happened to know that Azure Communications had not yet distributed their gear to major clients; their work was still new enough and untried enough that most corporations didn’t want to bleed at the cutting edge.
Such a large order would give publicity to Azure, and would make other clients sign up. Certainly there would be an immediate benefit from this that the CEO could sell to his board of directors. Perhaps throwing in some extra equipment for nothing would seal this exclusive deal, no? Economies of scale,
And then Seurat would wave another banner for LeBathe and the board of directors: patriotism. The management at Azure was known to be extremely nationalistic. Seurat might point out how the expansion of French technology could impact the world now, and the possible world offered by CyberNation in the future.
Where the Toubon law from the last century had failed to stem the influence of the outside world on France — by removing words like “cheeseburger,” “jumbo jet,” and “e-mail” from the language — the expansion of French technology into a new nation would succeed. And if Azure were to get in on the ground floor, why, perhaps it would have more say in the shape of things to come.
Of course, if Azure’s equipment hadn’t truly been the fastest his team could find, CyberNation would have gone with another supplier, whether it be Japanese, Chinese, or American. But CyberNation had to have the best, and in this case, that was French. Charles’s patriotism, his loyalty, was not to France, but to the dream that was the heart of CyberNation. Eventually, there would be no borders, only a single, unified, information-based world. What was the phrase? Geography was history?
He looked forward to the day when he could dispense with the machinations and sleights of hand he was required to perform to achieve this glorious end. The men at Azure would of course never be allowed to impact the shape of CyberNation with their own biases; but their believing so was necessary. For now.
Ahead, Seurat saw the turnoff to Rue Albert Einstein. He smiled as he drove toward Azure’s building, imagining the future, a huge canvas made from carefully worked-out plans and studies, each one helping build a masterpiece that would change the world. It was still a ways off, but it was coming.
It was a heavy responsibility, the future of humanity, but he accepted it gladly.
2
Chang Han Yao sighed and shook his head at the image on the computer screen. Pornography, and from a Chinese website no less. At least the server was in Beijing, thousands of kilometers away from him.
It was not particularly inspired, the picture, a plain-vanilla Chinese man and woman, both naked, coupling, nothing perverse about it. They appeared young, but they were not children. They might even be married, so that what they were doing could be perfectly legal in and of itself, although the posting of it in public to drum up sales for more of the same was certainly not.
Chang ran the simple backlook bot he had gotten in England the last time he’d been there, a basic, no-frills, easily fooled piece of software he’d been using for almost a year — a lifetime in computer circles — and it took all of two seconds for the program to render the address of the person who had posted the image of the young couple. A telephone call, and the People’s Police would drop round and gather up the sleaze artists. And that would be the end of that — at least as far as Chang was concerned.
If only all his work was this easy.
Fortunately, most Chinese were still not as sophisticated as the rest of the world when it came to computers, and that made some of Chang’s job relatively simple.
Unfortunately, that was changing. Once his people had gained access to the international net, the home- grown product had started to improve dramatically. Now there were people in his country who would not be caught so easily as this would-be smut peddler, those who could rascal their addresses from all but the most cutting-edge huntbots. Chang’s generally superior software and abilities were constantly being overtaken by a new breed of operator, and his goal of running a Chinese agency at the sophisticated level of the United States’ own Net Force was a very long way from being realized.
Still, if one reached, one should reach high.
Pandora’s box had been opened, the cat allowed to escape from the bag, the thousand-year-old egg hatched — and there was no turning back. This new breed of hackers and sysops was smart. More, they had grown up enjoying private enterprise, so they had money, and money gave access to better and better software and hardware, not all of which was legal.
Chang himself, only thirty, had been one of the Xaio Pangzi children — the “small fatties,” so called because they grew up in a time when food was plentiful for the middle class. A fat child was a testament to his parents’ wealth. Chang knew those with whom he was dealing.
It was a long way from Beijing to Urumqui. Were it not for the computer school established here only eighteen months past, and the new chip plant still under construction, Chang would not have been sent to this town. Yes, he had others working for him, and certainly they did their jobs as best they could, but the government still did not understand so much. If they would just—
He smiled, laughing at himself. Yes, yes, yes. And were there no sun, it would always be night.
Chang shook his head. There was no point in traveling along the what-if road. It led nowhere.
He constantly had to struggle to convince the powers that be that he needed to upgrade his systems just to keep pace, to say nothing of staying ahead of the criminal elements. As a Muslim who had the right to put “Haj” before his name, having made the pilgrimage to Mecca only two years before, Chang had a strong sense of morality. Evil would ultimately be punished by Allah, but in the meantime, Chang was able to offer his small part in this world.
Getting some help himself now and then would be nice, Insh’allah…
Captain Jay Gridley looked at his crew. They were down a man, the air in the ship was stale and smelled like lube, but the alien that had killed Hobbs wasn’t going to get any more of them. They were still more than ten light seconds away from the Mars Skyhook, almost two million miles, clearing the Bussey Cluster with a cruise-ship-sized chunk of nickel-iron on the pusher, and nobody was anywhere near close enough to help them.
“All right,” Captain Gridley said, “here’s how it is going to be. Everybody is armed at all times. Nobody goes anywhere alone. We stay together constantly, no exceptions. If you hear a funny noise, you don’t go to check it out, we
He paused to let that sink in, then continued. “We aren’t going to go into the air duct system looking for this thing, nor are we going to roam around in the storage areas where the lighting is dim. If it wants us, it is going to have to come and get us and we will make it cross empty space to do it. No matter how tough its skin is, it can’t withstand the fire of seven blasters hitting it at once. If we see it — when we see it — we kill it. If it is the last of its kind, too bad — it should have thought of that before.”
He paused again, making eye contact with each individual member of his crew. “This, people, is how you stay alive when faced with this kind of threat — you’ve all seen idiot-plot movies and you ought to know by now that the first rule is: You don’t do anything
There weren’t any.
Jay grinned. In the real world, he was in Quantico, Virginia, at Net Force HQ, initiating a virus protection program with half a dozen sub-routines, wired and taped and shrouded in VR gear, running cutting-edge software on the latest hardware. Here in virtual reality, he was on a space tug, protecting it from a nasty alien monster, which was definitely a lot more fun.
Most people didn’t realize that specialized computer hacking was normally about as exciting as watching
