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  The scene before him shifted. He could still see the hole, only now there were faint gridlike lines around it.

  A patch!

  Someone had hidden the network details on the incursion space.

  Jay extended his forefinger and a small probe shot out. He slid it around the now visible hairline crack surrounding the hole, separating the code that wrote the patch from the VR code that made the hole.

  The patch slid off into his hand, and Jay popped it into the satchel strapped over his shoulder, a small VR analyzer.

  This could be good news—he hadn’t found anything like this before. If this virus had been programmed to cover its tracks, there might be something interesting about this access node that would give him more information about how it worked.

  The analyzer chimed and a code window opened up at eye level. He scanned it and frowned.

  It was a patch designed to conceal part of their network interface. He’d been given access to their system, all right—but they hadn’t wanted him to see everything, so they’d tried to cut off from the bits they didn’t want him to know about.

  What, did they think he was that stupid? Didn’t they have a clue who they were dealing with here?

  He scanned the woods nearby. If you knew where and how to look, it wasn’t that hard to find. . . .

  There it was—a programming back door, concealed as an old tree stump. Easy to hide if you weren’t looking for it, because it was an integral part of the environment, not anything added, like the hole.

  Well, he’d pop the lock on it, and show these CyberNation jerks what a real VR coder could do. Once he was in there, he’d give himself all kinds of access—

  Ping! Ping! Pingpingpingpingpingpingpingping!

  Something had gotten caught in Jay’s snare. Ah.

  His anger forgotten for the moment, Jay ran back the way he had come. As he had traversed the woods, backtracking the attack, he’d laid traps for code remnants that might still be around. It happened sometimes. A virus mutated and didn’t reach full functionality, left a bit of itself running around in the bushes, as it were.

  It was one thing to see the traces of where an attack had come from, but to see a still-working example was far better.

  He jumped a small creek, running hard, bare feet lightly treading the earth, long black braids flying behind him. He reached down and drew the tomahawk from his belt.

  Just because he was in a medieval forest didn’t mean he had to be medieval. He was Jay Gridley, last of the Mohicans. Or at least, last of the movie version of them . . .

  There.

  Up ahead he saw a large fox in the trap he’d left. It moved strangely for a fox, examining the trap, as if trying to figure out how it worked.

  As he watched, it looked up and saw him coming.

  It opened its delicate fox jaws and then huge teeth sprouted, like in some werewolf or vampire movie, huge, metal teeth. Its mouth opened impossibly wide and it lunged for its own leg, caught in the trap.

  No way, pal—!

  Jay threw the tomahawk, a hard overhand toss, and watched it twirl end over end toward the fox. The hickory handle smacked into the side of the fox’s head; it yelped and fell over, stunned.

  Now, that’s what I’m talking about: Jay Gridley has come into the forest, booyah!

  He pushed a button on the satchel and it expanded. Quickly, before it could recover, he slid the fox, trap and all, into the analyzer.

  A few seconds later a chime sounded, announcing that the virus had been analyzed.

  Before he’d come to CyberNation, he’d uploaded the latest virus encyclopedia from the Center for Virus Research in Beaverton, Oregon. A special tri-split screen appeared showing him in the first pane the code for the virus, broken down into segments. In the second window was a representation of an insect. The insect metaphor had become the de-facto ideogrammatic standard for depicting viruses; various parts of the insect were colored to highlight the separate codes making them up, and the body parts always represented similar abilities. The legs showed its ability to spread; pincers or mandibles its ability to attack; the overall size could indicate ease of detection, and so on.

  The CyberNation virus looked like no real insect Jay had ever seen, nor would he want to. It had large wings, indicating speed, and a huge stinger plus pincers. The venom reservoir was split, indicating that it could sting for several functions—to paralyze, and replicate.

  Nice.

  But the third pane of the split screen was what he was most interested in. The CVR had spent years tracking down viruses to their origin countries and, when they were lucky, to their earliest programmers. Since most computer attacks were based on similar methods, there was a synergistic effect to coding, where a hacker might steal an idea from another, or be inspired to create something new.

  It looked as if this virus had been developed from code that had origins in Europe, with pieces of USA ancestry.

  Jay tabbed a control and called up the reconstruction of the virus that had attacked the military network. Since they hadn’t caught it in its entirety, it was more of an identikit version, based on its effects. He compared the two.

  They were similar. It was the delivery system that seemed to be the same—the speed, along with the venom replication. The military bug had some of the same code, but there were South American influences as well.

  Interestingly, there were no influences at all from what could be called Asiatic countries. No Japan, no Taiwan, and no China.

  Which by itself meant nothing, but combined with his earlier clue about China, it reminded him of his second favorite Sherlock Holmes adage. The one about the dog not barking in the night.

  There were no Chinese dogs barking here.

  And somehow, Jay knew that was a clue. No logic or reason to the knowledge, but a certainty nonetheless.

