“Isabella’s been sabotaged. A hacker is making fools of us.”
“How so?”
“Someone planted malware in the supercomputer. It seems to be a kind of logic bomb that goes off just as Isabella is about to reach one hundred percent power. First it produces a bizarre image on the Visualizer; then it shuts down the supercomputer and posts a stupid message. It’s incredibly frustrating—and extremely dangerous. At that high energy level, if the beams kink or get thrown off track, we could all be blown up. Even worse, a sudden energy fluctuation could create dangerous particles or miniature black holes. It’s the
“What’s the message?”
“You know, GREETINGS or HELLO or ANYBODY THERE?”
“Like the old AI programming saw, HELLO, WORLD.”
“Exactly. An inside joke.”
“And then what?”
“That’s it.”
“It doesn’t say more?”
“There’s no time for it to say more. With the computer crashed, we’re forced to initiate an emergency shutdown of the system.”
“You haven’t engaged it in conversation? Gotten it talking?”
“Are you kidding? With a forty-billion-dollar machine about to blow up? Anyway, it wouldn’t help—it would only spew out more crap. And with the supercomputer crashed, running Isabella is like driving at night on a wet road at a hundred miles an hour with the headlights off. We’d be crazy to sit around chatting with it.”
“And the image?”
“Very strange. It’s hard to describe—really spectacular, all deep and shimmery like a ghost. Whoever did this was an artist in his own way.”
“You can’t find the malware?”
“No. It’s devilishly clever. It appears to be moving itself around the system, erasing its tracks as it goes, evading detection.”
“Why not tell Washington and get a specialized team out here to fix it?”
She was silent for a moment. “It’s too late for that. If it came out that we were flummoxed by a hacker, there’d be a furious scandal. The Isabella project just barely scraped by the Congress . . . . It would be the end.”
“Why didn’t you report it right away? Why are you hiding it?”
“We were going to!” She brushed back her hair. “But then we decided it would be better to delete the malware before we reported it, so we could say we’d already taken care of the problem. A day went by, then another and another, and we couldn’t find the malware. A week passed, ten days—and then it dawned on us we’d waited too long. If we reported it, we’d be accused of a cover-up.”
“That was a blunder.”
“I’ll say. I don’t quite know how it happened . . . . We were just crazy with stress, and it takes a minimum of forty-eight hours to complete a single run cycle . . . .” She shook her head.
“Any idea who’s behind it?”
“Gregory thinks it may be a sophisticated group of hackers who planned a deliberate act of criminal sabotage. But there’s always the unspoken fear . . . that the hacker might be one of us.” She paused, breathing hard. “You see the position we’re in, Wyman.”
A horse nickered softly in the shadows.
“This must be why Hazelius seems to think Volkonsky’s death was a suicide,” Ford said.
“Of course it was a suicide. As the software engineer, the humiliation of being the victim of a hacker fell on him like a ton of bricks. Poor Peter. He was so fragile, an emotional twelve-year-old, just a hyperactive, insecure kid in T-shirts that were too big for him.” She shook her head. “He couldn’t take the pressure. The guy never slept. He was in there with the computer day and night. But he couldn’t find the slag code. It tore him to pieces. He started drinking and I wouldn’t be surprised if he got into harder stuff.”
“What about Innes? Isn’t he supposed to be the team psychologist?”
“Innes.” Her brow furrowed. “He means well, but he’s hopelessly out-gunned intellectually. I mean, these once-a-week ‘rap’ sessions, this let’s-talk-it-all-out crap, it might wash with normal people, but not with us. It’s so easy to see through his tricks, his leading questions, his little strategies. Peter detested him.” She brushed away a tear with the back of her gloved hand. “We were all very fond of Peter.”
“All except Wardlaw,” said Ford. “And Corcoran.”
“Wardlaw . . . Well, he doesn’t really like any of us, except Hazelius. But you have to realize, he’s under even more pressure. He’s the team’s intelligence officer, the guy who’s supposed to be in charge of security. If this came out, he’d go to prison.”
“As for Melissa, she’s had dustups with quite a few of the team members. It wasn’t just Volkonsky. I’d . . . be careful of her.”
Ford thought of the note, but said nothing.
She pulled off her gloves and tossed them in a basket hung on the wall. “Satisfied?” she asked, an edge in her voice.
As Ford walked back to his casita, he repeated the question to himself.
21
PASTOR RUSS EDDY HAD GOTTEN INTO his old Ford pickup and was staring at the gas gauge, caculating if he had the gas to get up the mesa and back, when he saw the telltale corkscrew of dust on the horizon that indicated an approaching vehicle. He got out of the truck and leaned against it, waiting.
A few moments later a Navajo Tribal Police car eased to a stop in front of the trailer, the plume of dust spiraling away in the wind. The door opened and a dusty cowboy boot appeared. A tall man unfolded himself from the inside and straightened up.
“Morning, Pastor,” he said, touching his hat.
“Morning, Lieutenant Bia,” said Eddy, trying to keep his voice easy and loose.
“Going somewhere?”
“Oh, no, just checking the gas level in the truck,” said Eddy. “Actually, I was thinking of driving up to the mesa, introducing myself to the scientists up there. I’m concerned about what’s going on up there.”
Bia gazed around, his mirrored sunglasses reflecting the endless horizon in every direction he looked. “Haven’t seen Lorenzo around lately, have you?”
“No,” said Eddy. “Haven’t seen him since Monday morning.”
Bia hitched up his pants, his dangling accoutrements clinking like a giant charm bracelet. “Funny thing is, he hitched a ride to Blue Gap around four o’clock Monday, told the folks there he was heading out this way to finish up his work. They saw him walking down the mission road—and then he seems to have disappeared.”
Eddy let a beat pass. “Well, I never saw him. I mean, I saw him in the morning, but he left around noon or maybe before and I haven’t seen him here since. He was supposed to be working for me, but . . .”
“Hot out here today, eh?” Bia turned and grinned at Eddy, and glanced toward the trailer.
“Can I talk you into a cup of coffee?” Bia asked.
“Of course.”
Bia followed Eddy into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Eddy filled the percolator pot with fresh water and turned on the burner. Navajos habitually reused their grounds, and Eddy figured Bia wouldn’t mind.
Bia laid his hat on the table. His hair was plastered down in a wet ring. “Well, I’m actually not here about Lorenzo. I personally think he took off again. The folks at Blue Gap said he was pretty drunk when he came through on Monday.”
Eddy nodded. “I noticed he’d started hitting the juice.”
Bia shook his head. “Too bad. That kid had just about everything going for him. If he don’t show up soon, they’ll revoke his parole and he’ll go back to Alameda.”
