screen. “What’s this?”
“Autopsy of that program you found yesterday,” Jensey Baeyen answered. “It’s homebrew, or at best heavily modified commercial. I got a sixty percent probability on the maker, though.”
“What’s the name?” Cerise asked, already knowing the answer.
“Someone called Trouble. Been inactive for a few years, just came back onto the nets in a big way, is what it looks like,” Baeyen answered.
“Who made the match—which data bank, I mean?”
“Treasury.”
That figured. Cerise nodded. “Make me a copy of the autopsy and put it on disk for me, would you? What about copies? Any sign of them on the grey markets?”
“Not yet,” Baeyen said. She touched keys, and slipped a datablock into one of her subsidiary drives. “I put Sirico on it; he should have a report for you within the hour. Someone’s been bragging, though.”
“Shit.”
Baeyen grimaced. “I know. It’s just the usual stuff, ‘look how smart I am,’ with nothing real to back it up —”
“—but the board isn’t going to like it,” Cerise said. She sighed, made a face at the screen. “Make me a quick copy of what you’ve picked up so I can look it over before my meeting. So Treasury thinks it’s Trouble?”
“That’s what the match says,” Baeyen said. “But Trouble was never one to boast, or so I hear, so the boaster and the cracker may not be the same hand, which would explain why nothing’s showed up on the markets yet. But it looks like she’s back—Trouble, I mean. It was a she, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Cerise said, in her most colorless voice. Oh, yes, she added silently, Trouble’s a woman, all right, a tough and sexy, smart-ass broad who walked out on me—but she didn’t boast, and she didn’t take stupid chances. She accepted the datablock, glanced up to check the time. “I’ve got to get moving, but tell Sirico I want to talk to him as soon as I get back.”
“All right,” Baeyen said, and turned her attention back to her displays.
Cerise went back out of the office, past the rows of cubicles staffed by limp bodies, and the security checkpoint, rode the elevator to the executive dining area. The conference rooms were on the lower of the two floors, a maze of linked rooms with movable walls to accommodate groups of various sizes. Dining room three was smaller than she had remembered from the last meeting, just a single oval table with half a dozen chairs and place settings, but the view from the enormous window was just as she remembered it. The room faced northeast, and the towers of the city gleamed in the distance, bright as steel against the vivid blue of the sky. It looked best in the morning, before the daily haze settled in; the channels of the salt marsh that lay between Multiplane’s compound and the main connector flyway were full, reflecting the sky like a tarnished mirror.
The others were there ahead of her, Lenassi of Marketing, Mr. Koichiro from the Executive Committee, Guineven from R-and-D and Brendan Rabin from the Corvo subgroup, looking distinctly uneasy at being in such high company, Coigne himself for Main Security—most of the important people on the Internal Affairs Committee, plus a representative of the group involved in the intrusion. Cerise nodded a general greeting, and took her place at the table. A young woman in a neat black uniform drifted over to take her order.
“You’re late,” Coigne said.
Cerise looked at him dispassionately, said to the waitress, “Just coffee, please, and a display stand for my system.” The woman nodded and backed away, and only then did Cerise turn her attention to the people at the table. “I know. I stopped in downstairs to see how the autopsy was going.”
“Autopsy?” Lenassi asked sharply.
“My people spent last night dissecting what was left of the intruding program,” Cerise said. “They’ve achieved a reconstruction, but I’ll want to look it over myself before I can say if we’ve got anything useful.”
The display stand arrived then, trundling into place under its own power, and Cerise turned to fit her pocketbook into the cradle. Her coffee arrived a moment later, a full pot and a delicate cup-and-saucer displayed for a moment on a silver tray, before the waitress whisked everything into place in front of her. At the same moment, a rather handsome abstract painting slid aside to reveal the larger of the room’s two projection screens.
“Are we all set, gentlemen?” Koichiro asked, and nodded to the waitress before anyone could respond. “That will be all, thank you, Consuela.”
“Yes, sir,” the waitress said in a colorless voice, and slipped away, closing the door behind her.
Koichiro looked at Coigne. “So. Derrick, you wanted this meeting.” As always, he sounded a little conscious of the first name, as though he were still getting used to the alien custom. He was older than most of the Board, older than most of the executive committee, and Cerise had never been able to determine if his posting to Internal Affairs was a sign of his rank or a graceful step toward retirement.
“That’s right, sir,” Coigne said, and gathered the table’s attention with a look that was as eloquent as shuffling papers. “As you know, we had an intrusion yesterday, into the Corvo subgroup’s research net. As far as we can tell, no actual damage was done, but it remains possible that copies were made of crucial data. I felt that Internal Affairs should meet as soon as possible to discuss both the immediate consequences and any long-term effects. And, of course, any possible solutions to a continuing problem. Cerise, would you give us a rundown of yesterday’s event, and your department’s response to it?”
“Of course.” Cerise reached across the display stand to touch the start-up key, cupped her hand around the remote, almost hiding the controls. Letters and symbols flashed onto the wall screen, shaping a schematic outline of Multiplane’s internal network. Bright blue lines formed a boundary around the image, showing the IC(E) that walled in the systems. “I’ve made disk copies for each of you as well, but this is the summary. The intrusion lasted about five seconds, realtime, before the syscops spotted it, and was directed into Corvo’s secondary storage volume—that’s the space linked to Bren’s principal workspace.” On the screen, the affected nodes glowed briefly red. “Five seconds is not a lot of time to make copies, but I have people checking for any signs that the intruder is trying to market stolen goods. The program used was a cracker’s tool, probably homebrew, or maybe a commercial product that has been extensively rewritten. We are autopsying what’s left of it, but we haven’t gotten a solid match to any known crackers.”
She was taking a risk there, and knew it, but sixty percent wasn’t a solid match by any stretch of the imagination. She glanced from face to face, gauging their reactions. Both Rabin and Rand Guineven looked relieved—as well they might; most of their projects were too complex to be significantly affected by such a short intrusion. Lanessi still looked worried, which was no surprise. Public relations was part of Marketing’s concern, and he would have heard that someone was bragging already. Coigne wore his usual faint, faintly patronizing smile, but she couldn’t read Koichiri’s expression at all.
“I was on the net when the intrusion occurred,” Cerise went on, “and tracked the incoming path to a dead- end node in the BBS. I’ve begun other lines of inquiry, but I don’t expect to hear much from those sources until later today.”
She touched the remote again, dimming the big screen. It had not been the most useful presentation she had ever made, but the Board seemed to expect to see visuals no matter what the topic. There was a little silence, and then Lanessi cleared his throat.
“I understand that there has already been publicity about this on the nets.”
The shadow of a frown flickered across Coigne’s face, but he said nothing. Cerise said, “That’s right.”
“Most unfortunate,” Koichiri murmured.
Cerise glanced warily at him, saw no expression at all on his broad face. “But unavoidable,” she said. “A short intrusion like this is likely to have been made for advertising—to prove that someone can do the job, not actually to copy anything. Of course whoever did it is going to boast.”
“And by boasting, tell every other cracker out there that we’re vulnerable,” Lanessi said. He shook his head. “It’ll get back to clients and shareholders at this rate.”
“Not necessarily,” Cerise said. “Right now, the intruder doesn’t have anything real to boast about—and everyone on the net, at least, will know that. They’ll ignore it until the intruder comes up with something useful. And that we can prevent, now that we’re warned.”
“We’ve taken the usual precautions,” Coigne cut in smoothly, “doubling the sweep frequency, running more watchdogs, putting more syscops into the system. And we’re devoting a particular effort to tracking down the intruder, making sure she’s stopped for good.”