  Which brought back a fleeting memory of an old movie farce about a superagent in the 1960’s, Derek Flint. In one of the funniest scenes in that picture, Flint walks down a hall past a couple of military guards. Suddenly Flint attacks the guards, uses his martial arts abilities to take them out, then picks up a fallen weapon and cooks them. When the head of the agency runs up behind Flint and whacks him, thinking he’s gone mad, Flint explains why he did it. They were imposters. What gave them away was, they were wearing Battle of the Bulge ribbons. Cramden, the agency head, says, “There aren’t any Battle of the Bulge ribbons.”

  “Exactly,” Flint says. . . .

  If it took the rest of his life, Jay was going to get this guy. You could take that to the bank.

  But it wasn’t going to happen today. He logged out.

  26

  Somewhere in the Air over Kansas

  The dead man’s guitar—his now, if Natadze’s dying wish was to be honored—was stowed in the luggage bin over Kent’s head. The commercial jet droned along, somewhere over the Midwest—Kansas, maybe. Once, there had been websites you could access that showed the progress of every commercial flight in the country. Log on, type in the flight number, and you’d get a nice visual of a little aircraft superimposed on a map, showing you exactly where it was, where it had been, and its projected flight path to where it was going.

  Those days were long gone. After 9/11, a lot of such information had been shut down. Too risky. Even National Parks data was restricted. And if you started trying to run down where the nation’s water supplies were, or the exact geographic locations of military bases, nuclear power plants, or chemical factories, you might well hear a knock on your door with a curious federal agent behind it wanting to know just why you needed such information.

  Interesting times, that was the Chinese curse, and certainly that’s what had come to pass in the United States. When he’d been a boy, you could catch a bus downtown, wander around alone all day, and your parents didn’t need to worry about you. You could walk onto a plane carrying a loaded pistol in your pocket and there weren’t any metal detectors between you and the aircraft because nobody e
ver considered hijacking the craft to Cuba, or flying it into a building and killing thousands. Things you might conceivably put into your mouth were not protected by security seals with instructions that, if broken, you shouldn’t eat it. Terrorists didn’t sit around planning ways to release poison gas, blow up bridges, or set off an atomic bomb in an American city, except in the movies or in books. And you didn’t need to stamp warnings on the barrels of guns that they were dangerous.

  Of course, you could still get polio, and his mother had warned him against playing in ditches because she still thought that was how you caught it. The shadow of nuclear war loomed large, and they told schoolchildren to hide under their desks if the Russians dropped the bomb, as if that would help. And institutionalized racism and sexism were still the norm.

  No men on the moon back in the 1950s—but also no AIDS.

  A lot of things had changed during Kent’s lifetime, most for better, but some for worse. Things didn’t sit still, that was a given, and the good old days were always better in memory than they’d actually been, but still, now and then, Kent wondered if the new millennium really was much better than the one just past.

  He got reflective like this after a battle. And even though it had been just him and Natadze in this one, it had ended with guns working. Yes, he had walked away, which was always better than the alternative, but he hadn’t won the victory he’d wanted. If he had been a little sharper, if he had really known what he was doing, it might have gone better.

  He remembered his grandfather. Paw-Paw had been in the Second World War, had been on the islands in the South Pacific fighting against the Japanese—that’s where Kent had gotten the samurai sword and the interest in it. But Paw-Paw had also been a master craftsman when it came to building things.

  When Kent had been a kid, his parents moved into the first house they ever owned. It was a small place, and his room had been converted from a den—it had no closets or shelves. His grandfather had come to the house with a yardstick—one of those cheap wooden things the paint companies used to give away if you bought a gallon of paint—and a pencil and spiral notebook.

  Paw Paw talked to Kent’s mother, then went into the den and made some measurements with that old yardstick, jotted down some notes, then went back to his shop and started cutting plywood.

  When he came back a week later, he put together a desk, two closets, and a bunch of shelves, using a screwdriver and a handful of wood screws. When he was finished, you couldn’t slip a piece of paper into any of the joints—everything fit together as tightly as a Swiss watch.

  The man had known what he was doing. He had been an expert at it.

  Going after Natadze alone had been a mistake. Kent hadn’t had the skill necessary to pull it off. An expert would have figured out a way to bring him back alive. Yeah, Kent had resolved his earlier mistakes, in that Natadze wasn’t running around loose anymore, but it was like burning down a barn to get rid of rats. It had cost a lot more than necessary.

  Kent sighed. Well. There was nothing to be done for it now, save to go back to work and explain it to his commander. Who might decide to fire him for it, and if so, Kent wouldn’t blame him. He had screwed up. And if you can’t do the time, you don’t do the crime. . . .

  The Summer Festival Marathon Race Beijing, China

  In China, the VR marathon races in which Chang ran were always run at night, and usually in the fog or rain, with the visibility never more than a few meters. It was a long race, a marathon, twenty-six miles, 385 yards, supposedly the distance a long-ago messenger had run in Greece on the plains of Marathon to deliver some important news, just before dropping dead from exhaustion. Over forty-two kilometers, and these days, crippled men, old women, and nine-year-old children ran it regularly, and few of them ever died.

