Infoquake (7 page)

"Then maybe he has a source in the Defense and Wellness
Council."

Jara snorted. "Horvil, we're getting nowhere. Natch doesn't have
sources anywhere. The only people he talks to are you and Serr Vigal.
Everyone else trusts him even less than I do."

They were both standing now, venting their inner turmoil at each
other. Jara turned away from her fellow apprentice and stalked to the
other side of the kitchen. Suddenly, the news began flooding into her
consciousness once more, overrunning the hastily erected barricades
she had put up so she could concentrate on her conversation with
Horvil. Drudges of all political stripes were bickering in public about
the sums of money that had vanished. The Council was maintaining
complete silence about the situation. Jara's younger sister in Sudafrica
sent her a panic-stricken message asking for advice. And then, without
thinking about it, Jara opened a message from the Vault authorities.

The Vault has detected a DNA-assisted decryption attack directed at your
account. Your holdings have not been compromised ...

The fiefcorp apprentice smacked her hand loudly against the wall
and stomped off to the living room. Jara instantly regretted it. Blank
walls weren't so bad in the kitchen, but in living space they seemed
like an accusation. She didn't want the world to come to an end before
she had made some kind of mark on this place.

"You know what we have to do," Jara said grimly to the engineer,
who had followed her out of the kitchen.

"What's that?"

"We have to go to the Council and tell them what we know. They'll
listen."

Horvil's jaw dropped. He was too stunned to speak.

"Horvil, can you live with something like this on your shoulders?"
she bellowed. She started to pace, Natch-like. "I mean, deceiving
greedy fiefcorp masters is one thing. Even deceiving Primo's. But what
about those people out there who are going to suffer the consequences?"
Jara's sweeping gesture encompassed the London commuters visible
from the window. The multied businesspeople hustling to meetings,
the families scampering across the square looking for safety, the street
performers in the midst of some apocalyptic pantomime at the foot of
Big Ben. "What if the medical networks break down? What if the
multi network collapses? What if this black code attack sparks a total
panic? What if people die, for process' preservation?"

The engineer cocooned himself in a ball on Jara's couch, as if his
voluminous stomach might provide some insulation against the
calamities of the world. "But ... but ... I'm sure that Natch
wouldn't-that he didn't ..."

Jara refused to give any ground. "I don't know how he's involved in
this. Maybe he heard a rumor on the Data Sea weeks ago. Maybe he had
a hand in putting this black code together. But he knows something. We
can't just ignore that, Horvil! We can't just let people die! The Council
might need Natch's information to help stop the attack." I know Natch
has been your best friend practically since birth, Horv, but sometimes you've got
to look out for your own ass. Do you think Natch cares one way or the other
what happens to you? "Horvil, there comes a point where we have to put
this Primo's nonsense behind us and think of the people out there."

The engineer was starting to crack. "All I ever wanted was to be a
bio/logic engineer," he whimpered, as if this were the most relevant statement in the world. "All I ever wanted to do was help people." He
peered up at this pint-sized woman with the mass of curly hair
standing over him, but there was no mercy forthcoming.

Can't you see that I'm trying to help you, Horv?

Don't you realize this could be just what we need to do to get out of these
miserable apprenticeship contracts?

And then Horvil narrowed his eyes, puzzled. The color gushed back
to his face all at once. He looked as if his tongue was struggling to catch
up with the information in his head. Finally, the engineer shook his head
violently, banished the display on the viewscreen with an outstretched
hand, and summoned forth the craggy visage of Sen Sivv Sor.

Defense and Wellness Council to Make Statement

Jara could afford only one outgoing multi stream at her apartment, and
it would have taken too long for Horvil to physically traipse back to
his place on the other side of London. So the engineer had to rush down
the street to the nearest public multi facility, something he hated to
do. He didn't care how many times the Council guaranteed the safety
of these public connections and how many guards they posted; you
could never really feel comfortable letting your body stand slack in a
room full of strangers while your mind was off elsewhere. Life in the
world of meat and bone could be so inconvenient.

Apparently, word of the Council's impending statement had hit
the streets. People started vanishing throughout the block as they slid
into multivoid and prepared to open new connections. Horvil arrived
at the public multi facility just in time to claim the last open red tile.
He breathed a sigh of relief, and stepped into the space between a fat
Japanese businesswoman and a wiry Indian man who seemed to be a technician of some kind.

"We didn't have to multi over here," said an amused Jara when
Horvil finally caught up to her in the crowd. "We could have stayed at
my place and watched the press conference on the viewscreen."

Horvil sniffed. "How much fun would that be?"

They were standing in the Defense and Wellness Council's main
auditorium, its public face. Everyone knew the Council had moved its
real base of operations to a new compound of unknown location. The
auditorium was a fat wedge that might have represented 20 percent on
some vast pie chart-a number that roughly approximated the
Council's public approval ratings.

Horvil had actually been here in person once, during his requisite
tour of the Melbourne governmental facilities. He remembered seeing
the entire city laid out before him during the descent of the arriving
hoverbird craft. If he had the power to see through the dozens of
hanging pennants to the west and the stretched stone wall beneath
them, he could have seen the Prime Committee complex and the Congress of L-PRACGs. To the east lay the headquarters of the Creeds
Coalition and the chief lobbying arms of TubeCo, GravCo, and TeleCo.

Jara pinged the Council's multi information node. "A hundred and
twelve million," she said, gazing around at the assembled crowd of
multi projections.

