolled his eyes. “Except the important one—why you were here to meet me.”

  “Sorry to be so late,” another voice interrupted.

  David turned to see Luddie MacPherson enter the room. Sabotine’s older brother was a complete physical contrast to her—big, blond, and beefy. Judging by photographs from his rare public appearances, Luddie MacPherson often went without a tie. But as he stepped forward, wiping his face with a towel, the boy genius seemed to be taking the look a bit fur-then

  Luddie MacPherson wasn’t wearing a shirt. All he had on was a sweaty pair of exercise shorts .. . and the seemingly inevitable glittering Hardweare vest. The twinkling design of this one seemed to have a lot of red in it, David noticed.

  “My workout ran a bit longer than I anticipated,” Luddie said. “Hope you don’t mind.” He slapped his stomach. “Two years ago I was living on Ho-Hos and orange-cream soda. I’ve come a long way”—he grinned, plucking at the vest-computer, whose colors seemed to be calming down—“with this as my personal trainer. Sabotine programmed in everything I’d need to know about pumping myself up. I don’t even have to think about it. While the computer was taking my body through all the reps, I was in virtual reality watching Shakespeare—right on the stage!”

  Luddie struck a dramatic pose. “’My, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!’ That’s Orlando from As You Like It”

  He grinned, suddenly self-conscious. “I guess I pursued technology to the exclusion of almost everything else. Now I have the chance to catch up on all sorts of stuff while doing my exercises. Since the vest is already hooked into my nervous system, it monitors my pulse, blood pressure, respiration … it can even detect when I’m on the point of pushing too hard and giving myself a training-induced muscle sprain or strain, and stop me before I hurt myself. How many personal trainers can anticipate that— and also give you a classical education?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s wonderful.” Sabotine waved him away. “Too bad it can’t spot for you during weight training”—she wrinkled her nose, waving faster—“or tell you when you should’ve taken a shower.”

  Luddie MacPherson swiped the towel along his arms. “Still a geek,” he said, embarrassed. “It takes more than a computer and a couple of years to create a Renaissance man.”

  David found himself grinning. “I’ve been in gyms before. I know what it smells like.”

  “But it’s not supposed to smell the same way in a gracious salon.” Sabotine shook her head, smiling. “That’s what happens when you try to run a personal life and a business in the same mansion.”

  “Come on,” Luddie said, leading the way out of the room. At the far end they had to detour around a life-sized sculpture. A female figure that looked remarkably like Sabotine seemed literally to be pulling herself out of a base of jagged rock. Luddie caught David looking. “She throws a lot of money at artists,” he muttered as he brought them down a hallway. A pair of doors swung open as he approached, revealing an almost featureless space. It seemed to be carpeted, walled, and ceilinged in a strange silvery-gray fabric that gave pliantly under their feet.

  “Welcome to the rubber room,” Luddie announced cheerfully, heading straight for a small alcove David had initially missed. Hanging from a bar was a selection of Hardweare vests. “The effect is best if you get a good fit.” He ran a practiced eye over David. “I’d figure you for a size forty long.”

  Wordlessly David nodded.

  Luddie grinned. “If this computer thing craps out, I can always go into menswear.”

  David took off his jacket and shrugged into the vest, buttoning it up. A creepy tickling sensation, like his hair standing on end, swept along the back of his neck, where the vest touched his skin. “Just the computer making its connection,” Luddie reassured him. “With a little more development, I hope to make implants a thing of the past. I’d rather have a little chill along my neck than that static-between-the-ears feeling.”

  Luddie had another vest in his hand. He tossed it to the floor. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you on the guided tour.”

  Suddenly the vest began to grow—no, David realized, they were shrinking! That little chill had not only established the connection with his implant—it had moved him into virtual reality!

  Luddie ran to the gigantic vest and began climbing, with David right on his heels. The boy inventor seemed to have a specific destination in mind. David was glad someone had an idea of what was going on. They continued to shrink even as they scaled Mt. Hardweare—which was now definitely looking like a mountain.

  After a while, however, the climb became oddly easier, because David had shrunk to a size where he could actually grab on to the fiber-optic filaments that made up the body of the vest. String-size, cord-size, cable-size … then they became about the thickness of the pipes on monkey bars.

  Luddie MacPherson continued to clamber up a steep slope— actually the side of a crease in the fabric—until he almost reached a large round building. Again, it took David a moment to readjust his frame of reference. The structure was actually a button on the front of the vest.

  Apparently, it was also Luddie’s destination. He stopped climbing and pulled David onto a specific filament—which had now grown large enough for the boys to swing astride like a horse. The young inventor grinned at David. “Pretty good,” he complimented. “Some Net hotshots I’ve met are more like computer-link couch potatoes. When I take them on this tour, they’re terrified of the heights, they can’t move fast enough, and they’re afraid to take risks moving through the environment—the trip puts them on the verge of blowing a gasket.”

  David shrugged. “I have two younger brothers. They put me through worse every Saturday morning.”

  Luddie looked like something out of a cheap horror show. Green light welled up from the optical filament beneath them—one of the million dots of color that flowed around the Hardweare vest. He laughed, an everyday sound very much at odds with his ghastly green skin. “Relax. From here on in, we ride.”

  They were still shrinking. The fiber beneath them had grown to the size of a giant pipe, about the size of a sidewalk. Then it seemed less rounded under their feet—and about the width of a city street. Now it seemed almost flat, and David couldn’t even see where it ended.

  We must be microscopic by now, he thought. I hope Luddie didn ‘t write any amoebas or germs into this sim.

  The boys grew so small they sank into the substance of the filament, just as a new blast of light—red, this time—came along.

  “Here’s our ride now,” Luddie said.

  David almost cried out in surprise as he and the inventor were engulfed in a cloud of gleaming scarlet points of energy and carried along on the wave.

  It took a brief struggle, but he managed to regain his poise. “So now we’re part of the vest’s light-show.”

  “The beads of light aren’t just there for show, althoug
h they do make the vest look pretty,” Luddie lectured as they flashed along at tremendous speed. “They represent information packets, shunted among various processing sites.”

  “Decorative as well as useful,” David said.

  Luddie laughed. “Exactly.”

  “And tons of processing sites.” David looked sharply at his prospective employer. “Just how big a computer network have you got in here disguised as a vest?”

  “Very good,” Luddie MacPherson said. “Of course I can’t answer that—it’s proprietary. But I can assure you that, pretty much regardless of the complexity of the problem or program a user presents, I’ve got enough processors that they can band together to handle it. The challenge was to make everything flexible—the physical components, you know—both so the system will fit comfortably around the end user’s body, and so the hardware and software work flexibly and adaptively on any problem the user gives them. This network, despite its complexity, is tight enough and fast enough to give quick results.”

  They passed into a maze-like structure, and the ride immediately became bumpier. “A microchip?” David hazarded a guess.

  “One of several main processors,” Luddie admitted as they were shunted violently through the printed circuitry. Besides being shaken up, David noticed that the red glow around them had intensified until it was almost painful.

  “I know we’re putting you through a bit of sensory overload,” MacPherson apologized, “but this really is proprietary technology—and I don’t want people getting any ideas about the actual architecture.”

  David thought this was taking security a bit too far. “Can’t any competitor buy a Hardweare vest and invest in the necessary technology to take it apart and steal the design?” David asked.

  “Not if they want a working system,” Luddie grimly assured him. They went through another area, this one too blindingly bright to make out details. “I call this our insurance circuit. If it detects anyone monkeying with the vest, it blows the whole system.”