sulky and brutal. Chard —
Then Miles had it.
Danzig stood at the bottom of the stairwell. He opened the door and looked into the parking garage and felt a sudden, suffocating loss of confidence. Enormous weight seemed to crush down on him; he could not breathe and just for a moment he thought he might be having a heart attack.
Yet it passed. Still, he felt almost physically ill with fear, in a blasphemed place. He could not go back; he was terrified to go forward. He could feel the sweat damp and heavy in his shirt and was aware with what great difficulty the air came into his lungs. At last he stepped through the final door.
It was so simple. Frenchy, you’re smart. No matter what you did, Frenchy, no matter what you became in your weakness, let no man ever say you are not smart.
What would Chardy see that no other man would?
Chardy would see Hungarian. Chardy was half-Hungarian and had grown up with a mad Hungarian doctor for a father, a raving anticommunist with a failed practice and a one-bedroom apartment on the North Side of Chicago.
Lanahan swiftly ended the directory. He looked behind him, down the rows of cubicles in the dark space. At last he saw a free machine on a different system. He rose, walked through the darkness to it. He could hear the other operators clicking away, each sealed into his machine, each fighting his private little war.
Miles sat at the empty machine, which was linked into a different computer system, and quickly punched:
There rose before him a language directory. He filed down through the listings until he reached HUNG.
A concise word-list and phrase catalogue of Hungarian — placed in the machine’s memory in case an analyst who didn’t speak the language came across a word in it and needed translation fast — sailed up before Lanahan. He looked at it quickly, then clicked the machine off.
He walked back to his own terminal. Why did he feel he was being observed?
He was so close now; if he could just bluff it through another two or three minutes.
He sat back at his own terminal, called up the SHU directory and looked again at the code groupings.
Another directory rose.
Miles glanced through it until he found the proper code.
Fetch two.
Another directory.
Another.
Another.
One, two, three, four, five. He was in the fifth directory now. Where would it end? He was within a directory within a directory within a directory within a directory within a directory. Was this a Mobius strip of a code, an Escher drawing of a code, that would go on forever, twisty and clever?
The screen went blank.
The machine stared at him, mutely stupid.
Long moments lagged. Had the whole thing collapsed? He knew he’d have no time to dig this deep into it again.
The screen’s emptiness mocked him.
Then a message with a long tail dragged into view:
In all his hours before the screen, Miles had never seen a communication like this one. Service Level Designator? Now what the hell did that mean? Priority Code, Category Code?
But he knew he’d tapped the mother lode.
He stared at it. Another hurdle, a last one. Oh, come on, Frenchy, Jesus, Frenchy, you hid it so good. God, Frenchy, you must have been a clever bastard. Miles reached across the years to love Frenchy Short, who was so smart. Burying it so deep, so well; and now there was only this last obstacle.
Oh, Frenchy. Miles stared at it. Six letters between himself and Frenchy.
He tried to concentrate.
Was it SHOES, or some variation on the HSU-SHU axis? No, not enough letters, unless you rolled them up into one.
He instructed the machine:
His fingers stroked the send command button, but he did not depress it.
Do it, he told himself.
But he could not.
If he was wrong, he might lose the whole chain, he might be back up top, back up at HSU again. He might be forced to dig through all the levels. And also, suppose — it was a good supposition — suppose there was some sort of alarm mechanism built into the system? That is, if you tried to penetrate this final level and displayed a kind of tentativeness, an awkwardness, a hesitancy, suppose the machine was programmed to recognize these inadequacies for the profile of a thief, recognize your guilt? The machine was notoriously literal-minded: it had no imagination, no capacity for sympathy; its ethics were coldly binary. It would blow the whistle on you.
Sitting there, Miles knew the machine would betray him if he disappointed it.
This awareness almost paralyzed him. He suddenly hated the thing. He stared at it and was afraid.
“Mr. Lanahan?”
He looked up, startled.
It was Bluestein.
“How are you coming?”
“Ah, oh, all right. Surprising how long it takes you to get it back, though.”
“I’m afraid we’re going to pull that disc pretty soon. The other systems are beginning to top up and the stuff from upstairs is really pouring in. We need the system space. You know how it is.”
“I see,” said Miles.
“It’s not that I want to play the hard guy; it’s that—”
“Sure.”
Miles thought: Come on, altar boy. Come on, little priest. Come on you stinking pimply suck-ass:
“Just a minute more, okay, Mike? I just have to wrap this.”
“Miles, people are waiting and—”
“I’ll owe you one. I always pay off. I can help you. A lot. You know what I mean? I can help you upstairs. Cover for me.”
“Miles, I just can’t. I gave you a big break and—”
“Mike, just let me say one thing. I appreciate what you did for me. I really do. You’re a decent guy. I won’t give you any trouble.”
“Thanks, Miles. I really appreciate your co-op—”