  When Chang ran here, he was faster than many, but still slower than some. Now and again, he would pass a runner close enough to see him in the gloom. Occasionally, one would pass him near enough for him to make out. There could be hundreds or even thousands of others in the race. Sometimes he felt them out there, but he didn’t see them, didn’t hear their footsteps. Now and again, Chang might stumble over something in the darkness—something he couldn’t detect until he was too close to stop.

  Chang had equipped himself with a flashlight that could extend his vision a few more meters. It would be so much better were these contests held on bright and sunny days, but he had grown used to the fog and rain and moonless dark, and had learned to navigate it, albeit sometimes he was more tentative than he would have liked. It was hard to run full-out, knowing you might trip over something you couldn’t spot waiting in the road ahead. But, it was what it was, and there was little to be done about it.

  So now, as he stood at the starting line, amidst a crowd of which he could see but a few close to him, he was familiar with the situation.

  But: The American, Petrie, had added a wrinkle to the fabric of night. Now, in this scenario, Chang wore a special headset, with goggles that slipped over his eyes, a device that approximated sixth-gen spookeyes—starlight scopes that would gather the faintest light and intensify it, amplify it, transmit it to the lenses, and in doing so, also computer-augment colors to an approximation of normal.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  As he stood there, waiting for the signal to start, Chang touched a control on the headset. . . .

  Light flared brightly, causing him to blink against it. When his vision cleared, he beheld a miracle:

  He could see!

  It was as if he had stepped into a football stadium in the dark and someone had switched on the lights. The colors were perhaps a hair too intense, but before, where he had been able to see but a handful of those lined up with him to run, now he could see nearly all of them! The road ahead was visible for blocks, the buildings lining the street, the sky, everything was open to his gaze.

  The beauty of it was awesome.

  The starter’s gun fired, and the crowd surged. Chang ran with them, marveling at his ability to take it all in.

  He looked at a runner fifty meters ahead—a man in a purple unitard that covered him from his knees to his neck, leaving his arms bare. Here was a man Chang would have never known was there before, for he was moving at a pace that Chang normally did not match. Once ahead, Chang would never catch him.

  Chang sped up, fell in behind the man, matching his pace, staying two meters back. It was a bit of a strain, but he could manage it for a short time. Long enough to manage something he’d never managed before.

  Who was he? Chang didn’t know, but he could deduce much from all those details he observed. The man was fit—his muscles lean and hard. He ran easily, denoting a serious amount of training. He was wealthy or he had a sponsor—the shoes were the latest Adidas SmartShoe, with a computer built in to adjust the foot cushion, and those cost four times what a normal pair of decent running shoes would run. The unitard was a Nike wind-cheater, custom-fitted, made from polypropyl and cloned silk, and cost nearly as much as the shoes. The man wore a Rolex watch or a well-made knockoff. He had a tiny Optar-plus pulse monitor strapped to the other wrist—another expensive toy—and even though it was nighttime, he sported top of the line Ferami photogray RunnerShades, and they didn’t give those away, either. A thousand, maybe twelve hundred U.S. dollars for his outfit, easy—not counting the Rolex.

  So much knowledge from just being able to see somebody.

  Before, in the dark, even if Chang had been within a few meters, he could not have gathered all that, not in such fine detail. And he would have never known where to look.

  Chang’s game had just improved in a major way. Knowledge was power, and with the new software that Petrie had supplied him with, he was going to have options he’d never had before. He’d be able to see individual racers, notice patterns in the crowd, he’d know who was gaining and who was falling back. Runners ahead of him he’d never known were there? He could spot them, track them, maybe catch them.

  T
his was going to make things a lot different in his job. Men who had counted on the fog and rain and darkness to cloak them were about to lose that protection.

  Now, Chang was going to be able to find them, chase them down, and catch them. Soon, there were going to be some very surprised computer criminals in his homeland.

  Allah be praised for such a gift.

  Washington, D.C.

  Chang sat in his hotel room, staring at the program mini-disk he had just tried for the first time. It was tiny—the size of a U.S. quarter. He could slip it into his pocket and walk through a dozen airport security checkpoints and nobody would know he had it. He could stick it in an envelope and mail it to himself in a normal-size letter, and nobody would bother to worry over it. But—he did not have to do these things, because it was a legal purchase. It would vastly improve his ability to find miscreants in China, but it was not forbidden for him to own, to take home, because it was old-hat here, something anyone living here could get for his home computer if he had the money to buy it.

  Amazing. Americans truly did not know how good they had things. What they took for granted that other societies would see as a miracle.

  Chang looked at his watch. He had a few hours before he was supposed to see Gridley, at Net Force. Might as well use the time productively. He would go back into VR, log into his system at home, and do a little hunting. Now that he had this, who knew what manner of crook he might find?

  Ah, how wonderful this was!

  Net Force HQ

  Quantico, Virginia

  Abe Kent sat at his desk, staring at nothing. The meeting with Thorn couldn’t have gone better. The Commander had listened to his story, then shrugged it off. “This guy was a killer, Abe. You went out there and took him down. A man like that? He wasn’t going to give us anything if you’d brought him back alive. He was a bad man, and in a just society he would have paid for it with his life in court. You saved us all a lot of time and money to the same end.”