Horvil whistled. This black code attack had shaken people up. It
looked like only twenty thousand, of course; in situations like this, the
network conveniently abandoned the illusion that multi projections
inhabited Cartesian space. "Any sign of Merri? Or Vigal?" he said.

"Public directory says Merri's here somewhere," replied Jara. "But
no word on Serr Vigal. He wouldn't come out here for something like
this."

"And Natch?"

Jara looked at Horvil and shook her head with a frown.

At precisely three o'clock (London time), there was a decrescendo in the background chatter of the crowd. Lights that had been glaring
at full intensity dimmed to candle strength. Horvil held his breath and
watched the stage below for the towering form of High Executive Len
Borda.

But the man who materialized on center stage wasn't him. A
white-robed and yellow-starred figure approached the podium. The
man, a pureblooded Asian, was little more than half Borda's height,
and had only a third of his girth. He stood patiently for a moment, dispensing that arrogant Council stare.

Borda's underling did not give his name or rank. He simply
opened his mouth and began to speak in a dead monotone. "My word
is the will of the Defense and Wellness Council," the man said, "which
was established by the Prime Committee two hundred and fifty-two
years ago to ensure the security of all persons throughout the system.
The word of the Council is the word of the people."

Horvil shuddered involuntarily. Out of the corner of his eye, he
saw Jara doing the same. They had heard this opening dictum thousands of times in dramas, news reports and speeches, and yet it still had
the power to send ripples up and down the spine. Horvil was convinced the effect was bio/logically enhanced.

"Today, rumors have circulated on the Data Sea that the Vault was
under black code attack by Pharisees," continued the Council officer
coolly, as if system-wide panic was an expected hazard; the total at the
bottom of a spreadsheet column, the predictable outcome of a wellweathered formula. "Many irresponsible words have been written
about the so-called vulnerabilities of the financial system and the supposed failings of the Defense and Wellness Council.

"High Executive Borda wishes it to be known that these rumors
are completely without foundation. There was no black code attack
this morning."

Even through the sound-deadening programs of the Council auditorium, Horvil could hear the murmur of a million raised voices. He remembered his pathetic sniveling at Jara's apartment, his panicked
dash across London, and felt an embarrassed flush cover his face. The
engineer risked a peek at Jara. Her nostrils were flaring.

The anonymous Council spokesman pressed on, either oblivious to
or unconcerned by the crowd's reaction. "The attack this morning was
not a product of bio/logic engineering, or of black coding skill. It
required nothing more than the ability to make clever forgeries and the
will to deceive.

"These forgeries of Vault security messages were designed to fool
the public into believing their financial holdings were under attack.
What the perpetrators hoped to accomplish with this ruse is unknown.
High Executive Borda believes the forgers' goal was to sow panic in the
marketplace. Suffice it to say these messages have been tracked down
and eliminated."

Jara seemed disoriented. She took a step backwards and turned her
focus away from the diminutive Council spokesman, who began to
recite a numbing series of technical statistics. "I don't understand," she
ConfidentialWhispered to Horvil. "You can't just forge a message from
the Vault like that. You'd need DNA, atomic signatures, who knows
what else."

Horvil tilted his head in thought. "It's not impossible."

"Horv, we saw those messages. They said they were from the Vault.
They looked authentic. They had valid signatures."

The engineer smiled. The panic of the world coming to an end had
already given way to the open vistas of a mathematical challenge.
"Sure, it looked authentic," he explained. "It's not hard to make a forgery that looks official at first glance. You could probably find black
code on the Data Sea that'll do the trick. The hard part is getting
people not to take that second or third glance." Horvil summoned a
virtual tablet in the air and began making sketches. "And you could
probably do the same thing with the signatures ... if you knew
bio/logic encryption theory inside and out ..."

Jara cradled her head in her hands and began rocking back and
forth. She interrupted Horvil's musings in mid-sentence. "Horv, have
you checked the dock at the fiefcorp in the past few hours?"

Horvil had already ventured far afield into chaos theory and fractal
patterns, but Jara's question brought him back to familiar territory
with a sickening thud. He shook his head.

"I can't believe we fell for this," Jara croaked. "Natch did it. He
went ahead and launched all those programs onto the Data Sea this
morning, when nobody was paying attention. NiteFocus 48, EyeMorph 66, everything."

"A-and the Patels?"

"Pushed back their NightHawk release until tomorrow. Routine
last minute error-checking, their channelers are saying."

There was a very easy syllogism to follow here, even for someone
who had not studied subaether physics and advanced bio/logic calculus
like Horvil had. Natch had spread rumors of a black code attack....
There was such an attack, or at least a fake one.... The attack had created confusion in the marketplace.... Horvil didn't want to solve the
problem. He wanted the whole thing to disappear, to vanish like the
multi pedestrians on the street had vanished.

But the Defense and Wellness Council spokesman had no such hesitations. "The perpetrators of this crime may not have launched an
actual attack on the Vault," he said, his voice preternaturally calm.
"But nevertheless there has been an attack-an attack on the people's
assumption of safety and security. And that is something the Council
cannot abide."

On cue, a row of ghostly figures materialized behind the
spokesman. Council officers all, adorned with the white robe and
yellow star, steely dartguns holstered at their waists, the inexorable
mastery of the Data Sea written on their brows.

"This disruption has been thwarted, as all attacks against the
public welfare are thwarted," continued the small Asian at the van guard of the officers. "To the perpetrators of this act, let me say this: