'I won't tell anyone.'
'I know. Now tell me what you want me to get. WebTrends printouts or what? I'm computer-friendly but I'm not a techie so you'll have to give me explicit details.'
I switched off the TV, sat down, and walked her through the details of where she could find the files that I needed. I heard her typing as I talked, presumably transcribing my instructions. She didn't ask any questions.
When I was finished, she said 'Got it. I'll get them tomorrow. What's your address?'
'My address?'
'Your address. So I can bring you the floppy disk with the files. Like you said, I could get fired, so email's a wee bit too insecure for my liking.'
I gave her my address.
'All right. Tomorrow at eight. Be there.'
'I will,' I said.
'Bye.'
'Talena?'
'Yes?'
'Thank you.'
'My pleasure,' she said. 'See you tomorrow.'
After she hung up a thought occurred to me. I went to my study, sat down at my laptop, and logged on to the Thorn Tree. There were no new entries to my conversation, so I added my own:
PaulWood 11/06 19:45
BC088269: you think you're pretty smart, don't you?
With any luck I'd bait him into giving us new data.
I checked my email. There was a new message from Carmel, an Aussie girl from the truck, telling me how much she hated her new job in Sydney, and asking me how Nepal had been.
Good question, I thought. But are you sure you want to know the answer?
I wanted to answer. I wanted to send an email to all of the tribe of the truck, telling them everything I had found and everything I suspected. These were the people who would understand what I meant, and what it meant to me. Maybe some of them could even help me find out what was going on. Like Hallam and Nicole. He was an ex-paratrooper and a security consultant, and she had one of the keenest minds I had ever encountered. Or Steven, with his dubious past and host of shady connections. This was a job for people like them, not for a mild-mannered computer programmer.
But, really, what good would it do? Other than a meaningless moment of catharsis, what was the point in telling them what I had seen and discovered? What could they really find out that I couldn't? Why remind them of Laura's murder, and trouble them with this sick unsolvable mystery that seemed somehow connected to it? It didn't seem right to unleash it on their minds just because I couldn't stop it from preying on mine. All it would do was drag a bunch of horrible old memories out of the mud. I had gone through enough of that myself recently to want to wish it on others.
Talena showed up right on time, dressed in jeans and a purple sweater, a floppy disk in her hand. I took it from her and said 'Thank you.'
I expected her to turn around and walk away, and there was an awkward silence for a few seconds before she said 'Aren't you going to invite me in?'
I blinked and said 'Oh. Okay.'
'I am risking my job for this,' she reminded me. 'Least you can do is let me shoulder-surf.'
'Oh. Yeah, sure. No problem.'
She followed me in.
'Nice apartment,' she said.
'Yeah,' I said, and then sheepishly 'Sometimes it's a little cleaner… '
She laughed.
'Do you want a drink or something?' I asked.
'Let's just get to work.'
'Right.' I led the way into my study, where my laptop sat on the desk, connected to a cable modem. She sat next to me and I had to remind myself to focus on what I was doing. She was even prettier than I remembered, and she moved with athletic grace, and her jeans and sweater were both tighter than absolutely necessary, and she wore something that smelled like fresh strawberries, and I couldn't help but think that it had been four months, since a drunken encounter with a giggly blonde girl named Amy I had met at a party, since…
'So are we meditating before we begin or what?' she asked.
'Um, yeah. Just planning,' I lied, inserting the disk. 'I warn you, this could take a while and will probably be very boring.'
'That's okay. Just keep me informed about what you're doing. And use English words and no acronyms.'
'I see you have dealt with my kind before.'
'More than the amount necessary to have a full and happy life.'
'Very funny. Well, the first thing I'm doing is checking for the exact time that Mr. BC088269 posted to the Thorn Tree.' I went on the Web, logged in to the Thorn Tree, scrolled down to his message. '6:01 on November 4. I'm going to assume that the web servers are using the same time zone as your database server — '
'They are,' she said.
'Okay. Next we look at the log files.' I opened them up in UltraEdit. Each one consisted of hundreds of thousands of rows of text, each row a long stream of data unintelligible to anyone uninitiated in the secrets of my field:
64.76.56.49, 11/4/00, 0:00:19, ARMSTRONG, 64.211.224.135, 2110,
438, 22573, 200, GET, /dest/
206.47.24.62, 11/4/00, 0:00:19, COOK, 64.211.224.135, 109, 502,
32090, 200, GET, /prop/booklist. html
129.82.46.82, 11/4/00, 0:00:21, MAGELLAN, 64.211.24.142, 78, 477,
11505, 200, GET, /cgi-bin/search
206.47.244.62, 11/4/00, 0:00:23, MAGELLAN, 64.211.224.135, 0, 567,
28072, 304, GET, /dest/europe/UK/London. html
… and so forth and so forth, one for every time anybody looked at a Lonely Planet web page that day.
'And this means something to you?' she asked.
'It does.'
'What does it mean?'
'Well… each line represents one request. One page that some user out there wants served to them. And each line tells me the IP number of the user's computer, the date and time, the server computer name, the IP number served, how much time the whole request took, how many characters the user sent, how many characters the server sent, whether it all completed successfully, whether the user was getting or sending information, and the page they wanted.'
'Uh-huh. And this is useful?'
'Maybe. First of all let's get all this into Excel. Text is hard to work with.' I called up Microsoft Excel and ran its import wizard on the four log files, turning them into malleable spreadsheets, which I cut-and-pasted together into a single file. A very large file.
'You guys are popular,' I observed. I sent an impressed look over my shoulder and met those electric blue eyes again.
'A million hits a day,' she said proudly.
'Right,' I said briskly, making my head swivel back towards the computer. 'Yeah. One point two three million on November 4. Good thing I've got a monster machine here or this would take forever. Okay. Yeah. All right, first thing, let's get rid of everything that isn't within a two-minute window when that message appeared.' I sorted the entries by date and wiped everything except those between 6:00 and 6:02. This reduced things to a manageable 2200 hits. 'Next, let's get rid of everyone looking at your main site instead of the Thorn Tree.' I pinged thorntree.
