The Blue Nowhere

old Altair computer. And, Jesus, next year too.”
    “Check out this week—Univac,” Bishop said.
    Gillette expanded the directory tree.
    ——-Univac week.
    ——-Completed games
    ——-Lara Gibson
    ——-St. Francis Academy
    ——-Next projects
    “There!” Tony Mott called. “‘Next Projects.’”
    Gillette clicked on it.
    The folder contained dozens of files—page after page of dense notes, graphics, diagrams, pictures, schematics, newspaper clippings. There was too much to read quickly so Gillette started at the beginning, scrolled through the first file, hitting the screen-dump button every time he jumped to the next page. He moved as quickly as he could but screen dumps are slow; it took about ten seconds to print out each page.
    “It’s taking too much time,” he said.
    “I think we should download it,” Patricia Nolan said.
    “That’s a risk,” Gillette said. “I told you.”
    “But remember Phate’s ego,” Nolan countered. “He thinks there’s nobody good enough to get inside his machine so he might not’ve put a download alarm on it.”
    “It is awfully slow,” Stephen Miller said. “We’ve only got three pages so far.”
    “It’s your call,” Gillette said to Bishop. The detective leaned forward, staring at the screen, while the hacker’s hands hung in the empty space in front of him, furiously pounding on a keyboard that didn’t exist.
    P hate was sitting comfortably at his laptop in the immaculate dining room of his house.
    Though he wasn’t really here at all.
    He was lost in the Machine World, roaming through the computer he’d hacked earlier and planning his attack for later that day.
    Suddenly an urgent beeping sounded from his machine’s speakers. Simultaneously a red box appeared in the upper-right corner of his screen. Inside the box was a single word:
    ACCESS
    He gasped in shock. Someone was trying to download files from his machine! This had never happened. Stunned, sweat bursting out on his face, Phate didn’t even bother to examine the system to discover what was happening. He knew instantly: the picture supposedly sent by Vlast had in fact been e-mailed to him by Wyatt Gillette to implant a back-door virus in his computer.
    The fucking Judas Valleyman was prowling through his system right now!
    Phate reached for the power switch—the way a driver instinctively goes for the brake when he sees a squirrel in the road.
    But then, like some drivers, he smiled coldly and let his machine keep running at full speed.
    His hands returned to the keyboard and he held down the SHIFT and CONTROL keys on his computer while simultaneously pressing the E key.

CHAPTER 00011111 / THIRTY-ONE
    O n the monitor in front of Wyatt Gillette the words flashed in hot type:
    BEGIN BATCH ENCRYPTION
    A moment later another message:
    ENCRYPTING—DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE STANDARD 12
    “No!” Gillette cried, as the download of Phate’s files stopped and the contents of the Next Projects file turned to digital oatmeal.
    “What happened?” Bishop asked.
    “Phate did have a download alarm,” Nolan muttered, angry with herself. “I was wrong.”
    Gillette scanned the screen hopelessly. “He aborted the download but he didn’t log off. He hit a hot key and’s encrypting everything that’s on his machine.”
    “Can you decode it?” Shelton called.
    Agent Backle was watching Gillette carefully.
    “Not without Phate’s decryption key,” the hacker said firmly. “Even Fort Meade running parallel arrays couldn’t decrypt this much data in a month.”
    Shelton said, “I wasn’t asking if you had the key. I was asking if you can crack it.”
    “I can’t. I told you that. I don’t know how to crack Standard 12.”
    “Fuck,” muttered Shelton, staring at Gillette. “People’re going to die if we can’t find out what’s in his computer.”
    DoD agent Backle sighed. Gillette noticed his eyes straying to the picture of Lara Gibson on the white-board and he said to Gillette, “Go ahead. If it’ll save lives go ahead and do it.”
    Gillette turned back to the screen. For once his fingers, dangling in front of him, refrained from air-keying as he saw the streams of dense gibberish flow past on the screen. Any one of these blocks of type could have a clue as to who Shawn was, where Phate might be, what the address of the next victim was.
    “Do it, for Christ’s sake,” Shelton muttered.
    Backle whispered, “I mean it. I’ll turn my back on this one.”
    Gillette