Dark Rivers of the Heart

being, however, he was unable to settle into a lair in the middle of a neighborhood of unsuspecting innocents.
        If Spencer could have discovered a way to access God's computer, he would have tampered with Henry Beckwatt's destiny by giving him an immediate and mortal stroke or by walking him into the path of a runaway truck. He wouldn't have hesitated to ensure the justice that modern society, in its Freudian confusion and moral paralysis, found difficult to impose.
        He was not a hero, not a scarred and computer-wielding cousin of Batman, not out to save the world. Mostly, he sailed cyberspace-that eerie dimension of energy and information within computers and computer networks-simply because it fascinated him as much as Tahiti and far Tortuga fascinated some people, enticed him in the way that the moon and Mars enticed the men and women who became astronauts.
        Perhaps the most appealing aspect of that other dimension was the potential for exploration and discovery that it offered-without direct human interaction. When Spencer avoided computer billboards and other userto-user conversations, cyberspace was an uninhabited universe, created by human beings yet strangely devoid of them. He wandered through vast structures of data, which were infinitely more grand than the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of ancient Rome, or the rococo hives of the world's great cities-yet saw no human face, heard no human voice. He was Columbus without shipmates, Magellan walking alone across electronic highways and through metropolises of data as unpopulated as ghost towns in the Nevada wastelands.
        Now, he sat before one of his computers, switched it on, and sipped coffee while it went through its start-up procedures. These included the Norton AntiVirus program, to be sure that none of his files had been contaminated by a destructive bug during his previous venture into the national data webs. The machine was uninfected.
        The first telephone number that he entered was for a service offering twenty-four-hour-a-day stock market quotations. In seconds, the connection was made, and a greeting appeared on his computer screen:
        "ELCOMINO WORLDWIDE STOCK MARKET INFORMATION, INC.
        
        Using his subscriber ID, Spencer requested information aboutjapanese stocks. Simultaneously he activated a parallel program that he had designed himself and that searched the telephone line for the subtle electronic signature of a listening device. Worldwide Stock Market Information was a legitimate data service, and no police agency had reason to eavesdrop on its lines; therefore, evidence of a tap would indicate that his own telephone was being monitored.
        Rocky padded in from the kitchen and rubbed his head against Spencer's leg. The mutt couldn't have finished his orange juice so quickly.
        He was evidently more lonely than thirsty.
        Keeping his attention on the video display, waiting for an alarm or an all-clear, Spencer reached down with one hand and gently scratched behind the dog's ears.
        Nothing he had done as a hacker could have drawn the attention of the authorities, but caution was advisable. In recent years, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other organizations had established computer-crime divisions, all of which zealously prosecuted offenders.
        Sometimes they were almost criminally zealous. Like every overstaffed government agency, each computer-crime project was eager to justify its ever increasing budget. Every year a greater number of arrests and convictions was required to support the contention that electronic theft and vandalism were escalating at a frightening rate.
        Consequently, from time to time, hackers who had stolen nothing and who had wrought no destruction were brought to trial on flimsy charges.
        They weren't prosecuted with any intention that, by their example, they would deter crime; their convictions were sought merely to create the statistics that ensured higher funding for the project.
        Some of them were sent to prison.
        Sacrifices on the altars of bureaucracy.
        Martyrs to the cyberspace underground.
        Spencer was determined never to become one of them.
        As the rain rattled against the cabin roof and the wind stirred a whispery chorus of lamenting ghosts from the eucalyptus grove, he waited, with his gaze fixed on the upper right corner of