distant lightning, his feet spread apart, hand on sword pommel, it seemed to them that they beheld some legendary hero of ancient times, returned from Valhalla to try his steel against modern foes.
The mood was broken as another man suddenly came around the corner. He brushed silently past Fred Fine and nearly impaled Gary on a key, but Gary moved just in time and the new arrival shoved the key home and shot back the deadbolt. He was tall, with nearly white blond hair, pale blue eyes and a lean but cherubic face, dressed in cutoffs and a white dress shirt. Shouldering through them, he entered the little room.
Fred Fine reacted with uncharacteristic warmth. 'Well, well, well,' he said, starting in a high whine and dropping in pitch from there. I had Fred Fine in one of my classes and when in a good mood he really did talk like Colonel Klink; it took some getting used to. 'So they haven't caught up with you and your master key yet, eh, Virgil? Very interesting.'
Virgil Gabrielsen turned smoothly while stepping through the doorway, and stared transparently through Fred Fine's head. 'No,' he said, 'but I have plenty of copies anyway. They aren't about to change every lock in the Plex on my account. The only doors this won't open are in the hazardous waste area, the Administration Bloc, Doors 1253 through 1778 and 7899 to 8100, which obviously no one cares about, and Doors 753, 10100 and the high 12,500's, and I'm obviously not going to go ripping off vending-machine receipts, am I?' At this the three friends frowned and looked back and forth. Virgil entered the room and switched on the awesomely powerful battery of overhead fluorescent lights. Everything was somewhat dusty inside.
'No rat poison on the floor,' observed Fred Fine. 'Dusty. Still keeping the B-men out, eh?'
'Yeah,' said Virgil, barely aware of them, and began to pull things from his knapsack. 'I told them I was doing werewolf experiments in here.'
Fred Fine nodded soberly at this. Meanwhile, the three younger students had invited themselves in and were gathered around the 'terminal, staring raptly into its printing mechanism. 'It's just an antique Teletype,' said the blue one. He had already said this once, but repeated it now for Fred Fine. 'However, I really like these. Real dependable, and lots of old-fashioned class despite an inferior character menu.' Fred Fine nodded approvingly. Virgil shouldered through them, sat before the terminal and, without looking up, announced, 'I didn't invite any of you in, so you can all leave NOW.' They did not quite understand.
'Catch my drift? I dislike audiences.'
Fred Fine avoided this by shaking his head, smiling a red smile and chuckling. The others were unmanned and stood still, waiting to be told that Virgil was kidding.
'Couldn't we just sit in?' one finally asked. 'I've just got to XEQ one routine. It's debugged and bad data tested. It's fast, it outputs on batch. I can wait till you're done.'
'Forget it,' said Virgil airily, scooting back and nudging him away. 'I won't be done for hours. It's all secret Science Shop data. Okay?'
'But turnover for terminals at CC is two hours to the minus one!'
'Try it at four in the morning. You know? Four in the morning is a great time at American Megaversity. Everything is quiet, there are no lines even at the laundry, you can do whatever you want without fucking with a mob of freshmen. Put yourselves on second shift and you'll be fine. Okay?'
They left, sheeshing. Fred Fine stopped in the doorway, still grinning broadly and shaking his head, as though leaving just for the hell of it.
'You're still the same old guy, Virgil. You still program in raw machine code, still have that master key. Don't know where science at AM would be without you. What a wiz.'
Virgil stared patiently at the wall. 'Fred. I told you I'd fix your MCA and I will. Don't you believe me?'
'Sure I do. Say! That invitation I made you, to join MARS anytime you want, is still open. You'll be a Sergeant right away, and we'll probably commission you after your first night of gaming, from what I know of you.'
'Thanks. I won't forget. Goodbye.'
'Ciao.' Fred Fine bowed his thin frame low and strode off. 'What a creep,' said Virgil, and ferociously snapped the deadbolt as soon as Fred Fine was almost out of earshot. Removing supplies from the desk drawer, he stuffed a towel under the door and taped black paper over the window. By the terminal he set up a small lamp with gel over its mouth, which cast a dim pool of red once he had shut off the room lights. He activated the terminal, and the computer asked him for the number of his account, Instead of typing in an account number, though, Virgil typed: FIAT LUX.
Later, Virgil and I got to know each other. I had problems with the computer only he could deal with, and after our first contacts he seemed to find me interesting enough to stay in touch, He began to show me parts of his secret world, and eventually allowed me to sit in on one of these computer sessions. Nothing at all made sense until he explained the Worm to me, and the story of Paul Bennett.
'Paul Bennett was one of these computer geniuses. When he was a sophomore here he waltzed through most of the secret codes and keys the Computing Center uses to protect valuable data. Well, he really had the University by the short hairs then. At any time he could have erased everything in the computer— financial records, scientific data, expensive software, you name it. He could have devastated this university just sitting there at his computer terminal— that's how vulnerable computers are. Eventually the Center found out who he was, and reprimanded him. Bennett was obviously a genius, and he wasn't malicious, so the Center then went ahead and hired him to design better security locks. That happens fairly often— the best lock-designers are people who have a talent for picking locks.'
'They hired him right out of his sophomore year?' I asked. 'Why not? He had nothing more to learn. The people who were teaching his classes were the same ones whose security programs he was defeating! What's the point of keeping someone like that in school? Anyway, Bennett did very well at the Center, but he was still a kid with some big problems, and no one got along with him. Finally they fired him.
'When they fire a major Computing Center employee, they have to be sneaky. If they give him two weeks' notice he might play havoc with the computer during those two weeks, out of spite. So when they fire these people, it happens overnight. They show up at work and all the locks have been changed, and they have to empty out their desks while the senior staff watch them. That's what they did to Paul Bennett, because they knew he was just screwed up enough to frag the System for revenge.'
'So much for his career, then.'
'No. He was immediately hired by a firm in Massachusetts for four times his old salary. And CC was happy, because they'd gotten good work out of him and thought they were safe from reprisals. About a week later, though, the Worm showed up.'
'And that is— ?'
'Paul Bennett's sabotage program. He put it into the computer before he was fired, you see, and activated it, but every morning when he came to work he entered a secret command that would put it on hold for another twenty-four hours. As soon as he stopped giving the command, the Worm came out of hiding and began to play hell with things.'
'But what good did it do him? It didn't prevent his being fired,'
'Who the hell knows? I think he put it in to blackmail the CC staff and hold on to his job. That must have been his original plan. But when you make a really beautiful, brilliant program, the temptation to see it work is just overwhelming. He must have been dying to see the Worm in action. So when he was fired, he decided, what the hell, they deserve it, I'll unleash the Worm. That was in the middle of last year. At first it did minor things such as erasing student programs, shutting the System down at odd times, et cetera. Then it began to worm its way deeper and deeper into the Operator— the master program that controls the entire System— and wreak vandalism on a larger scale. The Computing Center personnel fought it for a while, but they were successful for only so long. The Operator is a huge program and you have to know it all at once in order to understand what the Worm is doing to it.'
'Aha,' I said, beginning to understand, 'they needed someone with a photographic memory. They needed another prodigy, didn't they? So they got you? Is that it?'
At this Virgil shrugged. 'It's true that I am the sort of person they needed,' he said quietly. 'But don't assume that they 'got' me.'
'Really? You're a free lance?'
'I help them and they help me. It is a free exchange of services. You needn't know the details.'
I was willing to accept that restriction. Virgil had told me enough so that what he was doing made sense to
